Delilah J
www.delilah-jay.com
Chaussee 17
14621 Schoenwalde

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

© 2013 Delilah J, www.delilah-jay.com
Translated from the German by Gitta Wolf

Cover design: Julia Kuhnert, Berlin, www.juliakuhnert.de
Cover idea: Massi J ©
Images: private

Interior Typography: Siegfried Pompe, Köln
published by: epubli GmbH, Berlin, www.epubli.de
ISBN 978-3-8442-5485-3

IN THE END ...

They could not put him on display. Could not lay him out. Too many gunshots. The head destroyed, the chest area too. There was a brief forensic examination. Nothing major. One might be better off not knowing - here in Naples. Could be dangerous. For the medics, the experts, the Carabinieri, the family, the judges, the witnesses. Yes, witnesses. Were there witnesses? Five shots in total. They made sure that death was certain. Aimed for head, chest, heart, and again. Certain. Shots fired from a Kalashnikov. The weapon of choice, here in this region. Yes, it happened in Naples. One beautiful, sunny lunchtime. He got out of the back of the black limousine. By the harbour. On his way to an appointment and on to the island of Ponza. Usually he goes by helicopter. Not today. No looking back. The driver opens the door. He gets out. Two young guys - not even masked - skilfully let their motorbikes drop to the ground, pull their weapons and shoot - first him, then the driver. The driver survives, after a seven-hour operation in the Ospedale Cardarelli in Naples. He will be unfit for questioning for a long time. According to the doctors. And anyway, what could he say - or, more to the point, what would he say? Should his condition allow. Physically, at least. Mentally, he would not want to, would not allow himself to. Mission accomplished. Fast and efficient. Two young guys, almost still boys. Slight, slender. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old.

Move like professionals. He was not their first victim.

No one can restore him: not his body, and certainly not his soul. And now, no one can look at him anymore either. No undertaker or medic ever could do or had to do that much artful reconstruction work on the body of a respected deceased person.

He fell to the ground. Fell onto the filth of Naples harbour. Around him a sea of blood. The burning sun quickly turns it into a sticky, smelly mass. He meets his end here, where fish, cigarettes, smugglers, alcohol, cocaine, diamonds and other contraband arrive, intermingled with the blood of asylum seekers dead or alive, the human merchandise that touches down and is bought and sold, here, on this, the world’s main trafficking spot for all merchandise of illegal and murky origin - this is where he meets his end. The end of a wealthy life. A life of profiteering. Did his wealth increase with other people’s deaths? With drugs, with human trafficking? Did he stay clean because he was never caught? Protected by his friends: Bellarosa, his special kind of companion? Or the “Gransignore in Carozza”? No conviction without an accusation - here in Naples, nobody dares to accuse the guilty. He succeeded: he managed to dedicate an entire life to dark machinations and he got away with it. Or did he? Then what is this?

What would he have imagined? A different kind of death? One where his son would hold his hand for hours while he talked in monologues about his life with an undertone of: look at me and be grateful? Forgive me? That I was never there for those who loved me? Needed me? Saw myself as some kind of God? Oh yes, he loved his monologues! They started with “let’s talk about this” and they always ended with the way he believed things were.

His son - thank God his son had not been with him today. His son, his true loss. A never-ending sorrow. Irreparable for him. The one that pulls his strings. Like a puppet. The only thing in his life. MIND GAMES. Over and over. Manipulation. Always and everyone.

How well did he know his murderers? Could he have manipulated them? Would his monologues have touched them? Begging for his life? Was he one of those people referred to as “signore”? There is a saying in Naples: “Signori non crescono - signori nascono”, which means, “you can’t become a Lord and Master, you are born a Lord and Master”. That’s how it was for him. Right from the start. No other choice, where he was born - and how he grew up. A saying of the poor, who are forever excluded from the world of the “signori”. Those who spend their lives looking up to those who are what they would like to be. In Italy, the gap between rich and poor is greater than anywhere else - there is respect for what one does not have. What one is not. What is out of reach

- except for very few, and very rarely.

What exactly was his business, out there on the island? Ponza: the island of the “nouveau riche”. Didn’t he receive building permission for swimming pools? And wasn’t the one who had granted them arrested? Arrested! And was that by order of the most powerful man in Italy, second only to the president, or was that his routine day-to-day business? A director and board member of some fifty successful companies trading in anything from alcohol, fashion, media, foods, hedge funds, insurance and executive jet charter to real estate, he certainly lived dangerously. Power and control are defended by a scheming game of corruption, manipulation and lies. Danger lies in waiting everywhere. Even for you! And now it got you. You buy, pay, and receive that which you paid for. That which you gave yourself to. You were practically on your own, thank God! Don’t let me speculate: what if you hadn’t been alone... There was just your driver, and he survived. How come? Doubtlessly it was planned that way.

A professional execution like this one doesn’t normally leave any witnesses. Maybe they will come back and kill him later, when they read in the papers that he survived. Would you have been safe if you had taken the helicopter instead of the ferry from Procida to Naples?

The body was taken to Ferrara on the day of the murder. A long procession of mourners stood waiting as they arrived. Organized in just a few hours. They take him through the entire city.

Everybody was there: his family, his friends, his enemies. Also his family’s enemies. And us: Feliciano and I. Many wore black, but certainly not all of them. I did, but only because I am German. My mind would have chosen a bright red dress and a huge hat with a feather on it. Plunging neckline. I can still carry it off, or rather, again. My breasts are just the right shape and size, swelling as prescribed by the demands of lust. My hat like one of those worn at Ascot, the difference being that this occasion is unique and never to be repeated, whereas the Ascot races take place every year. You can hear loud moaning, crying, wailing. As befits Southern Italy. Especially in Campagna, but pretty much everywhere else, too. Everyone is here: businessmen from all over Italy. Corruption has no name. It simply exists. Still does. Here and now. In a small, intimate circle. Practically all brands and exports united around one coffin. How many dead bodies are they responsible for, jointly and severally? Those shot to death, driven to suicide, those maybe killed in a car crash, killed by drugs, the dead of the garbage and real estate mafia? How many? Did he die for “revenge”?

Was he getting too inconvenient for Bellarosa and her business interests? Or maybe he knew too much and, just this once, overplayed his hand? Or maybe it was a combination of all kinds of small things that she could not forgive? I am one of those things. As is Feliciano. We are the greatest agony anyone ever bestowed on Bellarosa.

It almost looks like the entire city is in mourning. Surely he would not have wanted that. The way he lived, introverted, almost shy. He, the Philosopher of High Finance! He wanted to show the rich how to use their wealth responsibly. He explained to those who asked him for money because they were in dire need, that money does not make you happy. Copied the Gransignore in Carozza with his longing for “serenita”. The Philosopher of High Finance - that’s what the media called him - is dead.

The hearse - guarded by local police and the Carabinieri - creeps along the streets of Ferrara towards the cemetery. Followed by countless black limousines filled with mourners, bodyguards, Carabinieri and police, he finally reaches his ultimate resting place. Why the bodyguards? Now? He is already dead! Everyone feels unsafe surrounded by all this power, all this loss of control. One can feel the fear. I can smell it. They take him to the mausoleum - the future burial vault for his family. An entire building for him and his family. His final piece of real estate. No sea views, this time? That’s what he felt he was worth. Money does not make you happy! Serenita! Rest in peace! This is my first Italian funeral. Later, they will push the coffin into a drawer, they told me. Italians are terrified of being devoured by maggots beneath the soil. However, he will be well set up here - an exciting monument will be added later - an original sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, the world-famous Swiss sculptor, yes, that’s what will adorn his grave. It’s meant to depict you. Giacometti died in 1966. Someone bought it for you at auction. Just like the other Giacomettis that changed ownership within minutes of going under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London, for sixty-two million pounds. Rest in peace - whatever is left of you. And your soul, which has so much still to deal with that surely you will be reborn soon. Serenita!

In the background, I can hear “Knockin’ on heaven’s door”. I am getting carried away. My imagination gets the better of me.

“Mama put my guns in the ground - I can’t shoot them anymore.

Knock knock knockin‘ on heaven’s door...”

Guns N’ Roses singing tenderly inside my head. No orchestra in the world can drown this out now. “Knockin’ on heaven’s door” is knocking through my entire body.

WE: FELICIANO & I

We’ve long banned a number of Italian products from our lives and our shopping lists: the multitude of Bright Colours of Veneto - nothing can deter me, not even the fact that my lovely former colleague was the one that maintained those private jets. Formula 1, the factory of creativity in Piedmont with its stream of new ideas for the world of driving and flying, the scent of Emilia Romagna captured in candles, creams and perfumes; comfy shoes with gummi bears stuck to the heels, prestigiously worn by corporate wives - totally banned, and soon my son will exchange his love of the red racing car as well as the world-famous chocolate factory that’s been so successful with all its brand names: crumbs of nuts in little balls of chocolate, a cherry in alcohol, sponsorship on MTV and VH1 from my own times past. It would be so hard to deprive kids of that yummy nut-nougat spread!

And we must not forget Adonis the beautiful! What yacht shall we use today? Not a problem for the president of the “Nouveau Riche Yacht Club” on Ponza. Cigarettes? Alcohol? No question! TobacPac and any box full of weed spewing out of packaging manufactured by your machinery? Unconditionally banned from Ferrara, Italy, after allegations of socialist tendencies for the purpose of subtly simulated possible intellectualism? And here he is, “Lello”, with the little cap, warbling on about Emilia Romagna communism in the house of the “Church Tower”

- still invited to glittering places by the Gransignore in Carozza high up in the hills above the sea on the island of Ponza! Drives well, doesn’t it? Called by the conceited

Gransignore, Germany’s most famous racing driver of all time drove that red car unerringly. Sadly, he wasn’t always on target, and certainly not always first. Wasn’t his fault that the marketing was more brilliant than the engineering! What power he wields, the Gransignore in Carozza... Is it really true that he is the most powerful man in Italy, after Silvio Berlusconi?

I wish I could have placed bets on Silvio Berlusconi’s choice of divorce lawyer. Way off the mark! I’d have lost that bet. That’s no surprise, because my choice of Barbara della Guerra’s stardom and fame gathered bitter-dark clouds above her head. Not that she lost a lot of cash from her bank account when she represented her client’s case against me - no, certainly not that. As Italy’s top divorce lawyer, she was no longer allowed to practise at court... all that’s left now is silly television shows! A circus full of passive clowns. They hide behind those who take the fall for them - in jail, or in death. The second option being much more likely. Safer.

PRIVATE JETS AND OTHER FLIGHTS OF FANCY

Phone call from my Swiss NetJets office. Get in touch with Dr Amos in Ferrara, he may be interested in purchasing a share in a private jet. Fine. I arrange an appointment, confirm it with the secretary and ask, naively:

“What line of business... what industry - is Dottore in?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I’m not authorized to give out any information,” she replies, almost embarrassed for me.

My visit to Ferrara: I remember that I was tired. Dr Amos, boring, early forties, sits opposite me. Thick black hair, dark blue made-to-measure suit, handmade English shoes. A soft smile that emphasizes his personal power as much as that of his office. Located in the most beautiful part of town - across from the cathedral -chrome, glass and marble, a perfect combination of old and new. Just like his white collar to go with the dark blue made-to-measure suit. Fashionable, conservative, simple, elegant.

“I’m not interested in a share of whatever kind of jet, Signorina,” he says, charming and distant. “May I call you Signorina?” A soft smile plays around the corners of his mouth.

“Prego Dottore.” He may.

“I’m a pilot myself and I intend to acquire my own aircraft. What are your conditions of work at NetJets? Can you come and work for me? I am preparing to set up a company to run a jet charter business in Italy. Interested? May I invite you to dinner?”

His smugness knows no bounds within this unending monologue he’s starting to get into. I decline, need to get back.

“How long have you lived in Italy? I’ve always had a thing for German women...”

Unbelievable, I think.

“How can I get in touch with you? When may I see you again?”

He describes his dealings and those of his company -he calls it a “holding company” - as “Mergers & Acquisitions”.

“I’m not interested in “merging” with you right now, and I’m not available for acquisition either,” I turn him down.

“No, ... thank you, ... my train to Milano leaves in forty minutes. But thank you again. Of course we can stay in touch. Arrivederci Dottore!”

The way he looks at me and holds my hand tells me that that’s exactly what will happen.

David would have asked me how it went anyway. NetJets was still in its infancy in Europe, run by David in Zug - for tax reasons. Legally represented by Ernesto Sprungler and backed by his MaxiJetCompany. Ernesto and his sensational know-how of dealing in jets. He was not even remotely like Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince. One plane in - one plane out, preferably in African countries. A huge list of contacts and appointments. Flying Gulfstreams to sales events and Citation 10s to Geneva, London or wherever the client wanted him. Transatlantic ultra-long range jets. Groundings of luxury class new planes - some on their maiden flight -navigated by our pilots out of Lisbon. Clients whose names were never made public, Tiger Woods being the only exception. The year is 1996. And I am drinking a quick, strong espresso at Ferrara station, waiting for my train back to Milano, with not the faintest inkling of what fate has in store for me...

I’m living at Franco Bossi’s stables between Como and Milano. Franco, former international show jumping champion, and Devina and Don Juan - my two darlings. I can cope with appointments like the one in Ferrara only because I come home to animals and nature. My consumption of some thirty cigarettes a day doesn’t quite fit that image - a small vice that I have since given up. David at NetJets is getting more demanding by the day and the winter months are so sad in damp, drizzly Northern Italy near Lake Como. To this day I fail to understand what the Germans and the English like so much about the Northern Italian lakes. For a start, Italians don’t even regard this area as Italy proper, it’s only Italy to northern folk. And once you’ve crossed the border into Switzerland, even the pasta doesn’t taste right anymore! There’s no sea, but there’s loads of fog and humidity. From November to February, you should never take the motorway to Turin before 11 a.m. - you won’t be able to see your hand in front of your face. The same goes for driving from Milano to Ferrara.

“You’ll be based in the Swiss office here in Zug as from now, and not at home in your cosy stables near Como,” David informs me during my next visit at the Zug office.

The daily trip to the office is something I’ve not had for many a year; it’s not something I’m fond of. This caused me to make a fast but well-considered decision: I took a sheet of A4 paper and wrote a quick handwritten resignation.

“You can’t mean that!” David’s face crumbles.

Me, I’m impulsive, in a planned sort of a way - he hadn’t expected that. In retrospect I enjoy thinking about the power I had then and think I should have made more of it at the time. What went with me were the contact details of clients and potential clients. After all, I had been selected as their first Managing Director for Europe. And not just because I was fluent in three languages, knew the music scene inside-out thanks to my previous work at MTV, was great at establishing contact with people and always took “no” to mean “not just yet”. Of all my jobs to date, the most interesting by far has been this: being part of the birth of a new TV station. I was actively involved in the launch of VH1 in Germany, a subsidiary of Viacom and sister-company of MTV Europe. Took clients to rock concerts. Was Marketing Manager for Fortune 500 at mega events. Clients and potential clients of NetJets quite enjoyed meeting up with me, too: that was my advantage as a beautiful woman, daintily longlegged in stiletto heels, trying to find takers for those expensive private airplane shares. Swiss publishers, musicians of all nationalities, Russian oligarchs, directors of giant multi-nationals, owners of mid-size family businesses; tall, short, fat, thin, friendly, hostile, young but more often old, impotent, grey-haired, bald-headed, voracious, greedy-for-success, power-driven, controlling MEN.

“Don’t you ever come to Monte Carlo?”

“When can I see you in St. Moritz? I have a chalet in Suvretta. But not over Christmas, that’s when I’ll be there with my family.”

“Nice try!”

I’m paid well by NetJets, thank you. And I don’t do double-work: it’s either for money or...

But, instead of really savouring this feeling of power after tendering my resignation, I sat in my office, drank too much coffee, smoked one cigarette after the other and called Dottore in Ferrara. He would have to know, just like all the other clients and contacts, that in future he could no longer get in touch with me at NetJets. Arrogantly, he said:

“You rang to ask me for a job, didn’t you?”

How smug... A NetJets colleague warns me. He’s Italian, an engineer who maintains our planes and used to maintain those of the “multitude of bright colours” in the Veneto.

“Dottore’s family is in Sicily,” I learn. “There’s this lady billionaire he is, or maybe was, supposedly associated with, whose ex-husband is apparently in jail, put there by her because of corruption. A straw man fronting their illegal dealings,” my colleague Federico explains to me.

I think he’s mistaking him for someone else... Lots of people live in Ferrara after all. Wipe that thought away; don’t even allow it.

“Voglio la mia independenza!”

I want my independence! ... That’s what Dr Amos writes in his book. Independenza. A term, name, word with the simple meaning “independent” - he likes that very much.

“A good friend of mine named his yacht “Independence”,” Amos explains to me like a little kid talking about his toys.

He wouldn’t let it go, regarded my phone call as an invitation to tango.

“When can I see you?” he asks me. “Are you coming to Ferrara? Or Monte Carlo? To Milan?”

“No, I can’t. And I’m not calling to ask for a job. Have made plans, know what I’ll be doing,” I say confidently.

“So when can I see you?” He won’t leave it alone...

“May I call you?” Yes, of course, he may...

BERLIN

I left the office and drove myself and my midnight-blue Porsche Carrera 4 back to Como, to Don Juan and Devina and to my removal boxes because I had made my decision: back to Berlin. My friend Aurelia was living in my flat now. I didn’t want to give up completely on my love for Italy, but the infatuation had weakened in the grey, damp chilliness of the Northern Italian February. Tomorrow, Evita and Alexander will arrive from the stables near Berlin, to collect me, my horses, my Hutschenreuther dinnerware, the crystal glasses and silver spoons, and my designer clothes by Versace, Chanel, Cavalli and Valentino. Three suitcases full of shoes: stilettos in every shade of colour, courts of all types, Sergio Rossi vying for space with Prada. Handbags for every outfit. Louis Vuitton next to Hermes. Chanel dresses, riding boots, spurs and saddles cuddled up to each other in Alexander’s Dodge, pulling the horse trailer with my Westphalian Don Juan and my Hanoverian Devina. Travel in style! We spent a lovely evening in the little pizzeria in Como and I floated in-between feeling bad for not having managed to survive in macho country as a straniera - a foreign woman - and congratulating myself for having had the guts to at least try. Probably it had to do with the mist over Lake Como, a place I have not missed to this day.

In the February cold, accompanied by fog, ice and snowstorms we drove in convoy across Austria to Berlin - Devina, Don Juan, Evita, Alexander and I.

How beautiful is the rain in Berlin during the winter months! Aurelia was waiting for me and a wonderful time began. She had problems: job, money, family, men... We went back and forth between Berlin and Verona, where she had a flat right next to the Arena. We enjoy our life, currently so easy, in-between cappuccino, prosecco, pasta, sex, the sea and the future.

IN LOVE WITH YOU

Dottore got in touch with me almost daily, rang me and allowed himself to be carried away enough to tell me: “Talking on the phone with you makes me feel as though I’m standing in a flower meadow.”

Who on earth is taken in by that? ME!

A short time later, Dottore came to Berlin. I picked him up in my Porsche Carrera 4, a car that had cost me a fortune in money and nerves: a lemon. In Italy they would say, “fatto un giorno di sciopero” - they would know! - built during a strike. And so it came to pass that Porschina, my nickame for HER, went on strike on the way from the airport to the Four Seasons Hotel at the Gendarmenmarkt - back then, the hotel was still there. Maybe I should have listened to the Technology Angel who kept taking my Porsche out of action. I didn’t, though. Porsches were invented for beautiful women -for women who want to slowly meander around town on four wheels. Who want to cruise. To be seen. Women who don’t respond to all those admiring glances. These cars are driven with pride by women. And not just from their fiftieth birthday onwards - no: they’re in their early thirties. Arrogant and of childbearing age. Beautiful, the right side of forty. Curious, seductive, prepared. Provocative - ahead of their time. In knowledge, looks, intellect, internationality - a dazzle of emotions, sensitivity, vanity. Aware of their power. Searching for danger.

During the drive, Dottore talks about Carolina, his exgirlfriend. “In the end I had to persuade her to have an abortion, I didn’t even know whether the child was mine or not. I was there - during the abortion. What a horrible experience she put me through!” A pause. He forces back tears. I keep quiet. Concentrate on the traffic. Feeling sorry for himself, again? Yes, apparently so. Carolina started an affair with some other guy whom she married in the end. They had three children together, Dottore presumes.

After dinner he took my hand - looked deep into my eyes and uttered the craziest sentence I’ve ever heard in connection with a seduction:

“I have just made love to you with my eyes!”

We still addressed each other formally... in Italian... and we did it six times that night... hallelujah! He felt like a seventeen-year-old and when he talked with me on the phone, he saw himself in a “prato fiorito”, a flower meadow. I felt so powerful! Was practically addicted to his charm. Within the shortest time. Addicted to him.

HE & I

He would not let me out of his arms - by phone, of course. I was the angel, the diva and his geisha, the one who made all his undreamt-of fantasies come true. Maybe I should mention at this point that Dottore wasn’t quite living on his own. By his - Italian - side there still was Bellarosa. She who, as he says, was never beautiful.

“Non era mai una bella donna”, he says.

No, she really wasn’t. I think that ugly women should absolutely have this BELLA in their name, for reasons of justice. She did however have something that fascinated him: money and power. And, in the manner of persons who have very much of those, she controlled him: constant phone calls and her comment about his visit to Berlin:

“What are you up to with Lili Marlene?”

Her imagination can stretch to ordinary affairs, but no further.

“Believe me, I am alone. Alone with you on the telephone, Bella. Yes, I love you! Only you!”

I hear him whispering, through the almost closed door of the suite. See myself as the “Blue Angel”. His sensitivity decreases in proportion with the increase of power and control. Erasing fantasies, provided they were there in the first place.

“No - I haven’t had sex with Bellarosa in six years,” he declares.

“Other women?” I ask with a chuckle, eyebrows raised, already not believing what he is about to say.

“She must not know - she would be so hurt. That’s

why she asked me to never tell her about it, if it should ever happen.”

“So why does she ask after me, then - Lili Marlene?” I want to know, provocatively.

“Is that her personal fantasy, stuck in the German war years?” I smirk.

“Cynic!” I think. Yes, I’d have made a damn good Lili Marlene! You need talent for that. Which I have. I HAVE SKILLS! That’s how my English lawyer assesses me, ironically, many years later. Later - much, much later.

Between now and later, there will be a number of exciting and stressful years. And I know how to utilize them, my skills!

“How come you don’t have children? Together or separately?” I am interested.

“Well, we tried once. It didn’t work. Bellarosa is ten years older than me,” Amos replies. He was in his early forties at the time.

“Even the best IVF specialist could not help us. I’ve been with Bellarosa for ten years now,” he says resentfully, with melancholy.

“She in the east wing - you in the west wing of the fully-staffed mansion house? Or the other way around?” I ask cheekily, chewing my drinking straw. Provocatively, sexy. Now I could understand all the better.

He contemplates my full lips, which I purse, slightly opened. Always aware of my full lips, of their impact.

“You are the woman, the lover, the girl, the whore, the angel, the Madonna, the mother in every conceivable variation for me, Aelita! My Aelitina, Aelitissima,” he vowed softly.

And I understood that Bellarosa represented an extension of the umbilical chord, without which he cannot survive. A mother-son relationship, business relationship, power relationship. The greatest form of dependence known in this galaxy. I had yet to find out where that got me, walking into the lioness’s den in the control room of Starship Enterprise, just like that!

“I’m a bitch, I’m a lover,

I’m a child, I’m a mother,

I’m a sinner, I’m a saint,

I do not feel ashamed.”

That’s exactly how I feel now.

“I’m your hell, I’m your dream,

I’m nothing in between,

I know you wouldn’t want it any other way!” sings Meredith Brooks straight from the choreography of my soul.

“... but you look at me like maybe I’m an angel underneath,

innocent and sweet ...,” she continues. ²)

Hey Amos - that’s Dottore’s real name - you Greek God of Love, have you forgotten that song already or did you never understand it? Maybe you didn’t realize what you were doing when you dedicated it to us, in our situation.

Bellarosa was old, unattractive, coarse, sarcastic, dominant, powerful in money and body - she didn’t understand him. Her laughter too loud. Men don’t like loud women. Too dominant. They don’t like dominant women either. If they did like them, it would be in a brothel, as Domina, but not in real life, by their side. The far side of

2) “The Bitch”, by Meredith Brooks

fifty is Bellarosa. A fading rose. An age where it no longer matters whether it’s “early” or “late” fifties. Whatever it is, it’s too late. I was the exact opposite: young, beautiful, slender, long-legged, elegant, blonde... and I understood his cock! With my spirit, my soul, my breasts, my experience, my longing, my lust. But most of all he adored my intelligence - wow!!! That’s what I needed more than anything, for screwing!

Two weeks later he came to Berlin again, during the ILA, the Internationale Luftfahrt Ausstellung. He tells me he wants to purchase a Hawker 1000 and is looking for the best the market has to offer. Purchase price: around eleven million US dollars. He gives me a list of names: current owners of this type of plane.

“Please would you ring them up for me?” he asks. “Of course I’ll pay the phone charges.”

How cheap is that, Dottore? I think. I too am at the ILA this time, I’m meeting with NetJets and handing back my laptop. At the fair, I run into a representative from Raytheon, manufacturers of the Hawker plane. We get talking and I ask about used Hawker 1000s.

“This isn’t by any chance to do with an Italian client, whose name starts with A and who comes from Ferrara?” the representative wants to know.

Small world! I’ll stay in contact with him. We can always share the commission, if I help him to stay in touch with Amos.

“He was at the fair with his pilot friend Antonio. He let him do all the talking. His eyes controlled the atmosphere.”

I think Amos was gauging the profits.

A short time later, the Raytheon representative warns me about Amos:

“I’ve spoken with a business partner in Monaco, he’s responsible for Southern Europe. Broker for private jets - you understand.”

Chris, the rep, shares his secrets with me.

“They all know him there - and of course his life partner, Bellarosa. Careful!” Chris hisses in my ear.

“Monte Carlo isn’t all that far from Beaulieu sur Mer. That’s where she has her villa by the sea. Everyone knows that this is Mafia! Do you understand?”

No. I don’t understand. Can’t, don’t want to. That was the second warning, both entirely unconnected. I call Federico again, the engineer at NetJets.

“Girl,” he says, “you are moving in very dangerous circles...!”

“I can’t back out anymore,” I think.

And if it is as dangerous as they say, then it doesn’t matter whether I continue or stop now... This is my best argument for not giving up Amos. My love, his love, the excellent sex. The game he plays with me - a game I enjoy very much. I don’t want to stop, can’t stop! Am carried away, entirely enmeshed by the force of his attraction. His love, his control, his power...

Aurelia witnessed those endless phone calls between Amos and me, the preparations for our meetings, trying to choose the right lingerie, shoes, dresses, the right nail varnish.

“Are you sure you want to wear this dress?” I hear her ask. “What lingerie are you taking? Let me see. Oh yes, that’s sexy enough.”

This time, she’s happy with my arrangements. She used to read the Tarot for me every morning, accompanied by cappuccino and many cigarettes. On the way to the stables. Going riding at nine in the morning. Aurelia was a witch - you could tell by the red hair! She used to be beautiful - very beautiful, she had many men. She slept with Robert de Niro while she was pregnant. That’s why her daughter Cornelia is the prettiest of all her children. Maybe all pregnant women should have lovers. Provided they are as exciting as Robert de Niro! Three cheers for trophy men! No - I’m not doing a review of all my affairs with important men... Not now. Later.

Aurelia thought that no better man ever loved me more than he did, and I think that too.

“Non hai conosciuto mai uno meglio di lui!” she kept saying. A superlative!

My name is Aelita - I am the Queen of Mars. Like in the Soviet silent movie of 1924, by the Russian filmmaker Yakov Protazanov. A movie based on the novella by Alexei Tolstoy. Queen Aelita and Amos. Amos, God of Love, and the Queen of Mars. Aelita, like the child prodigy Aelita Andre, the four-year-old artist from New Zealand. Aelita, standing in for Aphrodite, lover of Amos, my Amos and I. A special name, Aelita - a special destiny. Every woman, every girl named Aelita is someone very special. And I, in the vastness of all of space, in this great universe that belongs to him and me, I come upon the one man who was born for me. I am the only woman that exists for him on the Milky Way of love. I became Aelitina and Aelitissima - made smaller or larger, depending on his need - and was allowed to share a part of his life that no other woman had known before: I - the lover! Almost every week at the Baglioni Hotel in Bologna, close to Ferrara and so easy for me to reach from the airport. Where we almost always had the same love nest: number 222, what a number! It even encapsulates my birth date. And I was able to see him as soon as he crossed the street opposite, on foot. And when he left the room, I could taste him for a long time after. His eyes sparkled. Sometimes green, sometimes blue, depending on his mood. During orgasm they were blue - definitely - even when they were shut. I am sure of that. They turn green during times of great anger. Of fury. Uncertainty. And today I am convinced that nowadays they are only green. No more blue! The blue eyes were my prerogative. Mine and, of course, Feliciano’s. I could smell Amos’ scent in all the hotel corridors. Today, I can’t pick up his scent at all - he just doesn’t smell of anything anymore. I am no longer sensitive to his scent. No buzz anymore. Back on Sardinia, I could smell, taste, feel him. Out there, where he took the required jet flying lessons at the Italian flying school and met up with his Alitalia friend Antonio - his name similar to that of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the greatest of all the little princes. I was there to support him. I accompanied him, advised him. Amos and I had separate rooms in the beautiful hotel right on the seafront near Alghero. Because Bellarosa must not know. He’d been there with her before. And was completely terrorised by the possibility that the old owner might notice and he would look bad. Not only that: maybe they would inform Bellarosa. He’d been here with Bellarosa. With that old, ugly crow who, like I said before, had never ever been beautiful. Bellarosa: sharp and prickly like the thorns on a rose. Not rose coloured, not red. It’s her thorns that leave a red trace. Her trace of blood. But everyone loved her! Or her money? Only her money. Amos and I went to dinner in a third-class restaurant -the best one locally was where his co-pilots would go and they would of course recognize him, most of them were staying in our hotel. No cigarette after dinner - a drama for me! Those were the moments when I wished him gone. At least for the duration of one cigarette!

His discretion was absolute.

“I can’t risk it! Just wait, one day it’ll be OK. But not now. It’s bad timing. You have no idea what would happen if it would get out now - now of all times! The thing - I mean - the thing with you and me. A scandal!”

He puffs up like a male diva. Discretion for him and only for him. Even towards Antonio. The same Antonio who, at a later time, will play a small role in my life. But that’s much, much later. It seemed as though Amos didn’t even trust him completely. Even though they have known each other for such a long time, and so well.

“It’s better that nobody knows about us. That way, it’s a sweet secret for you and me only. Totally in love. You and me. Our sweet secret, Aelitina!”

His eyes, when he says these words, are full of longing, he is moved to tears - which he can do on command. For many years, Antonio and Amos have been joint owners of a company. This predates even Bellarosa. After his father’s death, it was Antonio who encouraged him to learn to fly. That was when he had his communications company - communications for those unable to communicate! He who himself is such a poor communicator, even during his interminable monologues! A silent movie company for contemporary pantomime. In the background, a publishing house concerning itself with the philosophies of the world. Psychologically illuminating, intellectual. Yes, this is where he met Bella, the rose. She was a client. Clients are easy prey for affairs: risk-free, verifiable, susceptible to blackmail. I remember my own sexual excursion with Dr Charly Schwarz. Not the Charly from Roald Dahl’s Chocolate Factory. Not a Johnny Depp. My Charly is a Chief Financial Officer. Mergers & Acquisitions. Fifty-seven percent acquisitions as opposed to ninety-nine percent mergers? Looking for the quick statutory consolidation. All branches. Trade, transition, banking, automotive, telecommunications. German, tall, powerful, attractive, client of my corporate past in one of the big international software companies I used to work for. Trading in Mühlheim, rising up through the ranks in Cologne, at the very top in Düsseldorf as CFO, raking it in throughout Germany during a planned mega insolvency. In the run-up, planned loss of share value.

“No, darling, you needn’t buy these shares, not at IPO and not later. Never!”

Says Charly the insider, forbidden Champagne prickling on my velvety-soft skin.

When the insolvency hit home across the German Republic, we were no longer acquainted. Sixty-nine salmon-pink roses delivered every Saturday to the Lüneburger Heide where I lived at the time. Every Saturday - sixty-nine, no other number delighted Charly more! Champagne coloured lingerie from La Perla.

“Are your breasts really this big?”

I hear his manly voice breathing through the telephone, establishing my “goods” with one terse question. “What are you doing now? Come on!” he demands. “Describe where your hand is! Do you use the right one or the left? Yes, that’s it!”

Moaning through my telephone, landline or mobile, as required. By him. Business trips. Luxury hotels. Me. He on top, me underneath. Practising my position. Perfectly played, right up to his orgasm. An old story. Reinvented again and again. My friend William always says:

“Most women sit on their capital - they just don’t realize it.”

He’s right. I put my capital to good use: between my lover’s legs! Nowadays just those of my God of Love, Amos. The only man there is. All the Charlies of this world, forgotten as though they never even existed. And quite probably, they didn’t.

“Come, Aelitina, come, fly out to me! To the South of France. I need you. Want you.”

Amos loves me eternally.

“I can’t without you,” he intones on the phone.

Here and now, Amos with me at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo - so easy to get to from the villa, where he is spending August with Bellarosa, at the Southern French Cape of her Good Hope. Bentleys, Rolls-Royce, Ferraris are vying for the best places of sun-drenched vanity outside of this hostelry of opulence. Me at night at Jimmy’s. Me in the mornings at the spa. Me at the pool. Me at Monte Carlo Beach Club. He between my legs. My mouth between his. In bed. In the shower. In the great outdoors. Dunes, beach, sand, it’s scratchy. In the car. On the car boot. Constantly. Always and everywhere. On Sardinia, in Berlin, Milano, London, Ferrara. He has never done anything like this before. I believe him.

“You are the first, the only, my girlfriend, lover, geisha, the one who understands me! You are forever,” he says.

Spellbound, exhilarated, drunk with lust. Laughing, I soak up the unforgettable magic of his words.

“You, only you,” I whisper.

Moan during sex into all eternity. At the Four Seasons in Milano - stopover. I’m waiting for you. Checking myself in the mirror - make-up, hair, perfume, lingerie, a dress. Precautionary measures again - again, separate suites. No financial expenditure was too great to ensure our sweet secret would remain just that. To maintain the perpetual thrill. Only the sheets could give us away now -our fragrance - the heat, the sweat! He bought me: with his love, his emotions or that which I believed, I wished for, I hoped. Addicted! Completely!! Because at this point in time, nothing is more attractive to me than his power, his control, that which I regard as love. So beautiful, so simple. I surrender, he wants me. And nothing in this world is hotter than surrendering to him, this attractive, intelligent, wealthy, international, emotional, demanding man. Using all my feminine wiles. Such a pleasure to see him dependent on me. Orgasmic!

That summer, I decided to go with Aurelia’s idea: he’s the best, he loves me, I want a baby! Naively, I ask her:

“How do I do that? Got him used to being careful - I don’t use contraception.”

Aurelia advises:

“Just don’t let him out again! You’ll see - you’ll be pregnant before you can count to three!”

She should know, she has three children.

“And how do I do that?” I ask Aurelia, uncertainly.

She laughs and says:

“I think you can manage that, don’t you?”

He was inside of me and I wouldn’t let him out. He loved it! Me, I’m imagining a baby.

“What are you up to?” Amos, my God of Love, asks me.

“I want your baby,” I say and am reminded of Romy Schneider in Sissi.

Yes! From now on, he never wanted to get out of me again... He couldn’t wait to come inside of me. To come into me. Just never get out again. Never ever get out. It will happen...

All worries and troublesome thoughts, from Bellarosa to the possibility that he might not support me, had gone overboard. Feeling no fear, no danger. No warning would have worked now. Never. There was only he and I. He even wrote our story - even named me by my original name in his book: Maria, who had his son. Aelita, the mother. I think of the stable in Bethlehem and of “Saint Joan of the Stockyards”. Brecht between virtue and greed. His story is Don Giovanni, told and interpreted by his son, whom he never saw. Never knew. In his story. Suddenly both men find each other. The son is a teenager by then and they spend all their time philosophizing about Don Giovanni. Amos’ book is published in late summer -just for a few people. So he says. Published by his “communications company”, the publishers of philosophy. Published as a special kind of silent movie. His love of art, philosophy, of himself - his second “Laurea” at over forty years of age - tired of all those many directorships and board meetings. Another luxury he allows himself. He needs new toys. Me. The Barbie of the modern age. Helicopter flying in Southampton. Then me again. It’s like a drug - more! Only the fantasy turns into reality - YOUR FANTASY... One day you don’t evade your trauma anymore. Not your emotionally impoverished mother. A harsh woman. Full of inner poverty. Incapable of showing emotions. Of witnessing, feeling, perceiving them in others. A poor communicator. Poor in every respect. Amos is the second-born, after the tragic death of the first daughter.

“A boy! What mother would not be happy?” Amos asks.

Amos, the man I, the Queen of Mars, chose as my God, my Amos, my lover, Amos. His mother gave him that name for the dead baby of her “patrone” - the family she worked for as a maid. Yes, in Italy maids have “patrone” - that’s owners. A life of serfdom. Who cares, as long as there is enough money! Amos is flying to the stars. With me! In a helicopter or a private jet. In his dreams, his fantasies. You dreamt of Petunia... you called me SORELLINA while you screwed me... little sister, and you told me about her. When she was so small and so innocent. Even today, you like young girls, just about eleven years old, that’s what you say. You talk about the daughter of a friend, regard her - eleven years old - as a perfectly mature, complete woman. You even know those sites on the Internet where you can find them, touch them. Is that your fantasy? You say that you love me like you love her, your sister. Petunia is so ill, poor woman. Always under medical care. Not even your mother can cope - that’s why she is forever on Procida, can’t bear to watch her child die. The only one with her is that dutiful fool of a clerk, a humpbacked pen-pusher at the local municipal offices... her husband. A good job for one like him. He, good enough for one like her - Petunia, his sister. A minimum of non-fertile womanhood, married under pretensions of love. However, perfectly capable of enjoying Dottore’s money now... if only it wasn’t for that little secret Petunia shares with him... And now I do, too. Would it have been better if he had kept quiet?

Amos could be this open only with me, could not imagine that I, the only person on the planet who ever was his true friend, would not be with him anymore. He wanted to live in the moment, no plans, no worries, no duties. And me, I believed in love. His love. If you love, you are always right. I loved. HIM.

“I’ve been looking for a suitable house for us for some time now,” he tells me.

“Just you and I. In Ferrara. I want you!”

And I want him. I trust him blindly, unconditionally, without safety net and mirrors. He waits for my wings to carry me heavenwards - I can’t imagine falling into the abyss. There isn’t one. Precluded - completely precluded.

Every Saturday he drives over to his mother’s for lunch.

“My mother is a good cook,” he says. “But her lasagne is dreadful. I was four when I came to Ferrara with my parents and two little sisters. From Molise, the smallest region of Italy. And one of the poorest.”

Nowadays everybody knows Molise, in-between Campagna on the Mediterranean side and the counties on Italy’s Adriatic side - due to the earthquake, where a school caved in and buried all those children under the rubble, thanks to the corrupt system of granting building permits. Building permits based on black favours, such as those Amos receives these days for his swimming pools on Ponza. Procured by the Gransignore in Carozza?

At least that’s what it said in all the papers in Italy. And not just there. A recorded phone call from the Gransignore to the local planning authority. The building permit was granted by someone in charge at that authority. Philosophia di Amos - that’s what he calls it, his company. The employee was arrested for the “favore”, the favour. The company receiving those building permits is one of Amos’ many enterprises. As the only “aministra-tore delegato” - the only managing director - of swimming pools on Ponza - he’s swimming right in the middle of all that corruption. There have never been swimming pools on the island’s densely built-up steep hillsides. Not with the Romans and not with the Greeks. But now! And rumours concerning the corrupt Gransignore in Carozza are reverberating across the entire country. Not much luck in this case, is there? The corruption will get in the way of political planning... or will it? After all, we’re in Italy...

POLITICA & CORRIJZIONE - POLITICS & CORRUPTION

On Ponza, in the Villa del’Sole, his summer residence on the hill, he makes his preparations. The Gransignore in Carozza on Ponza, philosophizing with Amos about the IPO at the Hong Kong stock exchange of that Italian car manufacturer with the international name, charm, reputation. They also rejoice, here and now, in their investments in emerging markets. Topping the list is India.

“It’s us who are winning here in Italy! Look at this: we’ve been able to bring all our secret monies back home, from all our bank accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands!”

He laughs gloatingly.

“The Italian state does not punish us. Not for corruption. Not for tax evasion. Long live Italy!”

Gransignore is conscious of his victory. Now. Here. Always. He is president of this enterprise, and not only this one. Full of pride - a conceited peacock - he struts arrogantly and self-aggrandisingly across many a playing field, awaiting adulation.

“And we’re well able to hide it,” he hears a voice from within the circle, can’t make out whose.

Not important enough. Not powerful enough to be recognized. But true.

“To our Fondazioni! Hidden within companies, without the owners’ names, without taxation!”

The peacock declaims in the sun.

“Those stupid Europeans will save Italy, of course. We don’t pay!”

We are the “signori”, the untouchables. That’s what he thinks.

“You just wait,” I mumble to myself, watching from a safe distance.

The racing car jerk, flash, silk scarf around his neck, is setting up a party, wants to get into politics. Another ridiculous character who will rob Italy. Rob it of its authenticity by destroying nature, erecting buildings with permits obtained by blackmail, accepting favours and privileges. With him, Amos. They will both be held accountable - not just by a court of law, also by nature, by God and the coming generations. An elegant silk scarf around his neck, the narrow nose held high, resembling an ageing civetta - an owl. What a comparison! “Il giorno della civetta” - The Day of the Owl?

“SERENITA,” one can hear him say - and again, his favourite saying.

“Vi auguro serenita!”

They direct the orchestra. The question is, how many musicians are still playing, for how long? Even the audience of the Italian opera will get it eventually.

“I will create jobs, here, near Naples. In Campagna. Look, I’ll show you what to do!”

He talks to his people, this Gransignore. Here, in Campagna, the home of the Camorra? Setting up a company that manufactures overhead railways and gets them to fly - or crash? Who is that supposed to help now? The voter, who has to watch this: the shoe manufacturer, the Philosopher of High Finance and his mergers & acquisitions, alcohol & cigarette enterprises, banks, real estate, fashion houses, art galleries, all those whose investments were bought or scammed - on the back of a country that would do well to get back to itself, to its good food, its wines, the beautiful sea, the olive groves. A “new” Silvio Berlusconi for Italy? No, Silvio has worked against that, has charmingly done the groundwork with humour and audacity. This now is planned, devastating: it’s the Gransignore in Carozza.

“I’ve lost nearly 43 million euros on my yachts in one year,” we heard him lamenting in the papers - understandably, since we’ve just had an economic crisis.

Which, incidentally, some of us still have. Forty-three million is less than five percent of his estimated fortune!

“We understand you,” one can hear the voices of the people in the background.

Subservient as they are, most of the Italians. That’s what they were taught, what they inherited. “The Manifesto” says something else entirely. There, they know how to go up against capitalism, how to dare, on the side of the “socialists”. Those were forty-three private millions. Untaxed of course, since they come in via the various “legal” channels: reinvested millions from Swiss bank accounts, from the Luxemburg based foundation “CHIC” - founded together with Amos, my God of Love, whom I loved, and the manufacturer of tiny shoes with gummi bears stuck to the heel. And of course Bellarosa. Legally taxed in Liechtenstein and I’m sure that, if Berlusconi had grabbed one less "Veline" - the Italian invention of the Playboy-Bunny - and seized the moment, then he would not have missed the Gransignore and all his friends - his “amici di merenda”. Friends who share their sweeties during afternoon tea, while concocting a devious plan. “Amici di merenda” - a term that originated from the murders of kissing couples in cars and meadows in and around Florence. One lies in wait, the other attacks. Which one of them lies in wait? Amos or the Gransignore?

“Ma no... che ne pensi... noi siamo i signori!” What, us? No!

The result is always the same: there are victims. Whether here and now in Naples, or back then in Florence. Berlusconi’s candy seems rather harmless by comparison: always age-dependent. Later, the sweeties have long legs and are under eighteen. Still made from sugar, though lower in calories and more about heightening potency. The Gransignore took over presidency of the automobile corporation from the godfather - his godfather. Dottori, professori, ingenieri, avvocati, monsignori, among themselves. Whose avvocati? Their own? Whose professori? Aren’t they all venerated and feared at the best university of Italy? At the Bocconi in Milano? No, they keep hiding: behind a veneer of jurisdiction and justice. Both of them. Isn’t a grand old man said to have loved small boys, to have obtained them - he could, after all, with his influence, his power, his money. He, the godfather. MIND GAME. Power & control. Again. But not just that. Do such affectations rub off? The perversion that knows no boundaries? How far do you go - here, in this Italy where nearly everything is permitted, remains unseen because of fear? Do I now have to imagine that the old man, the “generoso” who handed his empire to the Gransignore in Carozza, also handed him the silence of the children whom he was assumed to have abused? Yes,

I suppose so. When many people know about it, when they whisper and keep quiet about it, then those who are close associates will know a lot more about it. They just turn away. Pretend it isn’t true. Even I could not believe it, but it was just too similar to all those stories about Michael Jackson - be they true or not. No smoke without fire, right? And this is the man that my God of Love, Amos, is so close to? The man who preaches water and drinks wine. Wine, incidentally, that he knows nothing about. All that aside: a man who maybe would offer his only son, Feliciano, as fodder to this mob? Physically as well as emotionally? In preparation for his future responsibility? What a saint Silvio Berlusconi is, compared to them! Having little defenceless children on the menu is in a somewhat different moral league than bedding someone who isn’t quite eighteen yet! I think of my own son and a veritable shudder engulfs my entire body. Adrenalin. Rarely experienced to that degree. Rarely tasted. Persisting. Is my imagination going too far? No, not at all. I am a mother. More than these men ever will be or have been fathers. Their love is focused on themselves. Only on themselves. They sacrifice nothing. Nothing is sacred to them. Nothing is precious. Their values are adorned with numbers followed by many zeroes, in their secret accounts in Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong. Offshore. Official. You can read about it in many articles of local and regional gazettes and the more serious national papers. Written by journalists who have uncovered more details than the police, the Carabinieri or the Guardia di Finanza ever have done or will do. Circumstantial evidence only. No proof. These are persons “di buona famiglia” - from a good family, practically untouchable. I grab at them, touch them, hit them. Torment them. Them, whom the world applauds. Them, whom the world envies.

“Attention at the platform! Train floating in!”

The new slogan for the successor of the “wheels”, the horsepower from Southern Italy. The new means of transportation in Italy, the overhead railway, feathered with corrupt machinations? How else would this be financed? Everyone has a share: a percentage share in the directorships and executive boards - same as ever: Amos, Bellarosa, the Gransignore, fashion manufacturers and all the rest of the Clan. Careful, the shares are down! Calling all stock exchanges! I am reminded of Pasquale -the character form Roberto Saviano’s book “Gomorrah”. Pasquale is a tailor in Caserta Province north of Naples. He makes the most beautiful dresses, creates what even designers can’t put on paper. Pasquale himself has no idea for whom he sews those badly paid dresses. They come down from Milano, give their orders to whoever promises to work fastest and cheapest. For starvation wages, without security. They only survive for as long as they can sew. The alternative is to get involved with the Clan proper: drugs, human trafficking, garbage crises. The planned poisoning of the earth. Murdering their own families - this generation and the next and the ones after. They stop at nothing. The fish provided by the Mediterranean around Naples is unfit for human consumption thanks to the toxic waste illegally sunk into ocean and earth. People fall ill, die. Nobody wants to know. Is it them, the Clan from Milano and Ferrara, who make their profits that way? One day, Pasquale sees Angelina Jolie in the papers, on television. Pasquale can’t go to Ponza, where they are at home - the mighty members of the Clan. Pasquale does not believe his eyes when he sees Angelina Jolie in HIS dress. He who gives his talent, his skills, for a few cents an hour, to be able to feed his family. He gives up and never sews again. Instead, he joins the Clan. Life is hard for him and his family. The only alternative left for him - as brought about by the Clan - is the Clan. That’s what Roberto Saviano tells us in his book “Gomorrah”.

Back to the overhead railway: they want to have it manufactured down here, near Naples - the new railway. Utilizing public funds to set up tax avoidance schemes for some selected clowns of Northern Italian society? Everything rolling nicely. Except for their yachts, which float, and their private planes and helicopters, which lift off, just like they do themselves. Among their own kind with all their old millionaire and billionaire chums on Ponza. The olden days music box blares “Oh sole mio” in the little bar on Ponza, down by the harbour, where I linger, observing, while the Monopoly players on the island nurse their power and glory. The jukebox warbles “Azzurro, il pomeriggio e troppo azzuro e lungo per me” in mono. Drop another euro in and I’ll have free choice again.

MOLISE - CAMPOBASSO

In Germany, we know the Molise Region predominantly from Jan Weiler’s humorous descriptions in “Maria, He Doesn’t Like It”, where, with the utilization of every possible bit of love for Italy, he depicts Antonio Marcipane from Campobasso in a way that moves the German soul to tears. Panettone. If you don’t eat, you don’t like it. That’s logic, isn’t it? Italian logic. Yes, it is the smallest region of Italy and one of the poorest. Dot-tore Amos, my hero, didn’t have enough to eat as a child, was left on his own as both parents had to work. They didn’t even have a loo in Molise. His place of birth, synonymous with the misery of an entire region.

”My parents loved me,” he tells me, tears in his eyes.

“Even though they beat you all the time?” I ask, provocatively and disgusted, while applying dark red nail varnish.

“Of course! You don’t understand! That’s love.”

Love, the Italian way, I think.

“And paint your nails more delicately. White or pink. Natural-looking. I want you soft and fragile.”

Then the emigration to Emilia Romagna. A career created in Ferrara: father working in the factory, on one of Bellarosa’s many production lines. His mother is a housemaid. Maybe she’s trying to see herself in the role of the signori for whom she works.

“That’s why she chose this name,” Amos explains to me.

The beloved, the lover. Amos, the lovely! It’s not that hard to move up. The real challenge is to behave as though that’s where you already come from - UP THERE - not from down here. Amos learned well. And turned into a carbon copy. A bad copy. The replica of Bellarosa and her way of life.

CINDERELLA THE ITALIAN WAY

Of course, every Saturday his sisters also sit around the traditional lunchtime table in Ferrara. Brunilda is divorced, one son. Brunilda and Petunia - the two sisters from Cinderella. When Brunilda’s son was eleven, Dot-tore went to visit him in England - the kid needs to learn English. So he sends him off to a summer camp, where all the Italian kids go who have parents and uncles with no gift for languages. Naturally, they speak Italian there, learn hardly any English. I’m waiting for Dottore in a small café - at long last, I’m allowed to smoke! As Brunilda can’t very well raise her son on her own, Dot-tore has assumed the male role and control in this game. Power and control. He accuses his sister and her son of separation anxiety - an inability to step back from each other, that’s what his inner amateur psychologist says. Years later, he’ll repeat that diagnosis. They are all called Franco: Franchino, Francesco, Frank - or similar. Even the dog, a Yorkshire terrier who peers out of Petunia’s tiny Gucci handbag. Has to be pure-bred. And small

- big and snappy they already were themselves. Big from Amos’ money and power. Dottore, my God of Love, carried the poor creature back with him on the plane, from England. Presumably they both travelled business class.

“Coffee, tea, me?” he heard the stewardess ask, in his randy fantasies.

Today, the dog was replaced by Matto, the crazy one. Another Yorkshire terrier. Meanwhile, they are all well fed: Mamma, Brunilda, Petunia, Petunia’s husband, Franco & Francesco in Ferrara underneath the socialist haze of Emilia Romagna, thanks to Dottore and of course Bellarosa. Today, Brunilda wears Moschino and Versace

- always a little on the cheap side. It was their mother who named them, after Cinderella’s evil sisters who wanted him, Amos, the prince. These days, Amos reminds me only of Lord Farquaad from the movie Shrek. Mean, small, with an ego larger than the sum total of all the crisis-stricken Southern European countries. Lifted up onto the high horse by Bellarosa and the Gransignore. His legs are too short to get up by himself. Brunilda has a penchant for Southern Italian island dwellers who have problems keeping their virility under control. She brings one of them back to Ferrara, as a souvenir. Of course he doesn’t do any work; Amos gets to bankroll his sister’s pussy-mates as well, now that she’s able to hold on to one of them for a short while, thanks to Amos’ life of luxury. Dottore believes that his older sister Brunilda is hot and up for anything in bed.

“I am certain she needs it,” he presumes.

I wonder on what exactly he has based those thoughts about his sister... Confirming his instinct by her choice of men: hairy super-Latinos from the South, who proceed to conduct their lives at Amos’ expense. They only speak one language: Neapolitan. Not Italian. That’s also how they act. A woman in and around Naples - as a matter of fact, in the entire South of Italy - has basically only one justification for leaving the house: to go shopping. That’s where that sentence comes from:

“I’m going out to get some bread.”

Generally speaking, she’ll call out this sentence to her family, her husband, the neighbours. So that everybody knows that she’s not being unfaithful. She’s just going out to get some BREAD. Even nowadays, there’s a lot of that going on in Naples. It’s surprising to us Northern or Central Europeans, how often some women go out to buy bread. A left-over from the olden days, when women were only allowed to go out for shopping purposes, “fare la spesa”. In some regions, things haven’t changed to this day.

None of them wants to remember the days when there wasn’t enough money for bread. Friends who had to lend money to keep the hunger at bay. They had no bath, no toilet. Not enough to eat. Not in Molise. Not in Ferrara. They borrowed money to be able to buy bread. And most especially, to ensure that none of the children or his wife would go without the father’s love. Amos’ mother saw her husband’s whores come and go, as did Amos, for whom this became normal, and she spent long nights crying about the unfaithful husband until at long last, fate stepped in and he - thank God - having tormented his family to the last, finally died, of prostate cancer followed by lung cancer caused by all those years of smoking. At long last!

“My mother blackmailed me all my life with her crying and whining about my father,” that’s how Amos always accused his mother of emotionally pressurizing him with her tears and her grief and her emotions.

Entirely misunderstood!

“In reality, my father was the innocent, my mother was the one responsible, she drove him to it,” he kept wailing, always and all the time, poor rich Amos, the God of Love.

The truly guilty party, in actual fact, was his mother -poor Franco, he couldn’t help being unfaithful, could he?

No sooner does he come home with the money, than he spends it all on other women, instead of handing it to his family. Really! It requires the brain of a philosopher or a complete idiot to comprehend that kind of logic. Guilt reversal, that’s what it’s called. Learned at an early age, practised to perfection. Very Italian! That’s what he is like - to this day.

Amos never described the hunger, but he did describe not having a loo.

“We didn’t even have a bath, a toilet. But we were so happy,” my Amos retrospects.

I listen. Listen well. That’s another thing I excel at. The world is small and people are bad, especially when it concerns another’s discomfort.

Today I know that the hunger must have been terrible. I now have friends in Ferrara - nothing happens by coincidence. By the most bizarre route possible, I learn that my friend’s cousin was a schoolmate of Amos’ sister, who constantly talked about how hungry they were and how they had to borrow money to be able to buy food. How incredible is that, with a father who moved his family from Molise to Ferrara, leaving all their relatives behind, under the pretence of finding better work for more money? Or, whose appetite for sexual diversion was greater than his sense of responsibility towards his family? The little wretch that nobody noticed! Poor of physique, intelligence and even economics. Maybe Amos’ mother made too much of what she didn’t have?

Dottore didn’t know his father, not really. By his own admission, at least. At his father’s deathbed he thought he understood that his Mamma had blackmailed his Papa with her tears. No - she is not the victim - his father was! So what else was he to do except screw around, spend money on cigarettes, while his family went hungry? He had every right, didn’t he? And his Mamma blackmailing this “buono”, this good man, which is what he is. Blackmailing him with her tears? The trauma of an early Italian childhood that gives him the right, today, to live, judge, act as he sees fit. Added to by the Catholic Church.

“I am unable to masturbate,” he tells me with deepest sorrow.

Expecting pity.

“It always gives me a headache.”

Don’t we usually hear this from women, in bad comedy shows?

“Too many female hormones, Amos dearest?” I ask ironically.

“Could well be - what with your tears and all that feeling sorry for yourself,” I add.

And of course there is Adonis the beautiful - his good friend, best friend - as he calls him.

“I thought you didn’t have any friends?”

I have always listened carefully when Amos was talking... And now they start, the contradictions in his truth.

They are terrific, all of them together on Ponza. What’s to happen now with those building permits for the swimming pools up in the hills that, according to the press, were handed out as favours? At least someone was arrested here, and the ones involved are HE and the Gransignore in Carozza, the one with those fast red cars.

AELITA

Here I am: riding every day, practising Jiu-Jitsu for self-defence and because I’m scared of being mugged -smoke too much, wear designer clothes, travel around Europe on business, am fluent in German, English and Italian, have intermediate proficiency in Latin - especially important for fellatio - can cook, swim, ride, read & write, am charming, arrogant, efficient, emotional, in love, beautiful, humorous, strong, hysterical, feminine, blonde with an ample bosom, am envied, hated, loved and admired and am THE lover! Has anyone ever really looked at this word, heard it, understood it? L O V E R -the one who is loved and who loves. Interchangeable in English and Italian: AMANTE or LOVER. Wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, daughters become instantly forgettable!!! They cease to exist in this frenzy of ecstasy! In all these orgasmic flights of fancy! There is only one - the lover, mistress! Me!

Aurelia has cancer. The diagnosis came fast and surprising from the Charité. Cancer of the tongue. Half of her tongue needs to be removed. It’s August - all the Italians are on holiday.

“I don’t want to disturb my family, don’t want to talk with the children. Not a word about my illness, to nobody, promise me!”

She bewitches me.

“I can’t do that!”

We drive to Verona and Aurelia does not come back. She has an operation, then her family learns about the lung cancer. She was in a terrible state and the worst was that she was completely at the mercy of her family. They all criticised her to the end.

“She had too many men,” says Flavio, the ex-husband - he should know, considering his career as a playboy in the provinces.

“Walked away from her family, left the children for others to raise,” says Aurelia’s friend Valentina.

“And she drank too much. A bottle of Vecchia Romagna hardly got her through an evening!”

Doesn’t sound credible to me, who lived side by side with her for half a year.

“Not to mention all those many cigarettes... ” Valentina continues although nobody asks.

I remember how we met: clutching a boring cocktail at one of those Berlin-Fasanenstrasse receptions. We chatted about art, literature, then quickly and abundantly about men, and we made fun of the Germans. Their idea of living. Of sex, eroticism, food, drink, generosity, elegance. We had an instant rapport, a kind of spiritual kinship. Then we met again at a private viewing in a Spandau loft. Her brother and her son were there and in the evening we went to dinner.

Both men had the hots for me, which Aurelia regarded with delight, wanting the “vittoria” - the victory - to fall to her son, wanting to see her brother lose this challenge. In fact, nothing came of it for either of them. Today Pietro, her brother, is by her discriminating side. He’s a surgeon, which means nothing. However, he is a family member and as such he has the power to decide what’s going to happen with Aurelia now.

“She’s staying with us, with her family. Here in Italy. I will perform the operation.”

And so it ended, our glamorous, lovely, close, oblivi-ous-to-everything friendship. Tarot cards in the morning with cappuccino and cigarettes, then riding, back for lunch, art, galleries, going out, socializing, discussing Italy... Verona, Ferrara, Robert de Niro, Briatore, Eros Ramaz-zotti, Luciano Pavarotti and Nicoletta, the invention of marriage, our illusions about men, sexual ecstasies, the transience of youth and beauty and... HIM. SHE knew him, Amos, my prince, spoke with him on the phone every day when I was or wanted to be out of reach, absorbed his charm and passed it to me, unfiltered. He induced the same state of trance in her as in me: TRUST! Which created Aurelia’s conviction that there was, or had ever been, no one better in my life. I trusted these words and everything else she said to me, and I believed. I even believed that I wanted a child. Thank you, Aurelia!

Aurelia dies in Verona the following January.

I wake up every morning and all I can think of is you, Amos! I dream, laugh, cry in Italian. I want you, need you - have only one more wish: to finally fall pregnant! You’re in the Caribbean with Bellarosa. I cannot reach you!

The last time we met was in England. Somewhere near Southampton, where Amos is taking helicopter flying lessons. The Little Prince! The heliport belongs to his friend, who owns a British chewing gum and lollipop manufacturing business, a market leader, and who represents a big Italian helicopter brand in England.

“You’re flying high above my head and you’re excited like a little kid flying his model plane for the first time!” I call out to him, laughing.

“Kamikaze!”

We were staying in a hotel with four stars and Amos the helicopter crash pilot kept apologising for them.

“What a restaurant! And this is supposed to be Italian? The English have no idea! Not about food and not about anything else, either!”

He is so annoyed, he is beyond being able to enjoy the moment with me.

“This restaurant has no business calling itself Italian. Let’s go to bed, quickly, Aelitina,” Amos whispers in my ear.

“Quick, I can’t stand it anymore!”

“Anything here you want to make a fuss about or criticise, too?” I ask him while he licks Mousse au Chocolat off my breasts.

“Oh no, Aelita, never,” he groans, in ecstatic bliss.

“You are my chocolate praline, Aelitina, Aelitissima!”

“I really want a child,” I say, defiantly.

“Yes, Aelitina, me too. I don’t know if we can.”

“I don’t just want one - two...” I groan.

“Yes, three, oh please! I’m coming!” Amos screams into my ear.

I wake up, he’s still on me, in me!

“Didn’t you just explain to me - on the way here - that you keep being reminded of me so much - on the way to the heliport - when you’re passing through all that REAL countryside with cows and horses... yes, the horses made you think of me...” I prompt Amos.

In the seconds in-between him reporting to Bellarosa

- where he was with whom -, or the other members of the board, or his secretary. Oh, what was it he said, so nicely:

“I bought a telephone for my secretary that can send text messages from the office. Then I won’t have to listen to her voice anymore. The last one left me in tears, and all the others keep starting to snivel as soon as I bawl them out.”

“Poor you! They treat you so badly,” I say, understandingly.

Still was, then. I feel sorry for him when he loses his temper, when he gets upset, bursts into tears because he’s upset about believing he’s not a real man, not comprehending what he might mean by that, here and now, but learning all about it later... Not having any real, true, proper friends - imagine that!

“Non so se sono un uomo vero!” - I don’t know whether I’m a real man.

“Are you a man or a mouse?” they ask in England.

His tears. I get to see the gentleness in him. Oh yes, I want him. Can’t imagine anyone else, ever. Only him. He and I. Not the powerful controller. See only his gentle side, the one he currently offers me. He smiles almost shyly, cries, shows his fragility, philosophizes. That’s the Amos I know. The one I love.

That night he called me HIS geisha. I was proud, intellectual, randy and tireless. My head between his legs, his cock voraciously in my mouth. “La Passionata” - passion, passione. Is there an equivalent German term? If there is, I don’t know it. My body as perfect as his. He cried - as always: bemoaning his own present, his past and his future. Crying because he had no friends, no one who could understand him - only ME. I’ve been hearing this for over a year by now!

“Do you love me?” I ask.

“Yes. Aelita, I love you. I want you. Just you.”

Am I just the psychologist? I’d prefer the lover... Completely forgetting about the phone calls and vows to Bellarosa... She no longer exists for me. Forgotten about, entirely!

As always, we spent every waking moment screwing -day, night, morning.

“I’ll take you to the station.” He smiled happily and I went to Watford, to the office. In the car, his hand, searching unerringly, sneaks up my thighs that I’ve opened in readiness. As ever. His hand inside of me, a last chance to keep my scent with him a while longer.

My trip to Watford turns out to be not particularly exciting. Officially, I’ve just returned from visiting clients or potential clients in Switzerland. Nobody ever checks these things anyway. It’s my nature: a gambler, always skating on thin ice, always searching for new challenges, the ultimate thrill. Thank God I’m allowed to smoke on the train! And there is coffee! My vices that I almost don’t want to give up. Every time, they stand between Amos and me. The sun is shining - a rare treat in England, and I travel, dreaming of my next time with HIM - not a clue that this will be a long time in coming.

A HORSE LOVES THOSE...
IT CARRIES, THEN THROWS...

Down at Alexander and Evita’s stables, everything is as usual: I have riding lessons with Alexander and - exceptionally - ride Devina instead of Don Juan.

“He’s thrown a shoe and the blacksmith hasn’t been yet,” Alexander calls out to me, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, while he saddles Devina for me.

“You’ll take her, won’t you?”

“Sure,” I say. “I wanted to ride them both anyway, but if Don Juan has a shoe problem, I’ll just go with her.”

I’m riding across the arena, the sun is shining, it rained last night. The ground is sodden. With no warning and for no reason at all, Devina starts to buck. She puts on a veritable rodeo. Usually, she is rather a placid horse who won’t get worked up about anything or anyone. Unex-citable. Absolutely good-natured. The more unexpected is her bucking now, going crazy within a ten-metre-ra-dius.

“Alex!” I scream in desperation.

Don’t hear his reply. I fall, slowly - practically in slow motion - down past her inner shoulder and slam flat onto the ground. I can’t breathe.

“That’s the shock,” says Alexander. “Stay put.”

I am in a state of total panic and I get up. Just about make it to a bale of straw. We sit and we wait.

“Just go and call an ambulance!” I snarl at Alexander.

Meanwhile I have attracted a crowd of gawping riders. I’m taken to the nearest hospital. Out in the sticks in the east of Germany. Nauen, north of Berlin. New state of

the art equipment. The consultant tries to calm me down: “You’ve broken a few vertebrae, but we used to heal those by traditional methods back in the GDR. Meaning, bed rest.”

“Well, if that’s all,” I remark, rolling my eyes.

“I can’t feel my toes,” I wail, distraught.

“Please forward my records, I want a neurologist to look at this,” I tell the doctors on duty.

My records are sent to Brandenburg. The result: immediate surgery.

“I don’t want to go to Brandenburg. Send these on again, to the Charité in Berlin. Please!”

At long last, my scans and x-rays are transferred to the Charité in Berlin, and I follow the next day, by road, bumping across country instead of going by helicopter. In Berlin, I am touchingly well looked after by a hard-boiled team of casualty surgeons. No moaning and groaning here!

In the meantime, Amos has been informed and appears completely destroyed by the terrible situation I’m in. I rang his office, as I couldn’t reach him by mobile. He was in the Caribbean, with Bellarosa! His secretary asks me: “Who are you? What is this in connection with?”

That most classic of all secretary questions.

“Dottore is not available. Are you calling about the yacht he intends to charter? You can talk to me about that.”

“No, it’s not about that. He’ll know what it’s about when you tell him I called. Grazie. And - it is urgent, very urgent. He needs to call me as soon as possible on THIS number. Thank you. Buongiorno.”

Three vertebrae are broken: one simple and one triple fracture, and one is smashed. The charming professor tells me his son just had a riding accident, too. Luckily however, he didn’t need an operation. I, on the other hand... two of them - one to stabilize and another one, about a week later, to partly replace one of the vertebrae with bone taken from my hip. Will I ever be able to ride again? That’s my first worry... and to walk? A frown... he says he can’t really say just yet...

I am completely on my own and Amos is ever-present only by phone.

“No, I can’t come over now, I’m much too busy, and anyway, that would not be sensible,” he comforts me. “You need rest - not me.”

“Please... come over!” I beg him.

“What would we be able to do? You, after your operations, on your sickbed?”

I hear his words but their meaning escapes me.

“Kiss the rain,” Billie Myers sings.

“Hello - can you hear me?

Am I getting through to you?

Hello - Is it late there?”

I am still in a trance.

“Is there laughter on the line?

Are you sure you’re there alone?”

Exactly the question I ask myself all the time.

“Cause I’m trying to explain, something’s wrong...” Yes, I think while listening to the music in the background.

“You just don’t sound the same.

Why don’t you go outside... ”

Tears are running down my face. Silence.

“Kiss the rain whenever you need me... ”

My make-up is running.

“Kiss the rain whenever I’m gone too long...” ⁴)

Am I dreaming or is all this really real?

Amos keeps talking about Bellarosa.

“She’s been seeing a psychologist. A huge success!” he reports from her boring life.

Oh - great! She suddenly is able to understand her life and herself - Amos, the playmate by her side, the straw man fronting her business dealings; overcomes her childhood trauma of being incapable, as a woman, of running businesses and being a true entrepreneur, until she has proof that she is perfectly well capable of taking a string of corrupt and unsound medium-sized enterprises right to the top of Italy’s turnover and consumer league.

“Just like in the movie Goodfellas?” I ask Amos provocatively.

“Are you crazy?” Amos gets more and more angry, loses his last tiny bit of humour.

“Isn’t it always the same merchandise?”

“No, not always,” my love hero corrects me, wins me over against Bellarosa.

“Luxury and indulgence!”

I call her “la capona” the female version of Mafia. Bel-larosa’s companies were founded in the late 1800s - this reminds me of Bugsy Malone, the movie that made Jodie Foster. Saw it with my class at school, in the Luisenstiftung in Berlin. Yes, Bella, that was your mediocre ambition, wasn’t it, to lift that bit of “Alta Montagna” back up as a brand! Alcohol & cigarettes, media, telecommu-

⁴) “Kiss the rain”, by Billie Meyers

nications companies... However, these days the real bigwigs of the controlled markets don’t wear black suits, sun glasses and spats, and they don’t necessarily live in Brooklyn or on Sicily... Take Amos, for example.

“My gentlemen’s outfitter says I am the most elegant and best dressed signore in town!”

The peacock raises his tail feathers into a quivering fan. A smallish fan - he is one metre seventy-eight tall, or so he says. Shielded by his doctor title - totally different to the German system: in Italy, once you’ve graduated from university, the doctorate is awarded more or less automatically