As God Commands (8 page)

He would see her riding around the village with her friend. And
often he would end up following her. He was very good at spying
on her without being noticed. He would watch her and then he
would have dirty thoughts.

Why did his brain torment him like this?

He liked Liliana. The accounts clerk at Euroedil. She was a woman,
not a young girl. Alone, like him. And she was kind. She would smile
at him, ask him how he was doing. He only had to find the courage
to ask her out to dinner, and he could do that...

But a deep, hollow voice that lived inside him whispered that
Liliana wasn't like Ramona.

(Did you see her with that boy with the motorbike?)

It was evening. Quattro Formaggi had been in the public gardens and had just found a one-armed King Kong doll for his
nativity scene when he had seen the little blonde arrive with a boy
on a motorbike. Hiding behind a tree he had watched them making
out and then the boy had pulled it out and she had put her hand
around it.

Up and down. Up and down.

That scene had lodged in his brain like a piece of shrapnel. At
night he would wake up and see it. The little hand holding that stiff
thing. And Quattro Formaggi, lying on his bed, couldn't help closing
his eyes, pulling down his underpants and ...

(Up and down. Up and down. Up and down ... )

... he was Bob the lumberjack, and the little blonde and Ramona
were holding his cock.

The Mahatma Gandhi Junior High School stood on an artificial hill
about one hundred feet high which dominated the plain. It was a
box-like building with large windows, which on the rare sunny days
would fill with light. A trim lawn covered the slopes, and a narrow
road led up to a parking lot for the use of the disabled and the
teaching staff. Behind the school was a sports complex with an
Olympic-size swimming pool and a gym.

The school had been built on the outskirts of Murelle in the early
Eighties as a collection point for all the pupils from the dozens of
villages in the surrounding area. It had a population of seven hundred and fifty children divided into eight sections.

Cristiano Zena was sitting at the back of the class. From his desk
he stared out at the rain-lashed volleyball court, the lawn strewn
with rotting leaves and behind them, half-hidden in the mist, the
concrete bastions of the shopping mall "I Quattro Camini".

He had managed to get in halfway through the first lesson. The
first excuse that had come to his mind was that a frozen water pipe
had burst at home and that since his father had gone out to work
he'd had to wait for the plumber. The Italian teacher had pretended
to believe him.

Lately Cristiano had noticed that the teachers no longer bothered
him very much. And he knew the reason why.

A few months earlier all third-year students had had to complete
a questionnaire in which they were asked which high school or
other institution they were going to attend after the exam. Cristiano had put a big cross against the option of not continuing his education. And on the three lines provided for an explanation he had
written:

Because I don't want to study any more there's no point
and I want to work with my father.

From that day on, as if by magic, he had suddenly become invisible,
like Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four. Now the bastards rarely tested
him in class and if he didn't go to school at all they didn't give a shit.
When he had put that cross on the form they had mentally put another
one on his forehead.

He spent the rest of the first lesson and the whole of the second
with his chin on his desk thinking about those two bitches Fabiana
Ponticelli and Esmeralda Guerra. He had fallen for it again. He
hated them.

He must do something to pay them back. Like going out with
Laura Re, a girl in 3D whom they loathed because she was even
more beautiful than they were.

"Hey, what about the essay? Aren't you going to do it?" A
whisper brought him back into class.

It was the boy who sat next to him. Colizzi. A pathetic little nerd
whom the math teacher had put with him because Cristiano used
to hang out with Minardi.

Colizzi looked like an old man. He even moved like one. He kept
his desk impeccably tidy. And he wrote with a fountain pen without
ever making a blot. The things he valued most in life were the cartridges of light turquoise ink that he used for his Mont Blanc. He
was such a weed that it wasn't even worth hitting him-as soon as
you touched him he would drop down on the ground and behave
like those cockroaches that pretend to be dead when you touch them.

"What the fuck do you want, Colizzi?"

The rest of the class were bent over their sheets of paper doing
the history essay. The teacher was sitting at her desk reading Gente.
You could have heard a pin drop.

"You'd better hurry up, there's only..." Colizzi looked at his
gigantic calculator watch "...one hour six minutes to go. You
haven't written a word."

"What the fuck do you care?"

Colizzi retreated along his seat, like a crab into a crevice in the
rocks. "Oh ... No ... I just..."

"Okay. Don't waste time. You'd better get writing, it's late. No,
wait, since you're a genius you've probably finished yours already:
if you write mine too I'll give you a videogame."

The crab's eyes showed a flicker of life and then Colizzi leaned
down flat over his desk and whispered, wrinkling up his nose: "You
haven't got any videogames."

"No, but I can go to the mall and steal one. Just tell me which
one you want."

Colizzi thought this over for a moment, nervously rubbing his
mouth with his hand. "But will you really give it to me? You won't
double-cross me like you usually do?"

Cristiano put his hand on his heart: "Trust me."

"All right. But you'll have to copy it out. Otherwise she'll catch on."

"Of course."

Colizzi started scribbling away. Cristiano looked for the first time
at the title written on the blackboard.

THE RISE OF NAZISM IN GERMANY IN THE THIRTIES.
EXPLAIN ITS CAUSES AND EFFECTS.

He smiled. "Forget it, Colizzi. I'll do it myself. Don't worry. I know
this one."

He was an expert on Nazism. His father talked to him about it
every day.

He picked up his pen, took a deep breath and began to write.

Rino Zena had begun working for Euroedil in Bogognano in the
mid-Eighties. On the death of Bocchiola the notary, Quattro Formaggi
had been taken on, and in 2002 Danilo Aprea had arrived, having
lost his job in the transport firm.

Euroedil was a construction business which had prospered during
the Nineties thanks to some large government contracts, but since
2003 it had been going steadily downhill and its workforce had
dwindled to a few employees. Only when he won bigger commissions did the owner call in Rino and his friends to do manual labor.
This happened two or three times a year. And it would only tide
them over for a few weeks.

For the rest of the time the three made do with whatever work
they could find. They did small transporting jobs. Emptied cellars and cesspits. Delivered plants for a nursery. Painted walls.
Mended roofs. That kind of thing, often arranged at the very last
moment.

They were perennially hard up and could barely make it through
to the end of the month. And while Danilo and Quattro Formaggi
only had themselves to think about, Rino had Cristiano to support
as well.

According to a recent survey, the area comprising Varrano and
the surrounding villages had one of the highest per capita incomes
in Italy. Thanks to a generation of small and medium-scale businessmen who had known how to exploit the region's resources and
human capital, unemployment was practically non-existent.

Our heroes were probably the only citizens of Varrano with an
income of less than six hundred euros a month.

But that morning Rino was pleased. At last a bit of well-paid
work was in prospect. Euroedil had won a big contract to build a
new BMW showroom and was looking for laborers.

The Ducato went through Euroedil's wide gateway and into
a large area of beaten earth, which that day was nothing but a
quagmire, surrounded by a high fence. On one side of the yard
stood the dumptrucks, the mechanical diggers and the bulldozers, on the other the workmen's and secretaries' cars and the
Porsche Cayenne of Max Marchetta, the owner's son, who during
the past year had taken over the running of the firm from his
father.

In the middle of the yard was a prefabricated building which contained the offices and a meeting room. Next to it, a corrugated iron
shed that served as a changing room for the workmen.

Rino parked next to a big yellow bulldozer and the three men
got out of the van. The rain had stopped, but there was a cold,
biting wind.

"We're going to have to get out with the bulldozer in a moment.
Can you move your van?" a black man in a hard hat said to Rino.

"Move it yourself!" Rino threw him the keys and the other man,
taken by surprise, dropped them and had to fish them out of the mud.

"Isn't it amazing. They're even giving the orders now." Rino
smirked at Danilo as he set off toward the offices. "I'm going to
see Marchetta. What about you two?"

Quattro Formaggi and Danilo stopped. "We'll wait for you here... "

Rino wiped his boots on the mat, opened the glass door of the
offices and entered a small square room. The floor was covered with
imitation parquet. A glass-fronted noticeboard hung on a wall next
to a closed door. Two shabby armchairs and a table littered with
building trade magazines stood in a corner. Opposite them was a
desk covered with an incredible number of little wooden Pinocchios.

Behind a computer screen sat Rita Pirro. The secretary had
always been there, at least in Rino's memories. In her youth she
hadn't been bad looking, but the years had robbed her of whatever beauty she'd had.

Her age was impossible to determine. She might have been fifty,
might have been sixty. Long years of sitting in that windowless little
room suffering the cold in winter and the heat in summer had shrivelled her up like a kippered herring. She was tall and thin, had a
thick layer of foundation cream on her face and wore a pair of redrimmed glasses with a string of pearls dangling down from them.
Behind her back, stuck to the wall, were some faded photographs
of three toddlers playing on a seashore thick with beach umbrellas.
Her children, probably all married by now.

According to Rino, Rita Pirro had once been old Angelo
Marchetta's mistress. "A blow job now and then. That kind of thing.
Short and sweet. In the office, during the lunch hour, so as not to
waste any time."

"Hello, Zena," said the woman, looking up from the screen and
scrutinizing him, before her fingers continued tapping on the keyboard.

For a moment Rino had an image of her giving a blow job to
that fat old letch Angelo Marchetta, and he smiled.

"Hello, beautiful. How are things?"

The secretary didn't even turn her head. "Can't complain."

What a strange woman. She had always treated him like dirt. As
if she was the Duchess of York and it was only by some quirk of
fate that she had ended up in that dump. Hadn't she ever looked
in the mirror? Hadn't she ever stopped to think that all she had to
live for was a collection of Pinocchios, some children who didn't
give a shit about her, a husband who had died in a factory accident
and that windowless little hole?

Rino approached her desk. "Is Marchetta in?"

"Do you have an appointment?" asked the secretary, her eyes still
on the screen.

"An appointment? Since when has anyone had to have an appointment to speak to Marchetta?"

"New orders." Rita Pirro made a movement with her head, indicating Marchetta's door. "I'll make you one if you like."

Rino placed his hands on the desk and said: "Is this the dentist's?
Will he clean my teeth for me as well?"

The secretary widened her mouth into a kind of smile. "Very
funny. Would next Friday suit you?"

Rino was astounded. "Friday? That's a week away."

"Exactly."

"They'll have organized the team for the BMW showroom by then."

"That's already closed."

"What do you mean, it's already closed? You only won the contract the day before yesterday."

At last she raised her eyes and stared at Rino. "Do you think we
mess around here? The team was formed that very same day. Work
begins on Monday."

"Why didn't you call me? You didn't call Danilo and Quattro
Formaggi either."

"You know I don't deal with those things."

"Where's the team list?"

The secretary went back to her typing. "Where it always is. On
the noticeboard."

Rino went over and scanned a sheet of paper with twenty names
on it. All Africans or East Europeans, with just a couple of Italian
master builders.

He rested one hand against the wall and closed his eyes. "Couldn't
you have called me? Told me? We've known each other for twenty
years..."

"What have you ever done for me?" And she rearranged some
of her Pinocchios.

He felt anger spreading throughout his body like a toxin.

Keep calm ...

Yes, he must keep calm. Cool-headed. Serene. But how do you
stay cool when, as regular as clockwork, people keep ramming a
cucumber up your ass?

To keep calm he was going to have to let out a bit of shit. He
needed to smash something. Set fire to that fucking hut. Take one
of those Pinocchio dolls and ...

Meanwhile the bluish veins on his forearms had swollen up under
his skin till they looked like macaroni and his calves had started
tingling as if he had nettle rash. He clenched his fists, digging his
nails into his palms, and breathed in and out to release a little anger.

But he knew that it wouldn't be enough.