The Crossroads (38 page)

He picked up the bible that he kept on his bedside table and quickly leafed through it. And he read, struggling to focus on the words:

It's identical!

But at what a cost!

I'll give up Ida
.

That was what he had said. So …

So I'll never see her again. I made a vow
.

His head fell back heavily and he seemed to be sucked back down into the black hole.

He had given away his heart in exchange for a life.

I'll give up the only beautiful thing in my life
…

With a grimace of terror on his face he clutched the sheet, as panic smashed into him like a wave hitting a sandcastle.

From the doorway of the waiting room a tall, thin doctor was looking at him.

Who does he remind me of
?

Cristiano Zena had to think for a few seconds, then it came to him. He was a dead ringer for Bernard, the vulture in
Popeye
.

After clearing his throat, the doctor spoke: ‘Are you Cristiano, the son of Rino Zena?'

He nodded.

The professor sat down, all bent over, on a plastic seat facing him.

His legs were even longer than Quattro Formaggi's, and Cristiano noticed that he was wearing odd socks. Both were blue, but one was smooth, the other ribbed.

He felt an instinctive surge of affection for this man, which he immediately repressed.

‘I'm Enrico Brolli, the surgeon who operated on your father, and …' He tailed off and started reading a folder which he held in his hand, scratching the back of his head.

Cristiano stood up. ‘He's dead. Why don't you tell me straight out?'

The doctor looked at him with his small head cocked on one side, as dogs sometimes do. ‘Who told you he's dead?'

‘I won't start crying. Just tell me, so I can go.'

Brolli jumped to his feet and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. ‘Come with me. Let's go and see him.'

Quattro Formaggi, under the shower, raised his arms, then lowered them again and looked at his hands.

Those hands had picked up a rock and smashed a girl's head in.

The boiling hot water of the shower turned to ice-cold rain and he felt on his fingertips the rough surface of the stone and the spongy texture of the moss and he felt again the vibration on contact with the forehead of that …

His head whirled, he fell against the tiles and let himself slip down them like a damp cloth.

Rino Zena was lying on a bed, with a turban of white gauze wrapped round his head. A lamp over the headboard formed a luminous oval and his serene face seemed to hover above the pillow like that of a ghost. The rest of his body was hidden under a light-green sheet. All around was an amphitheatre of monitors and electronic gadgets which emitted lights and beeps.

Cristiano Zena and Enrico Brolli were standing a couple of metres from the bed.

‘Is he asleep?'

The doctor shook his head: ‘No. He's in a coma.'

‘But he's snoring!'

Brolli couldn't help smiling. ‘Sometimes people in comas snore.'

‘He's in a coma?' Cristiano turned for a second to look at him, as if he hadn't understood.

‘Go closer, if you like.'

He saw him take two steps forward, hesitantly, as if the bed contained an anaesthetised lion, and then grasp the headboard. ‘When will he wake up?'

‘I don't know. But it usually takes a couple of weeks at least.'

They stood in silence.

It seemed as if the boy hadn't heard. He stood stiffly, clutching
the headboard as if he was afraid of falling. Brolli didn't know how to explain the situation to him. He moved closer to him. ‘Your father had an aneurysm. He'd probably had it since birth.'

‘What's an aneu …?' asked Cristiano without turning.

‘An aneurysm is a small swelling of the artery. A sort of little bag full of blood which isn't elastic like the other blood vessels, and in time it can burst. Your father's burst last night and the blood got into the sub … let's say it got in between the brain and the skull, and penetrated the brain itself.'

‘What happens then?'

‘The blood compresses the brain and creates a chemical imbalance …'

‘And what did you do to him?'

‘We removed the blood and closed the artery.'

‘And now?'

‘He's in a coma.'

‘In a coma …' Cristiano repeated.

Brolli was about to stretch out his hand and put it on his shoulder. But he checked himself. This boy didn't seem to want comfort. His eyes were dry and he was exhausted. ‘Your father can't wake up. He looks as if he's sleeping, but he's not. Fortunately he can breathe on his own and he doesn't need to be helped by a machine. That bottle hanging upside down,' he pointed to the drip by the bed, ‘serves to feed him; later we'll put a tube into him to take the food straight to his stomach. His brain has suffered very serious damage and now is devoting all its resources to repairing itself. All its other functions, such as eating, drinking and speaking, have been suspended. For the moment …'

‘But did the vein burst because he did something strange?' Cristiano's voice sounded shrill.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean, strange?'

‘I don't know …' The boy fell silent, but then added: ‘I found him like that …'

Brolli wondered whether the boy might have made his father angry that evening and now felt responsible. He tried to reassure him. ‘He might even have been asleep when the haemorrhage occurred. He had a pretty extensive aneurysm. Did he ever have check-ups? Has he ever had a CAT scan?'

The boy shook his head: ‘No. He hated doctors.'

Brolli raised the volume of his voice: ‘Don't talk in the past tense. He's not dead. He's alive. His heart is still beating, the blood is circulating in his veins.'

‘If I speak to him will he hear me?'

The doctor sighed. ‘I don't think so. Until he gives some sign of regaining consciousness such as opening his eyes … I don't honestly think so. But perhaps I'm wrong … It's a mystery to us too, you know. Anyway, if you want to speak to him you can.'

The boy shrugged. ‘I don't want to now.'

Brolli went over to the window. He saw his wife's car standing in the road. He knew why Cristiano didn't want to talk to his father. He felt abandoned.

Dr Davide Brolli, Enrico Brolli's father, had woken up at seven o'clock every day of his life. Exactly half an hour later he would have his coffee. At eight on the dot he would go out, walk down one flight of stairs and enter his surgery, where he would see patients till five to one. At one o'clock he was at home for the beginning of the television news. He ate on his own in front of the television. From one thirty to ten past two he would rest. At ten past two he would go back to the surgery. He would come home at eight. He would have supper and check his children's homework. At nine o'clock he would go to bed.

This happened every day of the year, excluding Sundays. On Sundays he would go to mass, buy the pastries and listen to the football on the radio.

Sometimes, when he had a doubt about an essay or a translation from Latin, little Enrico would go out of the flat, with his exercise book in his hand, and walk down to his father's surgery.

To reach it he had to thread his way along the corridor full of crying babies, prams and mothers. He hated all those little brats because his father considered them his own children. He had often heard him say, ‘It's as if he was my own son.'

And Enrico couldn't make out whether his father treated him like those children or treated those children like him.

When Enrico was thirteen Davide Brolli started taking him along on his night calls. He would get him out of bed at any hour of the night and drive him in a blue Giulietta across the dark countryside
searching for a farmhouse where there was a child with a temperature. Enrico would lie in the back, wrapped up in a blanket, and sleep.

When they arrived, his father would get out with his black bag and he would stay in the car. If they finished after five o'clock they would stop at the baker's and have a hot croissant, straight out of the oven.

They would sit, as night melted into day, on a wooden bench just by the door of the bakery. Inside there were lots of men covered in flour who transported huge trays of bread and cakes.

‘What's it like?' his father would ask.

‘Delicious.'

‘They make really special ones here.' And he would stroke his head.

Even today Enrico Brolli still wondered why his father had taken him with him at night. For years he had wanted to ask him, but had never had the courage. And now that he felt ready to ask him his father wasn't there any more.

Perhaps for the croissants. His other children didn't like them
.

His father had died nearly ten years ago. His intestine had been devoured by cancer. During his last days of life he could hardly speak any more and was doped up on morphine. With a pen he kept writing prescriptions on the sheet. Prescriptions of medicines for flu, scarlet fever and diarrhoea.

Two days before he died, in a fleeting moment of lucidity, the paediatrician had looked at his son, squeezed his wrist tightly and whispered: ‘God comes down hardest on those who are weakest. You're a doctor and you need to know this. It's important, Enrico. Evil is attracted by the poorest and the weakest. When God strikes, he strikes the weakest.'

Enrico Brolli glanced at the boy standing by his father, shook his head and went out of the room.

Beppe Trecca, sitting at the living room table with a thermometer under his arm, took a sip of Vicks MediNite, which didn't remove the taste of the melon vodka. He gave a disgusted grimace and frowned at his Nokia mobile, which lay in front of him. On the display was a little envelope and beside it the word: I
DA
.

Can I read it
?

He had promised the Eternal Father that he wouldn't speak to her or see her, so, theoretically, if he read a text message he wouldn't be breaking his vow. It was better not to do it, though. He must accept that Ida Lo Vino was a thing of the past, forget her and clear her out of his system.

Like a drug addict
.

Cold turkey. And perhaps it would pass.

He would suffer like hell. But that suffering was the coin with which he would repay his debt to the Lord.

And this suffering will make me a better man
.

He imagined himself as a kind of movie hero who committed a crime and who as a result of a vow to God became a man of peace, a superior being who devoted his life to the poor and the downtrodden.

There was a Robert De Niro film
…

He couldn't remember the title, but it was about a knight who killed an innocent man. Afterwards he repented, and as a penance he dragged his weapons and armour, on the end of a rope, through the forests of Brazil and up a high mountain, and then became a priest, helping the Amazonian Indians.

He must do the same.

He picked up his mobile, turned his head away, stretched out his arm as if they were going to amputate it and, clenching his teeth, deleted Ida Lo Vino from his life.

‘It's me. Cristiano. Papa, listen to me! I'm here beside you. I'm holding your hand. You're in hospital. You've had an accident. The doctor said you're in a coma but that you'll wake up in a few weeks. Now you're repairing your brain because you've had a thingummy … A haemorrhage. You needn't worry. I've seen to everything else. Nobody will find anything. I'm good at these things, you know that. So you just stay here and repair yourself and I'll look after everything else. Don't worry. I've tried calling Quattro Formaggi and Danilo, but they don't reply.' Cristiano peered at his father's face, searching for a movement, a twitch of the eyelid, an infinitesimal grimace that might show that he was listening. He looked around, to check once more that no one was there, then stretched out his arm and pressed his forefinger on his father's left eye, first gently, then harder. Nothing. He didn't react. ‘Listen to me. I can only come here for a short time every day. So now I'm going home and I'll be back tomorrow.' He was about to get up, but stopped. He put his lips close to his father's ear and whispered: ‘I know you can't hear me, but I'll tell you anyway. I told everyone you fell into the coma at home while you were asleep, so …'
nobody will think it was you
.

Cristiano put his hand over his mouth. His stomach had suddenly contracted like a vacuum-packed plastic bag. He sniffed and rubbed his eyes to stop himself crying. Then he got up and left the intensive care ward.

Quattro Formaggi was sitting in front of the crib.

He'd had a good wash, had put on his bath robe and then had popped in his mouth all the medicines he had found in the house: three aspirins, two Ibuprofens, one paracetamol, one Sennakot and one effervescent Alka-Seltzer. He had smeared a whole tube of Anusol over his chest and shoulder.

Now he felt better, except that the more he looked at the nativity
scene, spread right across the room, the more he noticed how wrong it all was. He didn't know exactly why, but it was. Not because of the soldiers, all the statuettes and dolls, all the cars, or the little Baby Jesus stuck to the manger. He had botched the world. The mountains. The rivers. The lakes. They were all badly positioned, without any order or meaning.