“Spitting on Carl Schmitt” is not a gratuitous provocation: it is a symbolic gesture of desertion, in homage to what Carla Lonzi once did with Hegel.
For a long time, as happens to many of us, I inhabited—often without naming it—a conception of politics and of the soul grounded in Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction. An effective grammar —otherwise modern politics would not have been built upon it— yet one that is brutal and intrinsically violent.
Not only because Schmitt was a Nazi (and unambiguously so), but because his thought functions only by producing exclusion and permanent warfare—both outside and within us.
In its place, I choose to imagine a politics founded on the philosophical principle of eudaimonia: a “happiness” understood not as the absence of disturbance or conflict, but as a good relationship with one’s own daimon.
The eudaimonia I propose here is neither private nor spiritualistic: it is profoundly political.
It rejects the enemy as a foundational category—not out of naïveté, but because no justice can arise from the systematic dehumanization of the adversary.
The Judgment to which this episode is dedicated neither condemns nor absolves: it recomposes, and calls forth a new consciousness. It does not separate the pure from the impure, but restores a voice to what has been expelled in the name of order.
This principle constitutes the theoretical and emotional core of the entire Amaro con gli spettri series, of which this episode seeks to be the true grand finale.
The following episode will not be a closure, but an opening—toward new journeys and new stories.
Previous episode:–> Episode 20: Picchi’s Honor
Florence wakes up all at once, as if someone had flipped a switch in the afterlife.
First, a trumpet—long, frightened, as if someone had misread the score.
Then a wave of bells, all together: Santa Croce, Sant’Ambrogio, the Badia. Even bicycle bells ring in unison.
The Lungarno trembles. Cars screech to a halt. A dove falls from its nest and swears in vernacular: maremma sealed in a manhole!
From the sky, a metallic voice—rasping like a municipal megaphone that’s had too much to drink—repeats:
“THE JUDGMENT! THE JUDGMENT!
VISUALIZE YOUR CONSCIENCE AND LINE UP!”
The people around me can’t decide whether to laugh or run.
Some see a dead person, some see their neighbor—and confuse the categories. A woman screams that her mother-in-law is chasing her in her 1987 pajamas. A German tourist faints from an excess of gothic atmosphere.
And then I see him.
A man on the riverbank. Dressed in a rust-colored cloak, short beard, eyes like two candles lit in a crypt. In one hand he holds his phone (Google Maps open, obviously). In the other… his head.
He walks with elegant detachment, as if accustomed to the chaos around him:
“Sorry, folks, universal judgment in progress—same old organizational confusion…”
When his gaze meets mine, he nods like greeting an old friend:
“Coming? If you stay here, you’ll be judged by the City Council.”
(Implicit meaning: worse than death.)
I ask no questions. I follow him.
As he climbs Costa San Giorgio at a brisk pace—my lungs protesting in pursuit—the stones seem to pulse beneath his steps, as if recognizing the weight of history. His head, however, appears less happy with the speed:
“Slower, Miniato! I’m still attached with cherub spit!”
That’s when I understand: it really is him.
The city’s first martyr.
The one who, once beheaded, picked up his head and went to live above Florence, like a hermit who didn’t want visitors.
The Armenian prince pauses for a moment, adjusts his neck more comfortably, and looks at me with the air of someone who knows how things really work:
“Don’t worry about the bells. This isn’t a judgment of others.
It’s about you. And that kind of tribunal… wants reliable witnesses.”
With that, he resumes walking. I follow: shoes slipping on cobblestones, heart beating like the metronome of the universe.
We head toward his basilica, San Miniato al Monte, which in the distance looks like a gigantic altar ready for the autopsy of the soul.
As we climb, the world loses its daytime logic. Things detach from their shadows, and shadows climb walls like black cats late for an appointment.
The first creature we encounter is a man in an elegant jacket, leather briefcase, helmet still fastened.
His scooter is running beneath him—but the wheels don’t touch the ground. The vehicle floats half a meter above the paving stones, like an improvised star of urban transport.
With the exasperated expression of a commuter from Purgatory, the man shouts upward:
“Excuse me, Your Honor! May I at least park? I’ve got a residents’ permit in my pocket!”
The wind rocks his scooter like a pendulum measuring a time different from the world’s.
We turn the corner, and a nun appears.
She is running.
Running uphill as someone fleeing—or searching for—something. She’s wearing a gray jogging suit, with only a fragment of veil left, like a warning from a forgotten vow.
She looks like someone who went jogging even when alive, but now I see her pass through a lamppost, as if she were mist in human form.
Every so often she stops, looks around as if she’s lost a group of invisible friends. Then she starts again, with long, silent strides.
Miniato greets her by removing his head in a chivalrous gesture. She answers with a nod of her rosary, which flashes for a moment like a star.
A little further on, a dog and a cat—the first pale like a faded memory, the other black like deep sleep—are chasing each other in play. But there’s a detail: the dog leaves no footprints. The cat does.
At every change of direction, the dog passes straight through the cat—a leap through its body, as if it were midnight water.
The cat looks at me with studied slowness. It meows a word I don’t recognize—perhaps medieval Latin, perhaps a polite insult. Then they resume their chase toward a bush full of fireflies, which appear highly agitated.
Miniato comments with the calm of someone who has seen far worse:
“When the sky opens, the boundary between the living and the dead forgets the password.”
I lift my eyes again toward the basilica. The façade seems to breathe. The world trembles and laughs at once: a Judgment that does not punish, but remembers.
Once I cross the threshold of the church, the darkness is not simply darkness.
It is a darkness that listens.
The crypt beneath San Miniato smells of ancient stone, burned-down wax, and stagnant water that has never known the sun.
Saint Miniato places his head on a step, like a helmet temporarily out of use,
and gestures for me to descend into the crypt.
The stairs narrow—an apnea in the earth—and when we reach the bottom, the air vibrates with a milky light. A series of medieval frescoes stare death in the face with professional composure: martyrs, saints, severed heads treated like cut flowers.
Miniato snaps his fingers.
“We’re not here to look backward. We’re here to remember what you forgot.”
And then one of the frescoes… detaches from the wall.
First the lines of the face,
then the hands,
then the tweed jacket torso.
The man emerges like a slide turning three-dimensional: tired intellectual glasses, a notebook tucked under his arm, the gaze of a skeptical psychologist and a benevolent father at once.
“Let me introduce Julian Jaynes,” says Saint Miniato.
“Professor, author of The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and the Origin of Consciousness. Expert in brains that talk too much.”
Jaynes adjusts his glasses with the patience of someone who has taught stubborn minds:
“You see, Margherita… what we call consciousness is a relatively recent construction. Before that, it was the voices of the dead—or of the gods—that guided us. In those days, what Socrates and Philip Pullman called the daimon was not a philosophical metaphor: it was a real perception. A constant companion.”
He walks in a circle around me, brushing the air as if it were a page to be read:
“Your problem is not that you hear a voice. Your problem is that you hear too many of them: the university, institutions, directors, the geniuses of administrative evil…”
He stops and looks at me with armed gentleness:
“What they call delusion is not a malfunction. It is an internal civil war between the daimon that wants you to live and the internalized authorities that want you to obey—even at the cost of your life.”
Miniato nods like a priest who has finally found the right homily. Jaynes tilts his head (his own, still firmly attached) and continues:
“You see, Margherita… when politics decides that everything is friend or enemy, it inevitably infects us. The same logic slips inside: what you love in yourself becomes the Friend, and what you fear in yourself becomes the Enemy. And then there is no care, no healing—only civil war in the soul.”
He takes three steps back and opens his arms wide:
“That is why they wanted you mad. Because anyone who integrates their shadow becomes unavailable to command.”
Saint Miniato adds, with the irony of someone who has walked holding his own head:
“Carl Schmitt was a brilliant strategist. But he failed to grasp the essential point: not everyone who wounds you is an enemy. Not everyone who embraces you is a friend. And often, the fiercest enemy is the one you force yourself to silence.”
Jaynes looks at me the way one looks at survivors:
“You speak openly with your daimon. You dialogue with it. And that makes you dangerous.”
Miniato smiles:
“And since you’re dangerous, two ladies upstairs can’t wait to spit on Carl Schmitt with you.”
I stare at him. Miniato touches his neck—out of habit—and concludes:
“Judgment, here, does not divide. It recomposes.”
Jaynes hands me a black ring and a red bracelet:
“When you wear them, you’ll know how to distinguish the voice of your daimon from that of the inner judge. And that will be the beginning of eudaimonia, the Greek word for happiness—which simply means good-daimon, because this simple, ancient principle identifies happiness with inner peace.”
In my hand, the amulets Jaynes has given me burn like small suns, while Miniato sets his head back in place.
“Come. It’s time to meet those who taught you how to love before you were even born.”
On the terrace of San Miniato al Monte, Judgment has no trumpets and no fire. It has two folding chairs and a view better than anything Netflix could ever offer.
Seated side by side—like always, like never—are my grandmother Margherita, in a pearl-colored suit, eyeliner drawn like a duel already won, her posture itself a verdict; and Grandma Grazia, rosary beads slipping through her fingers, her gaze measuring the distance between vice and redemption. At her feet there’s a handbag from which two crochet hooks and a wooden ladle stick out—improper weapons, and blessed ones.
Between them, leaning against the parapet, stands a very blond boy.
He’s too beautiful for comfort. The wind moves his hair like a prophecy without a date, as he looks at me with that tired smile worn by boys turned into icons against their will.
“You know,” he tells me, “it’s dangerous to be this beautiful. Those with power desire you… and then punish you for the desire they feel.”
A flash crosses his eyes; a memory of the Lido of Venice, of fever and other people’s hunger.
Grandma Margherita hands him a mint candy. He laughs, grateful.
She turns to me with that gentle lucidity that knows more about the world than the world knows about itself:
“Margherita, my love… the greatest deception in life is believing we’re free while playing a character written by someone else.”
Grandma Grazia nods vigorously. “The important thing is not to sin—but if you do… at least sin for love!”
The Beautiful Boy gestures toward her with respect:
“See? Here, friend and enemy aren’t survival categories. What matters is who wants you alive and whole—and who, instead, only wants to devour you.”
I feel a knot loosen somewhere behind my sternum. And I think that maybe Judgment isn’t meant to divide, but to recognize those who have known how to love without becoming slaves to the role assigned to them.
After the Beautiful Boy speaks about the price of being desired, Grandma Margherita adjusts her invisible eyeliner—a sword returning to its scabbard—and points her finger at me with affectionate menace:
“Feminism gets one thing wrong, my little Margherita: it thinks men are as intelligent as we are. And they’re not.
They have to be treated like children… but without letting them see you’re treating them like children, otherwise they get offended. And then they cry like generals at five o’clock tea.”
Grandma Grazia makes the sign of the cross a little faster than necessary, but doesn’t dare contradict her: ladles know how to recognize knives when they see them.
The Beautiful Boy lets out a little laugh—the kind capable of bringing down an empire:
“Believe me, I know it well. I died because no one protected me from the desire of great men.”
At that point, Grandma Margherita rises slightly, as if inaugurating an embassy in the afterlife:
“Remember this, my love: even bureaucrats, even the most rigid professors, even directors who stiffen up… they’re just frightened monkeys trying to look like gods. You, on the other hand, know you’re a storytelling animal—and anyone who knows how to narrate their own story is always one step ahead of those who only try to defend their cage.”
The sun over San Miniato brightens a little more.
As if nodding in agreement.
We enter the basilica again, and the silence grows more alive.
The golden mosaic of Christ Pantocrator is no longer an image: it breathes. The tesserae tilt, like the scales of a creature waking up.
Saint Miniato—still beheaded, yet composed—steps aside. He is not the one who judges today:
“I introduce. I do not pass sentence. Each one judges themselves. This is the trial of the living.”
The floor vibrates slightly. The ancient Zodiac at the center of the nave begins to rotate, slowly, like a drunken astrolabe.
One by one, the signs ignite: the courage of Aries, the balance of Libra, the duality of Gemini, the pride of Leo, the pain of Scorpio, the deep waters of Pisces…
The witnesses take their seats on the pews, while from behind a column emerges the unmistakable profile of K.—the angel of paperwork—arrived to certify the procedural regularity of the rite.
I remain standing on the Zodiac spinning beneath my shoes. My shadow seems to split into three silhouettes: the child I was, the woman I am, the old woman I may become.
The Pantocrator looks down. Not like a God who wants to frighten you, but rather like an incredulous older brother:
“So then, Margherita Picchi: this is the only question that matters—how have you treated your demon?”
Jaynes opens a book and exclaims: “Her demon is not an enemy. It is the part of the mind that speaks from the side where there is no language.”
Grandma Grazia nods: “And if you silence it… that silence will kill you.”
Grandma Margherita, instead, points upward: “Spitting on Carl Schmitt, my dearest Margherita, means this: swearing that you will never again declare your truest part your enemy.”
Saint Miniato resumes: “We are here to decide whether you are guilty of surrendering yourself to the Judgment of Others—which is the only heresy of the free soul.”
The Beautiful Boy steps closer, eyes like a calm sea: “We were loved as mirrors, not as people. And that nearly cost us our sanity.”
Jaynes sips incense (don’t ask how): “Judgment is about to fall. But here it is different: it does not assess whether you are good or evil. It assesses whether you are whole.”
The Pantocrator inclines his head. “Margherita, the question is one: are you on your own side?”
Silence. The immense silence before the true word.
Then… a sound like the beating of wings. Large.
An ape (yes: an ape!) enters through the wide-open doors and takes its place at the center of the nave, looking at me the way one looks at a long-lost sister.
Grandma Margherita smiles:
“See? They are not gods. They are frightened monkeys. And to keep them at bay, you have to know how to tell a good story.”
The ape sits down with a very human gesture. It scratches its ear, then takes a worn book from a lectern before the altar and lifts it, showing the cover:
Carl Schmitt — Der Begriff des Politischen
Jaynes sighs: “There it is. The catechism of suspicion. The manual of divide yourself.”
Saint Miniato removes his head and places it reverently on the floor: “In this temple, what was separated is reconciled. But first: one must spit.”
Grandma Grazia clears her throat: “My child, one does not spit at random. One spits against what divides love.”
Grandma Margherita takes aim like a gunslinger: “This is for all the times they made you feel like an enemy to yourself.”
The Beautiful Boy, who has known the poison of others’ desire, grips the book with trembling hands: “And this is for all the lives sacrificed to image.”
The ape hands me the book.
It weighs in my hands. Not like paper: like law. Like discipline. Like diagnosis.
The Pantocrator no longer watches us from above. He has stepped closer. He looks me in the eyes—as if we were equals.
“So then, Margherita Picchi. Do you choose integration, or the civil war of the soul?”
I smile faintly, with a weariness that resembles hope:
“I spit on the idea that there is an enemy within us.”
And I do.
The spit lands on the page like a broken seal.
It is not violence. It is liberation.
A wind rises inside the basilica. The Zodiac stops turning. Miniato puts his head back in place:
“Judgment is this: welcoming back everything you were forced to fight.”
The Pantocrator offers me his hand, warm with humanity: “Go. And tell this story to the living.”
My grandmothers embrace me, one on each side. The Beautiful Boy kisses my forehead. Jaynes slips back into the fresco, satisfied.
I take a bow—exaggerated, theatrical, liberating—and at last, the curtain falls.
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