He picked himself up, red in the face and with the expression of a psychopath.
She covered her chest with her blouse and made an undefinable face.
Pity! She feels pity for me! Fabrizio realised. He pulled his finger out and cleaned it off on his jacket. What the devil was he doing? Had he gone crazy? He had thrown himself like a horny teenager onto a stranger while his publishing house was plotting against him.
I must respond to this outrage.
There was only one person in the world who could help him. His agent. Margherita Levin Gritti.
‘Sorry, I've gotta go!’ he said distractedly, while he stuffed his mollusc into his trousers and ran away.
She didn't move, not knowing what to think. Then she began buttoning up her blouse.
15
The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had finally found the idea. He needed to meet with his adepts immediately and fill them in on the situation. It didn't matter that it was past ten o'clock. They were all at Silvietta's house watching a film.
With the lights off, he went into the broom cupboard. Well hidden behind the detergents and shoes, rammed into a plastic supermarket bag, were the uniforms of the Beasts. He had designed them himself, and then had them sewn by a Chinese tailor from Capranica. They were simple black cotton tunics (not like the showy ones of the Children of the Apocalypse, in gold and purple) with a pointed hood. As for shoes, after reconsidering many times, he had opted for black espadrilles.
Saverio went back into the living room and, trying not to make any noise, took the Durendal out of its box, and from the mantelpiece the car keys. He grabbed an umbrella and the bottle of Jägermeister, and was just about to lower the handle of the front door when the hall light came on, illuminating the Zanzibar collection.
Serena was standing in the doorway of the living room in her night gown.
‘Where are you going?’
Saverio hunched forward, lowered his head and tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the sword behind his back. ‘I'm going out for a moment . . .’
‘Where?’
‘I'm going to the shop to see a thing . . .’
Serena was confused. ‘With the sword?’
‘Yes . . .’ He had to come up with some crap quickly. ‘You see . . . There's this piece of furniture . . . It's a living-room piece that could hold it perfectly, and I wanted to check whether it fits. I'll go and come back straight away. It'll only take me a second. You go to sleep.’
‘And what's in the bag?’
Saverio looked around him. ‘Which bag?’
‘The one you've got in your hand.’
‘Oh, this one.’ Saverio shrugged his shoulders. ‘No, nothing. Just some clothes I have to give back to Edoardo. They're for a costume party.’
‘Do you know how old you are, Saverio?’
‘What sort of a question is that?’
‘You tire me. Truly tire me.’
When Serena said that she was tired, sick and tired, with that worn out tone of voice, Saverio knew that within a few minutes they would start arguing. And an argument with Serena was never worth it. She was capable of obliterating you, of turning into something so terrible that you cannot even begin to describe it. The best strategy was to stop talking and smile vaguely. If she started shouting, the twins would wake up and whine, and then he would have to stay at home.
Let her talk. Superior.
‘And you haven't just tired me. You know what Dad says? He says that of all the departments in the furniture shop, yours is the only one in the red.’
Saverio, despite what he'd just promised himself to do, couldn't take that.
‘Too right! Thyrolean furniture sucks. Nobody wants to buy it! That's why your father gave it to me. You know that. This way he can . . .’
Serena interrupted him, strangely enough without raising her voice. She seemed so discouraged as to not even have the strength to scream.
‘Oh! Thyrolean furniture sucks? Are you aware that for over twenty years my father sold solely and exclusively Thyrolean furniture? May I remind you that he was the one to bring it to the Lazio region? Do you know how many people have copied him since then? The wood-style furniture and what-not only came thanks to that furniture you hate so much.’ She crossed her arms. ‘You have no respect . . . No respect for my father and not even for me. I am really so tired of covering for you, of hearing Dad insult my husband every day. It mortifies me.’ She shook her head, embittered. ‘Hang on . . . hang on . . . What did he call you last time? Oh, yes . . . a cockroach with no balls. Do you know where he'd have sent you by now, if you weren't with me?’
Saverio squeezed the handle of the Durendal like he wanted to snap it. He could have killed him, that old bastard. It would have been so easy. One clean slice of the sword between the third and the fourth cervical vertebrae.
‘Can't say he's wrong.’ Serena pointed at him. ‘Look at you. You sneak out with a bag full of fancy dress, and a sword, and you go off to play with your mates . . . You are not thirteen years old. And I am not your mother.’
Saverio, his head lowered, began to dig the tip of the Durendal into the parquet flooring.
‘We can't go on this way. I have lost all respect for you. I need a man. Do you ever ask yourself why I don't want to make love to you?’ She turned around and went back into the bedroom. He heard her say: ‘Off you go. Run along. You wouldn't want to keep your friends waiting . . . And take out the rubbish.’
Saverio stood on the threshold of the front doorstep for about a minute. Outside the storm didn't show any sign of calming down. If he went out now, his life would be a living hell for a week. He put the Durendal back in the box and returned the plastic bag with the tunics to the closet. He sucked on the bottle of bitter liqueur. He'd better sleep on the sofa-bed. Tomorrow morning Serena will have calmed down and they will be able to make up, or something along those lines.
He had to show her, though, that he wasn't a cockroach with no balls. And to prove it there was only one way: get his department's quarterly budget under control and shut the old bastard up. There was still a month to go, and if he worked himself silly he could make it. He took another sip of alcohol and, with his head spinning, went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.
What was he thinking when he'd come up with the idea of killing Larita? To do so, he'd need to take a day off and, right now, under these expectations, it just wasn't do-able. And moreover, let's admit it, the problem wasn't simply his wife: the Wilde Beasts didn't believe in him either.
He spat toothpaste into the basin, dried his mouth and looked at himself in the mirror. His temples had turned almost completely white and the shadow of a beard on his chin was grey.
You're not thirteen years old. And I am not your mother.
Serena was spot on. Spot on the dot. If he didn't prove to her that she could trust him, she would never let him manage the furniture shop after her father was gone.
And I have two kids to look after. They can't grow up thinking their father is incompetent.
And it was only his fault if that's what everyone thought.
Enough! This whole story with the Satanic sect has to end. Tomorrow I'll call the Beasts together and I'll tell them the game is over.
He took off his shirt and vest. Even the few hairs on his chest were beginning to turn grey. He opened the shower tap, then shut it again. He opened his mouth wide in a silent scream. His cheeks were tracked with tears.
Why had he let himself go like this? What was the absurd reason that had made him lock himself in a cage with that harpy and throw away the keys of his existence? He had had so many ideas when he was young. Travel by train across Europe. Go to Transylvania to visit Count Vlad's castle. See the dolmen and the sculptures on Easter Island. Study Latin and Aramaic. He hadn't done any of these things. He had gotten married too young to a woman who loved holiday villages and sifting through factory outlets.
He went back to the basin and looked at himself in the mirror, as if
he wanted to check that it was still really him. He picked up a towel and placed it over his head.
‘Hang on . . . Hang on just a moment,’ he said to himself.
He couldn't forget. This had been a special day and one fight with Serena shouldn't erase it. He could feel in every fibre in his body that this was the beginning of a new existence. All he needed was the courage to rebel. And it wasn't because of Gerry Scotti, and not even because of the big cloud with the face of Satan that had come to him like an omen. It wasn't even because of Kurtz calling to ask him to be his representative. It was because of that no. It had been so great. So gratifying. He couldn't ruin it like that. It had been the first time he had said NO. A real NO.
If you abandon the sect now, you must be conscious of the fact that from this point on your life will be a long series of YES. You must be conscious of the fact that you will go out slowly, amidst the general indifference, like a votive candle on an abandoned tombstone. If you lay down the Durendal now, and you go to sleep on the sofa-bed, there will be no more black masses, Satanic orgies, and graffiti on viaducts. Never again. And you will be unable to mourn them because you will be too depressed to mourn them. You decide now. Decide if you are your wife's slave or if you are Mantos, the grand master of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon. Decide now who the fuck you are.
He took the towel off his head. He swigged down the last of the Jägermeister. He grabbed the clippers, turned them on, and he shaved his head.
16
Washed up.
Fabrizio Ciba was driving his Vespa down the winding road of Monte Mario. Foot to the floor, he curved right and left like he was Valentino Rossi. He was fit to be tied. Those cowboys from Martinelli had said that he was washed up and they wanted to slip him the pill. Him, the one who pulled them out of bankruptcy, who had sold more than all the other Italian writers together. Him, the one who had been translated into twenty-nine languages, including Swahili and Ladino.
‘And you even cop twenty per cent of the sales of the translation rights!’ he shouted as he swerved to overtake a Ford Ka.
If they thought they could treat him like the bulimic nun, they were making a big mistake.
‘Who do you think you are? Everybody wants to publish me. You'll see when I publish my new novel, you worthless bastards.’
He began zig-zagging through the traffic of Viale delle Milizie. Then he threw himself down the tramway, screeching to a halt at a red light.
He had to go to another publisher. And then leave this fucking country. Italy doesn't deserve me. He could live in Edinburgh, amidst the great Scottish writers. He didn't know how to write in English, but that didn't matter. Somebody would translate his novels for him.
Alice . . .
He was struck by the vision of the two of them in a Scottish cottage. She, naked, would translate while he would prepare a dish of cacio and pepe rigatoni. He needed to call her tomorrow and ingratiate himself with her.
A raindrop as big as a coffee bean hit him in the middle of the forehead, followed by one on his shoulder, one on his knee, one . . .
‘No!’
A downpour of rain exploded. People ran for shelter. Umbrellas were opened. Gusts of wind shook the banana trees on the sides of the road.
Fabrizio decided to keep on nevertheless. His agent's house wasn't too far away. He would have a warm shower and then they would organise their counter-attack.
He reached the Lungotevere Road. Millions of stationary cars were at a standstill in the underpass. Everyone honked their horns. The rain whipped the panels, the asphalt and everything else. Headlights created a blinding glare.
What the hell is happening?
Friday night + yobbos on the loose + rain = bumper to bumper traffic across town for the whole night.
Fabrizio hated Friday evenings. Hordes of barbarians came from the Prenestino, from Mentana, from Cinecittà, from i Castelli, poured themselves from the surrounding ring road into the historical town centre, Trastevere and the Piramide, in search of pizzerias, Irish pubs, Mexican restaurants and sandwich bars. All of them determined to have fun.
The writer cursed and threw himself along with the others onto the Lungotevere Road. He couldn't make any headway, though. The Vespa couldn't fit between one car and the next. He clambered onto the pavement, but even there it was hard to travel forwards. There were cars parked all over the place, thrown about like the Matchbox toys of a spoilt brat. He came, soaked through to his underwear, to a sort of bottleneck that funnelled into a lake. Cars drove through it, sending up waves like speedboats. He took a deep breath and threw himself in. He did the first twenty metres in a jubilee of splashes. The Vespa's wheels disappeared below a dark, freezing cold liquid. He began struggling. The water level was rising above the footboard. It was up to his ankles. The engine began to splutter, to stutter. Like an injured beast, the scooter shuddered forward, wheezing. Fabrizio begged: ‘Come on, you fucker, come on, you fucker, come on, you piece of shit . . . You can do it!’
But the Vespa wheezed and died right at the deepest point.
Fabrizio Ciba got off, swearing to the Madonna. The water reached his calves. His feet squished in his old Church's. He started kicking the scooter. He couldn't believe that humanity, mechanics and nature had conspired in the span of forty minutes to take it out on him.
The cars, crammed with shaven-headed, tattooed monsters, drove by splashing him. They pointed at him, shaking their heads, laughed and drove off.
He took a look at himself. His jacket had turned into a horrendous dripping poncho. His trousers were wet and muddy.
His head lowered, shaking all over, he pushed the Vespa out of the lake. The rain dribbled down his neck, slid down his back between his buttocks. His feet had gone numb. He dumped the scooter and began walking.
Luckily, he wasn't far from his agent's house. He would sleep there. He'd get her to make him a cup of camomile tea with honey. He would take a couple of aspirin and get her to hug and reassure him. He would fall asleep against those warm breasts while she whispered sweetly that they were going to take Martinelli for a spin, big time.
He began to march, his mood improved, while blasts of wind pushed him from behind. The mournful shadow of Castel Sant'Angelo was shrouded in water. He crossed the bridge of angels. The river in flood roared beneath his feet as it channelled between the pillars.
On the opposite side of the road a long snake of queued traffic stood unmoving and restless, honking horns and flashing headlights. Storm drains vomited grey torrents that ran impetuously along the pavements. All the roads, lanes and shortcuts that led to the historical centre were manned by groups of traffic police with hi-viz raincoats and traffic paddles, trying to stem the flow of cars. It looked like an exodus from a city under a bomb threat.
Fabrizio made his way between the cars and slipped into the first lane that appeared before him. He popped out in a little square where two guys had gotten out of their cars and were shoving each other over a free parking space. The two girlfriends, both blondes, both dressed like Versace models, were screaming from the car windows.
‘Enrico! Can't you see he's a dickhead? It's useless.’
‘Franco! It's not worth it, he's a piece of shit.’
Fabrizio walked by without even deigning to glance at them. He came at last to Via Coronari.
What a nightmare.
But it was over, he had made it.
17
‘And so you don't want to make love to me?’
Serena opened one eye. To be able to fall asleep, she had taken twenty-five drops of sleeping medication. She raised her head slightly and saw the dark shadow of her husband at the bedroom door.
‘What do you want?’ she mumbled, feeling the bittersweet taste of benzodiazepine on her numb tongue. ‘Can't you see I'm sleeping? Are you looking for an argument?’
‘You said that you don't want to make love to me.’
‘Give it up. Leave me alone. I'm telling you . . .’ she brushed him off, sinking
her head back on the pillow. Despite her sleepiness, one part of Serena's brain noticed that Saverio's voice sounded different, very confident. And it wasn't like him to face her in such a direct way. That idiot must be drunk. She began scratching around in the drawer in the bedside table for her eye mask and ear plugs. She had spent the whole day in Rome looking for a potter's wheel and she was whacked. She did not feel like getting into an argument.
‘Go on, say it again. Go on, if you've got the guts, say you don't want to make love to me.’
‘I don't want to make love to you. Are you happy now?’
She found the eye mask.
‘You prefer to be fucked by the guys from the dispatch office, don't you?’
Now he was overdoing it. He needed to be put in his place. She pulled herself up and growled: ‘Have you gone crazy? How dare you? I'm gonna . . .’ But she couldn't say any more because, despite having the light from the corridor in her eyes, it looked to her like Saverio was naked and . . . No, I don't believe it . . . He's shaved his hair off. A shiver ran up her spinal cord.
‘Do you know what they say to me each time I go down into the warehouse? That you could be a porn star. And they're not that far off, after all, considering how you dress. You are such a slut! You are so slutty that you say that fucking is vulgar, but then you get a boob job.’ And then he burst into howling laughter.
Serena was frozen stiff. She wasn't even breathing. Her heart was beating like crazy and the blood was humming in her veins. There was something not quite right with her husband. And it wasn't because he'd suddenly become jealous or because he'd cut his hair. Yes, these were worrying symptoms. But the thing that terrorised her was his voice. It had changed. It didn't sound like him. It was deep and mean. And that mean laugh, like a psychopath's, like a man possessed.
Serena Mastrodomenico had always been aware that sooner or later her husband was going to snap. He was frustrated. Too downtrodden, too remissive, too nice with everyone. She liked him that way. He reminded her of those dray horses that pull the carriage and take beatings for their whole lives and then die, cut-down with fatigue. Deep inside, though, she knew that Saverio carried in him a hell that burned day and night. And she loved teasing him, to see how much he could stand, and whether every now and then he would let off a blast of anger. In ten years of marriage, it had never happened.