As God Commands (35 page)

No, that was too difficult for insects.

The problem now was those big black clouds on the horizon
which were covering the violet sky and which were bringing darkness back over him, the desert of stones and the ants.

Yes, he must try.

Danilo Aprea came off the exit and turned down Via Enrico Fermi,
singing at the top of his voice: "And its arms no longer open to one
like me who hungers for something rare and new that I'll never get
from you..."

The bank was there. Right in front of the car.

Danilo kissed the Padre Pio medallion, sat back in his seat and
aimed straight at the cash machine.

"...A moving car is enough to make me ask if I'm alive..." he
yelled along with Bruno Lauzi.

The right wheel hit the curb at a hundred miles an hour and
broke away from the axle and the car capsized and rolled over and
over and crashed into an enormous concrete flower-pot which had
been put there by the newly elected local council to stop cars entering
what they called the historic center.

Danilo dived through the windshield, flew over the flowerpot and
landed face-first on a bicycle rack.

He lay there with his arms outspread, but then slowly, as if he
had been resuscitated, he got up and started staggering about in the
middle of the little pedestrian precinct.

Where his face had been there was a mask of raw flesh and glass.
With his only working eye he saw a greenish glow.

The bank.

I hit it.

He saw the cash machine spewing out money like a slot machine
gone mad. But instead of coins there were green banknotes as big
as hearth rugs.

I'm rich.

He knelt down to pick them up and spat out a lump of blood,
mucous and teeth.

I don't believe it. I'm dying...

If he had been capable of laughing he would have.

How absurd life is...

If he had remembered to fasten his seat belt he wouldn't have
dived through the windshield and perhaps he would have lived, but
now Laura ... Laura was ...

He fell down and death took him on the ground, in the rain, as
he laughed and moved his fingers, gathering his money.

Beppe Trecca was driving along with his heart full of emotion. In
front of him were the red tail lights of Ida's homeward-bound Opel.

He kept shaking his head incredulously. First making love to Ida,
then the camper being wrecked and them, like the heroes of an
adventure film, coming out alive.. .It had been incredible.

Now it was hard, very hard, to accept not being able to spend
the rest of the night together, not seeing the dawn light as they lay
in each other's arms.

In thirty-five years of life he had never known sexual intercourse
to be so intense and ...

Mystical? Yes, mystical.

He smiled happily.

"Beppe ... Beppe ... Oh my God, I'm going to come ... I'm
coming! I'm coming!" he had heard her moan just before the
camper was seized by the tempest like the house in The Wizard
of Oz.

"You put on a great show," he congratulated himself.

And that embrace in the midst of the fury of the elements had
sealed a union that would not end like that, with a simple fuck.
Before they had parted Ida had hugged him tightly and had started
crying and then said to him: "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."

For the first time in his life Beppe Trecca had not hesitated. "All
right. I'll speak to him."

His cell phone started ringing.

Ida.

He replied immediately.

"Beppe, darling, this is where I turn off. You sleep for both of
us-I won't be able to. I'll be thinking about you all the time till I
see you again. I can still feel you inside me."

The social worker gulped. "And I won't be happy till I can kiss
your lips again."

"Can I call you tomorrow?"

"Of course."

"I love you."

"Not as much as I love you."

As Ida's car winked its indicator and turned off onto the interchange for Varrano, Beppe Trecca declaimed in a melodramatic tone:
"Mario, there's something I've got to tell you. I've fallen in love
with your wife. She loves me too. I know... It's hard, but these
things can always happen in life. I'm terribly sorry. But the force of
love is greater than anything else. Two soulmates have found each
other, so please set us free."

Pleased with his little speech, he pressed the CD button and
started singing along with Bryan Ferry: "More than this ..."

He could just imagine him, that bastard Tekken, cackling away with
his friends. Cristiano Zena couldn't see what was so funny.

From tomorrow I'm going to have to watch my step. He curled
up on the sofa and grasped his big toes with one hand. Tekken will
be out for revenge.

A clap of thunder exploded directly overhead and, with a
strange stereo effect, he heard it croak through the earpiece of
the telephone.

Cristiano opened his mouth and clamped his hand over it to stop
himself screaming with fear.

He's here! He's near here! He called to find out if I was alone.

He dropped the phone and rushed over to check the door. He
gave the key several turns in the lock and put on the safety
chain.

The windows!

He lowered all the shutters, including those of the kitchen and
the bathroom, and went back to the telephone, groping his way
along in total darkness.

He picked up the receiver from where it lay on the cushions of the
sofa. The line was still open. "Tekken, you bastard.. .1 know you're
here... I'm not an idiot. You'd better keep away from the house..."

Will he have seen that the van's not here?

"...if you don't want me to wake my father. Do you hear, you
bastard?" He closed his eyes and listened again. For a while he could
only hear his own suppressed breathing, but then he thought he
could hear something else. He pressed the receiver to his ear and
held his breath.

What is it?

The wind, something rustling and rain on leaves, the sound rain
makes when it falls on a tree...

He's just outside here.

The saliva had gone from his mouth. His guts had contracted like
a dry floorcloth.

But there was something else. Something barely audible. Heavy
breathing. Someone with asthma. Someone who was hurt. Someone
who was ...

... jerking off.

Cristiano grimaced and shouted angrily: "Who the hell are you?
Some kind of maniac? Answer me, you bastard! You bastard!"

"I'm shitting myself with fear," he would have liked to add.

Why don't you just hang up? Go on! Pull out the plug from the
wall. Check that the door's locked and go back to bed.

Then the voice of a dead man calling his name.

"Cri ... stiano..." said the ants.

Rino Zena's tongue was a solid, black mass of swarming insects.
And his lips, and also his teeth, his jaw and his palate, were covered with ants advancing in orderly fashion, moving like members
of a vast ballet troupe, dying to enable him to speak to his son.

"Papa?" yelled Cristiano Zena, and as he shouted he understood
that the ram raid on the cash machine had gone wrong and he imagined his father riddled with bullets and dripping with blood, pursued by police cars, and at the roadside murmuring his name into
his cell phone. "Papa..." but he couldn't go on. Someone must have
sucked all the air out of the room and he was suffocating. With
what little breath was left in his lungs he sighed: "Papa? Papa, what's
happened? Are you hurt? Papa! Papa?"

The television suddenly came back on at full blast. On the
screen there appeared the man with the fringe and the big bushy
mustache, drawing a curve and yelling obsessively: "The variables
X, y, z...

Why couldn't he hear anything any more?

Rino Zena wasn't sure the ants had managed to pronounce
Cristiano's name, or even that they had managed to phone him.

There were few of them left alive now.

He wondered if they could still do it.

Cristiano Zena pleaded into the microphone, while the storm
wrapped itself around the house as if it was trying to suffocate it:
"Papa! Papa! Answer me, please, please! Where are you?"

He waited, but he got no reply.

He felt like shouting, like smashing everything to pieces.

Calm. Keep calm. He bent his head back and breathed in, and
then said: "Papa, listen to me, please. Tell me where you are. Just
tell me where you are and I'll come."

Nothing.

His father didn't reply and Cristiano felt the rock that was obstructing
his throat melt and flow down into his chest like hot lava and ...

You're not going to start crying!

... he put his hand over his mouth and held back the tears.

Why don't you answer me, you bastard?

He waited for a long time, for hours it seemed, but every now
and again he couldn't help repeating: "Papa, papa ... ?"

(You know why he doesn't answer you.)

No, I don't.

(Yes you do...)

I don't! Fuck off.

(It's true.)

No! No!

(He's ... )

HE'S DEAD. ALL RIGHT. HE'S DEAD.

That was why he wasn't answering any more.

He had gone. Gone away. Forever.

It was what he had always known would happen, because God
is an asshole and sooner or later takes everything away from you.

What if this is hell?

Rino Zena was among the ants inside the huge cavern that was
his mouth.

He takes everything away from you. Everything... sighed Cristiano
Zena, and his legs would no longer support him and he slumped
down onto the floor and there in front of the television screen he
opened his mouth and let out a mute scream and he repeated to
himself that this was a very important moment, a moment he would remember for the rest of his life, the exact, precise moment
when his father had died, and he had heard him die over the telephone, so he must print it all on his memory, every thing, every
detail, nothing must escape him of that moment, the most terrible moment in his life: the rain, the thunder and lightning, the
pizza al prosciutto under his foot, the mustached guy on TV and
that house which he would leave. And the darkness. He would
certainly remember that darkness which surrounded him on every
side.

Sniffing, he said, almost in a whisper: "Please papa! Answer me!
Answer me ... Where are you? You can't do this to me ... It's not
fair." He sat down on the sofa, put his elbows on his knees, wiped
his nose with the back of his hand and started squeezing his head
and sobbing: "If you don't tell me where you are ... what can I
do ... what can I do ... there's nothing I can do ... Please,
God ... Please ... Help me. Please God, help me. I've never asked you
for anything ... Anything."

"San Rocco ... Agip ... P ..."

Cristiano jumped to his feet and shouted: "I'm coming, papa! I'm
coming! I'll come straight away! Don't worry. I'll be there in a
minute! Leave it to me." To make quite sure, he waited a little
longer, then he put down the receiver and started pacing backward
and forward in the sitting room, unable to decide what to do.

Right... Right... Think, Cristiano. Think. He held his head
between his hands. Right... The Agip service station. Where the hell
is the Agip service station at San Rocco? But which service station?
The one on the interchange? Or the one just before San Rocco?
Isn't that Esso? Yes, it's Esso.

He stopped and started slapping himself on the cheek. Remember.
Remember. Remember. Come on. Come on. Come on.

No, he just couldn't remember, but it didn't matter, he would find
it somehow.

He bounded upstairs, three steps at a time. He dashed into his
room and started getting dressed and talking out loud: "Wait a
minute ... Wait a minute ... There's no Agip gas station at San
Rocco ... The only one is the one after the bypass. Near the woods.
The one with the carwash. Perfect! I've got it!" He put on his pants.
"Quick! Quick! Quick! I'm coming, papa! But where are my shoes?"

He ransacked the room. He lifted up the bed and he saw them.
As he sat on the floor putting them on, he stopped and began
shaking his head.

But how the hell am I going to get there?

It was an incredibly long way.

He remembered that while he was going to bed his father had
told him he was waiting for Danilo and Quattro Formaggi.

How did they get here, then?

On the Boxer.

Perfect!

He rushed downstairs, tripped over his shoelaces and flew down
the second flight. He got up off the floor and...

I'm not hurt, I'm not hurt.

... put on his windbreaker and limped out of the house.