As God Commands (5 page)

"Yeah, like last time, when you made pasta with a sauce of clams
and sand."

"There's nothing wrong with a bit of sand in clams."

Cristiano, as usual, fell into a reverie as he looked at him.

He thought that if his father had been born in America he would
definitely have been an actor. Not a pansy actor like the guy who played James Bond. No, a hard man like Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson.
Someone who went to Vietnam.

He had the face of a tough guy.

Cristiano liked the shape of his skull and his ears, which were
small and round, not like his own. The square jaw and the little
black dots of his beard, the small nose, the cold stare of his eyes and
the little creases that appeared around them when he laughed.

And he liked the fact that he was not too tall, but well proportioned, like a boxer. With a lot of bulging muscles. And he liked
the barbed-wire tattoo around his biceps. He wasn't so keen on his
beer-belly and that lion's head on his shoulder which looked more
like a monkey. But even the Celtic cross on his right pectoral wasn't
bad.

Why can't I be like him?

They didn't even look like father and son, except for the color
of their eyes.

"Hey! Are you listening to me?"

Cristiano looked at his watch. It was very late. The first bus had
already passed. "Look, I've got to go!"

"Okay, but first you've got to give a kiss to the only man you've
ever loved."

Cristiano laughed and shook his head. "No! You're disgusting,
you stink to high heaven."

"Look who's talking! The last time you took a shower you were
in primary school." Rino shoved the cigarette into an empty beer
can, grinning. "Come over here at once and kiss your God. Remember
that without me you wouldn't have existed, and if I hadn't been
around your mother would have had an abortion, so kiss this Latin
male."

Cristiano puffed out his cheeks, muttered "Jesus Christ" and
brushed his father's rough cheek with his lips. He was about to
move away when Rino grabbed him by the wrist, used his free hand
to wipe his cheek and gave a grimace of disgust. "Ugh! My son's a
faggot!"

"Fuck off!" Cristiano started laughing and hitting him with his
backpack.

"Ooh yes ... Again ... Again ... I like it..." Rino sighed idiotically.

"You bastard..." And the blows rained down on his shaven pate.

Rino rubbed the back of his head and then suddenly turned
menacing: "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Not on the
head! You idiot! You hurt me! You know I've got a headache!"

Cristiano was taken aback, and stammered, "I'm sorry ...I didn't
mean to..."

With a sudden movement Rino grabbed the gun from the bedside table, yanked Cristiano towards him, bringing him crashing
down on the bed, and put the barrel to his forehead.

"Fooled you again! Always keep your guard up. You'd be dead
by now," he whispered in his ear conspiratorially.

Cristiano tried to get up, but his father held him down with his
arm. "Let me go! Let me go! You asshole..." he protested.

"Only if you give me a kiss," said Rino, proffering his cheek.

Reluctantly Cristiano kissed him again, and Rino yelled out in
disgust: "It's true! My son is a faggot!" and he started tickling him.

Cristiano giggled and tried to break free, gasping: "Please ...
Please ... Please ... Stop it..."

At last he managed to escape. He retreated from the bed, tucking
his T-shirt into his pants, and picked up his backpack. As he went
downstairs Rino shouted after him: "Hey, that was a good job you
did last night."

Forty-five-year-old Danilo Aprea was sitting at a table in the Bar
Boomerang finishing his third grappa of the morning.

He too was tall, but unlike Quattro Formaggi he was large and
had a stomach as swollen as that of a drowned cow. Not that he
was exactly fat; his muscles were firm and his skin as white as
marble. Every part of him was square: his fingers, his ankles, his
feet, his neck. He had a cubic skull, a wall-like forehead and two
deep-set hazel eyes on either side of a broad nose. A thin strip of
beard framed his perfectly shaven cheeks. He wore gold-rimmed
Ray-Ban glasses and his crew-cut hair was dyed mahogany red.

He too, like Quattro Formaggi, had a winter outfit, but unlike
his friend's, his was always immaculately washed and ironed. A checkered flannel shirt. A hunter's waistcoat with lots of pockets.
Jeans with a pleated front. Sneakers. And, attached to his belt, a
pouch for a Swiss Army knife and his cell phone.

He economized on everything else, but not on his appearance.
He had his beard trimmed and his hair dyed once a fortnight by
the barber.

He was waiting for Quattro Formaggi, who, just for a change,
was late. Not that Danilo was particularly bothered. In the bar it
was nice and warm and he was in a strategic position. The table,
by the front window, overlooked the street. Danilo held the Gazzetta
dello Sport up in front of him and now and then took a glance
outside.

Directly opposite was the Credito Italiano dell'Agricoltura. He
saw people going in and out through the metal detectors and the
private guard outside the entrance talking into his cell phone.

That guard really pissed him off. With his bullet-proof jacket, his
emblazoned beret, his gleaming pistol, his sunglasses, his square jaw
and his chewing gum, who the fuck did he think he was? Tom
Cruise?

But the thing that really interested Danilo Aprea was not the
guard, but what was behind him: the ATM.

That was his objective. It was the most frequently used cashpoint
in the village, as this bank had more customers than any other in
Varrano, so it must be crammed with money.

There were two CCTV cameras positioned above the machine.
One to the right and one to the left, so as to cover the whole surrounding area. And no doubt they were connected to a set of videorecorders inside the bank. But that wasn't a problem.

In actual fact, there wasn't the slightest need for Danilo to sit
there watching the movement in front of the bank. He had already
worked out the plan down to the smallest detail. But watching that
cash machine made him feel better.

The plan for the raid on the Credito dell'Agricoltura had been
hatched six months before.

Danilo had been at the barber's, and leafing through the crime
pages of the newspaper, he had read that in a village near Cagliari
a gang of crooks driving a four-by-four had smashed through the
wall of a bank and carried off its cash machine.

While his hair was being dyed the story kept buzzing around in
his head; this could be the turning point in his life.

The plan was quite simple.

"Simplicity is the basis of every well-done thing," his father used
to tell him.

And it was easy to put into practice. The night in Varrano was
so quiet that if you acted fast, who would see you? And who would
ever suspect that such a respectable citizen as Danilo Aprea could
have robbed a bank?

With the loot he would make Teresa's dream come true. The dream
of opening a lingerie boutique. Danilo was sure that if he gave her
a shop his wife would come back to him, and then he would find
the strength to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and dry out.

After Cristiano's departure Rino Zena had gone back to sleep, and
when he had woken up again the whistling in his ears, as if by
magic, had vanished, along with the band of pain around his head.
It had been replaced by a ravenous hunger.

He lay in bed and imagined a dish of chargrilled sausages accompanied by plenty of bread.

His cock was hard and his balls were as full as hard-boiled eggs.

How long is it since I last had a fuck?

It had been at least two weeks. But when he had a headache,
screwing was the last thing on his mind.

This evening I'll go out on the town, he said to himself, struggling to get up from the mattress and going into the bathroom naked,
with his pecker sticking out in front of him like the bowsprit of a
schooner.

In the course of his life Rino had encountered difficulties of many
kinds, but these did not include finding a woman to fuck or someone
to pick a fight with.

And recently he had found a couple of bars where skinheads, punks,
and all the local freaks hung out. A bunch of rich kids who showed
off riding around on Harley-Davidsons worth thirty thousand euros. Rino despised them, but their womenfolk swarmed over him like flies
on shit.

All the girls followed the same career pattern: most started out
as shaven-headed anorexics who tattooed swastikas and Celtic crosses
on their asses and for a while played at being bad girls and slept
around. They would fuck up their brains with cut shit, then get sent
off to some American clinic to detox, have their tattoos lasered off,
marry a rich businessman and end up driving around in a Mercedes
wearing a miniskirt and a boucle jacket.

But Rino took advantage of the transitional phase and of their
undiscriminating desire for sex and intense experience. He would put
his mark on them, then kick them out next morning with their pussies
on fire and a few bruises. And most of the slags came back for more.

Stupid cows!

He plunged into the ice-cold shower, shaved his skull and then
put on a tiny vest, his pants and his boots.

He went down the stairs into the lounge, a room of about thirty
square feet. On one side of it was the front door, on the other side
a hall leading to the kitchen, a toilet and a broom cupboard.

The floor was covered with reddish linoleum which rode up
against the red brick and concrete walls. On one side of the room
was a table draped with a green-and-white checkered plastic tablecloth, and two benches. On the other the television area. Two blue
plastic crates with an old Saba color TV on top. To change channels without getting up the Zenas used a broomstick, ramming it
against the big channel buttons. Opposite the TV were a sofa bed
with a filthy cover and three white folding chairs with plastic threads.
There was also an orange-colored iron bench with a barbell loaded
with weights. Lastly, in one corner, next to a big box full of newspapers and a pile of firewood, there stood a cast-iron stove. A ventilator fan on a stick served in winter to spread the warmth of the
stove and in summer to stir the sultry air.

Danilo and Quattro Formaggi would soon be arriving.

I can do some work on my biceps, Rino said to himself. But he
abandoned the idea. His tummy was rumbling and his cock was
still erect.

He turned on the TV and started jerking off as he watched a
blonde bitch with a pendant as big as a turkey medallion around her neck helping a fat man prepare some fillets of wild mullet in a
sauce of raspberry, chestnut and sage.

With his pecker in his hand, Rino gave a gesture of disgust. That
shit they were cooking had made him lose his hard-on.

Danilo Aprea looked at the old Casio digital watch on his wrist.

A quarter past eight and there was still no sign of Quattro
Formaggi.

He took out the purse in which he kept his coins. He had
three euros and ... He brought the small coins closer to his eyes.
Twenty ... Forty cents.

Four years had passed since they had changed the currency and
he still found it confusing. What had been wrong with the lira?

He got up and ordered another grappa.

This'll be the last one, though ...

At that moment a mother entered the bar with a little girl bundled up in a white parka holding her hand.

"How old is she?" he restrained himself from asking the woman.

"Three," she would have answered. He was sure she was three,
or four at most.

Like...

(Stop it) Teresa's voice reproved him.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Teresa came around this afternoon?

Teresa Carucci, a woman as insipid as a bowl of celery soup
(as Rino had put it to him once) and whom Danilo had asked to
be his bride one evening in 1996, had left him four years ago to
set up home with a tire dealer who she had been working for as
a secretary.

Yet Teresa continued to see Danilo. Unknown to the tire dealer
she brought him trays of lasagna, spezzatino and rabbit cacciatore to put in the freezer. She would always arrive out of breath,
sweep the apartment and iron his shirts and he would start begging her to stay and give it another try. She would retort that it
was impossible to live with an alcoholic. And, in the early days, sometimes she had felt sorry for him, and had lifted up her skirt
and let him screw her.

Danilo watched the little girl happily eating a huge croissant. Her
mouth all smeared with powdered sugar.

He took the glass off the counter and went back to his table.

He knocked back the grappa. The alcohol warmed his esophagus and his head became lighter.

That's better. Much better.

Until five years before the most Danilo Aprea had been able to
drink was a finger of moscato. "Alcohol and I don't get on," he
would say to anyone who offered him a drink.

This remained the case until July 9th, 2001, when alcohol and
Danilo Aprea decided that the time had come to bury their differences and become friends.

Until July 9th, 2001 Danilo Aprea had been a different person
with a different life. He had worked as a night-watchman for a
freight firm, had had a wife whom he loved and Laura, a threeyear-old daughter.

On July 9th, 2001 Laura Aprea had choked to death, with the
cap from a bottle of shampoo stuck in her windpipe.

A year later Teresa had left him.

Cristiano arrived at the bus stop, but the bus had just gone. And
with it his chances of making the first lesson.

If only he had been a year older... If he'd had a motorbike he
could have got to school in ten minutes. And he would have had
the fun of riding across the fields and rough tracks. As soon as he
finished school next year he was going to get a job-he should be
able to earn enough to buy one in six months.