The Crossroads (25 page)

A noise.

So he didn't go away
.

Fabiana opened one swollen eye. A light. The man in the helmet was in the middle of the road with the torch in his hand, and was running backwards and forwards.

(Fabi, you must get away.)

She just had to find the strength to stand up, but now she really didn't think she could do it. The pain seemed to be circulating from one side of her body to the other, through her bones, her muscles and her guts, and every now and then it stopped and dug in its claws.

The wood is big and dark and you can hide
.

If she had been well, if that bastard had played fair and not laid a trap for her, he would never have been able to catch her.

I won the cross-country race three years running
.

Fabiana the rocket. That's what they called me … The rocket
.

(If you get up now and go into the wood you'll become invisible.)

(GET UP!)

(GET UP!)

She clenched her teeth and fists and slowly got up onto her knees, her right arm completely numb. There seemed to be fragments of glass in her ankle.

(GET UP!)

With her eyes closed she stood up, without even looking to see where the bastard was, and set off towards the wood, towards the darkness that would hide and protect her. The pain in the meantime had moved to her face, it didn't leave her for a single step, and …

It's just a matter of gritting your teeth.

… each time she inhaled the cold air it was like getting another slap across the face …

I must look a mess. But it'll pass. You go back to normal. I saw
on TV a woman who'd had an operation
…

She couldn't see a thing, but there was no danger because God would help her to find her way and not to trip over and not to fall down and to find a hole to disappear into.

She was safe, she was in the wood. The branches whipped her jacket and the thorns tried to stop her, but now she was far away, alone, in the darkness, she was walking over a lot of stones, of rocks, of tree trunks, and not falling down, and this was God.

Danilo Aprea was asleep, sitting in front of the television. He looked like the statue of the pharaoh Chephren. In one hand the empty Cynar bottle, in the other his mobile phone.

About eight kilometres away from Danilo's flat, Rino Zena woke up in his old camouflage sleeping bag. An atomic bomb had exploded in his skull. He opened his eyelids: the television looked like a painter's palette and a group of dickheads were blathering about pensions and workers' rights.

It was very late. Those two would never come now.

Rino pulled the sleeping bag over his nose and thought that old Quattro Formaggi was a genius. He had switched off his mobile and that was that.

‘Thanks, Quattro.' He yawned, then he turned over on his side and closed his eyes.

Perfect. Nobody will see the scooters now
.

Quattro Formaggi turned happily towards Ramona and …

Where is she?

… she had gone.

He must be mistaken, it was too dark. He started walking faster and faster, then running, towards the point where she'd fallen.

‘Where are you?' he groaned in despair.

He ran back and forth along the layby and kept returning incredulously to the guardrail, where Ramona had been until thirty seconds before. He gazed for a long time at the black mass of vegetation which loomed over the road. No, she couldn't have gone into that tangle of brambles.

(Go and see. What are you waiting for? Where else can she have
gone?)

He stepped over the guardrail and entered the wood, lighting his way with the torch.

Before he had gone ten metres he saw her. He leaned against a tree trunk and heaved a sigh of relief.

She was there, walking through the trees with her arms stretched out in front of her and her eyes closed, as if she was playing blind man's buff.

Quattro Formaggi moved towards her, careful not to make a noise, pointing his torch at the ground. He stretched out his hand and was about to touch her on the shoulder, but then he stopped to look at her.

She had guts. None of those other little tarts would have gone into the woods on their own. And they would have just lain there on the ground, crying their eyes out. This one never gave up.

“
Come on, let's chuck him in the river!
”

Quattro Formaggi was twelve years old and was being dragged along the dry part of the river bed on a carpet of sharp pebbles. They had caught him. They had stubbed out a cigarette on his neck, kicked him and thrown stones at him. Then two of them had grabbed him by the legs and were pulling him towards the water, but he wouldn't give up – he clutched at the rocks, at the branches whitened by the river, at the reeds. Silently, gritting his teeth: he
wouldn't surrender. He too had shut his eyes and refused to give up, but he had been picked up bodily and dumped in the water and carried away by the current.

We're two of a kind
.

Quattro Formaggi hurled her to the ground.

Fabiana Ponticelli fell right on a branch, which bent under the weight of her body and then with a loud crack snapped, tearing her jacket and cardigan and grazing her side. A sharp pain twisted its tentacles round her ribs.

So I'm not invisible. And God isn't here, or if he is, he's just
standing by and watching
.

She felt a weight on her stomach. It took a few seconds to realise that the bastard was sitting on top of her.

He grabbed her wrist and she didn't put up any resistance.

Something warm and soft on the palm of her hand. She couldn't make out what it was.

(Well what do you think it is?)
Esmeralda's voice.
(Do it. What
are you waiting for?)

Crying, Fabiana began to move her hand up and down.

(See? She did it like a shot, you fool.)

Quattro Formaggi panted as he watched Ramona's little hand. She was wearing a ring with a silver skull, which was going up and down, slowly. Breathtaking.

He closed his eyes and leaned sideways against a tree trunk, waiting for it to stiffen.

He didn't understand. This was the most beautiful thing in the world, so why was it still so limp? He tightened his buttocks and gritted his teeth, trying to arouse it, but without success.

No, it wasn't possible, now that Ramona was finally doing it to him …

‘Slower. Slower, please …' Quattro Formaggi raised a trembling fist in the air and thumped himself on the chest.

He knew he could come almost instantly. But it was as if that thing didn't belong to him. A dead appendage. This was the exact opposite of what he had expected. The warm hand, and his body cold and unfeeling. Why did it work when he did it himself, but not like this?

(It's her fault. It's this little tart's fault.)

He grabbed her by the hair and muttered to her desperately: ‘Slower. Slower. Please …'

It was never going to stiffen.

Fabiana Ponticelli felt as if hours had passed, but it was still as limp as a dead slug. It seemed to be melting in her hand, like a lump of butter.

‘Slower. Slower. Please …'

She would gladly have obliged, but if she went any slower …

‘No, squeeze it. Hard. Very hard. Pull it.'

She didn't understand, first slow and now … But she obeyed.

Eventually she stopped, feeling frustrated and scared and guilty, and she realised that the bastard was crying.

‘Calm down, relax, or you won't make it …' she said, hardly realizing what she was saying. ‘Just wait, you'll see, …'

But the man angrily snatched away her hand and started frantically undoing her belt, her trousers. 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 flat 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
flat. 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 mobile 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 realise that his mobile was ringing on the floor.

He yawned and with a weary movement picked up the phone, certain that it was that pain in the arse 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 mobile 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 mobile!

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 mobile 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 round here. I even invited him for a meal. I told him to come round and have some spaghetti al pomodoro and then we could go together. And did he come? Did he hell. If he had done 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 scumbag!' 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?'