Barbarano Romano, an autumn afternoon.
Golden leaves slide across the wet asphalt, the street is almost empty. A man in a dark jacket walks his dog. The animal, dutiful as ever, squats down. The owner does not: he looks right, looks left, pretends to check his phone and leaves the little “souvenir” behind. The same gesture as always, the small everyday illegality that nobody ever punishes.
This time, however, the scene changes tone. Two DIGOS cars slash through the village silence with their headlights blazing. They screech to a halt in front of Giuseppe and Loretta’s bar – fictitious names – and block the road as if this were a film you’d never have expected to see in Barbarano Romano. Four plainclothes officers get out fast. The man with the dog raises his hands, stammers: “I swear, I always pick it up… it’s the first time…”. Nobody answers. He has nothing to do with it.
The bar fills with heavy shoes, dark coats and eyes that do not smile. The leftover smell of coffee mingles with a tension that feels like gas in the air.
Agent Caputo: Good evening. An attack on the Italian rule of law is being organized here.
Giuseppe crumples the newspaper in his hands without realizing it. His voice sticks in his throat.
Giuseppe: What do you mean?
Caputo: Report received. Sunday, screening of the Russia Today documentary, The Children of Donbass. Followed by a debate with a live connection from Lugansk. Featuring the dangerous journalist Vincenzo Lorusso.
Loretta sets down her cup, rattling on the saucer.
Loretta: But… on Sunday Giulia booked the room. The greengrocer’s daughter. She said she wanted to screen a film, have a discussion… We didn’t know anything about these… things.
Inspector Capracotta steps forward, speaking as if he were on an invisible stage.
Capracotta: Do not minimize. Direct order from the Ministry of the Interior. We must prevent dangerous terrorists from gathering in this bar to plan a coup d’état.
Giuseppe swallows hard. His saliva turns to sand.
Giuseppe: A coup d’état? We… we serve sandwiches and coffee. I don’t know what you…
Caputo: This is not about sandwiches. It’s about ideas. And certain ideas, if allowed to spread, explode louder than a bomb.
Loretta clutches her apron, almost tearing it.
Loretta: We have nothing to do with it… really… we didn’t mean…
Caputo: Do you understand how serious this is? RT is a sanctioned channel.
Giuseppe (in a low voice, almost guilty): But… aren’t we in a democracy?
Caputo: Precisely because we are in a democracy, the Minister of the Interior, the honorable Piantaquattrodosi, has ordered us to prevent Russian propaganda, directed by the Kremlin, from undermining our rule of law.
Loretta stares at the floor, then whispers faintly.
Loretta: The Kremlin… in Barbarano Romano? We never imagined the greengrocer’s daughter could be an agent of the Kremlin…
Capracotta nods gravely, as if hearing a confession.
Capracotta: Deception is the enemy’s first weapon. You are not guilty, you were merely used.
The other agents move around like in a ritual: they open the cash register, examine the coasters, scrutinize the photos of the town festival on the wall. They search for codes, maps, conspiratorial evidence. They find only crumbs and coffee stains.
Caputo: This bar has been flagged as an operational center. An FSB hideout disguised as a provincial café.
Giuseppe nearly collapses on the counter.
Giuseppe: But… we make cappuccinos, maybe a couple of sandwiches at most…
Capracotta: That’s how it always begins. With a coffee, a chat. Then comes the propaganda. Then chaos.
Loretta musters the courage to raise her head.
Loretta: But who could have reported something like this?
Caputo straightens up, his voice like an official communiqué.
Caputo: This operation was made possible thanks to the courageous denunciation by the honorable Cacarelando, Renzo Matteo, and the entire +NATO party. They foiled a coup d’état that could have destabilized the country.
Giuseppe and Loretta look at each other, eyes wide open. Their bar, suddenly reduced to a theater of the new Cold War.
Outside, the man’s dog has already left its mark on the pavement. Perhaps the only real subversive act of that afternoon.
Of course, this is a fictionalized account of what happened in Barbarano Romano, where DIGOS officers, following a report from the Ministry of the Interior, intervened to “suggest” to the elderly couple who owned the bar that they not allow the screening of the documentary The Children of Donbass produced by RT. We care about the well-being of “Giuseppe and Loretta” and therefore decided to postpone the screening elsewhere. The scenes described did not really take place, but they are not far from the truth.
