Liberal no. 42/1999
Dear Mina,
another big blow to our recent history. Another shadowy area falling on our country. This umpteenth scandal of Italian spies paid by the KGB was almost to be expected. I cannot imagine what other resounding revelation we should expect. I am distressed that when I have to explain to my son, who is only a few years old, what kind of country we live in and what legality is, I will have to lie so that he will not immediately lose faith in institutions and politics. From what you write it seems to me that you have already lost this trust. Am I wrong?
Veronica F., Perugia
It was a dark and stormy night. Bundled up in a fur coat borrowed from a Leningrad meat dealer who was in the same hotel as me, with some difficulty I was making my way to the theater. Reaching, half-frozen the dressing room of the Bolshoi, I was preparing for the last concert of the Soviet tour. I did not want to see anyone, and so I had asked my men to keep a good watch, to prevent admirers or intruders from approaching. After Kiev, Leningrad and Minsk that evening would be the last, before returning to Italy to make, together with my parents, New Year’s Eve 1962.
I was very tired, and not even the colbacle I had bought for myself had done much to lift me from a slight feverish state, perhaps due to the hellish cold that could not be defeated even by the timid theater radiators. I took off my colbac, which did not match the exaggerated backcombing of my hair.
It was just as I was busy rearranging my hairdo that I saw the door open. Two big big men with decisive manners and blank stares appeared in the dressing room mirror and, without much pleasantry, got to the point. They wanted to entrust me with a highly confidential assignment, for which unsuspected characters were needed. They had thought of me, they said, because my background had never been connected with any political activity and because the connections I had in Italy were the most appropriate for the purpose of the mission. They did not give their names, they just told me to memorize a cipher code by which, in later contacts, I would know it was them.
The concert slipped away in the usual routine, and at the end a representative car picked me up to be driven to an unknown destination. When I finally met with the head of Soviet intelligence, the plan was revealed to me and, thanks in part to the details, I could understand what an enormous undertaking I had been chosen for: through me the destabilization of Italy was to be accomplished. In addition to normal espionage service, I was to contact journalists, politicians, businessmen and magistrates upon my return home. All for the purpose of a monstrous project of dissolving Italy’s democratic institutions. When I objected that I had never had the calling to become Mata Hari, the mysterious KGB chief replied that for that very reason I was the best person to carry out the plan. I mumbled, I no longer remember in what language, that I did not know a word of Russian. He told me that from then on I would always have someone close by, day and night, who would send a detailed report on our activities to Moscow every week, and Russian, this someone, spoke it perfectly and without any inflection.
My task was very delicate. My tours turned into a very intricate network of contacts. Bassly, I took advantage of acquaintances and connections to weave a huge web, in which the Machiavellian pattern of a secret hand pressing red buttons, scattering bombs, placing TNT was being created. Crime had become my real profession. And when some journalist sub-smelled that my frantic wandering around Italy was hiding dark plots, I was forced to silence him forever. Yes.
All the talk about my retirement from the scene was a big bubble because no one ever understood the true nature of my eclipse. The hermitage in Lugano has been the perfect venue for my coverage for years.
That’s it: the great and futile treasure hunt, looking for the names of the spies, is over. The thousands of questions about the identity of collaborators in the pay of the KGB have found their final resolution. But there is more. It will no longer make any sense to try to fill the huge black holes in Italian history. The wall of silence is, at last, crumbling. Ah, I couldn’t take it anymore. I freed myself.
By now the “notitia criminis” is there for all to see. If you want the truth about Italy, forget Hammamet. The corpses of recent Italian history are in the refrigerator of my house.
Ah, I forgot to reveal the identity of that “someone” the Russians had placed near me. It was Topo Gigio. Yes.