Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
Where was the Boxer?
Cristiano had searched all over the yard and had even gone down
to the lamppost at the side of the highway where Quattro Formaggi
usually left it, but the fucking scooter wasn't there.
So Quattro Formaggi didn't come. Maybe Papa went to pick them
up. I don't understand.
How could he get to San Rocco now?
Two minutes out in that deluge had been enough to drench him
from head to foot. The water was coming from the sky in buckets,
and when a flash of forked lightning fell Cristiano saw the clouds
catch fire overhead.
He went out onto the highway, having made up his mind to
go on foot, but after twenty yards he stopped and came back
again.
Where am I going? It's too far.
He had no idea how many miles it was to the Agip gas station.
What about hitch-hiking?
(Forget it. There's not a single car on the roads.)
The bus?
(No buses after eleven o'clock.)
He slapped himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand.
He must call Quattro Formaggi or Danilo. Of course! Why hadn't
he thought of it before?
He ran to the front door, gripped the handle and turned, but
nothing happened. With a sinking feeling, he searched in his pockets
for the keys.
They weren't there.
He had left them indoors.
And I closed the shutters too.
He picked up a flowerpot and hurled it at the door and then, for
good measure, kicked the steps and started jumping up and down
in the rain, howling and cursing the fact that he wasn't yet fourteen and didn't have a scooter of his own.
If I had a scooter, I'd already be...
(Stop it! Think!)
He wanted to, but he couldn't. As soon as one thought appeared
in his mind it was erased by another.
If only he'd repaired the Renault...I could have driven it.
(Yes, but he didn't. So... )
His head was whirling. He could only imagine himself on a
scooter speeding toward his father.
Cristiano closed his eyes, threw his head back and opened his
mouth.
The bicycle!
What a fool he was! There was the bicycle in the garage.
He ran around to the back of the house, lifted a flowerpot and
picked up the key. He put it in the lock and wrenched up the rolling
door so violently he could have given himself a hernia. He switched
on the long fluorescent light and the bicycle, a green-and-grey mountain bike, was there, hanging by its wheel from a hook.
His father had given it to him six months earlier. He had won it
with fuel points. But Cristiano hated pedal bikes, he only liked
motorbikes. And it had remained hanging there, with the transparent
plastic still covering the seat and handlebars.
Cristiano stood on an old radio and took it down. It was covered in dust and its tires had gone down quite a bit. For a moment
he hesitated, wondering whether to look for the pump.
There's no time.
He hoisted the bike onto his shoulders and carried it out onto
the road, got a running start, jumped on and started pedalling for
all he was worth.
As the Puma slid through the rain silent as a torpedo, Beppe
Trecca sang at the top of his voice: "More than this ... There is
nothing..." He wagged his head in time with the windshield
wipers.
His knowledge of English was pretty basic, but he understood
what the great Bryan Ferry was saying.
More than this there is nothing.
It was absolutely true. What more could he want? Ida Lo Vino
was crazy about him and he about her. And that was a truth, like
the fact that that night it had seemed as if the end of the world had
come.
There was so much joy and love in the social worker's heart that
next day he was personally going to clear up the sky and make the
sun shine again.
I feel like a god.
He remembered the camper. The banana.
Ernesto would have a fit when he saw what had happened to his
motor home.
But he's so cautious, he's bound to have an insurance policy that
covers natural disasters. And anyway, quite frankly, who gives a
damn about such material things?
He felt like dancing. For a while he had attended a samba course
organized by the local council and had discovered the pleasures of
the ballroom.
Ida likes dancing too.
But this called for something with a bit more beat. He took
the CD box out of the pocket in the door and looked for something more lively. He didn't have much, to be honest. Supertramp,
the Eagles, Pino Daniele, Venditti, Rod Stewart. Then in the last
compartment he found a Donna Summer compilation and put it
in the stereo.
Perfect.
He turned the volume right up.
The singer started screaming: "Hot stuff. I need hot stuff." And
Beppe joined in.
Hot stuff. I need hot stuff.
"You must be a little raver, then, like Ida," Beppe chuckled.
Who would ever have thought Ida was such a sex-bomb? Even
in his wildest fantasies he had never imagined that the coordinator
of voluntary activities, that quiet, retiring woman, that loving mother,
had so much fire inside her.
A thrill of pleasure ran up into his neck and ignited his spinal
nerves.
What about me? I held out like the Alamo. Not a hint of a wilt.
As steady as a rock.
It must have been those three Xanaxes and the melon vodka that
had enabled him to stop himself coming immediately.
Different music. He needed different music. He took out Donna
Summer, picked up the box and was putting in a Rod Stewart CD
when suddenly he heard a bang on the front of the car and for a
split second something dark slid over the right-hand side of the
windshield.
Beppe let out a yell and, without even thinking, rammed his foot
down on the brake and the car skidded across the wet asphalt like
a crazed surfboard and came to rest on the shoulder, half a yard
away from the trunk of a poplar.
Beppe, terrified, with his arms stiff and his hands glued to the
wheel, heaved a sigh of relief.
Phew!
A little further to one side and he'd have crashed into that tree.
What had happened?
He had hit something.
A tree trunk. A dog. Or a cat. Or maybe a seagull.
The place was full of those big birds that had abandoned the seas
for the inland garbage dumps. It must have been dazzled by the
headlights.
He switched off the radio, unfastened his seat belt and got out
of the car with a plastic bag from the Esselunga supermarket over
his head. He walked around the front of the Puma and with clenched
fists exclaimed: "Noooo! Damn it!"
I'd only just had the bodywork repaired.
The right side, above the front wheel, was dented, and there were
bumps on the hood too. The right windshield wiper was bent.
What did I hit-a brown bear? Will the insurance cover something like this? he wondered, getting hurriedly back into the car.
He shut the door and selected first gear, then changed his mind,
put it into reverse and started driving backward.
I want to have a look, just out of curiosity...
He travelled less than fifty yards and then braked. The white light
of the reversing lights had fallen on something brown curled up on
the edge of the asphalt.
There it is!
A dog! A damned dog.
He reversed three more yards and noticed that the dog was
wearing a pair of sneakers with the Nike ticks on their soles.
He must have done about ten miles and he still hadn't reached the
turning for San Rocco.
Maybe it's been blocked off. Or perhaps I didn't see it and I've
come too far.
Cristiano Zena was pedalling in the middle of the deserted
highway. The dim light produced by the dynamo barely lit up a
couple of yards of road in front of the wheel.
He was shivering with cold, but inside his jacket he was boiling.
The rain was stinging his eyes, the back of his head and his ankles
were frozen and he had lost all feeling in his chin and ears.
He had been a fool not to pump up the tires. It was costing him
three times the effort. If he didn't find the turnoff soon he was sure
his legs would give out.
Now and then, for an instant, the electric glow from a flash of
lightning would light up the storm-battered fields as bright as day.
Since he had spoken to his father on the phone more than half
an hour must have passed.
If only I had a motorbike... I'd be there by now.
It was incredible, whatever he did his brain always returned to
motorbikes.
A tractor trailer with a German license plate came up behind him,
immense and silent like a humpback whale. It honked its horn and
emitted a yellowish glare.
Cristiano dived in toward the side of the road.
The truck went past very close, drenching him from head to foot.
While he was still recovering from the fright he saw up ahead a
blue sign proclaiming: SAN ROCCO 1000 YARDS.
So the turnoff did exist and he was near to it!
Though his fingers were stuck to the handlebar and his nose was
an icicle, he stood up from the seat, leaned forward, gritted his teeth,
and with his muscles flooded with lactic acid pushed on the pedals, which were as stiff as rusty cogwheels, and shouted: "Go, Pantani!
Go!" Finally he took the exit at full speed and found himself, leaning
over steeply to the side, in a puddle just around the bend. The wheels
lost their grip and the bicycle skidded as if on a sheet of ice.
When he opened his eyes again he was lying on the ground. He
got up and checked what he'd done to himself. He had grazed the
palm of one of his hands, his jeans were torn at the knee and the
sole of one shoe had been ripped away by the asphalt, but apart
from that he was all right.
He straightened up the handlebar and set off again.
I've hit a man.
Beppe Trecca, with his head turned back over his shoulders, continued to gaze through the rear window at the bundle on the road.
His heart was pounding and his armpits were as cold as ice.
(Go and see.)
It wasn't my fault. I was driving very slowly.
(Go and see.)
The idiot must have crossed the road without looking.
(And you were putting the CD into the stereo.)
A second. It only took me a second...
(Go and see!)
If he's...
(Go and see!!)
He must be hurt. Maybe he's not too badly injured, though.
(G O!!!)
He ran his tongue over his teeth in his dry mouth and said: "Okay,
I'm going."
The road to San Rocco was narrower and had no reflectors at the
sides.
Cristiano, with his head down, was pedalling and following
the white line painted on the asphalt. The wind had dropped and
the rain fell so straight and fine that, in the feeble light from the
bicycle's lamp, it resembled the silvery hair of a witch.
He didn't want to look up. Hidden in the darkness that surrounded him there might be castles haunted by skeletons, alien
spaceships standing in the wilderness, chained giants.
When he finally did raise his head he saw a luminous dot which
grew into a yellow patch and then turned into a sign, in the middle
of which a black patch formed and became a dog-like creature, with
six legs and with fire coming out of its mouth.
The Agip service station.
The man was lying at the edge of the road, curled up, as if he was
asleep in bed.
Beppe Trecca walked around him, his left hand pressed to his
lips. His tracksuit was already soaking wet and his hair drooped
over his forehead like a mass of blond fusilli.
He's black.
One of the many Africans who worked in the local factories, or
more likely one of the countless illegal immigrants.
The man wore a heavy beige jacket, and underneath it a colored
tunic from which protruded two long black legs and two enormous
basketball shoes. Beside him lay a big red backpack.
Senegalese, I should think.
His face wasn't visible. His head was tucked into his chest. His
hair was short and flecked with gray.
Breathe deeply, the social worker told himself. And take a look
at him, to see who he is.
He felt like throwing up. He breathed in several times through
his nose, then at last found the strength to bend down over the
body. He reached out, stopped for a moment with his hand five centimeters from the man's shoulder, then gave a gentle push, and the
man rolled over on the asphalt.
His face was round. His forehead broad. His eyes closed. Well
shaven. About forty years old.
I've never seen him before. I don't think so, anyway.
Beppe often met Africans in the course of his work. In the factories. In the center for hospitality and orientation. Or when he went
to visit them in the dormitory houses.
What now?
He tried shaking him and then stammered: "Can you hear me?
Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?" But the man neither
replied nor moved.
What now?
The only thing his mind was capable of producing was that
fatuous question.
What now?
He felt bewildered, so confused that he didn't even notice the rain
and the wind.
What if bes...?
He couldn't even bring himself to finish the sentence.
That word was too terrifying for him even to think of it.
No! He can't be.
He tugged at his arm.
If he was ... Beppe's life would be over.
His first thought was for Ida. If he went to prison all his plans
for a life with her would be destroyed. There would be lawyers,
court cases, police ... But Ida and I must... He couldn't breathe. It
wasn't my fault. It was an accident.
Why did I get out that CD?
Two yellow headlights appeared out of the darkness and dazzled
him.
This is it.
Beppe Trecca, bent over the body, raised his arm and shielded his
eyes.