As God Commands (4 page)

When he had woken up he had seen from the window of his
room, in the pale light of dawn, an expanse of gentle hills and white
valleys, as if he was enjoying the view from a mountain lodge. If
he avoided looking at the walls of the building opposite he might
even have imagined he was in Alaska.

He had sat in bed huddled up under the blankets, watching the
snowflakes fall as light as feathers.

It hadn't snowed like this for ages.

Almost every winter, sooner or later, there was a sprinkling, but
before Quattro Formaggi had time to go out for a walk in the countryside it had always melted.

But that night at least ten inches must have fallen.

When Quattro Formaggi had been small and lived in the orphanage
run by the nuns it had snowed every winter. Cars would stop, some
people would even put on cross-country skis and the children would
make snowmen with branches for arms and would slide down the
garage ramps on old car tires. What incredible snowball fights they'd
had with Sister Anna and Sister Margherita. And there had been
sleds drawn by horses with jingling bells...

At least, he thought there had.

Lately he had noticed that he often remembered things that had
never happened. Or he got things he had seen on TV jumbled up
with his own memories.

Certainly something in the world must have changed if it no
longer snowed as it used to.

On TV, they had explained that the world was warming up like
a meatball in the oven and that it was all the fault of man and his
gases.

Quattro Formaggi, lying in bed, had told himself that if he hurried
up he could go round to Rino and Cristiano's and when Cristiano
came out to go to school he could pelt him with snowballs.

But as if the weather had been listening and decided to throw a
wrench in the works, the snowflakes had become increasingly heavier
and more liquid till they had turned to rain, and the hills had first
become pockmarked and then shrunk to patches of icy mush,
revealing the mass of old junk heaped up in the little yard. Beds,
furniture, tires, rusty trash cans, the skeleton of an orange Ape 125
pickup, and the carcass of a sofa.

Quattro Formaggi gulped down his cup of milk, his pointed
Adam's apple rising and falling. He yawned, and stood up to his
full height of six-foot-two-inches.

He was so tall and thin he looked like a basketball player who
had been put on starvation rations. Gangly arms and legs, enormous hands and feet. There was a thick callous on the palm of his
right hand and a hard brown scar on his right calf. His bony neck
supported a head as small and round as that of a silvery gibbon. A
grayish beard stained his sunken cheeks and his chin. His hair, unlike
his beard, was black and shiny and hung in a fringe over his low
forehead, in the style of an Amazonian Indian.

He put the cup in the sink, quivering with tremors and spasms
as if he had hundreds of electrodes clamped to his body.

He continued to stare at the yard, cocking his head on one side
and twisting his mouth, then he thumped himself twice on the thigh
and slapped his forehead.

The children in the park, when they saw him go by, would stare
at him in amazement and then run to their nannies and tug at their
clothes, asking: "Why does that man walk in that funny way?"

And usually they would get the reply (if the nanny was a polite
person) that it was rude to point and that the poor fellow was an
unfortunate who suffered from some mental illness.

But then the same children, talking to the older ones at school,
would learn that that strange man, who was always in the public
gardens and who would steal your toys if you didn't watch out,
was called Electric Man, like some enemy of Spiderman or
Superman.

That would indeed have been a more appropriate nickname for
Quattro Formaggi. At the age of thirty Corrado Rumitz had had a
nasty experience which had nearly cost him his life.

It had all begun with an air rifle which he had exchanged for a
long fishing rod. It was a good bargain: the air rifle's gaskets were
worn out and it made a farting noise when you fired it. It barely
even tickled the coypu in the river. The rod, by contrast, was practically new and extremely long, so if you cast it properly you could
reach the middle of the river.

Feeling very pleased with himself, Quattro Formaggi had set off,
rod in one hand and bucket in the other, to fish in the river. He had
been told that there was one special point, just below the lock, where
the fish gathered, carried down by the current.

After having a look around, Quattro Formaggi had climbed over the
fence and stationed himself just above the lock, which that day was closed.

He had never been the brightest of people. When he was in the
orphanage he had caught a particularly acute form of meningitis
and consequently he "thought slowly," as he put it.

That day he may have thought slowly but he had thought well.
He had made a few casts and could feel that the fish were touching
the bait. There must be hundreds of them, massed by the lock gates.
But they were very crafty. They would eat the worm and leave him
with nothing but a hook that needed re-baiting.

Maybe he should try further out.

He had made a long, vigorous cast, describing a perfect curve
through the air. The hook had cleared the foliage of the trees but
not the electric cables that ran right over his head.

If the rod had been made of plastic he wouldn't have come to
any harm, but unfortunately for him it was made of carbon, which
on a scale of electrical conductivity is second only to silver.

The current had entered his hand and gone right through his
body, leaving via his left leg.

The lock-keepers had found him lying on the ground, burnt
almost to a frazzle.

For several years he hadn't been able to speak and had moved
jerkily, like a green lizard. Then gradually he had recovered, but he
still had spasms in his neck and mouth and a crazy leg which he
sometimes had to thump awake.

Quattro Formaggi took some minced meat out of the fridge
and gave it to Uno and Due, the turtles who lived in three inches
of water in a big washing-bowl on the table by the window.

Someone had thrown them into the fountain in Piazza Bologna
and he had brought them home. When he had found them they had
been the size of two-euro pieces; now, five years later, they were
nearly as big as cottage loaves.

He looked at the clock shaped like a violin that hung on the wall.
He couldn't remember exactly at what time, but he was supposed
to be meeting Danilo at the Boomerang Bar, after which they had
arranged to go around together to wake Rino up.

There was just time to reposition the little wooden church by the
lake.

He went through into the sitting room.

A room about sixty square feet in area, completely covered with
mountains of colored papier-mache, with rivers of tin foil, with
lakes made out of plates and bowls, with woods made of moss,
with towns dotted with cardboard houses, deserts of sand and
roads of cloth.

And the surface was populated by soldiers, plastic animals,
dinosaurs, shepherds, little cars, tanks, robots and dolls.

His nativity scene. He had been working on it for years.

Thousands of toys retrieved from trash cans, found on the dump
or left by children in the public gardens.

On the highest mountain of all stood a stable with Baby Jesus,
Mary, Joseph and the ox and the ass. They had been a gift from
Sister Margherita when he was ten. Quattro Formaggi, moving with
surprising agility, crossed the scene without knocking anything over
and repositioned the bridge across which a troop of smurfs was
walking, with a Pokemon at their head.

When he had finished the job he knelt down and prayed for the
soul of Sister Margherita. Then he went into the tiny toilet, had a
cursory wash and put on his winter gear: some long johns, a pair
of cotton pants, a flannel shirt with a blue-and-white checkered pattern, a brown sweatshirt, an old quilted jacket, a Juventus scarf, a
yellow poncho, woolen gloves, a peaked cap and some heavy working
shoes.

Ready.

The alarm clock went off at a quarter to seven and jolted Cristiano
Zena out of a dreamless sleep.

It was a good ten minutes before an arm emerged like a hermit
crab's pincer from under the bedclothes and silenced the ringing.

He felt as if he had only just closed his eyes. But the most terrible thing was leaving the warm bed.

As every morning, he considered the idea of not going to school.
Today it was particularly tempting, because his father had told him
he was going to work. That didn't happen often these days.

But it wasn't possible. He had a history essay. And if he skipped
it again ...

Come on, up you go.

One corner of the room was beginning to brighten with the dull
light emitted by the overcast, gray sky.

Cristiano stretched, and checked the scratch on his thigh. It was
red, but it was already forming a scab.

He picked up his pants, fleece, and socks off the floor and pulled
them under the bedclothes. Yawning, he sat up, slipped on his
sneakers and shuffled, zombie-like, toward the door.

Cristiano's room was large, with still unplastered walls. In one
corner two trestles supported a wooden plank on which exercise
books and textbooks were piled. Above the bed, a poster of Valentino
Rossi advertising beer. Sticking out from the wall by the door were
the truncated copper pipes from a radiator that had never been
fitted.

With another yawn, he crossed the hall floored with gray linoleum,
passed the tatters of the bathroom door that still hung from its
hinges and entered the room.

The bathroom was a little cubbyhole measuring about three-bysix-feet, with blue, flowery tiles encircling the floor of the shower.
Over the basin hung a long shard of the mirror. A bare light bulb
dangled from the ceiling.

He stepped over the remains of his father's vomit and looked out
of the little window.

It was raining and the rain had eaten away all the snow. All that
was left were a few useless white patches, melting on the gravel in
front of the house.

School will be on.

The toilet had no seat and he rested his buttocks on the cold
porcelain, gritting his teeth. A shiver ran up his spine. And in a state
of semi-consciousness he crapped.

Then he cleaned his teeth. Cristiano didn't have good teeth. The
dentist wanted to give him braces, but luckily they had no money
and his father had said his teeth were fine the way they were.

He didn't take a shower, but sprayed himself with deodorant. He
dug his fingers into the gel and ran them through his hair to make
it even more tousled, if that was possible, but taking care not to let
his ears stick out.

He returned to his room, put his books in his backpack and was
about to go downstairs when he saw a dim glow under the door of
his father's bedroom.

He pushed down the handle.

His father was huddled up in a camouflage sleeping bag on a
double mattress on the floor.

Cristiano drew nearer.

Only the oval of his shaven head protruded from the sleeping
bag. The floor was strewn with empty beer cans, socks, and his
boots. On the bedside table, more cans and the pistol. There was a
stench of rancid sweat and dirty clothes which mingled with the
smell of an old, threadbare blue carpet. A lamp swathed in a red
cloth threw a scarlet glow on the enormous flag with a black
swastika in the middle that hung on the plasterless wall. The shutters were down, the curtains, patterned with brown-and-white diamonds, were held together with pegs.

His father only came here to sleep. Usually he collapsed on the sofa
in front of the television, and only the cold, and in the summer the
mosquitoes, gave him the strength to drag himself up to his bedroom.

If Cristiano ever saw him open the windows and make an attempt
at tidying up the room he knew old baldy had arranged to fuck
some woman and didn't want to suffocate her with rotting socks
and cigarette butts.

Cristiano kicked the mattress. "Papa! Papa, wake up! It's late."

No reaction.

He raised his voice. "Papa, you've got to go to work!"

He must have drunk a barrelful of beer.

Ah to hell with it! he said to himself and was about to leave when
he heard a groan which might as easily have come from beyond the
grave as out of that bundle. "No, today ... today ... I'm going ... I
have to ... Danilo ... Quattro..."

"OK. See you later. I have to go or I'll miss the bus." Cristiano
moved toward the door.

"Wait a minute... "

"It's late, pa... " Cristiano bristled.

"Give me my cigarettes."

The boy snorted and searched around the room for the packet.

"They're in my pants." His father's face emerged from the
sleeping bag, yawning. The mark of the zipper on his cheek. "My
God, that chicken we had last night was shit ... I'll cook something this evening.. .I'll make some lasagna, what do you say to
that?"

Cristiano threw the packet to his father, who caught it deftly.
"Look, I'm in a hurry ...I'll miss the bus, I told you."

"Hold on a minute! What's got into you today?" Rino lit himself a cigarette. For an instant his face was enveloped in a white
cloud. "Last night I dreamed we were eating lasagna. I can't remember
where, but it was delicious. You know what I'm going to do? I'm
going to make some myself today."

Why does he always talk such bullshit? Cristiano asked himself.
It was as much as he could do to cook a couple of fried eggs, and
he couldn't even do that without breaking the yolk.

"I'll make it with loads of bechamel. And sausages. If you do the
shopping, I'll make you some lasagna so delicious you'll be forced
to bow down and admit that I'm your God."