GIALLO Hannah Shilling This is a work of fiction.

References to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Copyright Hannah Shilling 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Published by Acedusa Books http://acedusa.wordpress.com

They grow up, they feel the stirrings of the flesh then fall into the arms of sin, A sin that God can easily enough forgive them, this is true, But what of tomorrow? What sins will they commit later, when they no longer come to confession? When they have found the world's pleasures? Then they will really be dead, dead for eternity. If I can do something to save their souls then I must, They are my brothers and I love them.

1. Vergogna Shame is the squirm, it unmans, it unmasks, His daughter, smart, had also noticed. Against the strip of travel, zipped, back there, just then, Now receding just as quickly, a sight of the past. A daughter was innocent, at the age of six, but would be conveyed, coerced, into becoming a woman. The black-haired woman struggling to hold herself up against the cement blocks, gravestone reminder: it was blood on the woman's face and neck. "What's the matter with her?" The lisp of child's palate. He does not reply, frozen muscles in the face, biting hard the teeth together. His face goes behind the lens flare from the windscreen and sun, a kindness to him to

"Shouldn't we have stopped?" his wife asks. "She looked like she was in some trouble." Against the travel from Foggia to Bari, the road, impresses the sign of the gypsy witch. Call it a place of blood, but we mustn't get involved (spiritual). The father has protected his daughter from the bloodied woman (menstrual). The Vodou of Haiti came from Africa to Port au Prince. When a relationship is broken by one party, it can be that they have stolen the wronged party's Love - which is rightfully yours, so to attempt to regain it can be no evil. But, as always, the popular idea of sticking pins into a doll representing the person, to cause them ills, has no factual basis. It has come about from the inclusions of dolls into votive altars, together with other found objects. The gypsy woman had first ripped open the grave of an infant taken. An infant not given life, a sacrifice. Without casket, the earth a coffin she can break with her fingers, to exhume the single small skeleton, mishap, loss, perdition. Later, she looks with hate though a hate so abject we have to pity her on the three voodoo dolls. In The Magic Flute by Schikaneder, the three Boys are more the linking devices they are sometimes reduced to. Be steadfast, patient, and remain silent. Reflect on this only; be a man. Then, youth, you'll win the man! They give Prince Tamino the flute and bells to Papageno. They will have been supplied them by Astrofiammante or Sarastro; they pass them on to the intended youth. Tamino, as a character, has lessons for Leopold II, recently ascended to the throne of Emperor of Austria. Or Leopold's son, one day to be Francis II, considered to be even less enlightened by those Freemasons Schikaneder, Mozart, Goethe. Under this view of the libretto, if, like Tamino, our leaders and commanders are filled with virtue and righteousness, then earth will be like heaven. From the work of Lorenz, a nurturing response is triggered by a particular set of 'infant' characteristics, particularly facial features. A rounded head, a button nose: far removed from the long snout of the predatory wolf. A small round mouth: never a great tooth-filled maw, Big round googly eyes: those bush babies, loris, Relatively short limbs, the pudgy bouncy ball, pandas and koalas, With cartoon mouse or cartoon bear, or Betty Boop, the cuteness not to mention wholesomeness is overwhelming. The exaggeration is horrific, the animal re-cut on the drawing board, dismembered, reorganised, revivified to something other. With this crude recipe you can make anything cute: bears, spiders, lobsters, sharks even, if you so wish. Similarly, a display of a lack of cunning, such that the nurturing organism is 'tricked' into sympathy with the other organism: for which a nubility might also be employed. Walter Disney was a harsh man. He sacked employees on the spot: any sign of lewdness, any mistreatment of his creations'

image. He had firm opinions about their political expressions. The Hitchcock gravestone... This is what happens to naughty little boys. He refused to let Alfred Hitchcock film at Disneyland because Hitchcock had made that disgusting film. What will the ethnologist say about this? Morality and Disney, fatal confection: stand here and, with hand on heart, contend that he was not haunted by his childhood? Those young people who are attracted to illicit experience, they seek to demonstrate their grown-up nature. In their taking of drugs, or drinking alcohol, they assert their right to a place in the adult world, and to the respect that accompanies this. Maybe the most childish of behaviours is believe and obey all that you have been told, by that ludicrous mass of the Preceding. Although, undoubtedly, the most powerful means of demonstrating adulthood is to produce offspring. The priest is the Father who is no father at all, just one part of the patriarchy that produces no children. His celibacy is a demonstration of a lack of sexual thoughts, feelings, but also, as much as anything else, his unmarried state is to demonstrate his loyalty to the community. He possesses an undivided heart, dedicated to the service of God and humanity. The parish may feel comfortable in calling him their own father. The same, viewed from a different preconception: Do we know of any animal that kidnaps another's offspring, to raise it itself and perpetuate its dogma in a Lamarckian fashion? And, although this is in no wise conclusive, celibacy is not scripturally ordained. 1 Timothy 3:2: It behoves therefore a bishop to be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, chaste, given to hospitality, a teacher. Carnal matters disposed of, beyond enticement now. The way of flesh is to rot or be burned, choose one or the other. The autoclave, or it to be the auto-da-f? Incineration will reduce any organism to ash. All fungi, bacteria, viruses, spores made non-hazardous, sanitised and sterile. The witch will be burned: all will be made clean by that act. But, in her, in her cleansers, by the film's action, a demand seems to have been imposed. Choose Heaven or Hell, choose no other.

2. Scena A woman, with only her hands, digs down into the earth beside a motorway. The woman is wild, feral, a creature of the woods and heath. She extracts the skeletal remains of an infant, holds it in her arms tenderly, brushing at the brow. The promptings are of magic, violence, perversion, death. The story proper begins. It is a small village in Puglia, not long after the Second World

War, and three boys, Bruno, Michele, and Tonino are engaged in mischief. They have smoked cigarettes, stolen unripe oranges from the orchards and let down a few car tyres. Just outside the village, near the main through road, they sneak up behind the local imbecile Giuseppe. He is also spying, on a pair of prostitutes and their clients, local men, in an abandoned farmhouse. Peeping through the chinks of rotten wood, a bulging eye. The boys hurl the oranges and abuse at him; he threatens them fiercely, but is caught in his turn by the two men and punched to the ground. Michele has to run an errand for his mother when he gets home: take orange juice up to the new arrival from the north, who has taken the rooms upstairs. Patrizia is a young woman who has come to the village after a drugs scandal. When he goes upstairs, she calls him inside. There, again, the tables are turned. Patrizia reclines naked in front of him, taunting the adolescent Michele a little, asking him if he prefers as a thank-you kiss or a tip for his errand. Prima che il confuso Michele risponda, viene per richiamato dalla madre. Meanwhile, in the hills, the wild woman is shown again. She is La Magiara: the Magyar, or Gypsy. She is plunging pins into the bodies of three clay voodoo dolls. She reburies the first to the earth. No doubt is left, some time in the past, the three boys have also played their tricks on her. The next morning, after he failed to turn up for school, Bruno is found strangled, with the imbecile nearby. He makes a half-hearted attempt to run away, but is arrested by the local men and taken to the police station. When interrogated, he claims to have only discovered the body and was hoping to demand a ransom. When the police take him over to the courthouse to be remanded, a mob try to attack the imbecile. The police are convinced they have the child-killer, but the next morning as he wakes up in the cell, having been beaten a second time, almost immediately another body is found, that of Tonino. Among the media pack that has descended on the village from all over the region is Andrea Martelli, an investigative journalist from Milan, sharp and cynical. He recognises Patrizia from her previous notoriety, and the two form a relationship. The funerals of the two children are in the church, amid scenes of grief, weeping and crying out. Hidden away at the back of the church, watching intently at the scenes of grief, is La Magiara. The second part begins with the gypsy witch, her shunning by the community as she walks through the whitewashed village. Old women turn their heads and spit as she passes, windows are closed, men stare at her. The sound of a film projector motor fades up and we are watching a police surveillance film. The scene widens to include the three, the local superintendent, the regional chief and police prosecutor, as they discuss her behaviour and resolve to question her as their second suspect. The boy's club at the church is run by the village priest, Don Alberto, he encourages the boys to play on the church grounds to keep them out of trouble. As he says to the journalist, if they had kept to the football, and not got into their usual mischief, maybe this would have never happened. As they talk in the square, Patrizia is having her Volkswagen Beetle repaired at the garage. The mechanic has already turned over a girlie calendar on the wall, when he saw the priest, but Don Alberto engages him and gently makes a suggestion about reading matter. All the time, Patrizia is there in the flesh, beautiful and nonchalant in red

halterneck, short skirt. She makes a small theatre of diverting him from his calling by offering him a cigarette. He declines at first, but then gives in. At the end of the scene, they encounter Dona Aurelia, his mother, who is inscrutable with a pervasive unpleasantness. After she has gone, the mechanic tells Andrea that she is only accepted in the village because she is the mother of their priest. The police go to question an old hermit, Francesco, who lives in a tumble-down stone hut in the hills. He practices black magic and is the maker of the voodoo dolls that La Magiara used earlier, (it is a suggestion, no more, that he might once have been a priest). He refuses to take seriously their questions continually throwing out a mixture of believable and unbelievable statements, He says he passed on his knowledge of black magic to the gypsy an also claims to that Patrizia has done the same, and that they engaged in. It is difficult to believe him, but he is adamant. Finally, he does confess that he once aborted La Magiara's child, a significant crime. They lock him up. That night, the weather breaks, and thunderstorm rolls through the hills, Michael gets a telephone call and leaves the house. At the same time, in front of a petrol station, Patrizia ends a call. Michele wanders through the dark rain-soaked cemetery, until he too is strangled by an unseen assailant. It is imperative to locate the witch. In the woods, she is tracked down and surrounded by fifteen, twenty, policemen and their slavering Alsatians. When brought back for questioning, because La Magiara believes so strongly in the power of her voodoo, she freely confesses to being responsible for the killings. They press her but she has no idea how the murders were committed, She rants, and rolls round the floor of the station, frothing at the mouth. And has to be given pethidine to sedate her by a doctor. A constable comes in and says he saw her up in the hills last night, kilometres away from where the last body was found. He has also found a cigarette lighter known to belong to Patrizia, near Michele's body. In the paper the journalist notices a picture of a Donald Duck, plastic toy, near the body of the second victim, the head ripped looking up with cute and happy expression . He thinks immediately of Malvina the deaf-mute little girl, remembering that she appears disturbed and pulled and twisted at the head of her doll, while he was watching her in the village square. He becomes convinced she has some knowledge of the crimes, and may even have witnessed one. He makes enquiries and discovers that the child's mother is none other than Dona Aurelia. After La Magiara is released by the police, she is steadily, implacably, pursued out of the town by the fathers of the dead children, who catch up with her in the cemetery. She is beaten with a heavy iron chain and left for dead. Despite her terrible injuries, she manages to drag herself up to the autostrada and as the cars and lorries speed past she looks imploringly for their help. No one stops, and slowly, piteously, she dies. The journalist goes to the police station to discuss what he has found, but when he gets

there finds that they have arrested Patrizia. He becomes angry, telling them that they only suspect her because of her different lifestyle. He waits while Patrizia is interrogated. She is evasive, but for a different reason; finally, she admits she has no alibi for the time of the killing because she went to into Bari that night to buy dope. The local police chief wants to keep her in cells, but the regional commissioner tells him to bail her. Andrea and Patrizia share a night of passion. They are now convinced Dona Aurelia is the killer. The next morning they go to her house, which they find empty. They then drive up to the hills, where, to their surprise, they find her tied up in one of the woodsmen's huts it is not her. Then, immediately, a man is seen from behind, carrying a young girl in his arms, Dona Aurelia's daughter. The cliffs are there. The man, the real killer, is intent on throwing her over the edge, to ensure he cannot be betrayed. The journalist hurries to the cliff-edge and prevents the killer, ripping the child from his arms. They fight, a bloody business, and at its end the journalist is hanging precariously from the cliff-edge, the killer moving in to kick away his grasp. But the journalist manages to grab hold of the killer's ankle and topple him over the edge. As he falls, his body smashing against the rock face, scenes of the boys innocently playing football on the church grounds are intercut. The killer is the priest, Don Alberto. His crazed motivation was to protect the children from an adult life where they would surely be unable to resist the sin and depravity of the world.

3. Casualit More than a coincidence. It was his catchphrase, and from behind his beard he would use it often. If you don't know Fulci, but you remember the writer Primo Levi, that was pretty much him, in looks except, perhaps, not quite so dignified. When the usual news arrived that his film would not get a full release. When he wanted the sun beating down, but the clouds had rolled over and the sprockets had to stop turning. You think our friend the Pope cannot control the weather? Eh? You think not? More than a coincidence, I say. Bemoan the conspiracies against him, and then burst out in his rumbling laugh. Lucio Fulci was a buccaneer, always; a rebellious spirit, so he had a certain talent to bring troubles down on himself. John Huston or Billy Wilder, those guys don't have our problems. They know which side of the line to stay on, those clever guys. And he knew as well, but felt it a matter of honour to cross it. Fulci arranged it like the Puppetta album cover around at the time, with the purplish throw on the couch. She would be there, naked, reclining, when he came in on his errand to deliver the orange juice. The left knee raised to provide a partial shield for the... But not all done with hints and what-have-you. Both breasts showing. She had an all-over tan, which was felt to be less shocking, I don't know why.

And, back to camera, but facing her, the adolescent boy was confronted by the sight, the woman, who was definitely taunting him. We must have the confrontation, said Fulci. We discussed our options. A double for the boy: probably a woman. Or not showing the nudity at all. Camera tricks, the technology of mattes and bluescreen, yes, it was primitive then, and also well beyond our budget. And we wanted to keep the sound consistent, Signorina Boccaletti had lines, I think the child did too, it was becoming too complicated. Or just do it with the boy. How about that? He won't mind so much, said Fulci. He knew this was completely against the code of practice, if not the law, even then. And I should have said no. Especially because as the cameraman I got dragged in later. Anyway, we got the scene. Signorina Boccaletti was a trouper, which was something, at least. I don't know, it was just all a big mistake; we wouldn't dream of it, now, but then... The rumours sprang up of the maverick director having gone too far this time. Fulci was called before a committee of the Film Institute. He went in with a sheaf of papers in his briefcase old scripts and shooting schedules sat down, spread them across the table and when asked by Mr. Trasino, the chairman, said it straight out. We used a dwarf for the purpose. Whether he got it off the top of his head, or had been planning this, I don't know. The child's reaction shots were done later, he told them. He even supplied a name for the dwarf. They consulted and asked Fulci whether he could make available the actor to the committee, to confirm this testimony. Fulci informed Trasino that he thought the dwarf was in Mexico. Why would that be? asked Trasino. Because he is Mexican, I suppose. Fulci kept an absolutely straight face. Fulci was a Marxist and Trasino was anything but. This was their confrontation, sharp and glinting. After that, the director kept out of the Film Institute's way, but the dwarf was a sign of their battles and took on a life of his own. When we doing another film together, the next summer. He has been making a porno, the dwarf, did you know? He has to be a bad dwarf, doesn't he? After all he is the child divested of all innocence, is he not? And Fulci made his usual snigger. The dwarf had to have his wife on the set to keep him under control, and still got into trouble flirting with no pestering all the women. And if not that, then the dwarf was drunk on the set. God, he was a trial, that dwarf. He sent off a young casting director, saying: Get me the Mexican dwarf, you know the one... worked with us on the Duckling film. Until one day: Gianni, I have slaughtered the kinky dwarf. He told me it as if it were true rolled fulsomely the pervertito during mortadella and bread. The dwarf had died in a stunt accident, fallen from a train roof while trying to jump

from wagon to wagon. Which had some plausibility, a stunt that had gone wrong. As the train thundered along, already unconscious, he hung trapped in the couplings, and the other actor could not or would not get down there to help, the stunt director was leaning out of the speeding car shouting useless orders, the train carried on, and the dwarf slowly tipped again and went under the wheels. A ghastly sight when recovered. So that Trasino can visit the grave, said Fulci. What you think would be worse? Have the dwarf die in an orgy or something? Easily trampled by the horse... I had nothing to gain in all this. I'm just the cameraman, I do what I'm told, point and shoot. So the film was already blacklisted by the Church, though it escaped being banned. It did good business as always, better than it would have otherwise. A lot of fuss and effort, for what? In the end, Trasino moved on to another position in the ministry. And Fulci became an old man, worried that his obsession with sex and violence was a sign of mental disease. Doubt came into his faith, that the Church was wrong. Despite, he always came up if not spotless still walking and on to the next. It's not quite the right example of him, he was a better man than this, but you know the line: Tu hai commesso... ... Fornicazione, dite Barabas, ma che stato in un altro paese; E poi, la giovanetta morta.

4. Telefonata Telefonata, Michele! He gets a call, inviting. Michele, pretty little Italian boy, damned. At the same time, in front of a petrol station, Patrizia ends a call. If my beloved has hair of autumn leaf, Because she is young, I should beware her song. This is the same road she was driving down during the rainstorm. The night Michele was killed and we still have the evidence of the gold-plated lighter found near the scene, as in the Chabrol film. Evidence at first incriminating, later seemingly discredited, but the truth in the end. He purloins another look sideways, as she is concentrating on the road ahead, eyes hard. Highlighted copper and hazel, so burnished, I always prefer the brightest beacons, perhaps I am, what would you say...? Her skin is of honey, warm honey. But what if she really is the murderer? The lemon tang of topsy-turvy. Of young beauty intermingled with old evil. You'd not claim this relationship has a serious chance of lasting not outside the moulding events they swim in for these few days. By this evening they will have had to

have made some headway, if not solved the case. Or she will leave the village, too many dark looks in her direction. No reason why she would stay. The clock ticks. At San Nicandro, they stop for a newspaper. She gets out of the car and puts on the widebrimmed, white, straw hat, which she can't keep on her head in the car: there isn't the room. Clamps it against the wind. The shop has newspapers, sand buckets and spades for the kiddies, sailor hats, white and blue. She goes off to do something. Martelli sits in the car, holds the morning newspaper in front of him, inspects the inside pages. The body left with a blanket placed over. And nearby, thought important enough to appear in one of the subsidiary photos, thought to be connected to the murder, the head of a Donald Duck plastic doll. The doll that they have not captioned as Donald Duck, or mentioned Disney anywhere, not wishing a suit. A stark decapitation. Being looked at from the cantina across the road. We are foreign here. Patrizia comes back. Let's buy, I don't know... a toy for the child. Something like a doll, he says. A doll? We need persuade her to talk, the deaf mute girl. They clam it up, children. We can ask Donna Aurelia. The mother has a lot to hide. Do you think that is wise? asks Patrizia. You buy it. I would feel seriously embarrassed to... While she does this, he considers at the possibility of a knife, there was a display of them back in the shop. He is a fierce journalist, stubborn and efficient. He would like to think not driven by money or favours. Unorthodox, he has gone toward the margins himself, drawn there perhaps, but never out of society. A wife in Rome. I think of myself as a divorced man: and that would be, if I could ever get a divorce. If we had got married in America when we could have, should have it would be much easier now. Now, because of the Church, I commit adultery. She has been trying to get through to Milan, still no luck, that's what she was doing, trying again. I know Milan, bastard town full of pointless shouting children of rich people, he says to himself. To test her out, her specialist subject, the child of rich parents. And getting into trouble, the silent salotto sorting out an abortion, Liberated girl on the Pill, no abortions for you, we hope. Or the salotto sorting out a pay-off, a little straightener for someone who has offended. All of them fascinating and delightful. Yes, I know Milan. Patrizia, she is just a child of the age, discovering new things, not understanding the boundaries, he is old and wise, but she is a flavoursome prospect. The church that baptised you, my darling, what were they thinking? She is not a member, outcast, she could be Paris, or L.A. again L.A. you are a city woman, you are a sophisticate who reads Paris Match.and Tempo magazine,

She will leave, and we have done fornication. It has been a chance meeting thrown up by a complicated world, But if they communed for any length of time, he might draw her back into society. A relationship on a seesaw, the fulcrum would be success/failure in dissolving mystery, finding the murderer. Like legal types, they are, who are more interested in career than justice. Or she might wrench him out of society. Forse... I don't know... We might not get anywhere this afternoon... it's a wild-goose chase. For you, Patrizia, I could buy a swimsuit and we could leave it all behind. The unsavoury Church, the murders, those sweating pig policemen. Find something at white-beached Brindisi instead, something for ourselves. If not Brindisi, not so far, Campo di Mare, there's a place I know, San Pietro Vernotico... You could have a gelato, and then, in the evening, we could have a stroll round town. ... The air was filled with the scents of too much aftershave and grilling meat, as all the macelleria were getting ready for their night's business. They strolled hand-in-hand and stopped to watch a juggler plying his trade ... I thought you wanted your big story. I thought you were a journalist, she'd say. Forse... we shouldn't be meddling, let the police do their job. I have a swimsuit already, the girl of his dreams might say. By the late afternoon, when Andrea Martelli, journalist, is hanging from the cliff edge, in very fear of his life, and the priest, psychosis flaring, is kicking away at his hands, he knows he has not much left. Only the vision: Patrizia swimsuited at Campo di Mare, on the beach, with him. A deceitful image because only a future hoped.

5. Vignetta He was a creation of his times, and those who created him should not be judged anachronistically. Let us note that Mickey Mouse was first drawn with the distinct signs of a blackface minstrel and immediately move past this. Mickey is Chaplin, certainly. At times, he is Harold Lloyd. He does not really have that other stone-face of a bizarre man contemplating a more bizarre world. It is easy for him to take on the persona of Douglas Fairbanks, Wallace Beery, if he is to be a swashbuckler. Sometimes he has a James Cagney smirk: that he is the one still standing, when the others are bleeding their last on the sidewalk, winner of the game, for a game it is. The Mouse is a tough guy, every girl loves a rough diamond. He is ready with the pathos, may droop deflated, appeal to your sympathy, but he always has a new plan. The Mouse is often an idiot: although compared to his side-kicks he is the bright one. Cartoons had rougher beginnings, less moral: the Mouse is an uninhibited rabble-rouser who got into fistfights, played some fairly vicious tricks on his friends, Droopy, Clarabelle Cow, and could be amorous towards Minnie to the point of sexual aggression. And he flings up a hand to shade the brow from the sunstaring across the main as a great

sea captain a visionary, a roguish, but not a rogue. There is also the cuteness: who wouldn't love the Mouse? Mickey Mouse has become very bland. They are scared to do almost anything with him, in case of disaster. He becomes the straight man for other, brasher personalities, Donald, Droopy. He is the stable core, which some will argue necessary to hold a huge narrative together. Disney goes to the screening: Vital, it's vital. We have to be the most careful with Mickey, get him wrong and you can forget about everything else. That's us up the Swanee. Donald's dominant personality trait is his short temper and, in contrast, his positive look on life. Many Donald shorts start with Donald in a happy mood, without a care in the world, until something comes and spoils his day. He is a WC Fields Look at me, he runs frenetically, leers with endearing, as if on his 14th birthday, if the stroke ever came, his puberty would damn him to hell. His cliff edge existence, as if he were real he'd soon be down, as the minstrel entertainer currying humiliating laughs from his audience. The Mouse has been saved from the fate of many child stars. Most fade away, a few reinvent themselves, many perish, some continually hang at the cliff edge, fighting to get back. The lot of the child actor is a dreadful one. So often the obvious fact is that the cuteness goes and the acne and broken voices aren't what the Toy-Maker wants. We did what we could, which usually wasn't very much. It really is difficult to help someone if they don't want help. You never really understand this until you try. After he got out of prison, after his problems, we were going to pay his school fees. We spoke to the University of California, get him enrolled on a course, journalism or He just wanted to stay in the business, anything. He fell in with those dope heads in New York, artists, and suchlike, he was doing that lame ass films. Then he could only get construction jobs, and constantly nurtures hopes of a comeback, the return to the fold, but he was doing the drugs again When his mother tried to locate him because his father was dying, she was able to the identify him from the photos they took of the body. It was found in a condemned tenement, went unclaimed and buried in a pauper's grave. She is was who tracked him down. Only eager historians care to research, their purpose to blacken the Disney name. There's Mickey as a propaganda tool - everything's bound to be orl korrekt in the end. I've watched servicemen mustering to go in at Heartbreak Ridge and they are leafing through Donald Duck and his nephews, battle orders ready, dumped their full packs with the engineers, flamethrower at their right hand, the last minutes, the jeeps and the B-52s is in full volume around them, the solipsism, the infantilism, the cartoon aspects of sudden bursts of M1 fire. Just a few klicks up the road, they may ripped in Incheon, Battle of the Kasserine Pass, Kasserine the rout of They may get it at the Imjin River, They may lie inert, draped over Bofors gun housing,

Medivac helicopter But there's still Mickey showing them how it's done, leaping and scurrying between the shells, these with their charmed faces. He too is facially screwed up with panic, but he is the safest ever. There's the hostile 40mm Several hundred thousand Mickey Mouses in plastic wrapping, in warehouses, waiting to go out onto the population. A solider for the state, so the Mouse is soldier in the war, The sight of Mickey Mouse mangled in a ditch, fought his last fight - if that fell image were ever allowed to escape... He is indestructible, eternal; he will always be there on the morrow.

6. Frittata Chin is up in the air. The eyes are eagle proud. Supercilious will bounce against whitewash.The witch struts through the village, She is supposed to be acting a vilified lonely wander through the traumatised village, released by the police, the grieving fathers have other ideas over ,and will follw and beat her to death in the cemetery. Nonnas will spit as she passes when really she should be flitting like the reviled outlaw she is. But Fulic has she can't, this beautiful woman dressed to rags for the day. With the overstep of one foot in front of the other, which does everything to create the hip sway, she's on the runway at Milano. Let's go again, says Fulci. They have a disagreement, the witch and the director. More? More would be too much, Lucio caro, she says. He wants more witch glamour, enchantment to She thinks it should be more realistic She looks around for support, the crew are studiously not getting involved it's too much already. It is cold fact, due to budget constraints (tutto il tempo, si parla di bilanci) the Brazilian bombshell was engaged for two days and one night only: received her direction, shot her scenes, and left for an evening Rome. However, she was one of the crew: no false rubbish with her. She was a marvellous one to have on the set, she mucked in with the technicians and the production team. We didn't have trailers then, no servants to rush around giving assistance to the stars - and there she was, drinking beer and telling her seriously disrespectful stories of what Dirk Bogarde might have got up to. There were some other actors and actresses I could mention, who spent most of their time demanding this and that, and always on the point of walking out. He paid almost nothing up front, did Fulci. The witch is balancing a plate, frittata con cipolle, and is working a fork, savouring, among the chatter. She has already got her make-up, with the rubber gaping wounds plastered to her stomach, needing only the last squirt of fake blood.

And she gulps down her frittata: how does she eat so much and still slim as a rake? It will all fall out, says the dwarf, wandering past. Your nice omelette. I'll eat it again, so I will... quick as a flash, a great big smile. It'll fall out again. Go away, begone, shoo, and they both laugh, it's all so long ago. For her miserable death this afternoon at the hands of the grieving father, among the posse of fathers, swinging a heavy iron chain and lashing her, in the cemetery, turning up the car radio and a syrupy song to disguise the sounds of iron on the skin, she needs some energy. There's a mouse... Don't touch it. I turned you into a star... did I not? says Fulci. Now, you bankrupt my films. He gives it an unpleasant ring, something of the transaction, but Florinda glosses easily. She has a toothpick, golden, to give an impossible air. She could switch on her star, it was like a threat mechanism, retaliation first. She suspends it close to us, fantasia, fantasticheria, asks us whether we really want to take her, and glamour, on, or would we think better of it. And I am not giving too much away when I say that, like not a few beautiful women, she was beyond men, in a sense. Just ask Ryan O' Neal. Yes, of course you did, and you would hold out for good money if you were in my position, Lucio. I will always work for you, if I can well, here I am, working for you. It's all crazy, now I cannot afford you. And it is crazy that I have to work as fast as I can, while there's a market for me. (Before the end of this week, I am in Egypt for a photo shoot). You'll be overexposed. And you, Lucio, will never be in danger of that. She and he argued, but vaguely loved each other. To the red-blooded men who are going to kill her, she must look sensational, which is also acting, I suppose. Though you wouldn't write her up as a great actor. She was candy for the eye first and foremost and knew it. She was wobbly in that German film, for the big Director, though as hot as hell in the ballgown at the end. By God, she has cheekbones you could hang weights off, a geometry to the face. Her lashes do not prevent a river of dark molasses sensuality which flows out, knocking back, pushing away, It is not acting, she is operating with God-given. Cinderella, wasn't it taking the form of a loan? Five per centum on the capital? Suffer now and collect later. The beauty underneath the mud, which might be wiped away. She fits the slipper, but where is a prince to fit the bill? There is a Cinderella about La Magiara, how much? Oodles, slapped on with a trowel. Obviously, many Cinderellas must walk their paths without their Prince come knocking... This Cinderella is deaf to the Prince's knocking, because she needs it not. And not a hoitytoity Milanese, because she is Brazilian, has a Brazilian name, although she changed it for the Italian and French markets. A witch in league with all the powers of hell, modelling a black shawl and behaving . I don't recall whether she was actually barefoot. Wearing heels of

The only other actors she encountered during this time were the three boys, the three police officers and the doctor - and none of these major players. Later in their lives she met the female lead. When she does her vilified wander through the village in the film, the scene is actually of surveillance footage, captured in cin by the bungling police. Which we are shown as a surprise, pulling the frame back from into the wider room they are viewing it. These Princes are less pleasant. They decide to arrest her on the basis, and one remove further back, with the director, he casts. She wanders through the theology of her opponent Fulci, You love your little cuties, I am not that, male, female, the vulnerable, the politics, the giallo, the victim. Beaten, Jesus in proximity and the Harlot.

7. Prosperit Horatio Alger was a cheap man. Cheap nearly always means weak, and with Horatio not strong enough for purity, he cut a muddled middle between the soutane and fleshly fervency. Horatio Alger had been asked to leave the Catholic church. Horatio Alger was 19 centuries after Christ, scratching with a quill at medium-quality paper from booksellers. He managed to churn out a good hundred novel-length stories for the pulp magazines. Strive and Succeed - Bound to Rise - Pat the Tramcar Boy - Gilbert the Young Acrobat By the restoration of a stolen pocket watch, By the saving of a drowning nephew. It followed an absolute template. You are young, male, and an adverse event will be visited on you. You will be destitute, but you will maintain virtue, despite all temptation or after one small slip, resolve never to go back. There will be an opportunity, always. Your moral character supplies the means to take advantage of this opportunity, while the morally deficient fall by the wayside. It is the Cinderella, modified. It is the American Dream; Mickey Mouse can follow. I ain't got no mother, said Herbert. She died when I wasn't but six years old. My father went to serve in Gen'ral Grant's army, he went off before mother died, and nothin' was ever heard of him. Whether he got killed in the service or he came out and went off some other

place I reckon is just the same. The people he left us with in the boarding-house couldn't support us, they wuz horrible poor, so I had to look after myself from scratch. I've knowed how it is to be hungry and cold on a street, with nothin' to eat or to warm me but there's one thing I never could do. I've never stole anything from anybody, rich or poor. It's mean and wrong and I wouldn't do it. He grasped tight hold of the little boy and fought manfully against the treacherous sea, as he saw the small row-boat also riding the waves to get close to them. Pleading his Maker for one last ounce of strength, a few more strokes, then strong hands seized Ned and his burden. "God be thanked!" exclaimed the grandfather, as he saw the rescue accomplished. "That brave boy shall be rewarded!" In gratitude to the kindness offered him by old Mr. Kimball, Tommy has worked hard at his ledgers and bills of lading, acquitting himself with noticeable distinction. It seems very likely that next June, on his twenty-first birthday, he will be admitted to a junior partnership in the business. He is well on the path to a god-fearing prosperity. Although they have shaken hands after their various troubles, Sandy Felix holds a subordinate clerkship in the same house, and is obliged to look up to Tommy as his superior. Following his difficulties with Mr. Kimball, Stan Chisholm has disappeared from town, but only a fortnight later there came news of his arrest in Buffalo and his jailing for two years for his swindling of a hotel owner. But Horatio Alger played the one true formula in his own life, creating a fatal feedback. He played the rich benefactor: and not excessively rich himself, but relatively. The boys were the boys street Arabs, as they were known a mattress for the night and a hot meal for five cents, or whatever a boy could afford. Without a doubt, Horatio Alger was there to save them from the world's evil. Alger's engaged biographer rapidly discovered nobody was going to talk, even after his subject's demise. Having to produce something people would pay to read, it became a biography of scandal, which has a lineage back to eighteenth century France at least. The biographer invented a diary, and a ring of compliant mistresses. When the biographer was, in his turn, on his death bed, he came clean about his own part in the decpetion. Even then, he did not mention the pederasty. Alger had In return for the patronage, is it not natural to ask a little something? By the early 1890s, Alger's modest abode is under seige. The good news spreads fast, as his disciples tap the knocker, push notes under the door, a quarter asked for, happy to oblige. If only the first boy saved had not told so many others, in a pyramid scheme. First boy, the memory of him was a noonday mist. Now, instead, it was how to avoid them. Alger goes about his small apartment tip-toeing, at night with no lamp. If he dares go out, it is very early in the morning, hoping to catch the grocer and buy some tea, then some bread, more the shops are properly open. He is ill with a variety of complaints, the innards acting up badly on him, griping pains, dizziness. He puts a notice saying 'Gone Away' on his door. He will make the attempt to reach his sister in New England and at the train station, he uses the last of his money and manages to find a yesterday's newspaper. The template demands at least one suspenseful coach ride across a deserted landscape, usually on the errand of transporting money. This coach ride provides the hero an

opportunity to be held up by a highwayman or local toughs and use his quick wits to escape from the situation. Horatio Alger was not a New England Gentleman, or a landowner of any description. He had no estate to flee from or to. On his struggle along the track he was directed towards as taking him to Mrs Fanner's house, he starts to feel very unwell. He looks at the turnips he could not steal, their greenery was taunting. Two workers far off: he wonders whether they would rob him if he fell down. If he were found lying mangled in a ditch, the sentiment would be greater then. Afterwards, he could rest in a hospital bed. He is coughing blood in a field of turnips. He is fleeing to his sister's, without even with the certainty of her taking him in. But it is worse than that, he expires there in that ditch.

8. Infelicit The shawled women at their misery: the faces acid dissolved, contorted. Skilfully at its doors, the Catholic church: the coffin has an immovable lid. As for the nails that kept our Saviour safely to his immolation, an efficient reciprocity, If I need to defeat the nail, I need only one cleverness. The screw closes more skilfully than the nail, it holds, it fastens, As their first thought, Both the children and the shawled women may at first believe imagine heaven has destroyed their dreams. The priest is there to tell them it is not heaven that has done this. Their dreams have been destroyed by a secular, iniquitous world, where the Devil is able to wander unchecked. The retarded man is in the church, praying loudly that God would send him a wife and children, Yes, you must pray, but you must pray silently, so that it is between you and God. That is a more special way of praying, which God welcomes. Will God send me a wife and children? We cannot fathom the will of the Lord, my son. I want to have many children. I am pleased you have come to pray, you are God's child and all God's children are welcome in his house. There are many ways of doing God's will. Having a pure heart is one of them. A long life offers the chance to do good works, do not smoke, keep your body pure, let God provide. The young priest looked at the retarded man, the very young priest. We should always place ourselves in the hands of God, who will carry our dreams wisely for us. Is this the end for the three adventurers? They had fallen out over the scheme of spying on Noemi, not an elaborate scheme. Among and around the olive groves, where she was interviewer of suitors, they could spy on her and perhaps get some useful information about what exactly she did to them.

Noemi, who is morgue pale and has her shawl up over her head whenever the sun rises. And lipstick and pink nail varnish, when she was allowed. A cold gettor of boys, Noemi, reader of plain Jane novels not that she was plain herself. She tests them out for ambition, then she will hitch herself to one of them. Naturally, Bruno was in favour and Michele thought that they shouldn't be doing it, sticking up for his sister. Bruno pushed at Michele in petulance, he tripped over backwards. He was almost crying. They didn't talk to each other for a week. We will all leave one day. We all left, says Tonio. It all happened much quicker than we'd ever thought. Left behind the priests and the village. The other children, the inkballs, the football at breaktime, all the childish things. Capo di Istituto Scolastico, on his office door, in gold serif letters. The Father in a furious bate, waiting outside to be chastised by him with the flexible cane. Rome has television. Rome is full of pigeons and rats, but it is a big important place. Michele debates that they are too intelligent there to need schools and schoolteachers unlike this backward place. His father was working in Rome, as a mechanic at the airport, Fiumicino. He came back to theirs, one weekend, with miniature models of the English Concord. Four, all the same: and Michele wouldn't give any of us one, even though he had four. Give one to Raniero, said his mother, I don't want to give him one. When I grow up, I am going to be an airline pilot, said Michele. The African, who is not in the village any more who was from Libya, but he could speak Italian enough worked for the mechanic in the town square. Very good with bicycles. The venticelli have their say. And he lodged at Fabrizio's for a time. Never went to church on Sunday morning. Good thing he isn't still here. The police would want a word. Sar per la sua strada presto. They all leave. Hoarse with supporting Italia, but Brasil poured through. Until, like Time, they could not be stopped. We were chicks cheeping for sustenance; we were betrayed into being on the wrong side on the day. Grizzled on the bench, shouting, pointing, old wise Valcareggi. His wisdom not enough to carry the day either, a respected man humiliated. Knotty gnarled legs inside his smart blue suit, as he urged on from the sidelines, he couldn't do the running for them. The twin pendolini, staffeta, the relay: he would never play Rivera and Mazzola in the same team, even though they were two best players. Too similar. We did very well in the World Cup, we got to the final, but we did not win. You can trash Valcareggi all you like, but he did not fix matches. That Swiss referee, who was in the World Cup final, the last time, in England, he was paid to fix matches. Rubbed with oregano for his acne (stride from the path, reach rosy garlic and marjoram). Eager to be off, out of his mother's clutches and away playing football. Every boy on the

rough sward outside the village has the idea, unshakeable of glory. Watch them as they shout and bully each other, hoping to make themselves the best. A sight of heaven on earth, attracted to it, and battling ever upwards. So growing up is a shaking off, and final shattering of, the certain glory. After they are under the ground, Glory to be applied later Glory is always retroactively applied.

9. Scomparsa I am Raniero Belcastro and I am fifty-seven years old. I have a wife and two children, both sons. One, the younger one, works with computers in Silicon Valley. I work in the insurance business. I do not know how it would be for me today, if my older brother not been murdered when he was thirteen. We moved as a family. My father already worked in aircraft maintenance at the airport at Fiumicino, so it made sense that we should move there. On the Airbuses that were just coming into service then. Before, he had been coming home at weekends. My mother always said that she stayed in the village to look after my grandmother, but after my brother... we felt we had to move. Noemi, my sister, had always talked about leaving before, so she did feel guilty because of it all. I can understand that. Because her head was filled with fashion, all the things she could not have because we lived in a village, she thought she would get married and leave. She was quiet, and she went round trying to make it very obvious she was helping my parents all the time. In Rome, my mother became a librarian, the job did not pay much, she was never able to get a full week's hours. Everything cost more in the city. I remember my thoughts at that time were disconnected; I was disconnected from my family, the youngest, nobody had any time for anything, we did not look each other in the face. It was all the shame. They tried to shield us from it, me and Noemie, of course, that's how it was in those days. People were embarrassed to speak, and it involved sexual matters. My parents went to the police station, and it was explained to them there. But the priest had thrown himself off a cliff, so there was no trial. They did not ask much about the details, did not really think to. Apparently, a journalist, one of those who had come down because of the sensation, from Milan or somewhere, had solved the crimes and was going to unmask the priest as the murderer. The police never really explained this part at all. This is what I was told later, by one of the people from the village I don't know how true it was. The priest had been in the village for three or four years: his mother and a half-sister were there as well. I don't know what happened with those two, they definitely couldn't have stayed, they would have gone off somewhere else. Like we did. But there was no trial. If there had been a trial, it would have been much better. On August 29th, or near it, I go to the autosport museum at Torino. That might sound odd,

but Michele was keen on motor racing. I've found it's best to get there early, as soon as it opens, it gets crowded and noisy. I catch a half-hour or an hour there, thinking about things, thinking of Michele. I try not to think about how it would be for him now, if he was still here. They have the Ferraris there, and the film of the circuits and the races. The drivers of those days, back in the 60's, 70's, they have photos of them. Young men, all of them. Bandini, or Scarfiotti, the Rodrguez brothers, or Jo Siffert. They look sombre and it's sad to see them, but I suppose they say to me, we weren't bad or evil, or anything like that, it was just what happened... we met with accident, destino nostro, anche... and so with Michele. They did not sip the wrong potion, Or wrestle the wrong angel, Humans die: one was my brother, Michele. Back then, I think I started to investigate my father, I saw what was going on, I was convinced he was having an affair. He'd started it when he was in Rome during the week and now that his family had arrived, he had to be more stealthy to carry it on. I started to suspect, or assume, really, that he had another woman, he would have to sneak out of the house to visit her, make up lies about working late, the usual rubbish, I wanted to protect my mother... though how it would have protected her to find out... Probably he wasn't having an affair at all, I really don't know. He and my mother used to argue, but... I don't know. I look at it differently now. We all struggled, in so many ways, we couldn't see it at the time, when we were in the middle of it. There wasn't any assistance, nothing. And I have read that nowadays the relatives of murder victims are given public money, as a compensation. It's something, isn't it... That sort of thing never crossed our minds then. Again, that's how it was. Genesi, Esodo, Levitico, Numeri, I don't know, I profeti, it flows like quicksilver, Geremia, Isaia, Michea, With the good and the bad and the witch enchanting, Michele was caused to live in a fairy tale. I have paid to see a psychiatrist, just the one time, but it was not a good experience. I thought it would be like a confession, that is what everybody says, a chance to speak of your hidden thoughts, I spoke, he listened, and he was very polite, but nothing, absolutely nothing was changed. I expect these psychologists will tell you it is a bad thing to bottle up the secrets like this really, I would be happier if I never told anyone and never had to explain anything. It's just easier. Telling Vera was the hardest thing. When I was courting her, I thought hard about the time when I would have to tell her all about it. Again, you imagine maybe best to say nothing I did consider that idea but it was bound to have got out. It was a big issue for me at the time and yet I can barely remember anything of it, what questions she might have asked at the time. I think she just took it in her stride. My children know of it, and it doesn't affect them, I'm sure. My wife and I have separated. I live elsewhere now, but that has nothing to do with Michele. Did Michele like the same things as you like? He did, mostly, but what does that matter? Did he have good marks at school? No, not especially. Did he ever mention the priest, or anything else that could have been going on, before the

murder? No. When I left home, I started in the insurance trade. I could have gone to America, as one of my sons has, but going north was what I chose. It was the most ridiculous thought, I was petrified I might marry the woman that Michele would have if I stayed that is. I know, stupid. Not just the village, but the whole region, Puglia, the south, Lecce, Napoli. To have remained, the fear was that I had married my brother's wife and would be eternally damned for it. Strange, to be tormented by the Old Testament. And Michele's funeral, it was ludicrous. I don't take Communion. How could I, now? I have no respect or love for the Church. They are on the other side. I feel as if they have attacked me all through my life and there is no one to defend me.

10. Confusa He offered to meet in the park. And I said, two men in a park, I don't think so. I'd been long enough in the game by then, I told him it would be much simpler to meet at his home, I could make sure no one had followed me. But then he said he didn't want any chance of his family being involved, he had to be absolutely certain of their safety so we ended up meeting on the train. I believe we met four times, each time in the Friday evening rush hour, when everybody is heading out of Rome; he himself had a villa retreat near Civitavecchia. We would stand separately on the station platform and get into a first class carriage and then sit down opposite, giving no indication that we knew each other, saying nothing. The first class compartments were always quite quiet. And if he had any information or documents that week, he would pass them across to me. Then, before the train arrived at Civitavecchia, I would have moved to another compartment. I'd have something at the platform cafe there, and then go back to Rome. Really, we had discussed everything we needed to at our first meeting. All he had to do was to pass copies of the documents to me and I would do the rest. I had an accountant ready to look at the bank statements, and that would decide where we began to look next. But my contact never went the whole way. What he passed to me was never the truly incriminating material... which I knew he did have access to. He could not bring himself to do it. And was stuck. This halfway situation was bad: bad, indeed, for both of us. Sometimes, the people I came into contact with, loved the skullduggery of it. Just like a spy film, with James Bond, the villains, Miss Moneypenny and M making the gadgets somewhere. God knows, they got carried away. and you had to be careful with them. Morew than once If it got really bizarre, he might be the one charged with investigating the possible leak. But most, get cold feet, they just won't jump, and he was one of them. He was unsure, nervous, irritable. He knew they could come for him, they would root out the whistleblower. He knew that Sindona had finished with cyanide in his coffee: anyone could be got

to, even when they were in prison. I assumed he was a religious man. Presumably he had shown an aptitude and so had gone to university and then worked in banking, and now he was faced with this moral dilemma. The connection between the money put in the collection boxes by the people of this country eventually ending in the pockets of crime bosses Masonic, Mafia, Curia all addicted to secrets. For his protection, my newspaper would have helped him to get settle in the USA, which I explained to him right at the beginning. Eventually he wrote me a letter saying that he could not do "what we talked about" and we wouldn't be meeting anymore. I understood the dirtiness that attached to the soul Anni di piombo, the years go on. I did feel I was combatting evil, back then but I have never thought myself good because of it. I am a person used, sent out by good maybe. And anyway, back then, in the middle of it, it was a confused picture. It was dangerous, because they were also watching us, and could sometimes choose when and how hard they struck back. They burgled my flat and the only thing they took was my degree certificate, Italian literature, which was hanging on the wall of the dining-room, no valuables, nothing. The significance of that was plain enough. I left then; I gave it all up and got the newspaper to send me somewhere else. It is fifteen years since I set foot on Italian soil and I expect I never will again. By then I had given up any hope of him acting, we hadn't had any contact in a long time. No, I do not feel any guilt that he is dead. One time, as we were going along in this charade, we'd stopped at Look he said, and pointed through the window at the opposite platform, I couldn't tell what he was on about at first, but looked, and there he was. Twenty years ago, he would have had a crowd round him. Standing there all alone, it was very sad. He looked very old, considering. This man had been great player for Italy, their captain when they won the world cup. I think he had gone into some business ventures, they'd not worked out, usual story. This was well before they got paid anything like the millions they get these days, of course. A man of principle, which he demonstrated in his conduct on the pitch, no doubt about that. And my contact could see it, more clearly than me, probably That's just not right, is it, he said. What have they done for him, the high-ups? What have we done for him? The ex-footballer died of cancer, soon after, as it turned out. You'll know whom I'm referring to; you probably worked it out straight away. The footballer had had his usefulness, he was finished with. A disillusioned man, stood alone on the platform with his empty briefcase. People could be used, sacrificed, that easily, just as long the Emperors at the top were fine. My contact was thinking about the disillusionment that would grow in him. That was what scared him most. With Good, or the side that sells you Good, disillusion is actually their weapon, keeping you onside it's not the other team's weapon.

11. Grafia The character of the journalist has little. He is present only to re-establish moral order; despite the reputation of his trade. He detects, more accurately than the police. He takes on without fear or the fist-fight with the priest at the climax. He is a Macduff. He is us: apparently, we yearn that good should prevail. It is a fault is the lack of involvement in the plot of the male lead, standing outside, scrutinising. The fault with the plot is the lack of invcolvment, The character of Donna Aurelia: it is not believable that her two children could be of the same sire: and, to be fair, no suggestion of this is made. She may have lost her first husband in the war. Or he was a husband who could not keep himself on the straight and narrow, with gambling, women, although all sins confessible. and she tired of his behaviour in the end. She has a retarded child: as an obvious punishment. Strong and tragic, much more to tell, maybe the the result of rape, even, a failed abortion? She conceived by a chance encounter in a rain-lashed forest Not from these parts, taciturn and intense, the dark circles under the eyes, a temptress of another era, perhaps. If Magnani could be afforded... and if Magnani were still making films. Of the director's chosen pulchritudes. The crude doubleback of evil inhabiting pretty throw that in the viewer's face, why not It becomes a simple hook for those tiresome types who work out whodunnit. The bluff, it is a bluff, isn't it? Not a double-bluff...? And by God he is pretty, black suits him, and he has spectacles with flat glass and has been told to do sudden turn, disconcerting stare, but smile with it. Had he not been a priest he would have drifted to the city and the shadowed back alleys. A soft face, more French looking, no harsh expressions to distort the beauty, diffident and humble is the acting, not a very wind-roughened man, Montgomery Clift, as if he is not of machine or manly pursuits, he ponders theology, the passions, he suffers, The evil he represents is evil from the best of motives. The evil is done for the best of motives. If supplied with the vestments, every day for a two-month stretch, discounting the time off at weekends, It will come to you and fight with you, It will make a wilderness everywhere you go, the holiness. It is so much harder to be a false priest than a false shyster and Marc gets a taste of it, as he goes through the shoot, every day more laden experiences. And whoever played the priest character will probably have go, His career is heading for the buffers, therefore it's an overdose. She turns heads in the city, so when she is depositing her car in the largely deserted square... There's a problem with the sparkplugs, I think, says the journalist she is with. She is

there, in our very own village square, red halterneck and wedge heels, eying the houses with her great boredom while he discusses it with the mechanic. Across the square, Sandro, puffing at his Balkan Sobranie pipe, Fabrizio and Roberto the quiet, the lazy old men, the card players, who have a finished game laying there equally idly, not fussed to start another. Red dress tottering over in heels, The priest, covered up in his sunglasses. The mechanic, his mouth hanging open, looks like he's very pleased to have met her, our young red dress, doesn't he just... and the old men sniggered between themselves. The mechanic hasn't had a woman since she died. Now he is taciturn, taken in a deal more grappa. Check cheesecloth shirt and a heavy moustachioed lip to be most like old Peppone, like, in his turn, old Joe Stalin. Shaved on Tuesday, here's Saturday, now receiving her 2CV and saying he can fix it by the evening, The priest has joined them. The journalist offers a cigarette, the priest declines, he would, But then maybe he will have one. They continue to talk and the girl from Milan in her red dress is being looked at by those lazy sods. He came back from the war with ideas of being a man of the cloth. Do you remember that? A long time ago, Who would remember that now? Now he curses and blinding under the bonnet, and has let himself go. They didn't want him because he didn't have the money, and he couldn't get an education, not even after the war, when they said that all that was going to be available, war reconstruction. He has his foul pipe, which he says is fine Turkish, but shunts the fumes massively The other with a pipe won't touch it at all, He gave me a pipeful, insisted... he insisted it is horrible, took a week to get rid of the stench You would get on Well, Sandro is not married at all, why doesn't he have a go? She scowls a lot, Aurelia, she's a good enough looking woman, But she's strange, yes she's strange. She is a perfectly good woman, but she has the other child, the mute. He is the writer-director; he is the producer, usually, begging a budget from investors whom he really does not like much. He has so much responsibility, a dictator, so that a real joy it is, when he is made up for his one cameo appearance. Every one of his films has him in it. Blink and you'll miss him, frequently as a detective or doctor, an authority figure, neutral or 'good' - I don't think he ever appeared as a baddie. And, as the ritual goes, during his cameo scene the cinematographer is boss. He makes sure to bawl out the portly actor, our esteemed director reduced to the ranks, to the mirth of all spectators. He does an imitation of the rages. That scene in the can, normal service is resumed. A watchmaker's construction, not far off, fastidious, is the story. Many complementarities,

many reflections. Don Alberto and Francesco, the three policemen, the three boys, in their ignorance stumbling through the world. The sophisticate and the menial how they react, The various suspects slotted into the frame: the lens of suspicion to run, the man with learning difficulties, old Francesco, the Gypsy, Patrizia, Dona Aurelia, the Priest. How they each hand on to each other, no choice in that.

12. Ciliegia Once upon a time... A king! my little readers will say immediately. No, children, I'm sorry, you're wrong. There was once a piece of wood. A talking log, to be precise. Old Master Cilegia was just about to chop the wood in half, his arm raised with the hatchet, when it spoke to him in no uncertain terms. Please be careful! Don't hit me! Fulci was pulling the strings, was watching from below as the dummy bounced down the cliff. They then had a furious row, with the dummy maker backed into a corner. Nearly at the end, we were there's never enough time, serial shooting if you left more time to get things done, the complicated pieces, we'd be making better films. The scene involved no actors, it could have been done. It ruins the whole film. If we try it several times, we can get some shots that look OK and patch it all together. It's because it bounces unrealistically. The articulation needs to be better. The limbs flap in all directions, real limbs, obviously they only go in certain directions, they're still held by the sinews, still tension in them. Still life. So they threw a rope over and hauled the dummy up the cliffs again. We sat, we watched the bumping progress. The budget was all spent, it was our last day, we would go our separate ways. The post-production sparks flying from the dummy's head, as it makes contact with the rocks on its journey down, I don't know how that all came about. Is it really not possible to make something that looks more realistic? I liked the baby skeleton, that was good. La Magiara holds with tenderness the dead infant, Once, she tried to nurse it at her breast, The wet lambing, eased out of the earth, The Toy-Maker has a terrific cold today, sniffly and sneezy with a blast that is artillery against the wooden dragoons. The bunnies are sent tumbling into the swans, elves peek round the door. The workbench is crowded with many dismemberments; the Toy-Maker is ready to abandon his previous commitments to all the children and the animals. He is angry inside. Walter Disney is a Congregationalist. In his nightmare: in front of all the senators and congressmen he uses a thousand dollar bill to light a stogie and says:

Here, I've changed my dream, look at the ashes. The congressmen, and men they all were, gasped at the squander in horror I love America and will do so until the day I die. But today, you know, to me it feels like most Americans are good-for-nothing. Anyway, I've given up trying to help them. For too long I supported the status quo. I quit. Able to look them in the eye, he draws deep of the smoke. Think of the children, implores Truman, called in to help prevent calamity. I've thought of the children and they are wretches, replies Disney. Disney did have the dream, sometimes, a waking dream where all the Presidential candidates, the Majority Leader, the Minority leader, all the Representatives and Senators were his creations and could be made to foxtrot exactly to his command. He always pulled himself together, got back to his work. The strings are manipulated by being kept at infant, which is a paedophilia practised by the state, says the Marxist Fulci. The two Toy-makers examine each other intently, hoping to locate vulnerability. What are we talking about here? asks Disney, breaking first. Go on, Walt, free yourself up a little. Why did Gepetto make the wooden boy? Have you no suspicions at all? I refuse to have anything to do with that, it's a children's story. In his own image: when lies are told, the nose lengthens. The carabinere have come to arrest and imprison Geppetto, because he is known to dislike children. You with your accusations, you are always needling away, says Disney. You are a liar, you are the dirt.

13. Perla This is how it occurred. We had reached the end of our spiritual reading and it was time for 'lights-out'. If I can explain to you that our dormitory was long enough to have the beds of eight seminarians in a row and we could make a game of tennis along those beds with the ball bounding and hopping. Unless sometimes it was us doing the hopping to avoid the shark-infested oceans of the olive linoleum floor. And we all 'got on' terrifically, nobody was left out. When the fluorescent strips clicked off and left the four corners of blue nightlights, we waited for the Prefect, Padre Ernesto, to make his routine check-up. The electric torch bounced around, a little fairy in the dark. Not in the eyes, Padre, we would complain. No talking, to sleep with you, was his constant refrain. Or it was best to pretend sleeping, of course. His soft soles went out. And then what? My pal Gennaro dipped to the secret cache and voil, it's a bottle who is glinting through the dim light. A potent brew of Strega, gotten from the railway station cafe. And more he had eked it with cola, brown sticky cola, old Gennaro, that practised man of the world, come to the seminary to learn of the bible and parables. I will have some of that, the voice told me straight, and to my trembling, I could not stop

myself. And the bottle passed down and up, up and down, to all of us giggling and snorting. If the witch-brew was ever meant to be quaffed by the gentle touch, it was not understood properly by us fourth years. You do realise it is only the gangsters who should ever touch the accursed Strega. Soon it was, the room started to go round and split in two and one veered off somewhere, one was still thereabouts, but unhappy it seemed and forlorn about being deserted. Oh, it was a funny sensation. See a man about a dog, I told myself, I scrambled for the comfort station. But no, it was the lurching stomach. The roasted lamb dinner of the evening now on the corridor floor. Padre Ernesto was waiting, a monster hidden away, his ear grasp was the most ferocious. I was caught and had to suffer my medicine that next fortnight. I'd say the others were in big trouble as well, the bottle was held up the next morning, and our sin was explained to us. The commission was a juvenile one, a boy pretending to be a man and waiting to become a priest. I accept what we did, and soon you know better. We grow up, that is all it is. In a seminary some misconducts occur. All the same, since those who now lead our church live first in a system in which standards of behaviour are set only by those inside, it becomes a brotherhood of vestments. These men who still know of the juvenile nights of tippling and, it is not unknown, the watching of X-flicks, can often be so very patient with and oftentimes protective of their brothers who later go astray. The air was hot with July freedom, gelati and peoples on the Rimini beaches, when I took my orders. When in their half-nakedness they looked just like they were worshipping an older deity, and one more free-n-easy than old Jehovah. The kaftans cast off, having no thoughts for the morrow and not seeing their danger, they toil not, neither do they spin, The church interior was a single redoubt against that evil, I was not worthy to form part of it. I was perched on failure and humiliation. I said inside, I cannot. Ow, it hurt me as a pain, here I was as an imposter, collywobbles bigger than anything. If I could have run away, the first thought was with the Padre reaching out to grasp an earlobe and direct me to betterness. But when the Most Reverend Basileo Calantini S.J laid on hands, I recovered myself. Do not be tempted like this, I could now pray with conviction, you will bring them in. The celebration of eucharist, a priestly stole and chasuble, it was mine. During the litany of the saints, the parents were grinning from ear to ear The mother with her best pearls. Come Father, let us get closer, and he bent over with his cane, and she dabbing at moisture. Gennaro and Mauro grinning in the line beside me. Surely to goodness, I must have been grinning too. Breathing hard, fluttering heart, I bent my mouth to be more solemn, kept my shoulders straight. And the applause, I could scarcely believe it was for me and my brothers. The holy oils, on this day, the plenary indulgence, if the books are to be believed. But they must be in a state of grace. The people lined up to kiss the palms, obeisance was made and it is a remarkable feeling

the first time someone kneels in front you, as if the service was designed to show us immediately, us tender cubs, that we had arrived at the state of grace. Give thy praise to the Lord, but give thy praise also to those men and those priests who are righteous in their works: all praise reaches the Lord thy God.

14. Sublimit Mauro loves Donnatella. Cut into the sandstone cliffs at Viareggio. Serafino loves Dorotea. Cut into an arcade pillar at the Baths of Caracalla, Roma, and a hideous desecration of the ancient. The area was open to tourists before and after the Olympic gymnastic events were held there in 1960, and this was when it happened the offensive graffito of Serafino was expunged, repaired using a mix of putty and powdered sandstone. He was unwrit and what of Dorothea? The cherubim in Raphael's Sistine Madonna are often lifted from the scene and used for birthday cards. The cherubim, not putti, winged for their flight to heaven, with a delivery not of cupidity, but of a pure innocent love. Cherubim possibly bored in an hour or two, hoping to deliver their messages, move the choirs and wheel of Heaven on, a small amount. Raphael was inspired, so the old legend runs, by two children he encountered on the street when he saw them "looking wistfully into the window of a baker's shop. Shall we proceed on the basis that we all know kitsch when we see it? Or should we narrow it to a definition? Kitsch can be defined as an exposition of only the sweet unthreatening things in life, necessarily censoring all that is hard, unpleasant, evil. If exposed in the context of art, kitsch is 'bad' art, because it presents an incomplete statement, therefore a false statement. They hide things from you, which you only receive after a while. So kitsch bites deep to psychoanalysis and social politics. Called 'managers', they think they must manage. They always think they must do something about it, provide some indication they are managing the situation, if only for the show. They meddle. The imbecile was not implicated in any crime, but following the events h. He had lived in a tumbledown part of the stone old cottages, but couldn't live there anymore, he went to the institution in the town. In town, he was out in the shopping centre in their regular crocodile, they also went to the park. Maybe it was good that he had regular meals, It was a bad idea, because he met up with a woman in the institution and the pair got it into their addled heads that they should get married. Although the sleeping and other domestic arrangements were segregated, they were permitted to associate through the day. The two of them held hands in the recreation area. The parents of the woman Words were spoken about sterilisation. The superintendent resisted; a humane man, he knew the imbecile had no other advocate. In the end, it was

decided he should be moved to another home, which I believe was in Napoli, so he ended far from the village he had known since his childhood. He had an ingenuous simplicity. He was motivated to spy on people, which showed that sexual matters are in his heart, desires he will not be able to control properly. Raffaello sketches them all, again and again. He finds the distress, the poignance of l'imbecille, his brow grim, his arms up to ward off the assaults of Heaven, elbows , knees staggering.His eyes bulged out The mechanic crabbed and surly: don't judge a book by its cover. Grease monkey he may have been all his life, but when he came back to the village after the war, it was with the hope of taking orders. He does not quite know now why he did not. Something made him pause, whether the wrong social class, or doubts about his spirituality. He should have, the Church had money and a shortage at that time, places at seminary were all taken up by those The burns he suffered in the Libyan desert. Round the thigh, withering up the skin to rumple, serpentine round to the buttock getting out a tank. Few in the village would know this now, despite timeless appearances, the turnover had, people come gone, died. No reason now to indicate his suffering, go back over it, reopening. The Madonna di San Sisto, by Raphael. The Madonna and Child, accompanied by martyrs Pope Sixtus II and Saint Barbara, walking on clouds, the pair of wistful cherubs below and in the background ghostly others. Pope Sixtus II was one of the first victims of this Roman persecution, beheaded on August 6. Saint Barbara, every day the Romans tortured, but the night had lights floating, bathing the prison in and in the morning her wounds were wiped clean, Her father, deputed, carried out the death stroke, she was beheaded. stands on clouds before dozens of obscured cherubs, without name, the unbaptised infants? The film Bambi is not kitsch and Disney's detractors should withdraw. You have to accept that Disney did not sugar-coat all of it. Bambi's mother getting it, but it always turns out ok in the end. Interestingly, a scene in the animation Pinocchio, strikingly corresponds with this experience of Walt at 14. It demonstrates that memories of child abuse are long-lasting, The hand of the Catholic church and the oppressive sun that beats down on the village, Church of Jesus, Church of Disney, Church of Raphael The village washed white. Normally peaceful: roused into fury when an arrest is made. The day did not betray us: what we were did.

15. Udienza As he is being ushered onto the hotel balcony, a gust of warm wind. And she makes an involuntary movement, right hand, up, as if to clutch at a wide-brimmed straw hat, one that's felt the urge to fly.

Except she is hatless on the balcony. The straw hat would be white, wide, flappy, refusing a conformity: as they used to be. Fashion is more kempt at present. Or uncommitted, he could reckon, pre-approved, disinterested, square. A film of some time back, in which her character wore a straw hat, white, the brim sagged as rugged, uneven, adventurous may be that has jogged his memory. She is delighted to meet the showbiz journalist, as the PR girl fetches him coffee. So, at this point, he will ask a question, she will reel off a prepared piece, if necessary prompted by the PR girl. The PR girl has put the release into the showbiz journalist's hands, which is actually what he will write, with scarcely any alteration. Money is easy. Are you enjoying your stay in L.A.? Which she is. Your first time? Oh no, I have made films in Hollywood previously, for Mr Schoular, for Mr Hirsch. Yes, of course. She is on a sun lounger, in day clothes, a glass of something next to her. The coffee arrives, the film company is managing today, her European PR is not here. He recalls some dealings with them, they were good, efficient the coffee too hot he'll need put it down, but nowhere other to reach across to her little side table, invade, froideur... She has presumably done four of these already this morning. He smiles, no real reaction returned. Tilde (Benigna Bocaletti), a beautiful and successful journalist, is murdered at her home along with her lover. Her spirit rises again to take vengeance, starting with the He's read the release. Such rubbish, and yet you are expecting us to take seriously. Why did you turn down the part of Astrella in The Dark Magician? I'm told you were offered it. I was never offered the part. He waits for more. She looks at him, and then: no, it was another actress (she mentions a name) who turned it down. And anyway, she evades, I wouldn't regret it, even if I had been offered, it is not a very good film. Despite what people are saying. (It has made money, which is important in L.A.) Raffaella (Benigna Bocaletti) is a liberated woman of our times, nothing's too crazy for her to try until one evening she runs into Mauro Belcastro, the rich banker and man-abouttown, who begins to shower her with presents. Initially she is flattered, but she soon starts to find something unhealthy in his interest. We then learn the story of Paola, Mauro's wife, who has been secretly shut away in an attic room in his large house. After a night out with Mauro, Raffaella wakes up to find herself trapped in the basement of this house, forced to dress and act like Paola. While Mauro becomes more and more obsessed, Lauriano, his brother, also starts falling in love with her (as he may also have been in love with Paola). Meanwhile, in the attic, Paola finds a way to break free. It will all lead to a murderous finale, but there's a terrific twist, something to connect Raffalla and Paola that neither of them had realised possible before. Honey and hazel hair, perhaps augmented a little.

You know, Miss Boccaletti, I must confess to being your biggest fan, it's been a while, I used to watch you on the television and couldn't imagine a more beautiful... To me, then... Unspoken between them - the time we spent in Campo di Mare. If he were brave, he would explode the veneer. Reach back - the story about the dwarf, and the nude scene. Initially, she was flattered... Isn't it always the way? She was very keen to work with Fulci, when it was a leg-up for her career. Put one story to rest, madam. She would bridle. I know what you are talking about... This was the only film I did with Fulci, and I know what he said about it, but none of it is true. Fulci was an old pervert, and was only interested in blood and gore and women's breasts. (Where would I be without Fulci, he gave me my start). Well, he certainly knew how to publicise a film, let's put it that way. I'm not going to talk about this any more. Naked in the Forest The Senator Likes Women... Despite Appearances and Provided the Nation Doesn't Know. The Antichrist Comes to Us. These questions he could ask, but does not, the coward, made flat with the easy life, you will not get invited to the parties if he upsets the cart. Now that you have gravitated to L.A., the palms of the Strip, and are dead inside, as they say. So much that I do not know, and every one of those ignorances I can alchemise to guilt. I do apologise, said Andrea, if Miss Boccaletti would be prepared to... The PR girl's telephone rings. Nello stesso momento, davanti a una stazione di servizio, Patrizia termina una telefonata. She has not become a big star. She would excuse this semi-crime, or semi-vice, by saying: I have been away from the scene for a time. I have my husband and my two wonderful children, I have been very happy watching them grow up. We have a place in San Remo, And if she could arch south, down the coast, If she could return to herself as she was fifteen years ago, That is to say, convincingly act herself, if the rle were still inside her, a Marcel ghost. If we could do that, any of us... At first, but only almost, he had thought it a wave of recognition. At the same time as knowing it impossible, far too much to ask. Time has moved elephantine, it has crushed the past. Women's hats today are sculpted tighter, parsimonious. Not the expansive nature, which marked the 70s, that was then, before his bypass surgery, the tug across his chest when he had come up the stairs, the stairs he now goes down.

16. Sevizia Round fluffy leghorns pecking near him, as he wakes, prickled in the chin department and

bleary bloodshot, From which yesterday, he is not quite sure, But must have been a heavy night. So uncle Walt finds himself in his own typed universe to be exact, the farmyard of it the sun is in the sky, befaced a lilting song with clarinets somewhere an old nag tethered near the tree porkers in the farrowing pens that rooster, proud stud, with his harem about a Persian or Turk, for they do such things The hens in search of corn among the dust they peck their way up to Walt but they are Communists and angry, Suddenly their viciousness arrives, now every beak is a dagger, This man of fifty autumns, a good round number, Walter Disney leaps up, indiarubber, flees. An old hayseed watches him go, seated on a stump with a stalk. The scherzo, hi ho Tonto away, on the soundtrack of flitting clumps and copses, he runs is stationary the background flees the steady pack of hens and galloping cows, synchronised, gaining slowly he puts on a spurt, they recede here, Walt looks at the fourth wall, then at the background he begins to notice the pattern know yourself in your walls he touches it, scrapes and burns himself, yeow they are gaining, he spurts again. An elephant seal is raised on a string courtesy of Acme products fabulous company with improbable shipping schedules a creak of cordage and squeak of winch as he passes underneath, let fly it misses by a millimetre bounces, misses by the other millimetre. Ninjas clad in black, kangaroos, are bouncing in, they leap over buildings and pursue him Flamingos introduce him into their goosestepping Red Square rally type affair, The sympathy we have for Disney at this point is immense. Assailed by parachuting octopuses, Flying Dutchmen raining down on him their clogs as carpet bombing, wearing windmill sails as wings. He tries to lift up the lip of earth, tugs at it, it will not budge, The curtain is ripped away, To the The fox ripping the head from the bunny recently copulating fluffy bunny on copulating rabbits, the woodland This repressed individual, who preaches wholesome family values, Through the hall of distorting mirrors, The preacher in the pulpit, but the pulpit forms itself to a coffin, and bounces The book of the revelation, behold the scriptural text come to life and assault him, The bars of the stave act as wires to slice him, Across hill and dale away, taxidermy coming to live as zombies, goggle eyed The vampire or zombies, they multiply, the black and white cats are Walt looks at his reflection, it turns into a wizened old white bearded man, More than a coincidence said Walt Disney's imagined nemesis, himself. Lashed out a claw, cannot dodge, scarring three furrows down the back, Disney flees, The anti-semite pauses for breath, draws deeply tries to get something of good oxygen back to the splintered lungs.

The fading-in, from a cotton wool wisp to a cannon ball, is the finale of the Resurrection Symphony, spiritual as blood-force organ and tam-tam, the great mysteries of death the contralto asking that there be intercession, Behind, all the time, growing, In the outline first, the smoke which hardens to a body, Walt Disney tormented by a large bosomed lady Astrofiammante the whore of Babylon, he's to be battered by udders could it be worse? a small cold zipping sound a rift unzipped between the vast bosoms out steps the red Satanic mouse.

17. Sporcizia A low yellowed full moon, Singing a hymn of the dirtiness, Swollen in dropsy, wasted and seedy. Absent for a season, the pearlescent biting Marian blued moon. She feels herself humiliated and she walks across the cobbles, tired from a long day, starting at four, now seven, but no punishment is too great. Her tongue is stone, she feels she cannot push out a word, yet she will have to this evening, else she will be silent in front of her son. She gets up the stairs, does the key in the lock. Gives herself five minutes, knowing she must start preparation, rises, and begins the meal. Teglia di verdure, as the vegetables soften, the passata, al formaggio filante, gnocchi, From the kiosk she has brought back a box of chocolate truffles, the more expensive option. The radio with light music, Edmundo Ros, latin salsa. She does not think she will be able to speak. Lauriano coming back from the seminary, all the way on that train. The saviour, he is a good man to keep his mother and organise so much. Her belly is out there, his mother is a harlot, the woman of Jericho. She sells newspapers, magazines, sweets, lollipops, chewing gum from the kiosk - and first he nodded hallo to her as he took his journey home, past her for a second time that day. A month of that, thudding, Until he slightly replaces that man from Terni who had the stomach cancer in '52. Until he would pretextually buy chewing gum, Inside, she brought the shutters together, banged the wood and the padlock inside, the lockdown, But his honesty was to say it first of all. I have a wife... And she did not order him to leave. Then, he was a lustful animal upon her. You know, he might be a civil servant or anything, just in an office, a hard-working man. He never appeared again at her kiosk, never walked that street, he must have made a detour. She had allowed him in, she kept him there.

Mother, And lightly brushes her cheek, says nothing about it. For the one she knows as Lauriano, but will be taken from her to be Don Alberto Avallone, has come home, and she gives thanks that he is the best son. He is home and he puts down his smart leather case she bought for him. I have newspapers for you, she says. Sit down. Lauriano at the railway station, when he first went away: Now you will tell me. If the other boys bully you, you must speak to the Fathers about it/ A Mass... is not the offering up of a sacrifice? I beseech Thee to cleanse my heart of its past sins, With the unspeakable gift of Thy grace. The Scarlet Woman does not exist, I acted her for one moment. In and out At my age which is monstrous. The lissom girl gulped with eye bulge, in a bath, white enamel and no marble and handmaidens to worry about. Taking a call from the stalker, vine leaves and bunches, putti gracing the ceiling, ending in rape, Nympholept fingers place plates on table, they sit together, the radio with Victor Sylvester. Simpler than that, her strong face on, Dona Aurelia Avallone He might think that she was forced to it, he has not asked her how it came, Perhaps his mother was forced to it, raped as if, It would be enough to have him asked to leave the seminary, She refused to put so much as a piece of thread into a needle in anticipation of her confinement and would have been absolutely unprepared, When the child is born with difficulties, it tipped her into the decision, she thought there was never the chance that she would give the child away, but now, she knew what she must do and would care for the child, and give the child all that she could, You sometimes see the polio children and it is bad for them when they are grown, The child must not go to the orphanage, the child is my child, He will go back tomorrow night, he will probably go round to see his friends in the day, and then back to the seminary for Sunday. And he says nothing at all - he helps his mother, but of his thoughts about his harlot mother.

18. Propagandistica End with the padlock on Papageno's mouth, it is easiest. Were all such liars to have such a lock placed, instead of hatred and calumny, love and brotherhood would endure in our world. For the root of iniquity is false whisper strengthened into common agreement. Hope springs, it might have been hoped that the composer's biography, published by Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, husband to the composer's widow, would tell a golden story, both praise of Mozart's genius and a recognition of his occasional foibles. It did not. The diplomat was untalented in his task, partial and lazy. He simply recited the propaganda the widow wished uttered.

The earlier editions of the biography contained no special comment regarding the composition of the final Requiem. Yet, subsequently, the false account was inserted of a mysterious emissary who spirited away the unfinished manuscript on the night of the composer's death. The story has come down of a child prodigy abused by his father Leopold, hawked around the archdukes simply for financial gain, a jackpot for the less talented, less successful composer. The truth is different. Leopold was wisely trying to hold him back at all times. His correspondence tells of the precocious child petulant that would not be taken on a tour, or that his father would not teach him counterpoint. It was the child who was the driving-force . If it was his divine gift that caused him to continually agitate to play and compose, the father was not the uncaring greedy monster. Even at sixteen, Leopold was still seeking to limit his son's appearances at public concerts, urging him to continue in his studies. He threw himself around the room, spinning in a berserker frenzy. He screamed that it was not fair, that he was going to be a monk. Wife and children, what did he need with them? The druggist sold a powder to put him to sleep, which it did very rapidly. He made no sound until the middle of the afternoon of the following day, when he rose and was allowed to take a small amount of cognac. These attacks at times were common. He tried to thrust things into his mouth, he was banging his head on the table, and he broke a chair, We were left with the need when he woke up, and a brain tonic was advised. He - and to a greater degree, his wife - would not accept laudanum and so paregoric was chosen. is greyed skin regained its rose He seemed to lose the impedimenta, to petulance, huffiness, He stayed at home, and worked more of his music which all fitted to place, He has become an adult, in his thirty-fifth year Mozart , desperate to be accepted into the adult world, having been praised as a prodigy this had stuck, and he was not a proper adult, had never properly been entered. Had been the prodigy, which is only a conjuration, a trick perpetrated to gain admission by dubious means. The serenity came over, he was going to produced greatness, He was writing the music for a singspiel. Schikaneder. It had been, and changes were made, Six lions, Mozart thought, might be quelled by the playing of a magic flute, Woodland animals, the Orphic ability, strange smell across an Austrian woodland A flute that with it he can change the passions of people, the sad will become joyful and the bachelor accept love. Schikaneder would play Coriolanus, whether it was . reduced in dignity nobility When the two were side-by-side, Schikaneder now looked and sounded the childish one. His insistence of the bosomy ladies now was the The three ladies and Astrofiammante are the big boobed bosomy We can have our The freemasons, and Caligostro and Goethe, Soon or never, for the

Fratellanza, the Brderlichkeit. Again, the sense is initiation, the acceptance into the full membership of the and of a brotherhood, His wife was falling into the trap of any addict in believing they held in their hands an elixir, With his part maturity he knew that Constanze would not look on this favourably so experimented when she was elsewhere, Constanze would also be badly treated by the biographers of her celebrated husband. She was as if a mortal, who dragged back the immortal genius, because she would never understand She had to look after the money, debts were easy to accumulate and noblemen being as they were had a poor attitude to the payments due, so it was a struggle, Wolfgang was only too human, If it was that she wished to control the legend, when the time came to who can blame her This, she would note down and offer up. The change in Mozart when he received the tonic, the But on one occasion he said that he wished could speak again to his father, who had died some few years earlier, That he would tell him of his and there would be a if not quite a reconciliation, but an easing of the sticking-points that had been between the,. That the younger composer of music was able to look back and understand his Mozart had he knew that he was and the initiation into the adult world was complete. Is he worthy, and well qualified? He is. Duly and well prepared? He is. Of lawful age and properly vouched for? He is. 19. Comparabilit In bocca al lupo... Into the mouth of the wolf, good luck, they commend each other. Just before the three portlies go in to arrest La Magiara. They look at each other, it's got to be done. They will be facing the occult. Contrastively, they have no fear of the young and attractive Patrizia, and what she might be able do to them, when it's her turn to be arrested. Just march straight in and say you're coming with us, down to the station. Vederlo? You do see, don't you, it's a trashy exploitation shock horror film, a giallo, straight out of the lines of the yellowest-paper book. Ok, not the worst ever, but nothing near high culture, that strange old concept. Except Signor Fulci does one thing that is clever and who is going to quibble whether he knows he does or not? the Mary and the Magdalene are played opposite to expectation. The unexpected way, known as the wrong way. The demure Virgin is a sophisticate, and uses her knowledge only in cunning, a viper's

tooth. The Witch is Cinderella involontaria, and, as the drama progresses, discovered to be purein-heart. The pariah, suspected, reviled, has the tenderness, the maternit. The Virgin is a Copplia, assembled by Love to show how dangerous is Love. She is cheating she is She is practically male. Not only play against, but are cast against expectation. Cut! the director declares and cleanly, the witch loops the voodoo doll over and across to the props man. He catches it. Where ends the punctum. The witch shakes the rain from her hair, tries first to wipe the mud streaks from her face with her hand - inspects her fingers, muddied - and calls for tissues. Across the ocean, the witch is not Hungarian, instead, Brazilian. Once safely across the ocean. She has many charitable acts to her name, in the assistance of street children in her native city of So Paulo. She's cheerful, genuine and the Witch says: Espero que gostem! At Mais! The Virgin has the best chance to be a star. Ex machina, she is an Austrian actress in the cheaper sort of film. The Virgin appears on the cover of Tempo, radiant in smile. From Cin Revue, the Witch looks out - heavy black and white mascara, if mascara can be white, eye make-up, done up like an Egyptian slavegirl. It's the Witch we remember. On the Witch, depraved amounts of zoom. (But none are on Propaganda Due.) The witch was pursued for several years by a Mexican wrestling promoter... do you not see how slim I am? I have no muscles, look. No, it doesn't work like that. She would fight unmasked, he proposed, of course. Sunset flip, Powerbomb, Cobra clutch suplex, and she found any number of excuses. Or she could star in leather sword and sorcery But I have no muscles, look...? It doesn't matter, you have the scaring. And the dangerous-to-enjoy, but enjoy-we-shall, Virgin. The Virgin has an all-over tan, before her and behind her there is nothing. The strawberry blonde that Miss Boccaletti appears as, a hint. Pamina and Papagena do not mix, different social class. The Virgin repeals, designs, by just one glance, she is Italian society, The Virgin can revile huge portions of the world for you, if you are not careful; it's specifically in her power. The male police force, they interrogate the Witch, leave her foaming at the mouth, While the Virgin Swinger Girl they stupidly crowd round to light her cigarette. They end injecting the Witch. The doctor has something for it, evil. They cannot break out of their conditioning. The judicial three loom behind the shoulders of La Magiara. She faces us directly, gabbling her opinion about the boy's death, that she got the clay dolls from Francesco, the voodoo worked its power, she is evil and they realise she is crazy only. Agitation, delirium, convulsions. The doctor applies a hypodermic, meperidine. The foreshadowing, the Adumbration, lost into the reflex senses, has enchained us. Our modern, adult, detective skills still go no further than a witch is a witch, a virgin is a virgin, We are brutalised by the classification. Assigned, the world, ere we got here, Assigned, a rock to a rock,

Assigned, a hill to a hill, in all respects, So change it? Change it with which levers that act against God?

20. Inginocchiata During her interrogation of him by gaze, at no time does the vulnerability tilt. A boy soldier trembling before first musket-fire and the weapons of breast and pudenda he has not the means to disarm. He was caught unawares the first time. He did not cope well; he was tongue-tied, he admits that. Having now had some time to plan it through, he had some ideas for his own baptism. Unpicked all the teachings, with a tool that slices. Ready to take on Iniquity, an embrace so similar to that of a mother. Telefonata, Michele! He will do better this time. Father, I have sinned in word and deed and thought, Through weakness, through deliberate fault. I have slept with a woman not my wife. She would take the children off to her parents. The marriage would not be over, but he would have to seek her forgiveness, extracted at a price. She would be cold towards him. You must think of the Spirit, when you are tempted, let the Spirit visit you, and ask you whether you do right. Finishing with the efficacious application of three Hail Marys, Mother most pure! Forsake me not, despise not my prayer. You are trembling in the bed, said Graziella, with the bedsheets across to his side hauled. We questioned him six hours straight. But Arbaletti is not even a suspect, he is just a witness, because he was there when the imbecile threatened the boys. Just go along with it, you're not in charge. He does not understand that he is free to go. When they put him in a room and stood him with his face to the wall, he thought he was going to get a beating. They came for him while he was on the roof, clearing out a gutter, kneeling on heavy cotton trousers, olive green, tied with string to prevent snakes and lizards. He was petrified of his wife finding out he'd been with a working girl. We need not tell her anything, but you need to talk to us. We have to find out what is going on here, and quickly, before anything else happens. (Need not tell her, if you co-operate, of course). He would have been more use to us if we hadn't done that - but I don't think he knows anything anyway. Normally I would never see the chief of police at all, but here he is, day after day. This is make or break for my career. You're forgetting about the children, said his wife. If they catch whoever did it, that's the main thing. A few corners cut....

I think the retarded fellow is the one, he said. Although the imbecile is so slippery, wailing on about not knowing anything, and yes, yes, he'd been very wrong to spy on people, but he knew nothing about the dead boy. He was next to the body when we found him. The boys threw stones at him. Then Arbaletti heard him threaten the boys. You need to get some sleep. The revelations of the single night they spend together, toots and nibbles and scherzi, tinsel, the pills, the poppers, swelling from fairies and their dust, Patrizia and Andrea, in amongst the damp slide of their bodies, mouth meeting mouth and are their speeches demanding the other should yield first? Fairies do sprinkle their dust - which is not magic, but a release from shame. Their conjugation was very beautiful and lingered upon. Fulci said his life was being made impossible by Trasino. I was sending him shooting schedules, he kept sending word that he wanted to see a script and I said we didn't work to a script. If we didn't produce a script, he was going to shut us down. In Italy... we would have had to go to Spain, the cinemas would still take the film, I guess. He continually asked whether they were supposed to make an exception just for us? That filming should not have begun. That the Board was going to consider the matter in full session, whatever that was. Trasino had this mannerism, which revealed what he thought to be his killer question, when we sat in front of him like naughty children, he straightened up his big heavy spectacles and that was the tell. Why did you not make those arrangements for the children? The duties are set out very clearly in the Code. Virtue would reign in the Italian film industry. We have to be more careful, I bet you some of those technicians are his spies. A very plain challenge thrown down to the child who has dared enter the fray. He was so clever when he was taunting the simpleton, little angelic-faced Michele, wasn't he just. A woman, stretched out as baigneuse, now taunting him as if he were a lusty twenty year old, which he will not be. He can play football on the green he will never get a trial with Lecce or Foggia, He can learn of trigonometry to no purpose. The reversal rung-like, down you'll learn your lessons one by one.

21. Grezza The melons themselves should be quite sufficient to stop anybody in their tracks, when they see the sign on the highway 300 sandy miles out from Mexical. We don't really need branding as well, do we?

Erasmo, the dwarf, has drawn on a scrap of paper, not the back of an envelope, a rough idea. Which is himself, a dwarf, with snood cap, natch, tucking into a dramatically large canteloupe, little head buried into the sweet flesh and los melones gigantes, a woman with the bust of La Lollo next to him, towering above. And those car drivers, through a fly-spattered screen, dusty and sweating, will be gasping for it. Erasmo de los Apostoles Zamora del Nio Jess Rodrguez Hernndez, the dwarf, was always thinking about money, how to earn it, how to earn enough of it to indulge his tastes absolutely. His current idea is the watermelon farm, he has seen them in the US, and not so many yet in Mexico. Look at what's in Mexico at the moment... with the irrigation techniques used in Colorado they could quadruple their fruit yields. The E. coli scares, they mean nothing. But the start-up costs, and the eighteen months before the first real harvest... He has got into debt everywhere he is going to have to work over the summer in Italy again, and hope that the current Mrs Hernndez and his farm manager will look after things until he returns. More for your money by the comparison of size. The natural employment of a dwarf in the entertainment industry is pornographic. Sleeping Beauty will be introduced by some plot device, suddenly, when they, the benighted seven, enter a chamber with a bed in it. And never a shooting season without some variation on Snow White. Known as Quarterback on the set, his filmography including the horror films where he tags along behind a mad inventor, that genre, the executioner of a 16th century Hungarian princess who had transgressed against her father's opinion, You know the woman who did the voice of Snow White? She can make a living just selling autographs, did you know that? asked the dwarf of his wife. Never been seen on screen, not once. He is always thinking about money. How is it you are always thinking about money and you have all these schemes in the air and yet here we are still in this poor little shack? The watermelons will pay off, you wait. And anyway, the dwarf has never been in a film as big as Snow White. Priests must stare at a dwarf as a test of their faith. Priests, being as priests are, cannot believe we are permitted to exist. In the wonders and miracles department, Hernndez is a garlanded Apollo to his own mind. Anything I do has that hint of the marvellous to it, he asserts. I have that headstart in creating spectacle. The wicked parents, father and mother, were agreed and accepting. They had two other children, both below seven years of age, and could not afford to look after the deformed child. The mother left him there, to the hands of the Catholic Brotherhood with their baroque cream arches and scarred stone. A children's home and Catholic reformatory and hospice, all on the same site. In 1948 he was informed by the Catholic brothers that she was no longer alive. He left in 1951. Erasmo is Moses in the bulrushes, or the Ugly Duckling, or a child who has orphaned

himself. She knows the child as Alejandro. Thirty-eight years after the child's abandonment, his father is dead. The guilt-ridden mother begins her path to detect, to find what became of the baby she discarded. Erasmo wouldn't have imagined that the Brothers of the Children's Home, those sadistic souls, would trouble themselves much to find out what their former charges had got up to once released into the wide world, but it seemed they knew a surprising amount. An entry had been made in that ledger and would be there permanently. They knew that he and hasd it all written down, Her inquiries as an atonement. They told her that he had worked in the movie business, that he had died, they did not know how he had died. His mother caught the evasion. She thought it might be suicide. Catarina, grandmother to several now, traces the third wife. To trace the life she then recounted, Catarina will have to listen to crudity, in a shack out al bitter gloom sombre She made a comment about the the hacienda style, and the opulence of the None of it is paid for, said Catarina, the dwarf's last wife, He always had plans, He was going to be an evanglist, he was, when he had made a success of this, that's what he told me. An evangelist with his own tent, and a TV tie-up. That was in his forties, I expect he had Presidinet of Mexico in there somehwere, The bank have been sending letters, asking me to come to see them, now that he's gone., I'll be going to the city when they take it all back, Forced into existence, we must make the best of it. You know, she said. I really wouldn't too surprised at all if he's somewhere in Spain or Italy right now. His mother felt the guilt, that she had so set free this megalomanic, given him such a bad start in life, her child, that the megalomaia Snow White is on a lubricated trip to bride. Said the dwarf: I have dropped many coffins, but never had a piece of apple dislodge. Then you must just continue dropping coffins, said the Wicked Witch. The fairytale is very clear on this. Or, could it be you are not a prince, majestically born? If a waterfall from either side of the mouth Might insinuate towards wolf slaver Stop it. He looked at the current Mrs Hernndez she is the third and he is only 32 with the idea she could help him in his marketing of the melons. Made some measurements, by eye, rough reckoning. The branding to consist of him, her and a few melons. Would it work? as he debated his alternatives. You can plan all you like, with a business plan and cahsflow etc etc but there's a time when you just have to go for it. Hey, we only get one life, he said.

22. Inevitabilit

The untampered seals were those of a pharoah, said the Director of the Museum of Antiquities. However, when the grand opening took place in front of many dignitaries, including the President of our country, the alabaster sarcophagus was found to be completely empty. From the point of view of Andrea, investigative journalist, now in retirement in a safer country: I was fascinated by the mummies mostly, who isn't? These curse-ridden wonders, to gaze on the face of three thousand years ago. I had wanted to go when the exhibition hit LA, but never got round to it. I that the pyramids didn't have mummies and the sarcophaguses, just pyramids. The huge designs, a great army of slaves all to the bidding of a pharoah. Tut, Rameses, Akhenaton, Hashepsut, Osorkon, massed and placed to the service of God Mammon. All working away, losing their lives, the countless numbers. A great symbol, of statehood. I wanted to see the mummified foetuses. They said were twins, born to a wife of Tutankhamen. But they were all committed to incest, so the foetuses were likely to be unviable. I could blame the ease of travel nowadays, phone up for a reservation and you can be on the plane the next day; but, in the rush, I overlooked that it was Ramadan and there was no easy way to get served with alcohol in the hotels, not even for a foreigner. Now, your correspondent is not a great drinker, as all the bar-owners of East LA will corroborate, but when you can't have something... So the holiday was My cab driver was a jolly sort: from the hotel we shot straight out into the Cairo traffic, barely a glance. If you want, I show you museum, Cairo, king Tut, the cab driver shouting backwards. He wasn't a great believer in looking at the road as we went along. My heart in my mouth, I arrived at the Pyramids of Gizeh. Out of the car was to run the baksheesh gauntlet. It's a sad fact, but some people will be put off their trip to any of the sights of Egypt by their experience of the bedlam that goes on around them. It can be overpowering at time Now the first thing to do is ignore anything and everything they say to you. Don't get into conversation, even if it is just to tell them you can't carry a carpet back on a plane. Some will tell you they are official, that you have pay them to get in, but they won't be. (Anybody with an official function in Egypt can be relied on to take absolutely no notice of you and any problems you may have.) the traders made. The wonderful offers, never to be bettered, or believed...Anyway, I thought, this is what it is like to be Sophia Loren. But despite it all, tThe yammering and hoo-ha, the scruffy bazaar set up just across from the Pyramids, where you can buy the most awesome tat, the Pyramids do not disappoint, once you come under their spell. He sent postcards to his sister and his mother in Italy, which were received six days later. The usual postcard greetings. There is a postal service at the Pyramid site and they are

franked with that date. So wouldn't you normally wait? You had the chance to convey an expensive fare around Cairo in the afternoon and evening, didn't you? He told me not to wait for him. But he had said that he wanted to visit the Cairo Museum. He couldn't be sure of getting a taxi back. He paid his fare and he went into the pyramids. I did not see him again. I have told you all I know. A guide said that he had been seen on his own, wearing a cravat of black, blue shirt, yes, that was him. A guide said he had been seen in the company of another guide, a thief, no good. A tourist policeman said he did not see him. He came back into the city, he spent the afternoon there, and then went on to the nightspots, a club, we don't know where. He met somebody there and went on with them. He had been lured into a trap. A familiar encounter? Not just something from his past, but someone... a woman, a honey-trap. His body was discovered on the Wednesday after his Sunday trip to the pyramids in Gizeh, hands tied behind the back, the contents of his stomach was olives, but the type of olives, green, small, for use with alcoholic drinks, the Western martini, for example. Gizeh has many luxury apartment buildings along the Nile. Quella destinata per te... Whodunnit, the figure in black that so dogs us and the murderer was wearing black gloves, bearing a softly-glowing argenteous weapon, a blade, a nightspecial black for moonlight. Moses, leader of Israelites, bobbed, a few days dead. Leather cord tied the hands behind the back, Snagged by rushes, bragged of being too clever to be caught. Being a foreigner and known to have been a crusading journalist, having powerful enemies, dating back a long way, the regional police chief is to be kept informed of all developments, He was definitely dead before entering the Nile's water. He had not been shot, the executioner's shot to the back of the head, he had been beaten to death with steel chains, the marks indicated that, the sort of chains used in a car repair shop lifting the engine block, that sort of thing. Local criminals employed to do a job? A relative lack of wounds to the hands and arms: he protected himself only a very little, drunken, although no intoxicants other than alcohol. No morphine-based drugs, heroin, oxycodone. Canaps, party food, drink, olives, as if at a party or get-together. The other theory is that he was attempting buying drugs, hashish. His copy was put in at the Press Office which is only round the corner from his hotel late the evening before, Saturday, about 11. It was wired the next morning to his newspaper. The clerk said he had been alone. It might be possible he wrote the copy the day before his actual visit. How to explain the missing hours? If his body had ceased to digest a meal at 4-6 hours after eating, how do we explain the shall we say 12 hours in-between? He was a single man and he might accept female company, I'm not going to say he

wouldn't. He was on holiday... and I'm sure round the hotel there might be... But he would not have paid for the pleasure, I reject that. What is the purpose of these questions, really what is the purpose? We all know what has gone on here.

23. Infermit Getting up slowly to hate the last days. Ill and not in the best of financial circumstances. His expenditure as a snail, loaned, mortgaged, he still went on with the spooled momentum, still hoping one last budget might be raised, the flesh not really strong enough. Where had it all gone? Time to take stock. Just the once, in New York, they threw a super party for him. Like the old days. Wine flowed, a Tiber red, some people he hadn't seen in years, the plaudits came as they should. Festschrift, as the Germans say. Where he was posed with two starlets to flash the teeth and a mistiness in his eye pumped adrenalin to raise one more time. This is my heart medication, this is for my diabetes... I am such a junkie, said Fulci. He jogged the bottle and two or three pills, not many, escaped onto the bedside table. One has gone down the back, he heard it go. Una malattia della tiroide, his medication list was a stunna. Diabetes, pancreatitis, gall stones, Grave's Disease, said the lazy-eyed physician in Brooklyn. I come to another land and I am told have a new illness. I will write you a prescription, You should not drink alcohol, Steatorrhoea, aches in the head and joints, convulsions, and hyperthermia. Or, he could just not take the pills, but return to the Church and say God's will is God's will, however coincidental to mine. My eyes have to be constant for leading ladies, he said, earlier, while we waited for him to go in to see the doctor. You never know... on the off-chance... what starry vehicles are in the heavens... He was nudging me, indicating the receptionist. I carried on sipping at my coffee. The bulging eyes are not symptom of a crazed sex beast, poised? They are not, fortunately. It is a disease of the thyroid. Thank you doctor, for I was sure that my depraved nature, always thinking of situations where ladies are placed in iron maidens, might be the cause. Fortunately, he did not follow-up his threats to proposition the receptionist. How do you sleep? I have never slept well, since I was a 13-year-old boy. You need to continue this course, and then I will see you again in a month. In a month I will be back in Italy. Consult another doctor, receive another illness. No, not champagne for me, I wish I could, but the bubbles...

He is explaining furiously: Yes, it's Nazi, 88 is always Nazi, you look where it appears and your eyes will be opened. That's why it was there. The Spielbergs and that Star Wars, to get grown men and women to watch a children's film, now that is clever. There is no danger, no meat. These films they make now turn adults to children. They are doing the job of their President. Whether he was a Communist some without pause calling him a Marxist, others not is something for the biographers to have their say on. He always kept it simple: I was raised as a Catholic. I always wanted a career here in America, of course I did, but only on my terms, how stupid do you think I am? He tells the story of how they wanted him in Hollywood, or rather, he had the offer but there it wasn't great and no guarantees, you know, I might have had a drink that day and here toasted upwards a slopping glass I thought I could make some mischief and Renato here was my cinematographer where's your still camera? I said to him And I lit my cigar with a 500 lire note. Here, here, make sure they see the zeros send the photo to the USA and tell them they will need to up their offer if they wish to secure the great Fulci. We all shrugged at that, but he thought it excellent. John Marshall has come. He is delighted to see Lucio. Pictured each with arms around shoulders. At the far end, I Have the Key to your Door is playing on a big television screen. Dario is there, grabbing it all for posterity, a super 8 camera, documenting. Some others may be along, I have spoken to Anita already. What are you going to say to them all? We need a little speech. Anita? Anita is here? But poor Marc will not be: he has had his overdose. What about the films you never made but wanted to? I wrote a treatment, we were going to do it together. (And here he mentioned a name of a previous collaborator, a prominent director now. They had fallen out over money, the usual.) I never had any false ambition that I could do great films like David Lean or someone like that. Just the one American hit, that would be me happy... in my grave, you know. And guffaws. He wishes his heart was still a fountain of pleasure and passion. As when the 20-year-old had stood ready to invade sterreich, as part of Mussolini's aid against the Anschluss. The rifles they gave us, we would have been better throwing them at the Germnas than trying to shoot with them. Che strano, but I could have lost my life fighting for Mussolini against the Germans, such an irony, very nearly... You wouldn't believe... I might never have been here tonight, you would never have known me, I would never have known you. He eats another piece of cake, chocolate and orange. Ah, I did not realise! Yes, of course, You, I remember when you were Gianni Assiento. And another laughing and coughing fit. He drops a mess of crumbs down to a paper plate, most of it hits the floor. Never chocolate and citrus to be combined ever, the notes are wrong, he is talking rapidly and the crumbs are shot all over again. Will there be a future? Will he be allowed by God to make more films?

Live your professional life in pendulum between enrag and child pleading acceptance, this is how it ends, with cake rather than champagne it will come to you.

24. Credenza Credenza. Illusion versus disillusion is more a lucky pun than a serious contrast of opposites, but it works sufficiently. The Illusions are those created by film and the Church, each to their own, in a race. It isn't evil that has to worry about disillusion: evil hasn't made the promises. And in this day and age the Holy Mother Church on her own, fighting so hard to combat Disillusion, the tearing away of the Veil. Where now is Lorenzo Bandini, who never crashed until the crash that killed him? What was Torino '49? Remember the old priests, who were crusty enough to be the old burnt wood of the Cross, crawling with cracks, split and black? Remember the salotto buono? Propaganda Due? Remember Berlinguer and even the spirit of Gramsci, him with his foolish utopian ideas? Or ideas that seem foolish now. When Michele said: When I grow up, I am going to be a airline pilot. When his mother said: You cannot go on the train to Roma on your own. Who was the blonde flight attendant at the dance? You never stayed to find out and regretted it forever. You shying away, no, mustn't, she might be the girl that Michele would have married. Why was it so strange, this old world? They persuaded you against your ideas. We know the police said the priest had committed the murders. They didn't say it loudly, of course, but if there was an official position then that was it. A few inches in the paper. The Church published a statement about feelings of loss. They certainly weren't going to admit anything without proof in a court of law. Compensation? Don't make me laugh. It is a difficulty, admitted the deputy chief of police, However, we have no firm evidence tthat the village priest was implicated. You feel very sorry for the hicks we were the parents of the boys, the families, what could they do, the Church only talking through their lawyers. We got outwitted. Alessandro, he took to the drink, because of his son; he felt humiliated that he could do nothing. He died in '77. To sit in your seats and applaud as the curtains close, as if that were all that was required. This is terrible: the world is in ruins, we cannot know the true identity of the murderer, there was no trial, and all have left town. Nobody has started a man hunt over La Magiara, found dead. They will not talk about that, the police have not investigated.

Several people, AAAA The mechanic in particulart remained convinced, and accused the dead woman several, when she could not answer him back. We know that the murders stopped after the priest jumped the cliff. Who says he jumped off the cliff? asks one of the card players. The journalist may have pushed him, he's supposed to have been there at the time. Maybe the journalist is the guilty one. He left with the woman from Milan immediately after. I will not believe that it was him, I still think it was the priest's mother. Why was she hurrying from the church? No, the murders stopped after La Magiara was killed. He confronted him with the facts and the priest threw himself from the cliff in shame. The priest's in Hell now, say the card players, She is in Hell now. They were in it together. She's in Cagliari now, that's what I was told. The murders stopped, you want more? You have been supplied with an identity for the murderer. When we can never bring them back, this is a poor substitute. Can you ever demand more from the God and Devil assigned to run this world? Alike in so many particulars, they really are made for each other. The curtains close, the action continues. Good things always come in threes. The last is the parallel between the three children and the three toy figures thrown on the verge. Since there is a pile of spectacles and a pile of false teeth, it is natural that there will be a pile of children's toys. The toys made of plastic and the object of some love and caring by the child who once owned them, now they flicker only by the passing gusts of lorries and family cars. A doll with a cloth face, or a stuffed bear, a penguin, a duck. The sterility is the lack of sin. Only the most dangerous of radicals could claim that from sin comes life. The converse of the Horatio Alger American Dream template is that used by The Way of all Flesh, by Samuel Butler. As he says: If you wish to understand the cruelty, observe how it goes back through the generations. Due to the recent influx into the village, Don Camillo felt he had to say something in his sermon against lesbians, managing at no time to mention the actual word. Which he was pleased about afterwards, when he discussed it with his invisible friend. For a moment there, I thought I might profane your House. The Lord thought it best if He said nothing in reply to that. Don Camillo wondered if he could ask about the phrase 'lipstick lesbian', which had gained a currency. He wasn't sure what it meant, quite... but also thought it best to remain silent. So there was nothing further said in the church that night, and the priest passed a profitable hour or so in devout contemplation. Everybody loves Don Camillo. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys are not the story you think you know. Although, with Captain Hook, not wrong there, he wasn't born that way, despite him having been named that way

and it growing on him. No, nothing is so simple, the pivot of beautiful flight as Peter and friends carve the air, la caduta degli dei, the fallen angels, the damned a thousand pardons, effendi, but I have to break to you the bad news: this lostness of Peter Pan and his Boys, It resides in the absolute fact they are dead. That tune, a funeral march for a marionette, Gounod, died away. Buona sera. And our portly chief of police began, in his sonorous croak:Stasera, i miei amici... He was large enough to take over most of the screen. He had a delight in badness. He will adjust and settle his Sam Browne and then say a little something about the story he wishes to unfold for our interest and education tonight: tutelage, guidance, a fable of instruction. We will be safe in his care, even as the drama builds, when the evil is shows itself, because it will arrive, there are always hidden forces working against us, Quando gli errori del mondo sono pi di una coincidenza.