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“Happy New 2000 Year!” shouted a group of masculine voices in one of the small, half-decayed Neapolitan apartments.
Glasses of cheap champagne collided and wishes and drunk laughs broke in a new year full of hopes, like every previous ones.
But will this year be different in anything?
Prosciutto sighed and apologised while living the living room of la Squadra di Esecuzioni, taking his cigarettes and lighter with him. Illuso, one of the eldest members of the team, gave him a smirk.
“First cig of the year? On the very first minute, really?”
Prosciutto didn’t smile back at him.
“I never said I’d quit.”
The fresh air of the night didn’t release him for a bit. It wasn’t much colder outside, after all. Napoli was a southern city in a southern country. Prosciutto lighted a cigarette and observed the surroundings streets by trying to relax but the city was too noisy for him. Only his dose of nicotine could make him feel a bit less asphyxiated by the atmosphere. He smoked for a bit and started thinking about the last time he’d really enjoyed New Year celebrations.
As a child, he loved the New Year. Not only the magical time when the clock hit midnight, but the entire month before, the decorations, the games, the food, the special TV shows, the eve, the gifts, “Grandpa Frost” with his niece, and of course, the comforting “tomorrow”, when you spend all your day doing nothing but enjoying the rests of yesterday’s party. All of it accompanied by snow.
Snow.
His heart beat harder for an instant.
Leaving his country, family, friends, traditions and everything else was hard, but Prosciutto never expected what he’ll miss the harder will be the winter climate.
He was born during a snowstorm. Made wishes when he saw the first snowflakes hitting the ground of St-Petersburg in October, played the entire winter in this white paradise, made wishes again each New Year. In April, he picked snowdrops and hoped summer and autumn won’t last long.
He gazed at the snowless winter southern Italy has to offer him and felt wrapped in a giant blanket of sadness: he was suddenly certain he will never see snow ever again before he’d die.
It was childish, stupid. He couldn’t shed tears over something as stupid as some ice falling from the sky. And yet, here he was. The big bad Russian, the strict big brother whose terrifying capacity could age up and kill a hundred of strong men in less than an hour, was bursting because of nostalgia caused by the so-called New Year miracle.
“Stop crying like a goddamn toddler, it’s already damp enough in Campania.”
Prosciutto immediately recognised the voice of his grumpy partner, broken after shouting all day (life) long, but it took him a few to understand where was he: nor behind or from the street under, but…
“Above you, retard.”
Ghiaccio was sitting on the roof, his red sneakers standing out from the discoloured yellowish wall. His small silhouette, pale skin and white coat made him look like a cranky little ghost. He looked almost cute if he didn’t swear so much the minute before.
“Happy New Century to you as well, Ghiaccio.” Said Prosciutto with half a smile.
The little man’s face contracted in a furious grimace after his greetings.
“We are technically still living in the XXth century. 2001 will be the beginning of a new century for real and most importantly, a new millennium. Not only you’re a fucking idiot for not knowing that, but you also missed the opportunity to greet me with this new millennium if you did assume 2000 IS the beginning of something. I expected so much for about you, you disappointed m- EH! Are you listening!? Prosciutto! Proshka!”
Prosciutto had started a new cigarette and turned around to look at Napoli again during Ghiaccio’s tirade, and minded turning around only when the Venetian called him by his old name.
“Listening, Ghiaccenko.”
Ghiaccio’s expression became calm again (calling it “normal” would be an absurdity: Ghiaccio’s normal mood was simple and most of the time exaggerated anger). He played idly with one of his blue curls.
“You only know my last name, don’t you?”
“Yes. I heard Melone calling you like this once.”
A silence. It was unusual during a dialogue with Ghiaccio.
“Why were you crying?”
“Over something stupid. Don’t tell anyone.”
“You didn’t tell the others my former name, guess you can trust me. Each of us will hold the other’s secret. So, tell me.”
In normal times, Prosciutto would just go back to the apartment and avoid conversation or conflict (with Ghiaccio, both made the pair).
But New Year’s miracle made him act differently than usual.
“In Leningrad’s oblast, it always snowed during winter. I miss these cold days. When I described it to Italians or other Europeans, they couldn’t understand. It’s hostile to them. But… when everything is covered in snow, I feel protected. Every extra noise is shut down to the mellow sound of silence, and it seems like this dirty world is washed out to a purer, unknown one. Like a blank page on which you can write your own story. The last time I witnessed snow during the New Year, my father was still alive. And I was looking at these white stars falling on the ground of our building entrance, wishing for a happiness I didn’t know I had back then then lost, and never had it back.”
He said it in one trait, in a shameless expression, and his voice was clear. But he didn’t notice at first the hot, salty tears running down his hollow cheeks. He only did when his vision went blurry.
Ghiaccio listened carefully then started playing with his hair again. He wasn’t a passive-aggressive and cold man like the northern Russian crying under him was. His blood was boiling, hid implosive mind bursting into an impulsive exterior expression. Prosciutto and him were like ice and fire. This was probably why they didn’t speak to each other before that night. And yet, they had something in common.
“I was a kid when I came to Venezia”, said Ghiaccio, gazing his brown eyes upon Prosciutto, “way younger than you. But I still remember the snow in Kiev. Grandpa’s cottage in Poltava as well, covered by it… There was a lake in his town. Frozen every winter, without exception. I learned how to ice skate on it. Never un-learned my skills.”
“How? It’s always raining in Venice. You went to Milan or something, when you came to Italy?” asked Prosciutto, who never talked to one of his teammates so intimately before.
“Use your fucking brain, Proshka. My parents were too busy seeking for a school that would accept a kid with my temperament than caring about his hobbies. No, I didn’t go to the north… I waited for the inundations then used White Album in night time to froze the Po and skated until I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.”
So Ghiaccio was a born stand user like Pesci was.
“You never quite left your old habits. Good for you, White Album and your passion together make a fearsome adversary out of you.” Said Prosciutto with a sincere admiration.
His ability, Grateful Dead, came after he joined Passione. It was all after the fall of everything he loved, after his father’s death, his first grey hair. Prosciutto aged before he could even live. He knew his agonising soul didn’t fit his young body. It could explain his addiction to cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs in some way. A subconscious dying wish.
He mindlessly looked at the wall; Ghiaccio’s feet weren’t wearing his red sneakers anymore, but White Album’s ice skates.
A question he was always scared to think of suddenly came out of his mouth:
“Do you think I would have had another kind of power if I was a born stand user like you?”
The answer didn’t take long:
“Stands are the reflexion of the soul. Maybe you always were a geezer inside.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at Ghiaccio’s sharp comeback.
“I didn’t expect less of you. I guess you’re right. Maybe I was born dead inside.”
They didn’t notice la Squadra’s appartement went completely quiet during their conversation. Everyone was probably asleep, drunk or not.
Prosciutto yawned. He’d love to drink an entire bottle of a good, strong vodka to forget this stupid New Year, but all la Squadra got was cheap wine and beer which the dubious smell only made him nauseous.
“I’ll probably smoke one last cig then go to sleep”, he finally said, razing his eyes on Ghiaccio again, “why did you invoke White Album for?”
“I’ll make this New Year celebration not as shitty as it should have been. There’s no Po in Napoli and the sea is too hard to froze up, but I found another way to have fun. Want to join?”
Even if he was now standing on the roof, perfectly balanced on his thin, athletic legs, Ghiaccio’s goals were still unknown to Prosciutto.
“Wait, what do you mean?”
“For fuck’s sake, you really are an idiot. Climb on the roof.”
Prosciutto obeyed. He didn’t stand until Ghiaccio gave him a hand.
“I still don’t get it.”
The younger one raised his eyes to the sky and grinned his teeth.
Is Ghiaccio according patience to me?
Prosciutto couldn’t think of this question any longer: a frozen squall hit him right in the face. He shivered like he didn’t for years.
“White Album… Gently Weeps.”
Before his eyes, the frail, Neapolitan roof tiles took a shade they never had but he only knew too well, a transparent, magical reflexion of the sky, almost unreal after all these years spent in Europe: ice.
He let out a few curses in his mother tongue: a way to express one’s admiration in eastern countries.
The small hand which was still holding his squeezed him harder to get back his attention to its owner.
“Do you understand now?”
When he looked in Ghiaccio’s self-confident black eyes, he saw his own reflexion, his own blue, hesitant, half-fascinated, half-scared blue iris. He felt like an impostor. Like he didn’t deserve this unique chance.
“N… no. I was more a sledge kind of kid, I will fall… I don’t even have any proper ice skaters to put on, and these Valentino shoes are the only decent part of my entire wardrobe, and what if we get noticed- “
“You have your stand to carry you if you fall. And we’re the fucking mafia, who cares if we do shit on the roofs? C’mon, Russian boy, you will regret it if you don’t go with me. And you know I won’t be in such a good mood for long.”
Prosciutto smiled, almost shyly. Maybe, after all, he could carry the name of Proshka for one last night, in the most unintended way for sure.
La Squadra was the poorest branch of all of Passione. Even the old roofs weren’t technically theirs. But when the two Slavic assassins were sledging up and down on them, they felt like all of Napoli’s roofs belonged to them. They felt like the masters of the world for this only, miraculous New Year night.