As God Commands (41 page)

He was nearly sixty now and had three grown-up children
(Francesco, the youngest, had decided to study medicine) but he still
hadn't developed the doctor's proverbial bluntness in telling the plain
truth, yet neither was he very good at sugaring the pill. When he
tried to do so he would start stammering and get confused, which
only made things worse.

After a career of over thirty years, nothing had changed. Every
time he had to break some bad news to a patient's family he felt
his heart sink in the very same way. But that morning he faced an
even more thankless task. Explaining to a thirteen-year-old boy, who
was alone in the world, that his father was in a coma.

He peered into the deserted waiting room.

The boy was sitting half-asleep on a plastic chair. His head resting
against the drink machine. His eyes fixed on the floor.

No! No, I can't do it... Brolli turned around and walked quickly
back toward the elevator. Cammarano can tell him. Cammarano is
young and decisive.

But he stopped and looked out of the window. Hundreds of starlings were forming a black funnel which lengthened out against the
white clouds.

He steeled himself and entered the waiting room.

Beppe Trecca woke up screaming "The vow!" He gasped for breath
as if someone had been holding his head under water. With feverish,
bloodshot eyes he looked around in bewilderment. It took him a
few seconds to understand that he was at home in bed.

He saw the face of an African staring in at him through the rear
window of the Puma, brandishing a packet of spongy white socks.

What a nightmare that was!

The social worker lifted his head off the pillow. Daylight filtered
between the slats of the shutters. He was soaked in sweat and he
felt the goose-feather duvet weighing down on him as if he was
buried under a ton of earth. In his mouth he still had the revolting
taste of the melon vodka. He reached out and switched on the bedside lamp. He screwed up his eyes and they seemed to burn.

I've got a temperature.

He sat up. The room started spinning. Caught in a whirlpool,
they all circled past him-Foppe the IKEA chest of drawers, the
Mivar portable television, the poster of a tropical beach, the little
bookcase crammed with paperback classics and the Library of Knowledge, the table, a packet of spongy white socks, the silver
frame enclosing the photograph of his mother, the ...

A packet of socks?

Trecca gave an acidic burp and sat gazing at them, his body stiff
under the duvet. He saw the whole night again as if in a film. The
camper, Ida, the sex, the banana, Rod Stewart, him in the rain beside
the corpse of the dead African and ...

Beppe Trecca slapped his boiling forehead.

... The vow!

Please, God...I swear to you that if you save his life I'll give up
everything... I'll give up the only beautiful thing in my life ... If
you save him I promise I'll give up Ida. I'll never see her again. I
swear.

He had asked God, and God had given.

The African had returned from the realms of the dead thanks to
his prayer. Beppe Trecca, that night, had witnessed a miracle.

He picked up the bible that he kept on his bedside table and
quickly leafed through it. And he read, struggling to focus on the
words:

... So they took away the stone. Then Jesus raised his eyes
and said, "Father, thank you for listening to me. I know
that you always listen to me, but I said this for the good
of the people around me, so that they will believe that
you sent me." And having said this, he called out in a
loud voice: "Lazarus, come forth!" And the dead man
came forth, with his feet and hands wrapped in bandages
and his face covered in a shroud. Jesus said to them:
"Untie him and let him go."

It's identical!

But at what a cost!

I'll give up Ida.

That was what he had said. So ...

So I'll never see her again. I made a vow.

His head fell back heavily and he seemed to be sucked back down
into the black hole.

He had given away his heart in exchange for a life.

I'll give up the only beautiful thing in my life...

With a grimace of terror on his face he clutched the sheet, as
panic smashed into him like a wave hitting a sandcastle.

From the doorway of the waiting room a tall, thin doctor was
looking at him.

Who does he remind me of?

Cristiano Zena had to think for a few seconds, then it came to
him. He was a dead ringer for Bernard, the vulture in Popeye.

After clearing his throat, the doctor spoke: "Are you Cristiano,
the son of Rino Zena?"

He nodded.

The professor sat down, all bent over, on a plastic seat facing
him.

His legs were even longer than Quattro Formaggi's, and Cristiano
noticed that he was wearing odd socks. Both were blue, but one
was smooth, the other ribbed.

He felt an instinctive surge of affection for this man, which he
immediately repressed.

"I'm Enrico Brolli, the surgeon who operated on your father,
and ..." He tailed off and started reading a folder that he held in
his hand, scratching the back of his head.

Cristiano stood up. "He's dead. Why don't you tell me straight
out?"

The doctor looked at him with his small head cocked on one
side, as dogs sometimes do. "Who told you he's dead?"

"I won't start crying. Just tell me, so I can go."

Brolli jumped to his feet and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Come with me. Let's go and see him."

Quattro Formaggi, under the shower, raised his arms, then lowered
them again and looked at his hands.

Those hands had picked up a rock and smashed a girl's head in.

The boiling hot water of the shower turned to ice-cold rain and
he felt on his fingertips the rough surface of the stone and the spongy
texture of the moss and he felt again the vibration on contact with
the forehead of that ...

His head whirled, he fell against the tiles and let himself slip down
them like a damp cloth.

Rino Zena was lying on a bed, with a turban of white gauze wrapped
around his head. A lamp over the headboard formed a luminous
oval and his serene face seemed to hover above the pillow like that
of a ghost. The rest of his body was hidden under a light-green
sheet. All around was an amphitheater of monitors and electronic
gadgets that emitted lights and beeps.

Cristiano Zena and Enrico Brolli were standing a couple of yards
from the bed.

"Is he asleep?"

The doctor shook his head: "No. He's in a coma."

"But he's snoring!"

Brolli couldn't help smiling. "Sometimes people in comas snore."

"He's in a coma?" Cristiano turned for a second to look at him,
as if he hadn't understood.

"Go closer, if you like."

He saw him take two steps forward, hesitantly, as if the bed contained an anaesthetized lion, and then grasp the headboard. "When
will he wake up?"

"I don't know. But it usually takes a couple of weeks at least."

They stood in silence.

It seemed as if the boy hadn't heard. He stood stiffly, clutching
the headboard as if he was afraid of falling. Brolli didn't know how
to explain the situation to him. He moved closer to him. "Your
father had an aneurysm. He'd probably had it since birth."

"What's an aneu... ?" asked Cristiano without turning.

"An aneurysm is a small swelling of the artery. A sort of little
bag full of blood which isn't elastic like the other blood vessels, and
in time it can burst. Your father's burst last night and the blood got
into the sub ... let's say it got in between the brain and the skull,
and penetrated the brain itself."

"What happens then?"

"The blood compresses the brain and creates a chemical
imbalance..."

"And what did you do to him?"

"We removed the blood and closed the artery."

"And now?"

"He's in a coma."

"In a coma..." Cristiano repeated.

Brolli was about to stretch out his hand and put it on his shoulder.
But he checked himself. This boy didn't seem to want comfort. His
eyes were dry and he was exhausted. "Your father can't wake up.
He looks as if he's sleeping, but he's not. Fortunately he can breathe
on his own and he doesn't need to be helped by a machine. That
bottle hanging upside down," he pointed to the drip by the bed,
"serves to feed him; later we'll put a tube into him to take the food
straight to his stomach. His brain has suffered very serious damage
and now is devoting all its resources to repairing itself. All its other
functions, such as eating, drinking and speaking, have been suspended. For the moment...

"But did the vein burst because he did something strange?"
Cristiano's voice sounded shrill.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, strange?"

"I don't know..." The boy fell silent, but then added: "I found
him like that..."

Brolli wondered whether the boy might have made his father
angry that evening and now felt responsible. He tried to reassure
him. "He might even have been asleep when the hemorrhage occurred. He had a pretty extensive aneurysm. Did he ever have
check-ups? Has he ever had a CAT scan?"

The boy shook his head: "No. He hated doctors."

Brolli raised the volume of his voice: "Don't talk in the past tense.
He's not dead. He's alive. His heart is still beating, the blood is circulating in his veins."

"If I speak to him will he hear me?"

The doctor sighed. "I don't think so. Until he gives some sign of
regaining consciousness such as opening his eyes ... I don't honestly
think so. But perhaps I'm wrong ... It's a mystery to us too, you
know. Anyway, if you want to speak to him you can."

The boy shrugged. "I don't want to now."

Brolli went over to the window. He saw his wife's car standing
in the road. He knew why Cristiano didn't want to talk to his father.
He felt abandoned.

Dr. Davide Brolli, Enrico Brolli's father, had woken up at seven
o'clock every day of his life. Exactly half an hour later he would
have his coffee. At eight on the dot he would go out, walk down
one flight of stairs and enter his surgery, where he would see patients
till five to one. At one o'clock he was at home for the beginning of
the television news. He ate on his own in front of the television.
From one thirty to ten past two he would rest. At ten past two he
would go back to the surgery. He would come home at eight. He
would have supper and check his children's homework. At nine
o'clock he would go to bed.

This happened every day of the year, excluding Sundays. On
Sundays he would go to mass, buy the pastries and listen to the
football on the radio.

Sometimes, when he had a doubt about an essay or a translation
from Latin, little Enrico would go out of the flat, with his exercise
book in his hand, and walk down to his father's surgery.

To reach it he had to thread his way along the corridor full of
crying babies, strollers and mothers. He hated all those little brats
because his father considered them his own children. He had often
heard him say, "It's as if he was my own son."

And Enrico couldn't make out whether his father treated him like
those children or treated those children like him.

When Enrico was thirteen Davide Brolli started taking him along
on his night calls. He would get him out of bed at any hour of the
night and drive him in a blue Giulietta across the dark countryside
searching for a farmhouse where there was a child with a temperature. Enrico would lie in the back, wrapped up in a blanket, and
sleep.

When they arrived, his father would get out with his black bag
and he would stay in the car. If they finished after five o'clock they
would stop at the baker's and have a hot croissant, straight out of
the oven.

They would sit, as night melted into day, on a wooden bench
just by the door of the bakery. Inside there were lots of men covered in flour who transported huge trays of bread and cakes.

"What's it like?" his father would ask.

"Delicious."

"They make really special ones here." And he would stroke his
head.

Even today Enrico Brolli still wondered why his father had taken
him with him at night. For years he had wanted to ask him, but
had never had the courage. And now that he felt ready to ask him
his father wasn't there any more.

Perhaps for the croissants. His other children didn't like them.

His father had died nearly ten years ago. His intestine had been
devoured by cancer. During his last days of life he could hardly
speak any more and was doped up on morphine. With a pen he
kept writing prescriptions on the sheet. Prescriptions of medicines
for flu, scarlet fever and diarrhea.

Two days before he died, in a fleeting moment of lucidity, the
pediatrician had looked at his son, squeezed his wrist tightly and
whispered: "God comes down hardest on those who are weakest.
You're a doctor and you need to know this. It's important, Enrico.
Evil is attracted by the poorest and the weakest. When God strikes,
he strikes the weakest."

Enrico Brolli glanced at the boy standing by his father, shook his
head and went out of the room.

Beppe Trecca, sitting at the living room table with a thermometer
under his arm, took a sip of Vicks MediNite, which didn't remove
the taste of the melon vodka. He gave a disgusted grimace and
frowned at his Nokia cell, which lay in front of him. On the display was a little envelope and beside it the word: IDA.

Can I read it?

He had promised the Eternal Father that he wouldn't speak to
her or see her, so, theoretically, if he read a text message he wouldn't
be breaking his vow. It was better not to do it, though. He must
accept that Ida Lo Vino was a thing of the past, forget her and clear
her out of his system.