The Crossroads

  Danilo straightened up and shouted: ‘That’s enough, you two! I’m going to tell your father!’

  When he heard that voice explode in the silence the boy popped up in the air like a champagne cork and fell off the bonnet. Pannocchietta gave a querulous squeal and jumped off the car too.

  They clung together, frightened and guilty, trying to make out who had spoken.

  ‘Did you hear what I said? I’m going to tell your father. And I’m going to bring it up at the next residents’ meeting.’

  At last the two saw that the head of a large man dressed like Fred Flintstone was sticking out of the window of the Alfa Romeo.

  It took Niccolò Donazzan a few moments to realise that it was Aprea, the guy from the second floor. He was so terrified by the threat to involve his father that he didn’t even wonder why Aprea was sitting in his car at three o’clock in the morning dressed like that.

  ‘I’m sorry … We didn’t know you were there. Or …’ he stuttered.

  ‘Or what, son?’

  ‘Or I wouldn’t have done it. I swear! I’m terribly sorry.’

  ‘Okay.’ Danilo assumed a contented expression. ‘Give me your jacket. I’ll give it back to you tomorrow.’

  ‘My jacket? But it’s an Avirex original … It was a present from …’ The boy was evidently very attached to his horrendous biker jacket.

  ‘Do you have a hearing problem? Your jacket! And cut the chat. Do you want me to go and see your father?’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But nothing. And give me your trousers and boots too.’

  Donazzan hesitated.

  ‘Give them to him, go on. Can’t you see what a state he’s in? He’s out of his mind, he looks mad enough to carry out a massacre,’ interposed the girl, quite calmly. She had recovered well from the fright and had lit herself a cigarette.

  ‘She’s right. Can’t you see what a state I’m in? You’d better listen to your girlfriend.’

  She corrected him, puffing out a cloud of smoke: ‘I’m not his girlfriend.’

  In the meantime the boy had taken off his boots and trousers.

  ‘Give them to me. Quick.’ Danilo reached out of the window and took them. ‘And now you’ve got to push the car. My battery’s flat.’

  Niccolò Donazzan said to Pannocchietta: ‘Come on, help me. His battery’s flat.’

  The girl slouched reluctantly round to the boot: ‘What a drag!’

  The two of them started pushing the car towards the garage door.

  Danilo waited till they were going fast enough, released the clutch and went into second. The engine lurched three times and fired in a cloud of white smoke.

  Those two kids, too, Danilo said to himself as he drove out of the garage, were angels sent by the Lord.

  140

  The ants were moving his arm, but in the effort thousands of them were dying and being carried out of the cave and replaced by others that arrived from distant regions of his body.

  Rino Zena couldn’t understand why they were sacrificing themselves to help him.

  The ones inside his hand moved together, with coordination, so as to enable his fingers to bend and grasp the mobile phone in his trouser pocket.

  Well done … Well done, little ones.

  Now call Cristiano. Please …

  Rino tried to imagine his thumb pressing the green key twice.

  141

  In the Zena household the phone didn’t often ring.

  And after a certain hour it never did.

  A couple of times Danilo Aprea, during one of his fits of missing Teresa, had called after eleven o’clock at night in search of a friendly voice. Rino had listened and had then explained to him that if he ever tried phoning him again at that hour he would make him swallow his teeth.

  But that night, after months of silence, the phone started ringing.

  The sound took a full three minutes to wake Cristiano, who was asleep upstairs.

  He was having a bad dream. He was very warm and had soaked the sheets in sweat, as if he had a fever. He lifted his head and noticed that the gale showed no sign of abating. The broken shutter was knocking against the window. The gate outside was rattling in the wind.

  His mouth was parched.

  The ham.

  He reached out and picked up the bottle off the floor, and as he drank he noticed that the phone was ringing downstairs.

  Why doesn’t papa answer it?

  He flapped the blankets to disperse some of the heat from inside the bed and then, since the phone kept on ringing, with a yawn he thumped twice on the thin wall that divided his bedroom from his father’s and in a sleepy voice shouted: ‘Papa! Papa! The phone! Can’t you hear?’

  No reply.

  Just for a change he was drunk, and when he was drunk a herd of wild gnu could charge through his bedroom and he wouldn’t notice.

  Cristiano stuck his head under the pillow and in less than a minute the phone stopped ringing.

  142

  After the banana had turned the camper into a coupé, the storm had lifted up the cushions, the crockery, the Chinese food and everything else and dumped them in the car park.

  Beppe Trecca and Ida Lo Vino lay locked in each other’s arms, naked and trembling, on the roofless sleeping compartment. Over their heads the sky twisted and howled, and the clouds, as huge as mountains, were lit up by thousands of electric flashes.

  At the boathouse a rubber dinghy rose up from the ground and whirled out into the middle of the swollen river.

  ‘Beppe, what’s happening?’ Ida shouted, trying to make herself heard above the noise of the storm.

  ‘I don’t know. We’ve got to get out of here. Let’s go down this way,’ he replied, and eventually, hand in hand, they succeeded in picking their way through the remains of the camper and retrieving their clothes, which were scattered across the car park.

  They took refuge in the Puma.

  Luckily Beppe had his gym bag in the car. He put on his track suit, she a T-shirt and his bathrobe.

  He wanted to tell her that he loved her more than he had ever loved anyone and that he felt as if he had been born again and that he would do anything in the world to keep her, but instead he just held her tight and they sat watching the storm finish sweeping away the campsite.

  Then she stroked his neck. ‘Beppe, it took me a while to understand it but now I’m sure. I love you. And I don’t feel guilty about what we did tonight.’

  Automatically Beppe said: ‘What do we do now? What about your husband?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know … I’m so confused. I only know I love you. I love you very much.’

  ‘I love you too, Ida.’

  143

  ‘The river’s wide. On the other side a speeding car that leaves a trail of smoke and me. And this green and lovely world, so indifferent, unreal …’ sang Danilo Aprea at the wheel of his Alfa Romeo, going through the storm.

  What a great feeling, to be driving again.

  What a pleasure to hold the steering wheel in your hands and feel the warm blast from the radiator on your feet. The petrol gauge indicated half-full. In the stereo was a cassette of Bruno Lauzi’s greatest hits.

  Why on earth did I ever give up driving?

  He no longer felt cold, his mind seemed to have cleared and his sadness had suddenly vanished, to be replaced by an alcoholic euphoria.

  Danilo turned the radio up higher: ‘… because everything has changed and its arms no longer open to one like me who hungers for something rare and new.’

  ‘The Eagle’ had always been his favourite song.

  He found himself thinking about the trip he’d taken with Teresa in autumn 1995. How often they had listened to that record. And sung along with it.

  Back then he’d had an Autobianchi A112 with a white roof.

  He and Teresa had just got engaged. And they’d decided to go and spend three days at Riccione. How young Teresa had been then. How old would she have been?

&n
bsp; Eighteen, nineteen.

  She was slim. Since then she had put on a bit of weight, but she still had a good figure.

  What a holiday! Three days making love in a room in a small hotel. And they weren’t married, either. They got married soon afterwards. Teresa’s parents hadn’t come to the wedding. They didn’t want their daughter to get married so young, especially not to a man who was out of work.

  ‘But Teresa took no notice of them. She wanted to marry me,’ said Danilo with a proud smile.

  She had kept calm even on the day she’d given birth to Laura. She had told the obstetrician: ‘Let my husband in. I want to hold his hand.’

  ‘My husband,’ said Danilo out loud. And he repeated it: ‘My husband.’

  144

  Why hadn’t he thought of it?

  The ants couldn’t speak for him.

  It had been wrong to make so many of them die for that pointless phone call.

  Rino Zena, imprisoned in his own body, didn’t even know if the ants had really moved his arm, pushed the right key. And now, besides, he couldn’t hear anything. The rain had disappeared. Quite suddenly. And that violet sky, towards the horizon, was covering over with bluish clouds.

  It’s too silent. Perhaps I’ve been buried alive.

  “Every creature on Earth is alone when it dies,” his mother always used to say.

  But she was wrong: when you die the ants are there to keep you company.

  They were standing in straight rows and were looking at him in silence. They only moved their antennae. He could feel billions of little eyes on him.

  Please, little ants, try again. One more phone call, that’s all. Please.

  145

  While Cristiano Zena, with his head under his pillow, tried to rock himself to sleep by moving his backside, some fragments of a dream came up to the surface from the depths of his subconscious and a knot of sadness blocked his throat.

  He couldn’t remember why, but in the dream he was in despair (perhaps because of something he didn’t know how to do) and had decided to kill himself.

  He was in the bathroom of the school gym, though it looked a bit different. In the first place it was a thousand times bigger and secondly it had lots of showers, all of which were spraying out hot water and steam. In the middle of the room was a bath tub, one of those old-fashioned ones with animal-like legs, and Cristiano was in it with the water up to his shoulders.

  He had to commit suicide and he had to be quick – if anyone came in and caught him in the nude he’d look stupid. His classmates would soon be coming. He could hear them in the gym, playing basketball. Voices calling to each other. The ball rebounding from the backboard.

  He was holding in his hand one of those old cut-throat razors, with a square, rusty blade. Slowly, without any fear, he had opened the veins in his wrists, but no blood had come out.

  It’s always like that when you cut yourself, a moment passes and then the blood starts to flow, but this time at least a minute had gone by.

  So Cristiano had inspected the wound and out of the edges some ants had emerged, each with a bit of green leaf in its mouth.

  And then he had woken up.

  He hoped it wasn’t one of those episodic nightmares which start again as soon as you fall sleep.

  The telephone started ringing again.

  So it wasn’t a wrong number …

  ‘What a fucking nuisance!’ He got out of bed, snorting with exasperation, and went out onto the dark landing in his vest and pants. It was freezing cold and all the warmth in his body was immediately dispersed.

  He opened the door of his father’s room and fumbled for the light switch.

  ‘Papa, can’t you he …’

  The bed was empty.

  He’s downstairs.

  If he couldn’t hear the phone, half a metre from his ear, he must be absolutely smashed.

  146

  Danilo Aprea could have gone on driving for ever. How wonderful it would be to leave behind you that thunderstorm and that grey land infested with snakes and scorpions and head south.

  Down to Calabria. To Sicily. And from there further down. To Africa. Further and further down. The deserts. The savannahs. The Nile. The crocodiles. The blacks. The elephants. South Africa. Down to … What was it called? Cape Horn? There he would stop. On the southernmost tip of Africa, looking out in silence at the ocean.

  ‘… rare and new that I’ll never get from you. A moving car is enough to make me ask if I’m alive,’ sang Bruno Lauzi. Danilo started beating the time on the dashboard.

  In South Africa he would make a new start. In those underdeveloped countries all you need is a bit of initiative and you’ll have a thriving business in no time. And he would find a young woman, a woman much younger than him, and have a baby with her.

  Then he would call Teresa. ‘Hi, it’s Danilo, I’m in South Africa, I just wanted to let you know I’m not dead, on the contrary I’m in the best of health and I’ve had a baby with a girl …’ he recited, pushing down the accelerator. The hand of the speedometer reached a hundred and forty km/h. The streetlamps flashed by on either side in a long trail of sodium.

  He turned onto the flyover that led to the bank.

  147

  While the phone kept on ringing, Cristiano Zena went downstairs, cursing his father for a drunken fool.

  It was dark and the television, which was on, spread a pale blue glow over a segment of the room. Inside the screen was a guy with a grey fringe and a big moustache who was drawing graphs.

  The lounger was empty. The blanket screwed up into a heap. The heater off.

  Where is he?

  Running towards the phone, he passed the window just as an electric vein was printed on the dark blue sky, lighting up the highway and the yard as bright as day.

  The van’s not there.

  That was why he wasn’t answering.

  So all his talk had been a load of hot air. ‘I’m not going on the raid … I’m this, I’m that …’ And then he’d gone along anyway. It was strange, though. His father never changed his mind. Maybe he’d just gone out to find another tart.

  Typical! It’s probably him on the phone, the idiot.

  Cristiano clumsily hurdled the folding chair and landed with one foot inside a pizza box while the other hit a bottle of beer and sent it rolling across the floor. A slice of ham got stuck to his heel. He picked up the handset and yelled into the microphone: ‘Hallo! Papa?’

  A clap of thunder deafened him, rattling the windows.

  Cristiano put his finger in his free ear. ‘Hallo? Hallo? Papa, is that you?’

  Silence.

  ‘Hallo? Hallo?’

  Tekken!

  His guts tightened in a spasm of pain and his scrotum shrunk between his legs as fear crept through his veins.

  It was him, Tekken. Without a doubt. He wanted revenge.

  He had waited for his father to go out before coming after him.

  He took a deep breath and growled: ‘Tekken, is that you? I know it’s you! Speak, you bastard! What’s the matter, haven’t you got the guts? Answer me!’

  The rain, quite suddenly, as if the sky had been ripped apart, started beating against the window panes and at the same moment the television went off and Cristiano found himself in the dark.

  Don’t worry. It’s only a power cut.

  ‘Is that you, Tekken? Admit it! It’s you!’ he repeated, without the same conviction as before.

  He peeled the ham off his sole with his finger, squatted down shivering on the sofa and sat there in silence with the receiver pressed to his ear, waiting for the CLICK of Tekken hanging up.

  148

  Rino Zena thought he could hear Cristiano’s voice.

  But it was so far away that it might be only his imagination.

  If only he could speak to him. If the ants had succeeded in moving his arm, perhaps they could move his lips, his jaws and his tongue and make him speak.

  No, that was too difficult for insect
s.

  The problem now was those big black clouds on the horizon which were covering the violet sky and which were bringing darkness back over him, the desert of stones and the ants.

  Yes, he must try.

  149

  Danilo Aprea came off the flyover and turned down Via Enrico Fermi, singing at the top of his voice: ‘And its arms no longer open to one like me who hungers for something rare and new that I’ll never get from you …’

  The bank was there. Right in front of the car.

  Danilo kissed the Padre Pio medallion, sat back in his seat and aimed straight at the cash machine.

  ‘… A moving car is enough to make me ask if I’m alive …’ he yelled along with Bruno Lauzi.

  The right wheel hit the kerb at a hundred and sixty kilometres an hour and broke away from the axle and the car capsized and rolled over and over and crashed into an enormous concrete flowerpot which had been put there by the newly elected local council to stop cars entering what they called the historic centre.

  Danilo dived through the windscreen, flew over the flowerpot and landed face-first on a bicycle rack.

  He lay there with his arms outspread, but then slowly, as if he had been resuscitated, he got up and started staggering about in the middle of the little pedestrian precinct.

  Where his face had been there was a mask of raw flesh and glass. With his only working eye he saw a greenish glow.

  The bank.

  I hit it.

  He saw the cash machine spewing out money like a slot machine gone mad. But instead of coins there were green banknotes as big as hearth rugs.

  I’m rich.

  He knelt down to pick them up and spat out a lump of blood, mucous and teeth.

  I don’t believe it. I’m dying …

  If he had been capable of laughing he would have.

  How absurd life is …

  If he had remembered to fasten his seat belt he wouldn’t have dived through the windscreen and perhaps he would have lived, but now Laura … Laura was …