Duccio Chilleri

Duccio Chilleri is Marco Carrera’s closest friend in adolescence and a gifted athlete whose reputation for bringing bad luck grows from one fogbound ski race into a story that shadows their lives. First nicknamed Blizzard, later called the Unnameable, he becomes the center of a superstition that Marco resists even as their friendship, gambling, and a plane journey expose the costs of believing—or refusing to believe—in omens.

Identity and the Origin of the Omen

Tall, clumsy, black-haired, and thin enough to seem always in profile, Duccio is nevertheless a conspicuous sporting talent. His father had imagined an even greater future for him, but Duccio distinguished himself in ski races in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, first in the Puppy category and later among Students and Aspirants. Blizzard, his childhood nickname, came from the ski brand associated with those races. The later nickname, the Unnameable, attached itself to a reputation for misfortune whose beginning nobody could identify—until the memory of a particular race supplied an origin story.

At Zum Zeri–Passo dei Due Santi, in a giant slalom held for interzonal qualifications, Duccio finished the first run second in his category, behind Tavella, an unpleasant champion from Modena. Wind and fog made conditions dangerous enough that the jury considered cancelling the race. The wind then eased, but the fog thickened, and the second run went ahead. At the starting gate, as his father-coach urged him to attack the invisible course and beat Tavella, Duccio said, “So he falls, and he also hurts himself.” Duccio went on to record the best time. Tavella followed; in the dense fog, he crashed near the end of the wall, where a broken wooden stake pierced his thigh and blood spread across the snow. The stake narrowly missed the femoral artery, but the accident became the ski resort’s most serious and was remembered alongside Duccio’s words.

The prophecy-like sequence made his fame as a jinx take hold at the threshold of adolescence, “suddenly and without redemption.” The novel notes that no one bothered to investigate the rumor or its meaning: Duccio brought bad luck, and that seemed explanation enough. The narrative also plays with the suggestive coincidence of Blizzard meaning “storm” and the resemblance of Chilleri to “killer,” while explicitly distinguishing these associations from the surname’s likely linguistic origins. The teasing etymologies illuminate how readily a reputation accumulates meanings after the fact; they do not establish that Duccio causes the accidents attributed to him.

Friendship, Gambling, and the Eye of the Storm

As Duccio’s childhood sporting success gave way to the name of the Unnameable, the friendships that had gathered around him eroded. By sixteen, Marco Carrera was the only friend he had left in Florence. The two had known each other since elementary and middle school, played tennis together at CT Firenze, and belonged to the same ski club until Marco stopped competing. Though they attended different high schools, they continued to see each other daily, often listening to American West Coast bands including the Eagles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Poco, and the Grateful Dead. Their shared music mattered, but gambling became the stronger bond.

Gambling was Duccio’s own passion; Marco was initially carried along by it, sharing the sense of freedom—and even liberation—that their new pursuit brought. Neither boy came from a family with a history of gambling ruin. For Duccio, the game instead offered a way to pick the lock of the golden cage his parents had built around him. The thought of dissipating the wealth they had accumulated through clothing stores appealed to him, although at fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen he had little money with which to threaten the family’s prosperity. His generous weekly allowance was roughly twice Marco’s, and in bad stretches he might run up a debt at Mondo Disco, the record shop on Via dei Conti where the friends bought imported music. He could repay it himself within weeks, without his parents finding out.

Marco continued to defend Duccio against the jinx story, insisting that his own continued safety proved the superstition false: he spent time with Duccio and nothing happened to him. But the rumor had hardened beyond argument. The “eye of the storm” theory reconciled Marco’s loyalty with his friends’ fear: someone who stayed close to the Unnameable, as Marco did, occupied the calm center of the cyclone, while even a small separation—a chance encounter, a car ride, or a greeting from afar—could expose someone to the devastation around it. The explanation let Marco keep company with friends who joked about Duccio while still entertaining the omen, and let him condemn their superstition without relinquishing his friendship. It was an unstable accommodation, turning closeness itself into supposed protection.

The Plane Journey and the Cost of Superstition

By the time Duccio and Marco were approaching twenty, their friendship had begun to narrow around gambling. Duccio still possessed the gifts that made him an extraordinary casino companion: he knew roulette systems, seemed almost extrasensory in his craps instincts, and had a feral feel for blackjack. Yet Marco had grown tired of the long drives Duccio planned to casinos in Austria and Yugoslavia, with their obligatory stops at brothels and restaurants. Ten or twelve hours together in the cockpit of Duccio’s Fiat X1/9 had become burdensome, and Marco wanted trips organized professionally around the game, without the carousing. The companionship and pleasure of sharing time had faded for him; the wish to appear at casinos alongside Duccio’s gambling prowess remained.

Marco therefore took charge of their next trip and persuaded Duccio, who feared flying, to travel by plane. Over four evenings, he countered that fear with the same rational, anti-superstitious arguments he used to challenge other people’s fear of the Unnameable. One fragrant May afternoon, the friends arrived at Pisa International Airport bound for the casino in Ljubljana, where they had driven the previous year and won heavily. Marco had found an unusually cheap charter flight with Koper Aviopromet, whose route made an inexplicable stop in Larnaca, Cyprus. That detour multiplied the travel time while reducing the ticket price.

The journey collapsed when Duccio suffered a panic attack aboard the aircraft. Marco experienced the episode as the wrecking of a carefully arranged weekend and, in anger and shame, left Duccio at home without even saying goodbye. He also lied to his parents about why their plans had changed. But after the flight, the episode looked different when Marco imagined it from the perspective of the other passengers: the boy scouts and the stewardesses who had watched the two friends leave the plane, believing themselves delivered from Duccio’s omen. Under the eye-of-the-storm superstition, the passengers should have formed a human chain to prevent the flight from landing. Marco could not shake the thought of them, or his concern for the people they had left behind.

That night, while Marco lay awake, the Koper Aviopromet DC-9-30 had already plunged into the Cilician Sea off Cyprus’s northern coast. All aboard were dead. Marco did not yet know that the passengers whose fate troubled him had perished; he alone remained with any knowledge of the ominous words Duccio had spoken before the plane departed. When Marco eventually fell asleep, it was his last night of innocence: the airplane journey had turned his refusal to believe in Duccio’s power into an experience he could neither undo nor understand as mere bad luck.

Omen, Memory, and the Limits of Explanation

The novel preserves a distinction between Duccio’s apparent predictions and proof of supernatural power. His remark before Tavella’s crash and the passengers’ death give the jinx story a terrible retrospective force, but the narration also emphasizes how little scrutiny the rumor received. The eye-of-the-storm theory is not a demonstration that Duccio causes disaster; it is a social explanation that enables people to live with contradictory responses to him. Marco can remain loyal and call the fear absurd, while those around him can keep fearing the Unnameable without abandoning their friendship with Marco.

Years later, a separate memory of the plane disaster returns to Marco as he confronts an accusation that he abandoned his wife and daughter during a moment of terror. His brief flight of thought had lasted only seconds, but what troubles him is what passed through his mind as he stood against a pine, looking toward the hedge between the gardens: he silently repeated Luisa’s name. The memory makes him recognize a prophecy in his father’s association between airplanes and the year of Marco’s birth. He had not seen it when he escaped the plane crash or when he married a stewardess whom he believed had survived it; he sees it now, in the particular thought that surfaced during his own fearful moment. The later recollection does not establish that Duccio caused the crash, but it shows how the catastrophe persists in Marco’s understanding of fear, coincidence, and the people he turns toward in crisis.

Duccio’s significance lies in the tension between the man and the legend imposed on him. A sportsman, friend, and compulsive gambler becomes a figure around whom others organize their fears, reading accidents as evidence and proximity as protection. Marco’s loyalty challenges that reading without keeping him untouched by it: he resists the superstition, then carries the memory of the catastrophe and of his own complicity in leaving Duccio behind. In this story, the omen’s power is less a proven supernatural force than a pattern that survives through rumor, fear, and the meanings people make after disaster.

Omen, Memory, and the Limits of Explanation

The novel preserves a distinction between Duccio’s apparent predictions and proof of supernatural power. His remark before Tavella’s crash and the passengers’ death give the jinx story a terrible retrospective force, but the narration also emphasizes how little scrutiny the rumor received. The eye-of-the-storm theory is not a demonstration that Duccio causes disaster; it is a social explanation that enables people to live with contradictory responses to him. Marco can remain loyal and call the fear absurd, while those around him can keep fearing the Unnameable without abandoning their friendship with Marco.

Years later, a separate memory of the plane disaster returns to Marco as he confronts an accusation that he abandoned his wife and daughter during a moment of terror. His brief flight of thought had lasted only seconds, but what troubles him is what passed through his mind as he stood against a pine, looking toward the hedge between the gardens: he silently repeated Luisa’s name. The memory makes him recognize a prophecy in his father’s association between airplanes and the year of Marco’s birth. He had not seen it when he escaped the plane crash or when he married a stewardess whom he believed had survived it; he sees it now, in the particular thought that surfaced during his own fearful moment. The later recollection does not establish that Duccio caused the crash, but it shows how the catastrophe persists in Marco’s understanding of fear, coincidence, and the people he turns toward in crisis.

Duccio’s significance lies in the tension between the man and the legend imposed on him. A sportsman, friend, and compulsive gambler becomes a figure around whom others organize their fears, reading accidents as evidence and proximity as protection. Marco’s loyalty challenges that reading without keeping him untouched by it: he resists the superstition, then carries the memory of the catastrophe and of his own complicity in leaving Duccio behind. In this story, the omen’s power is less a proven supernatural force than a pattern that survives through rumor, fear, and the meanings people make after disaster.