TE23 Double Feature

A Conspiracy of Talkers

Gaetano Savatteri

more so, to the point of blindness, as soon as the Americans appointed him mayor right after the landing. They’d arrived in July of the previous year, quickly occupying the town without encountering the least resistance. Even the homes of diehard Fascists flew the stars and stripes, sewn by prudent hands in the shadow and uncertainty of the eve of the invasion. Operator of a sulfur mine, he had friends and allies everywhere. Before the war, those same friends had gotten him thrown in jail, identifying him as a mafia capo. But he was released with an acquittal — bad news for anyone who’d denounced him. The judge looked for the dark uniform of Chief Perez, head of the local carabinieri. He was near the entrance of the Cacioppo Café, the buttons of his jacket pulled down over his fat belly. The town considered the chief an idiot. But he was a certain kind of idiot, good at understanding men and things, good enough to make you believe that idiots are equipped with a sort of compass that keeps them out of the worst trouble, faithfully pointing out the right direction. The chief greeted the judge with cordial irritation. He in turn considered the judge 316

inept, even dangerous, unreliable because fixated on a search for some abstract ideal of honesty. “Your Honor, who could have imagined?” said the chief. The judge shook his head. Anyone could have imagined. Many were hoping . If there was anyone who might end up murdered, it was precisely the mayor. Nanìa joined in. “Nothing. These guys are saying they didn’t see anything. They just heard a shot, but it sounded like a firecracker.” The chief shrugged, turning to the judge. Since the Allied landing less than a year and a half before, there’d been at least three homicides per month. Deserters killed in the countryside, miners with their throats cut along a mule path. They’d shot a carpenter in front of the cathedral, but that was a matter of jealousy. No one ever saw anything, no one ever knew. The chief, who perhaps wasn’t such a profound idiot, would manage to find out something — the husband of the lover of the carpenter ended up under arrest — but always via indirect paths and informants, vaguely identified in the record as “voices of public 317