Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
The smell, as solid as a wall, was both human and chemical at
the same time. For a moment he thought his cousin's husband must
have dissolved a dead animal in the acid, but then he saw some
violet-colored sludge in the bowl with some material floating in it
which at first sight seemed organic, though of uncertain origin.
He pressed a big red button, hoping some pump might drain that
pestilential pond, but it didn't. All he succeeded in doing was opening
the port-hole, turning on a weary little fan and shutting the door.
The impact of the stench had been so strong that only now did
he realize that the temperature in the camper was at least five degrees below freezing and that the rain was beating down on it like a
hammer on an anvil.
How did the heating work? But above all: did campers have any
heating?
They should.
He laid the suitcase on the table and unzipped it. He began to
arrange on the little cooker a series of foil dishes containing chicken
with bamboo shoots, spring rolls, won tons, sweet and sour pork and
Cantonese rice. All bought from the Pagoda Incantata restaurant at
the twentieth mile mark on the highway. Then he took out a bottle
of Falanghina that had cost him twelve euros, and another of melon
vodka to give Ida the coup de grace if she ...
(What?)
Nothing.
He laid a red cloth on the little table, added some plastic plates
and chopsticks and then lit some cedar-scented candles and a dozen
sticks of incense, which began to send up spirals of white smoke.
That should cover the smell...
The cell phone in his jacket pocket gave two beeps.
A message.
He took it out and read:
Mario has come home unexpectedly.
I'll wait till he's gone to bed then I'll join you.
It was eleven thirty and Fabiana Ponticelli couldn't believe she was
still lying on Esmeralda's bed.
She was an hour late, but the thought of going out and doing
twenty minutes on a scooter in the storm made her feel like weeping.
Besides, she couldn't stop thinking that next morning, before
school, she had to see the dentist, who would find the piercing on
her tongue.
What if I just said screw it and stayed here for the night? That
way I'd miss the dentist too. What could happen?
In the first place the Turd would confiscate her scooter. The thing
she cared about most in the world, and which enabled her to escape
from Giardino Fiorito, the estate where her family lived.
Oh yes, he didn't just take things away, he confiscated them. And
how he loved doing it.
"I'll confiscate your phone!" "I'll confiscate your combat boots!"
I'll confiscate all the fun out of your life.
How much did she hate him? She wished she could quantify it,
she wished she had an instrument like the one for pressure, a
hateometer, to measure the loathing she felt for her father. She'd
melt it. She hated him as much as all the grains of sand on all the
beaches of the world. No, more. As much as all the molecules of
water in the sea. No, even more. The stars in the universe. Yes,
that was it.
Well, he'd only take away my scooter for a week, or ten days at
most.
She knew the reason she felt so anxious was that pot they had
smoked. Lately she had noticed that joints, instead of making her
giggly as they used to, turned her paranoid.
To keep this effect under control Fabiana had drunk half a bottle
of limoncello.
The alcohol and the pot were two monsters that were fighting
for supremacy over her mind. The marijuana monster was geometric. All sharp points, blades, hard edges. The limoncello monster was shapeless, slobbery and blind. And if you took them in the
right proportions, the two monsters, instead of fighting, fused into
a perfect hybrid that made you feel out of this world.
But now the monster had lost its spherical perfection and had
got out its blades and sharp points (thanks to that last, damned
joint) and kept jabbing them into her brain.
She breathed in deeply and blew the air out.
In these cases never think about your parents, school or a fucking
visit to the dentist.
But if I don't go to the dentist the Turd will get suspicious. He'll
start thinking I'm pregnant or something.
Why didn't Esmeralda ever get attacks of paranoia? She stuffed herself with joints and never had any side effects. It must be a genetic thing.
Drink. Drink, it'll do you good.
Fabiana took a swig from what was left of the warm limoncello
and tried to think about something else, but without success. "I'm
so anxious..." she said out loud, without meaning to.
Esmeralda, who was busy plucking hairs out of her eyebrows
with tweezers, looked up. "What?"
"I've got to go home."
"Stay here for the night. Why do you want to go? Haven't you
seen what it's like outside?" Esmeralda lit a cigarette.
"I can't. My parents will kill me if I don't go home."
Esmeralda started burning her split ends with the lighted end.
"The truth is, you're not methodical. You don't tell your parents to
fuck off often enough. It's just a question of regularity. You've got
to be strict with yourself-even if you don't feel like it you must do
it every day. Look at me. I tell my mother to fuck off every day of
the week and we've settled all our conflicts."
Fabiana didn't reply. It was stuffy in the room. What with the
incense, the joints and the cigarettes, there was such a haze she could
hardly see Esmeralda.
"Esme, open the window, I'm suffocating."
Her friend, intent on her coiffuring, took no notice.
"Mrs Ponticelli, your daughter's got a little silver ball on her
tongue." That was what the dentist would say to her mother.
She had been clever, so far she had managed to hide the piercing.
It hadn't been difficult. All you had to do was keep your mouth
shut, avoid yawning, and above all, never laugh. There wasn't much
to laugh about in her home anyway.
The problem had been getting used to having a nail through the
middle of your tongue. And, to be honest, Fabiana still hadn't got
used to it. She would keep twisting it around in her mouth and running it along her teeth, and by evening her tongue would be all
swollen and her mouth sore.
When her mother found out she would make a melodramatic
scene in front of the dentist, the patients, everyone. Her mother
loved making a fool of herself in public. But that would be as far
as it would go. The woman had about as much backbone as an
earthworm.
You accepted the one on my eyebrow and the one on my navel.
Now, mama dear, you're just going to have to learn to live with
another one. What's the big deal?
The real problem would come if she told the Turd. And since
mama had no real personality, no individual life of her own, and
was only an external organ of her husband, Fabiana was sure she
would go and tell him.
But on reflection, there was a slight possibility that for once in
her life the external organ would restrain the urge to confess all.
And this solely and exclusively for sordid, utilitarian reasons.
Her father would bang on about it for the next twelve years,
accusing her of not knowing how to bring up children. Anyway,
who said the dentist would spill the beans?
"I bet you're freaking out about that piercing!" said Esmeralda.
How did that girl always know what she was thinking? Could
she read her mind?
Fabiana looked at her friend, who was rolling another joint.
She tried to appear calm. "No, I was thinking about something
completely different." But it was as if she had GOTCHA! written
across her forehead in great big letters.
"What were you thinking about then?"
"Nothing."
"You were thinking about when the dentist goes to see your
mother..." Mrs. Ponticelli, your daughter's got a piercing in her
tongue"...
How you love it when my parents give me a hard time! "Oh
come on, doctors have a professional obligation to respect their
patients" privacy."
Esmeralda raised her eyes from the cigarette paper and goggled
at her. "Are you crazy? The dentist?"
"It's true. They take an oath ... I know they do..."
"Oh sure, the Xenophontic oath. Yeah, sure ... Listen, take my
advice ... Don't go to the dentist's. Stay here. If I were you I wouldn't
give a damn about the Turd and your mother ... They boss you
about, they treat you like an imbecile. Stand on your own two feet
for once in your life."
Fabiana got off the bed.
Esmeralda had given her the strength to go home. She started
nervously searching for her clothes among the debris scattered on
the floor.
"You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take it out before
I go to the dentist's." She would have liked to add that she didn't
like it anyway, in fact she loathed it, and that really it was just a
nightmare, especially since someone had told her a piercing on your
tongue gave you a tic, so that for the rest of your life you looked
like a ruminating camel.
"That'd be a big mistake, I warn you ... Remember what James
said-if you take it out the hole will close up immediately."
Esmeralda sealed the joint with a deft flick of her tongue.
Fabiana put on her T-shirt. "I'd just take it out during the
check-up..."
Esmeralda lit the joint and blew out a white cloud. "That's plenty
long enough. The mucous membranes heal up instantly! And don't
think I'm going to put it back in for you."
Fabiana didn't reply. She finished dressing and glanced at her
reflection in a long mirror framed by photos of Christina Aguilera
and Johnny Depp. She had bloodshot eyes and dry lips, like Regan,
the girl in The Exorcist. She ran her fingers through her hair and
touched up her lipstick. "Okay, I'm off."
Esmeralda held out the joint to Fabiana. "At least let's have a
goodnight puff."
"No, I'm too spaced out. I can hardly stand up. I'm going."
"Oh come on, Fabi, you know it's bad luck to smoke a joint on
your own," said Esmeralda in the voice of a sad little child.
"I've got to go..."
She seized her hand. "You're mad at me, aren't you, because of
what I said about the dentist?"
"No, it's just that I've got to go."
Esmeralda lowered her black eyes and then raised them again.
"I'm sorry, Fabi."
"What for?"
"You know... It'll be all right, you'll see. The worst that can
happen is that your mother will make a scene at the dentist's ... Don't
worry.
Fabiana realized that her anger had evaporated. Esmeralda only
had to look at her like that and she'd melt like a little idiot. "Okay,
but then I really must go."
"I love you!" Esmeralda jumped to her feet, planted a kiss on
her lips and hugged her tight and then said: "But we've got to make
this a good one. Pass me the bottle of Uliveto and a pen."
That idiot Quattro Formaggi was more than half an hour late.
Danilo paced around the room in galoshes, a blue windbreaker,
a scarf and a woolly hat, repeating over and over again like a broken
record: "I don't believe it, I don't believe it! Where the hell has he
got to?"
He had already tried calling him six times on his cell but every
time the fucking call had been unanswered.
"What a stupid bastard..." muttered Danilo, collapsing in a heap
on the sofa. "It's impossible to work with people like this. Turn on
your phone, you fool!"
He poured himself his fourth (was it his fourth or his fifth?) glass
of grappa and tossed it back with a grimace.
Maybe he should call Rino and tell him Quattro Formaggi was
behind schedule, that he must have got lost somewhere.
But Rino would hit the roof.
And this evening there was no room for rages.
They had to be a united, close-knit, focused team.
But how do you form a close-knit, focused team with a hysterical lunatic and the village idiot?
He was about to pour himself another glass, but decided against it.
I'd get drunk ...
He closed his eyes, trying to calm himself.
"He'll be here any minute. He'll be here any minute. He'll..."
he started repeating like a mantra. "If he isn't here in a quarter of
an hour I swear I'll kill him." He forced himself to be silent and
heard the fury of the storm swirling around the house and, below,
the canal surging, swollen with water.
There, finished.
All the inhabitants of the nativity scene were back on their feet
and the bridge had been repaired. This made him feel much calmer.
But that bridge had been worrying him for some time and sooner
or later he was going to have to build a new one, bigger and stronger,
with at least a three-lane road across it.
Quattro Formaggi put on his waterproof pants and checked for
the umpteenth time to see whether he'd missed anything.
The next morning, first of all he would tidy up the hill, and while
he was about it he could make it into a mountain, a high, rocky
one. He could go down to the river and get a few large stones from
the beach and it would be perfect.
Lots of animals live on rocks.
The ... He couldn't remember what they were called. The whatdo-you-call-ems. Those things with long horns that jump.
"Steinbock," he said, pulling on his rubber boots. He put on his
ski mask and over it his green full-face helmet.
He picked up his yellow poncho, but didn't put it on.
Danilo had told him not to wear it because it could be seen from
miles away.
But who's going to be out in this weather?
He put it on.
He had no desire to go out. He would have been happy to stay
at home, working on the nativity scene.
Did they have to do the robbery that evening, of all evenings? In
all that rain?
He turned off the television just as Ramona was coming out of
the house stark naked, meeting Bob the lumberjack and saying to
him: "Get out your joystick and let's have some fun."