The Crossroads

  Alessio looked at the house. At least that had been spared. The shutters of his bedroom window were down.

  She’s asleep.

  Certainly his wife was still asleep, doped up on sleeping tablets and with earplugs in her ears. She hadn’t noticed a thing.

  But surely Fabiana must have heard it.

  196

  Quattro Formaggi, on the saddle of the Boxer, was climbing back up round the hairpin bends of the San Rocco woods.

  A fire burned in his shoulder. Every rut that he crossed was agony. But that, too, was a sign that God was with him.

  Just like the holes in Padre Pio’s hands.

  Through his helmet he could hear the sparrows twittering away merrily.

  The sun, which had pushed its way between the clouds, was threading its rays through the vegetation, dappling the ground with patches of light. On the branches the wet leaves glittered like diamonds. During the night the rain had dug streams in the earth which were still pouring mud onto the road.

  Quattro Formaggi had no plan for taking the girl’s body home. He couldn’t just pick up the corpse and load it onto the scooter. But God would tell him what to do.

  He was excited. Soon he would see Ramona again and be able to touch her and have a better look at her. He feared that the blow he had given her with the stone might have disfigured her. But he would find a remedy for that too.

  He stopped in the layby and dismounted from the scooter. He took off his crash helmet. And he filled his lungs with that fresh, damp air.

  A car passed …

  Look out!

  … and he turned away so that he couldn’t be recognized.

  If the police caught him he would be sent to prison for the rest of his days. The idea terrified him. There were a lot of bad people in there. He reached the edge of the road and was about to put his foot on the earth, but he stopped with his leg suspended in mid-air.

  Something wasn’t right.

  The van … Where’s the van?

  He turned back in bewilderment and looked around. This was the place … He was sure of it.

  He felt his skin freeze and an icy hand grab his scrotum.

  He plunged into the woods. He went a dozen metres and started thumping himself on the leg. He turned round and round in circles, incredulous.

  Rino’s body wasn’t there, nor was Ramona’s.

  Where are they?

  In panic he turned back, then he ran forward …

  Maybe they’re a bit further on.

  Pushing his way through the brambles, he began to circle round, to step over rotten tree trunks, to climb over rocks, to blunder wildly about in the wood, as everything blurred into patches of light and shade.

  No … You can’t do this to me … You can’t.

  197

  At the wheel of his Puma, Beppe Trecca watched the highway unroll between the flooded fields like a strip of liquorice. He moved up behind an HGV transporting some huge metal pipes. He turned to look at Cristiano Zena, who was sleeping beside him with his hood over his head.

  Poor kid.

  Trecca had found him at the hospital, disorientated and apathetic, as if his father was already dead. He could hardly walk in a straight line and had had to be helped down the stairs. As soon as he had got into the car he had fallen asleep.

  The doctor had explained to the social worker that Rino Zena was in a critical condition and that it was impossible to predict how and when he would come out of the coma. But even if he woke up soon, and without any damage, he would still have to undergo a period of rehabilitation to complete his recovery.

  It’ll be six months at least. And who’s going to look after this poor little bastard?

  He flicked the indicator and overtook the lorry.

  Cristiano didn’t even have a mother, and there was no question of those crazy friends of Rino’s being able to look after him.

  Beppe knew he ought to call the juvenile magistrate to put him in the picture. But he knew what the response would be – to dispatch Cristiano immediately to a foster-family or a care home.

  I can wait a couple of days. Till we see what happens to Rino. That way Cristiano will be able to be near his father.

  Beppe could go and stay at their house.

  His eyes lit up.

  I’m a genius! Ida will never find me there.

  In the background the radio was playing a song that he knew. He turned up the volume. A hoarse voice sang: ‘Maybe tomorrow I’ll find my way home …’

  Maybe tomorrow I’ll find my way home.

  Yes, maybe he would.

  198

  Or was it possible that he had dreamed it all? And that Ramona had never existed? Or only existed in films?

  But if that was so, why did he have those pains, those bruises, that wound in his shoulder?

  Why were Rino and Ramona’s bodies no longer there?

  Someone’s stolen them.

  ‘What use are they to you, you bastards? Tell me. What use are they to you?’ Quattro Formaggi, on his knees, wept and pummelled the ground. Then, like an actress in a third-rate soap opera, he raised his head towards the tangle of black branches that imprisoned the sky and spoke to the Eternal Father: ‘Where have you put them? Tell me. Please … At least tell me if it was real. You can’t do this to me … It was you who helped me.’ His head dropped down and he started sobbing, ‘It’s not fair … It’s not fair …’

  (You’ve got the ring.)

  He saw himself slipping the silver skull ring off Ramona’s finger, and then…

  I swallowed it. I went back home and I swallowed it.

  He put his hand on his stomach. It was inside there. He could feel it burning inside him like red-hot embers.

  (Go home.)

  He hobbled out of the woods as fast as he could, picked up the Boxer and rode off in a cloud of smoke.

  If only he had been a bit calmer, if only he had stopped to think, he would have remembered that Fabiana Ponticelli’s scooter was lying behind the electricity hut.

  199

  At the police station an officer explained to Alessio Ponticelli that before you could register a person as missing at least twenty-four hours had to pass. Especially if it was a teenager.

  Every year at least three thousand investigations into missing minors are initiated, but eighty per cent of them end after a few hours with the child returning home.

  The officer asked him a lot of questions: if there were problems in the family, if the girl had a boyfriend, if she hung about with any strange people, if she had ever expressed a desire to travel, if she was rebellious, if she took drugs and if she had ever run away from home before.

  To all these questions Alessio Ponticelli replied no, no, and again no.

  The police had recently acquired the services of a support psychologist, who was extremely useful in such cases, and if he wished …

  Alessio Ponticelli dashed out of the police station and began to retrace the route from Esmeralda Guerra’s house to Giardino Fiorito.

  First he went the long way round, following the bypass. He drove at twenty kilometres an hour, cursing and swearing and repeating all the while: ‘Why did I ever buy her the scooter? It’s all my fault. She hadn’t even passed her exams!’ Then, as if he was talking to his wife: ‘It’s all your fault for insisting that we buy it for her …’

  He couldn’t believe the stupid woman had stuffed herself with tranquillizers and gone to bed without waiting for Fabiana to come home. With all those stories on the news about Moroccans and Albanians raping girls on every street corner. Not to mention the kidnappings.

  ‘You’ll pay for this, so help me God …’ He had left his wife at home in case there was a phone call.

  He decided to try the road through the San Rocco woods. Though it was unthinkable that his daughter would have gone that way. He had told her a thousand times not to.

  He drove up the hill, round the hairpin bends. He went through the woods and out the other side. But then he d
ecided to turn back. He parked the BMW in a layby where there was an electricity hut and got out of the car.

  For the rest of his days Alessio Ponticelli wondered what had made him stop in that precise spot, but could never find an answer. According to some American research, certain animals can smell pain. Pain has a distinctive odour, strong and pungent, like the pheromones of insects. A stench which sticks to things for a very long time. And perhaps he, somehow, had smelled the pain that his daughter had felt before she perished.

  At all events, when Alessio Ponticelli saw his daughter’s scooter lying on the ground behind the electricity hut, something inside him withered and died. And he knew for certain that Fabiana was no longer of this world.

  He listened to the gasps of his own irregular breathing. The universe broke up into a series of disconnected thoughts, and, descending over them, the grief that would accompany him, like a faithful dog, for the rest of his life.

  200

  Quattro Formaggi sat on the toilet and, with a series of thunderclaps and spurts, unleashed a spray of fetid diarrhoea. Then, with pain and satisfaction, he felt something as hard as a stone pass through his rectum.

  There it is!

  He started squeezing and gasping as if he was in labour, and at last pushed out something that fell with a TING on the porcelain.

  He got up and looked into the bowl.

  The sides were encrusted with limescale and a dark mess. Below, the pitch-black sludge reflected his pale face.

  The light bulb that hung naked from the ceiling, behind him, created a luminous halo around his head like that of a saint in a religious painting.

  He dipped his hand into his shit and took it out again clenched into a fist. He held it under the tap and finally opened his fingers.

  A big silver skull ring lay in the middle of his palm. Triumphantly he began to rinse it. ‘There it is. You see? I wasn’t mistaken, was I? I did kill her, and this is the proof.’

  He smiled, opened his mouth and swallowed it again.

  Now he must find out what had happened to the bodies of the little blonde and Rino.

  201

  “I could ask your father myself, you know. Do you think I’m scared? I wouldn’t think twice about it.” So Fabiana had said to him in the shopping mall.

  That had been on Saturday. In the evening he and Rino had gone looking for Tekken and had then returned home. On Sunday they had been together all day.

  There was no time for them to meet and get to know each other.

  “… I wouldn’t think twice about it.”

  If she wouldn’t think twice, it was because she already knew him, Cristiano reasoned.

  They had gone to screw in the woods because they didn’t want to be seen.

  In the rain? At that time of night?

  And then he’d had the haemorrhage and had gone into a coma. And she …

  Cristiano rubbed his feet against each other. The cold that he felt in his bones wouldn’t go away despite the boiling hot shower and the layer of blankets under which he was buried.

  Trecca had stationed himself downstairs and was watching the television with the volume turned right up. The broken shutter banged in the wind and the alarm clock kept winking. Everything had changed, yet that damned clock continued to show the time and that shutter kept banging, as though nothing had happened.

  Cristiano put his head under the pillow.

  And my father hit her on the head with the stone.

  He just couldn’t understand why.

  Because she told him she was going to tell everyone about it – that he was screwing her. She’s under age. They quarrelled and he lost his temper and killed her.

  No, that was bullshit. It wasn’t possible.

  There must be another reason.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said, hugging his legs. ‘Now I must sleep. I mustn’t think about it.’

  He closed his eyes and remembered a book he had found lying on the bench in the bus shelter, when he was ten years old. It was dog-eared and the pages were yellowed, as if it had been read and re-read a million times. The title was printed in red letters in the centre of a nondescript grey cover: Mary Rebels.

  The first page was occupied by a black-and-white illustration. In the middle was a little girl with big round glasses, plaits and an apron below which protruded two legs as thin as twigs. On the right a portly priest with slicked-back hair, a double chin and a sharp-edged ruler in his hand, on the left a plump woman with her hair tied back in a bun and an unpleasant turned-up nose. The story was about Mary, the little girl in glasses, who was an orphan (her rich parents had been killed in a railway accident) and lived in an immense English house (she had to use a bicycle to get from the kitchen to her bedroom) with the unpleasant woman and the portly priest, who acted as her tutor and rapped her on the knuckles whenever she gave a wrong answer. The two of them stole all the money from her inheritance and were now the owners of the house, which was in a ramshackle state and had a leaky roof. Mary was alone, without even a dog for a friend. Whenever the two of them left her any time to herself, she would go and explore the garden, which had turned into a jungle.

  One day she was playing in a little temple, overgrown with wild roses and ivy, which stood on an island in the middle of a small dark lake. She saw something moving. A mouse, she thought. She went closer and saw two little men and a tiny woman grazing a cow which was two centimetres high.

  They were Lilliputians who had been brought to England by a certain Gulliver when he had returned from his travels to unknown lands. They had managed to escape and lived in that little temple in the middle of the pond.

  Mary caught one and put him in a shoebox. And in time she became his friend.

  It was a wonderful book. Cristiano kept it hidden in a cupboard. How he would have loved to have a Lilliputian to talk to at that moment; he would have carried him in his jacket pocket …

  Rino’s mobile phone started ringing.

  Cristiano, who had almost dropped off to sleep, jumped.

  Who was it?

  (This is Dr Brolli. I’m sorry to tell you your father has died.)

  He got out of bed and took the mobile out of his trouser pocket. ‘Who is it?’ Silence. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Rino …’

  ‘Quattro Formaggi! Where have you been? You never answered your phone! What happened to you? I’ve been worried.’

  ‘Cristiano?’

  ‘Why didn’t you answer? I called you a million times. What have you been doing?’

  ‘I haven’t been doing anything.’

  ‘But what about last night? What happened?’

  ‘I was ill.’

  Cristiano lowered his voice. ‘And what about the bank raid? Did you do it?’

  ‘No, not me. I stayed at home … Is Rino there?’

  He must break it to him gently. Rino was his only real friend. ‘Papa’s not very well. He had a haemorrhage in the head.’

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘Fairly. But he should be better soon.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  Cristiano was about to tell him the whole story when he remembered that you must never talk over the phone. Someone might be listening. ‘Last night. I was asleep and this thing happened and he went into a coma. Now he’s in the hospital at San Rocco.’

  Quattro Formaggi said nothing.

  ‘Hey, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice broke with emotion. ‘How is he now?’

  He repeated: ‘He’s in a coma. It’s as if he was asleep, but he can’t wake up.’

  ‘And when will it end?’

  ‘The doctor says he doesn’t know. Maybe in a week, maybe in two years … Maybe he’ll die.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘For the moment I’m going to stay here.’ Cristiano lowered his voice to a whisper: ‘Trecca’s here! He’s moved in.’

  ‘Trecca? The social worker?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been very kind
. He said he’s going to stay for a week. But you and I can still meet.’

  ‘Listen, is it possible to go and see Rino?’

  ‘Yes. Only at certain times, though. Why don’t you come round here? We could go and see him together.’

  ‘I can’t …‘

  ‘Oh, go on.’ He wanted to say that he needed him, but as usual he kept it to himself.

  ‘I’m not well, Cri. How about tomorrow?’

  ‘All right. I won’t be going to school for the next few days anyway.’

  ‘But how … how did you find out about Rino last night?’

  ‘Oh, I just went into his bedroom and found him in a coma.’

  A pause, then: ‘I see. Okay. Bye, then.’

  ‘See you tomorrow?’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Cristiano was about to hang up, but he couldn’t restrain himself. ‘Quattro? Quattro Formaggi?’

  ‘Yes? What’s up?’

  ‘Listen, I know that if papa doesn’t wake up immediately they’re going to send me to a home. They’ll never let me stay here on my own. I was wondering …’ He hesitated. ‘… could I come and stay at your place? I know you never want to let anyone in there … But I’d be good, if you could just give me a corner I could sleep there. You know I’m not any trouble. Just till papa …’

  ‘I don’t think so. You know what they think about me.’

  A coil of pain wrapped around Cristiano’s windpipe. ‘Yes, I know. They’re bastards. You’re not crazy. You’re the best person in the world. Could I stay with Danilo, then?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  ‘I’ve called him lots of times but he doesn’t reply, either on his mobile or at home. Have you spoken to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh well. See you tomorrow, then.’

  I’ve got so many things to tell you.

  ‘See you tomorrow.’