Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
He wanted to go back home and look for the ring, that fucking
skull ring. After abandoning the corpse in the river Cristiano had
returned home and while Trecca slept he had searched for it.
He had turned the garage upside down, and he had looked carefully in the van when he had cleaned it up.
It wasn't there.
He had searched in the jacket and pants that his father had been
wearing.
It wasn't there either.
It had to be still in the woods!
His father's fingerprints on that ring were the only evidence that
could link him with Fabiana's death.
"Do you think I ought to turn off down Via Borromeo? I wonder
if..." Trecca asked him.
Cristiano pretended to be asleep. Being in the traffic jam meant
not being in the hospital.
"Trecca's here. Quick, get out the Monopoly."
The image of him and his father hurriedly setting out the little
houses and the money on the board while Trecca parked his car
appeared on the screen of his eyelids, and a faint smile curled his
lips.
One thing Cristiano just couldn't understand was why this guy
was busting his ass for him.
If the roles were reversed I wouldn't lift a finger.
Trecca had gone to pick him up at the hospital, taken him home,
done his back in sleeping on the sofa and now he was taking him
to see his father again.
"Nobody does anything for anybody. Look behind people's
actions, Cristiano. " That was what Rino had taught him.
And yet he had a hunch Beppe Trecca wouldn't be getting any
overtime pay at the end of the month for looking after him.
Maybe he just likes me.
Anyway, in a few days, if his father didn't wake up, the judge
would bung him into a home or foster him out to some shithead.
He must find Danilo as soon as possible. He could adopt him,
at least until papa came out of the coma.
If I can find him, that is.
And if they didn't let him stay with Danilo, he would run away.
Beppe Trecca was dying for a coffee.
"Why all the traffic? I don't understand," he said, without
expecting any reply from Cristiano.
About a mile down the road there was a bar, but with this
backup ... He couldn't even imagine how long it would take.
The social worker thumped the steering wheel irritably. "Something
must have happened. An accident. It's not normal, this traffic."
As well as a coffee, he could do with a good massage. The springs
of that battered old sofa had given him a terrible backache.
What a hellish night he'd had. Too cold, much too cold. And on top
of that the roar of the trucks on the highway. When you closed your
eyes you felt as if you were lying on the hard shoulder of a highway.
He peeked at Cristiano out of the corner of his eye.
He had hidden himself in his hoodie and seemed to be asleep.
Now would be the perfect time to tell him everything.
"Listen, Cristiano, I've got to tell you something. Danilo's been
killed in a car accident. " No, on second thoughts maybe I'll tell him
later.
Later that day he would also have to call the juvenile judge.
Maybe he could persuade him to wait a bit longer. A few days.
Long enough for Ida to forget him.
But how long would it take him to forget her?
He had only spent one day without seeing her or speaking to her,
but it seemed like a year. Previously they had met all the time. Once
a week they would go shopping at the Quattro Camini. And Ida
would stop him buying deep-frozen junk food. Then he would take
her to pick up the children from the swimming pool. And if they
happened not to meet for a couple of days they would speak on the
phone. She was his best friend.
My life partner.
He kept thinking obsessively of the two of them in the camper
making love. Of the pleasant smell of her skin. Of her hair, so
smooth to the touch. Of feeling her tremble in his arms. It had been
the most beautiful thing in his life. And for the first time he had
behaved like a man. He had taken their lives in hand and had been
ready to face up to his responsibilities.
Suddenly he had understood what it meant to live.
But now, in the desperate state in which he found himself, he
would erase that night and go back to the days when they had been
just friends. The days when he used to lie to himself.
He looked around.
To the right was Truffarelli's, a big bathroom outlet.
He had gone there with her to choose the majolica for the toilet
in the house in the mountains that Mario had bought.
Everything on that cursed plain reminded him of her.
I can't stand any more!
He must leave. For some faraway place. For Burkina Faso, to dig
artesian wells. It was the only thing for it. Once he had found
Cristiano a home he would resign from his job and just go.
It had been easy to get as far as the pharmacy.
No one had given him so much as a passing glance. Or if they
had, the Carrion Man hadn't noticed, because he had kept his eyes
on the ground.
The old pharmacy, Molinari's, with its flashing red cross and its
window display with the torso of a brown man covered in bandages and advertisements for skin-toning creams, was there, on the
other side of the road.
Now all he had to do was go in, ask for the aspirin, pay and
make his escape.
The Carrion Man scratched his cheek, screwed up his lips and
thumped himself several times on the thigh.
He couldn't make up his mind whether to go in or not. The pharmacist was mad, completely out of his mind. He had got the idea,
from God knows where, that the Carrion Man was a keen Juventus
fan.
The Carrion Man hated madmen, strange people, anyone
abnormal. And he loathed football.
He seldom went to the pharmacy, but whenever he did that guy,
a skinny man with a receding hairline and a goatee, would start
talking to him about players he had never heard of and the league
tables, and once he had invited him to go to Turin to watch a
Champions League match.
"Go on, why don't you join us? We're a great bunch of lads. We
always have a great time. We're going by bus."
The Carrion Man had a problem: if anyone said something about
him that wasn't true, he couldn't put them right. He was too shy.
Once he had agreed to do a yoga course just because a guy who
worked with him in the construction firm had told him he was sure
he would like it.
And so it was that he had found himself on a bus crammed with
Juventus supporters bound for the stadium. When they had got off
the bus, the Carrion Man had pretended to go to the toilet and had
hidden behind a police van and only re-emerged after the match to
get back on the bus.
What if he now went into the pharmacy and the guy forced him
to go to a soccer match again?
The Carrion Man sat down on a bench, uncertain what to do.
He needed that aspirin.
He could always go to the pharmacy at the station. It was a long
way and he would have to go by scooter, but that would be better
than facing the maniac.
He was about to return home when two women came out of the
Boutique della Carne butcher's shop, on the other side of the road,
and stopped outside the pharmacy.
They looked sixtyish. One was tall and spindly, like a praying
mantis, and the other was small and green, like a goblin. The
goblin had a quadruped in tow which looked like a Tasmanian
devil.
The Carrion Man saw them debating animatedly outside the
pharmacy window. If they would only go in, the pharmacist would
be too busy to talk to him.
Finally the praying mantis pushed the glass door and the two disappeared into the shop.
The Carrion Man got up and limped in after them. He hid behind
a rotating display of foot-care products.
Serving at the counter, besides the madman, was an elderly lady
in a white coat, who read the prescriptions and stamped them,
extremely hard. She was the one he would have to ask for the aspirin.
Standing in line, besides the two women, were an old man in a
cloth cap and a boy.
The Carrion Man, clutching his coins in his fist, rehearsed his
first speech under his breath: "Hello. Good morning. Could I have
some of that aspirin that dissolves in water, please? Thank you.
How much is it?"
Meanwhile the two women, less than half a yard away, were
talking conspiratorially in low voices.
"Anyway, he called me five minutes ago..." said the goblin, and
showed her friend her cell phone as if to prove that she wasn't
making it all up.
The tall, balding woman knitted her brow. "But I don't understand. Where is your husband now?"
"On the bridge! He's been there for two hours. The traffic is completely stuck."
"And what did he tell you, exactly?"
"Matilde, why do I have to repeat things to you a hundred times?
Are you taking that medicine for your head that the doctor prescribed for you?"
"Yes I am," snapped the lanky one impatiently. "Now will you
tell me what he told you? Did he really say there was a corpse under
the bridge?"
"Exactly. That's what he said. Listen, Matilde dear, why don't
you do something useful? Why don't you call a taxi and go and see
for yourself? That way you'll understand everything."
"Oh, really, it's impossible to have a conversation with you!" the
mantis intended to retort, but all she managed to say was "Oh,
rea..." because a man in a poncho who was holding on to the
rotating display of Dr. Scholl's products trod on her big toe and she
screamed, partly in fright and partly in pain. On the floor, the man
in the poncho tried to get back to his feet but like a moose on a
carpet of marbles he only managed to slip and slither on the corn
bandages and the mint-scented porous insoles, and when he finally
managed to get up, limping, sobbing, braying like a mule in a slaughterhouse, he hurled himself at the glass doors of the pharmacy and
disappeared.
"Excuse me, do you know what's happened?" Beppe was asking a
truck driver who had got out of a long, yellow-and-black truck and
was smoking a cigarette.
The man puffed out a mouthful of smoke and said in a bored
voice, as if this had happened to him a million times before:
"Apparently they've found a dead body in the river."
Cristiano, who was still trying to have a doze, winced as if he
had been punched in the stomach. He felt a shiver grip the back of
his head, his armpits freeze and his cheeks catch fire.
He closed and re-opened his eyes. He opened his mouth. He tried
to listen to what Beppe and the trucker were saying, but a buzzing
in his ears prevented him from hearing.
He only managed to catch one sentence from the truck driver:
"In these cases they block everything till the magistrate arrives."
So they had found Fabiana's body.
Straight away.
He had expected it to be carried down to the sea and be eaten
up by the fish, but instead, after less than four hours, it had been
found only a stone's throw away from his house.
He tried to swallow, but couldn't. He felt sick. He got out of the
car, put his hands on the warm hood and let his head hang down.
(Did you really think the body would disappear, by magic?)
I should have buried her.
(Did you really think God or your fairy godmother would help
you because you were trying to save your father?)
I should have buried her in concrete.
(From the moment you entered that wood and decided to ... )
I should have dissolved her in acid. I should have burned her.
(You became an... )
He knew the word.
ACCOMPLICE.
I should have cut her up in a thousand pieces and fed her to the
pigs, the dogs.
(You're guiltier than him.)
"Cristiano?" Beppe Trecca was calling to him.
(You're worse than him.)
"Cristiano?"
(And now they'll get you. They'll catch you in no time. You're
finished.)
"Cristiano, will you answer me? What's the matter?"
He raised his upper lip and growled: "What the fuck do you
want, eh?" He clenched his fists, suddenly feeling an uncontrollable
urge to pound that bastard's face to a ball of mincemeat.
The social worker shrank back in alarm. "Nothing. You're as
white as a sheet. Is something wrong? Do you feel ill?"
A gurgle came up from the depths of his throat and then, spluttering, he managed to say: "Why don't you get off my fucking back? What the fuck does it matter to you how I feel? Who the fuck are
you, anyway? What the fuck do you want from me?" As he said
all this he noticed that they had been surrounded by a cluster of
curious drivers, who had got out of the line of cars in the belief
that they were watching the classic scene of a father quarrelling with
his teenage son. Who knows, maybe they were hoping they would
start hitting each other, that there would be fireworks.
How he wished he had a nice heavy crowbar so he could smash
all their stupid heads in. At least he would have had the satisfaction
of carrying out a massacre before spending the rest of his life in jail.
And I killed all these people. I did it with my own hands. So
when you come out of your coma-if you ever do come out of it,
you bastard-we can see who killed more people, you stupid son
of a bitch.
Trecca moved toward him. "Cristiano! Listen ... !"
But Cristiano Zena wasn't listening. He was looking up at the
sky, at those brown clouds so low he could have touched them with
his fingertips, those clouds that would soon pour even more water
on this shitty world, and he felt himself levitating, as if aliens had
suddenly sucked him up into space. He swayed dizzily, raised his
arms toward the clouds, threw his head back and imagined he was
puking out everything he had inside him, all that blackness he had
inside him, that black anger, that fear, that feeling of not being worth
a shit, of being the most pathetic little jerk on the planet, the loneliest
and most desperate creature in the world. Out. Yes, out. He must
spew out of his mouth all the thoughts, all the anxieties, everything.
And turn into a black dog. A black, brainless dog, which ran,
stretching out its legs, curving its body, straightening its tail. It barely
touched the ground and it spread out, as perfect as an angel.