Let the Games Begin Read online

  Also by Niccolò Ammaniti

  Steal You Away

  I'm Not Scared

  The Crossroads

  Me and You

  LET THE

  GAMES

  BEGIN

  NICCOLÒ AMMANITI

  Translated from the Italian

  by Kylee Doust

  Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Niccolò Ammaniti, 2009

  English translation copyright © Kylee Doust

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  First published in Italian in 2009 as Che la festa cominci by Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84767 941 3

  ePub ISBN 978 0 85786 130 6

  To Anatole,

  who pulled me out of the box

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part Two

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Part Three

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Part Four

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  Genesis

  1

  At a table in Jerry's Pizzeria 2 in Oriolo Romano the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon were holding a meeting.

  Their leader, Saverio Moneta, aka Mantos, was worried.

  The situation was critical. If he didn't succeed in taking back command of his sect, this might very well be the last get-together of the Beasts.

  They had been haemorrhaging for a while. The first one to leave had been little Paolo Scialdone, aka The Reaper. Without a word, he had dumped them and become part of the Children of the Apocalypse, a Satan-worshipping group from Pavia. A few weeks later Antonello Agnese, aka Molten, had bought a secondhand Harley-Davidson and joined the Hell's Angels from Subiaco. And to top it off Pietro Fauci, aka Nosferatu, Mantos’ right-hand man and founder of the Beasts, had got married and opened a plumbing and heating supplies store on the Abetone.

  They were down to four members.

  It was time to give them a serious talking to, tell them to get their shit together and pull in some new recruits.

  ‘Mantos, what are you having?’ asked Silvietta, the group's Vestal. A scrawny redhead with bug-eyes sticking out beneath thin eyebrows that sat too high on her forehead. She wore a silver ring in one nostril and another in the middle of her lip.

  Saverio took a quick look at the menu. ‘I don't know . . . A marinara pizza? No, better not, it gives me heartburn . . . Pappardelle, yeah.’

  ‘They do ’em greasy here, but they're delicious!’ said Roberto Morsillo, aka Murder, approvingly. A chubby guy almost six foot six, with long dyed-black hair and glasses covered in oily fingerprints. He wore a stretched Slayer t-shirt. Originally from Sutri, he was studying Law at Rome University and worked at the Brico DIY centre in Vetralla.

  Saverio studied his disciples. Even though they were all over thirty, they still dressed like a mob of head-banging losers. He couldn't remember how many times he'd told them: ‘You've got to look normal, get rid of these body-piercings, and the tattoos, and the bloody metal spikes . . .’ But it didn't make any difference.

  Beggars can't be choosers, he thought to himself, downhearted.

  Mantos could see his image reflected in the Birra Moretti mirror hanging behind the pizzeria's counter. Skinny, five foot six, with metal-framed glasses, he wore his dark hair parted on the left. He was wearing a short-sleeved, light blue shirt buttoned right up to the throat, dark blue cords and a pair of slip-on moccasins.

  A normal-looking guy. Just like all the great champions of Evil: Ted Bundy, Andrei Chikatilo and Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal. The sort of people you would see on the street and you wouldn't even give the time of day. And yet they were the Demon's Chosen Ones.

  What would Charlie Manson have done if he'd had such hopeless disciples?

  ‘Master, we have to talk to you . . . We've been sort of thinking . . . about the sect . . .’

  Mantos was caught off-guard by Edoardo Sambreddero, aka Zombie, the fourth member, a haggard-looking guy who suffered from congenital oesophagitis: couldn't swallow garlic, chocolate or fizzy drinks. He worked for his father assembling electrical systems in Manziana.

  ‘Technically,’ he said, ‘we, as a sect, don't exist.’

  Saverio had guessed what he was up to, but pretended not to understand.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How long's it been since we took the bloody oath?’

  Saverio shrugged his shoulders. ‘It's been a few years.’

  ‘They never talk about us online. But they talk plenty about the Children of the Apocalypse,’ whispered Silvietta so softly that nobody heard her.

  Zombie pointed a grissino at his chief. ‘In all this time, what have we ever accomplished?’

  ‘All those things that you promised . . . How many of them have we done?’ Murder chimed in. ‘You said we'd make loads of human sacrifices, but we haven't seen hide nor hair of them. And what about the initiation ritual with the virgins? And the Satanic orgies?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, we did make a human sacrifice, we did indeed,’ Saverio pointed out, annoyed. ‘It might not have worked, but we made it. And the orgy, too.’

  In November of the year before, on the train to Rome, Murder had met Silvia Butti, an off-campus student at the Faculty of Psychology at Tor Vergata University. They had a lot in common: their love for the
Lazio football team, for horror films, for Slayer and Iron Maiden, basically for your good old 1980’s-heavy metal. They had started chatting on MSN and hanging out on Via del Corso on Saturday afternoons.

  Saverio had been the one who came up with the idea of sacrificing Silvia Butti to Satan in the forest of Sutri.

  There was just one problem. The victim needed to be a virgin.

  Murder had sworn to it. ‘She and I have done everything, but when I tried to fuck her, she just wouldn't cave in.’

  Zombie had burst out laughing. ‘Did it ever occur to you that maybe she just doesn't want to fuck a fatso like you?’

  ‘She's taken a chastity vow, you idiot. She's definitely a virgin, no doubt about it. And anyway . . . I mean, if it turned out she wasn't one, what would happen?’

  Saverio, the group's master and theoretician, looked worried.

  ‘Well, it's pretty serious. The sacrifice would be worthless. Or even worse, it could turn against us. The powers of Hell wouldn't be satisfied, and they could attack and destroy us.’

  After hours of arguing and online investigating, the Beasts had come to the conclusion that the purity of the victim was not a substantial problem. So they had set to work on a plan.

  Murder had invited Silvia Butti out for pizza in Oriolo Romano. There, by the light of a candle, he had offered her supplì rice balls, salted cod fillets and a huge glass of beer in which he had dissolved three tablets of Rohipnol. By the end of the dinner the young woman could barely stand and was mumbling incomprehensibly. Murder had gotten her into the car and, using the excuse that they should go to see the sunrise over the lake of Bracciano, he'd carried her into the forest of Sutri. There the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had used tuff bricks to build a sacrificial shrine. The girl, half-unconscious, was undressed and laid down on the altar. Saverio invoked the Evil One, chopped the head off a chicken and sprayed the blood over the naked body of the psychology student, and then they'd all done her. At that point they had dug a hole and buried her alive. The ritual had been performed and the sect had undertaken its journey down into Evil's tenebrous lands.

  The problem had arisen three days later. The Beasts had just come out of the Flamingo cinema, where they had seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and ran straight into Silvia. The girl, sitting on a bench in the gardens, was eating a piadina. She couldn't remember much about that evening, but she had the feeling she'd had fun. She told them how, when she'd come to her senses underneath the dirt, she dug her way to the surface.

  Saverio had then signed her up as the sect's official high priestess. A few weeks later she and Murder were an item.

  ‘Yeah, that's right, you did have an orgy,’ Silvietta giggled nervously. ‘You've told me about it a hundred times.’

  ‘Yeah, but you weren't a virgin. And so, technically, the ceremony didn't work,’ Zombie commented.

  ‘How on earth could you think that I was a virgin? My first time . . .’

  Saverio interrupted her. ‘It was still a Satanic ritual . . .’

  Zombie cut in. ‘All right, forget the sacrifice. What else have we done?’

  ‘We've cut a few sheep's throats, if I remember rightly. Haven't we?’

  ‘Then what?’

  Mantos unwittingly raised his voice. ‘“Then what?! Then what?!” Then there's the grafitti on the viaducts in Anguillara Sabazia!’

  ‘Sure. Did you know that Paolino and those guys from Pavia disembowelled a nun?’

  The only thing that the leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had managed to do was neck a glass of water.

  ‘Mantos? Did you hear me?’ Murder put his hand to his mouth, like a loudhailer. ‘They disembowelled a fifty-eight-year-old nun.’

  Saverio shrugged his shoulders. ‘That's bollocks. Paolo's just trying to make us jealous, he regrets leaving us.’ But he had the feeling that it wasn't bollocks.

  ‘You watch the news on TV, right?’ Murder insisted, unmerciful. ‘You remember that nun from Caianello that they found decapitated near Pavia?’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘The Children of the Apocalypse did it. They picked her up at a bus stop and then Kurtz decapitated her with a double-headed axe.’

  Saverio couldn't stand Kurtz, the leader of the Children of the Apocalypse from Pavia. He always had to be top of the class. Always the one coming up with extravagant stuff. Good on you, Kurtz! Congratulations! You're the best!

  Saverio wiped his hand across his face.

  ‘Well, guys . . . Don't forget how much of a hard time I've been having lately, what with the birth of the twins . . . the bloody bank loan for the new house . . .’

  ‘That reminds me, how are the little darlings?’ asked Silvietta.

  ‘They're like drainpipes. They eat and shit. At night they don't let us get any sleep. They've got the measles, too. On top of it all, Serena's father had hip-replacement surgery, so the whole furniture shop is my responsibility. You tell me when I'm supposed to get something organised for the sect . . .’

  ‘Hey, have you got any special offers at the shop?’ Zombie asked. ‘I want to buy a three-seater sofa-bed. The cat's ruined mine.’

  The leader of the Beasts wasn't listening. He was thinking about Kurtz Minetti. As tall as a dick on a tin can. Full-time pastry chef. He had already set fire to a Kirby Vacuum Cleaner salesman and now he had decapitated a nun.

  ‘Anyway, you're all ungrateful.’ He pointed to them one by one. ‘I've worked my arse off for this sect. If it hadn't been for me introducing you to the Worship of Hades, you'd all still be sitting around reading Harry Potter.’

  ‘We know, Saverio, but try to understand us, too. We do believe in the group, but we can't keep going like this.’ Murder bit angrily into a grissino. ‘Let's just give it up and stay friends.’

  The leader of the Beasts slammed his hands down on the table in exasperation.

  ‘Or how about this? Give me a week. You can't say no to an extra week.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Silvietta, nibbling on her lip ring.

  ‘I've been laying the groundwork for a mind-blowing piece of action. It's a really dangerous mission . . .’ He paused. ‘But don't think you can just cop out. We all know that talk is cheap. But when it's time to act . . .’ He put on a whiney voice. ‘“I can't, I'm sorry . . . I've got problems at home, my mother's not well . . . I have to work.”’ And he looked hard at Zombie, who lowered his head over his plate. ‘No. We all put our arses on the line in the same way.’

  ‘Can't you give us a hint?’ Murder asked shyly.

  ‘No! All I can say is that it's something that will send us right to number one on the list of Italy's Satanic sects.’

  Silvietta grabbed a hold of his wrist. ‘Mantos, come on. Please. Just a little hint. I'm so curious . . .’

  Saverio 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 w
ell-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?’