might admire but of which he is wary. You never know, for example, when one of them might be after you. And then what?
This is an area he has already had experience of with a Jesuit priest who gave him extra Latin lessons after school in his study. Don Tinca was a scrawny little chap, and Pistola was small and skinny himself in those days, so it did not seem strange when the priest patted his knee and said, ‘Come and sit on my lap while we see what delights Cicero has in store for us today.’
He happily sat on the friendly priest’s knee during every extra lesson, poring over the book with him, and the priest didn’t touch him in any inappropriate way. At his last lesson, he gave Pistola a book of Ovid’s poetry inscribed, To Ettore, in the hopes of a great literary career. It was only later, when his schoolfriends imparted the extraordinary information that Don Tinca liked to do rude things with boys, that he realised his sessions on the priest’s lap might not have been as innocent as he thought. It put him off the church forever.
So he regards Girotti’s flattering remarks with a certain amount of suspicion. For the rest of the shoot, he keeps as close an eye as possible on the main players and is intrigued to see that on the day Alida Valli does make a tantalisingly brief visit to the set, both Girotti and Zeffirelli are all over her, stroking her hair and gazing into her eyes.
‘Mamma mia, they’re both in love with her,’ he announces to Donato with a certain pride in being the one to make the revelation. ‘Have you noticed?’
Donato shrugs. ‘Ma va là! Do me a favour! That’s how these people behave. Have to make each other feel good so they can work together. It’s all politics.’ His scorn is palpable. ‘You’re on the wrong track as usual, Pistolino. Haven’t you noticed how the director looks at his assistant director? Where have you been? I’m out there on the battlefield, struggling to stop that goddamned horse throwing me, yet I can’t help noticing what’s going on between them, while right here under your nose you can’t even see it. Anyway, I’ve decided I can’t stand movie people. All this hysterical egotism under a veil of loving camaraderie …’
Yet Pistola does notice something rather curious one afternoon. He’s hanging around the camera crew, trying to cadge a cigarette off one of them, when he spots Aguinaldo having an intense conversation with the assistant director. He’s crouched on his haunches in front of Zeffirelli and gazing at him with admiration. The assistant director is leaning so close to Aguinaldo’s face, it looks as if he’s going to kiss him. They carry on a long low-voiced exchange so intimate and affectionate that Visconti, sitting nearby, notices it and suddenly rises, shaking his large head like a lion irritated by flies. When he snaps something at the assistant director, Zeffirelli leaps to his feet and joins him.
Afterwards, Pistola decides it was all in his imagination, that there’s no way a randy bastard like Aguinaldo could ever get into bed with a man. But when he tells Donato and Fiorenzo, their mocking reactions are unanimous.
‘You know as well as I do he’s capable of anything,’ says Fiorenzo.
‘If it was in his interests,’ says Donato, ‘Aguinaldo would screw the Pope.’
The day after filming finishes, Pistola writes a short piece about what it’s like to be an extra on a Visconti movie for the morning newspaper, La Gazzetta di Mantova. His philosophy professore, Signor Orvieto, has a brother who works there, and the two of them encourage the literary talents of boys from the Liceo. The newspaper even pays a nominal fee.
Pistola has discovered he has a way with the written word, though so far the only thing he has managed to get published is a report on Campino’s Archaeological Society that highlights its recent fossil finds. The only person who appears to have read it is his geography professore, whose only comment was, ‘I can’t imagine your grandfather pays you much to publicise his miserable efforts, considering the abysmal quality of the writing.’
But he’s prepared to put up with scorn for the pocket money. So he posts his latest journalistic effort and heads for Giacinto Zanetti’s bar to spend some of it on a gelato.
At the back of the bar is a table of rummy players. Fiorenzo’s father, Pino, Cremonini the coffin maker, and two high rollers who keep slapping down one-thousand-lire notes – Pistola’s cousin Eros, owner of the open-air cinema, and Valetti the maize farmer.
As usual coffee drinking involves verbal jousting with Giacinto about the forthcoming soccer match. Italy has never been an essay in peace and quiet, and life in Campino is affirmed as much by heckling and controversy as it was in Roman times. For volume and passion, the squabbling is equalled only by Caruso at full operatic throttle. So here they are, the pig-farmers and the pasta-makers, slapping the counter and making the glasses jump as they dispute with Giacinto and one another the chances of Juventus’s next game with Milan.
‘In the morning you must always screw before you piss. Otherwise you lose your hard-on!’ Eros announces with authority as he drains the last drops of his espresso, and deals the cards for their fifth game.
‘Are we having a sex lecture or playing rummy?’ Valetti snaps. He glances up, gives Pistola a filthy look over his bifocals which makes Pistola wonder if he’s seen him and Fiorenzo in his maize fields, and calls loudly for a grappa. With a look of contempt for the table in general, he tosses it into his coffee. Silence descends, tight with tension, and blue with the muttered curses of the players and the acrid smoke of their Nazionalis.
Pistola stands at the bar licking his gelato and watching as the occasional interested new party arrives and strolls to the back of the bar. One of them causes an instant commotion. It’s the hunchback Gobbetto. He has been busy gluing Communist Party fête posters on the wall outside and comes in only because he’s thirsty. At the sight of the card players, he lets off a stream of socialist steam loudly in their direction.
‘Beh, filthy industrialists! Sitting here playing cards when other people are working!’
The barman, twice his size and equally cantankerous, looks up from his copy of La Gazzetta dello Sport, in whose pink pages he’s relishing the details of Juventus’s last resounding victory against Napoli, and interrupts with a thunderous, ‘Do me a favour! Some of us have lives to get on with! More than just gluing a couple of posters on the wall!’
Gobbetto stands his ground. ‘Exploiters of the working class! Vermin!’
‘Did you come to drink or talk politics?’ Giacinto asks, leaning over the bar and sticking his finger in Gobbetto’s chest. A church-going member of the Christian Democrat party, he has no truck with the Communists. ‘We don’t need that Russian propaganda drivel here! It would do you more good to go make your confessions to Don Bernardo.’
As Pistola moves down the bar to hear more of this interesting interchange, Eros spots him and shouts, ‘Eh, Pistolin! We got Esther Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid next week! Listen, Bepi has another load of grapes he wants to get done before the wedding and he’s looking for you.’
Eros and Teresa’s father, Bepi Faccincani, are friends, like-minded men of many parts who, along with their daily money-making pursuits, are both wine brokers. No written contracts, no banks. Deals done with a handshake, and the broker always comes back with a fat roll of notes in his pocket. In Bepi’s case, it’s often also several crates of grapes. He gets Pistola and his
