The Crossroads

  The same smell of damp and petrol.

  He hadn’t been in there since 12th July 2001.

  He steeled himself and pressed the light switch.

  The neon tubes flickered and lit up a long underground garage where two rows of cars were parked.

  Danilo walked across it, the sound of his footsteps echoing against the concrete walls.

  The Alfa Romeo was covered with a grey tarpaulin.

  He put his hand on the bonnet. On contact a shiver ran up his forearm, giving him gooseflesh.

  Don’t think about it.

  He took a deep breath and lifted the tarpaulin.

  For an instant he imagined his daughter sitting on the little green child seat, laughing. He banished the vision from his mind.

  It was because of that seat that Laura Aprea had died.

  ‘The damned buckle wouldn’t open. It got stuck,’ he had repeated to everyone till he was exhausted. To Teresa, to the policemen, to the whole world.

  On 9th July 2001 Danilo had asked for a day off work and had taken his daughter to the doctor for a check-up. Usually it was Teresa who looked after these things, but that day she’d had some business to sort out with the notary’s mother.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ the doctor had said, giving Laura an affectionate pat on the bottom as she chuckled and wriggled, stark naked on the couch. ‘This little bundle’s in perfect health.’

  ‘This isn’t a little bundle. It’s a little rascal, isn’t it?’ Danilo had said to his daughter, grinning from ear to ear. And while the doctor washed his hands he had buried his face in the little girl’s tummy, making a lot of rude noises. Laura had started chuckling. ‘And where are those little mozzarellas? There they are!’ And he had affectionately nibbled those plump little legs that he loved to bits.

  After the check-up they had gone to the cash-and-carry.

  It was no easy task doing the shopping with Laura sitting in the trolley singing ‘I love teatime with to-to-to-to-tomatoes.’

  Then they had got back into the car. Danilo had put the plastic bags on the back seat and had strapped the child into her seat and said to her: ‘Now we’re going to see mama.’

  They had driven off.

  Danilo Aprea was working for a freight firm as a night-watchman at the time and he knew that sooner or later there were going to be cuts in staff. And there was a good chance that he would be among the unlucky ones.

  He drove along the highway, which was unusually empty for the time of day, trying to think of a job he might be able to find at short notice, even a temporary one, perhaps at Euroedil, a building firm where they often needed labourers.

  Suddenly he had noticed that there was a smell of green apples in the car. Not real green apples, but the synthetic green-apple scent of the anti-dandruff shampoo.

  ‘I mistook it for the scent of the Arbre Magique,’ he had explained afterwards to his wife.

  ‘How could you? The deodorant is forest pine and the shampoo is green apples. They’re not the same thing!’ she had cried in despair, her eyes puffy with weeping.

  ‘You’re right. But I didn’t understand at first. I don’t know why …’

  Danilo had turned round and seen that Laura’s little red T-shirt and blue trousers were all smeared with green liquid.

  ‘Laura, what have you done?’ Danilo had seen the overturned plastic bag and the capless bottle of shampoo on the soap-spattered seat.

  Then – he remembered it as if it had happened that very day – he had heard a sucking noise, a strangled croak, and had looked at his daughter.

  The little girl’s mouth was wide open and her blue eyes, popping out of their orbits, were red. She was struggling desperately, but the safety belts of the child seat were doing their job and keeping her pinned down like a condemned prisoner in the electric chair.

  She can’t breathe. The cap! She’s swallowed the cap!

  Danilo had gripped the wheel and, without looking, had swerved sharply and darted, with a squeal of tyres, towards the edge of the road, just missing the front of a lorry, which had started honking furiously.

  The Alfa Romeo had stopped in the emergency lane of the highway in a cloud of white smoke. Danilo had leaped out, tripped over, scrambled to his feet and with his heart thumping against his chest had grabbed the handle of the rear door with both hands.

  ‘Here I am! Here I am! Papa’s coming …’ he had gasped, and had grabbed the safety buckle of the child seat to free his daughter, who was flailing about with her little hands and legs, hitting him on the face and the chest.

  But the incredible thing was that the bloody buckle wouldn’t open, it had two huge orange buttons which you just had to push together, something he had done a hundred times, always opening it perfectly, a German buckle designed by the finest engineers in the world, because everyone knows the Germans are the finest engineers in the world, which had passed the most stringent safety tests, been certified by an international commission and been given the ??, and yet that damned buckle wouldn’t open.

  It simply wouldn’t open.

  Danilo had told himself to keep calm, not to panic, that the buckle would open in a moment, but Laura’s desperate expression and strangled sobs made him lose his head, he felt like tearing at the straps with his teeth, but he had to keep calm. So he had closed his eyes so as not to see his little girl dying and had continued to push, fumble and pull while his daughter suffocated, but it was no good. He had tried to slip her out of the seat, without success, and then had grabbed the whole damned contraption, shouting, but there were the car’s seat belts that were wrapped round the plastic frame.

  I must get hold of her feet. I must get hold of her feet and shake her …

  But how, if he couldn’t get her free?

  Then, inhaling the smell of green apples, he had stuck his big fingers into the mouth of his daughter, who was now struggling less, suddenly weaker and tired, and had searched for the cap that was stuck right down in her windpipe. With his fingertips he had felt her little tongue, her epiglottis, her tonsils, but not the cap.

  Now Laura was no longer moving. Her little head lolled on her chest and her arms hung down by the sides of the seat.

  Yes, he knew what he had to do. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? He must pierce her throat, so that the air … but what with?

  He had shouted and pleaded, ‘Help, help me, a little girl, my daughter, is dying …’ and he had squeezed between the two front seats, he, a great hulk of a man weighing over a hundred kilos jammed between the two seats, with the gear lever sticking into his breastbone and his arms reaching out towards the glove box in the dashboard. The middle finger of his right hand had succeeded in reaching the button and the door had come open and spewed out bits of paper, brochures, maps and a Bic pen which had rolled under the seat.

  He had groped about, gasping, on the mat and at last had got hold of the pen and holding it like a bradawl had turned and raised his right arm, ready to …

  She’s dead.

  The Bic had fallen from his hand.

  Laura Aprea, lifeless, sat in the child seat, her blue eyes staring, her little arms outspread, her mouth wide open …

  A year after the accident, when his life had gone completely down the pan, Danilo had come across this short item in a newspaper:

  Routine tests of child car seats carried out in 2002 have revealed that certain buckles, made by the Rausberg company in 2000 and 2001, and used by some manufacturers of child car seats, do not always close correctly, even if they make a distinctly audible click. If the two metal tongues are inserted obliquely the belt may not be properly fixed on one side or the other and the buckle may not open, to the detriment of the child’s safety. The following child car seats have defective buckles: Boulgom, Chicco, Fair/Wavo, Kiddy and Storchenmühle. You are therefore advised to check the date of manufacture of the child car seat in your possession and should it have been produced in the period 2000–2001 to return it to the manufacturers, who have underta
ken to replace it promptly.

  129

  Rino’s van was parked in the middle of the layby.

  Quattro Formaggi climbed over the guardrail and looked at it for a while, scratching his beard with one hand and holding his wounded shoulder with the other.

  He must make sure that passers-by would notice it.

  He could call the police and say he had discovered a murder, then he would be famous. He would appear on television.

  No, I can’t do that.

  He was a friend of Rino’s and they would immediately think he was involved too.

  He started slapping himself on the forehead, repeating through clenched teeth: ‘Think! Think! Think, you rotten brain.’

  If he switched on the headlights everyone would see the Ducato. But the battery would go flat in less than an hour.

  He opened the door, turned the radio on full blast and left the door open, so that the little internal light would stay on.

  As he was walking round to retrieve the Boxer the radio began playing The Police’s So Lonely.

  He started nodding his head and then, spinning round and round, opened his arms to the rain, feeling a euphoric joy swell his chest.

  Alive! Alive! I’m alive!

  He had killed and he was alive. And nobody would ever know.

  He wheeled out the Boxer, mounted it and donned his crash helmet. He couldn’t move his left arm and found it a struggle to start the engine. After a couple of coughs the engine started turning and producing white smoke.

  ‘That’s the way, baby.’ He stroked the headlamp and, singing ‘So lonely, so lonely …’ headed for home, pushed by the wind and rain.

  130

  While Beppe Trecca and Ida Lo Vino were inside the camper the storm raged over Camp Bahamas.

  Above the gate the big banana-shaped sign flapped about like a spinnaker. One of the four steel cables that held it in place snapped with a crack that was lost in the howling winds.

  131

  Danilo Aprea screwed up the tarpaulin and put it on the ground. He approached the driver’s door and instinctively put his hands in his pockets.

  Where are the keys?

  When he remembered where they were he had to lean against the window to stop himself falling over.

  ‘No, it’s not possible. It’s not possible,’ he said, shaking his head. Then he put his hands over his face. ‘What a fool I am … What a fool …’

  He had thrown them in the canal on the day Laura had been buried, swearing that he would never drive that car again.

  What now?

  He couldn’t give up just because of a fucking bunch of keys. He wasn’t going to let such a stupid problem stop him.

  ‘If you want to stop Danilo Aprea you’ve got to blast him with a bazooka,’ he exclaimed, noting how firm and resolute his voice sounded. ‘Anyway, all I have to do is go upstairs and get the duplicate keys.’

  He went upstairs and set about opening all the drawers, searching in every cupboard, rummaging in every box, in every bloody corner.

  They had gone. Vanished into thin air.

  He was a meticulous man. He never lost anything. ‘Every thing has its place and every place has its thing,’ was his motto.

  So the keys must be there, hidden somewhere. But he had no idea where else to look for them.

  He was hot and tired and had a terrible headache. He staggered through the flat, which looked as if a herd of buffalo had just charged through it, and flopped down exhausted, with his legs apart, in the armchair.

  Unless …

  He jumped to his feet as if the cushion had caught fire.

  What if that cow Teresa, on the advice of the tyre dealer, had pinched them?

  But why?

  The tyre dealer had a Lexus. What would he want with his old Alfa?

  Maybe he didn’t have any special reason. Just did it out of spite. Or perhaps it was Teresa, worried I might drive again.

  But it could have been Rino too – he could have stolen them when he’d come round to do his washing. Or that young scoundrel Cristiano. And why rule out that halfwit Quattro Formaggi?

  Everyone coveted his car. You could just imagine what it would be like when he had the painting of the climbing clown in his sitting room! An object of such value would have them all trying to steal it …

  The first thing I must do tomorrow is put in a steel-clad door with multiple locks.

  But in the meantime he was keyless.

  I’m very tired. Perhaps I’d better call it off for this evening …

  But he knew himself too well – if he backed out now he would never have the courage to do the raid on his own the next day. And then he would be forced to share the loot with somebody else.

  No. It’s out of the question.

  Only he felt drained and his eyelids were drooping.

  He must give himself a boost. And there was only one way he knew of doing that. He shuffled into the kitchen, yawning. He ransacked the cupboards and discovered, among all the other junk, a bottle of Borghetti coffee liqueur.

  He took a swig and immediately felt better.

  (Instead of standing here like an idiot, go and see if anyone has left the keys in their car in the garage.)

  This brilliant idea could only have come from the clown on the bedroom ceiling.

  ‘That’s right! You’re a genius!’

  If there existed a plan of destiny that the course of his life should change that night, he would certainly find a car open.

  132

  In the first place he wasn’t suffering.

  That was one good thing.

  Also, he didn’t think he was dead.

  That was another good thing.

  There had been one immense instant, when the fluorescent cloud had been suddenly swallowed up by the blackness, during which Rino had been sure that his story had come to an end.

  Now, however, the violet had returned.

  Nobody had actually certified that he wasn’t dead. But Rino had always believed in heaven and hell, and this place was neither the one nor the other. Of that he was certain. He was aware of still being inside his own body.

  He could think. And to think is to live.

  And although he wasn’t suffering greatly, he was aware of a distant fire, a far-off pain and the ants running through his veins, but he also thought he could hear from a thousand kilometres away The Police singing and the rain falling on the leaves, dripping in silver drops on the branches, trickling down the bark of the trees and soaking the earth.

  He was blind. Insentient. Paralysed. And yet, strangely, he could hear.

  When he had come to, the darkness had been less intense, shading gradually into a phosphorescent violet, and suddenly millions of ants had been there. They covered the plain as far as the horizon. They were big, like the ones that appear in the wheatfields in August. With shiny heads and antennae.

  Rino couldn’t make out whether they were outside or inside him. And whether that desert over which they were crawling was him.

  He sensed that there was another reality just behind the violet cloud which enveloped him. The reality from which he had fallen.

  The woods. The rain.

  He saw himself in the woods with the rock in his hands, Quattro Formaggi, the dead girl.

  That was where he must get back to.

  He thought he was still there, and he was sure Quattro Formaggi had gone to get help.

  133

  Danilo Aprea, holding the bottle of Borghetti coffee liqueur in one hand, had checked the cars in the garage. One by one.

  All locked.

  In that bloody condominium everyone lived in terror of having their cars stolen. And you could bet your life they had burglar alarms and all the latest security gadgets installed.

  He had thought of smashing a window and putting the ignition leads together, like you see people doing in films.

  But he was no good at that kind of thing. He would still be there at daybreak trying to get the dashbo
ard open.

  If only Quattro Formaggi was here …

  Danilo gnashed his teeth like a rabid dog and shouted, white in the face with rage: ‘Fuck you! Fuck the whole lot of you! You won’t stop me. Do you hear? You won’t stop me. You’re doing everything you can to stop me, but you won’t succeed. No! No! And no! I’m going to do this raid.’ He kicked the door of a Mini Cooper, hurting his foot like mad.

  He hopped around, cursing and swearing, and when the pain eased he raised the bottle of Borghetti coffee liqueur, gulped down a third of it and staggered towards the garage door.

  134

  In his trouser pocket he had his mobile phone.

  When Rino Zena thought of the mobile he saw it appear huge, as if projected onto the violet sky.

  It wasn’t a photograph of a mobile phone, but a drawing done with a big black marker pen. The numbers written in a childish hand, and where the display should have been, a circle with a smile and eyes. He could have gazed at it for ever.

  But now he must get his mobile out of his trouser pocket …

  He must speak to the ants and explain to them what they had to do.

  135

  Danilo stood on the parapet of the canal, hands on hips, gazing blankly at the raindrops.

  In the dim light shed by the lamp-post on the little footbridge they seemed like silver threads, which dissolved on the brownish surface of the canal.

  The pebble shores and the greater part of the pillars under the bridge had been engulfed by the rising waters. If the rain kept coming down like this, by morning the flood would be over the dykes.

  Danilo was soaked through to his pants. His cheeks and chin frozen and the lenses of his glasses streaked with rain.

  It had taken just fifty metres, the distance from his home to there, out in that downpour, to reduce him to a sopping rag.

  A polystyrene box, the kind that is used for packing fish, raced along through the waves, bobbing up and down, like a raft in the rapids of the Colorado River, and disappeared under the bridge.