As God Commands (28 page)

But the man angrily snatched away her hand and started frantically undoing her belt, her pants. He pulled down her panties ...

Fabiana's heart began to race. She opened her mouth and dug
her fingers into the cold earth.

(Okay, this is it. Don't worry. It's nothing. Keep still.) It was
her mother's voice. Like the time when they had put stitches
in her forehead after she had fallen off her bicycle, and at the
hospital...

(Just let him do what he wants and it'll soon be over.)

She felt him fumble between her legs, then he grabbed her by the
hair, with a yell.

Away. Think of something. Something nice, distant. Away. Think
of Milan. Of when you'll be in Milan, at university. In the little apartment you've rented. It's small. One room for me. Another for Esme.
Yes, Esme too. Posters. Books on the table. A computer. There'll be
the usual mess. Tidiness is important in a small apartment. The fridge,
of course, will be empty. With me and Esme, what do you expect?
But the door leads out onto a balcony full of sun and flow...

The cell phone, on the ground, lit up and vibrated, and off went
the polyphonic version of Verdi's Va pensiero.

Rino Zena opened his eyes slowly and took a few seconds to
realize that his phone was ringing on the floor.

He yawned and with a weary movement picked up the phone,
certain that it was that pain in the ass Danilo again, but instead on
the display he saw the words: 4 FORM.

He answered, yawning: "Did you stay at home?"

But the only reply was the sound of uncontrollable sobbing.

"Quattro Formaggi?"

He heard him sniff and start blubbing again. He couldn't be at
home because there was the sound of rain.

"What's going on?"

At the other end Quattro Formaggi went on crying bitterly.

"Speak! What's the matter?"

After a while he heard him stammer out, between sobs, some
confused words: "Oh my God ... Oh my God ... Come here ...
Hurry."

Rino got to his feet. "Where? Tell me where!"

Quattro Formaggi sobbed and didn't speak.

"Stop crying! Listen to me. Tell me where you are." Rino was
beginning to lose his temper. "Pull yourself together and for Christ's
sake tell me where the fuck you are."

Danilo Aprea woke up with such a start that he dropped his phone
on the floor and started screaming.

He had been dreaming that he was holding a tennis racket which
had suddenly turned into a rattlesnake.

My phone!

He sprang up to answer it, but had to sit down again. The room
was swaying. The wooziness hadn't passed.

He reached out and picked up the phone off the floor. He squinted,
trying in vain to get the display into focus, certain that it was that
imbecile Quattro Formaggi.

"Hello? Where have you been?"

"It's Rino."

"Rino..." There was a taste of dead rat in his mouth.

"Quattro Formaggi has had an accident. Something's happened
to him. He was crying like a baby. I'm going to see him."

Danilo massaged his temples and shook his head: no, no. Rino
was bullshitting him. "What's happened to him?"

"I don't know."

"Why was he crying? I don't understand. I just don't understand."

Surely you guys can think up a better story than that.

"Didn't you hear what I said?"

Danilo massaged his stomach. "So? What are you saying? That
you want to put the raid off?"

"Exactly."

"Till when?"

Now he'll say he doesn't know.

"Do you understand that Quattro Formaggi has had an accident?"

An explosion of pain in his bowels deprived him of the strength
to answer this insult to his intelligence. He felt as if a cork had
popped in his stomach. Just like when you shake champagne. Only
instead of champagne it was foaming rage which tasted of Cynar.

He felt like smashing everything. Kicking in the television, hacking
down the walls with a pickaxe, blowing up the house, leading in a
squadron of stealth bombers to flatten Varrano and the whole
fucking plain, dropping an H-bomb on Italy.

He couldn't contain himself: "Yes, I understand! Oh, I understand,
don't worry! I'm not stupid! And do you want to know something?
It serves him right, he deserves it. I told him to come around here. I
even invited him for a meal. I told him to come around and have
some spaghetti al pomodoro and then we could go together. And did
he come? Did he, hell. If he had, he wouldn't have had any accident.
But you guys never listen to me! I'm just a fool and you two are the
brains." A wise little voice advised him to stop, but he took no notice.
It was so wonderful to get it all off his chest. He started nodding his
head like a pigeon. "Anyway, I knew. I knew very well."

"What did you know?"

"I understand. I'm not a fool, you know! You guys don't want to
do it. Admit it. It's so simple. All this crap about an accident... `We're
too scared to do it, we're shitting ourselves,' why don't you just come
out and say it? It's not a problem. Don't worry. It's human. I've known
for a long time. You're scared shitless, not only of doing the bank raid,
but of actually having some money, of changing your shitty little lives,
of not being failures for all eternity." While Danilo was venting his
rage and disappointment the danger light started winking in his brain,
but he ignored that too. For once in his life he had loosened the reins
of the rearing stallion within him and he couldn't care less if that lying
bastard Rino Zena was pissed off. Indeed, he added for good measure:
"The fact is, you like things the way they are. You're a pair of losers,
content to wallow like pigs in your own unhappiness ... How I pity
that poor kid Cristiano ... I..."

"You've been drinking, you piece of shit!" Rino interrupted him.

Danilo stiffened, lengthened his neck and swelled out his chest
and, as indignant as if he'd been accused of pissing in the sink, replied
in an offended tone: "Are you crazy? What are you talking about?"

"If we're two pigs that wallow in shit, what are you? The alcoholic son of a bitch who ought to be our leader?"

"But..." Danilo tried to reply, to slap him down, but what had
happened to his anger? To his desire to smash everything? They had
faded away, along with his words and his courage.

His Adam's apple moved in his throat.

"The truth is, Danilo my friend, that you're just a paranoid, selfcentred drunk who doesn't give a rat's ass about anything or anyone
else. If Quattro Formaggi has an accident you couldn't care less. In fact, you think it's a lie. You make me sick. You sit there on your
own, thinking about your stupid boutique, your fantasies of being
a great man. You're just a pathetic little jerk who feels sorry for
himself because he's been dumped by a woman who was sick of
swallowing the shit of a loser who..."

Killed her daughter. Go on, say it, thought Danilo.

... ruined her life. Your wife was right to leave you. She was dead
right. And I'll give you a piece of advice. You try once more, just once
more, telling me how to bring up my son and ... Let me be, Danilo.
Let me be. Keep well away from me. Don't push your luck."

"Let me be, Danilo. Let me be. Keep well away from me. Don't
push your luck." Rino Zena hung up, shaking his head, lit a cigarette and went out of the house. "What an asshole..."

His hands were itching. If he hadn't been in such a hurry to find
Quattro Formaggi he would gladly have dropped around on dear
old Danilo Aprea to have it out with him.

But what's the quickest way to the San Rocco woods?

In the end Quattro Formaggi had managed, in between sobs, to
stammer out that he was in the San Rocco woods. Near an electricity hut.

Why did he go all the way up there?

Rino was getting into the van when suddenly his head started
spinning, he felt weak, he thought he was fainting, the cigarette
dropped from his lips, his knees sagged and he fell to the ground.

What the hell's happening to me?

He tried to get up but he was too dizzy. He lay there for a long
time, in the pouring rain, to get his strength back. His hands were
trembling and his heart was pounding in his chest.

When he felt a bit better he climbed into the Ducato and drove
out through the gate. The pain in his head was so acute that he
couldn't decide whether to take the highway and then the road that
ran along the river or to go up the narrow road through the woods
near the bypass.

Danilo Aprea was paralyzed, with the phone glued to his ear.

Rino Zena had threatened him. And a threat from that crazy Nazi
was no laughing matter. That guy would kill you without so much
as a second thought.

And above all, he never forgot.

Once when some poor bastard had pushed in front of him the
thug had broken three of his ribs. Not immediately, though-six
months later. All that time he had nursed his grudge and when one
day he had happened to meet him in a pub he had first knocked
him down with a beer glass and then kicked him in the ribs.

Suddenly he felt his bowels pulsing and his anal sphincter contracting and relaxing. He dropped the phone and rushed into the
bathroom. He unleashed a stream of diarrhea and sat there on the
toilet with his elbows on his knees and his hands supporting his
feverish forehead.

He was in a bad enough mess already, without getting death
threats from Rino Zena.

"Well, if you want to kill me, go ahead and do it. What can
I say..." he murmured. "I was only trying to make you guys
rich..."

Another nightmare appeared in his mind. The next day at noon
the TV salespeople would be coming around to bring him the
painting of the climbing clown.

"What am I going to say to them? `I'm sorry, I haven't got any
money. I don't want the picture any more. I made a mistake,"' he
recited, sitting astride the bidet.

He couldn't let that masterpiece slip through his fingers so easily.

"Anyway, I'm not scared of you, Rino Zena, my friend. I don't
give a shit about you..." He curled his lip, baring his teeth like an
angry wolf, and gargled with the throat mixture. "Don't fuck with
me, do you hear? You've got to be very wary about fucking with
Danilo Aprea!"

He went back into the sitting room in his underpants and
windbreaker. A treacherous leer had formed beneath his mustache. He started cackling with laughter. "Who's the drunkard? I'm the drunkard, am I? Well, what are you then, Rino Zena? A
pathetic alcoholic Nazi? A failure? A piece of human trash?
Which? You decide. Which name would you like to be known
by? Take your pick." Then he started nodding his head and went
on: "You and me are finished. I'm not scared of you. Why don't
you come around here so I can..." he couldn't think of the word
"...knock your block off. You're going to regret the mistake
you've made, regret it bitterly. Hah! You don't understand who
you're dealing with!" He flopped back down on the sofa and
concluded, raising his index finger toward the ceiling: "Don't
fuck with Danilo Aprea! I have to get myself a T-shirt made,
with that slogan across the chest."

Beppe Trecca was sure Ida wouldn't come now.

So much the better.

He had spent a hellish evening cooped up in that stinking camper.
At least it would serve as a lesson to him-it would teach him not
to fool around with his best friend's wife.

Anyway, that was it, he must go home, get into bed and forget
about this mad infatuation with Ida Lo Vino. It was only a temptation that was burning his soul and would bring him eternal
damnation.

I got carried away.

He must write her a nice text message explaining that their relationship couldn't continue, for everyone's sake.

But how shall I put it?

"I apologize for pressing my attentions on you"? "Let's call the
whole thing off"?

No. Too cowardly. He would meet her the next day and make
her see reason. Reminding her that she had children, and a husband
who loved her, and that it was right that they say goodbye.

Yes, that was a test of character that would reconcile him with
his conscience and with God.

But outside a car horn hooted.

Beppe dashed to the window and saw two yellow headlights in
the rain.

It's her! She's here. Now I'll speak to her.

Give yourself the once-over, though...

He was about to go into the bathroom to look in the mirror when
he remembered what was in there.

He adjusted his tie, peering at his reflection in the rain-streaked
window, and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he started jumping
up and down, bending his head to the left and right and loosening
up his arms, like a boxer who has just climbed into the ring.

I must find the right way of putting it, so I don't hurt her. But
he didn't think he could even talk, he felt so excited. His stomach
was tight and he had no saliva.

My breath must be bad enough to kill a rhinoceros.

With trembling hands he took out the little box of mints that he
kept in his pocket, tipped the whole lot in his mouth and then started
crushing them with his teeth, recalling a statement once made by
Loris Reggiani, the great motorcycling champion: "I've spent most
of my life on a racing bike, knowing that I would achieve the best
results if I could control my emotions and my potential."

So go for it. Don't worry. You can do it.

He opened the door of the camper, breathing deeply in and out.

Ida Lo Vino rushed in, soaking wet. "What's happening? Is this
the biblical flood?" she said, removing her sopping raincoat.

Beppe would have liked to answer her, to say anything at all, but
his vocal cords had been paralyzed at the sight of her standing there
in front of him.

Christ, is she beautiful.

Even shrouded in the clouds of incense she was a goddess. She wore
a knee-length skirt, black high-heeled shoes and a peach-colored jacket.