I didn’t even feel like the punchball and so, when I got home, I made myself a roll, ate it, and went straight out without bothering to change.
I soon found myself in the streets of the Liberta neighbourhood. Places full of memories of a period of my life, around twenty years ago, when things seemed simpler.
Lost in thought, I stopped in front of the entrance to a kind of private club. From inside came a voice speaking dialect. Seven or eight men were sitting around a table. They were talking loudly, interrupting each other, waving their arms. To the side, two crates of Peroni beer.
They were playing for beer. It was an old game, halfway between a game and a tribal ritual, involving a pack of Neapolitan cards and several bottles of beer. The winner of each round had to drink a bottle of beer.
“Avvocato Guerrieri!”
Tonino Lopez, a fence well known in the Liberta, with a police record as long as your arm. My client for about ten years.
Officially, in the intervals between one arrest and another, he was a greengrocer, and – since for some reason he was particularly fond of me – every two or three months he’d send a crate of fruit to my office, or artichokes, or a jar of olives in brine, or two bottles of rustic wine. Every time, I would phone him at his shop to thank him, and every time, without fail, he would reply in the same way.
“At your service, Avvocato. Always at your service.”
Tonino stood up from his folding wooden stool, came up to me and gave me his hand.
“We’re playing for beer, Avvocato. Why don’t you come in and sit down?”
I didn’t even think twice. I said thank you and went in. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol, cigarette smoke and men. Lopez introduced me to the others. I recognized most of them by sight. I’d seen them either on the streets of the neighbourhood or in the corridors of the courthouse. Some said good evening, others nodded. None of them seemed surprised that I was there, in my grey lawyer’s suit and tie.
Tonino took another folding stool from where it was propped against the wall, opened it and put it down next to me.
“Take a seat, Avvocato. Have a beer?”
I took a beer and drank half of it in one go. Tonino liked that, I could see it in his face. I had drunk like a man. I thought it would be better to remove my tie. I did so, and looked around.
It was a dirty little room with a single little door of flaking wood, on the side facing the street. The grimy walls were bare apart from two football posters: one showing the Bari team in the good old days, another with Roberto Baggio in a blue shirt, in the middle of a game.
I finished my beer in another two swigs. Tonino opened another and gave it to me. “Do you know how to play for beer, Avvocato?”
I took a long swig of the second beer. I noticed a packet of red Marlboros on the table and had the impulse to take one. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, I didn’t. To be honest, I’ve never really known why I quit smoking.
I turned to Tonino. “A little. I played it in the army, with guys from Iapigia and San Pasquale.”
“So play with us. It’s not too late to join in.”
A great idea. We were practically in the street. Someone I knew could easily pass and see me, without a tie, surrounded by some of the biggest crooks in the area. Getting drunk on beer, belching and arguing and quarrelling about the strategy of the game. It might end up in a brawl, there’d be knives involved, and with a bit of luck I’d spend the night in a police holding cell. A perfect trajectory.
“Let’s play,” I replied, feeling a thrill go through me, and thinking, what the hell.
I played with them for a couple of hours, drank a lot of beers, and left when everyone else did. I was drunk, like all the others, and I felt light-headed and free.
When we said goodbye, everyone was very friendly to me. Almost affectionate. It was as if I had got through some kind of initiation ritual with flying colours. A guy with a belly so big it looked fake actually embraced me and kissed me on the cheeks. I felt the rubbery touch of his belly against me. He smelled of beer, cigarette smoke and sweat.
“You’re a great guy, Avvocato,” he said before turning and staggering away.
I also staggered away and somewhere on the way home I started to sing. I sang old songs from the Seventies. There must be a meaning to everything that was happening to me, I thought.
Fortunately I was too drunk to figure out what it was.