In a Heartbeat (20 page)

‘Yeah, thanks. What’s the trapdoor for?’

‘Wasn’t this your aunt’s place?’

‘I came here when I was little.’

‘It’s the cellar. Don’t go in, there’s no light.’

‘OK.’

I waited for him to leave, and then I kneeled for a closer look. The trapdoor was closed with a rusty latch and opened turning on a hinge bolted to the floor. I opened it, letting loose a million disgusting insects that crawled and hopped away. I lit up the hole with my lighter. A narrow wooden ladder nailed to the edge of the entrance led down a couple of metres to the cellar floor.

A blast of damp and rotting stench came through my nostrils and twisted my insides. I felt weird. It was as if there was something down there, and it scared me. I checked to see if the guy was looking. I grabbed the ladder and went down. As soon as my eyes got used to the weak light I saw that the cellar ran under the whole length of the farmhouse, with brick columns that held its ceiling up. A damp wooden shelf with bottle stains on it lined one wall. The other shelves were empty and covered with cobwebs and mould. As I looked for I still wasn’t sure what, I heard a thump, and the cellar went dark.

The trapdoor!

I had leaned it against the wall, and for some reason it shut. Maybe the builder hadn’t realised I was down here. I found the ladder by touch and went up until I hit my head against the trapdoor. I pushed. Nothing. It was either stuck, or the worker had locked it. I beat my fist against the door.

‘Hey, I’m still down here!’ I yelled. ‘Hey, dickhead, c’mon, open up!’

I kept beating and yelling, but no one came. The trapdoor didn’t move a millimetre. I stopped to catch my breath, and I heard a muffled sound. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I had that bad feeling again. This time it was so bad that my head began to spin.

‘Who’s there?’

The sound stopped, then began again, but louder. I searched frantically for the lighter in my pocket, but my hands were shaking so much that I dropped it. I heard it bounce through the darkness. I went back down the stairs, feeling around the floor. The sound had turned into weeping and between the sobs I heard a single elongated syllable:
Maaaaaaas, Maaaaaas.

My fingers found something hard. It was the lighter, and it lit on the tenth try. Something moved against the furthest wall. It was a shape stretched out on the floor, and it crawled in my direction.

I couldn’t move. My body felt heavy and it was hard to breathe. I stood there with one hand on the ladder and the other holding the hot lighter.

‘Maaaaaaaaaas,’ whispered the dark shadow crawling towards me. ‘Maaaaaasssss.’ It was a horrible sound, the moaning of a dying man.

‘Who are you?’ My throat had constricted. ‘Who are you? What happened to you?’

‘MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSS’

The shadow kept crawling until a hand came into the light. It was covered with a dark substance that had glued the fingers together. Its nails were broken and its fingertips were bleeding. The hand clawed the ground and the body dragged itself closer to me until I could see its face. It was covered in blood and contorted in pain but I recognised it.

It was me.

5

‘How’s it going down there?’

The world was suddenly light again. I blinked; the cellar was empty.

Maaaaaassssss.

I looked up. The builder was looking down at me from the trapdoor. It had never closed; I could see that now. Everything had happened inside of my head. A nightmare, a hallucination. I realised that I still had the lighter in my hand and that I had burned my fingers. I dropped it.

Maaaaaassssssssssss
.

‘C’mon man, get out of there. I told you not to go down.’

I struggled getting up, but the air made me feel a bit better.

‘Did you find anything?’ he asked. ‘Hidden treasure?’

I shrugged.

‘Your ten minutes were up a long time ago. It’s quitting time for me.’

I nodded and dragged myself to the car. Lighting a cigarette with the car lighter, I sat trembling in the cold for a few minutes, unable to move. I had imagined everything. No, I had
re-lived
everything. I was trapped in the cellar like a rat. What the hell was I doing there? What had happened?

Maaaaaaaassssssss.

Suddenly, I got it. The sound that I had heard wasn’t an inarticulate moan; it was a name that I didn’t understand because it was being pronounced with a busted lip and a swollen tongue. It was calling the name of the man that had put me there. My partner who had taken everything …

Max.

Max.

Max.

It was him. Ines didn’t tell me where he was, but I’d found him anyway, on the farm where he was holed up. He never gave me my money back, oh, no. He’d shot me instead. One time he had taken me out shooting. He had a gun that looked like it came from the Revolution, so small that you could easily fit it in your pocket. He shot at bottles and hit two out of three. He still had that gun and he’d used it against me before shoving me into that hole. I’d waited in the dark, hoping he’d change his mind and come back and save me. Hungry and thirsty, I was getting weaker and weaker – and crazier and crazier, of course. I was lucky to be alive.

Max!

Damn, how I hated that guy at that moment. That piece of shit. There weren’t words to describe him. If I had a chance to blow up the world I would have done it, just for the satisfaction of knowing that I would have taken him with me. He had buried me and was going to blow the cash that he had taken from me. Arsehole.

I tried to rip the steering wheel off until my arms hurt. I took me ten minutes to calm down and I was knackered afterwards. I felt as if I’d run a marathon. I lit another cigarette while the builder rode by on a beat-up scooter, honking as he passed. Max wouldn’t get away with this. As soon as I got out of the trouble that I was in, I’d scour to the ends of the earth to find him. It was better for him if I got life for Roveda’s murder.

The clock on the dashboard read six-thirty. Monica didn’t say a word when she saw me. I was wide-eyed and disgustingly dirty. She was getting used to the idea that her fiancé wasn’t quite like the one before.

‘I have one of your suits that would be perfect for this evening. And underwear.’

‘Fine.’

Monica’s apartment was a bit smaller than mine but I don’t think it was worth any less. Besides it was hers, she said, a gift from her dad. It was a penthouse in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio, where only princes and oil tycoons lived. I had to smoke on the terrace on top of the penthouse because she couldn’t stand the smell. She threw parties there when the weather was nice, she said. I imagined the happy company of B&M dancing the night away while Bianchi gave a speech to the piazza below. I brushed away the cobwebs and shaved with the pink razor that Monica used for her legs. The pinstriped suit was Dolce & Gabbana. With the black tie, I looked like a gangster, perfectly in sync with my mood. My overcoat couldn’t be saved despite every effort. We decided that I’d keep it folded on my arm as soon as I got out of the car.

‘Check your coat in when you get in.’

‘I didn’t know that there was a cloakroom in church.’

‘What church?’

*

It wasn’t in a church or even in Milan. The Flock gathering was taking place in a villa outside Verona. The place was immense. The façade was decorated with a double row of columns. There was also a park of evergreens perfectly manicured for the occasion with rectangular gardens and a labyrinth that seemed to be out of
The Shining
, stretching as far as the eye could see. My rented car looked pitiful compared to the other cars parked on the gravel near the entrance. It was the only one less than five metres long and the only red one.

The villa, Monica had explained during the trip, was from the 1600s. For centuries it had belonged to a noble family. In the seventies it had been bought by an American woman who was surrounded by endless gossip. She was the lover of the Shah of Iran, as well as both Laurel and Hardy. They said that she was also the first woman to skydive in a bikini and that she would drive her Rolls-Royces until they ran out of petrol and then throw them away. Talula, that was her name. She was supposed to have received a phone call from God himself. She had immediately converted, becoming one of Zurloni’s avid supporters and a founder of The Flock.

The other thing that I had found out about her when she came to greet us at the door, me with my coat on my arm and Monica in a black evening dress, was that Talula wasn’t old at all, she was ancient. She was preceded by a maid who looked as though she’d come from Paris in the thirties, with a white cap and a nice pair of legs (I had always had a thing for maids’ uniforms.) Talula was in an electric mobility scooter. She must have been a beautiful woman when she was young eons ago. She still had perfect features and eyes like Bette Davis’. Her body was like a coat hanger and her clothes dangled from it, making her look like a ghost.

Talula moved over to Monica and hugged her, kissing her on each cheek. Then she gave me her hand, her fingers long and almost transparent. Maybe I was supposed to kiss it but I shook it gently, afraid of breaking it.

‘Monica darling, welcome,’ she whispered. ‘And you, Santo, what happened to your face?’

‘He fell off of his bicycle,
Talula
,’ she said, stressing her name so that I’d remember it, just in case.

‘Oh, poor thing! The same thing happened to me but I was on horseback. It was an ugly black beast with eyes like the devil himself; he almost trampled me to death.’ Her American accent didn’t roll the ‘r.’ ‘Naturally, I had it put down. Please do come in. You’re the last to arrive.’

I gave my rags to the maid and we followed them through a dimly lit corridor lined with paintings. It looked like a museum, but I had no time to browse, not that I’d know what I was looking at, anyway. Talula and her wheels sped along, and we had to run to keep up with her.

While we were in the car Monica had given me a crash course on The Flock. They had more than ten thousand members all over Europe, many of them young and wanting to get a little
closer to the Almighty
. This meeting was of the Founding Committee, about fifty people who were responsible for the operation and the activities of The Flock, plus spouses and relatives.

The mood was formal, extremely formal. We weren’t allowed to laugh out loud or belch, and you certainly couldn’t eat with your hands. Monica’s father was going to be there. I could call her father by his first names, Pierluigi Maria, but I didn’t have to use the whole name.

The beginning of the evening, as it was explained to me, was to take place in the villa’s chapel. We got there after ten o’clock, walking out from the main ballroom. There were frescoes everywhere and silver candelabras that burned hundreds of candles, as well as long tables with elaborately decorated legs covered with linen tablecloths. We then went into a smaller hallway covered with votive offerings, carvings, etchings and paintings of saints. Christ and the Virgin Mary were depicted either splitting the clouds or riding sunbeams.

I had expected a chapel as majestic as the rest of the villa, but it was only a circular room with exposed brick and a small plain wooden altar in the middle. It looked more recent than the rest of the villa; Monica confirmed this soon afterwards. Talula had had it built at the start of her conversion. You could fit in twice as many people as were already sitting in the pews. I guessed that there were around a hundred worshippers.

The Flock was distinguished and elegant, men in suits and women with the occasional piece of jewellery that had not come from pawnshops. Even Monica wore diamond pendants; with my keen eye for value, I guessed that they were antique and extremely expensive. There were old members, a few as old as the hostess of the evening, and there was also a couple in their twenties. In one of the centre aisles I recognised Monica’s father, who was bigger and more youthful than I had imagined. The blue wool suit he wore brought out his tan. He gave a slight wave, and we waved back before entering an empty pew.

Talula got into one of the first pews on the left. It was custom-made; the space behind was empty, to accommodate her scooter.

Father Zurloni, wearing his vestment for Mass, genuflected before the altar and then turned toward us. He wore dark sunglasses just like the ones from the photo on the internet. It looked strange, and when he moved I saw that he had his reasons. The priest reached and touched everything, judging the distance before he walked, even if he knew the place and everything in it by heart.

A psychiatrist as well as blind, Zurloni was full of surprises. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d broken into a tap dance. The Mass, apart from the location, was just like any other that I could remember from my childhood. That was before I realised that Sundays were better for running around killing lizards than going to church.

At the beginning it was hard for me to remember the words but I must have saved them in some part of my brain because they came back to me. Maybe the Ad Exec’s memories were coming back? The homily was less boring than the ones that had tortured me when I was young, thanks to the Father’s delivery. He had a deep voice and he was nothing like the priest from my old parish. He played to the congregation, interacting and telling a joke or two while inviting them to give money to the poor. He recited a passage and I followed the first lines before going back to thinking about my own problems.