The Crossroads

  235

  Cristiano Zena was standing in the middle of the sitting room. Trecca was waiting for him outside.

  Perhaps he would never see this house again. He looked at the lounger where Rino always lay. He sat down on it.

  He had always loathed this unfinished house beside the highway, but the idea of leaving it made him feel desperately sad. He had been born here. He looked around for something, a keepsake to take with him, but nothing seemed suitable.

  ‘Cristiano! Come on. We’re late.’ Trecca’s voice outside.

  ‘Just a minute, I’m coming!’

  Then Cristiano saw, dumped in a corner, the threadbare blanket that his father liked to sleep under. He picked it up, sniffed it and put it in his rucksack. Then he went out, slamming the door behind him.

  Outside, the sun had only just risen from the horizon, but it was already obvious that a warm, cloudless day was in prospect. The air was transparent and a light wind blew among the foliage of the trees.

  ‘What have you got in that rucksack?’ Beppe Trecca asked Cristiano, putting the key into the Puma.

  ‘Clothes.’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Yes, some of my father’s clothes for Quattro Formaggi. When we get to Varrano I’ll take them to him, then I’ll join you in church.’

  They got into the car.

  The social worker started up the engine and fastened his safety belt. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ll go to the funeral first. They’ve set aside an area of the church for the students. They’re expecting you. Then we must go and see the magistrate and we can take him the clothes after that.’

  Cristiano gave a forced laugh. ‘Me? Who’s expecting me?’

  ‘Your teachers, your schoolmates …’

  The car turned onto the highway.

  Cristiano put his feet up on the dashboard. ‘What are you talking about? They don’t give a shit about me.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I’ve talked to your Italian teacher and told her what happened to your father. She’s very sad and she hopes you’ll soon be back at school.’

  Cristiano shook his head, smiling. ‘The bitch … Aren’t people just incredible!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Cristiano opened the window and then closed it again. ‘Oh, never mind … What’s the point? You don’t understand these things …’ But then he went on: ‘What did she say exactly? Tell me, come on.’

  ‘That she was very sorry and that she hoped you would soon be back at school.’

  ‘That’s rich, when she’s always telling me the best thing I can do is to leave school as soon as possible! Why does she want me to go back, then? I don’t understand. And do you know what she said about my father, in front of the whole class? Shall I tell you? She said he’s a good-for-nothing. Who the fuck is she to say my father’s a good-for-nothing? Does she know him? Are they friends? I don’t think so. She’s a good-for-nothing herself. The bitch. How much effort do you think it takes to say on the phone: “I’m terribly sorry, I hope he’ll soon be back at school?” None at all. Zero. Zilch. The effort of moving your lips. I can just imagine how sorry she is that my father’s in a coma … I bet she’s crying her eyes out all day long. That cow’s just hoping he’ll die. But she’s going to be disappointed, because my father’s going to wake up …! I don’t want to go to this bloody funeral.’

  The social worker flicked the indicator and stopped in an emergency layby, then he looked at Cristiano for a long while before speaking. ‘Look, I don’t understand this. Fabiana was a friend of yours.’

  ‘In the first place, who told you Fabiana Ponticelli was a friend of mine? I hardly knew her. Friendship is something else. In the second place, the only people at that funeral will be the ones who go there to be seen, so that everyone will see how good they are. Pretending to cry. It’s all phoney. Nobody gives a shit about Fabiana Ponticelli. Don’t you realise that?’

  ‘Listen, if your father dies will you be sorry?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that? Of course I will.’

  ‘And will Quattro Formaggi be sorry?’

  ‘Of course he will.’

  ‘And if Danilo was alive, wouldn’t he be sorry?’

  ‘Of course he would.’

  ‘What about me? Wouldn’t I be sorry?’

  Cristiano would have liked to say no, but he didn’t have the heart. ‘Yes … I think you would.’

  ‘And won’t Fabiana’s parents be sorry that their daughter has been beaten up, raped and murdered? Don’t you think they’ll be sorry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And her little brother, her relatives, her friends, and anyone who has a heart, won’t they be upset that an innocent little girl whose only mistake was to be late going home was killed like an animal in a slaughterhouse?’

  Cristiano said nothing.

  ‘You’ve got your father vegetating in a hospital bed. Your friend Danilo is dead because he got drunk and crashed into a wall. You should be able to understand what it means to suffer and to be compassionate. Do you know what compassion is? To hear you talk I wouldn’t have thought so. You hate everybody. You’re so full of anger you’re bursting. Cristiano, have you got a heart at all?’

  ‘No. I’ve lost it …’ was all he could say.

  236

  The voices of the television kept pounding away at the Carrion Man’s feverish brain. An incomprehensible mixture of music, news bulletins, recipes, commercials. But in the middle of this jumble of sounds one sentence succeeded in carving itself out some space and becoming intelligible. ‘Now we are going to discuss the terrible murder in the San Rocco woods with Professor Gianni Calcaterra, the distinguished criminologist and presenter of the show Crime and Punishment.’

  The Carrion Man slowly turned his head towards the television, like a laboratory monkey on opium. He screwed up his eyes and made a great effort to concentrate.

  The screen showed two men sitting on white armchairs. One of them, a skinny man, he knew: he was the guy who appeared on Channel One every morning. The other was a fat man with a goatee beard and long white hair who looked a bit like Danilo. He wore a grey pinstriped suit and had an unlit pipe in his mouth.

  ‘Well, Professor Calcaterra, what impression have you formed of the murderer or murderers of poor Fabiana? By the way, in your opinion, to judge from the first reconstructions, was the murder committed by one person or by more than one?’

  The professor looked thoroughly pissed off, as though he had been dragged onto the show by force. ‘I’d like to make it clear that given the small amount of evidence in my possession what I say has no scientific value, but is a mere conjecture made in order to help the public understand.’

  ‘Absolutely. We’d like to stress that what the professor says has no scientific value.’

  Professor Calcaterra grasped his pipe by the bowl and made a disgusted face, as if he’d just eaten a still-warm turd. ‘The first thing to say is that rape is always the result of a man’s problematic relationship with his own sexuality.’

  The Carrion Man was convinced by now that this guy was Danilo pretending to be Professor Calcaterra. If it wasn’t him it must be a close relative.

  ‘Rape arises from a feeling of impotence and inadequacy with respect to the world in general and the female universe in particular. It is likely, in the case of Fabiana Ponticelli, that the rapist killed the girl because he failed to get satisfaction during the rape …’

  Calcaterra was interrupted by the presenter: ‘What you say is really very, very interesting, professor, and certainly adds new perspectives to the understanding of this terrible murder which has shocked the whole of Italy. It’s a pity that we don’t have much time for talking about it. One last question, professor. Do you have any new information on the case?’

  ‘The search for the murderers of Fabiana Ponticelli is already well advanced and the investigating magistrates and the police, though they are not prepared to say so officially, seem moderately opti
mistic about the possibility of finding the culprits in a very short time. Somebody knows and will talk.’

  Darkness fell on the Carrion Man and a new, immense terror, such as he had never known until that moment, took possession of him. His brain was emptied of all thought and even the voices suddenly stopped.

  He sat slumped in the armchair, panting and staring at the ceiling.

  Slowly there emerged from the darkness a thought, a name.

  Rino.

  Rino Zena.

  He was the only person who could incriminate him. He was the somebody who knew and who would talk. He saw Rino’s arm rising up and pointing at him.

  But he must be dead by now. The Carrion Man had seen death hovering near him.

  But supposing death had come there for somebody else? A lot of people die every day in a hospital.

  He stood up and, swaying on his feet, picked up off the bedside table the pistol he had taken from Rino in the wood and gripped it tightly.

  This time they wouldn’t stop him.

  237

  They left the Puma in the car park of the sports club.

  ‘What are all these doing here?’ asked Cristiano, pointing to a row of coaches.

  Beppe put on some hideous bug-eye sunglasses. ‘Schools. People who’ve come for the funeral.’

  Cristiano thought that either Fabiana Ponticelli had known half the nation or some people were going to the funeral without having known her.

  The streets of the centre were closed and guarded by the police and nobody could enter without special authorisation.

  ‘The mass is in the church of San Biagio,’ said Beppe.

  Trecca was watching him like a hawk.

  Like you do with a dog the first time you let it off the lead.

  He must have guessed something.

  There were a lot of people walking in silence towards the church in Piazza Bologna. Along the way Cristiano noticed that all the shops were closed and had black bows tied to their lowered shutters.

  He had never seen so many people, not even the previous summer when that TV satire show had come to the village with the life-sized puppet and the dancing girls, but when he reached the piazza he was amazed.

  It was an immense human carpet, broken only by the roofs of the minibuses of the TV stations with their satellite dishes, the statue of the marble horse and the lamp posts with clusters of loudspeakers clinging to them. Other people looked out from the windows of the modern blocks that encircled the piazza. Hastily prepared white banners linked the balconies. They said: FABIANA YOU WILL BE FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS. FABIANA TEACH US TO BE BETTER. FABIANA NOW YOU LIVE IN A BETTER PLACE.

  ‘Give me your hand, or we might lose each other in this crowd.’ Trecca held out his hand and Cristiano was forced to take it.

  They went round the edge of the piazza and finally reached the church. A modern building made of grey concrete, with a pointed roof covered with long strips of tarnished copper. In the centre of the façade was a huge stained-glass window depicting a scrawny Christ. The steps, too, were crammed with people pushing to get in.

  ‘Let’s go away. They won’t let us in,’ said Cristiano, trying to break free of the other’s grasp.

  ‘Wait … You’re a schoolmate of hers.’ Trecca spoke to the officials on the door and they let them through. They crossed the right nave, threading their way through the crowd. There was a strong smell of incense, flowers and sweat.

  Cristiano found himself face to face with Castardin, the owner of the furniture factory, whose dog he had killed.

  Castardin looked him up and down for a moment. ‘Wait a minute. You’re Rino Zena’s son, aren’t you?’

  Cristiano was about to deny it, but Trecca was beside him.

  He nodded.

  ‘I heard about your father. I’m very sorry. How is he?’

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’

  The social worker intervened. ‘He’s still in a coma. But the doctors are optimistic.’

  Castardin was shouting as if he was in a seaside discotheque at Riccione. ‘Good. Good. Well, when he wakes up give him my best wishes, will you? As soon as he comes out of his coma tell him old Castardin sends him his very best wishes.’ He patted him on the back of the head.

  Cristiano imagined his father waking up and being told that Castardin sent him his very best wishes. He’d go straight back into a coma and never come out of it again.

  A few metres further on was Mariangela Santarelli, the hairdresser, who had gone out with his father when Cristiano was small. She was wearing a veil and a miniskirt. And Max Marchetta, the owner of Euroedil. He was dressed up as if he was going to his own wedding, and was talking into his mobile. Old Marchetta was there, too, on a wheelchair pushed by a Filipino.

  They reached the area where his schoolmates were sitting. As soon as they saw him they started whispering, nudging each other and pointing at him.

  Cristiano had to restrain himself from turning round and fleeing.

  The Italian mistress pushed her way through the crowd, came up and hugged him and whispered in his ear: ‘I heard about your father. I’m so sorry.’

  The very same words Castardin used.

  238

  The Carrion Man entered the hospital.

  His heart seemed to be trying to escape from his chest. And he was dying for a pee. He held one hand pressed against his stomach, with the fingers touching the steel of the pistol concealed in his underpants.

  At last he had managed to get there. He didn’t know how he had done it. He had even started the scooter at the first attempt.

  The village seemed to have gone mad. All the shutters of the shops were down. All the roads closed to traffic. The car parks full of coaches. The streets packed with people walking towards the centre.

  He wanted to ask them where they were all going and what on earth was happening, but didn’t have the courage. There were guards and traffic police everywhere.

  Maybe there was a Laura Pausini concert or a political rally.

  He would have liked to rush upstairs to Rino, but before he did anything else he needed to pee. His bladder was bursting.

  He entered the toilet next to the bar. At that moment, thank God, there was no one around. The Carrion Man hurried over to the urinal and let it out, throwing his head back and closing his eyes.

  He had to rest one hand against the wall to stop himself collapsing on the floor with the pain. It was like pissing out fire mingled with fragments of glass.

  When he opened his eyes he saw that the white ceramic walls of the urinal were splashed with red and that his pecker was dripping urine and blood. The acidic reek of ammonia blended with the metallic tang of blood.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ he muttered in despair.

  At that moment the spring-operated door of the toilet opened and closed with a creak.

  The Carrion Man moved closer to the wall and stared at the hole into which the red piss was falling.

  He heard behind him a sound of heels clicking on the floor tiles. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure take up a position three urinals down from his.

  ‘Ahhh! They say it’s bad for you to hold it in. Especially after a certain age,’ said the man, and at the same time there was a trickling noise.

  The Carrion Man turned.

  It was Ricky. The angel sent from God.

  He was wearing the same grey flannel suit and the same checked shirt. The same blond comb-over which looked as if it had just been licked by a cow. The same everything.

  ‘Ricky …’ he blurted out involuntarily.

  The little man turned, looked at him and raised his eyebrows. ‘Who are you, my friend?’

  ‘It’s me. Don’t you recognise me?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You must do. You gave me this.’ The Carrion Man pulled out from under his cardigan the crucifix he wore on his chest.

  Ricky seemed unsure whether to say he knew him or to deny everything and run for it. ‘Yes. Of course … Now I remem
ber. How are you?’

  The Carrion Man sniffed. ‘I’m dying …’

  Ricky zipped up his fly. ‘So the crucifix was for you?’ He went to wash his hands. ‘You should have told me … I would have given you something else. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  The Carrion Man shrugged and admitted: ‘I don’t know. I know I’m dying and that God has abandoned me.’

  Ricky took two steps backwards, drying his hands with a paper towel: ‘Have you prayed to the Lord?’

  ‘God doesn’t talk to me any more. He’s chosen someone else. What have I done wrong?’ The Carrion Man limped over to the little fellow and grabbed him by the arm.

  Ricky stiffened. ‘I don’t know. But you must keep praying. With more conviction.’

  ‘But is it up to me to kill Rino? Or has God already done it?’ He started stamping his foot on the floor as if trying to squash an invisible cockroach.

  Ricky broke away from his grasp as if he’d been touched by a leper. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I really must go. Good luck.’

  The Carrion Man saw him disappear through the door and then screwed up his lips into a grimace of terror, dropped to his knees, hugged himself, bent forward and started crying and moaning: ‘Tell me what I have to do. Please … Tell me. And I’ll do it.’

  239

  Beppe Trecca was leaning against a column in the side nave with his arms crossed.

  He had left Cristiano with his schoolmates and could now see his blond head of hair, prominent among the others.

  He looked like an alien, there in their midst. He had completely ignored them.

  He’s got character, that kid. And he’s tough.

  He would recover, of that Beppe was certain. He had never complained, he had never seen him shed a tear. That was the way to face difficulties.

  Beppe himself, however, felt tired and weak.

  He was longing to go home, to take a shower, shave and write his resignation letter. The next day he would close his bank account, gather together the few things he possessed and drive down to Ariccia.

  He took off his sunglasses, cleaned them and put them back on again. He screwed up his eyes and saw Ida sitting in the pews of the central nave. Next to her, Mario and the children.