The Crossroads (20 page)

1) Luisa's husband was as curious as a monkey and would have discovered everything, and nobody in the whole world must know about him and Ida Lo Vino. If word got out, he was finished.

2) Ernesto never lent his camper to anyone. He'd sunk himself up to his neck in debt in order to buy it.

Beppe managed to find the key to the padlock, pushed the gate and drove his car into the campsite, leaving it open behind him.

The gravel yard on the banks of the Forgese was flooded. The inky-black river, which usually flowed thirty metres away, had engulfed the jetty and was lapping at the canoe shed. The palm trees, their leaves ragged from the winter, were battered by gusts of wind and rain. The roar of the swollen river was audible even through the window panes.

A worse night for a romantic rendezvous would be hard to imagine.

The campers and caravans were parked side by side.

Now which of the bloody things is Ernesto's?

Beppe remembered it was called something like Rimmel. Finally, right at the end of the row, he saw a big white beast with the name plate ‘Rimor SuperDuca 688TC'.

There it is
.

It was inside that vehicle that the dreadful act of betrayal would be performed. Yes, for as Beppe was well aware, what he was about to commit was a dastardly deed, an assault on the integrity of a family. Poor Mario really didn't deserve such treachery from his best friend.

(Forget the whole idea. Turn back. Mario welcomed you into his
home like a brother. He loves his wife dearly and he trusts you.)

He parked the car, trying not to listen to the voice of his conscience.

(Ida would certainly be grateful to you, too.)

Beppe sighed, turning off the engine.

I'm a shit. I know I am. I wish I could do it, but I can't
…
Maybe I'll break it off after I've had her. But I can't go on living
like this, I must have her at least once
.

He got out of the car and walked round the camper, pulling a blue trolley case along between the puddles.

After a couple of attempts the door opened, and with a mixture of excitement and shame the social worker climbed the steps and entered, as a flash of lightning bathed the dinette and the mini-sofa in pale blue light.

Cristiano Zena was awoken by a clap of thunder so loud that for a moment he thought a tanker had exploded on the highway.

He felt some cushions, the back of a seat, and realised he was on the sofa. He had fallen asleep while they had been watching the Al Pacino film.

It was pitch black. The rain was beating on the window panes and the gate in the yard was rattling in the wind.

‘Don't worry, Cri. It's only a power cut.'

Cristiano could barely make out the features of his father's face, tinged red by the ash of his cigarette.

‘There's one hell of a thunderstorm. Go to bed.'

‘What's the time?'

‘I don't know. About eleven thirty.'

Cristiano yawned. ‘How are you going to get the tractor? The riverside road will be a sea of mud.'

‘Sure,' replied Rino calmly.

Cristiano was about to ask if he could go too, but checked himself. He knew what the answer would be. ‘But isn't it late?' he asked, finally.

‘Maybe.'

‘What's the matter? Don't you want to do it any more?'

His father breathed out through his nose. Silence. Then: ‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘I've had second thoughts.'

‘Why?'

‘It's too dangerous.'

Cristiano didn't know whether to be pleased or not. With the money they could have bought a lot of things, got a new car, had a better life, travelled. On the other hand the raid had always worried him a little. All in all, it was better like this. With hindsight, he had always sensed that his father's heart wasn't in it.

Cristiano sat up and crossed his legs. ‘What are you going to say to Danilo?'

‘I've got a headache. Go to bed.' Rino was beginning to get tetchy. As if his son was prodding at an open wound. Cristiano knew he should drop the matter, but it really irritated him that his father never kept his promises. Like when he'd said he would give him a PlayStation for Christmas.

‘But you promised him.'

‘Who cares?'

‘Danilo will hate you.'

‘No problem. He can do it with someone else if he likes. Not with me.'

‘Yes, but you're their leader. They can't do it on their own, you know that. You can't let them down like this.' As he talked, Cristiano wondered why the hell he kept going on about it if he was pleased his father had decided to drop out.

Rino started to shout: ‘Listen to me, you little brat. Get this into your head: I'm nobody's leader, least of all theirs. Besides, I've got a son, unlike them. I'm not risking that for a bit of loose change. End of discussion.'

The light came back on. The television started up again. In the kitchen the fridge started to buzz.

Cristiano screwed up his eyes. ‘When are you going to tell him?'

Rino opened a can of beer and took a swig from it. Then, wiping his mouth with his arm, he replied: ‘Now. When they get here. You go to bed. I don't want to quarrel in front of you. Move.'

Cristiano was on the point of retorting that it wasn't fair, that he'd always been present at their meetings and he ought to be present now, but he bit his tongue.

‘Shit …' He got up and went towards the stairs without saying goodnight.

You could hear everything upstairs anyway.

Inside the camper there was a horrible smell.

It wasn't just the damp, it was something much worse, something disgusting … Something to do with human excrement and chemical toilets.

Beppe Trecca groped around on the walls, searching for a light switch.

The previous summer he had ridden in this thing when they had taken a trip to the monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo, but he'd been car-sick all the way.

Finally, behind a cupboard, he found some switches and started to press them at random.

The neon lights on the ceiling and the spotlights over the sink lit up, spreading a cold light.

In front of him was a narrow space lined with wall units covered with beige formica, the day area with a little table and the sofa, and above the driver's cab the sleeping area with a double bed.

With one hand over his mouth he opened the toilet door. It was like getting a punch in the face. The social worker turned purple, dazed by the stink, and had to lean against a partition to stop himself collapsing on the light-blue carpet.

The smell, as solid as a wall, was both human and chemical at the same time. For a moment he thought his cousin's husband must have dissolved a dead animal in the acid, but then he saw some violet-coloured sludge in the bowl with some material floating in it which at first sight seemed organic, though of uncertain origin.

He pressed a big red button, hoping some pump might drain that pestilential pond, but it didn't. All he succeeded in doing was opening the port-hole, turning on a weary little fan and shutting the door.

The impact of the stench had been so strong that only now did he realise that the temperature in the camper was at least five degrees
below zero and that the rain was beating down on it like a hammer on an anvil.

How did the heating work? But above all: did campers have any heating?

They should do
.

He laid the trolley case on the table and unzipped it. He began to arrange on the little cooker a series of foil dishes containing chicken with bamboo shoots, spring rolls, won tons, sweet and sour pork and Cantonese rice. All bought from the Pagoda Incantata restaurant at the twentieth kilometre-mark on the highway. Then he took out a bottle of Falanghina which had cost him twelve euros, and another of melon vodka to give Ida the coup de grâce if she …

(What?)

Nothing
.

He laid a red cloth on the little table, added some plastic plates and chopsticks and then lit some cedar-scented candles and a dozen sticks of incense, which began to send up spirals of white smoke.

That should cover the smell
…

The mobile phone in his jacket pocket gave two beeps.

A message
.

He took out the handset and read:

It was eleven thirty and Fabiana Ponticelli couldn't believe she was still lying on Esmeralda's bed.

She was an hour late, but the thought of going out and doing twenty minutes on a scooter in the storm made her feel like weeping.

Besides, she couldn't stop thinking that next morning, before school, she had to see the dentist, who would find the piercing on her tongue.

What if I just said sod it and stayed here for the night? That way
I'd miss the dentist too. What could happen?

In the first place the Turd would confiscate her scooter. The thing she cared about most in the world, and which enabled her to escape from Giardino Fiorito, the estate where her family lived.

Oh yes, he didn't just take things away, he
confiscated
them. And how he loved doing it.

‘I'll confiscate your mobile!' ‘I'll confiscate your bovver boots!'
I'll confiscate all the fun out of your life
.

How much did she hate him? She wished she could quantify it, she wished she had an instrument like the one for pressure, a hateometer, to measure the loathing she felt for her father. She'd melt it. She hated him as much as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. No, more. As much as all the molecules of water in the sea. No, even more. The stars in the universe. Yes, that was it.

Well, he'd only take away my scooter for a week, or ten days at
most
.

She knew the reason she felt so anxious was that pot they had smoked. Lately she had noticed that joints, instead of making her giggly as they used to, turned her paranoid.

To keep this effect under control Fabiana had drunk half a bottle of limoncello.

The alcohol and the pot were two monsters that were fighting for supremacy over her mind. The marijuana monster was geometric. All sharp points, blades, hard edges. The limoncello monster was shapeless, slobbery and blind. And if you took them in the right proportions, the two monsters, instead of fighting, fused into a perfect hybrid which made you feel out of this world.

But now the monster had lost its spherical perfection and had got out its blades and sharp points (thanks to that last, damned joint) and kept jabbing them into her brain.

She breathed in deeply and blew the air out.

In these cases never think about your parents, school or a sodding visit to the dentist.

But if I don't go to the dentist the Turd will get suspicious. He'll
start thinking I'm pregnant or something
.

Why didn't Esmeralda ever get attacks of paranoia? She stuffed herself with joints and never had any side effects. It must be a genetic thing.

Drink. Drink, it'll do you good
.

Fabiana took a swig from what was left of the warm limoncello and tried to think about something else, but without success. ‘I'm so anxious …' she said out loud, without meaning to.

Esmeralda, who was busy plucking hairs out of her eyebrows with tweezers, looked up. ‘What?'

‘I've got to go home.'

‘Stay here for the night. Why do you want to go? Haven't you seen what it's like outside?' Esmeralda lit a cigarette.

‘I can't. My parents will kill me if I don't go home.'

Esmeralda started burning her split ends with the lighted end. ‘The truth is, you're not methodical. You don't tell your parents to fuck off often enough. It's just a question of regularity. You've got to be strict with yourself – even if you don't feel like it you must do it every day. Look at me. I tell my mother to fuck off every day of the week and we've settled all our conflicts.'

Fabiana didn't reply. It was stuffy in the room. What with the incense, the joints and the cigarettes, there was such a haze she could hardly see Esmeralda.

‘Esme, open the window, I'm suffocating.'

Her friend, intent on her coiffuring, took no notice.

‘
Mrs Ponticelli, your daughter's got a little silver ball on her
tongue
.' That was what the dentist would say to her mother.

She had been clever, so far she had managed to hide the piercing. It hadn't been difficult. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut, avoid yawning, and above all, never laugh. There wasn't much to laugh about in her home anyway.

The problem had been getting used to having a nail through the middle of your tongue. And, to be honest, Fabiana still hadn't got used to it. She would keep twisting it around in her mouth and running it along her teeth, and by evening her tongue would be all swollen and her mouth sore.

When her mother found out she would make a melodramatic scene in front of the dentist, the patients, everyone. Her mother loved making a fool of herself in public. But that would be as far as it would go. The woman had about as much backbone as an earthworm.

You accepted the one on my eyebrow and the one on my navel
.
Now, mama dear, you're just going to have to learn to live with
another one. What's the big deal?

The real problem would come if she told the Turd. And since mama had no real personality, no individual life of her own, and was only an external organ of her husband, Fabiana was sure she would go and tell him.

But on reflection, there was a slight possibility that for once in her life the external organ would restrain the urge to confess all. And this solely and exclusively for sordid, utilitarian reasons.

Her father would bang on about it for the next twelve years, accusing her of not knowing how to bring up children. Anyway, who said the dentist would spill the beans?