The Crossroads (32 page)

Now it was hard, very hard, to accept not being able to spend the rest of the night together, not seeing the dawn light as they lay in each other's arms.

In thirty-five years of life he had never known sexual intercourse be so intense and …

Mystical? Yes, mystical
.

He smiled happily.

“
Beppe … Beppe … Oh my God, I'm going to come
…
I'm coming! I'm coming!
” he had heard her moan just before the camper was seized by the tempest like the house in
The Wizard of
Oz
.

‘You put on a great show,' he congratulated himself.

And that embrace in the midst of the fury of the elements had sealed a union that would not end like that, with a simple fuck. Before they had parted Ida had hugged him tightly and had started crying and then said to him: ‘Beppe, do you really want me?'

‘Yes, I really do.'

‘Even with the children?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Then let's go through with it. Let's talk to Mario and tell him everything.'

For the first time in his life Beppe Trecca had not hesitated. ‘All right. I'll speak to him.'

His mobile phone started ringing.

Ida
.

He replied immediately.

‘Beppe, darling, this is where I turn off. You sleep for both of us – I won't be able to. I'll be thinking about you all the time till I see you again. I can still feel you inside me.'

The social worker gulped. ‘And I won't be happy till I can kiss your lips again.'

‘Can I call you tomorrow?'

‘Of course.'

‘I love you.'

‘Not as much as I love you.'

As Ida's car winked its indicator and turned off onto the sliproad for Varrano, Beppe Trecca declaimed in a melodramatic tone: ‘Mario, there's something I've got to tell you. I've fallen in love with your wife. She loves me too. I know … It's hard, but these things can always happen in life. I'm terribly sorry. But the force of love is greater than anything else. Two soulmates have found each other, so please set us free.'

Pleased with his little speech, he pressed the CD button and started singing along with Bryan Ferry: ‘More than this …'

He could just imagine him, that bastard Tekken, cackling away with his friends. Cristiano Zena couldn't see what was so funny.

From tomorrow I'm going to have to watch my step
. He curled up on the sofa and grasped his big toes with one hand.
Tekken will
be out for revenge
.

A clap of thunder exploded directly overhead and, with a strange stereo effect, he heard it croak through the earpiece of the telephone.

Cristiano opened his mouth and clamped his hand over it to stop himself screaming with fear.

He's here! He's near here! He called to find out if I was alone
.

He dropped the phone and rushed over to check the door. He gave the key several turns in the lock and put on the safety chain.

The windows!

He lowered all the shutters, including those of the kitchen and
the bathroom, and went back to the telephone, groping his way along in total darkness.

He picked up the receiver from where it lay on the cushions of the sofa. The line was still open. ‘Tekken, you bastard … I know you're here … I'm not an idiot. You'd better keep away from the house …'

Will he have seen that the van's not here?

‘… if you don't want me to wake my father. Do you hear, you bastard?' He closed his eyes and listened again. For a while he could only hear his own suppressed breathing, but then he thought he could hear something else. He pressed the receiver to his ear and held his breath.

What is it?

The wind, something rustling and rain on leaves, the sound rain makes when it falls on a tree …

He's just outside here
.

The saliva had gone from his mouth. His guts had contracted like a dry floorcloth.

But there was something else. Something barely audible. Heavy breathing. Someone with asthma. Someone who was hurt. Someone who was …

…
wanking
.

Cristiano grimaced and shouted angrily: ‘Who the hell are you? Some kind of maniac? Answer me, you bastard! You bastard!'

“
I'm shitting myself with fear
,” he would have liked to add.

Why don't you just hang up? Go on! Pull out the plug from the
wall. Check that the door's locked and go back to bed
.

Then the voice of a dead man calling his name.

‘Cri … stia … no …' said the ants.

Rino Zena's tongue was a solid, black mass of swarming insects. And his lips, and also his teeth, his jaw and his palate, were covered with ants advancing in orderly fashion, moving like members of a vast ballet troupe, dying to enable him to speak to his son.

‘Papa?' yelled Cristiano Zena, and as he shouted he understood that the ram raid on the cash machine had gone wrong and he imagined his father riddled with bullets and dripping with blood, pursued by police cars, and at the roadside murmuring his name into his mobile phone. ‘Papa …' but he couldn't go on. Someone must have sucked all the air out of the room and he was suffocating. With what little breath was left in his lungs he sighed: ‘Papa? Papa, what's happened? Are you hurt? Papa! Papa?'

The television suddenly came back on at full blast. On the screen there appeared the man with the fringe and the big bushy moustache, drawing a curve and yelling obsessively: ‘The variables x, y, z …'

Why couldn't he hear anything any more?

Rino Zena wasn't sure the ants had managed to pronounce Cristiano's name, or even that they had managed to phone him.

There were few of them left alive now.

He wondered if they could still do it.

Cristiano Zena pleaded into the microphone, while the storm wrapped itself around the house as if it was trying to suffocate it: ‘Papa! Papa! Answer me, please, please! Where are you?'

He waited, but he got no reply.

He felt like shouting, like smashing everything to pieces.

Calm. Keep calm
. He bent his head back and breathed in, and then said: ‘Papa, listen to me, please. Tell me where you are. Just tell me where you are and I'll come.'

Nothing.

His father didn't reply and Cristiano felt the rock that was obstructing his throat melt and flow down into his chest like hot lava and …

You're not going to start crying!

… he put his hand over his mouth and held back the tears.

Why don't you answer me, you bastard?

He waited for a long time, for hours it seemed, but every now and again he couldn't help repeating: ‘Papa, papa …?'

(You know why he doesn't answer you.)

No, I don't
.

(Yes you do …)

I don't! Fuck off
.

(It's true.)

No! No!

(He's …)

HE'S DEAD. ALL RIGHT. HE'S DEAD
.

That was why he wasn't answering any more.

He had gone. Gone away. For ever.

It was what he had always known would happen, because God is an arsehole and sooner or later takes everything away from you.

What if this is hell?

Rino Zena was among the ants inside the huge cavern that was his mouth.

He takes everything away from you. Everything
… sighed Cristiano Zena, and his legs would no longer support him and he slumped down onto the floor and there in front of the television screen he opened his mouth and let out a mute scream and he repeated to himself that this was a very important moment, a
moment he would remember for the rest of his life, the exact, precise moment when his father had died, and he had heard him die over the telephone, so he must print it all on his memory, every thing, every detail, nothing must escape him of that moment, the most terrible moment in his life: the rain, the thunder and lightning, the pizza al prosciutto under his foot, the mustachioed guy on TV and that house which he would leave. And the darkness. He would certainly remember that darkness which surrounded him on every side.

Sniffing, he said, almost in a whisper: ‘Please papa! Answer me! Answer me … Where are you? You can't do this to me … It's not fair.' He sat down on the sofa, put his elbows on his knees, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and started squeezing his head and sobbing: ‘If you don't tell me where you are … what can I do … what can I do … there's nothing I can do … Please, God … Please … Help me. Please God, help me. I've never asked you for anything … Anything.'

‘San Rocco … Agip … p …'

Cristiano jumped to his feet and shouted: ‘I'm coming, papa! I'm coming! I'll come straight away! Don't worry. I'll be there in a minute! Leave it to me.' To make quite sure, he waited a little longer, then he put down the receiver and started pacing backwards and forwards in the sitting room, unable to decide what to do.

Right … Right … Think, Cristiano. Think
. He held his head between his hands.
Right … The Agip service station. Where the
hell is the Agip service station at San Rocco? But which service station?
The one on the sliproad? Or the one just before San Rocco?
Isn't that Esso? Yes, it's Esso
.

He stopped and started slapping himself on the cheek.
Remember.
Remember. Remember. Come on. Come on. Come on
.

No, he just couldn't remember, but it didn't matter, he would find it somehow.

He bounded upstairs, three steps at a time. He dashed into his room and started getting dressed and talking out loud: ‘Wait a minute … Wait a minute … There's no Agip petrol station at San Rocco … The only one is the one after the bypass. Near the woods. The one with the carwash. Perfect! I've got it!' He put on his trousers. ‘Quick! Quick! Quick! I'm coming, papa! But where are my shoes?'

He ransacked the room. He lifted up the bed and he saw them. As he sat on the floor putting them on, he stopped and began shaking his head.

But how the hell am I going to get there?

It was an incredibly long way.

He remembered that while he was going to bed his father had told him he was waiting for Danilo and Quattro Formaggi.

How did they get here, then?

On the Boxer
.

Perfect!

He rushed downstairs, tripped over his shoelaces and flew down the second flight. He got up off the floor and …

I'm not hurt, I'm not hurt
.

… put on his windcheater and limped out of the house.

Where was the Boxer?

Cristiano had searched all over the yard and had even gone down to the lamppost at the side of the highway where Quattro Formaggi usually left it, but the fucking scooter wasn't there.

So Quattro Formaggi didn't come. Maybe Papa went to pick them
up. I don't understand
.

How could he get to San Rocco now?

Two minutes out in that deluge had been enough to drench him from head to foot. The water was coming from the sky in buckets, and when a flash of forked lightning fell Cristiano saw the clouds catch fire overhead.

He went out onto the highway, having made up his mind to go on foot, but after twenty metres he stopped and came back again.

Where am I going? It's too far
.

He had no idea how many kilometres it was to the Agip petrol station.

What about hitch-hiking?

(Forget it. There's not a single car on the roads.)

The bus?

(No buses after eleven o'clock.)

He slapped himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand.

He must call Quattro Formaggi or Danilo.
Of course!
Why hadn't he thought of it before?

He ran to the front door, gripped the handle and turned, but nothing happened. With a sinking feeling, he searched in his pockets for the keys.

They weren't there.

He had left them indoors.

And I closed the shutters too
.

He picked up a flowerpot and hurled it at the door and then, for good measure, kicked the steps and started jumping up and down in the rain, howling and cursing the fact that he wasn't yet fourteen and didn't have a scooter of his own.

If I had a scooter, I'd already be
…

(Stop it! Think!)

He wanted to, but he couldn't. As soon as one thought appeared in his mind it was erased by another.

If only he'd repaired the Renault … I could have driven it
.

(Yes, but he didn't. So …)

His head was whirling. He could only imagine himself on a scooter speeding towards his father.