As God Commands (12 page)

"Yes ... And quite right too. You should always show respect to
the elderly." Rino put his arm around his shoulders.

Father and son sat on the top of the hill, looking down at the
misty plain and the river, which at that point widened out into a
big, sandy loop. The opposite bank was far away, lost in the haze,
with only the bare tops of the poplars showing through, like the
masts of ghost ships. Further downstream the river had overflowed
its banks, flooding the fields. They could see the silhouette of the
power station, the string of electricity pylons and the viaduct along
which the highway ran.

Rino broke the silence: "It was a good essay. I liked it. What
you said was right. Immigrants out, jobs for the Italians. That's
right."

Cristiano scooped up a handful of sand and made it into a ball.
"Sure, we don't even have the freedom to write what we think."

Rino zipped up his jacket. "Don't talk to me about freedom.
Everybody talks about freedom. Freedom here, freedom there.
They fill their mouths with it. What good is freedom? If you're
penniless and jobless you have all the freedom in the world, but
you can't do a thing with it. You're free to go away if you want,
you say. But where to? And how are you going to get there? Tramps
are the freest people in the world, but they freeze to death on park
benches. Freedom is a word that only serves to delude people. Do
you know how many fools have died for freedom when they didn't
even know what it was? Do you know who are the only people
who really have freedom? The rich. They have freedom, all right..."
He mused in silence for a while, then put his hand on his son's
arm. "Do you want to see what my freedom looks like?"

Cristiano nodded.

Rino pulled out a pistol from behind his back. "This young lady's
last name is freedom and her first name is Magnum 44."

Cristiano's jaw dropped. "My God, it's beautiful."

"It's a beauty. Smith & Wesson. Short barrel. Chrome plated all
over." Rino held it in his hand approvingly. He pulled out the
chamber, spun it around, then snapped it back into place.

"Let me touch it."

Rino held it out to him butt first.

"Wow, it's heavy. Is this the gun that's used by ... ?" Cristiano
held it in both hands and aimed into the distance. "What's his name?
The detective in The Enforcer?"

"Dirty Harry. Only his has a long barrel. What do you think?
Isn't it great?"

"It's incredible. What would have happened if I'd shot Castardin's
dog with this?"

"You'd have blasted him out onto the road. This girl's an orphan,
like you. Only she's lost her father as well as her mother. Her serial
number has been erased."

Cristiano closed one eye, held his arm out full length and tilted
the gun over at an angle. "How much did you pay for it?"

"Not much...,,

"Why did you buy it? You've already got the Beretta..."

"That's enough questions! Aren't you going to ask me if you can
try it out?"

Cristiano gazed at his father incredulously. "Can I?"

"Yes. But mind the recoil. This gun's not like the other one. It's
got a real kick. Release the safety catch. Hold it in both hands. Stay
loose. Don't stiffen up or you'll hurt yourself. And keep it well away
from your face."

Cristiano obeyed. "What should I aim at?"

Rino looked around for a target. When he found one he smiled.
"Hit the bowl of macaroni. We'll give those two a heart attack,"
he whispered in his ear.

Cristiano laughed.

On the other side of the yard Danilo and Quattro Formaggi were
working on the old tractor. About five yards away, near a beatenup old sofa, there was a plastic container full of rigatoni al ragu, a
crate of beer and the now half-empty bottle of grappa. Danilo's
picnic.

"Aim carefully, though. Don't hit them. Don't hit the bottle either,
because if bits of glass go flying around..." Rino said in a low voice.

Cristiano closed one eye and squinted with the other. He moved
the sight till it framed the bowl. It was hard to keep the gun on
target; it weighed a ton.

"If you don't shoot now your arms will start to ti..."

Cristiano pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang, the bowl
disintegrated as if it had been hit by a cruise missile, and rigatoni,
splashes of ragu and fragments of plastic were scattered over a radius
of ten yards.

Danilo and Quattro Formaggi jumped in the air with fright.

Cristiano and Rino laughed so much they rolled down the hill of
sand while the other two, spattered from head to foot with rigatoni
and ragu, stood there, cursing and swearing.

They took some calming down.

Danilo in particular was furious. They had stained his pants; he
would never get the grease out, even in the washing machine.

Cristiano knelt down and pleaded, with his arms around his feet.
"Please don't be upset, Danilo. It was only a joke. And you're such
a nice guy..."

"Fuck you! You could have killed us! And that pasta had ragu!
Ragu with carrots, celery and onions. Teresa only makes it once a
month."

Quattro Formaggi was walking quietly around the yard, picking
up the rigatoni and putting them into a plastic bag.

Finally, Rino had to promise that as soon as he earned some
money he would treat them both to a pizza at the Vascello d'Oro.

They sat down on the sofa, each holding a beer. They passed
around the plastic bag and fished out the rigatoni.

"How's the work on the tractor going?" asked Cristiano, trying
to blow the sand off a piece of pasta.

"Quite well," replied Danilo, after taking a swig from his bottle
of beer. "Quattro Formaggi says we only need to repair the clutch
discs, then the engine should work perfectly."

"And is the tractor strong enough to break through the wall?"

"Are you kidding? I've studied the problem carefully. The wall
of the bank is made of such crappy little bricks you'd only have to
fart and they'd come tumbling down."

When they had finished their meal the three men sat on the sofa
in a drunken stupor. Cristiano was getting impatient. It was cold,
and next day Beppe Trecca, the social worker, was coming around
for his regular visit and the house was in a mess.

"Can't we go, papa? It's Saturday tomorrow. Trecca's coming.
We've got to tidy up."

"Another five minutes. Why don't you run off and play?"

From the tone of his reply, Cristiano understood that he wouldn't
move his ass off the sofa till nightfall.

"Shit!" he muttered, and started throwing stones at a fireblackened barrel.

Quattro Formaggi lay on the battered old sofa, gazing at the clouds
that swirled in the sky.

"Do you ... do you know ... Liliana?" he said, as his mouth
twisted and his arm began to quiver.

Danilo, befuddled by the beer, was gazing into the void. He raised
his head, but it fell back against the sofa. "Who's she?" he muttered, without much interest.

She works... "at Euroedil."

"Who is she?"

In the accounts department. She bas... "black hair. Long.
She's..." beautiful.

Rino, who was lying nearby with his feet up on an empty gas
cylinder, nodded. "She works in accounts. I know her."

"Oh, I know who you mean! That fat cow with three pounds of
make-up plastered all over her face?" asked Danilo.

Quattro Formaggi nodded.

"Good old Liliana," Rino said to himself, and put the empty
bottle to his lips, searching for the last drops of grappa.

Quattro Formaggi, by now twitching all over with tics, could
only manage to say: "Well ... Well..."

"Speak up! What?" Danilo goaded him.

"I'd like ... I'd like to ask her out to dinner..." and he swallowed
something that was blocking his throat.

Danilo guffawed. "She wouldn't go out with you even if..." He
pondered for a moment. "No, I can't think of anything that would
make her go out with someone like you."

"Let him speak..." Rino sighed.

Quattro Formaggi was encouraged. "I'd like to ... marry her."

Danilo belched and shook his head. "What bullshit!"

"It's not bullshit. I want to marry her."

"Do you like her?" asked Rino.

"Yes. A lot. And..." Quattro Formaggi broke off.

Danilo, sprawled out like an albino gorilla, was shaking with
laughter. "Have you taken a good look at her? She's got a butt as
big as Sardinia. And the worst thing is, she thinks she's Marilyn
Monroe. Forget her. She's not for you."

But Quattro Formaggi was undaunted. "You're wrong. I can
make her like me."

Danilo nudged Rino. "Well, go and tell her you want to marry
her... But call me first. I want to be there to enjoy the show."

Quattro Formaggi picked up a stone and threw it into the distance. "I've got a plan."

Danilo scratched his stomach. "For what?"

"For getting to talk to her."

"Let's hear it..."

Quattro Formaggi gave himself three thumps on the chest. "She
likes Rino."

Rino looked up in surprise. "Me?"

"Yes. She's always looking at you."

"Really? I'd never noticed."

Danilo didn't get it. "Hang on a minute, if she likes Rino you're
shit out of luck."

Quattro Formaggi narrowed his eyes irritably. "Let me speak."

He turned to Rino: "You invite her out to the restaurant. But
you turn up with Danilo. And you don't talk to her, you only talk
to Danilo-about soccer. Women hate soccer..."

"How would you know? Since when have you been an expert on
women?" Danilo interrupted him yet again.

Quattro Formaggi ignored him. "Then I appear ... You go away
and I stay with her." He paused. "What do you think, Rino?"

"Who pays for the meal?" Danilo asked.

"Me. I've saved up."

"But what's in it for us?"

Quattro Formaggi looked around in bewilderment. He wasn't
prepared for that question. He thumped himself hard on the leg.
"The pizza."

Rino stood up and stretched. "That's enough talk, let's go home.
I'm not feeling too great. Cristiano, you can drive as far as the
highway!"

Cristiano didn't feel like driving, but his father insisted: "You need
the practice. You're still having problems with the clutch. Don't
argue, I've got a splitting headache."

Cristiano had started driving a few months earlier. And he thought
he was quite good at it. He wasn't very good at starting-when he
released the clutch he couldn't control the accelerator, and the van
would either stall or lurch forward-but once he got going it was
fine.

With his father shouting in his ear, though, it was a nightmare.
"Look out! Change gear! Can't you hear the engine?"

But that day Rino had one of his headaches. They had been getting more and more frequent lately. He said it was like having a
swarm of bees inside your skull. And he could hear the blood throbbing in his ears. Sometimes it would last all day and he would have
to lie down in the dark, in silence, and the slightest noise would
drive him wild. In such cases Cristiano had to stay in his bedroom.

When Danilo had advised him to see a doctor, Rino had given
eloquent expression to his thoughts on the matter: "If there's one
thing doctors don't know the first fucking thing about it's the brain.
They fire out theories off the tops of their heads. They stuff you
with medicine that cost an arm and a leg and which fuck you up
so badly you don't even have the strength to pull out your pecker
and take a piss."

Cristiano drove while the other three, still knocked out by the
alcohol, lay slumped across each other, snoring. The sun had set, leaving pink streaks on the horizon, while the seagulls dived into the
river.

When they reached the highway Quattro Formaggi took the
wheel.

By the time they got home it was already dark.

Rino, without saying a word, set about washing the pile of dishes
that had accumulated in the sink over the past two weeks and
Cristiano started tidying up the sitting room.

Both of them hated the day of the social worker's visit.

They had dubbed it "keeping-up-appearances day." But what
they hated even more was "the day before keeping-up-appearances
day," because they had to straighten up the whole of the ground
floor. Not the upstairs, because, in Rino's words, you only need to
clean the parts where the bishop's going to walk.

This happened every other Saturday.

For the rest of the time the house was left to its own devices.

They used all the plates and forks till there were none left. They
washed their clothes in Danilo's washing machine once a month and
then hung them out to dry in the garage.

The sitting room wasn't hard to clean, being almost completely
empty.

Cristiano cleared away the beer cans, the pizza boxes and the foil
trays from the take out. They were everywhere. Even under the cupboards and the sofa. With the beer cans alone he filled a whole trash
bag.

Then he gave the floor a token wiping-over with a cloth.

In the kitchen, while his father was rinsing the dishes, he removed
from the fridge the remains of a piece of provolone that was green
with mold, some rotten vegetables and some peach jam covered with
white tufts. Then he cleaned the greasy table top with a damp cloth.

Athough Christmas was long since past, the Christmas tree, all
withered up, still stood in the hall. Cristiano had decorated it with
beer cans and stuck a little bottle of Campari soda on the top.

It was time to throw it out.

"I've finished!" he said to his father, wiping his brow.

"What food have we got?"

"Pasta and..." he looked to see what was left in the fridge: "some
cheese spread."

You squashed it down in your dish and dumped the partly drained
pasta on top.

The good old stand-by.

He put the water on to boil.