dark. I can smell olives and sunflowers and the sea. I must have been sedated for a long time for I have a terrible headache and I feel dizzy. I have been kidnapped for ransom from our summer villa. My father owns all the publishing houses from Turin to Rome. He is so rich we are all embarrassed about it. The basement seems empty and it is quiet, except for some gulls not far away. Then I hear a car followed by steps on the gravel. I hear gulls again and quiet voices approaching through the house. The bolt is pulled, the door opens, and three men enter the room with a lady in tight dress. My eyes adapt slowly to the sudden light. A huge man in a sleeveless shirt is holding an almost empty bottle of white liquid in his right hand. On his well-defined left bicep I notice a tattoo of the Virgin Mary. He says something to me in the local dialect, something that I don’t understand. The young lady kindly translates into Italian. “Your father refused to pay; we will send him a little present.” Her Italian is perfect. She must have graduated from the University of Padua, majoring in Italian language and literature. The big man speaks again, crossing the cellar toward me. Again I understand nothing. He hands me the bottle. “It’s homemade grappa. Drink it. You won’t feel any pain.” I notice some lipstick on her sexy moving lips. Before I emptied the bottle, I noticed that the huge man was holding a butcher’s knife in his left hand. I wish I was in a brothel in Gdansk quarrelling with drunk Finnish sailors for the only black whore left. The man says something again and I appreciate the lady’s translation. “Do you want left ear or right?”
cosa nostra’s operating instructions for cutting ears (page 695) …
Don Totino from Palermo describes the hypothetical situation in which you held several hostages and all are scheduled to have ears cut off at the same time. It is strongly advised to disinfect the knife between victims. Though the possibility of transmitting the HIV virus is remote, there are other diseases, like hepatitis c, which could spread … *** In the meantime we have moved on a couple of metres. The barbed wire is fixed around the complex. The soldier on duty in the guard tower is pacing left and right, right and left. I can’t see where his eyes are focused, but I am sure he is doing the precise activities as described in the manual for Wehrmacht guards. I hope he is allowed to have an electric stove or something otherwise his feet will need to be amputated.
manual for basic understanding of humour in greek comedy
22
(page 456) … pointing that way, but Aristotle is very straight about side characters. Unless you are writing a screenplay for a German erotic comedy from the 70s, complete with cows, overweight shepherds, blonde schoolgirls (with huge xxl tits) on holidays in the countryside, “jodl jodl” and sausages, it is already too late to