Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
The plot of land, measuring several acres, had been cordoned off
with long ribbons of striped plastic. A few leafless trees rose up out
of the mud like sad black aerials.
When our heroes reached the parking lot it was already occupied
by hundreds of cars and minibuses. They weren't the only ones who
had had the idea of a barbeque. All around, columns of smoke spiralled up from charcoal grills. There were also rows of vans with
illuminated signs selling drinks and sandwiches, to the sound of electric generators.
People sat on deckchairs and plastic stools, their feet in the mud
and their noses in the air.
Quattro Formaggi parked alongside a big blue pickup.
A small family sat on the back, chomping on pizza, rice balls and
chicken croquettes.
Rino Zena got out of the van and realized that he wasn't feeling
at all well. His headache was still there, alive and pulsing. Sometimes,
like an octopus, it hid in the crevices of his brain, but when he drank
or smoked too much, it emerged angrily and extended its electric
tentacles into his temples, his eye sockets, the back of his head, and
down into his stomach.
I have to give up drinking. I really have to.
Maybe he should join Alcoholics Anonymous, or follow
Trecca's advice-he must do something, anyway. Although the
social services might take this as proof that he couldn't look after
Cristiano.
Before going into rehab I must get married. Preferably to someone
with a job.
There had been one woman Rino had once thought of marrying:
Mariangela Santarelli, who owned a hairdressing salon in Marezzi,
a village near Varrano. Mariangela had three daughters (five, six
and seven years old) and was a young widow. Her husband, who
had owned a building supplies firm, had died of leukaemia after
eight years of marriage.
The real reason why Rino had stayed with Mariangela was that
she had looked after Cristiano when he went out at night. "If three
can sleep on it, I don't see why four can't," the hairdresser used to
say, leaning against the door frame, contemplating a double bed
covered with children.
Rino, who hated spending the night with the women he screwed,
would go and pick up Cristiano next morning and take him to
kindergarten.
Then one day Rino and Mariangela had split up, because he
wasn't a serious person and didn't want to marry her.
"I bet you never find another woman stupid enough to look after
your son while you cheat on her!" she had said.
And she had won her bet.
Maybe I could call her...
Though he doubted if Mariangela was still alone. She was an
attractive woman with a steady income.
Cristiano came over to him, holding the plastic bag from the cashand-carry. "Papa, how are we going to make the fire for the sausages?"
Rino rubbed his sore eyes. "I don't know. Look for some firewood, or ask someone if they'll give you some charcoal. I've got to
lie down for a minute. Call me when the planes come." He opened
the rear doors of the Ducato and lay down on the floor.
Maybe he just needed a nap.
"How are you feeling?"
Rino half-opened one eye and saw Quattro Formaggi looking at
him, his head cocked on one side.
"Not too good."
"I wanted to ask you something."
"Ask away."
Quattro Formaggi lay down beside Rino and started scratching his
cheek, then both of them stared in silence at the roof of the Ducato.
"Will you help me with Liliana?"
Rino yawned. "You really like her, do you?"
"I think so ... What do you think?"
"How would I know, Quattro? You're the one who's got to know."
After their discussion by the riverside, Rino had made inquiries
and found out that Liliana had been seeing a guy for over two years,
but he hadn't yet found the strength to tell his friend.
"No, you know best about my affairs. You always save me. You
helped me in the children's home. Remember..."
"For God's sake don't start going on about how I always save
you ...I've got a splitting headache."
Undaunted, Quattro Formaggi reminded him of their time in the
home, when they had met. Back then he had still been plain Corrado
Rumitz and had been teased, bullied, humiliated and bossed around
by all the other kids, before the indifferent eyes of the priests.
And he had helped him. Perhaps because by protecting him he
could show everyone that they had better keep away from Rino
Zena and everything he owned, including the idiot. Yes, that was
the truth of it.
Rino was fourteen years old and was sitting on a low wall outside
the care home smoking a cigarette while three bastards stuffed a poor idiot into a trash can and kicked it around the yard. Rino had
thrown away his butt and knocked one of them down.
"You pick on him again and you'll have to reckon with me. Just
imagine he has a label on him, saying "property of Rino Zena."
Okay?"
From that day on they had left the idiot in peace.
That had been the beginning of their friendship, if it could be
called that. Well, twenty years had passed and they were still there,
side by side. So maybe it could.
"Will you help me, then, Rino?"
"Listen ... That Liliana's not for the likes of... us. Haven't you
seen the way she behaves? She's after men who bring a bit of money
home. What have we got to offer her? Fuck all. You'd do better to
forget all about her. Anyway, what would you do? You won't even
let me into your apartment-where would you take her?"
Quattro Formaggi grabbed his wrist. "Has she got a boyfriend?"
"I don't know..."
"Tell me."
"Okay. Yes, she has! Are you satisfied now? Now stop going on
about it. It's over. Finished. I don't want to hear any more about it."
Silence. Then, quietly, Quattro Formaggi said: "Okay."
Quattro Formaggi said, "Okay." And he lay there in silence, staring
at the roof of the van, beside Rino.
To tell the truth, he too had heard that Liliana had a boyfriend,
but he had been hoping God had decided to lend a hand and would
make her quarrel with him.
Besides, Rino was right, he had nothing to offer a woman like
that. But when the nativity scene was finished, he too would have
something to brag about. His house would become a museum.
It was strange, though: now that he knew he had no chance with
Liliana he felt as if a weight had been taken off his shoulders.
Rino passed him the bottle of wine. "Well, are we going to do
this raid or not?"
Quattro Formaggi took a swig, then said: "You decide."
"Is the tractor ready?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's worth a try. But if we can't knock the cash machine
out of the wall first time, we give up. The police will be there in a
flash."
"All right. But when?"
"Tonight. Will you tell Danilo?"
"No, you tell him."
"We'll tell him later. It'll be a nice surprise for him."
Then they lay there in silence, passing the wine back and forth.
Danilo Aprea, sprawled in the wheelbarrow with a bottle in one
hand and a raw sausage in the other, unaware that a few yards away
Rino had decided that his plan would be carried out, looked in awe
at the three hundred and thirteenth air display team as they made
tricolored trails above his head, to the applause of hundreds of
people.
He was drunk and smiling inanely, and the only thought he managed to produce was:
Wow, they're good. They're really good.
Then, like a dopey camel, he lowered his gaze and saw Cristiano
beside him silently watching the planes, and he succeeded in producing another thought:
If Laura was alive now, she would be sitting here between me
and Cristiano.
It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there
must be a thunderstorm coming on. "What a thick black
cloud that is!" she said. "And how fast it comes! Why, I
do believe it's got wings!"
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
The terror dance began at half past ten in the evening, when a storm
front that had been tangled up for days among the mountain peaks
was freed by a Siberian airstream that pushed it southward.
In less than ten minutes the half-moon that hung in the middle
of a clear, starry sky was smothered by a blanket of dark, low clouds.
Darkness fell suddenly on the plain.
At ten forty-eight, thunder, lightning and gusts of wind marked
the opening of a long night of storms.
Then it started to rain and just went on and on.
If the temperature had been only a couple of degrees lower it
would have snowed, and the rest of this story might have taken a
different course.
Streets emptied. Shutters came down. Thermostats were adjusted.
Fires were lit. The satellite dishes on the roofs began to creak, the
Milan-Inter derby started breaking up into squares and furious
viewers reached for their telephones.
While the storm was raging over the Guerra home, Fabiana Ponticelli
was lying on Esmeralda's bed in her panties and bra, contemplating
her feet, which she had up against the wall.
Maybe it was only the effect of the pot, but from that position
they looked like two cod fillets.
So white, thin and long. And oh my God, those toes! So bony,
and with such big gaps between them...
Just like her father's.
Ever since she was small she had always hoped she was the secret
daughter of an American millionaire who would one day carry her
off to live with him in Beverly Hills, but those feet were worth more
than a thousand DNA tests.
The previous summer the Ponticellis had gone to the Valtour holiday village on Capo Rizzuto, and a cute but rather obnoxious boy from Florence had pointed out to her, on the beach, that her feet
were identical to her father's.
Fabiana's consolation was that this was the only physical resemblance between her and her father, and that it could be hidden in
her shoes.
Maybe I could put some nail polish on them.
Esmeralda had a collection in the bathroom covering all the colors
of the rainbow.
But the mere idea of sitting up, getting to her feet and going to
look for the right one made her lose interest.
Meanwhile, on the radio, Bob Dylan started singing "Knockin'
on Heaven's Door."
"I like this song..." yawned Fabiana.
"It's brilliant," said Esmeralda Guerra, who was sitting crosslegged on the desk. She too was in bra and panties. She was boring
holes in the head of an old doll, producing a black, toxic smoke
which mingled with that of the cigarettes and of the incense burning
on the bedside table among piles of fashion magazines.
"Who's the singer?" Fabiana slowly turned her head and saw that
the mute television screen was showing a heist film that she'd already
seen, starring that famous actor ...
Al... ? Al... ? Al something or other.
"Some famous guy. From the Eighties ... My mother's got the
record."
"But what do the words mean?"
"Evven means paradise. Dor, door. The door of Paradise."
"What about nokkin?"
Her friend threw the doll in the wastepaper basket and thought
about it a little too long.
She doesn't know, Fabiana said to herself.
Esmeralda claimed to be practically a native speaker of English
because she'd once been to California when she was small, but if
you asked her the meaning of any word a little more complicated
than window she never had a clue.
Let's see what crap she comes up with... "Well? What does it
mean?"
"It means knowing ... knowing the door of Paradise."
"And how does it go on?"
Esmeralda listened to the song with her eyes closed and then
said, in a serious tone: "He says that if you know the door of
Paradise it's easy to find it. And when you find it you can take
your mother with you, even though it's very dark ... Something like
that, anyway."
Fabiana grabbed a pillow and propped it under her head. "Jesus
Christ, what a stupid song."
If she ever opened a door and found herself looking at Paradise,
complete with woolly clouds and fluttering angels, she doubted that
she would go in. And certainly not with her mother.
Maybe I should put my head under the tap. Her eyes felt as
swollen as grapes and her skull so heavy it seemed full of gravel.
All because of that yellow limoncello and the pot supplied by one
Manish Esposito, a friend of Esmeralda's mother who lived in a
community of orange-clothed freaks near Santa Maria di Leuca.
Esmeralda yawned: "Shall we take a bath?"
"What?"
"A bath. I've got some great lily-of-the-valley bath foam."
It wasn't a bad idea. But what was the time? Fabiana looked at
the big clock shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle that hung above the
head of the bed.
Ten forty-five.
They had been shut up in that room for at least eight hours.
We're burying ourselves alive.
In the beginning it had seemed like an interesting project.
The Big Lock-Up.
That's what they had called it.
They would stay in the bedroom all Sunday, watching DVDs,
smoking joints, drinking and eating.
Better on their own than with that bunch of zombies who hung
around in the shopping mall and only woke up to have a fight. They
had come to this decision after that idiot Tekken had nearly thrown
Zena off the bridge.
God knows why he had slashed Tekken's motorbike like
that ... What was he trying to do? If she and Esmeralda hadn't interceded they really would have chucked him off.
Zena certainly had guts. But he was a difficult guy. Very touchy.
You couldn't say anything to him.
She had been thinking about Cristiano Zena a bit too much lately.
"Well?"
Fabiana turned toward her friend. "Well what?"