Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
Esmeralda put on a violet top over her blouse. "How do I look?"
"Fine."
"Only fine?" and then, to her friend: "See? I told you it wouldn't
suit me." She took it off and dumped it on the ground.
Fabiana observed him for a moment with her pale blue eyes.
"What are you doing here?"
"Nothing..."
"Are you waiting for someone?"
"No..." Then he remembered the act he had been putting on.
He shrugged. "Well, yes ... But I was late getting here."
Esmeralda pulled out of her bag a sweatshirt emblazoned with
the S of Superman. "Your girlfriend?"
Cristiano said a too hasty "No!"
"There's nothing wrong with having a girlfriend, you know. Are
you scared of girls?"
"No, why should I be?" With these two he always felt as if he
was under interrogation. He added, to make himself clearer: "I just
haven't got a girlfriend, that's all."
"What about Angela Baroni?"
"Angela Baroni?"
"She's always telling everyone how crazy she is about you..."
"But you don't even deign to look at her, poor girl. You're a hardass," Fabiana mocked him.
Angela Baroni was in 3C. A little girl with long black hair. He
had never noticed that she liked him.
"I don't like her," he whispered awkwardly.
"Who do you like?"
Cristiano dug his fingernails into his arm. "No one."
Esmeralda rested her head on his shoulder. His whole body went
stiff, as if someone had rammed a broomstick up his ass. He caught
a sweet smell of shampoo which made his head spin. She purred in
his ear: "It's not possible. You, the hottest guy in the school, and
you don't like anybody..." and gave him the lightest of kisses on
the neck.
And, although he was sure she was only messing with him, it was
a dizzying, disorientating sensation, which stunned him for a long,
long moment, leaving him breathless and with goosebumps all down
his back.
"Hey, what's this? You get to kiss him and I don't?" And Fabiana
kissed him full on the lips. Cristiano felt a second shock, perhaps
even more violent than the first, as if he had been stabbed in the
chest. An indescribable noise escaped his throat.
It had been all too brief, the contact with that soft flesh. Beautiful
and painful. He stopped himself putting his fingers to his lips to see
if some of that moistness had clung to them.
"What about us, then?"
"Don't you like us?"
Esmeralda picked up a Cossack hat made of phosphorescent green
plush and plonked it on his head. Then she burst out laughing. "It
really suits you."
Fabiana got out her lipstick and ran it over his lips.
By now Cristiano was so confused and disorientated he would
have let the two girls give him a shampoo and blowdry.
Esmeralda took a pocket mirror out of her handbag. "Look at
yourself!"
Cristiano took the briefest of looks and cleaned his lips.
"Why don't we go to the games arcade?" Esmeralda said to her
friend, and walked off toward the gallery.
Fabiana crossed her arms and pouted. "Has anyone ever told you
you're a real drag? Why don't you ever laugh? I reckon you take
after your father."
Cristiano stiffened. He didn't like talking about his father. "Why?"
"Well, he looks so mean, with that shaven head and those tattoos ... Hey, where did he get them, by the way?"
"What?"
"The tattoos."
"I don't know ... At the tattooist's." Cristiano genuinely didn't
know. Rino had had most of them done when he had been too
small to remember, and the more recent ones in some place near
Murelle.
"I know that. But where?"
"I've no idea. Why do you want to know?"
"I'd like to have one done.'
"Where?"
She smiled and shook her head. "I'm not telling you."
"Go on! Where?"
"In a secret place."
"Oh go on, tell me."
"You tell me where your father had his tattoos done, then."
He put his hand on his heart. "I don't know. I swear."
"I could ask your father myself, you know. Do you think I'm
scared? I wouldn't think twice about it."
Cristiano shrugged. "Go ahead and ask him, then."
Fabiana stood up, grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet.
"Come on, let's go."
The arcade was full of young people. Some were from their
school, but most were older.
It was an enormous room. There was a four-lane bowling alley,
a game that involved throwing a ball into a basket, with a scoreboard recording each successful shot, cranes that picked up cuddly
toys, and hundreds of videogames. The music was deafening. The
place was full of Filipinos, Chinese and children jumping about on
a platform trying to dance in time to the music, following the instructions of a videogame. Down at the other end was a second room,
darker and less crowded than the first, with fruit machines all
around the walls. In the middle were a dozen green billiard tables
illuminated by low-hanging lights, with black figures armed with
cues standing around them.
Cristiano had never been in there. In the first place because there
was a notice saying you had to be eighteen to enter, secondly
because he didn't know anybody, and thirdly because he was crap
at billiards.
Fabiana rushed into the room, ignoring the age restriction, and
Cristiano was about to follow, but he stopped in the doorway when
he saw that Tekken was there.
Tekken was playing a doubles match and Esmeralda was doing
her level best to put him off. She would knock the cue when he
played a shot, tickle him under the arms or rub up against him. He
pretended to be annoyed, but anyone could see he was loving it.
He was with two other boys. Memmo, a guy with a fancily
trimmed goatee and a ponytail, and Nespola, who thought he looked
like Robbie Williams but didn't.
Just then Esmeralda climbed up on the billiard table and Tekken
fired a ball between her thighs, to the raucous guffaws of everyone
present.
Cristiano closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He couldn't
breathe. He could still feel on his neck and mouth the pressure of
Esmeralda and Fabiana's lips.
"What a pair of sluts..." he whispered, resting his head against
the wall.
His father was right-girls like that only liked rich guys. Like
Tekken. Their motorbikes. Their money.
If you were poor, like he was, they just took the piss out of you.
He felt something acidic burning his stomach, as if he had drunk
a bottle of bleach. He felt like throwing up.
A wild anger clouded his thoughts. His hands itched. He felt like
going in there, picking up a billiard cue and smashing it over that
bastard's head. But instead he turned and ran out, panting hard. He
hated this place. The people. The shop windows full of useless things
he couldn't buy.
He went into a kitchenware shop, took a long knife out of a
block of wood, hid it under his jacket and walked out into the
parking lot, elbowing his way through the crowd.
He ran around behind the trash cans, pulled out the knife and
slashed the seat and punctured the tires of Tekken's motorbike.
He was about to dig a deep scratch across the gas tank when he
heard a voice behind his back shout: "Hey! What the fuck are
you doing?"
His heart leaped into his tonsils.
He turned around. Sitting astride a big Ducati was a guy in a
black helmet and a leather jacket. "You little creep, I'm going to
beat you to a pulp!" the biker shouted as he propped his motorbike on its stand.
Cristiano threw away the knife and ran off between the cars,
while the guy shouted after him, "You coward! It's no use you running away. I know who you are! You're at the junior high! We'll
find you! We'll find you and when we do..."
He came out onto the highway and kept on running.
He couldn't believe he had been such a fool. In the space of a
few seconds he had landed himself up to his neck in shit.
Of all the stupid things to do, he had chosen the stupidest one
possible. Slashing Tekken's motorbike and getting caught in the act!
He kept one eye on the ground as he ran, trying to avoid the
puddles. He had a stitch in his side and pressed his hand against it.
The highway, the guardrail and the car headlights blurred over and
reappeared at every step.
Below the hoarse wheeze of his breathing he kept hearing the
threats of the black-clad biker: "Where are you running to? I know
who you are! I know you! We'll get you for this!"
He felt as if it was all a bad dream, as if all he had to do was
stop, close his eyes and open them again and he would be back in
that dark corner of the games arcade which smelled of sweat and
deodorant.
He must have been out of his mind. He had stolen the knife and
slashed the motorbike in a kind of hypnotic trance. As if he'd had
a kind of blackout. When he had entered the kitchenware shop he
hadn't even looked around to check if anyone was watching.
He didn't know how he could keep on running, with all that fear
in his body. Soon Tekken's vengeance would come down on him
with all its merciless, crushing force.
The guy was quite capable of killing him.
Once Cristiano had seen him get into a fight with a truck driver
outside the bar.
The thing he remembered was his coolness in confronting a man
who was twenty pounds heavier than him and had fists as big as
shoulders of ham. Tekken had skipped about, swaying his hips like
a merengue dancer. He was enjoying himself. As if he was training
in the gym.
While the big ape swung his arms and hurled insults, Tekken had
kicked him on the knee and the giant had collapsed on the ground.
Then he had grabbed hold of his ear, jerked up his head and said,
wagging his finger from side to side: "You're nobody around here.
So don't try to throw your weight around."
And all this simply because the big brute had asked Tekken, without
saying "please," to move his motorbike so he could park his truck.
Just think what he'll do to me for destroying it...
His lungs were on fire and he had to slow down. He ran onto
a bridge that passed over an irrigation canal and stopped, panting,
in a bus shelter halfway across. The timetable and walls were
plastered with colored scrawls. The bench was caked with
ketchup and with the remains of french fries. And the place
reeked of urine. A dim fluorescent light crackled on the ceiling.
He stood there, scanning the road for a sight of the bus.
By this time the biker would have told Tekken what had happened. "Who the fuck was it?"
"A fair-haired guy. From the junior high."
Fabiana and Esmeralda would have worked out at once that it
had been him. "We know him. His name's Cristiano Zena. He goes
to our school."
Those two bitches would never cover for him.
Meanwhile there was still no sign of the bus. And Tekken and
his gang would certainly be on his trail by now. Cristiano hid in
the narrow space between the shelter and the guardrail. He could
hear the gurgling of the water that flowed in the canal some ten
yards below the bridge.
He was just wondering whether to continue on foot when the
yellow eyes of the bus appeared in the distance.
Thank God.
He emerged from behind the shelter, leaned out into the road and
was on the point of raising his arm when three motorbikes overtook the bus on the right and dazzled him with their headlights. He
stepped back and the bus flashed by without even slowing down.
He saw the people sitting behind the windows and, immediately
afterward, the red rear lights.
It hadn't stopped. But the motorbikes had.
He tried to make a run for it, but a black Ducati swerved around
and braked in front of him and Tekken, who was riding on the
back, leaped on him.
Cristiano fell down in the mud and banged his shoulder hard.
He tried to struggle, to kick, but Tekken had gripped him at the
base of the biceps, pinning him down with an arm across his chest.
With the other hand he grabbed him by the hair, pulled him up and
slapped him full in the face with the back of his hand, knocking
him back against the guardrail.
Cristiano's suprarenal glands were producing millions of molecules of adrenalin which prevented him, at least for the moment,
from feeling any pain.
He jumped to his feet, trying to escape toward the road, but only
managed to take a few steps before he fell down again.
Tekken had swept his legs from under him with a kick.
Now Cristiano was gasping in the ice-cold mud, trying to get up,
but his legs wouldn't respond.
He swore to himself that he wouldn't utter even the faintest groan.
Tekken put the heel of his shoe on Cristiano's hand and pressed
and Cristiano gave a piercing shriek with what little air remained
in his lungs.
"Why did you do it, eh? Why?" Tekken kept repeating to him.
"Tell me!" His voice was plaintive, incredulous, as if he was about
to burst into tears.
Cristiano couldn't answer, because he had no answer to give,
except that during those five minutes he had had some kind of brainstorm.
Tekken pressed harder and Cristiano felt an explosion of pain
envelop his forearm and fingers.
"Why? Speak!"
On the one hand Cristiano wanted to plead for mercy, to beg
him to stop, to say it hadn't been him, that they were wrong, that
he had nothing to do with it; on the other hand he felt inside him
a block as hard as stone which stopped him doing so. They could
kill him if they liked, but he would never beg for mercy.
Tekken stepped back and Cristiano started crawling toward the
shelter. Everything around him had got tangled up in a rainbow of
colors, exhaust fumes, wheels and legs. His ears were buzzing and
he could hear what the others on their motorbikes were saying.
He thought he could hear female voices.
Esmeralda and Fabiana.