Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
"Snap out of it. Go," he ordered himself. He put on his gloves
and left the apartment.
Cristiano Zena was in bed, buried under three layers of blankets,
listening to the storm. If he closed his eyes he felt as if he was in a
bunk on an ocean liner in the middle of a hurricane. The rain
drummed against the window panes, and the frames creaked, pushed
by the wind. A trickle of water was running down from the windowsill into the room and in one corner of the ceiling a dark patch
had spread and every one, two, three, four, five seconds a drip fell
making a loud PLIC.
He would have liked to get up and put a bucket there and roll
up a cloth and lay it along the windowsill to stop the rain, but he
was so sleepy ...
Fabiana Ponticelli staggered out of Esmeralda's room. She stood in
the hall in the half-light, trying to muster the strength to face the
storm. The last joint had finished her off.
I'm going to throw up.
To her left, on a long dresser, she saw the silhouettes of four
Chinese vases and for a moment she thought of vomiting in one
of them.
Swaying and putting her hands on the walls lined with old Arabian
carpets and shelves full of books, she advanced toward the exit. The
front door, at the end of the hall, was illuminated by a patch of reddish light that came from the sitting room.
Please God, don't let Esmeralda's mother be there ... If she sees
me in this state...
Over the past year Serena Guerra had caught her in even more
disastrous situations than this one, embracing the toilet bowl or
comatose on the bed.
That time we dropped acid and...
But now, with the paranoia that had taken hold of her, Fabiana
didn't think she was even capable of saying "goodnight."
Walk straight past, quickly, don't stop, don't look into the sitting
room, open the door and go out.
She closed her rainproof jacket more tightly, put up the hood,
took a breath and headed for the door as boldly as a hussar on
parade, but when she was outside the sitting room door she took
a quick glance inside.
Serena Guerra was lying on the floor on a coconut mat, leafing
through a big book of photographs.
The room was lit by the weak glow of the fire that was dying
on the hearth and by a dozen candles on a chest made of red wood.
On an old sofa, muffled up in blankets and with a funny woollen
hat on his head, little Mattia was sleeping with his mouth open.
Even in her present delicate mental and physical state, Fabiana
couldn't help being flabbergasted for the millionth time at the resemblance between mother and daughter.
The first time she had seen Esmeralda and Serena together she
had been lost for words. The same straight brown hair, the same
oval face. Same eyes, same shaped lips, same everything. Except that
Serena was an extra-small version of Esmeralda. There was a good
five inches difference between them. On her arms and shoulders the
mother was a trifle more muscular, she had a fairer complexion, a
slightly irregular nose and gentler, more liquid eyes. A certain angularity in the daughter's features was, as it were, smoothed out in the
mother.
Serena must be about forty but looked much younger. She could
easily have passed for thirty.
Fabiana found her fashion sense excellent. That evening she was
wearing a pair of low-waisted Levi's, cowboy boots and a coarse
woollen cardigan with geometric patterns, and she had gathered her
hair into a mass of little plaits.
A few days earlier, in a condition not dissimilar from her present
one, Fabiana had met Esmeralda's mother and they had had a chat.
Serena knew how to put you at your ease, she talked to you like
an adult and listened to you. Only, that evening she'd looked at her
for a little longer than usual and then asked her: "Don't you think
you two are overdoing the pot?"
Fabiana, like a dog that has just crapped on the carpet, had
squatted down against the wall and with a smile that had nearly dislocated her jaw had said, in the falsest of tones: "What? I'm sorry,
I don't understand."
"Don't you think you're overdoing the pot?"
She had opened her mouth and hoped that some meaningful sentiment would come out, but none had, so she had closed it again
and shaken her head.
"I know ... it's your business and I'm sure ... well, I'm sure you're
intelligent enough to keep it under control. But with pot it's easy to
get carried away ... Then it gets difficult to concentrate at school
... Look, I'm sorry to be a bore ... I don't usually do this."
It's a terrible effort for her to say this to me, Fabiana had thought.
"I'm a bit worried, if you want to know the truth. It's impossible
to talk to Esmeralda at the moment ... She's always angry, as if I'd
done something terrible to her. She answers me so aggressively, it
frightens me ... All I'm saying is that if you smoke too much pot
you become isolated and the world begins to seem small and stifling ... Maybe you should both try to get out more, not to keep to
yourselves all the time, shut up in that..."
Fabiana had gazed at her open-mouthed in wonder, like a child
watching a chameleon change color.
The small, stifling world.
That was it. Esmeralda's mother had put her finger on a problem
she had been aware of for some time, the reason she felt so dissatisfied.
A small, stifling world. Which you must escape from as soon as
you finish school. You must go to America, Rome, Milan, wherever
you like, but you've got to get away from this small, stifling village.
Why was that sensitive, beautiful creature standing in front of
her Esmeralda's mother, not hers? Why was she so unfortunate as
to be the daughter of a woman who was about as open-minded as
a cloistered nun and who spent her whole life repeating the refrain
that papa was having a hard time at work and that they must do
all they could to make his life easier?
What about me? Don't I exist? No, as far as my mother is concerned I don't. Or rather, I exist because I'm part of the Ponticelli
family, so I must be Good, Nice and Beautiful.
Isn't that a wonderful thing, a mother who tells you that if you
get stoned out of your mind it's none of her business?
When her mother had discovered a minute quantity of marijuana
in the pocket of her pants, she had first pretended to have a fainting
fit, then she'd taken her to speak to Beppe Trecca, the social worker,
then she'd tried to send her to boarding school in Switzerland. And
if it hadn't been for the tight-fistedness of the Turd, by this time
she'd be locked away in some paramilitary college in Lugano.
And the most ridiculous thing of all, which really upset her, was
that Esmeralda didn't realize how lucky she was to have a mother
like that. She would answer her rudely on principle. Raise her eyes
to the sky. Snort with exasperation.
For a moment, hidden in the shadow, Fabiana was uncertain
whether to ask Serena to give her a lift home. But it was better to
face the rain than show herself in that state.
With the furtive lightness of Eva Kant, Fabiana Ponticelli turned
the key in the lock and went out into the storm.
Danilo was holding the receiver in two hands like an iron mace.
"How the hell can I keep calm, Rino? You tell me! That idiot has
disappeared! We're way behind sche..."
"He'll be there. Keep calm! And behind what schedule, anyway?
What difference does it make whether we get there a bit sooner or
a bit later?" replied Rino, yawning.
Pure hydrochloric acid was bubbling inside the walls of Danilo
Aprea's stomach. He made a superhuman effort not to start shouting
so loud he would burst a blood vessel. He must keep calm. Very
calm. He swallowed the bile that was stinging his esophagus and
piped: "What do you mean, behind what schedule? Please, Rino,
don't be like this..."
"Don't be like what? Have you seen what it's like outside? How
are we going to get to the tractor? Swimming? Let's wait for the
storm to ease off, then we'll see."
Danilo inhaled and exhaled, puffing out his cheeks like Dizzy
Gillespie.
"What are you doing? Having an asthma attack?" asked Rino.
"Nothing. Nothing. You're right. As always, you're right. We'll wait."
Pure hatred.
It was that placid tone of Rino's, that air of a know-it-all God
Almighty who remained calm even when the Martians were invading
the Earth, that drove Danilo wild with rage. How he would have
loved to plunge a dagger in his heart. A hundred, a thousand times,
shouting: "So you know everything, do you? Yes, you're perfectly
right, you know everything!"
"That's the way. You've got to relax. I'll wait for you here, we
need to talk." And Rino hung up without even saying goodbye.
"Talk? Talk about what?" Danilo shouted. He seized the remote
control and hurled it against the wall, smashing it to pieces, then
started jumping up and down on it.
The dark sky was hammering down on Quattro Formaggi and his
Boxer. Gusts of wind and rain drove him this way and that, and it
was a struggle to keep the scooter on line.
The rush of the torrents that flowed down the roadside and the
gurgle of the drains vomiting out streams of brown water merged
into a fearful roar inside his helmet.
It was impossible to see anything and Quattro Formaggi was
making his way toward Danilo's house from memory.
The wind had uprooted a row of trees from the pavement and
thrown them into the middle of the road. A big pine had fallen on
a car, smashing its windscreen.
What was this, the storm of the century?
The next day all the television news bulletins would talk of rivers
overflowing, floods, collapsed buildings, damage to agriculture,
compensation. And while the downpour lashed the plain, a gang
had carried off the cash machine from the Credito Italiano
dell'Agricoltura.
As well as being rich we'll be in all the papers ...
Over the past few days Quattro Formaggi had tried to imagine
what he would do with all that money. The only idea he had come up with was buying some more clay to build a big castle and an
electric train complete with points, level crossings and stations to
link up the south and north of the nativity scene. Journeys were
very complicated now with all those mountains, lakes and rivers,
and having a railway at their disposal would help the inhabitants
of the nativity scene to no end.
What if I put ina...
What was the name of that box hanging from a wire which people
who went skiing used for going up mountains? He didn't know, but
it didn't matter. In the toyshop in the shopping mall he had seen a
fantastic one. With two cabins made of green tin with black roofs,
and skiers inside them and an electric motor that made it really work.
It could take people straight to Baby Jesus's cave instead of them
having to go all that way on foot...
He was already imagining his ski lift going up and down when,
beyond the rain-streaked visor of his helmet, there appeared in the
distance a red gleam in the middle of the road.
It looked like the rear light of a scooter.
In the camper Beppe Trecca, sitting on the little sofa, had eaten the
won tons, which with the cold had taken on the consistency of
chewed-up Hubba Bubba. To warm himself up he had drunk a little
melon vodka and wrapped himself in all the blankets he could find.
Let's face it, Ida will never come.
Mario had arrived home. She would have to wait till he went to
sleep and then sneak out secretly. It was madness.
But if Ida was willing to take such a risk she must be madly in
love with him. And that made him feel very good.
Certainly, it might be better to put it off to another day.
The social worker took a box of Xanax tablets out of the inside
pocket of his jacket and held it close to the candle as if it was a
magic amulet.
He had already taken two. Would a third make him as braindead as a lichen?
On the internet he had read that the usual effect of tranquillizers
on sexual activity was to inhibit the orgasmic reflex, which might
lead to a slowing down in the process of reaching a climax. This
had various consequences, one of which was a significant improvement in the quality of intercourse for both the man and his partner,
should there be a pre-existing tendency to rapid ejaculation.
And a pre-existing bloody tendency to rapid ejaculation had
indeed afflicted Beppe since the far-off years of his adolescence. He
had carried it with him through four miserable years of sociology
at the University of Rome.
Now, being a good manager of himself, he decided to assess the
various effects that the taking of a further tablet might have.
He could only think of two, both of them unpleasant:
1) Despite the massive presence of benzodiazepine in his body he
would still come in the time it took a sprinter to do the hundred
yards.
2) He wouldn't be able to get it up at all.
He wasn't sure which of the two options he preferred.
He stroked his chin in the manner of Rodin's thinker. Yes, perhaps not being able to have an erection would be preferable. I'd
still look a twat, but not quite such a stupid one. And I might even
find an excuse to back out. But if I come straight away she'll think
I'm pathetic.
Then a further possibility flashed through his mind: Suppose I
legged it? If I just wasn't here when she arrived?
Disconsolate and undecided, he took another sip of vodka.
Fabiana Ponticelli, on the seat of her scooter, was frozen stiff. The
pudding-basin helmet on her head was completely useless. The rain
got into her eyes and ran down her neck and froze the tip of her
nose. Her ears had gone numb. In the attempt to see something she
had tried putting on her sunglasses, but that had only made things
worse. Her pants were soaked and she was now beginning to feel
her feet floating in her sneakers.