The Crossroads

  He couldn’t even look at him, he was so terrified. This guy sitting beside him had come back, like Lazarus, from the realms of the dead.

  Beppe was so shaken that he couldn’t even feel happy.

  (You asked for a miracle and the miracle happened.)

  But how can it be? A miracle? Happening to me? What sense does it make? Why has God helped a pathetic little jerk like me?

  (The will of Our Lord is inscrutable.)

  How often he had uttered this platitude to get himself out of difficult situations. Now he understood its meaning to the full.

  The social worker plucked up courage and, without turning, managed to stammer out: ‘How are you feeling?’

  The man massaged his neck. ‘My head hurts a bit and I’ve got a pain here, in my side. I must have fallen over. I don’t know what happened, I can’t remember anything …’ He was confused. ‘I was about to run across the road and then everything went blank. I woke up on the ground with your car nearby. Thank you, friend.’

  Beppe opened his eyes wide. ‘What for?’

  ‘For stopping to help me.’

  He doesn’t even realize that I knocked him down.

  A sense of wellbeing relaxed his abdominal muscles and the social worker knew that God was with him and that he might have been too hard on himself.

  He glanced at the African. He didn’t seem to be badly hurt. ‘Would you like me to take you to hospital?’

  The African shook his head and became as agitated as if Beppe had suggested calling in at the local branch of the Northern League. ‘No! No! I’m fine. It’s nothing. Could you drop me at the next crossroads, please?’

  He hasn’t got a residence permit.

  ‘Perhaps you ought to see a doctor.’

  ‘It’s nothing, friend.’

  ‘May I at least ask you what your name is?’

  The black man seemed to hesitate for a moment about whether to tell him or not, but then said: ‘Antoine. My name’s Antoine.’ He pointed to the road. ‘Here, drop me here, please. This is fine. This is where I wanted to get to.’

  Beppe stopped the car and looked around. There was a crossroads with a winking traffic light, and, all around, a wasteland.

  At the end of the plain, beyond the factories and the electricity pylons, a faint glow had stolen a piece of sky from the night.

  ‘Here? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, yes. This is fine, friend. Stop here. Thank you very much.’ Antoine opened the car door and was about to get out when he stopped and stared at him. Beppe saw shining in those big brown eyes the mystery of the Trinity. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  Beppe Trecca gulped. ‘Yes, of course.’

  The African opened his rucksack, took out a bunch of socks made of a spongy white material and held them out to him. ‘Do you want them, friend? They’re pure cotton. A hundred per cent. I’ll give you a good price. Five euros. Only five euros.’

  177

  Cristiano Zena, with his chest right up against the steering wheel, was driving the van downhill round the hairpin bends.

  The Ducato’s engine, in second gear, was howling.

  Cristiano knew that he ought to change gear, but until the bends finished he wasn’t going to take that risk.

  Dawn had come at last and the rain had eased off a bit. The headlights projected two ovals onto the road, which was strewn with earth and puddles and with branches that brushed against the underside of the Ducato.

  Cristiano glanced back. Lying on the floor, side by side, were Rino Zena and the corpse of Fabiana Ponticelli.

  Fabiana’s body was swarming with evidence. He was an expert on these things, he had seen loads of TV detective films, and it’s well known that if you look under the victim’s fingernails you find the skin of the …

  There was a sort of CLICK in Cristiano’s mind, a momentary blackout.

  … and there were bound to be millions of other clues, and it wouldn’t take the police five minutes to find out …

  (What?)

  Nothing.

  178

  Beppe Trecca, with three packets of socks in his hand, entered his studio flat. He undressed in silence and took a boiling hot shower, his mind a total blank. He put on his pyjamas and lowered the shutters. Outside the rain had stopped and the day had taken possession of the world. The sparrows on the cypresses were timidly beginning to chirp, as if to say: ‘Wasn’t that a terrible night? It’s over and life can start again.’

  Beppe stuffed his earplugs into his ears and slipped under the blankets.

  179

  Cristiano Zena turned off the woodland road and found himself just outside Varrano.

  He had almost made it. He had to drive through the village and take the highway. He turned down a wide, tree-lined avenue and decided that it was time to change up. He glanced at the lever of the worn-out gears. He grasped it and was about to go into third when he heard his father’s dark voice saying:

  (The clutch. Are you going to push that bloody clutch or aren’t you?)

  He pressed down the pedal and got into third at the first attempt.

  When he looked outside again he noticed that at the end of the avenue there was a glow which tinged the tops of the plane trees blue and orange.

  The police!

  His heart missed a beat and he instinctively slammed on the brakes. The van came to an abrupt halt with a screech of brakes and then started moving forward in fits and starts for ten metres before stalling in the middle of the road.

  Cristiano clung to the steering wheel without breathing. Then he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth.

  What now?

  He opened his eyes again and saw some men in phosphorescent yellow uniforms stretching long tapes from one side of the avenue to the other. Right beside them was a police car and a lorry with flashing orange lights.

  A policeman came towards him, waving his signalling disc.

  Cristiano tried to swallow, but couldn’t. He kept his head down, because he didn’t want the policeman to see how young he was.

  Quick!

  He turned the key and the Ducato started lurching forward, pushed by the starter.

  The policeman had stopped fifty metres away and was telling him to turn back.

  Now then …

  (Push down that bloody clutch!)

  He puffed out his cheeks in exasperation, stretched out his leg and with the tip of his toe pressed down the pedal.

  Good.

  (Now put it into neutral. It’s the middle one.)

  After several attempts he decided that he had found neutral. He turned the key again and this time the engine fired. He selected first gear and gradually released the clutch. The van moved, he pulled the wheel round and turned back.

  On the highway he passed long articulated lorries with foreign number plates advancing one behind the other like a caravan of elephants. The sky had turned dark grey and to the east a thin strip of light was beginning to brighten the plain. The outline of the house seemed to emerge like a black bunker from the mist that enveloped the fields and the road.

  He parked the van, switched off the engine and got out. He opened the rear doors.

  His father had fallen on top of Fabiana’s corpse and under the bicycle. His head lay in the middle of the remains of the barbecue and a Peroni beer label had got stuck to his cheek.

  Cristiano climbed in and checked to see if his heart was still beating. He was alive. He got hold of his feet and pulled him out of the van, taking care not to knock his head against anything. He slid him down into the wheelbarrow again. Then he closed the doors and wheeled him towards the house, but when he reached the door he remembered that he didn’t have the keys. He found them in one of Rino’s trouser pockets. He opened the door.

  After several attempts he managed to hoist him onto his shoulders and slowly, bending under sixty-eight kilos, he went up the stairs. Exhausted, without a trace of strength left, he laid his father on the bed.

  Now he had to undress
him, but that was something he knew how to do. How many hundreds of times in the past had his father had to be put to bed pissed out of his mind?

  180

  If there was one thing Dr Furlan was crazy about it was ziti alla genovese.

  Put three kilos of onions into a large saucepan, add celery, carrots and a piece of lean veal and simmer all day over a low flame.

  The onion gradually turns into a dark, delicious-smelling sauce, which you pour over the ziti together with a generous handful of grated parmesan and a few leaves of basil.

  Fantastic.

  Dr Furlan’s wife made it extra tasty by adding a little bacon fat. And she cooked it for so long that nothing was left of the veal but the memory.

  The problem was that Andrea Furlan, after losing the basketball final at the club, had returned home at midnight howling with hunger, had opened the fridge and wolfed down half a casserole of the stuff without even heating it up, and then, not content with that, had added three slices of a pie filled with endives, olives and capers, and two sausages.

  In that state he had collapsed into bed. He had woken up three hours later for his shift in the ambulance.

  Now, as he sat between Paolo Ristori, the driver, and nurse Sperti, he could feel the onions and sausages trying to climb their way back up his digestive system. He felt terribly sick and his stomach was as tight as a basketball.

  What he would really have liked to do was get into the back and take a five-minute nap on the stretcher while those two fools bickered with each other.

  With a disgusted grimace on his face, Furlan observed Ristori.

  The driver was chewing gum and flashing his lights obsessively at a lorry full of pigs which wouldn’t get out of the outside lane. He thought he was Michael Schumacher. On the pretext that he had to get around quickly he drove like a maniac.

  ‘So anyway he crapped in his pants …’ said Michela Sperti, a blonde girl muffled up in her orange uniform. Underneath her jump-suit (Paolo had seen her once in a bikini at the local swimming pool and had had a shock) she was a mass of muscles so precise and well-defined they looked like so many fishes piled up one on top of the other. Her enthusiasm for body-building had cost her her tits and her menstrual cycle.

  Ristori gave her a quick glance. ‘Are you telling me your boyfriend crapped in his pants during the preliminary rounds of Mr Olympia?’

  ‘Yes. While he was on the platform doing the poses.’

  ‘No … please …’ stammered Andrea, and putting his hand in front of his mouth he gave an onion-flavoured belch that almost knocked him out.

  ‘Well, if you stuff yourself with Guttalax three hours before the competition …’ Michela started biting her fingernails.

  ‘Why the hell did he do that?’ asked Ristori.

  ‘He was three hundred grams overweight. He would have been excluded from his category. The idiot had drunk half a bottle of Ferrarelle mineral water that morning. He went to the sauna, he sweated like a pig, but it was no good, he didn’t lose half a gram. So he realised his intestine must be full. And he purged himself, but it took effect just when he was doing a front double bicep.’

  Furlan saw the house and pointed to it: ‘Slow down! Slow down! This is the place. Stop.’

  ‘Okay, boss.’ Ristori flicked the indicator and swerved abruptly, entering the front yard of the Zenas’ house at full speed, skidding on the gravel and stopping half a metre short of a Ducato van.

  Michela rounded on him furiously. ‘You bastard! The next time you do a sudden turn like that I swear I’ll punch you on the nose.’

  ‘Ooh! Who are you, then? Shanna the She-Devil?’

  Furlan took his first-aid case and got out of the ambulance. The fresh air made him immediately feel better. He went towards the front entrance of the house. The door was open.

  Ristori with the stretcher and Sperti with the oxygen cylinder followed him into the house, shoving each other aside like two teenagers.

  The doctor found himself in a large room. A table covered with beer cans. Some white plastic chairs.

  What a dump.

  In the half-light he could just make out a figure sitting on a folding chair.

  Furlan went over and saw that it was a tall, thin, stork-like boy who was looking at them blankly. He wore a long orange bathrobe and a pair of baggy underpants. He was pale and had dark rings around his swollen, bloodshot eyes. When he saw them enter he did nothing but open his mouth.

  He’s either high or in shock.

  ‘Was it you who called 118?’ Ristori asked the boy.

  He nodded and pointed to the stairs.

  ‘You look a bit strange. Are you all right?’ nurse Sperti asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ the boy said, as if in slow motion.

  Furlan looked around. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ said the boy.

  Furlan dashed up and in the first room found a shaven-headed man covered in tattoos lying on a mattress. He was squeezed into a pair of flannel pyjamas with blue and white stripes.

  As he opened his case Furlan took a quick glance around the room. Heaps of dirty washing. Shoes. Big boxes. Hanging on one wall was a large flag with a black swastika.

  He stopped himself flying into a rage. This wasn’t the first and it wouldn’t be the last bloody Nazi skinhead he’d happened to help while doing this job. How I hate these bastards …

  He bent over and grasped the man’s wrist. ‘Sir? Sir? Sir, can you hear me?’

  No response.

  Furlan got out his stethoscope. The heart was beating. And the rhythm was regular. He took a pencil out of his jacket pocket and pricked the guy’s forearm with the point.

  The man didn’t show any reaction.

  He turned towards the boy, who was leaning against the doorpost, gazing at him listlessly.

  ‘Who is he? Your father?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘How long has he been in this state?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I woke up and found him like that.’

  ‘What did he do last night?’

  ‘Nothing. He went to bed.’

  ‘Was he drinking? There are a lot of beer cans here.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he take drugs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please tell me the truth. Does he take drugs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he take any medicine?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Is he suffering from anything? Illnesses?’

  ‘No …’ Cristiano hesitated, then added: ‘Headaches.’

  ‘Does he take anything for them?’

  ‘No.’

  Furlan couldn’t make up his mind whether the boy was lying.

  It’s not your problem, he said to himself, as he always did in such cases.

  The doctor said to Ristori, pointing to the boy: ‘Take him outside, please.’

  He untied his tunic. Then he lifted the man’s eyelids and with the help of his torch examined his pupils. One was dilated, the other contracted.

  Ten to one a brain haemorrhage.

  The Nazi, in his misfortune, was lucky: the Sacred Heart Hospital in San Rocco had opened a new intensive care unit barely a year earlier and the guy might even live to tell the tale.

  ‘Let’s ventilate him, pack him up and deliver him,’ he said to nurse Sperti, who quickly put the endotracheal tube down the patient’s throat. He in the meantime cannulated his forearm.

  They put him on the stretcher.

  And carried him away.

  181

  In later years Cristiano Zena remembered the moment when they carried his father away on a stretcher as the one that changed his life.

  More than when he had pedalled through the rain believing that the turning for San Rocco had been closed off, more than when he had found his father lying dead in the mud, more than when he had seen Fabiana Ponticelli’s corpse.

  The world changed and his life became more important, worthy
of having its story told, when he saw old baldy’s head disappear into the ambulance.

  AFTER

  They’ve entered your name in a big game.

  Edoardo Bennato, ‘Quando sarai grande’

  Monday

  182

  In the early hours of the morning the storm which had raged all night over the plain moved out to sea, where it worked off what was left of its anger by sinking a couple of fishing boats and then, tired and enfeebled, died off the Balkan coast.

  The eight o’clock television news barely mentioned the storm and the fact that the Forgese was in spate, because during the night a well-known TV presenter had been kidnapped on the outskirts of Turin.

  A watery sun spread its rays over the grey, sodden countryside, and the inhabitants of the plain, like crabs after the passing of the backwash, stuck their heads out of the holes where they had taken shelter and, like little accountants, began to assess the damage.

  Trees and billboards blown down. A few old farmhouses stripped of their roofs. Landslides. Flooded roads.

  The habitués of the Café Rouge et Noir thronged round the marble counter and looked at the glass display where the famous croissants filled with white chocolate were kept. They were there. And if the croissants were there it meant that life was going on.

  The front page of the local paper was occupied by a photograph of the waterlogged fields taken from a helicopter. The Forgese had broken its banks a few kilometres upstream of Murelle and had overflowed, swamping factories and farms. In one vineyard a group of Albanians sleeping in a cellar had narrowly escaped drowning. A boy in a canoe had rescued an entire family.

  Luckily nobody had been hurt apart from one Danilo Aprea, forty-five years old, who, either through drunkenness or through falling asleep at the wheel, had lost control of his car and crashed at high speed into a wall in Via Enrico Fermi, Varrano, and been killed.

  183

  Professor Brolli was bent over a table in the bar of the Sacred Heart Hospital, quietly drinking a cappuccino and watching the pale sun melt like a knob of butter in the centre of the grey sky.