Let the Games Begin. Niccolo Ammaniti

shook himself free. ‘No! I said no! You'll have to wait. If in a week's time I haven't brought you a serious plan, then thanks very much, we shake hands and disband the sect. All right?’

      He stood up. His black eyes had turned red, reflecting the flames from the pizza oven.

      ‘Now, disciples, honour me!’

      The members lowered their heads. The leader raised his eyes to the ceiling and stretched out his arms.

      ‘Who is your Charismatic Father?’

      ‘You!’ the Beasts said in unison.

      ‘Who wrote the Tables of Evil?’

      ‘You!’

      ‘Who taught you the Liturgy of Darkness?’

      ‘You!’

      ‘Who ordered the pappardelle in hare sauce?’ asked the waiter with steaming plates perched on his arm.

      ‘Me!’ Saverio stretched out his hand.

      ‘Don't touch, they're hot.’

      The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon sat down and, without saying another word, began eating.

      2

      About fifty kilometres away from Jerry's Pizzeria 2, in Rome, a little three-gear Vespa struggled up the slope of Monte Mario. Sitting astride the saddle was the well-known writer Fabrizio Ciba. The scooter stopped at a traffic light and when it changed to green turned into Via della Camilluccia. Two kilometres further on, it braked in front of a cast-iron gate on the side of which hung a brass plaque that read ‘Villa Malaparte’.

      Ciba put the Vespa into first gear and was about to face the long climb up to the residence when a primate squeezed into a grey flannel suit stepped in front of him.

      ‘Excuse me! Excuse me! Where are you going? Have you got an invitation?’

      The writer took off his bowl-shaped helmet and began searching the pockets of his creased jacket.

      ‘No . . . No, I don't think I have . . . I must have forgotten it.’

      The man stood with his legs wide apart. ‘Well, you can't go in then.’

      ‘I've been invited to . . .’

      The bouncer pulled out a sheet of paper and slipped on a pair of small glasses with red frames. ‘What did you say your name was?’

      ‘I didn't. Ciba. Fabrizio Ciba . . .’

      The guy began running his index finger down the list of guests while shaking his head.

      He doesn't recognise me. Fabrizio wasn't annoyed, though. It was obvious that the primate didn't ‘do’ literature but, for Christ's sake, didn't he watch television? Ciba presented a show called Crime & Punishment every Wednesday evening on RAI Tre for this very purpose.

      ‘I'm sorry. Your name is not on the list.’

      The writer was there to present the novel A Life in the World by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sarwar Sawhney, published by Martinelli, his own publishing house. At the age of seventy-three, and with two books as thick as a law dictionary behind him, Sawhney had at last received the coveted prize from the Swedish Academy. Ciba was to do the honours alongside Gino Tremagli, Professor of English–American Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome. That old gasbag had been asked to participate just to give an official tone to the event. It was, however, up to Fabrizio to unravel the ancient secrets hidden within the folds of Sawhney's huge novel and offer them to a Roman audience notoriously thirsty for culture.

      Ciba was getting fed up. He lost the polite tone.

      ‘Listen to me. If you can forget about that guest list for a minute and take a look at the invitation – that white, rectangular-shaped piece of card which I unfortunately don't have with me – you will find my name on it, seeing as I am presenting this evening's event. If you want me to, I'll leave. But when they ask me why I didn't come, I'll tell them that . . . What's your name again?’

      Luckily an attendant, with a blonde pageboy haircut and wearing a blue suit, appeared. As soon as she recognised her favourite author, with his rebellious fringe and big green eyes sitting astride the old-style Vespa, she almost fell over.

      ‘Let him through! Let him through!’ she screeched in a thin, high-pitched voice. ‘Don't you know who this is? It's Fabrizio Ciba!’ Then, her legs stiff with excitement, she walked up to the writer. ‘I sincerely apologise. Oh God, this is so terribly embarrassing! I'm so sorry. I'd just gone off for a 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.

      ‘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.

      ‘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.

      ‘It's something out of the ordinary . . . striking . . . The garbage, the rats, the seagulls . . . Do you get it? The magazine, Venerdì di Repubblica . . .’

      ‘Maybe some other time. Excuse me.’

      And he threw himself in between Malagò and Calligari. The photographer, exhausted, bent over holding his side.

      ‘Can I call you in the next couple of days?’

      The writer didn't even bother to answer.

      ‘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 sagged like a merciful curtain over his triple chin, and he'd astutely grown a beard, albeit