Read an Excerpt

Pirate Utopia

Tachyon Publications

THE PIRATE CINEMA

I OCCUPIED FILIME, JANUARY, 1920

To celebrate his new, improved torpedo, the engineer took his pirates to the movies.

The spectacles in Futurist Fiume amazed the pirates. They'd never seen motion pictures.

The engineer's pirates were refugees and criminals. They felt rather shy about leaving their safe haven in the engineer's Torpedo Factory. To encourage themselves, they sang a Croatian sea ditty and whistled loudly at the passing girls.

Using his cane, the engineer wobbled along in the wake of his nine pirate crewmen. His female companion helped him over a tangled mess of harbor rope. Frau Blanka Piffer was a native of Fiume. She served as the engineer's business manager, interpreter, and purchasing agent.

The pirates left the dockside, with its dense mass of cranes, quays, and railway tracks. Downtown Fiume had a stone broadway with tall, peculiar gas-lamps. The church and the clock tower were the tallest buildings in the town.

The Croatian pirates were vividly conspicuous. All nine of them wore stolen women's fur overcoats, cinched by thick leather army belts festooned with daggers, pistols, and hand grenades.

As the pirates swaggered by, the dames of Fiume fled inside the dress-shops. The gentlemen dropped their newspapers and abandoned their sidewalk cafés. Children hid themselves behind the horse-carts and fruit-stands. Even stray dogs ran off.

Frau Piffer tugged the engineer's black sleeve. "Lorenzo: did you have to bring all these crooks to the movies with us? I thought we were going alone."

"I told you to bring the daughter along," said the engineer, reading her lips.

"I won't take my innocent child to see that man-eater!" said Frau Piffer. "Your Turinese femme fatale!"

"Pina Menichelli is from Naples," the engineer corrected. "You mustn't fuss about cinema, my dear. The Prophet himself adores the movies. He wrote the script of Cabiria, the greatest motion picture ever filmed! Made in Turin, of course."

Frau Piffer pursed her small, red lips, but she obeyed him.

Blanka Piffer was a Communist union leader. When the Great War had ended, her Torpedo Factory had been shuttered. Frau Piffer had lost both her livelihood and her husband, for Herr Piffer was an Austrian Communist agitator. Herr Piffer had abandoned Fiume and run off to join the violent uprisings in Red Vienna.

Frau Piffer's Torpedo Factory in Fiume had become a gloomy Red Cross depot, where Frau Piffer doled out soup to her despairing factory girls.

Then the engineer had arrived in Fiume from Italy, intent on saving the day. The engineer was Lieutenant Lorenzo Secondari, a veteran of the Royal Artillery, Third Army.

Secondari had spent four years on the front lines of Isonzo, maintaining Italy's war machinery. Constantly improvising under harsh battlefield conditions, making do with scrap, rivets, and steel wire, Secondari had deftly repaired Italian howitzers, trench mortars, FIAT trucks, pneumatic drills, even military telephones and radios.

Being from Turin, Lieutenant Secondari fully understood the needs of heavy industry. Once he'd met Frau Piffer inside her Torpedo Factory — (they had met because he was hungry, and he needed the Red Cross soup) — he'd been appalled to see such a splendid assembly line standing idle.

At his shouted insistence — Secondari was deaf from wartime cannon fire, so he tended to shout whenever he spoke — Frau Piffer's Communist factory workers had declared a strike. They seized their empty Torpedo Factory and placed it under worker occupation.

Secondari re-commenced local arms production with the simplest, most humble weapons he could create. These guns were crude single-shot derringers, punched from sheet-metal. The guns used ten-penny nails as firing pins, and they tended to burst.

He paid the striking workers with the flimsy handguns. The factory girls then swapped and bartered the guns with all the other women in Fiume.

The Torpedo Factory busily made hundreds of these cheap, nameless guns until the factory's owner had shown up, and urged the workers to desist. Whining in his bourgeois, conformist fashion, this rich man had complained that the Great War was all over. He'd said that it was morally wrong to make more weapons in peacetime.

Secondari had seized the capitalist, beaten him up, shaved his head, and dosed him with castor oil. The wretch had fled Fiume for Switzerland, never to return.

Secondari's Futurist fervor profoundly inspired the factory girls. Liberated by this swift change in their circumstances, they became eager factory pirates.

These female assembly workers found ways to re-purpose their factory tools, to illicitly copy the objects of their own desires. The girls happily banged out steel pots, pans, tableware, and kitchen stoves. They also redoubled their production of grenades and sea-mines.

The factory's weapons found ready buyers, as the Occupation persisted and the rebel soldiers dug in. American men with Irish accents arrived in civilian sailboats. They took the sea-mines to torment Great Britain, and they paid with American dollars.

Some Turks arrived, too: clean-shaven fanatics from the insurgent army of Mustafa Kemal. These "Young Turks" were Western-educated Moslem rebels. They bought grenades and car-bombs, and they paid with black opium.

With this money in her hands, Frau Piffer transformed her dull, brick war-factory into a vibrant stronghold of Futurist feminism. Frau Piffer's communal assembly line featured cake socials, tea breaks, and a generous childcare policy. Her factory's public address system played American jazz records.

The leaders of Occupied Fiume were poets and political radicals, but they had to notice so much innovation and initiative. Lieutenant Secondari and Frau Piffer were both well-rewarded. Secondari was made a gang-boss within the "Strike of the Hand Committee," the fiercest pirate commandos of Fiume. Frau Piffer was transformed into a "Corporate Syndicalist," and made the dictator of her factory.

For their night together, out on the town, Frau Piffer wore her shining new Syndicalist ensemble, granted to her by the grateful Fiume regime. Frau Piffer's Futurist paramilitary outfit had dazzling zigzag lines in shades of Italian orange, white, and green, plus a shining silk sash heavy with bronze medallions.

Frau Piffer was portly, married, and eleven years older than Secondari. Frau Piffer was an ugly, older woman from a newer, better world.

"It might be best if Maria avoids Cabiria," Secondari mused. "I just remembered a scene in that movie where a little girl is flung into the flaming belly of a brazen beast-god."

"We should see Cabiria together some night soon," Frau Piffer urged. "You work much too hard, Lorenzo. Every night you're out on those raiding boats, stealing diesel fuel. You should see more of the local people. Try to make some real friends."

"Oh, Cabiria is just a peacetime movie," said Secondari. "I don't care a damn about the ancient past."

The pirates arrived at the movie house. This Fiume cinema was a small musical-comedy theater. It sat within a modest piazza, crowded with glum examples of bad provincial Austro-Hungarian architecture.

The ticket-seller was a teenage girl. She had insolent bobbed hair, narrow plucked brows, and scarlet lipstick. She sat within a glass booth, reading a cheap German romance novel. Muffled jazz music blasted from her radio set.

Since Secondari was half-deaf, he hated conversing with the locals of Fiume. In fact, Secondari hated leaving his Torpedo Factory for any reason at all, except for enthusiastic pirate raids. Using low-slung, rapid Italian assault boats, his "Strike of the Hand Committee" raided the whole Adriatic. Half spies and half black-marketeers, operating mostly on moonless nights, the utopian pirates of Fiume stole supplies from half-abandoned Great War military depots. Secondari knew exactly what to steal, so he went along on every pirate raid. He generally manned a cannon.

Secondari brusquely rapped at the glass ticket-booth with the brass head of his gentleman's cane. "Miss, I built that radio with my own hands! So turn it off and pay attention to me."

The startled girl dropped her romance book. She struggled with the dials of her wooden radio box. The jazz music grew much louder, and the ticket-girl shouted in dismay.

"My gallant troops are here to see your movie!" Secondari bellowed at her. "Let us all in at once!"

The ticket-seller pointed angrily at the clock-tower, then at the nine Croat pirates, who were puffing smuggled Turkish cigarettes and knocking mud from their jackboots.

Secondari threw open his trenchcoat, revealing a black shirt, black jodhpur trousers, a bandolier of grenades, two holstered Glisenti semiautomatics, and a trench dagger the size of his forearm.

He plucked a newspaper clipping from his wallet, which was stuffed with five kinds of currency. "Now, you see here, miss! Your own advertisement states — no, look at this clipping, it's from yesterday's issue of The Fiume Head of Iron — it distinctly states that Miss Menichelli's feature begins at five pm!"

"Let me talk to her," said Frau Piffer.

Secondari stepped aside.

"Ciao, Tanja!" Frau Piffer chirped. "Is that Barney Bigard and his Jazzopators? They're great, aren't they? Turn that down a little! Use that big brown knob."

The ticket-seller successfully reduced the radio jazz racket. She made some muffled remark about Frau Piffer's new uniform.

"I'm a Corporate Syndicalist nowadays," Frau Piffer announced, preening at her lapels.

"So, what's that?" silently mouthed the ticket-girl, from behind her glass.

"Well, I don't know that yet! You'll have to ask the Constitutionalist about that! He's a genius!"

The ticket-girl made some flippant remark to the effect that all the leaders of Occupied Fiume were geniuses, but all the geniuses had to pay to watch her movies, anyway.

"Now Tanja, your father is a good Communist, isn't he? So why don't you let us inside there, without some exchange of cash? We're from the Torpedo Factory! I could see to it that you and your girlfriends get some very nice little pistols."

Tanja the ticket-girl twirled one kiss-curl over her lacquered fingernail. She then boasted about the Italian soldiers who were already inside her theater, happily watching her movies.

The Occupation troops of Fiume were the Arditi, the Alpini, and the legendary Royal Grenadiers of Sardinia. These fierce Italian elite troops feared no man and adored all women.

Frau Piffer stiffened. "You'd better watch that tongue of yours, young lady! Lieutenant Secondari is my business associate! Our relationship is entirely chaste and revolutionary."

Vividly waving her hands behind the glass, Tanja scoffed.

Frau Piffer then switched to speaking German. Being a Fiume girl, Tanja also spoke excellent German.

Since Fiume was an Italo-Balkan port city, the people of Fiume spoke an entire Babel of tongues. Unfortunately, the Great War had smashed Secondari's right ear. Even when the Fiumans spoke good Italian, Secondari was hard-put to hear them. He entirely failed to understand their Serbo-Croatian speech. Their Hungarian was a profound mystery to him.

The rich people of Fiume spoke some French, but Secondari hated the arrogant rich, and didn't much like the French, either. The English language was well known in Fiume's banking and shipping circles. Secondari could speak and write English rather well. However, the Great War had deafened him. Civilian life would always be a conspiracy to him.

The two Fiume women rattled along, parrying and bargaining, as if selling fish. The city life of Fiume was kinked like tarry harbor rope with Gordian knots of this kind. Secondari's thoughts drifted toward Futurism, as his thoughts generally did.

His next logical step was entirely clear to him. He had to manufacture naval torpedoes — that should be easy, in a Torpedo Factory — and then some radio-controlled, airborne Futurist torpedoes.

In Turin, Italy's national plans for flying torpedoes were gathering dust in the blueprint drawers of the War Ministry. Many brilliant Italian military innovations had been sadly doomed by the Armistice.

The new civilian government in Rome was weak, impoverished, and gutless. The civilians had mutilated Italy's great victory during the Great War. They were trying to put the Great War behind them, instead of ahead of them, where it properly belonged.

The secret agents of the Fiume "Strike of the Hand Committee" would steal those flying torpedo plans from inside Italy. Then Secondari would illicitly copy these unbuilt war-machines within his pirate factory.

The Anarcho-Syndicalist city-state would then own and brandish flying Futurist torpedoes. Even a civilian fool could see that this feat would change the destiny of the world.

Lorenzo Secondari was not an inventor. He lacked the creative skills for that. Instead, he was what he most wanted to be: a free pirate. Given the stolen plans, he had no doubt that he could successfully build flying radio torpedoes. Anyone who doubted his capacities deserved a hard lesson.

Frau Piffer glanced up from her negotiations. "Do you have any ready-money, Lorenzo?"

"Aha! Yes, indeed I do! Tell this tawdry creature that I have a good stock of American dollars."

"Dollars are only good for buying dynamite," Frau Piffer mourned. "Do you have any postage stamps?"

Secondari scowled. The Revolution had been selling its exotic postage stamps to foreigners, ever since the anarchist liberation of September 1919. Along with drugs, jazz music, and easy divorce, the postage stamp racket was a way of scraping by. The Fiumans often used their postage stamps as their makeshift internal currency.

"Postage stamps always stick inside my wallet," Secondari complained. He selected a legitimate British five-pound note from among a sheaf of fake ones. The Fiume "Strike of the Hand Committee" was wonderfully adept at forgery. However, British currency notes were hard work.

"Five pounds is much too much money!" Frau Piffer said. "She would have to give you change in dinars."

"Dinars! Outrageous!" Secondari yelled. "The 'Kingdom of Yugoslavia' cannot exist! I should arrest her for offering me Yugoslav money."

The impatient Croat pirates were shuffling at the delay. Some of Fiume's ubiquitous street urchins had shown up. They were begging the pirates for cigarettes.

One of the Croat pirates tossed his fine fur coat into the gutter. He tore his blue-striped nautical shirt from his tattooed back. He handed this to a young boy.

Secondari was not to be outdone by this splendid revolutionary gesture. He picked up the pirate's fur coat, dusted it off, cordially handed it back, then gave the Croat his favorite Swiss Army knife, direct from his own pocket.

He then confronted Frau Piffer. "Get this mess over with," he ordered.

Frau Piffer shouted at length at the ticket-seller, who was rebellious, but unable to resist a uniformed adult. "All right," Frau Piffer said at last. "I've fixed it. We'll give her some jazz records, later."

"Good work."

"We'll have to sit upstairs in the balcony. No gunfire. Also no brandy, no pipes, and no cigars."

Frau Piffer distributed the movie tickets to the pirates, then bought them nine boxes of popcorn. The happy marauders settled upstairs into the cheap seats, jostling their pistol belts and scratching at flea-bites. They immediately began smoking.

"Turin has movie palaces five times the size of this place," Secondari griped. "I should steal this theater! I could run pirated movies in here."

"Lorenzo, have you been snorting cocaine again?"

"No, I haven't," Secondari lied. The Ace of Hearts, his patron in the Fiume secret police, had given him a steady supply of the useful Peruvian herb. All the flying aces made much use of cocaine. Cocaine sharpened the senses for combat.

Newsreels commenced on the silver movie screen. These newsreels were American in origin because American newsreels were everywhere, and therefore easy to steal.

The first newsreel concerned American big-game hunters in Africa. The second reel featured "Tarzan." Tarzan was the American version of a Nietzschean Overman. Tarzan was a superhuman anarchist, but since he lived in a jungle, he did not have to smash the State.

The feature began, and the theater's hired pianist played along. Secondari scarcely heard the tinkling piano, but he did not mind. Since it was silent, the cinema was the one form of modern art in which a deaf man could fully participate.

The Turinese film featured the famous diva, Pina Menichelli, as a Russian countess, exiled and living in Italy. La Menichelli was a gorgeous creature of aristocratic privilege, from a fabulous Czarist world of sables and diamonds.

Of course her noble Russian life had been shattered by the Twentieth Century. The Russian Countess had wandered to Turin, bearing the livid infection of her doom, and the Italian noblemen within her high social circle ... They were all degenerate dabblers and dilettantes. Feeble, nerveless, archaic dolts with slicked-back hair, celluloid collars, and boiled shirt-fronts. Not one of these despicable toffs and weaklings had any Futurism to offer to this beautiful woman.

---

Excerpted from Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling. Copyright © 2016 Bruce Sterling. Excerpted by permission of Tachyon Publications.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---