Long before Cosa Nostra assumed its reign, its hooded forefathers, the dark knights, whispered subversive doctrine on the streets of Palermo. “The church is a cesspool of corruption!” “That Spaniard, Charles II, is an incompetent fool! He’s pawned off the great city of Palermo to sycophants and toadies!” Traveling through channels under the city, they wended their way back to the catacombs, the genius of the Carthaginians, and plotted their revenge. As a boy, I loved these stories. I begged my father to repeat them again and again and again. As a man of 34, I still see the black knights rising up from beneath the catacombs, only this time they don’t seek retribution from the church or the state, but from their very own sect, from their fellow black masked knights. Their leader may be a traitor, yes, but he’s a valiant traitor. His face, if he were to slip his hood off, say, to blow his nose, would be resolute. Crystal blue eyes, determined jaw-line, straight and white glistening teeth. A composite of Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood and Gregory Peck. Our black masked knight would have no need of money, no regret and no fear. As a boy, my father told me these stories to comfort me. As a man, I tell myself the same stories to fall asleep at night, even if I myself no longer believe them.

In 1992 the myth of the Beati Paoli, as it was then called, had long since fallen out of the hands of Cosa Nostra. Even Cosa Nostra had fallen out of the hands of Cosa Nostra. The Maxi Trial had just ruled in favor of the state, convicting more than 300 mafiosi, some to life in prison. In those days, I had the impression that for the first time, no one, or at least very few people, had any idea what they were actually doing. In America Mia Farrow accused Woody Allen of molesting their son, and Woody, in turn, ran off with Mia’s sullen daughter, Soon Yi. The newly-elected Bill Clinton delighted Republicans by pushing the so-called radical policy of allowing gays in the military. From the balconies of the House and the Senate, snorts and laughter were heard. In Italy, a great deal had changed, too. Jeff Koons, the artist, and Ilona Staller, a porn star, were either divorcing or running for office or both, it’s hard to remember which. The Christian Democrat’s Sicilian chairman, 64-year-old Salvo Lima, had just increased his bodyguards to five as a pre-election precaution. And my wife Sandy had just advanced ordered a three-year supply of birth control pills after visiting her stepsister June in Colorado, who had just given birth to her third child, a boy. Sandy observed this event with total and unequivocal fear. The exhaustion, the sleeplessness, the crying convinced her that her sister had relinquished her own life for the sake of the next generation, and Sandy wanted to make sure the same would not happen to her, at least, not for the next three years.

We moved into Via Cicerone on February 3, 1992, two days before Alessandra Mussolini, the twenty-nine-year-old granddaughter of Benito, announced her intent to run for office on the neo-Fascist ticket. The apartment was above my mother Livia’s, a not-so-out-of-the-ordinary living situation in Rome, but one which my wife was not pleased with. I felt that she exaggerated her displeasure. Our neighborhood Prati was one of the best neighborhoods in Rome. Our apartment was close to shops, department stores, theaters, banks and the subway. We lived directly on the bus-lines, ten minutes from Piazza Navona, ten minutes from the Vatican and fifteen to the Spanish Steps. The building was on a main thoroughfare. I found comfort in the name of the street: Via Cicerone. The word cicerone means “a traveler’s guide,” and even though I had grown up on this street, I did feel as if I needed some guidance, and that the name was portentous. In my view the only way I could accept returning to Via Cicerone was to behave as if nothing had ever happened, as if I had left Italy by chance, and returned by chance also, as if I were one of those Italian men in ads I had seen in America, singing opera in the shower, calling my amore to fetch me a fresh towel from the laundry, and lathering up. Maybe, if I was lucky, I would be able to act that way: flippant, carefree, a mass of charisma just waiting to reveal itself.

Soon after our return I began to have elaborate dreams. In the most common one I was a Sicilian ambulance driver whose job it was to pick up dead bodies at the Palermo Hospital, where, for bureaucratic purposes, hospital personnel were paid not to certify their dead loved ones and, then, to arrange for an ambulance to pick up the body and have it delivered to the family home to be officially certified. I read once about a shoot-out in which two rival ambulance companies resorted to violence after they both arrived to pick up the same body. In my dream I was one of those ambulance drivers. All was white, the road, the hospital gates, the fountain, the entrance and the building’s exterior. And as I pushed a dead body into the bed of the van, another ambulance driver shot me right in the heart, but rather than die, I continued loading bodies into my ambulance. Dr. Renato even interpreted this dream as wish-fulfillment, and claimed that I sought out situations to transport my own personal dead from one stagnant place to another. In her view I seek such things at my own peril, but I don’t see it that way. I responded typically by denying her interpretation. “The dream is a typical fear dream,” I said. “I fear death, like so many others, both in my waking and sleeping hours, and yet I never die. Freud thought every character in one’s dream was a version of oneself. Perhaps that driver shooting me is another me, the one who wants the glory and the reward, who does not want everyone staring at him and saying, ‘My, how you fucked up this time!’”

Dr. Renato. Spawn of the great Dr. Cesare Renato. Teodolinda, wearer of suits. Dr. How-Can-I-Maintain-This-Grim-Professionalism-And-Still-Dress-Sexy, Dr. I’m-Taking-A-Memo-For-My-Next-Book, Dr. I-Never-Have-Erotic-Dreams-About-My-Patients. Dr. Here’s-A-Classic-Case-Of-Transference, Dr. Let’s-Review-What-Happened-In-Our-Last-Session, Dr. I-Never-Refill-The-Candy-Jar-Until-It’s-Fully-Empty, Dr. I-Think-You’re-Making-Progress-And-My-Rates-Are-Going-Up. Invader of my dreams, surrogate mother, mammary gland extraordinaire. Renato, dear, lovely Renato. Those great statesmen of Italy, diplomats, parliamentarians, the men I rode in the elevator with, how sad that they were unaware. Renato Senior’s case studies, his guinea pigs, the source of his fame and his downfall. Dear Teodolinda: Your father’s book, The Neuroses of Power, I was impressed by it, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that he had betrayed his patients’ confidence in order to write it.

Renato: So, tell me about your mother?
Me: What’s to tell?
Renato: I think a lot.
Me: Such as?
Renato: Tell me about how you saw her as a child.
Me: She was—what more can I say? Kids don’t see their mother as anything. Their mothers just are.
Renato: And how was she?
Me: Her father named her Livia Drusilla after the Roman Empress Livia, Augustus’ first wife, a woman who was an expert on poison and murder. That should tell you something.
Renato: Come, you exaggerate.
Me: You’ve never met my mother.

Livia Drusilla, a pauper, born in Apuglia 1937, pawned between her dancing entertainer of a mother and her staid peasant grandparents, dreamer of dreams we dreamed of doing, but could not bring ourselves to do. Her father: a fat industrialist businessman, a man of means and many chins. He took one look at my mother and declared her Livia Drusilla. Legend has it she was born without so much as a shriek; they say she lay in her bassinet without uttering a sound. Good old Livia, she was taking it all in, even then. So still and yet so omniscient. In a ward of at least 50 screaming babies, there she lay. Still as a stone.

Renato: Telling, and yet hard to believe. Haven’t you any more positive way of looking at her?
Me: That is positive, doctor.

She could not gain weight. Even after the war, dresses hung off her dirty shoulders. At four-and-a-half, she tap-danced for the soldiers in Napoli for small change. At eight, she primped for her Little Miss Tuna of the Sea Competition. At fifteen, she wallpapered her walls with the Tuna of the Sea paper she won in the Young Miss Tuna of the Sea Competition. At eighteen, things seemed to be looking up: she became an extra on the set of Quo Vadis. Livia Drusilla. Born of ignominious background, bearer of titan tits, mercenary mama, lover of powerful men, dreamer of dreams we dreamed of doing, but could not bring ourselves to do. Livia Drusilla, my mother, her stars were in ascent, but her tubes were not tied, and not long after the beginning of her ascent, I was born. And doctor, I cried. I could not keep still when I was born. I cried, I got hungry, I shat, I peed, but, mostly, I cried too much and too often. I cried far too well, doctor.

Renato: Ok, ok, so you cried. All babies do. Must you make an issue of it?
Me: But Livia Drusilla, she dreamed great dreams for me. I was to fulfill the dreams she had to give up, doctor, can’t you see that?
Renato: Your description of your mother is skewed by your own narcissism.
Me: Perhaps.

“Your son will grow up to be a great piano player.” Just before that I had seen the gypsy woman clasp her runny-nosed husband to her bosom and tell him to stuff it. She drowned the room in incense, red-shaded lights and crystal balls. 40,000 lire, the woman cost my underpaid mother, and for 40,000 lire, what did she tell her? “Your son will grow up to be a great concert pianist.” And this was to be followed by many hours sitting on a hard piano bench, playing scales, Fur Elise, The Surprise Symphony, many lires spent on Mr. Bernstein’s weekly lessons. And everyone, Bernstein, myself, the fortune teller and company, we all knew I hadn’t an ounce of talent, everyone except Livia Drusilla, that is.

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