EXORCISM BY CRIME WRITING
date: 21 September 2008 at 14:50:58 - 0 comments
If you write thrillers, it comes as no surprise if someone asks you for a story.
As a rule, your agent handles the offer, which comes from the editor of a magazine or newspaper. The request that recently came our way, however, did not flow through the usual channels. The person asking us to write a story was one of the most important politicians in the city of Perugia.
Perugia is the largest town in Umbria, Italy. Until recently, it was known to tourists as a picturesque place full of art treasures, packed with the young students who flock to one of the oldest universities in Europe, a cosmopolitan centre where thousands of foreigners come to learn the Italian language and study Renaissance art and culture.
Early last November, Perugia was front-page news across the world. The town was swarming with journalists who were drawn there by the ferocious murder of Meredith Kercher. An outgoing, 22-year-old student from the University of Leeds, Meredith was found dead in the house that she was sharing with Amanda Knox, an American girl who was also studying Italian. Partially undressed, Meredith’s throat had been cut. Her death had been agonisingly slow, according to police, and their investigation soon led to the arrest of Amanda Knox, her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and a young man from the Ivory Coast named Rudy Guede.
Who had been in the room where Meredith died? If all of them were present, as forensic evidence suggested, what had led them to commit such a hideous crime? As the three suspects accused each other, only one thing remained absolutely certain: Meredith Kercher had been murdered.
Perugia was no longer a quiet provincial town bathed in the sort of light that made the name of its greatest painter, Perugino. Suddenly, it was a place of impenetrable shadows, alarming nightmares, indescribable fear. Journalists who came from England and the States to follow the case described Perugia as gloomy and sinister. They did not see the Renaissance splendour; they saw cheap drugs, easy sex. They wrote of raves and bar-crawling, clubbing by night, days in bed recovering, and a small house looking out over a green valley where something terrible had happened.
The local authorities were appalled. The name of Perugia was being dragged through the mire, and they made a determined effort to rectify the wrong. In tv and newspaper interviews, the mayor and other members of the council claimed that nothing had changed, that Perugia was not a den of vice, not a place to avoid, not a town where innocent students ran the risk of being murdered. The city fathers were frightened that the tourists would stay away, that parents would send their children to study somewhere else. The authorities admitted that the narrow streets were not well-lit, and that a small number of unregistered immigrants were openly dealing drugs in the centre of town, but that was true of every city in Europe. Normal people, they said, go home after dark and watch tv.
Normal people also read books.
Each year there is a literature festival in Perugia. The theme for 2008 had been decided before Meredith was murdered. “Il Male,” which means Evil. But then Pure Evil struck. The organisers struggled for a bit, then chose a title which was less controversial. Unde Malum? Latin for a start, and a probing question: where does Evil come from? They had already selected a striking publicity image, a detail from Luca Signorelli’s famous fresco The Devils in Hell. It was way too gory. Now, they had to tone it down. It was a hopeless mess. The question of Evil needed to be quashed until the trial was over and the ghost of Meredith Kercher had been laid to rest.
That was the order of the day.
But then we got a phone-call. From Andrea Cernicchi, the Councillor for Culture.
“Would you like to write a story set in Perugia?” he asked. “It will be published in December and handed out free as a Christmas gift to all the people living in the city.”
We looked at one another. Had he phoned the wrong author?
Our historical thrillers are cover-to-cover blood and gore. As we explained it to Councillor Cernicchi: “We ‘kill’ people for pleasure.” Then again, we had told him pretty much the same thing six months before. He had interviewed us in Perugia when the Italian hardback edition of ‘Days of Atonement’ was first published. We were certain he had picked the wrong name from his address-book. The people of Perugia wanted to forget a real-life murder, they didn’t need fiction.
“You’re the people I am looking for,” he assured us. “You write about murder, victims, the dark side of the human soul. That’s what Perugia wants from you. The darker, the better! Your story, together with stories by Massimo Carlotto and Grazia Verasani (two other well-known authors of noir) will make up an anthology. We’d like you to produce something relating to the city…”
“The city?”
“Perugia,” he confirmed. “After publication, you’ll have the chance to meet the townspeople at a special event, and talk about your work. In short, we’d like you to write and speak about evil in the context of Perugia. Especially crimes that happen late at night.”
What about Meredith? The murder? Perugia’s image? Wasn’t it all supposed to be swept under the carpet until the trial of Amanda, Raffaele, Rudi, and the inevitable clamour of the world’s press, brought it out into the open again?
“Quite the opposite,” Cernicchi insisted. “The murder of Merdith is a terrible fact, but it is part and parcel of city life today. Perugia must face up to it. The only way to free ourselves of the horror is by talking about it. By writing about it. Perugia needs to examine its conscience. Maybe you can guide us through the dark zone.”
His arguments were strong enough to intrigue us. “It is part of the medieval tradition,” he said, “and essentially Umbrian. In times of need you send for those who claim to be able to exorcise whatever horror happens to threaten the community. In the past they went by various names: benandante, shaman, sorcerer…”
Today, it seems, they go by the name of crime writers.