(By Massimo Genchi) I apologize if I abuse the readers’ patience but I am obliged to return to the controversy of the day before yesterday, not being able to overlook the shameless lies that the architect Marseille had the audacity to utter in reference to my person. I will not respond to his tones because he will be the one to respond in the appropriate places.
It is strange that a political post, even if peppered with two sarcastic jokes on the very banal considerations of a political layman such as the architect Marseille, was thrown into trivial status by two of his spiteful comments.
Not possessing argumentative skills to justify, on the merits, his infantile theses on the minority group on the council, probably assisted and fed by those who have made “sterile controversies” his trademark, he transferred the focus to what they believe is my Achilles’ heel, since they don’t find any others. The Minà Palumbo Museum and my relationships with prof. Mazzola.
The architect Marseille, at the very moment in which I brought him up in my post on the revocation of honorary citizenship, had put me in front of a serious doubt: either he has really been in the freezer for years, given that he ignores macroscopic political facts , or the matter is really serious, but not serious, as Flaiano said. After his two interventions, there is no room for doubt: the matter is very serious, but not at all serious.
In one of those rapid-fire jokes that closed the Cavernicoli’s cabaret shows, Leandro, on the phone, asked: «Hello!, is it 238977?». And Pio on the other end of the line: «Damn it, don’t miss it!». And the same thing could be said of the facts richly reported by the architect Marseille: Nn’avissi nzirtatu unu!
In fact, among those reported by him, there is not a single piece of data that has a grain of truth. Just nonsense. And you think: but how does he do it? Is it the result of disarming spontaneity or of severe commitment and constant training?
Starting from the «event that happened 25 years ago as part of the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of F. Minà Palumbo». If 1999 really marked the one hundredth anniversary of our doctor’s birth, we all should have known him, seen him around the Piazzetta or the Strada longa in the sixties and seventies, right? The Marseille architect not only doesn’t even know when Francesco Minà Palumbo was born but he also claims to talk about it.
But yesterday, in the paroxysmal phase of blind anger, the architect Marseille wanted to play dirty by bringing up the contents of one of my letters, without however having calculated that I could keep a copy of it in my archive. I don’t have dossiers on husbands who cheat on their wives, and vice versa, nor on those who are in trouble with the banks, to make miserable public use in moments of political anxiety, but I sometimes keep my papers. For the architect Marseille, this time it went decidedly badly.
So, yesterday, after the two spiteful comments from the architect Marseille, it was enough to publish my letter at the time, to see the bad faith of this individual manifest in all its abnormality. Suddenly, his boldness disappeared and his anger, after blinding him, also silenced him. And he remained silent.
But let’s go back to the famous letter. First of all, as you can see, it is addressed to the president of the Organizing Committee and finally to the mayor. Not “To the Municipality”. In it, as anyone can read, there are no reports of wrongdoing or accusations against the professor. Mazzola nor against anyone, but only communications, concerns and precautionary resolutions from the writer. Since the architect Marseille had given the precious clue that the letter “should be in the archives of the Municipality”, here to be precise I say that it can be traced, starting from the prot. n. 4855 of 22 March 1999, so we give someone the opportunity to check its conformity with the one I published.
At the time of the establishment of the Organizing Committee, on 9 October 1998, in the office of the Notary Minutella, I was identified by the prof. Raimondo as treasurer. Article 8 of the same deed of incorporation states: «The treasurer takes care of the economic and financial sector; he keeps the registers of income and expenditure, promptly and diligently noting all movements with the related reasons”. On March 19, the date of my letter, the demonstrations had already almost all taken place. Three books had been printed, the bronze bust had been created, all the conferences, lunches, dinners and so on had taken place. Nothing but records! The treasurer had no account of any of the incoming and outgoing movements. The budgets attached below, apart from the deficit of seven million, speak of over 97 million expenditures, just over 90 million incomes, of which only about fifty were actual. The rest of the income at the reporting date was still potential. Other than the bullshit told by the architect Marseille, the pins, the tape and all the rest but no small amount of money.
In that period, it is not useless to remember that the center-right council majority, like today’s, on the other hand, was making a crazy effort on the president of the Civic center, Dr. Pino Di Liberti, regarding similar accounting issues on the administration of the Civic Museum, which would soon lead to his dismissal. Now, with the permission of the architect Marseille, I had no intention of finding myself in the position of having to answer for things in which I had no knowledge or say. Indeed, of which I was kept in the dark in a scientific manner. Having understood early on that I was nothing more than a front man in there, I submitted my resignation with that letter. I could, right? The professor. Pietro Mazzola didn’t take it well at all but, obviously, it couldn’t concern me.
Following my letter, on the evening of 2 April 1999, Good Friday, the Committee was convened. Professor Mazzola, furious, railed against me for the entire duration of his speech, shaking the balance sheets under my nose. I repeated that having entrusted my thoughts to those few lines of the letter I had nothing else to add except that, sic stantibus rebus, the Committee would have no need of me as treasurer, given the role to which I had been relegated. I would only find out a couple of days later that all those little accounts in fair copy had been hastily sorted out, only the evening before the showdown. I don’t remember any particularly vehement words from the professor. Raimondo but these, addressed not to me but to everyone present: “I don’t think Minà’s memory is being honored tonight.” Just as I don’t remember sound beatings from the mythomaniac architect, as per his desperate mental reconstruction today, given that he remained the whole time in eloquent, passive silence, dispensing, at most, grim looks.
Frankly, I don’t remember whether that report was voted on, there are no minutes, and I don’t understand why I should have abstained or voted against given that the terms of the question did not lie in its correctness. But I understand well that this, despite its immediacy, is not within the reach of the Marseille architect, for whom a simplifying drawing would be in order, but perhaps we risk complicating things.
A couple more passages that demonstrate the enormity of the lies of which the architect Marseille is capable. The exhibition, which would have fueled many rumors. Architect Marseille writes that of the 10 million allocated by the Park, 6 and a half million would have been used for the purchase of mycological tables attributed to Minà and acquired on 24 December 1998. In reality the tables cost 8 million so only two for the exhibition. From the attached final balance, it can be seen that the items of expenses already incurred attributable to the exhibition amount to 12 million, nothing but economy and commitment. The exhibition, unlike what the architect Marseille told, was only set up in October 1999, when I was largely out. This is to say about the precision of the Marseille architect, which not even a laser would be capable of. Imagine the scientific rigor of his statement as «prof. Mazzola was accused of having used the ten million lire with casual discretion.” For the acquisition of the plates, on 24 December 1998, according to the report, only two million had been spent and the Park’s contribution (not 10 but 30 million) would have arrived I don’t know when, reading in the attached report, in correspondence of the Park contribution, ASSURED BUT NOT COLLECTED. On December 24, 1999, then, what cheerfully spent money would I have had to accuse the professor of. Mazzola? Architect Marseille, cci mittissi pani nna cucca!
Finally, let the architect Marseille understand that I am not a historian, nor a historiographer or anything. Nor do I pretend to be one, having no need to appear and, above all, I do not “pick up offal from the ground” or even my face, which I take care not to lose. Just as I take care to scrupulously keep myself at the antipodes of Craxist arrogance and shamelessness.
I live by doing what I want, in the ways and forms that please me most, without cultivating the stupid ambition of being a model for someone. Much less do I care about the architect Marseille’s opinion on everything I have published, on the value of these materials, on their quantity, quality and variety. Rather, I am absolutely honored to be read and appreciated by so many people of confident modesty, intelligence and morality, perhaps because what I write, even if sometimes (or always) cannot be shared, is free from premeditated mendacity and bad faith.
report
letter-1999
