Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System

ANGELINA JOLIE

In the days that followed, Xian took me along to his business meetings. He seemed to enjoy my company as he went about his day or ate his lunch. I either talked too much or too little, both of which he liked. I followed how the seeds of money are sown and cultivated, how the economy’s terrain is allowed to lie fallow. We went to Las Vegas, an area to the north of Naples. Las Vegas: that’s what we call it around here, for several reasons. Just like Las Vegas, Nevada, which is built in the middle of the desert, the urban agglomerations here seem to spring up out of nothing. And you have to cross a desert of roads to reach the place. Miles of tar, wide thoroughfares that whisk you away from here, propelling you toward the highway, to Rome, straight to the north. Roads built not for cars but for trucks, not to move people but clothes, shoes, purses. As you arrive from Naples, these towns appear out of nowhere, planted in the ground one after another. Lumps of cement. Tangles of streets. A web of roads on which the towns of Casavatore, Caivano, Sant’Antimo, Melito, Arzano, Piscinola, San Pietro a Patierno, Frattamaggiore, Frattaminore, Grumo Nevano, endlessly rotate. Places so indistinguishable they seem to be one giant metropolis, with the streets of one town running into another.

I must have heard the area around Foggia called Califoggia a hundred times, the southern part of Calabria referred to as Calafrica or Saudi Calabria, Sala Consilina Sahara Consilina, or an area of Secondigliano (which means “second mile”) called Terzo Mondo, Third World. But this Las Vegas really is Las Vegas. For years, anyone who wanted to try his hand at business could do it here. Live the dream. Use his severance pay, savings, or a loan to open a factory. You’d bet on a company: if you won, you’d reap efficiency, productivity, speed, protection, and cheap labor. You’d win just the way you win by betting on red or black. If you lost, you’d be out of business in a few months. Las Vegas. No regulations, no administrative or economic planning. Shoes, clothes, and accessories were clandestinely forced onto the international market. The towns didn’t boast of this precious production; the more silently, the more secretly the goods were manufactured, the more successful they were. For years this area produced the best in Italian fashion. And thus the best in the world. But they didn’t have entrepreneurs’ clubs or training centers; they had nothing but work, nothing but their sewing machines, small factories, wrapped packages, and shipped goods. Nothing but the endless repetition of production. Everything else was superfluous. Training took place at the workbench, and a company’s quality was demonstrated by its success. No financing, no projects, no internships. In the marketplace it’s all or nothing. Win or lose. A rise in salaries has meant better houses and fancy cars. Yet this is not wealth that can be considered collective. This is plundered wealth, taken by force from someone else and carried off to your own cave. People came from all over to invest in businesses making shirts, jackets, skirts, blazers, gloves, hats, purses, and wallets for Italian, German, and French companies. Las Vegas stopped requiring permits, contracts, or proper working conditions in the 1950s, and garages, stairwells, and storerooms were transformed into factories. But lately the Chinese competition has ruined the ones producing midrange-quality merchandise. There’s no more room for workmanship. Either you do the best work the fastest or someone else will figure out how to do average work more quickly. A lot of people found themselves out of work. Factory owners were crushed by debt and usury. Many absconded.

One place in particular has been threatened by the disappearance of these midrange industries: Parco Verde in Caivano. Its breath cut short, its growth stunted, it has become the emblem of the outer edge of urban sprawl. Here the lights are always on, the houses full of people, the courtyards crowded, the cars parked. No one leaves. Some people arrive, but few stay. There’s never a moment when the apartment houses are empty, never that sense of stillness after everyone has gone off to work or school in the morning. There’s always a crowd here, the incessant noise of people.

Parco Verde rises up just off the central axis of the city, the knife of tar that slices right through Naples. It seems more like a junk pile than a neighborhood, cement constructions with aluminum balconies swelling like carbuncles from every opening. It looks like one of those places an architect who got his inspiration at the beach designed, as if he’d meant the buildings to look like sand castles, the kind made from pails of sand dumped upside down. Dull, featureless buildings. In one corner is a tiny chapel. You almost don’t notice it, but that wasn’t always the case. There used to be a big, white chapel, a full-scale mausoleum dedicated to a boy named Emanuele. Emanuele was killed on the job. A job that in some places is even worse than moonlighting in a factory. But it’s a way to make a living. Emanuele did robberies. He’d strike on Saturdays—every Saturday. Always in the same place. Same time, same street, same day. Because Saturday was the day for his victims, the day for lovers. And Route 87 was where all the lovers in the area went. A shitty road of patched tar and mini-landfills. Every time I pass there and see the couples, I think you must have to really unleash a lot of passion to feel good in such a disgusting setting. It was here that Emanuele and his two friends hid, waiting for a car to park, for the lights to be switched off. They’d wait a few more minutes—to give them time to get undressed—and then, when the lovers were most vulnerable, they’d strike. They’d shatter the window with the butt of a pistol and stick the barrel under the man’s nose. After cleaning out their victims, they’d head off for the weekend with dozens of robberies under their belts and 500 euros in their pockets: meager booty, but it felt like a fortune.

Then one night a patrol of carabinieri intercepts them. Emanuele and his accomplices are so reckless that they don’t realize that constantly pulling the same moves in the same location is the best way to get arrested. A chase, the cars ram into each other, shots ring out. Then all is still. Emanuele is in the car, mortally wounded. He’d pointed a pistol at the carabinieri, so they kill him, eleven shots in just a few seconds. Firing eleven shots at point-blank means your gun is aimed and you’re ready to shoot at the least provocation. Shoot to kill first, and think of it as self-defense later. The bullets had flown in like the wind, drawn to Emanuele’s body as to a magnet. His friends stop the car and are about to flee, but give up as soon as they realize Emanuele is dead. They open the car doors, putting up no resistance to the fists in the face that are a prelude to every arrest. Emanuele is bent over himself, a fake pistol in his hand. A cap gun, the kind that used to be called a dog-chaser, good for keeping stray dogs out of the chicken coop. A toy wielded as if it were real; after all, Emanuele was a kid who acted like a grown man, with a frightened look that feigned ruthlessness, and a desire for pocket money that pretended to be a thirst for riches. Emanuele was fifteen years old. Everyone called him Manù. He had a lean, dark, angular face, the kind you picture when you imagine the last kid you’d want to hang out with. Emanuele came from a corner of the world where you don’t win honor and respect merely for having pocket money, but for how you get it. Emanuele belonged to Parco Verde. And when you come from a place that brands you, no mistake or crime can cancel out the fact of your belonging. The Parco Verde families took up a collection and built a small mausoleum. Inside they placed an image of the Neapolitan Madonna dell’Arco and a photo of Emanuele smiling. Emanuele’s chapel was one of the more than twenty the faithful had built in honor of every Madonna imaginable. But the mayor couldn’t stand that this one was dedicated to a lowlife, so he sent in a bulldozer to knock it down. The cement building crumbled instantly, as if it were made out of modeling clay. Word spread quickly, and the youth of Parco Verde arrived on their Vespas and motorcycles. No one spoke. They all just stared at the man working the bulldozer levers. Under the weight of their gaze, he stopped and pointed to the marshal as if to say that he was the one who’d given the order. A gesture to identify the object of their wrath and remove the target from his own chest. Frightened, besieged, he locked himself in. A second later the fighting began. He managed to flee in a police car as the kids began attacking the bulldozer with fists and feet. They emptied beer bottles and filled them with gas, tilting their motor scooters to drain the fuel right into the bottles, and threw rocks at the windows of a nearby school. If Emanuele’s chapel had to come down, then so did all the rest. Dishes, vases, and silverware flew from apartment windows. Firebombs were hurled at the police. Trash cans were lined up as barricades, and everything they could get their hands on was set on fire. Preparations for guerrilla warfare. There were hundreds of them, they’d be able to hold out a long time. The rebellion was spreading, and soon it would reach Naples proper.

But then someone arrived, from not too far away. The whole area was surrounded by police and carabinieri cars, but a black SUV had managed to get past the barricades. The driver gave a signal, someone opened the door, and a few of the rebels got in. In less than two hours everything was dismantled. Handkerchiefs came off faces, barricades of burning trash were extinguished. The clans had intervened, who knows which one. Parco Verde is a gold mine for Camorra laborers. Anyone who wants conscripts can round them up here: the bottom rung, unskilled workers who make even less than the Nigerian or Albanian pushers. Everybody wants Parco Verde kids: the Casalesi clan, the Mallardos in Giuliano, the Crispano “tiger cubs.” They become drug dealers on fixed pay, with no percentage on their sales, or drivers, or lookouts, defending territories miles from home. And to get the job they don’t even ask to be reimbursed for gas. Trustworthy kids, scrupulous in their work. Some wind up on heroin, the drug of the truly wretched. Some save themselves, enlist in the army, and get deployed; some of the girls manage to get away and never set foot in the place again. Hardly any of the younger generation become clan members; they work for the clans without ever becoming Camorristi. The clans don’t want them. They merely employ them, take advantage of the offering. These kids have no skills or commercial talent. A lot of them work as couriers, carrying backpacks filled with hashish to Rome. Motorcycle muscles flexed to the max, after an hour and a half they’re already at the capital gates. They don’t get anything for these trips, but after about twenty rounds they’re given a present—a motorcycle. To them it’s precious, beyond compare, out of reach with any other job available around here. They’ve been delivering goods that bring in ten times the cost of the motorcycle, but they don’t know that, can’t even begin to imagine it. If they get stopped at a roadblock, they’ll get less than ten years. The clan won’t cover their legal costs or guarantee assistance to their families. But there’s the roar of the exhaust in their ears and Rome to reach.

A few of the barricades came down slowly, depending on the degree of pent-up anger. Then everything fizzled. The clans weren’t afraid of the revolt. As far as they were concerned, Parco Verde could burn for days, the inhabitants could all kill each other. Except that the uproar meant no work, no reserves of cheap labor. Everything had to return to normal right away. Everyone had to get back to work, or at least be ready if they were needed. This game of revolt had to end.

I went to Emanuele’s funeral. In certain spots on the globe, fifteen is merely a number. In this slum neighborhood, dying at fifteen is more like fulfilling a death sentence than being deprived of life. The church was filled with grim-faced kids, and every now and then they’d let out a moan. Outside, a small chorus was even chanting, “He’s still with us, he’ll always be with us …” what soccer fanatics shout when some old glory retires his number. It was as if they were at the stadium, but the only chants were ones of rage. The plainclothesmen did their best to keep out of the aisles. Everyone had recognized them but there was no room for a skirmish. I’d spotted them right away; or rather they’d spotted me, not finding any trace of my face in their mental archives. As if attracted by my sullenness, one of them came up to me and said, “They’re all doomed here. Drugs, stealing, dealing in stolen goods, holdups … some are even streetwalkers. Not one of them is clean. The more of them who die here, the better it is for everyone.”

Words that deserve a punch or a head butt in the nose. But everyone was really thinking the same thing. And maybe they had a point. I looked at them one by one, those kids who’ll do life for stealing 200 euros—the dregs, stand-ins, pushers. Not one of them over twenty. Padre Mauro, the priest performing Emanuele’s funeral, knew whom he was burying. He also knew the other kids were hardly the picture of innocence.

“This is not a hero who has died today …”

He didn’t hold his hands open as priests do when they read the parables on Sunday, but instead clenched his fists. And there was no note of homily in his voice, which was strangely hoarse, as if he’d been talking too long. He spoke with anger—there was no light punishment for this creature, no delegating anything.

He seemed like one of those priests during the guerrilla uprisings in El Salvador, when they’d finally had enough of performing funerals for murder victims, when they stopped having pity and started shouting. But no one knew Romero here. Padre Mauro had unusual energy. “For all the responsibility we can assign to Emanuele, the fact remains that he was fifteen years old. At that age the sons of families born in other parts of Italy are going to the pool, taking dance lessons. It’s not like that here. God the Father will take into consideration the fact that the mistake was made by a fifteen-year-old boy. If in the south of Italy fifteen means you’re old enough to work, to decide to steal, to kill and be killed, it also means you’re old enough to take responsibility for certain things.”

He inhaled deeply the foul air inside the church. “But fifteen years are few enough that they let us see more clearly what’s behind them, and they require us to apportion the responsibility. Fifteen is an age that knocks at the conscience of those who merely play at legality, work, and responsibility. An age that doesn’t knock gently, but claws with its nails.”

The priest finished the homily. No one was completely sure what he really meant or who was to blame. The kids got all riled up. Four men carried the casket out of the church, but all of a sudden it lifted off their shoulders and floated above the crowd, swaying on a sea of hands, like a rock star who catapults from the stage into his fans. A bunch of motorcyclists pulled up around the hearse waiting to take Manù to the cemetery. They revved their engines and clamped down on the brakes: a chorus of burnouts for Emanuele’s last race. Their tires squealing and mufflers howling, it was as if they wanted to escort him all the way to the hereafter. Thick smoke and the stench of gas filled the air, permeating everyone’s clothes. I went in to the sacristy; I wanted to talk to the priest who’d uttered such fiery words. A woman got there before me. She wanted to tell him that the boy had gone looking for trouble, that his family hadn’t taught him anything. Then she confessed proudly, “My grandchildren would never have committed robbery, even though they’re unemployed … But what did that boy learn?” she continued nervously. “Anything?”

The priest looked at the floor. He was wearing a tracksuit. He didn’t try to respond, didn’t even look her in the face. He just kept staring at his sneakers as he whispered, “The fact is that the only thing you learn here is how to die.”

“Excuse me, Padre?”

“Nothing, signora, nothing.”

But not everyone is underground here. Not everyone has ended up in the quagmire of defeat. At least not yet. Some successful factories are still strong enough to compete with the Chinese because they work for big designer names. By delivering speed and quality—extremely high quality—they still hold the monopoly on beauty for top-level garments. “Made in Italy” is made here. Caivano, Sant’ Antimo, Arzano, and all across Las Vegas, Campania. “The face of Italy in the world” wears fabric draped over the bare head of the Naples suburbs. The brand names don’t dare risk sending everything East, contracting out to Asia. Factories here are crowded into stairwells, on the ground floors of row houses, in sheds on the outskirts of these outlying towns. Lined up one behind the other, staring at the back of the person in front of them, the workers sew cloth, cut leather, and assemble shoes. A garment worker puts in about ten hours a day, bringing home from 500 to 900 euros a month. Overtime usually pays well, as much as 15 euros an hour more than the regular wage. Factories rarely have more than ten employees. There’s almost always a television or radio so the workers can listen to music, maybe even hum along. But during crunch times the only noise is the march of needles. More than half the employees are women; they’re skilled workers, born staring at a sewing machine. Officially these factories don’t exist, and neither do the employees. If the same work were done legally, prices would go up and there’d be no more market—which means the work would disappear from Italy. The businessmen around here know this logic by heart. There’s usually no rancor or resentment between factory workers and owners; class conflict here is as soft as a soggy cookie. Often the owner is a former worker, and he puts in the same hours as his employees, in the same room, at the same bench. When he makes a mistake, he pays for it out of his own pocket, in mortgages or loans. His authority is paternalistic. You have to fight for a day off or a few cents’ raise. There’s no contract, no bureaucracy. It’s all head to head, and any concessions or benefits are individually negotiated. The owner and his family live above the factory. His daughters often babysit his employees’ children, and his mother becomes their de facto grandmother, so that workers’ and owner’s children grow up together. This communal existence acts out the horizontal dream of post-Fordism:* workers and managers eat together, socialize with each other, and are made to feel they’re all part of the same community.

No one acts ashamed here. They know they’re doing top-quality work, and that they’re being paid a pittance. But you can’t have one without the other. You work to get what you need and you do it as best you can, so that no one will find any reason to fire you. No safety net, just cause, sick leave, or vacation days. It’s up to you to negotiate your rights, to plead for time off. But there’s nothing to complain about. Everything is just as it should be. Here there’s only a body, a skill, a machine, and a salary. No one knows the exact number of clandestine workers in these parts, or how many legal employees are forced to sign a monthly pay slip for sums they never receive.

Xian was to take part in an auction. We went to an elementary-school classroom, but there were no children and no teacher, just sheets of construction paper with big letters tacked to the walls. About twenty company reps were milling around. Xian was the only foreigner. He only greeted two people, and without excessive familiarity. A car pulled into the school courtyard, and three people entered the room: two men and a woman. The woman was wearing a leather skirt and high-heeled patent-leather shoes. Everyone rose to greet her. They took their places and the auction began. One of the men drew three vertical lines on the blackboard and wrote as the woman dictated. In the first column:

“800”

This was the number of garments to make. The woman listed the types of fabric and the quality of the articles. A businessman from Sant’ Antimo went over to the window, turning his back to the rest of us, and offered his prices and times:

“Forty euros apiece in two months.”

His proposal was written on the board:

“800/40/2”

The other businessmen didn’t look worried. He hadn’t dared enter the realm of the impossible, which evidently was to their liking. But not to the buyers’. So the bidding continued.

The auctions the big Italian brands hold in this area are strange. No one wins the contract and no one loses. The game consists in entering or not entering the race. Someone throws out an offer, stating his time and price. If his conditions are accepted, he won’t be the only winner, however. His offer is like a head start the others can try to follow. When the brokers accept a bid, the other contractors decide if they want in; whoever agrees gets the fabric. It’s sent directly to the port of Naples, where the contractors pick it up. But only one of them will be paid: the one who delivers first, and with top-quality merchandise. The other players are free to keep the fabric, but they don’t get a cent. The fashion houses make so much money that material isn’t a loss worth considering. If a contractor takes advantage of the system to have free fabric but repeatedly fails to deliver, he’s excluded from future auctions. In this way the brokers are guaranteed speed: if someone falls behind, someone else will take his place. There’s no relief from the rhythms of high fashion.

To the joy of the woman behind the desk, another hand went up. A well-dressed contractor, elegant.

“Twenty euros in twenty-five days.”

In the end the bid was accepted. Nine of the twenty contractors signed on as well. But not Xian. He wouldn’t have been able to coordinate quality and speed in such a short time and at such low prices. When the auction was over, the woman wrote up a list of the contractors’ names and phone numbers and the addresses of their factories. The winner invited everyone to his house for lunch. His factory was on the ground floor, he and his wife lived on the second, his son on the third. “I’m applying for a permit to add another floor. My other son is getting married,” he declared proudly. As we climbed the stairs, he continued to tell us about his family, which, like his villa, was under construction.

“Don’t ever put men in charge of the female workers, it only causes problems. I’ve got two sons, and both of them married employees. Put the fags in charge. Make the fags manage the shifts and inspect the work, like in the old days …”

The workers, men and women, came up to toast the new contract. They faced a grueling schedule: first shift from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with an hour’s break to eat, second shift from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. The women were wearing makeup and earrings, and aprons to protect their clothes from the glue, dust, and machine grease. Like Superman, who takes off his shirt and reveals his blue costume underneath, they were ready to go out to dinner as soon as they removed their aprons. The men were sloppier, in sweatshirts and work pants. After the toast one of the guests took the owner aside, along with the others who had agreed to the auction price. They weren’t hiding, but simply respecting the ancient custom of not discussing money at table. Xian explained to me in great detail that the guest—the very image of a bank teller—was discussing interest rates. But he was not from a bank. Italian brands pay only when the work is completed. Or rather, only after it has been accepted. Everything—salaries, production costs, even shipping—must be paid in advance by the manufacturers, so the clans loan money to the factories in their territories. The Di Lauros in Arzano, the Verdes in Sant’ Antimo, the Cennamos in Crispano, and so on. The Camorra offers low rates, 2 to 4 percent. No one should have an easier time obtaining bank credit than these companies, who produce for the Italian fashion world, for the market of markets. But they’re phantom operations, and bank directors don’t meet with ghosts. Camorra liquidity is also the only way for factory employees to obtain a mortgage. Thus in towns where more than 40 percent of the residents support themselves by moonlighting, six out of ten families still manage to buy a home. Even the contractors who don’t satisfy the requirements of the designer labels manage to find a buyer. They sell the garments to the clans to be put on the fake-goods market. All the runway fashions, all the glitz for the most elegant premieres, comes from here. The Las Vegas towns and Casarano, Tricase, Taviano, and Melissano in Capo di Leuca, the lower Salento region, are the principal centers for black-market fashion. It all comes from here, from this hole. All merchandise has obscure origins: such is the law of capitalism. But to observe the hole, to see it in front of you, well, it causes a strange sensation. An anxious heaviness. Like the truth weighing on your stomach.

One of the winning contractor’s workers was particularly skilled: Pasquale. A lanky figure, tall, slim, and a bit hunchbacked; his frame curved behind his neck onto his shoulders, a bit like a hook. The stylists sent designs directly to him, articles intended for his hands only. His salary didn’t fluctuate, but his tasks varied, and he some how conveyed an air of satisfaction. I liked him immediately, the moment I caught sight of his big nose. Even though he was still young, Pasquale had the face of an old man. A face that was constantly buried in fabric, fingertips that ran along seams. Pasquale was one of the only workers who could buy fabric direct. Some brandname houses even trusted him to order materials directly from China and inspect the quality himself. Which is why he and Xian knew each other. They’d met at the port. One day we all had lunch together there. When we finished eating, we said goodbye to Pasquale, and Xian and I got in the car and headed toward Vesuvius. Volcanoes are usually depicted in dark colors, but Vesuvius is green; from a distance, it’s a vast mantle of moss. But before we got to the turnoff for the towns around Vesuvius, the car pulled into the courtyard of a building. Pasquale was there waiting for us. I had no idea why. Pasquale got out of his car and climbed straight into the trunk of Xian’s.

“What’s going on? Why’s he getting in the trunk?”

“Don’t worry. Now we’ll go to Terzigno, to the factory.”

A sort of Minotaur figure got in behind the wheel. He’d been in Pasquale’s car and seemed to know exactly what to do. He put the engine in reverse, backed out the gate, and, before pulling out into the street, produced a pistol. A semiautomatic. He racked a round and stuck it between his legs. I didn’t breathe, but the Minotaur, catching sight of me in the rearview mirror, realized I was staring at him anxiously.

“They tried to do us in once.”

“Who?”

I tried to get him to explain it all from the beginning.

“The ones who don’t want the Chinese learning to work in high fashion. The ones who just want fabric from China, nothing else.”

I didn’t understand. I just didn’t understand. Xian intervened, in his usual soothing way.

“Pasquale’s helping us learn how to make the quality garments they don’t trust us with yet. We’re learning how to make clothes from him.”

After Xian’s explanation, the Minotaur attempted to justify the pistol:

“So … one of them popped up there once, right there, see, in the middle of the piazza, and fired on our car. Hit the motor and windshield wipers. If they’d wanted to, they could’ve bumped us off. But it was just a warning. If they try it again though, this time I’m ready.”

The Minotaur explained that the best technique when driving is to keep the pistol between your thighs. Putting it on the dashboard slows you down—you lose too much time grabbing it. The road to Terzigno is uphill, and I could smell the clutch burning. I was less afraid of a burst of submachine-gun fire than the recoil of the engine, which might make the pistol fire into the driver’s scrotum. We arrived without a hitch. As soon as the car came to a stop, Xian went and opened the trunk. Pasquale got out, looking like a balled-up Kleenex trying to flatten itself out. He came over to me and said:

“It’s the same story every time. Not even a fugitive hides like this … But it’s better they don’t see me in the car, or else …”

He sliced a finger across his neck. The factory was big, but not enormous. Xian had described it to me proudly. It belonged to him, but housed nine microfactories of nine Chinese entrepreneurs. It was like a chessboard inside: each factory had a square, with its own workers and benches. Xian had given each company the same amount of space as the factories in Las Vegas, and the contracts were auctioned off using the same method. He’d decided not to let children into the work zone and had organized the shifts as in Italian factories. What’s more, when they did work for other companies, they didn’t ask for cash up front. In short, Xian was becoming a serious player in the Italian fashion business.

Chinese factories in China were competing with Chinese factories in Italy. As a result Prato, Rome, and the Chinatowns of half of Italy were suffering terribly; they’d experienced such a quick boom that the collapse felt even more sudden. There was only one way for the Chinese factories in Italy to save themselves: they had to become fashion experts, capable of doing top-quality work. They had to learn from the Italians, from the Las Vegas factory owners, to go from being junk manufacturers to the brands’ trusted suppliers in southern Italy. They had to take the place of the Italian underground factories, appropriate their logic, workspaces, and language. They had to do the same work, but for a little less money and in a little less time.

Pasquale took some fabric out of a suitcase: a dress he was supposed to cut and sew in his factory. He did it here instead, on a table in front of a camera, his image projected onto a sheet hanging behind him. As he talked, a girl with a microphone translated into Chinese. This was his fifth lesson.

“You must take great care with the seams. The seam has to be light but not nonexistent.”

The Chinese triangle: San Giuseppe Vesuviano, Terzigno, Ottaviano. The hub of the Chinese clothing business. Everything that’s happening in the Chinese communities of Italy happened first in Terzigno. The first production cycles, the first quality manufacturing, as well as the first murders. This is where Wang Dingjm was killed. A forty-year-old immigrant who’d driven down from Rome for a party some other Chinese were throwing. They invited him, then shot him in the head. Wang was a snakehead—a scout—tied to the criminal cartels in Beijing that organize the clandestine entry of Chinese into Italy. Trafficking in humans, the snakeheads often clash with their clients. They promise a certain quantity and then they don’t deliver. Just as a drug dealer is killed when he keeps back a part of his earnings, a snakehead is killed when he cheats on his goods, on human beings. But it’s not just Mafiosi who die. On one of the factory doors was the photo of a young girl. Pretty face, pink cheeks, eyes so dark they seemed painted. It was hung exactly where one would traditionally expect the yellow face of Mao, but this was a picture of Zhang Xiangbi, a pregnant girl who had been killed a few years earlier. She used to work here. A mechanic from these parts had fancied her; she used to walk past his garage, and liking what he saw, he decided that was reason enough to have her. The Chinese work like dogs, they slither like snakes, they’re quieter than deaf-mutes, they’re not allowed any means of resistance or free will. Such is the axiom everyone—or almost everyone—bears in mind. But Zhang had resisted. She tried to escape when the mechanic came near her, but she couldn’t report him. She was Chinese, and every sign of visibility was denied her. The next time the man didn’t take no for an answer. He beat and kicked her until she fainted, then slit her throat and threw her body in a deep well, where it remained for days, bloated with water. Pasquale knew this story and was devastated by it. Every time he went to give a lesson, he made sure to go over to Zhang’s brother and ask how he was, see if he needed anything. But he always got the same response: “Nothing, thanks.”

Pasquale and I became close. He was like a prophet when he spoke about fabric and was overly fastidious in clothing stores; it was impossible even to go for a stroll with him because he’d plant himself in front of every shop window and criticize the cut of a jacket or feel ashamed for the tailor who’d designed such a skirt. He could predict the longevity of a particular style of pants, jacket, or dress, and the exact number of washings before the fabric would start to sag. Pasquale initiated me into the complicated world of textiles. I even started going to his home. His family—his wife and three children—made me happy. They were always busy without ever being frenetic. That evening the smaller children were running around the house barefoot as usual, but without making a racket. Pasquale had turned on the television and was flipping channels, but all of a sudden he froze. He squinted at the screen, as if he were nearsighted, though he could see perfectly well. No one was talking, but the silence became more intense. His wife, Luisa, must have sensed something because she went over to the television and clasped her hand over her mouth, as if she’d just witnessed something terrible and were holding back a scream. On TV Angelina Jolie was treading the red carpet at the Oscars, dressed in a gorgeous garment. One of those custom-made outfits that Italian designers fall over each other to offer to the stars. An outfit that Pasquale had made in an underground factory in Arzano. All they’d said to him was “This one’s going to America.” Pasquale had worked on hundreds of outfits going to America, but that white suit was something else. He still remembered all the measurements. The cut of the neck, the circumference of the wrists. And the pants. He’d run his hands inside the legs and could still picture the naked body that every tailor forms in his mind—not an erotic figure but one defined by the curves of muscles, the ceramics of bones. A body to dress, a meditation of muscle, bone, and bearing. Pasquale still remembered the day he’d gone to the port to pick up the fabric. They’d commissioned three suits from him, without saying anything else. They knew whom they were for, but no one had told Pasquale.

In Japan the tailor of the bride to the heir to the throne had had a state reception given in his honor. A Berlin newspaper had dedicated six pages to the tailor of Germany’s first woman chancellor, pages that spoke of craftsmanship, imagination, and elegance. Pasquale was filled with rage, a rage that it’s impossible to express. And yet satisfaction is a right, and merit deserves recognition. Deep in his gut he knew he’d done a superb job and he wanted to be able to say so. He knew he deserved something more. But no one had said a word to him. He’d discovered it by accident, by mistake. His rage was an end in itself, justified but pointless. He couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t even whisper as he sat looking at the newspaper the next morning. He couldn’t say, “I made that suit.” No one would have believed that Angelina Jolie would go to the Academy Awards wearing an outfit made in Arzano, by Pasquale. The best and the worst. Millions of dollars and 600 euros a month. Neither Angelina Jolie nor the designer could have known. When everything possible has been done, when talent, skill, ability, and commitment are fused in a single act, when all this isn’t enough to change anything, then you just want to lie down, stretch out on nothing, in nothing. To vanish slowly, let the minutes wash over you, sink into them as if they were quicksand. To do nothing but breathe. Besides, nothing will change things, not even an outfit for Angelina Jolie at the Oscars.

Pasquale left the house without even bothering to shut the door. Luisa knew where he was going; she knew he was headed to Secondigliano and whom he was going to see. She threw herself on the couch and buried her face in a pillow like a child. I don’t know why, but when Luisa started to cry, it made me think of a poem by Vittorio Bodini. Lines that tell of the strategies southern Italian peasants used to keep from becoming soldiers, to avoid going off to fill the trenches of World War I in defense of borders they knew nothing of.

At the time of the other war peasants and smugglers

put tobacco leaves under their arms

to make themselves ill.

The artificial fevers, the supposed malaria

that made their bodies tremble and their teeth rattle

were their verdict

on governments and history.

That’s how Luisa’s weeping seemed to me—a verdict on government and history. Not a lament for a satisfaction that went uncelebrated. It seemed to me an amended chapter of Marx’s Capital, a paragraph added to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, a new sentence in John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, a note in Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. A page added or removed, a forgotten page that never got written or that perhaps was written many times over but never recorded on paper. Not a desperate act but an analysis. Severe, detailed, precise, reasoned. I imagined Pasquale in the street, stomping his feet as if knocking snow from his boots. Like a child who is surprised to discover that life has to be so painful. He’d managed up till then. Managed to hold himself back, to do his job, to want to do it. And do it better than anyone else. But the minute he saw that outfit, saw that body moving inside the very fabric he’d caressed, he felt alone, all alone. Because when you know something only within the confines of your own flesh and blood, it’s as if you don’t really know it. And when work is only about staying afloat, surviving, when it’s merely an end in itself, it becomes the worst kind of loneliness.

I saw Pasquale two months later. They’d put him on truck detail. He hauled all sorts of stuff—legal and illegal—for the Licciardi family businesses. Or at least that’s what they said. The best tailor in the world was driving trucks for the Camorra, back and forth between Secondigliano and Lago di Garda. He asked me to lunch and gave me a ride in his enormous vehicle. His hands were red, his knuckles split. As with every truck driver who grips a steering wheel for hours, his hands freeze up and his circulation is bad. His expression was troubled; he’d chosen the job out of spite, out of spite for his destiny, a kick in the ass of his life. But you can’t tolerate things indefinitely, even if walking away means you’re worse off. During lunch he got up to go say hello to some of his accomplices, leaving his wallet on the table. A folded-up page from a newspaper fell out. I opened it. It was a photograph, a cover shot of Angelina Jolie dressed in white. She was wearing the suit Pasquale had made, the jacket caressing her bare skin. You need talent to dress skin without hiding it; the fabric has to follow the body, has to be designed to trace its movements.

I’m sure that every once in a while, when he’s alone, maybe when he’s finished eating, when the children have fallen asleep on the couch, worn-out from playing, while his wife is talking on the phone with her mother before starting on the dishes, right at that moment Pasquale opens his wallet and stares at that newspaper photo. And I’m sure that he’s happy as he looks at the masterpiece he created with his own hands. A rabid happiness. But no one will ever know.

^*Post-Fordism is a mode of production that favors more flexible manufacturing practices and less hierarchical social dynamics than those developed in the assembly-line methods of Henry Ford’s factories.—Trans.