Italian rules daniel lei.., p.25
Italian Rules (Daniel Leicester), page 25
‘Just like that?’
‘Oh, Dad.’
I held her. ‘Gone,’ she said into my shoulder. ‘Just like Stella. They’ve both gone, while I’m stuck here.’
‘There, there.’ I stroked her head. ‘You’ll be gone soon, too.’
‘Not soon enough.’
‘It’ll always be too soon for me.’
‘Oh, Dad,’ Rose sat back, wiped her eyes. ‘You know I don’t mean you, don’t you?’
I laughed. ‘Oh, I know.’ She got up and grabbed some tissues.
‘Hey,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘News – Alba’s daughter finally has a name.’
‘So, she’s finally decided on Daniela?’
‘No,’ said Rose, suddenly serious. ‘She calling her Lucia, after Mum.’
Chapter 42
INTERIOR cab. Ursula, played by Anna Bloom, slams the door. She takes the face of her lover, Franco, played by Italian actor Riccardo Lenzi, in her hands and the pair indulge in a full-tongued kiss, the driver glancing at them in the rear-view mirror as he sets off through the back-projected streets of Boston in a clear homage to the style of Toni Fausto, who was in turn copying the playful artifice of Alfred Hitchcock.
Franco pulls back: ‘You’re sure about this?’
‘I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life,’ says Ursula.
CUT to a spacious office in the business district. Guiseppe, played by another Italian legend, Ghigo Ercolani, takes the call. He looks out over the city as the private eye reports back. It is only now his fear is confirmed – that his American wife is having an affair – and not with his handsome young assistant as he suspected, but his own brother, who had arrived a week ago ostensibly to see how they were settling in.
Ercolani is a master at conveying emotion, and as he thanks the PI, it is the very stillness of his face that communicates his grief – the betrayal by a brother he has always indulged and who has repaid him by running off with his wife. He believed he and Ursula had resolved their differences the previous evening, which had ended with a round of passionate lovemaking, but no – she had fallen for the gaudy charm of his shallow sibling, and was simply buying time.
Vittorio presses the intercom.
‘Call me a cab.’
INTERIOR airport. Again, Indigo Adler has switched the emphasis: Ursula is leading Franco through the terminal building, not the other way around. You have the sense that Franco knows this time he had gone too far – that he enjoyed the excitement of their summer fling but this is altogether too real for him. He is getting cold feet, but is equally too weak to pull out now. And Ursula? What of Ursula? Adler has given his Ursula more agency in keeping with the times, but he has refused to place her on a pedestal. Certainly, Vittorio is far from blameless – his withholding nature drove his wife into the arms of his brother – but Ursula is no saint. Adler respects the character too much for that: she is not, as she tells a friend, prepared to ‘make do’. And it is this duty she feels to herself which detonates the relationship between the two flawed brothers or, as Anna Bloom pithily put it to me, invoking another philosopher: ‘Hell is other people, hon.’
INTERIOR Departure gate. Flight 143 to Los Angeles is ready to board. Ursula and Franco rise with the rest to join the queue. CUT to Vittorio as he makes his way through the airport. CUT to the couple showing their tickets and stepping past the desk. Ursula spots Vittorio and hesitates. She moves on, but it is enough to alert Franco, who stops, stands staring at his brother as his brother stares at him.
Finally, Vittorio gives the smallest nod. Franco, tears flowing freely, returns the acknowledgement, then follows Ursula down the tunnel. EXTREME CLOSE UP: Vittorio watches them go. If it wasn’t extreme, you perhaps wouldn’t notice the subtlest crinkle at the corners of his mouth, the edges of his eyes.
Of a smile.
WIDE SHOT behind Vittorio as the gate empties, the United Airlines flight number and destination clearly visible on the departure board, but there is nothing significant about it that I can see. Adler has correctly judged an American audience would not stomach a reference to their own collective Ustica – 9/11. Instead, his twist is conveyed by the subtlest of expressions – the sense that only at that final moment does Vittorio realise he is not mourning the loss of an unfaithful wife, but celebrating liberty from a degenerate sibling.
I ask myself: did Elettra Fausto confess all to her husband? Picturing her sitting like a crow in a puddle of blood, I find it hard to believe. Instead, I think of Indigo Adler’s steady gaze behind that puppyish smile – neither cuckold nor slavish fan, he saw altogether more than he was letting on.
The credits float upwards in white script as Vittorio stands there, the noise of the airport carrying on around him. Finally, there she is: Assistant to Ms Bloom, Bologna Rose Maria Faidate.
The CineBo lights came on.
‘What did you think?’ I asked Rose. She nodded, cleared her throat.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It was cool.’
Later that evening I wrote to Anna to let her know we had seen the movie and how good she was. Although I could see that she had opened my message, she didn’t reply.
Author’s Note
While the movie Love on a Razorblade and Toni Fausto are of course fictional, the controversy surrounding the fate of the Itavia Flight 870 is sadly all too true. As I was working on Italian Rules in June 2021, President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella marked the 41st anniversary of the incident with a call ‘for a more complete reconstruction of the facts’.
President of the Chamber of Deputies Roberto Fico added: ‘Some pieces are now acquired, and contribute to the definition of a judicial and historical truth. Each institution must now work to ensure that the other pieces emerge and are placed in the right order. Because … there has been deception, omissions, complicity and conspiracy, also on the part of some deviant sectors of the state apparatus.’
Museo per la Memoria di Ustica is in Via di Saliceto, 3/22, 40128, Bologna.
Acknowledgements
Those familiar with Bologna may recognise similarities between world-renowned centre for film restoration, Cineteca di Bologna, and ‘CineBo’. In fact, staff at Cineteca went out of their way to assist my research and I would particularly like to thank Celine Pozzi and Elena Tammaccaro for talking me through the restoration process, along with the workings of the business in general. Needless to say, what transpires at CineBo is entirely the product of my imagination, although Cineteca, as Rose remarks, does indeed ‘put on some good films’. I would also like to thank (the increasingly indispensable!) Paolo Ghezzi for introducing us.
I would like to say a special thank you to my wife, Lea, whose comments on my draft manuscript made an especially big difference this time around. Also to Dave Holohan and Giovanni de Feo for sharing their expertise on the pre-digital film production process, and especially for introducing me to the Moviola.
I would like to express my enduring gratitude to my fellow authors in the D20 group for their support throughout the year, with special thanks to Victoria Dowd, Philippa East, Louise Fein, Louise Hare, Charlotte Levin and Trevor Wood who were kind enough to read my previous novel, Requiem in La Rossa, at proof stage.
Needless to say, I am immensely grateful for the continued and enthusiastic support of Krystyna Green and Hannah Wann at Constable, and the wise counsel of my agent Bill Goodall. Grazie mille to ever-patient Amanda Keats for steering me through the production process, along with copy-editor Colin Murray and proofreader Jon Appleton, along with publicist Clara Diaz for garnering those all-important reviews.
This novel is dedicated to Russell Norman. Memories of us as students watching videos of European films that had become fuzzy from repeat viewing, or the excitement of catching a new release at an arthouse cinema, came frequently to mind writing Italian Rules. Back in the days when the labour of discovery was matched by the labour of filmmaking and, flickering in the dark, new worlds were waiting.
Tom Benjamin
Bologna, April 2022
Table of Contents
About the Author
Also by Tom Benjamin
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Tom Benjamin, Italian Rules (Daniel Leicester)
