Roberto Saviano - Beauty and the Inferno: Essays

Praise for BEAUTY AND THE INFERNO

I feel humble, almost insignificant, faced with the dignity and the courage of the writer and journalist Roberto Saviano, the man who has mastered the art of living.

JOS SARAMAGO

We must thank Roberto Saviano for having returned to literature the ability to open eyes and minds.

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

A perceptive and sympathetic critic and reader... Saviano writes very well... what he has to say demands to be read. Like Primo Levi, his testimony pricks our conscience, tests our resolve, makes us examine ourselves... At once deeply disturbing and illuminating.

ALAN TAYLOR, Scottish Sunday Herald

He is determined to show the Camorra that he will not be silenced by their threats this book is his sod em to their Gomorrah... It is good to be reminded of the raw bravery of the Savianos of this world and to salute them for the sacrifices they have made in their challenges to power.

DUNCAN CAMPBELL, Guardian

He never pulls his punches, his message is incredibly important, and the facts he includes such as the increase in cancer rates due to the illegal dumping of toxic waste are like bombshells.

TOBIAS JONES, Sunday Times

All the essays in Beauty and the Inferno the title referring to the freedoms necessary to a writer and the hell that seems to have become the norm are in some sense a celebration of bravery and an expression of rage against cowardice.

CAROLINE MOOREHEAD, Times Literary Supplement

In his essay about [Anna] Politkovskaya, he writes: I do not care about beautiful stories that cannot be bothered with the blood of our times. I want to smell the rot of politics and the stench of business. He achieves that and more in his own work.

PATRICK FREYNE, Sunday Business Post

Running through this collection like a seam of poison is despair at the way Italy has made peace with the criminality he exposed.

PETER POPHAM, Independent

Roberto Saviano

Essays

Translated from the Italian by
Oonagh Stransky

First published in the US by Verso 2012
First published in Great Britain by MacLehose Press 2011
Roberto Saviano 2012
Translation Oonagh Stransky 2011
Published by arrangement with Agenzia Letteraria Roberto Santachiara
First published in Italian as La Bellezza e LInferno
Mondadori 2010

The quotation from Albert Camus The Rebel is from Anthony Bowers
translation (Hamish Hamilton 1954)

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PENs Writers in Translation program supported by Bloomberg. English PEN exists to promote literature and its understanding, uphold writers freedoms around the world, campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and promote the friendly co-operation of writers and free exchange of ideas.

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

eISBN: 978-1-84467-951-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset in Bembo
Printed in the US by Maple Vail

To M. a light in this long night

BEAUTY & THE INFERNO

THE ACT OF WRITING HAS ALLOWED ME TO EXIST. ARTICLES, reports, stories, editorials its a line of work that has always been more than just a job for me. It has merged with my life. If anyone hoped that living under extreme circumstances would lead me to hide my words away, they were wrong. I have not hidden them and I have not lost them. Every day has been a struggle, it is true. A silent one-to-one combat. A kind of shadow boxing. Writing was the only thing that allowed me to survive. My words stopped me from losing myself. From giving up. From despair.

Over the past few years I have written from at least ten different apartments, none of which I inhabited for more than a few months. Most of them were small, some were minuscule, and all of them were infernally dark. I always wanted them to be lighter or more spacious, to have a terrace, or at least a balcony.

I wanted a balcony in the same way that I used to want to travel: to see distant horizons. A chance to be outside, to breathe, to look around. But no-one would rent me an apartment with a balcony. And I had no choice in the matter. I have not been allowed to go out apartment-hunting on my own. I was never allowed to decide where I lived. And then, as soon as people found out that I was living on a certain street or in a particular building, I had to move.

I am not the first person to go through this, of course. I would visit an apartment that the carabinieri had selected and negotiated the terms for me, but as soon as the owner recognized me, he would say something like: I really admire your work, but I cant get into trouble, I have so many problems as it is, or else: If I was on my own, it wouldnt be a problem, but I have kids and a family, you see, and I have to think of their safety, or (the third and final variant): Id give it to you right away, and for nothing too, but the other people in the building would crucify me. You know, people here are scared.

And then there are the grave-robbers. They start off by siding with you Sure, Ill rent it to you, no problem and then they ask you for four times the usual rate. Im happy to put myself on the line for you, really, but you know how it is, its so expensive here. These were the usual reactions, from people who did not want to take sides (in this case, mine), but there were also others people I did not even know who offered me refuge: a room, friendship, warmth. I have not always been able to accept their offers because of security concerns, but I always got some writing done in places that were filled with warmth and kindness.

Many pages among these pieces were not written in homes at all, but in hotels. I have been to so many in the last few years that they all look the same and I hate them all equally. Dark rooms. Windows that dont open (sometimes no windows at all). No air. At night, you sweat. You turn on the air-conditioning so you can breathe, but then the sweat dries on your body and the next day it hurts to swallow. Abroad, when I travelled to one of those cities I had always dreamed of visiting, the only view I had was from my hotel room or the armoured car.

I am not allowed to go for a walk, even with bodyguards. Sometimes I cannot stay in the same hotel for more than one night at a time. The calmer the place, the more civilized it is, the farther away it seems to be from crime and the Mafia; and the safer I feel, the more they treat me as though something might explode at any moment. They try to be nice about it, and they are well organized too. But you never really know if they are giving you the kid-glove treatment or if they are actually wearing bomb-disposal gloves. Are you a gift-wrapped present or a parcel bomb?

More often than not I have stayed in rooms in the carabinieri barracks. I smell the leather polish they use on their boots. I hear the football game on television. I notice how they curse when the other team scores a goal or when they have to go back to work. Saturdays, Sundays, every godforsaken day its the same. I live in the hollow belly of a big old mechanical whale. Meanwhile, outside, people are on the move. You hear their voices. There is sunshine. It is summer already. And you know that where you are... you know that if you could leave this place, you are only a few minutes away from the building where they once said, Oh, youre going at last, and that only five or ten minutes down the road is the sea. But you cannot go there.