Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
They were there too. Another reason for not giving in.
Cristiano dragged himself under the bench of the bus shelter.
Maybe if I can get a little further in they won't find me.
It was a vain hope. Tekken grabbed him by the ankle and dragged
him back. "Well, what am I going to do with you?" He gave him
a kick. "Can you believe it, you guys? This little fuckhead ruined
my motorbike." He sounded despairing, as if someone had just shot
his mother. "What am I going to do with him?"
Cristiano curled up, his knees against his chest. He couldn't stop
shaking. He must react, get up, fight.
"Let's chuck him off the bridge," suggested a voice.
A moment's silence, then Tekken decreed: "Good thinking."
Through a mist of confusion and pain Cristiano found the idea of
dying like that, thrown off a bridge, almost beautiful, a liberation.
"Get hold of his legs."
They grabbed his ankles. An iron hand tugged at one of his arms.
He didn't resist.
He would be spotted next day by an old woman waiting for the
bus, squashed like a cockroach on the concrete embankment of the
canal. He felt sorry for his father.
He'll die of grief.
But when he suddenly sensed a dark abyss sucking him down,
heard the sound of the water and felt the icy wind on his face, he
realized that they had lifted him up and something inside him
snapped. He opened his eyes wide and started struggling frantically
and shouting, "You bastards! You bastards! Sons of bitches! You'll
pay for this! I'll kill you. I'll kill you all!"
But he couldn't break free. There seemed to be at least three of
them holding him fast.
The blood went to his head. Below him was a black stream which
gleamed silver each time a car passed by.
"Well, you little runt, do you want to die?"
"Fuck off!"
"Ooh, tough guy, are we?"
They pushed him further out.
"Fuck off, you bastards!"
He got a slap in the face which brought blood spurting out of
his nose.
Tekken's voice: "Listen to me very carefully. If you don't give
me one thousand euros, on the nail, on Monday, I swear on the
head of my mother that I'll kill you! And don't even think of running away, because I'll find you!" And then, to the others: "Now
let him go."
They put him down on the ground.
The whole world seemed to be a whirl of lights and featureless
faces.
Sitting there, slumped against the guardrail, Cristiano saw them
start up their engines, turn around and ride off toward the village.
It was five minutes before he tried to move a muscle, and when
he did so he discovered he had pissed himself.
When Cristiano Zena got home the lights were on.
Nothing was going right.
If his father saw him like this, with his pants soaked in piss and
covered with dirt, his jacket bloodstained and torn...
God knows what he'd do.
Cristiano limped across the yard, past the van and around to the
back of the house. A concrete ramp led down to an underground
garage with an aluminum rolling door. He lifted up a flower pot to
find the key. He put it in the lock and, stifling a cry of pain, raised
the door far enough for him to slip under it.
It was cold in the garage. He switched on the light, to reveal a
room which smelt of damp and of the paint in the tins that stood
on the long shelves. The pea-green walls and the yellow neon light
made it look like a morgue. In the middle was an old ping-pong
table covered with piles of newspapers, tires and other junk which
had accumulated over the years. A dusty, worm-eaten upright piano
stood against one wall. Rino had always been evasive about its origins and why it was there. It had nothing to do with the two of
them. And his father was the most tone-deaf person Cristiano had
ever met. At the millionth time of asking, he had finally got a reply.
"It was your mother's."
"What did she do with it?"
"She played it. She wanted to be a singer."
"Was she any good?"
His father had been reluctant to admit it. "She had a nice voice.
But when it came down to it, it wasn't singing she enjoyed, but
tarting herself up and going to piano bars and fooling around. I
tried to sell it, but I could never find a buyer."
So for a while Cristiano had taken to going down to the garage
and trying to play it. But he was even less musical than his father.
Inside some boxes stacked up against a wall Cristiano found some
old clothes. He took off his jacket and put on a moth-eaten cardigan
and a pair of jeans. He washed his face in the basin and straightened his hair. He wished he had a mirror to check his appearance,
but there wasn't any.
He locked up the garage and went back around to the front door.
The problem was his swollen lip. He also had scrapes on his back
and hands, and bruises on his leg, but those he could hide.
Another problem, which wasn't so much a problem as a disaster,
was the thousand euros. Well, he would have to think about that
later, think long and hard, because he didn't have the faintest idea
how he was going to solve it.
Now he could only hope his father was asleep or already dead
drunk, so that he could enter the house, slip past him as silently as
a panther and steal upstairs into his bedroom.
He took a good, deep breath. He had another quick look at his
clothes, then opened the front door and closed it behind him, trying
not to make any noise.
In the living room, only the lamp beside the television was on.
The rest of the room was in semi-darkness.
His father was in his usual place, on the beach chair; Cristiano
could see his shaven head. Quattro Formaggi was with him, sitting
on the sofa with his back to the door. Were they asleep? He waited
for a while to hear if they were talking. He couldn't hear anything.
So far so good.
He tiptoed toward the stairs. Hardly daring to breathe, he put
one foot on the first step and the other on the second, but he failed
to notice a hammer and some pliers, which fell down with a clatter.
Cristiano gritted his teeth and looked up, and at the same moment
he heard his father's hoarse voice: "Who's there? Cristiano, is that
you?"
He suppressed a curse and replied, trying to sound casual: "Yes,
it's me."
"Hi!" Quattro Formaggi raised an arm.
"Hi."
His father slowly turned his head, a mask which the television
screen had painted light blue. "So you've been home?"
Cristiano, as stiff as a statue, gripped the banister. "Yes."
"I didn't see any light in your room."
"I was asleep," he improvised.
"Ah! "
Emergency over. Rino was so drunk he wasn't interested in what
he was doing. He took another step.
"There should be some mortadella left. Could you bring it to me
with some bread?" Rino went on.
"Can't you get it yourself?"
"No."
"Oh come on. Is it such a big effort?"
"I'll get it for you," Quattro Formaggi offered.
"No, you stay where you are. If a father asks his son for some
mortadella, his son goes and gets the mortadella. That's the way it
works. What's the point of having children, otherwise?" He had
raised his voice. Either he was in one of his bad moods or he had
a headache.
Cristiano came back down the stairs, muttering to himself, and
went to fetch the mortadella. There was one single slice left in the
desolate fridge.
Then he got the bread. Still hidden in the shadows, he approached
his father.
But just as he was handing it to him, misfortune struck again.
On the television some guy gave the right answer to the twentythousand euro question, whereupon two thousand million-volt lightbulbs lit up all at once, flooding the lounge with light.
Cristiano lowered his eyelids, and when he raised them again his
father's expression had changed.
"What's the matter with your lip?"
"Nothing. What do you mean?" He covered it with his hands.
"And what are those scratches on your hands?"
"I fell over."
"How?"
Out of the void of Cristiano's mind came the first, foolish lie. "I
slipped on the stairs. It's nothing," he said, airily.
His father eyed him suspiciously. "On the stairs? And you made
such a mess of yourself? What did you do, fall all the way down?"
"Yes ... I tripped over my shoelaces..."
"How the fuck did you do that? It looks like someone's punched
you in the mouth..."
"No ...I just fell down..."
"Bullshit."
It was impossible to con his father. He had a special gift for spotting lies. He used to say lies stank and he could smell them at a distance of a hundred yards. And he always saw through you. How
he managed it Cristiano didn't know. He suspected it had something to do with that quiver of the jaw which he could never control when he was lying to him.
It was strange-with everyone else he was brilliant at lying. He
could spin the most outrageous yarns with such self-assurance that
nobody doubted him. But with his father it was different, he just
couldn't do it, he felt those black eyes boring through him in search
of the truth.
And at that moment Cristiano wasn't in the right frame of mind
to stand up to an interrogation.
His legs were still trembling and his stomach was churning. A
wise little voice told him that the only person who could get him
out of that mess with the thousand euros was his father.
Fatally, he lowered his head and, almost in a whisper, confessed:
"It's not true. I didn't fall down. I had a fight..."
Rino sat in silence for a long time, breathing through his nose,
then switched off the television. He swallowed saliva. "And by the
look of it you came off worst."
Cristiano nodded.
He shouldn't have spoken, because he could feel that all the
strength he had been using to stop himself crying was exhausted.
Coils of barbed wire seemed to be wrapped around his throat.
He lifted up his sweatshirt to show his grazed back.
His father looked at him expressionlessly for a moment, then
started rubbing his hands over his face like someone who's just heard
that his whole family has been killed in a road accident.
Cristiano wished he hadn't told him the truth.
Rino Zena looked up at the ceiling and asked, very politely:
"Would you mind leaving us, Quattro Formaggi?" He breathed
hard. "I need to be alone with my son."
He's going to give me a thrashing... thought Cristiano.
Quattro Formaggi got up without a word, put on his old overcoat, and, with an incomprehensible grimace at Cristiano, went out.
When the door was closed Rino stood up and switched on all
the lights in the sitting room. Then he went over to Cristiano and
examined his wounds and his mouth, as if he was checking a horse
at the market.
"Does your back hurt?"
"A bit..."
"Can you bend down?"
Cristiano leaned forward. "Yes."
"It's not serious, then. What about your leg?"
"Yes, I can bend it."
"Your hands?"
"They're okay."
Rino paced silently around the room, then sat down on a chair.
He lit a cigarette and stared at him. "And how about you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did you hurt him?" He only had to look his son in the eye for
the answer. "The hell you did!" He shook his head in despair.
"You ... you don't know how to fight, do you?" It was a revelation.
"You really don't know how to." He sounded half scandalized, half
ashamed of himself. As if he had failed to teach his offspring to
talk, or to walk. As if he had fathered a son with a fatal allergy to
wheat and then forced him to gorge himself on bread.
"But..." Cristiano tried to interrupt him, to explain exactly who
Tekken was. But his father was in full flow.
"It's my fault. It's my fault." Now he was walking around with
his head in his hands like a penitent at Lourdes. "He doesn't know
how to defend himself. It's my fault. I'm a failure..."
God knows how long he would have gone on like this if Cristiano
hadn't shouted, "Papa! Papa!"
Rino stopped. "What's up?"
"He's eighteen years old ... and he's an expert at Thai boxing. He
won the regional championships."
His father looked at him blankly. "Who is?"
"Tekken!"
"Who the fuck is Tekken?"
"The guy who beat me up."
Rino grabbed him by the collar. His face was contorted, his nostrils flared, his mouth clamped shut. He raised his fist. Cristiano
instinctively shielded his head with his arms. Rino held him there,
hesitating, then gave him a shove, so that he fell back onto the sofa.
"You're a total idiot. You believe all that shit about martial arts
experts knowing how to fight. What the fuck have you learned about life? What the fuck are you thinking? Wait a minute, I know! You
believe everything you see on TV and you try to be like them. That's
it, isn't it? You watch those cartoons where people do kung fu and
all that kind of shit and you think it's clever to act like Bruce Lee
or some other Chinese fuckwit, prancing about like an acrobat and
shouting ha all the fucking time instead of fighting. You've got no
fucking idea! Do you know what it really takes to beat the shit out
of someone? Well, do you or don't you?"
Cristiano shook his head.
"It's so simple. Rage. Rage, Cristiano! All it takes is to be a son
of a bitch and not give a fuck about anyone. Even if you're up
against motherfucking Jesus Christ in the temple, with steam
coming out of his ears, if you know what you're doing you can
knock him down like a bowling pin. You walk up behind him,
you say, "Excuse me," he turns around, you hit him in the face
with an iron bar and he goes down, and then, if you feel like it,
while he's on the ground you give him a kick in the teeth, and
that's it. Amen. Or if some guy's fucking you around, pushing you
and threatening you and trying to scare you by doing some of
those dance moves, you know what you do? Nothing. You just
stay put. Then," he pointed one foot forward, "you place your
foot like this. And when he moves in closer you head-butt him on
the nose. Like you were heading a soccerball, using all the force
of your neck and shoulders. Only make sure you hit him with this
part here, or you'll hurt yourself." He touched the top of his forehead. "If you do it right, you won't feel a thing. You might be a
bit sore the next day, but that's all. He'll go down and then it's
the same routine-a kick in the teeth and it's over. I defy anyone
to get up after that, even this asshole Tekker or whatever the fuck
his name is ... But you have to be decisive and mean, get it? Now
come here."