As God Commands (6 page)

The next bus wasn't due for half an hour.

What do I do now? he asked himself, kicking at a little mound
of snow that was melting away on the pavement.

If he could find someone to give him a lift maybe he could slip
into class without being noticed.

But who's going to stop here?

Along that stretch of the highway everyone drove flat out.

He set off, with his woolly hat pulled down over his head, his
headphones in his ears and his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
The air was saturated with water; the drops were so small you could
hardly tell it was raining.

With Metallica shrieking in his eardrums he looked around and
lit a cigarette.

He wasn't really all that keen on smoking, though he enjoyed the
sensation when his head started spinning. But if his father caught
him with a cigarette in his mouth he'd kill him.

"One of us committing suicide by nicotine is quite enough," he
always said.

In front of him was a strip of asphalt that ran as straight as a
ruler and faded into a leaden haze. To the right lay the fields of
sodden earth, to the left the row of industrial buildings. When he
came to the Castardin furniture factory with its red banners proclaiming special discounts he stopped. The gate was closed and the
dog lay there on the ground, tangled up in his chain. Head framed
by a dark pool. Jaws open. Eyes rolled back. Gums flecked with
foam. Stiff as a piece of frozen cod. One paw sticking out, as straight
and stiff as a walking stick.

Cristiano inhaled a mouthful of smoke as he looked at the corpse.

He didn't feel sorry for him.

He had died like a fool. And for what? To defend some assholes
who kept him chained up day and night and beat him with sticks
to make him even more ferocious than he was by nature.

He threw the butt on the ground and walked on as cars and
trucks drove past him, churning up a spray of filthy water.

He remembered Peppina, a little mongrel with a long body and
legs as short as jam jars.

His mother had got her from the dogs" home in the days before
she left home. How often Cristiano had said to himself that a woman
could ditch her son and husband if she liked, but not her dog. You
had to be a real cow to do a thing like that.

Rino didn't want Peppina in the house because he said she was
a stupid little beast and if he was in a particularly bad mood he
would threaten to kill her. The real reason he didn't want her around, in Cristiano's opinion, was that she reminded him of mama,
but when it came to it he never gave her away.

Cristiano was different, he liked Peppina. She always made a fuss
of you, and if you picked her up she would nibble your earlobes.
She lived for tennis balls. She woke up thinking of them and went
to bed thinking of them.

You would throw a ball for her and she would keep going to
fetch it and when you got fed up she would sit down beside you
with the ball between her little paws and keep nudging at you with
her nose till you threw it for her again.

One day-it must have been in the summer because it was
very warm-Cristiano had arrived home from school, and the
school bus (which brought primary school children right to their
doors) had left him opposite the house, on the other side of the
highway.

He had a treat in store for Peppina: he had gone all the way to
the sports club and behind the fences of the tennis courts, in a
drainage ditch choked with weeds and nettles, he had collected a
lot of balls. He was on the point of crossing the road when Peppina
emerged from behind the house, running like crazy. She looked
funny when she ran, like a furry train. How on earth had she heard
him arrive? The wooden gate was usually closed, but that day it
had only been pushed to.

Cristiano realized that the silly little mutt intended to cross the
road to join him.

He looked right and left and saw a constant stream of trucks. In
a split second he realized that if he shouted to her to stay where she
was she would think he was urging her on and dash across the road.

He didn't know what to do. He wanted to cross the road and
stop her, but there was too much traffic.

Peppina had pushed her nose between the gate and the gatepost
and was trying to open it.

He had to stop her. But how?

Of course, he must throw her a ball. A long throw. Toward the
back of the house. But not too high, or she wouldn't see the ball
and it would all be in vain.

He took a tennis ball out of his pants pocket, held it up so that
she could see it, took aim and threw it, but even as it left his hand he realized he had misjudged it. For a moment he clutched at the
air as if trying to pull the ball back, but it flew straight and fast
and too low and hit the front of an approaching tractor trailer. The
yellow sphere shot up into the air and fell back into the middle of
the road, where it started bouncing wildly up and down. Peppina,
who had managed to wriggle her way out, saw the ball in front of
her and ran to get it. By some miracle she avoided the first truck,
but not the second; it ran over her, first with its front wheels, then
with those of the trailer.

It was all over in a few seconds and Peppina was nothing but a
heap of flesh and fur squashed on the asphalt.

Cristiano, rooted to the spot on the other side of the road, wanted
to do something, wanted to pick her up off the ground, but there
was a river of metal flowing in front of him.

For the rest of the day he stood at the window crying and
watching Peppina's corpse being turned into a little mat. He and
his father had to wait till evening, when the traffic had slowed
down, to remove her remains from the road. There was hardly
anything left of her-just a furry brown scarf, which his father
had chucked in the trash bin, telling Cristiano to stop blubbering,
because a dog that only lived for a ball didn't deserve to live.

So, Cristiano said to himself, Castardin's beast was the second
dog he had killed in his life.

After turning the key in each of the three locks that sealed the door
of his apartment, Quattro Formaggi went up the steps that led to
Corso Vittorio. It was cold, and his breath condensed in the air into
white vapor. A solid gray blanket of clouds covered the sky, and it
was drizzling.

Quattro Formaggi waved to Franco, a shop assistant in the
Mondadori Mediastore, which occupied all the upper floors of the
house.

The building stood in a central position, among the clothes shops
and shoe shops, close to Piazza Bologna and the church of San Biagio.

The previous owner, the old notary Bocchiola, had died leaving
the whole building to his children, except for an apartment in the
basement behind the elevators, which he had bequeathed to Corrado
Rumitz, aka Quattro Formaggi, his trusted caretaker and factotum
for over ten years.

His heirs, furious at his decision, had done everything they could
to get rid of the tramp, offering him money and alternative accommodation and mobilizing lawyers and psychiatrists, but to no avail.
Quattro Formaggi wouldn't budge.

In the end they had managed to sell the rest of the building at
a knock-down price to Mondadori, who had divided the three
floors into the holy trinity: music, books and videos. The owners
of the firm had, in their turn, made several attempts to buy the
basement, wanting to turn it into a storehouse. But they had no
luck either.

Quattro Formaggi put on his pea-green full-face crash helmet,
unlocked the chain that tied up his old green Boxer and with one
kick at the pedal, started it first time.

The engine fired and the exhaust pipe belched out a cloud of
white smoke, which snaked its way down the street and gathered
under the red-and-black-striped awning of the Cafe Rouge et Noir.

Mrs. Citran and Colonel Ettore Manzini, who were sitting at one
of its tables, started coughing, choked by the fetid smoke of the
three-per-cent mixture. The old lady spat out a piece of croissant
filled with white chocolate, which was instantly hoovered up by
Ottavio, the colonel's wire-haired dachshund.

"Don't breathe in, whatever you do, Giuliana, don't breathe in!
You've only just recovered from pneumonia!" said the colonel,
pressing his napkin over his mouth.

"Oh my goodness, it's all gone down my throat! Help!" croaked
Mrs. Citran, sticking out her tongue.

It took them a few minutes to recover their composure, and by
the time they had Quattro Formaggi had ridden off on his scooter,
despite the fact that the center of the village was strictly off limits,
day and night, to any form of transport equipped with wheels,
skates, air cushions or caterpillar tracks.

For a while the old lady and the colonel sat in silence, too indignant for words.

Finally, after taking a sip from her cappuccino, Mrs. Citran managed to say: "It's scandalous. Did you see what he did?"

The colonel shook his head. "Quite disgraceful, Giuliana. I've
heard the wretched man takes trash into his house."

"Really, Ettore, do you mind? I'm eating..."

Manzini sank his teeth into a doughnut and said: "I'm sorry, my
dear, but these things make my blood boil. So much for all the fine
talk about cleaning up the center of Varrano. People like that need
to be helped, locked away in some institution..."

Giuliana Citran wiped the crumbs away from her mouth and
asked: "So you know who he is, do you?"

The colonel nodded: "I most certainly do."

It was rumored in the village that Corrado Rumitz was Bocchiola's
illegitimate son-that the late lamented notary had dumped him in
an orphanage when he was a baby, but then, twenty years later, had
been overcome with remorse and had given him a job and left him
that apartment which was worth a fortune.

As Cristiano Zena walked along the highway, resigned to going on
foot, he heard the high-pitched drone of a scooter's exhaust pipe
growing louder and louder behind him.

Cristiano looked around and his heart missed a beat.

A beige Scarabeo 50 with a big yellow smiley face sticker on the
front was coming toward him.

It was Fabiana Ponticelli's scooter.

What am I going to do?

He looked around in a panic for some place to hide. But where?
There was no cover anywhere.

He hated the idea of Fabiana Ponticelli seeing him walking along
the side of the highway like a big loser, three miles away from school.

So, on an impulse, he turned away toward the fields, hoping he
wouldn't be recognized. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the
scooter flash past. On the back seat behind Fabiana Ponticelli was Esmeralda Guerra. Both in phosphorescent windproof jackets. One
pink, the other pistachio. Both in miniskirts. Both in black tights
with embroidered seams, and cowboy boots. Both wearing a helmet
with a fluffy tail hanging down behind.

They were the same age as Cristiano (well, actually Fabiana was
a year older-she'd been held back for failing her exams-which is
why she could ride a scooter). They all went to the same school,
but were in different sections. The girls in H, he in B.

Cristiano didn't know them well.

They didn't recognize me.

He was wrong. After travelling another fifty yards the scooter
slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.

Don't worry; they've probably stopped because one of their
phones was ringing.

The girls' long legs stuck out on each side of the scooter like the
black legs of a tarantula. The exhaust pipe belched out white smoke.

He walked on, ignoring them and holding his breath, but finally,
when he had almost passed them, he couldn't help turning to look
at them.

Fabiana raised the visor of her helmet. "Hey, you! Stop! Where
are you going in this rain?"

Cristiano struggled to find enough air in his lungs to give a reply.
"To school..."

On the rare occasions when he talked to the two of them, something happened which always left him unhappy and frustrated.

He would become so shy that he couldn't string two words
together, his body temperature would soar and his ears would
burn.

If only he had been a little less awkward perhaps he could have
made them laugh, become their friend, got them to like him. But
this was impossible because there was a problem.

They were too beautiful.

They paralyzed him. When he met those two his brain would
seize up. He would become a complete moron, only able to stutter,
nod and shake his head.

They had a way of behaving that made you feel like a worm.
They knew the whole school fancied them and they delighted in driving you crazy. They would start toying with you and then when
they tired of it-and they tired very quickly-you no longer existed
and weren't worth a gob of spit. And they were weird. They kept
to themselves. They touched each other. They kissed. The other
kids whispered that they were lesbians. It was as if they weren't
of this world and had only come down to it for a moment to make
you understand that you would never be able to have them.

The strategy that Cristiano Zena had adopted with the female
sex was to ignore them. To act tough, play the guy who minds his
own business, the mystery man. But he had the impression that his
method wasn't very effective.

"Have you missed the bus?" Fabiana asked him.

Cristiano lit a cigarette and nodded.

"Wow! You smoke!"

He shrugged.

"School will be over by the time you get there..." Fabiana eyed
him, then gave a little smile. "You don't give a shit, do you? You
don't give a shit about anything."

"Exactly."

"Do you want a lift?"

At this point Esmeralda, squirming as if she had nettle rash, lifted
her visor and snorted: "For Christ's sake, Fabiana! We'll get stopped
with three on the scooter. Forget about it. What do you care? We're
late."