Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
Like a drug addict.
Cold turkey. And perhaps it would pass.
He would suffer like hell. But that suffering was the coin with
which he would repay his debt to the Lord.
And this suffering will make me a better man.
He imagined himself as a kind of movie hero who committed
a crime and who as a result of a vow to God became a man of
peace, a superior being who devoted his life to the poor and the
downtrodden.
There was a Robert De Niro film ...
He couldn't remember the title, but it was about a knight who
killed an innocent man. Afterward he repented, and as a penance
he dragged his weapons and armor, on the end of a rope, through
the forests of Brazil and up a high mountain, and then became a
priest, helping the Amazonian Indians.
He must do the same.
He picked up his phone, turned his head away, stretched out his
arm as if they were going to amputate it and, clenching his teeth,
deleted Ida Lo Vino from his life.
"It's me. Cristiano. Papa, listen to me! I'm here beside you. I'm holding
your hand. You're in hospital. You've had an accident. The doctor
said you're in a coma but that you'll wake up in a few weeks. Now
you're repairing your brain because you've had a thingummy... A
hemorrhage. You needn't worry. I've seen to everything else. Nobody
will find anything. I'm good at these things, you know that. So you
just stay here and repair yourself and I'll look after everything else.
Don't worry. I've tried calling Quattro Formaggi and Danilo, but they
don't reply." Cristiano peered at his father's face, searching for a movement, a twitch of the eyelid, an infinitesimal grimace that might show
that he was listening. He looked around, to check once more that no
one was there, then stretched out his arm and pressed his forefinger
on his father's left eye, first gently, then harder. Nothing. He didn't
react. "Listen to me. I can only come here for a short time every day.
So now I'm going home and I'll be back tomorrow." He was about
to get up, but stopped. He put his lips close to his father's ear and
whispered: "I know you can't hear me, but I'll tell you anyway. I told
everyone you fell into the coma at home while you were asleep, so..."
nobody will think it was you.
Cristiano put his hand over his mouth. His stomach had suddenly contracted like a vacuum-packed plastic bag. He sniffed and
rubbed his eyes to stop himself crying. Then he got up and left the
intensive care ward.
Quattro Formaggi was sitting in front of the nativity scene.
He'd had a good wash, had put on his bath robe and then had
popped in his mouth all the medicine he had found in the house:
three aspirins, two Ibuprofens, one paracetamol, one Sennakot and
one effervescent Alka-Seltzer. He had smeared a whole tube of
Anusol over his chest and shoulder.
Now he felt better, except that the more he looked at the nativity
scene, spread right across the room, the more he noticed how wrong
it all was. He didn't know exactly why, but it was. Not because of
the soldiers, all the statuettes and dolls, all the cars, or the little
Baby Jesus stuck to the manger. He had botched the world. The
mountains. The rivers. The lakes. They were all badly positioned,
without any order or meaning.
He closed his eyes and felt as if he was levitating from the chair.
He saw a huge valley of red earth which stretched as far as the walls
of the room, and mountains of immensely tall rocks that towered
up to the ceiling. And rivers. Streams. Waterfalls.
And in the center of the valley he saw the naked body of Ramona.
A dead giant. The girl's corpse surrounded by the soldiers, the
shepherds, the miniature cars. On her small breasts, spiders and
iguanas and sheep. On her dark nipples, little green crocodiles.
Among her pubic hairs, dinosaurs and soldiers and shepherds, and
inside, inside the cavern, the Baby Jesus.
He thought he was falling, opened his eyes and frantically clutched
at the chair. He bent his bruised arm and felt as if a rotating blade
was slicing it in two. He let out a scream of pain.
He waited for the pain to pass before getting to his feet.
Now he knew what he had to do.
He had to go back to the wood, take the little blonde's body and
put it in the nativity scene.
That was why he had killed her.
And God would help him.
Beppe Trecca was holding the thermometer in his hands.
Ninety-nine point five. Must be flu. These things mustn't be
underestimated, if you don't nip them in the bud they can drag on
for months.
Better to take a day off work. That would give him a chance to
devise a strategic plan for keeping his vow. He would have to keep
his cell phone switched off, and as soon as he recovered from the flu he would change his number. Then he would have to stop organizing the meetings in the parish hall. And at the office he would have
to avoid Mario Lo Vino as much as possible. Of course, Ida knew
where he lived, so he would have to move too. Though in a small
village like that they might bump into each other anywhere. Perhaps
it would be wiser to rent a apartment in some neighboring village
and keep out of the center of Varrano.
In short, he would have to live barricaded in a bunker, with no
job and no friends. A nightmare.
He couldn't do it. There was nothing else for it but to go away.
For a while.
Long enough for Ida to understand that the former Beppe Trecca,
the one who had said he would take her even with the children, no
longer existed. Had been the passing dream of a single night.
Keep away until she hates me.
That was the worst thing of all. Worse than the pain of not seeing
her again.
Ida would think he was a shit, a despicable person. A disgusting
individual who dishonored her in a camper, made a thousand promises and then ran away like a snivelling coward.
if only I could explain the truth to her.
Perhaps he should confess all to his cousin Luisa and ask her
to tell Ida. That at least would alleviate the pain a little. And
Ida, who was a sensitive, God-fearing woman, would certainly
understand and silently love and respect him for the rest of her
days.
No, he couldn't. The value of that damned vow lay precisely
there, in that torment. Being mistaken for a monster and not being
able to do anything to clear his name. If he eliminated that suffering he would be breaking his promise.
Besides, if he told Luisa about the miracle he would have to tell
her about the camper too.
No, it's out of the question. Her husband would kill me.
His cell phone started ringing.
The social worker looked in terror at the handset vibrating on
the table.
I didn't switch it off.
It's her.
His heart started fluttering inside his ribcage like a canary that
has just seen a cat. He opened his mouth and tried to gulp down
air. A wave of heat swept through him. And it wasn't the fever, but
the passion that was burning him. The mere thought of being able
to hear that sweet voice made his head spin, and nothing else had
any meaning.
Ida, I love you!
He wished he could throw the window open and shout it to the
world. But he couldn't.
That bloody African.
He put his hands over his face and through the gap between his
fingers peered at the display of the cell phone. It wasn't Ida's number.
Not even that of her landline. But what if she was calling from
another phone?
He hesitated for a moment, then answered: "Yes? Who is it?"
"Hello. This is Lance Corporal Mastrocola, calling from the carabinieri station in Varrano. I'd like to speak to Trecca Giuseppe."
They've found the camper!
Beppe swallowed hard and whispered: "Speaking."
"Are you responsible for..." Silence. "... Zena Cristiano?"
For a moment the name meant nothing to him. Then he remembered. "Yes. Certainly. I'm responsible for him."
"We need your help. His father has had a serious accident and
is now in the Sacred Heart Hospital in San Rocco. His son is there.
Could you go to him?"
"But what happened?"
"I'm afraid I don't know. The hospital notified us and we've called
you. Can you go? Apparently the minor has no family apart from
his father."
"Well, actually, I ... I've got a bit of a temperature." Then he said:
"Never mind. I'll go right away."
"Good. Could you drop by at our office for the relevant documents?"
"Yes, of course. Goodbye. And thank you..." Beppe hung up
and stood there absorbing the news.
He couldn't leave the poor kid on his own.
He took two aspirins and began to get dressed.
If Fabiana Ponticelli hadn't decided to go through the San Rocco
woods she would have had to make a long, tortuous detour to get
back to Giardino Fiorito, the estate where she had lived for fourteen years with her family.
It was nearly six miles away from Varrano. You had to get onto
the bypass, then take the service road for Marzio and after a couple
of miles turn left in the direction of the motorway. After driving for
another two miles between warehouses, factories and hardware
stores, you would suddenly see in front of you, encircled with walls
like a medieval citadel, the exclusive community of Giardino Fiorito.
Two hundred cottages (ranchos), built in the early Nineties in an
improbable Mexican-Mediterranean style by the celebrated architect Massimiliano Malerba. Blue woodwork, rounded forms and
earth-coloured plaster, vaguely reminiscent of the Indian adobes.
Half an acre of garden for each plot. Plus a shop and a sports club
with three tennis courts and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Three
entrances manned twenty-four hours a day by private guards in blue
uniforms. And halogen floodlights all around the enclosing walls.
The stuck-up inhabitants of the estate were not greatly loved by
the people who lived alongside them. Giardino Fiorito had been
dubbed "Escape from New York," an allusion to the John Carpenter
film in which the Big Apple, cut off from the world by huge concrete bastions, had been turned into a maximum security prison
where all the criminals of America were dumped.
Until the day before, a huge oak tree, more than twenty yards
high, had towered over rancho 36, where the Ponticelli family lived.
Its green umbrella had arched over Via del Ciclamini. Its trunk was
so thick that three people linking hands could barely embrace it.
The tree had stood there since the days when there had been
nothing here but swamps inhabited by snakes and mosquitos. It had
come unscathed through campaigns of deforestation and drainage,
it had survived the concrete vice of the village, but not the phy-
tophotra ramorum, a parasitic fungus of Canadian origin which had
colonized its trunk like tooth decay, turning the solid wood into a
spongy, friable substance.
That night the storm had dealt the death blow to the ancient tree,
which had come crashing down on the Ponticellis' garage.
If its fiber had not been infected by the mycosis perhaps the oak
would have resisted the storm as it had always done in the past and
would not have reduced the garage to a heap of rubble, and Alessio
Ponticelli would have discovered immediately that his daughter
Fabiana had not returned home the night before.
Fabiana's father was a perfect representative of the community
of Giardino Fiorito. An entrepreneur and a fine figure of a man.
Five-feet-nine-inches tall. Forty-two years old. Graying hair and
white teeth. Married to Paoletta Nardelli, the former Miss Eleganza
Trentino 1987. A good father. He frequented the club and detested
politics. And, the most important thing, his money was clean and
smelled of sweat. He had made it by creating out of nothing
Goldgarden, a firm specializing in products for the garden, with a
catalogue ranging from aluminum gazebos to reinforced concrete
fountains.
On the night of his daughter's death Alessio Ponticelli had been
stuck in Brindisi. The flight that was due to bring him home had
been cancelled because of the bad weather.
He had informed his wife, eaten a too-salty pizza and spent the
night at the Western Hotel. He had returned home on the first flight
the next morning.
The drive to Giardino Fiorito had taken him the best part of two
hours. They had diverted the road right out to Centuri. The Sarca
bridge had been damaged by the floods and the highway swamped
by the waters of the river.
When Alessio Ponticelli stopped his BMW SUV outside his home
he thought he must have got the wrong rancho. A green jungle had
grown up outside their cottage. It took him a few moments to grasp
that it was the foliage of the great oak.
He got out of the car with the sensation that the earth was clinging
to the soles of his shoes, pushed through the leaves and branches
and saw to his horror that there was nothing left of his garage but
rubble. His Bottega Veneta briefcase fell from his hand and he stared
at the Jaguar which was as flat as a pancake, the remains of the
ping-pong table, and the John Deere compact tractor, which he
hadn't even started to pay for, reduced to a mass of twisted metal.
He remained where he was, frozen. There was an unnatural
silence. Then he turned and saw that Renato Barretta, the owner of
rancho 35, was walking toward him. He was holding a rake over
his shoulder like a halberd and wore tracksuit pants and a gray
quilted jacket. He shook his head as he approached: "What a mess!
I was shocked when I saw it this morning." And then, proudly: "I've
already called the management and the fire brigade, don't worry.
Lucky there was no one at home..."
Alessio looked at the house. At least that had been spared. The
shutters of his bedroom window were down.
She's asleep.
Certainly his wife was still asleep, doped up on sleeping tablets
and with earplugs in her ears. She hadn't noticed a thing.