The Crossroads (42 page)

‘It is faith that sustains us and helps us to bear the pain.'

The little man was looking at him with a wise and kindly expression, and Quattro Formaggi couldn't help smiling.

‘But sometimes faith alone is not enough. Something more is needed. Something that can put us in contact with God. On speaking terms. As we might be with a friend. May I ask what your name is?'

Quattro Formaggi realised that his throat was dry. He swallowed. ‘My name is … Corrado Rumitz …' He summoned up his courage. ‘Though everyone calls me Quattro Formaggi. I'm tired of that name.'

‘Quattro Formaggi,' said the other, gravely.

It was the first time in his life that someone hadn't laughed when he'd told them his nickname.

‘Well, I'm very pleased to meet you, Corrado. My name's Riccardo, but I too have a nickname. Ricky.'

Ricky's eyes seemed to grow so big that they filled his whole face.

‘May we exchange a sign of peace?'

‘A sign of peace?'

The little man hugged him tightly and remained in that position for a long time, squeezing his bruised ribs. Quattro Formaggi forced himself not to scream with pain.

When he released him, Ricky seemed moved. ‘Thank you. Sometimes the mere embrace of a stranger is enough to make us feel that God loves us. Sometimes faith is not enough for us to enter the graces of the Lord. Often it takes something more. Often we need …' He looked at his hand, inspired. ‘We need an aerial to communicate with the Almighty. I'll show you something.' Ricky picked up his briefcase from the floor and with his short, stumpy fingers opened it quickly. ‘You're lucky to have met me today. My instinct, or perhaps the will of God himself, always leads me to people who are in need of help.' The tone of his voice had dropped even lower, if that was possible, and now it was difficult to understand what he was saying.

He took out a little case covered with blue velvet and opened it in front of Quattro Formaggi. Inside, cushioned on white satin, was a small, rusty crucifix attached to a thin golden chain. ‘Corrado, you know about Lourdes, don't you?'

Quattro Formaggi knew that once a month a big silver coach left from Piazza Bologna for Lourdes and many people went there, especially the elderly, and the trip cost two hundred euros and took eighteen hours, there and back. When you got there they took you to buy frying pans and porcelain, then you prayed in a cave and there was holy water which could miraculously cure you if you bathed in it. He had thought of going there, for his tics. ‘Yes,' he replied, nervously scratching his beard. His right leg, in the meantime, had begun to twitch of its own accord.

‘Haven't you ever been there?' The little man's blue eyes stared at him with such intensity that Quattro Formaggi, in alarm, started screwing up his lips. He couldn't speak, he felt as if a thin black tentacle was winding itself round his neck.

He shook his head.

‘But you do know about the miraculous water of the Madonna of Lourdes …?'

He nodded.

‘And you know that that water has cured cripples, paralytics and people in all conditions, patients considered to be terminally ill by conventional medicine?' Ricky's voice slid down into his ears like warm oil. ‘Do you see this crucifix? To look at it, you wouldn't think it was worth a cent. All rusty. Ugly. There are hundreds of crucifixes
in any jeweller's shop that are worth a hundred times more. Made of platinum, with diamonds or other precious stones. But not one of them, I tell you not one of them, is like this one. This one is special.' He took it between his thumb and forefinger and picked it up as delicately as if it was a splinter of wood from Noah's ark. ‘I don't suppose you know that the cloistered nuns of the convent of the Madonna of Lourdes have a secret pool of miraculous water …'

Why did he keep asking him if he knew this or that? He didn't know anything.

‘No,' replied Quattro Formaggi.

Ricky smiled, displaying a row of teeth that were too white and regular to be natural. ‘Of course you don't; nobody does. Except the people who really count, as always. For thousands of years popes with tumours, dying kings and sick politicians have bathed in that pool brimming with miraculous water. A few years ago the Prime Minister was seriously ill. Cancer was devouring him, just as a serpent eats an egg. Do you know how a serpent eats an egg? Like this …' He opened his mouth wide, with his eyes narrowed to two black slits, and swallowed an invisible egg.

Quattro Formaggi tightened his throat. He would have liked to say that he didn't give a damn about the sacred pool. That all he needed to know was where Ramona's corpse had got to. But he didn't have the courage, and besides, his lips, his teeth and his tongue had gone numb, like that time when he'd had a rotten molar extracted.

‘Anyway, the Prime Minister was taken to the secret pool and swam in it. For a mere ten minutes. No more. A couple of lengths, in freestyle. And the cancer vanished. Dissolved. The doctors couldn't believe it. And now he's fine.' The little dwarf dangled the crucifix in front of him like a hypnotist. ‘Now look at it! You won't believe what I'm going to tell you, but it's as true as the fact that we're here at this moment. Do you know how long it lay in that pool? For ten years. I'm not joking. Ten long years. While the world was changing – wars were breaking out, the Twin Towers were falling, Italy was being invaded by illegal immigrants – this crucifix lay immersed in the miraculous water.' He sounded as if he was doing a commercial for a pure malt Scotch whisky. ‘It was a nun … Sister Maria. She hid it in one of the pool's skimmers and then secretly gave it to me. Do you see it? That's why it's so dull and tarnished. I tell no lies.
Now just think how potent the healing effect of this object must be. From the pool it went straight into this box. Nobody has ever hung it round their neck. And do you know why? So that it wouldn't lose its potency. This crucifix can't be recharged like a mobile phone. Once it comes into contact with the sufferer's skin it begins to emanate its …' For the first time Ricky couldn't find the words. But he immediately recovered: ‘… healingness … Ability to heal, I mean. But the important thing is never to take it off. Never to exchange it with anyone. And not to talk about it.' He stared at Quattro Formaggi and then fired a question at him: ‘Why are you here? For your own sake, Corrado? Or for someone else's?'

Quattro Formaggi, who had slowly sunk down onto a bench, bowed his head and said: ‘No, not for my sake. Rino's in a coma.' He had to break off to clear his throat and then he went on: ‘I need to speak to him. I need to know …'

‘He's in a coma.' Ricky stroked his cheeks pensively. ‘Well, with this crucifix he might even wake up in one day. He might easily. Do you know what it means to have such an immense amount of divine energy discharged into you? He might even get straight out of bed, pick up his things and go home, as right as rain.'

‘Really?'

‘I can't guarantee it. It might take a bit longer. But it's worth trying. This is a wonderful opportunity for you – don't let it slip. There's just one problem …'

‘What's that?'

‘You have to make a offering.'

‘What kind of offering?'

‘Some money for the Sisters of Lourdes. It's …'

‘How much?' Quattro Formaggi interrupted him.

‘How much have you got?'

‘I don't know …' He put his hand in the back pocket of his trousers and took out his wallet, which was full to bursting with all kinds of paper except money. He rummaged through it and eventually extracted one twenty-euro and one five-euro note.

‘Is that all you've got?' Ricky's voice couldn't conceal all his disappointment.

‘Yes. I'm sorry. Wait a minute, though. Perhaps …' Quattro Formaggi took out of his wallet an envelope, folded in half. The money
from the last job he'd done with Rino and Danilo. Four hundred euros. He hadn't even touched it … ‘I've got this. Take it.' He held out the banknotes, and the little man, with a deadpan expression, snatched them as quick as a ferret and handed him the velvet case.

‘Remember, in contact with the skin. And don't talk about it to anyone. Otherwise, bang goes the miracle.'

A second later Quattro Formaggi was alone again.

I can't call you or see you again.
Forgive me.

So Beppe Trecca, in tears, had written on his mobile phone.

Now he only had to press the key and Ida would get over it. She would think he was a coward.

“
Beppe, do you really want me?
”

“
Yes, I really do
.”

“
Even with the children?
”

“
Yes, of course
.”

“
Then let's go through with it. Let's talk to Mario and tell him
everything
.”

“
All right. I'll speak to him
.”

He would far rather be thought a chicken-shit than a bastard who disappeared without a word.

But he couldn't do it. He would be breaking the agreement.

Perhaps he ought to speak to someone who was expert in pledges and vows to the Lord. Someone who had taken a vow like him.

Father
Marcello
.

He must make confession and tell him everything. Though he doubted if the priest would give him the answer he wanted.

He threw his head back on the sofa, gulping down air with every sob. He stared through his tears at his mobile. And then, in agonies of colitis, he deleted the message.

Quattro Formaggi opened the blue box, but didn't touch the crucifix.

The messenger had said it would lose its power if he did.

He must put it on Rino, so he would come out of his coma and tell him where Ramona was hidden.

But Rino was very angry. He had gone berserk when he had seen the corpse.

He almost beat me to death
.

What if Rino reported him to the police?

The most dangerous people are always your friends. People you trust.

At one time Quattro Formaggi had worked for a while in a fish shop. He gutted the fish and made home deliveries. Every day polystyrene boxes full of large clams were unloaded. The clams were still alive; you only had to drop them in the tank, and ten minutes later they would put out a long white tube through which they would suck in water and oxygen. But the lightest touch on the shell with the point of a knife was enough to make them snap shut and stay closed for at least an hour. But then, when they reopened, if you touched them again they would only stay closed for half an hour. And if you kept on prodding them like this they would eventually get used to it and stop closing altogether.

At that point they were done for. You stuck the point of the knife inside the shell and the stupid little buggers snapped shut with the whole blade inside. Then you twisted the blade, the shell broke and a brown cloud of flesh and excrement gushed out into the water.

What use is a shell if you can be trained not to use it?

It's better not to have one – to be naked – if all it does is help the knife to kill you. Rino was like that knife blade. Quattro Formaggi had got used to him, and that made him a serious threat.

And Cristiano was just like his father – he was hiding the truth from him to thwart him.

Those two are playing me for a sucker
.

Rino will open his eyes, pull the needle out of his arm, point at me
and start shouting: “It was him, he killed the girl! Put him in prison!
”

He would do it. He knew him well. He would never understand that he had killed her because …

He saw the white hand and the thin fingers wrapped round his marble-hard penis.

An icy shiver sank its claws into the back of his head. He closed his eyes and felt as if he was falling from a skyscraper.

He found himself on the floor, lying among the hassocks, breathing hard and clutching the crucifix.

He unbuttoned his shirt and put the chain round his neck. The pendant fell among the dark hairs on his chest. He could feel the beneficent power of the crucifix spreading like a warm current through his aching body, into his cracked ribs, into the wound, the torn and bruised flesh.

He brushed the crucifix with his fingertips and felt as if he was touching Ramona's smooth skin. And he saw little Baby Jesus hidden inside the woman's wet body.

“
God's will is as obscure to us poor sinners as the darkest of
winter nights. We need an aerial to communicate with the Almighty
,” Ricky had told him.

Now he had the aerial to communicate with.

He got to his feet and limped out of the chapel.

He knew what he had to do. He had to kill Rino.

If Rino woke up he would accuse him.

It was Rino who was opposing the will of God.

God had nearly killed him, and he would finish him off.

In fact he and God were one and the same thing.

He crossed the entrance hall, panting, with his violin-shaped clock under his arm, and pushed his way into the lift, which was full of doctors and visitors.

Quattro Formaggi got out on the second floor.

He remembered that this was where the most seriously ill patients were. He himself had been kept there after the accident with the fishing rod, before being moved to the floor above.

Trying not to attract attention, he went by the maternity ward. The big window with the newborn babies in their cots. A glass door. A long corridor and rows of closed doors. He reached the intensive care department. On the door there was a notice which detailed the visiting hours.

It was out of hours.

He tried turning the handle. The door opened. Scratching his cheek, he peered into the corridor.

The lighting in this department was softer, and the ceiling lower. There was a row of orange plastic chairs along one wall. Through the window he could see a violet strip which divided the dark sky from the plain.