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VI
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125 Tullio Pironti VI Where else would I meet the man who would at last deliver the kind of book I wanted, a piece of history as it’s lived, if not over dinner at Dante e Beatrice? A typical night, a late dinner. I’d closed up the shop and pulled the grates down over the windows. When I reached the restaurant, I was seated near a group from a Naples television station. Among them sat a broad-shouldered man with a knowing, lippy smile and wide aviator glasses. Though well into middle age, he had a full head of hair, loosely parted, so it crowned at the center of his forehead and hung down to his jacket collar. Anyone with a TV knew who this was: the reporter Giuseppe Marrazzo. To me, he’d soon become Joe, a friend I relied on and the single person who did the most for my press—and a great deal for my city as well. That night I called over my favorite waiter, Mario. Mario had TV charisma himself, and I asked him introduce Marrazzo and I. But after the waiter swung by the television crew’s table, it was Joe himself who welcomed me, loudly, to join his crew. Till I heard him close up, I hadn’t realized how his voice was part of his charm. He came across as sonorous yet vivacious, his growl made friendly by a Naples accent. Hearing that, I figured there was no point beating around the bush. No sooner had I introduced myself, settling into the chair he offered, than I added: “You should write a book, and I should publish it.” “You’re an editor?” he said. He hadn’t missed my accent, either. “Here in Naples?” “For the past few years now, yes.” 126 Books and Rough Business He gave a gesture that, from most people, would be an insult: the hand cupped upwards, the thumb pressed to two fingertips. “Pironti, you’re crazy! In this city, people don’t read.” Which seemed like a good occasion to excuse myself, cut back across the piazza, and select a few examples out of my office. Also the brief trip gave me a moment to reconsider the book I had in mind. A biography of the most dangerous Camorrista in Naples, Raffaele Cutolo, it would be based on Marrazzo’s interviews with the man. No one else had dared venture so close to a clan chieftain like Cutolo; no one else could deliver such a powerful narrative. Once I got back into the shop, I picked up a copy of Metaphorein, as ever an impressive collection of names, and a book on Lorca. Back under the arbor at Dante e Beatrice, my publications had an even better impact than I’d hoped. Marrazzo waved them at his crew: “Look what great books we’ve got in Naples!” And when he turned back to me, his voice was warmer yet. “All right then, Pironti, what’d you have in mind?” I smiled and told him. “Cutolo? Good idea. Good idea, I could do that.” Nodding, thoughtful, he ran his thumb and forefinger through his long hair. He began to suggest a meeting the next day at the Hotel Excelsior. Of course he was at the Excelsior, a four-star jet-set palace, one of those that glitter above the Lungomare. But then he cut himself off: “Look, I see you’re alone. Why don’t you just join me over there now?” Like that, Joe and I were on our way. Indeed, his openness was the principal impression I took away from that first evening. He was the one with the suite at the Excelsior, where the bar offered a half-dozen different kinds of grappa, where the very air conditioning thrummed with wealth and privilege, and yet he was perfectly frank about how much pulling together a book meant to him. Publication had a real cachet for this man, maybe as sweet a cachet as for me. His television career was something of a miracle, given his lowly beginnings in Nocera Inferiore.This was a hill town above Pompeii, one of those ravaged in the earthquake that had hit the region in 1980—just months before Joe and I met, as it happened. But that same earthquake had also allowed for a terrible rise in Camorra activity, with money flooding into town for repair and reconstruction. The “black work” of unregulated building, edilizio...