The man hung from him.
‘The horror! The horror! The earth belongs to no one.’
Mantos tried to free himself from the grip. ‘Leave me. Let me go, please.’
‘You should understand, and you don't understand. Brother killing brother. This is our world.’
The rubble had buried a woman. Her legs poked out from beneath the stones. On her skinny calf muscle, disappearing into the debris, was a long tattoo of an ivy branch.
Saverio, in desperation, dragged the madman along with him. ‘You must show me the road, and instead you want to abandon us,’ he went on.
Mantos kicked at him and finally managed to shake him off. ‘What do you want from me?’
The nutter, kneeling in the dirt, stared him in the eyes.
‘You know what you have to do.’
Mantos stepped back, terrified. For a second he had thought it was Zombie.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ the ex-leader of the Beasts stuttered, and began running towards the tunnel, pushing through with his head down.
He then saw Larita in a corner.
Saverio screeched to a halt.
The girl was curled up on the ground and people were running all over her.
You must finish off your task! You must sacrifice her. At least my death will have been worth something, he thought he heard Zombie telling him.
He screamed and, fighting against the tide of the guests, making way by punching and elbowing, he got to the singer.
The young woman's mouth was wide open, her cheeks were aflame, and she was trying to swallow air like she was having an asthma attack.
Saverio shielded her with his body. He would get her out of that hole and take her up to Forte Antenne. There, he would sacrifice her in Zombie's honour.
Larita was sobbing. ‘I had a panic attack. I couldn't breathe. Everyone was walking on me.’
‘I'm here now.’ Mantos hugged her in his arms.
The girl slowly began to breathe again. She dried her eyes and looked at him for the first time. She looked at his black robe. ‘Who are you?’
He stayed silent, without knowing how to answer. He would have liked to tell her the truth. Whisper it in her ear. I am your killer. But he said: ‘You don't know me.’
‘You're so kind.’
‘Listen, we can't stay here. Can you walk?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, come on, let's give it a go.’ He lifted her by the hip and stood her up.
She took his hand. ‘Thank you.’
He looked into her hazelnut eyes.
And who knows, perhaps Saverio Moneta aka Mantos would have told her that she shouldn't thank him. Perhaps for the first time in his life he would have had the balls to say . . . What had the nude guy called it?
The horror! Yes, the horror of a life lived wrongly.
Who knows what he would have said to her if a wave of dark, foamy water hadn't swept them away.
71
Fabrizio Ciba was moving through a tunnel, using a cigarette lighter to light the way. He couldn't see shit, and every ten steps he tripped over a pile of dirt or a hole.
He was sorry to have abandoned Larita. But if he'd brought her with him, he'd never have made it.
Only the strong survive. If they don't weigh themselves down with lead.
The noise behind him had become deafening.
He turned around quickly, and by the light of the little flame he saw a wall of water coming towards him, black and furious.
‘Fucking hell . . .’ he managed to say before the water flipped him over and carried him off like dead wood.
72
Piero Ristori was seventy-seven years old and lived in Via di Trasone, a few metres from Villa Ada. He had been retired for ten years. And since he'd stopped working, he'd had trouble sleeping. He woke at two a.m. and lay in bed awake, waiting for the light of day. Nailed to the bed next to the sleeping body of his wife, he would remember. The ticking of the alarm clock beat out the rhythm of the silence while, like boiling gnocchi, images from his childhood in Trentino floated to the surface of his mind. He remembered his teenage years, the boarding school, the holidays in Liguria. With longing, he saw his wife as a young lady, in her swimming costume, so beautiful she took his breath away, lying on a raft at Cesenatico. The first time they had made love without even being married. And Rome. Writing for the newspaper. Thousands of articles written in a rush. The sound of typewriters. Ashtrays full of cigarette ends. Lunch at the La Gazzella osteria with his colleagues. And in particular, he remembered all his trips. The Summer Olympics in Helsinki. The World Athletics Championships in Oslo. The World Swimming Championships in the United States. A Portuguese woman with a fringe and freckles whose name he couldn't remember.
In the dark of his bedroom, a heartbreaking yearning gripped Piero Ristori and tore the breath from his chest. Of his whole life, only useless, disconnected memories were left. Sensations, smells and the desire to turn back time.
What a fantastic life he'd had. At least until he'd retired.
From that moment onwards, it had been clear to him. He was an old man, and that was purgatory on earth. At times he regretted not being addled enough (like the majority of his friends) to not realise. He was painfully aware that his personality had changed. He got annoyed by any old crap, he hated young people, confusion, and anyone who would still be alive when he had become wormfood. He had collected all the cons of old age and not one single pro.
The only moment of the day that he loved was when the light began to filter in through the blinds and the birds began to sing. He got out of bed with a feeling of freedom and left that burial ground where his wife lay unconscious, got dressed and took Max, their little Jack Russell, to do his business. The city was quiet and peaceful. He would buy milk and fresh bread at the market, and then get the newspapers. He would sit on a bench of the Nemorense Park (he used to go to Villa Ada before, he was incredulous at the idea that the council had sold it) and leaf through the papers, leaving Max free to run around a bit.
That day he had got to the newsstand on via Salaria ten minutes behind his usual schedule. He had taken a sleeping pill the night before, so that he wouldn't have to listen to Salvatore Chiatti's hellish party. The whole suburb had been blocked so that that mafioso could do as he pleased.
Piero Ristori bought Il Messaggero, La Gazzetta dello Sport and La Settimana Enigmistica from Eugenio, the newsagent, who was still finishing opening the packs of newspapers that had just been dropped off.
‘Good morning, dottore. Did you hear the clashes between the police and the protestors yesterday?’
Max loved, for some obscure reason, to do his business in front of the newsstand. Piero Ristori pulled the leash, but the dog had already begun. ‘I heard them. I did indeed hear them. They have to die.’
Eugenio stretched his aching back. ‘I heard that Paco Jimenez de la Frontera, Milo Serinov and the whole Magica were there.’
The old man pulled a little plastic bag out of his jacket pocket to pick up Max's turd. ‘Who cares? You know, sport doesn't interest me any more.’
Eugenio was about to answer, and ask him why he bought La Gazzetta dello Sport every day then, but he didn't feel like getting into an argument with that cranky old man. Such a shame. He had been a great sports journalist, a likeable person, but since he had retired he'd shrivelled up and hated the world.
When I retire, I'll be a better person, the newsagent said to himself.I'll finally be able to go to Lake Bolsena to fish. I've just got to grit my teeth for another twenty-two years.
Piero Ristori took a look at the front page of the Gazzetta. The news was about the transfer of a French footballer costing millions of euro. ‘See? It's only a question of money now. Sport, the real stuff . . .’
He would have liked to end the sentence by saying what he repeated to his wife every day. Sport, the real stuff, the stuff the old Olympic Games were made of, is dead.
But a sudden roar silenced hi
m. He turned towards the Salaria, but he saw nothing. The sound continued, though.
He wiped a hand across his forehead . . . It sounded familiar. The roar you could hear walking along the dam wall of Ridracoli, in Emilia-Romagna, where they used to go for their summer holidays with the kids. It was an unmistakable sound, similar to the noise of a jet turbine.
The old journalist, with the dog shit in one hand and the newspapers under the other arm, squinted behind his glasses and kept looking around. Via Salaria was empty, and eveything seemed normal.
Even Eugenio was looking around in confusion, scowling. Max was going crazy, pulling at his lead and whimpering like he'd seen a cat.
‘Settle down . . . Jesus . . .’
For the second time, the noise shut him up. This time it sounded more like a high-pitched whistle.
Eugenio looked upwards. Piero Ristori moved his gaze upwards and saw in the cloudless sky a black object spinning higher than the buildings, above the street. He had enough time to understand that it was a manhole cover before the bronze disc fell back down again, straight as a rail, and wedged itself in the roof of a Passat Variant. The windows exploded, the wheels folded outwards and the alarm rang crazily.
Out of the corner of his eye, the old journalist noticed that from the footpath opposite him a column of white foam was lifting up, like the neck of a cobra. The stream of water went over the top of the fence of Villa Ada.
Then it appeared that the manhole spat out something black.
‘What the hell . . .?!’ Eugenio said.
Ten metres above their heads a human being was flapping his arms and kicking his legs in the air. He fell out of the sky like someone who has dived off a cliff, and plummeted to the ground.
Piero Ristori closed his eyes. A second later, when he opened them again, he saw that the man was standing on the white line in the middle of Via Salaria. His legs were shaking a little from the impact but, miraculously, he was unharmed.
As the water flooded the pavement, the journalist took two steps towards him.
It was a skinny old man covered in a tattered black tracksuit. His long white beard and hair were soaked and stuck to his body. He didn't move, as if his feet were glued to the tarmac.
The journalist took three more steps and overtook the cars parked alongside the kerb.
No, it can't be . . .
Despite the fact that half a century had gone by, despite the arteriosclerosis that was hardening his arteries, despite the long beard that covered half of the man's face, Piero Ristori's old temporal lobes, as soon as they saw those eyes as cold as the Siberian plains, and that big nose, remembered.
He was taken back in time, to the summer of 1960. Rome. The Olympic Games.
That there was Sergej Pelevin, the great pole vaulter who had won gold. He had disappeared during the Games, along with a group of other Russian athletes, and nobody had ever known where they had ended up. Piero Ristori had interviewed him for the Corriere della Sera newspaper after the medal ceremony.
But what was he doing half a century later in the middle of Via Salaria?
The journalist, his hands shaking, dragging the dog behind him, moved closer to the athlete, who was still as stiff as a statue.
‘Sergej . . . Sergej . . .’ he stuttered. ‘What happened to you? Where have you been? Why did you run away?’
The athlete turned around, and at first he didn't even seem to see the journalist.
Then he closed and opened his watery eyes, as if the sun on the horizon bothered him. He showed his toothless gums and said ‘Свободу я выбра . . .’5
He wasn't able to finish his sentence because a Smart Fortwo, coming from the Via Olimpica at over one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, ran straight in to him.
5 ‘I chose freedom . . .’
73
Saverio Moneta had managed to never let go of her, to keep hold of her hand even as they were being slammed around and turned over by the current that dragged them through the black tunnels of the underground necropolis. They had swallowed litres of water, and they hadn't taken a breath in what seemed like forever, and then, without knowing how, they had risen up inside a pocket of air that was trapped beneath the vault of one of the tunnels.
Saverio had the tip of his nose up against the ceiling. With his mouth open, he breathed and coughed. Larita, who was next to him, couldn't stop coughing either.
‘Can you make it?’ the singer gasped.
Saverio attempted to improve his hold with his hands and feet against the funeral niches. The current was so strong, if he let down his guard for a second it would drag him away. ‘Yes. I've got it.’
Larita used one hand to grab on to a jutted rock. ‘You all right?’
‘All right.’ And to be more convincing, he repeated himself. ‘All right.’
It wasn't true. He must have broken his right leg. While they were being dragged by the current, he had slammed violently up against a wall.
He released his grasp with this right hand and touched where he was feeling pain. He felt . . .
Oh God . . .
. . . a long, pointy shard sticking out of his leg.
A piece of wood, something, has been driven into my thigh . . .
Then he understood and almost let go of his grip.
It was his broken femur that was sticking out of his leg like a knife. His head started to spin. His ears were burning hot. His oesophagus squeezed tighter and stomach acid rose up and touched his palate.
I'm about to faint.
He couldn't. If he fainted, the current would suck him in. He stayed still, squashed up against the rock, waiting for his head to stop spinning.
‘What should we do?’ Larita's voice echoed from far away.
Saverio vomited and closed his eyes.
‘Should we stay here? Wait until they come and save us?’ He made a huge effort to answer her. ‘I don't know.’
I'm losing blood.
The water stopped him from being able to see the wound. A small mercy.
‘Neither do I,’ Larita said after a little while. ‘We can't wait here, though.’
Please, help me, I'm dying, was the only thing he would have liked to say to her. But he couldn't. He had to be a man.
How ridiculous . . . Less than forty-eight hours earlier, he had been the sad employee of a furniture shop, a failure oppressed by his own family. And now he was next to the most popular singer in Italy, in a flooded catacomb, bleeding to death.
A weird twist of fate was offering him an opportunity. That woman there, who knew nothing about him, or about his inbred bad luck, would see him and judge him for who he was in this moment.
At least, for once, someone would see him as a hero. A fearless man. A samurai.
What was it that Yamamoto Tsunemoto said in Hagakure? ‘The Way of the Samurai is found in death.’
He felt his willpower strengthen like a hard blood clot in his aching guts.
Show her who Saverio Moneta is.
He opened his eyes again. It was dark, but he could see the bones of the dead floating around them. There had to be light coming in from somewhere.
Larita was struggling to hold on. ‘I think the water's rising.’
Saverio tried to concentrate and not think about the pain. ‘Listen to me . . . The air will run out soon. And who knows how long it will take for the rescue teams to get here. We've got to make it on our own.’
‘How?’ Larita asked.
‘I think I can see a glimmer of light coming from over there. Can you see it, too?’
‘Yes . . . only just.’
‘All right. Let's go over there.’
‘But if I let go, I'll get dragged under.’
‘I'll take care of you.’ Mantos moved towards the voice of the singer, digging his fingers into the crumbly tuff rock. ‘Wait . . . Hang on to my shoulders.’
The pain was blinding him. To stop himself from screaming, he grabbed a tibia that was floating by and gripped it betwee
n his teeth. Then he moved right up to the young woman, who grabbed on to his shoulder and wrapped her thighs around his chest.
74
Matteo Saporelli was a fish.
In fact, he was a yellowfin tuna fish. No, actually, he was a dolphin. A splendid male dolphin swimming through the mysterious remains of Atlantis. His arms held close to his body, he moved his head up and down in time with his legs, which flapped in unison.
I am a marine mammal.
He was exploring the remains of a great civilisation sunk into the depths of the ocean. Now he found himself in the long corridors that led to the royal chambers. With his sharp eyes he could see gold, precious stones, antique jewels encrusted with seaweed and coral. He could see crabs and lobsters walking over mountains of gold coins.
He felt at ease. It had been a long counter-evolution, which had lasted millions of years and had led the mammals back into the sea, but it had really been worth it.
Water life is so much better.
There was just one problem that ruined that magical state of grace.
The air. He needed air too much, considering he was a dolphin. This disappointed him. He remembered that cetaceans could stay under water for a long time, but instead he felt a desperate need for air.
He tried to give a shit. There were too many fantastic things to see down there, he couldn't waste time breathing.
Along with the jewels, and the hot pink octopus, there was also amazing coral that he would have spent hours admiring.
Hey, you know what I'll do? I'll grab a bit of air and then I'll come back down.
He flippered his way to the surface, like the man from Atlantis, and popped his snout out of the water in a small pocket of air beneath a vault in the catacomb.
75
While Saverio Moneta was struggling along towards the glimmer, with Larita grasping on to his neck, the head of a man popped out of the water less than a metre away.
The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon, after a second of amazement, spat out the tibia and screamed: ‘Help!’