Let the Games Begin

  The leader of the Beasts looked him straight in the eye. ‘Listen, shall we give it up?’ It was a trick question to try and understand whether the adept was a dirty traitor. ‘Maybe we should pack it in, too . . . This is such a cock-up. The two of us can't do it on our own. And then, what if at the end we don't have the courage to commit suicide? We risk just getting thrown in prison. If we go home now, we're saved.’

  Zombie started walking again, with his head lowered. ‘I'm not giving up. If you want to, go ahead.’

  ‘But why? I don't understand why you suddenly care so much about this thing. Usually nothing suits you. Tell me why you want to kill yourself now, at all costs?’

  ‘I don't feel like talking about it.’

  Mantos grabbed him by the arm and stared at him threateningly. ‘No, you tell me about it right now.’

  ‘Let me go.’ The adept tried to shake himself free of Mantos's grasp.

  ‘Tell me. I am your leader. I order you to.’

  Zombie swallowed and then spoke in a far-off voice. ‘A couple of nights ago I woke suddenly, as if someone had shaken my arm. I thought it was my father telling me that mum wasn't well. But everyone was asleep. As usual I had fallen asleep with the television on. There was a thing in black and white about theatre. Old stuff. The sort of stuff they show on RAI Tre at four in the morning. I picked up the remote and was about to turn it off when the actor, an old man with pointy eyes and a fringe, said something. I'd never heard anything like it before in my life, and since that night everything changed, nothing meant anything to me any more.’

  Mantos was unprepared. ‘And what did he say?’

  Zombie looked as if he wasn't sure whether he should answer or not, but then: ‘Do you want to hear it?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘I learned it by heart. I bought the book. But I've never recited it for anyone.’

  ‘Go on, let me hear it.’

  ‘All right.’ Zombie put his legs apart, as if waves of pain were breaking over his body. He closed his eyes, opened them again, looked towards the sky and began reciting in a croaky, shaky voice. ‘I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! How infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me – no, nor woman neither.’

  Mantos was silent and then asked him: ‘Who wrote it?’

  Zombie sniffed. ‘William Shakespeare. It's Hamlet. I'm worse off than him. And the way I'm feeling, I could even do something good . . . I thought about it . . . But it's a thousand times harder than doing something evil. And frankly, I don't give a fuck about helping, I don't know . . . African babies. They annoy the shit out of me, just like the rest of humanity, and so I prefer to end it and to be remembered as the psychopathic bastard who killed Larita. And don't forget that you were the first to say that. It's all very simple and . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘Sad. Anyway, if you want to give up, don't worry, I'll kill the singer. But, please, hurry, the mosquitoes are bleeding me dry.’

  Mantos was ashamed to have thought that Zombie could be a traitor. Of course, he was in a really bad way. He must have stopped taking the anti-depressants.

  ‘Zombie, listen to me closely. There are no longer ranks between the two of us. There is no more leader and adept. We're the same. The Beasts are you and me. A duo. Like Simon and Garfunkel, you know.’

  Zombie's eyes teared-up. ‘You and me. The same and together. Until the end.’

  ‘The same and together. Until the end,’ Mantos repeated.

  Zombie looked at the sky. ‘It's night time. I'm going to sabotage the electrical plant.’

  ‘All right. I'll kidnap Larita and I'll catch you at the temple on Forte Antenne. Tonight the moon is right for ending it.’

  48

  With a deafening roar, an enormous age-old pine tree fell onto the woods. Beneath the weight of the tree, holm oaks, oak tree and laurel bushes were crushed, and from the earth a cloud of dust and leaves rose up. And, like in a primeval nightmare, the huge elephant emerged. Beneath the beast's stampeding feet the earth trembled. Nothing could stop it. Its brain had shrunk down to a simple and primitive impulse: run. Its famous long-term memory had been re-set, and in the evolutionary chain it had sunk down into the abysses where the sardines flee from tuna fish.

  It no longer remembered its infancy spent in a wandering cage. It no longer remembered exercising in the circus ring. It no longer remembered bowing, spraying water at the clowns. It didn't even remember the lashes and the potatoes. It remembered nothing at all, for terror had overcome it. What was this dark, inhospitable place? What were those stakes sticking out of the ground? Those smells? It just had to get away, and thorny bushes, fallen trunks, shrubs, weeds, nothing could stop its running. Every now and then it bent back its long trunk and, giving a heart-rending trumpet, it would rip a tree trunk out of the ground and throw it far away. The colourful quarter-sheet that covered it had been ripped to shreds and blood was dripping from a long gash on its side onto its hind legs. A branch had lodged itself like a harpoon in its right shoulder. It kept hitting its head. One eye was black and the other wide open, with the pupil rolling wildly, as it broke its way through the wall of vegetation.

  The half-ruined basket was still tied to its back but it was hanging lopsidedly off to one side. Inside, Fabrizio and Larita were hanging on to the belts of the harness and screaming in terror, just as scared as the elephant.

  The beast dodged an oak tree and almost tripped over a tree root as thick as an anaconda, but it regained its balance and began galloping again, diving into a thorn bush. It jumped a ditch, took a step, then another, and suddenly the ground was missing underneath its feet. The crazy eye stopped rolling, it opened its mouth wide in surprise and, waving its feet and trunk, it fell silently down a vegetation-covered slope. It flew about twenty metres towards the bottom of the ravine, hit its head on a stone pinnacle, bounced, rolled over and was jammed between two trees that stuck out like a fork above the chasm.

  The animal, its spine snapped, belly up, squirmed and released terrible screeches of pain, which became weaker and weaker.

  Fabrizio was thrown from the basket and found himself flopping downwards in the dark, ricocheting off branches, hanging vines and chains of ivy until he crashed into the twisted roots of an oak tree hanging from the rock face.

  A moment later Larita fell on top of him and slid towards the precipice.

  The writer grabbed her by the collar of her jacket a second before she fell to the ground. Her weight pulled him down and a stab of pain in his tricep ripped the air from his lungs.

  Larita, hanging mid-air, was struggling and looking below her, screaming: ‘Help! Help!’

  ‘Keep still! Keep still!’ Ciba begged. ‘If you move, I can't keep holding you.’

  ‘Help me! Please, help me. Don't let me go.’

  Ciba closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath. His biceps were trembling from the tension. ‘I can't hold on. Grab on to something.’

  Larita stretched out a hand towards a bundle of ivy that snaked up between the rocks. ‘I can't reach it! I can't fucking reach it!’

  ‘You have to try, I can't take it any more . . .’ Ciba's face had turned purple and his heart was booming in his ear drums.

  He shouldn't look down; it was a free fall of at least thirty metres.

  I am not a man. I am a mooring line. I don't feel pain, I have no brain, he began repeating to himself. But the muscles in his arms were trem
bling. He could feel, with horror, his fingers losing their grip on the material of the jacket. Out of desperation he bit into the root and screamed: ‘I won't drop you. I won't drop you.’

  And instead he dropped her.

  His face pressed against the hanging vine, he didn't move, almost paralysed. Too shaken to be able to think, to cry, to look down.

  Then a feeble voice: ‘Fabrizio. I'm down here.’

  The writer peeped over the edge and, in the light of the moon, he saw Larita below him, a few metres below, hanging on to the ivy that grew against the rock face.

  Neither of them spoke as they gulped air. When Fabrizio had the breath to speak, he asked her: ‘Are you all right?’

  Larita was wrapped around the plant. ‘Yes. I did it . . . I did it.’

  ‘Don't look down, Larita.’ Ciba lay back against the root, rubbing his aching right arm.

  A tiny stone bounced off his forehead. Then another. Then it began to rain gravel, dirt and dried branches. Ciba looked up above him. The ball-shaped moon was in the centre of the sky. He bent his head and in the middle of the glowing satellite the black outline of the elephant was painted, like a shadow puppet, lying on the oak tree.

  It was right above him.

  As he put his hand over his eyes to protect them from the falling earth, he heard the sound of wood snapping. The tree was swinging from side to side.

  ‘Oh Madonna!’ he murmured.

  ‘What's happening?’ asked Larita.

  ‘The elephant! It's about to . . .’

  The tree trunk gave way with a deafening crack. The pachyderm let out a last desperate scream and plummeted, along with the oak tree and a fountain of stones.

  Ciba, instinctively, wrapped his arms around his head. He closed his eyes. His guts rose into his throat.

  No, he was flying in the blackness. The darkness surrounded him like a merciful mother, stopping him from seeing the ground below him coming closer. How many times had he asked himself whether people committing suicide had the time to understand their ending before crashing to the ground? Or if their brain, pitifully, in the face of such a terrible death had a blackout of the senses.

  Now he knew. The brain worked perfectly, and screamed: ‘You're going to die!’

  49

  The moon dyed the grass silver. But Edo Sambreddero aka Zombie walked across the savanna, his head lowered, without even condescending to notice it. In one hand he was holding the poultry shears.

  A light breeze, cool enough to make him shiver, slipped under his coat. The Satanist rubbed his arms to try and free himself of that chill that wouldn't leave him.

  A herd of gazelles passed in front of him, followed by a mob of kangaroos. Not even that sight caught his attention.

  What was it that Hamlet said? ‘This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.’

  Yeah, the earth really was a disgusting place.

  Only in a disgusting place like this can Silvietta marry someone like Murder.

  When he surprised the two love birds talking about their wedding, at first he'd thought it was joke. It can't be true, he kept saying to himself while the two of them discussed the church, the reception and all that other crap. Then he had seen Silvietta moved to tears, and he'd understood that it was true, and something had shrivelled inside of him for ever.

  When he was a boy his granddad used to take him to the vegetable patch, a small piece of land beneath the viaduct of Oriolo, and he would give him a little bottle of poison for getting rid of the weeds. ‘You only need a drop,’ his granddad would warn him, and Edo would use the dropper so that just one drop, as black as petrol, would fall on the top of the plant. And in less than half an hour, it would lose its colours and shrink until it was nothing but a dried up twig.

  The same thing has happened to me.Silvietta had dried up his heart for ever.

  How many times had she complained about Murder to him, how coarse and distracted he was, how he always forgot their monthiversary?

  ‘I can't talk to him like I talk to you. You're different. You get me . . .’

  How many nights had they spent talking on the phone and watching Amici on the telly, hating these talentless monsters who fought all the time, or talking about music, about Motorhead and the historical importance of Denim and Leather by Saxon? How many Saturday afternoons had they spent walking up and down Via del Corso, forgetting time as it passed, forgetting the sales in the shops, the people around them, the bus that took them home?

  Of course, they weren't a couple. She was Murder's girlfriend. But what did that chubby guy with dandruff have that he didn't?

  All right, he suffered from congenital oesophagitis. But he'd read on the Internet that a definitive cure existed using stem cells. It was illegal in Italy, but as soon as his mother died he would have inherited the gold coins of Pope Luciani, and he would have enough money to be cured in America.

  Once, Murder had gone to visit his aunt in Follonica, and the two of them had gone out to dinner at the Pizzeria Jerry 2. It had been a special evening, there had been a unique sense of intimacy. She had told him about her fears as a small girl, about her dream to become a death metal queen.

  Afterwards he'd taken her home and said goodbye, giving her the usual respectful kiss on the cheek, but with her lips she had brushed against the corner of his mouth. It had been just a moment, and yet the skin, where Silvietta had placed her kiss, had become sensitive like when you burn yourself on a scorching hot fork.

  For months he had thought of that kiss. If he, stupidly, hadn't moved his head, they probably would have kissed on the lips.

  He placed his finger on the burnt corner. He felt a shiver and gritted his teeth to stop himself crying. He thought back to the night of the sacrifice in the woods of Sutri. The others had simply fucked her and come on her like a pack of horny dogs. He hadn't. It had been different for him. He had put love into it, and when he finally came he had lain on her small white breasts with tears in his eyes, and the desire to pick her up and carry her away.

  And after they had buried her alive, without letting the others see him he had moved the dirt in such a way that Silvietta could climb out of the grave. When he'd seen her, three days later, sitting on a bench outside the cinema, he'd understood that this incredible girl was the love of his life.

  And now he'd discovered that she was marrying Murder.

  Muffin.

  There wasn't much else to say, except that there was no sense in living any more.

  50

  Not even this time did good fortune abandon Fabrizio Ciba. He landed on the flabby stomach of the elephant, which was lying on its side in a rivulet that flowed between stones and ferns. Larita, tangled in a ball of ivy, fell down next to him one second later. The two of them lay there, without moving, grazed, aching and lost for words, incredulous at the idea that they were still alive.

  Then Fabrizio pulled himself up, helped Larita to get down off the elephant, and looked around. They were at the bottom of a narrow ravine covered in vegetation. A gravel path stretched right through the middle, dotted with street lamps that created little shiny domes. Everything else – beside them, above them – was wrapped in darkness.

  He couldn't bear to think about what had just happened to them. If an elephant hadn't been there to cushion their fall, they would be dead as dodoes right now.

  Who organises a safari in Villa Ada? Only a crazy megalomaniac like Chiatti can come up with such a stupid idea.

  But it wasn't Chiatti's fault if he'd almost lost his skin.

  It's mine. It's my fault for coming to this party. I shouldn't have come. What the fuck am I doing here? How the fuck did I let them convince me to get on that animal? With all those monsters? I am a writer, for fuck's sake . . . I have to write my novel. My novel . . .
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  He touched his arm. He had difficulty bending it.

  If I've dislocated my shoulder, I'll never be able to write again.

  It was too much for Fabrizio Ciba. A rage as bitter as vinegar started to bubble in his stomach and rise towards his oesophagus. The more he thought about what had happened to him, the angrier he got. He was so full of rage that he risked exploding like a football. He began to sway his head up and down like a pigeon pecking at grain, and then, gritting his teeth, he started muttering to himself and gesturing with his hands. ‘Fuck off! I'm going to fuck them all over. One by one. I'll line them up and I'll fuck them one by one.’ His nostrils flared in fury. ‘To begin with, I'll fuck over that joker Chiatti . . . I'll write the article and I'll ruin him. That big ball of shit has ended his days of recieving kindness. Who does he think he's dealing with?’

  He turned suddenly towards Larita in search of support. ‘Can you explain what the fuck those fox hunters were doing . . .?’ But he fell quiet, seeing her stock-still, paralysed next to the dead animal.

  He felt like he was watching the last scene from King Kong.When the girl stays by the side of the big ape fallen from the skyscraper.

  Larita really was tiny next to the elephant. In death, the pachyderm looked even bigger than when it was alive. Its trunk stretched out like a snake amongst the stones of the creek. Its feet drew up against its stomach; a broken tusk. The open eye reflected the light of the street lamp. Blood trickled from its mouth and dissolved in the water.

  Larita suddenly, as if freed from a magic spell, opened her mouth, trying to breath in deeply, but something stopped her. So she slowly reached her hand and placed it on the elephant's wrinkly forehead. Then, as if the strings that kept her standing had been cut, she slumped down and curled against its rump and began to cry, shaken by sobs.

  Fabrizio put a hand over his mouth. How could he have forgotten about Larita? She was the only precious thing amongst all this crap. She was the angel who would save him. She and him were different. She and him had nothing to do with that party. And he had to take care of this beautiful creature and carry her to safety.