Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

A PERFECT IDIOT By Frank Iodice (NOVEL EXCERPT) Originally published in Italian by Edizioni Il Foglio Translated from the Italian by Jessica Levine and Frank Iodice On the thi rd and last f loor of the yel low palazzo over looking the piazza, Łucas Ciepiela, the photographer obsessed wi th the Stock Market , received a not-so-secure Cedr i l Morel , who had just been appr i sed of thei r col laborator ’s death on the same train where he’d met Mel i , two compartments behind him. They ’d been in clear agreement : “We are gett ing off at Mi lan,” he’d said to Bando, “you a l i tt le farther on, you’ l l choose the stat ion yoursel f, let me get in touch wi th you so no one suspects anything.” What nei ther Ciepiela nor Morel had foreseen was that I ’d run into poor Bando. And I couldn’ t have imagined ei ther the trouble I was gett ing into or that Mel i would get al so involved. Ciepiela would get agi tated before deal ing wi th any topic that had meaning. The f i rst f ive minutes, Morel knew, were only a warm-up. Dur ing that phase, the photographer took out var ious booklets from one of hi s bags. When he bent over, he had to hold hi s camera wi th one hand, l ike a r ich lady 115