The Seventh Function of Language

Bianca’s eyes are shining. After a diatribe like that, her only option is to go for broke, with added lyricism if possible, but not too much because she knows that all politicized lyricism tends to sound religious, so she says: “His grandson will get over it. He’ll go to the best schools, he’ll never go hungry, he’ll get an internship at UNESCO, at NATO, at the UN, in Rome, in Geneva, in New York! Have you ever been to Naples? Have you seen the Neapolitan children who live in houses that the government—the government run by Andreotti and your friend Moro—have allowed to collapse? How many women and children have been abandoned by the Christian Democrats’ corrupted policies?”

Enzo snorts as he fills Bianca’s glass: “So two wrongs make a right, giusto?”

At this instant, one of the three young men stands up and tosses his napkin on the floor. With the lower part of his face covered by his scarf, he walks up to the table of card players, waves a pistol at the bar owner, and shoots him in the leg.

Luciano crumples to the floor, groaning.

Bayard is not armed, and in the scramble that follows he cannot reach the young man, who walks out of the bar, escorted by his two friends, the smoking gun in his hand. And in the blink of an eye, the gang has disappeared. Inside, it is not exactly a scene of panic, even if the old woman behind the bar has rushed over to her son, screaming, but young and old alike are all yelling at the tops of their voices. Luciano pushes his mother away. Enzo shouts at Bianca, with venomous irony: “Brava, brava! Continua a difenderli i tuoi amici brigatisti? Bisognava punire Luciano, vero? Questo sporco capitalista proprietario di bar. È un vero covo di fascisti, giusto?” Bianca goes over to help Luciano, lying on the floor, and replies to Enzo, in Italian, that it almost certainly wasn’t the Red Brigades, that there are hundreds of far-left or far-right factions who practice gambizzazione with shots from a P38. Luciano tells his mother: “Basta, mamma!” The poor woman lets loose a long sob of anguish. Bianca does not see why the Red Brigades would have attacked Luciano. While she tries to stanch the bleeding with a dishcloth, Enzo points out that her being unsure whether to attribute this attack to the far left or far right indicates a slight problem. Someone says they should call the police, but Luciano groans categorically: niente polizia. Bayard leans down over the wound: the bullet hole is above the knee, in the thigh, and the amount of blood loss suggests that it missed the femoral artery. Bianca replies to Enzo, in French, so that Simon realizes she is also speaking to him: “You know perfectly well that’s how it is—the strategy of tension. It’s been like that since the Piazza Fontana.” Simon asks what she’s talking about. Enzo replies that in Milan, in ’69, a bomb in a bank on the Piazza Fontana killed fifteen people. Bianca adds that during the investigation, the police killed an anarcho-syndicalist by throwing him through the police station window. “They said it was the anarchists, but afterward we realized it was the far right, working with the state, who planted the bomb in order to accuse the far left and justify their fascist policies. That is the strategia della tensione. It’s been going on for ten years. Even the pope is involved.” Enzo confirms: “Yeah, that’s true. A Pole!” Bayard asks: “And these, er, kneecappings, do they happen a lot?” Bianca thinks while she improvises a tourniquet with her belt. “No, not really. Probably not even once a week.”

And so, as Luciano does not seem to be at death’s door, the customers disperse into the night, and Simon and Bayard head toward the Drogheria Calzolari, guided by Enzo and Bianca, who have no desire to go home.

7:42 p.m.