Let the Games Begin Read Free

second and you arrived out of nowhere . . . I'm sorry, I'm so sorry . . . I . . .’
    Fabrizio lavished the girl with a smug smile.
    The attendant looked at her watch and rubbed her hand across her forehead. ‘It's very late. Everybody will be expecting you. Please, go, go.’ She shoved the bouncer out of the way, and as Fabrizio passed by her she shouted: ‘Afterwards, would you mind signing a copy of your book for me?’
    Ciba left the Vespa in the parking area and walked towards the villa, his footsteps as light as those of a middle-distance runner.
    A photographer, camouflaged behind the laurel bushes, popped out onto the tree-lined avenue and ran towards him.
    â€˜Fabrizio! Fabrizio, do you remember me?’ He began following the writer. ‘We had dinner together in Milano in that Osteria . . . La compagnia dei naviganti ? I invited you to come to my dammuso on Pantelleria and you said that you might come . . .’
    The writer raised an eyebrow and gave the scruffy hippie, covered in cameras, the once over.
    â€˜Of course I remember . . .’ He didn't have the faintest idea who the man was. ‘Sorry, but I'm late. Maybe some other time. They're expecting me . . .’
    The photographer didn't relent. ‘Listen, Fabrizio, while I was brushing my teeth I had a brilliant idea: I want to take some photos of you in an illegal dumping ground . . .’
    Standing in the doorway of Villa Malaparte the editor Leopoldo Malagò and the head of public relations for Martinelli, Maria Letizia Calligari, were gesturing to him to hurry.
    The photographer was struggling to keep up, with fifteen kilos of equipment hanging around his neck, but he wouldn't be deterred.
    â€˜It's something out of the ordinary . . . striking . . . The garbage, the rats, the seagulls . . . Do you get it? The magazine, Venerdì di Repubblica . . .’
    â€˜Maybe some other time. Excuse me.’
    And he threw himself in between Malagò and Calligari. The photographer, exhausted, bent over holding his side.
    â€˜Can I call you in the next couple of days?’
    The writer didn't even bother to answer.
    â€˜Fabrizio, you never change . . . The Indian got here an hour ago. And that pain in the arse, Tremagli, wanted to start without you.’
    Malagò was pushing him towards the conference hall while Calligari tucked his shirt into his trousers and mumbled, ‘Look what you're wearing! You look like a tramp. The room is full. Even the Lord Mayor is here. Do your fly up.’
    Fabrizio Ciba was forty-one years old, but everyone thought of him as the young writer. That adjective, frequently repeated by the newspapers and other media, had a psychosomatic effect on his body. Fabrizio didn't look any older than thirty-five. He was slim and toned without going to the gym. He got drunk every evening, but his stomach was still as flat as a table.
    Leopoldo Malagò, nicknamed Leo, was thirty-five but looked ten years older, and that was being generous. He'd lost his hair at a tender age, and a thin layer of fluff stuck to his skull. His backbone had twisted into the shape of the Philippe Starck chair he spent ten hours a day sitting in. His cheeks saggedlike a merciful curtain over his triple chin, and he'd astutely grown a beard, albeit not one bushy enough to cover the mountainous region. His stomach was as bloated as if someone had inflated it with an air-compressor. Martinelli obviously spared no expense when it came to feeding its editors. Thanks to a special credit card, they were free to gorge themselves in the best and most expensive restaurants, inviting writers, paper-smearers, poets and journalists to feasts disguised as work. The outcome of this policy was that the editors at Martinelli were a mob of obese bons vivants with constellations of cholesterol molecules floating freely through their veins. In other words, Leo – despite his tortoiseshell glasses and his beard that made him look like a