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first murders. This is where Wang Dingjm was killed. A forty-year-old immigrant who’d driven down from Rome for a party some other Chinese were throwing. They invited him, then shot him in the head. Wang was a snakehead—a scout—tied to the criminal cartels in Beijing that organize the clandestine entry of Chinese into Italy. Trafficking in humans, the snakeheads often clash with their clients. They promise a certain quantity and then they don’t deliver. Just as a drug dealer is killed when he keeps back a part of his earnings, a snakehead is killed when he cheats on his goods, on human beings. But it’s not just Mafiosi who die. On one of the factory doors was the photo of a young girl. Pretty face, pink cheeks, eyes so dark they seemed painted. It was hung exactly where one would traditionallyexpect the yellow face of Mao, but this was a picture of Zhang Xiangbi, a pregnant girl who had been killed a few years earlier. She used to work here. A mechanic from these parts had fancied her; she used to walk past his garage, and liking what he saw, he decided that was reason enough to have her. The Chinese work like dogs, they slither like snakes, they’re quieter than deaf-mutes, they’re not allowed any means of resistance or free will. Such is the axiom everyone—or almost everyone—bears in mind. But Zhang had resisted. She tried to escape when the mechanic came near her, but she couldn’t report him. She was Chinese, and every sign of visibility was denied her. The next time the man didn’t take no for an answer. He beat and kicked her until she fainted, then slit her throat and threw her body in a deep well, where it remained for days, bloated with water. Pasquale knew this story and was devastated by it. Every time he went to give a lesson, he made sure to go over to Zhang’s brother and ask how he was, see if he needed anything. But he always got the same response: “Nothing, thanks.”
    Pasquale and I became close. He was like a prophet when he spoke about fabric and was overly fastidious in clothing stores; it was impossible even to go for a stroll with him because he’d plant himself in front of every shop window and criticize the cut of a jacket or feel ashamed for the tailor who’d designed such a skirt. He could predict the longevity of a particular style of pants, jacket, or dress, and the exact number of washings before the fabric would start to sag. Pasquale initiated me into the complicated world of textiles. I even started going to his home. His family—his wife and three children—made me happy. They were always busy without ever being frenetic. That evening the smaller children were running around the house barefoot as usual, but without making a racket. Pasquale had turned on the television and was flipping channels, but all of a sudden he froze. He squinted at the screen, as if he were nearsighted, though he could seeperfectly well. No one was talking, but the silence became more intense. His wife, Luisa, must have sensed something because she went over to the television and clasped her hand over her mouth, as if she’d just witnessed something terrible and were holding back a scream. On TV Angelina Jolie was treading the red carpet at the Oscars, dressed in a gorgeous garment. One of those custom-made outfits that Italian designers fall over each other to offer to the stars. An outfit that Pasquale had made in an underground factory in Arzano. All they’d said to him was “This one’s going to America.” Pasquale had worked on hundreds of outfits going to America, but that white suit was something else. He still remembered all the measurements. The cut of the neck, the circumference of the wrists. And the pants. He’d run his hands inside the legs and could still picture the naked body that every tailor forms in his mind—not an erotic figure but one defined by the curves of muscles, the ceramics of bones. A body to dress, a meditation of muscle, bone, and bearing. Pasquale still