The Crossroads (51 page)

He took off his sunglasses, cleaned them and put them back on
again. He screwed up his eyes and saw Ida sitting in the pews of the central nave. Next to her, Mario and the children.

He should have started, choked or hidden away, but instead he stood there, spellbound, gazing at her. During the past few days he had imagined this moment a thousand times and he had never thought he would react like this. He felt peaceful, calm, because he only had to look at her for all his anxieties and fears to dissolve like tempera in water. He knew he was seeing her for the last time, and wanted to fill his memory with her so that he could hold her there for ever.

She wore a black trouser suit and a grey cardigan. Her hair gathered back behind her head. Her neck long and slender. She looked stunning. She was brushing a lock of hair off her forehead with her hand.

What in the name of heaven made me make that vow
?

Who said the African was dead, anyway? He was on the ground, but maybe he had only fainted. He hadn't even felt his heart. What a fool he was! It had been his own guilty conscience that had decided for him. In his panic he had written him off. But there had been no doctor there to verify his death.

He was in perfect health. I even bought those socks off him
.

Besides, miracles don't exist. They're just an illusion designed to
spread the faith. The Lord isn't a merchant you can barter promises
with in exchange for favours
.

How could I been so stupid as to think you could just say a
prayer and God would revive the dead? If that was true nobody
would ever die!

There hadn't been any miracle. And if there hadn't been any miracle there wasn't any vow. If he was wrong and had to pay for being happy, he would pay.

I'm in love with Ida Lo Vino and I don't want to lose her for
anything in the world
.

He felt a sensation of warmth spreading through his body, and his limbs relaxed. It was like being born again. Someone had removed from his chest those thousand kilos that had been crushing the breath out of him.

He filled his lungs, breathed out again and ran his fingers through his hair. He smoothed down his jacket and straightened the knot of his tie.

He strode decisively through the crowd and entered the pew where Ida was sitting.

He smelled the sweet scent of her perfume. He squeezed her arm. ‘Ida?'

She turned and saw him. Astonished, she breathed: ‘Beppe? Where have you been?'

‘I've been closing my account with God,' he said. Then he motioned to her to wait and turned to Mario Lo Vino, who was looking at him and smiling: ‘After the service I must talk to you.' He sat down and took hold of Ida's hand.

Cristiano had had to embrace all his schoolmates. Some had kissed him. Even that pathetic little pillock Colizzi, the swot, who had always hated him. The only one who had completely ignored him was Esmeralda Guerra, Fabiana's friend.

At first he hadn't recognised her, so smartly dressed and with her long black hair gathered into a plait. She had removed her piercing. She seemed taller, and was breathtakingly beautiful. She was holding a sheet of paper which she kept reading. A group of girls sat around her, trying to comfort her.

Cristiano sat down next to Pietrolin, whom he had once beaten up in the mall with a cardboard cut-out of Brad Pitt.

Pietrolin nudged him. ‘Esmeralda's going to read a poem she's written for Fabiana. And tomorrow at three thirty she's going to be on
Real Life Stories
on TV.'

On the other side, standing by a confessional, was Tekken with his whole gang – Ducati, Nespola, Memmo and three or four others whose names Cristiano didn't know. He was so covered in plaster he looked like the Michelin Man.

So that whack I gave you was on target. I hurt you. You deserve
it. After what you did to Quattro Formaggi
…

Suddenly a general murmur arose.

Cristiano looked round.

Fabiana's father, mother and little brother had entered. The crowd
parted to let them through. The Ponticellis clung tightly together and made their way forward, looking lost. Some people raised their mobile phones to snap them or make videos. In the dim light of the church the screens of the mobiles lit up like funeral candles.

They put them in the front row, next to the mayor, a lot of important people and the policemen in their uniforms. The mother took her son on her lap while the television cameras zoomed in for a close-up.

‘After the funeral there's a procession to the cemetery. I don't know if we have to go too.'

Cristiano stared at Pietrolin, not knowing what to say. Since entering the church he had avoided looking towards the altar, but he couldn't restrain himself any longer.

The white coffin lay on a red carpet. Around it, thousands of irises, tulips and marguerites. Dozens of wreaths and little soft toy white rabbits.

A long queue of people went up to lay down more flowers or simply stroke the coffin.

Fabiana is in there and I was the last to touch her
.

He relived the moment when, in pushing the corpse wrapped in plastic out into the river, he had brushed the tip of her toe.

The Carrion Man opened the door of the intensive care unit.

His heart was pounding hard in his chest, but its rhythm was regular.

There was a bustle of doctors and nurses going in and out of the room where Rino lay.

An alarm bell was ringing.

He drew nearer, biting the palm of his hand.

Around the bed there was a group of doctors who were talking and blocking his view.

Nobody took any notice of him.

He felt emboldened and moved a little closer. Underneath his cardigan he felt the pistol pushing against his sore ribs.

Between the doctors' backs he saw Rino's body under the sheets. The neck, the chin, the cheeks, the eyelids closed … The tattooed arm pierced with transparent tubes was rising. With the forefinger pointing at him. The blue eyes staring into his own.

Rino opened his mouth and said: “
It was you!
”

Music started playing and the congregation fell silent. Only the crying of a few babies continued.

At the other end of the church, beside the altar, four girls in black skirts and white blouses were playing a very sad tune on their violins. Cristiano had heard it before in a war film.

Esmeralda looked at Miss Carraccio, the maths teacher, who motioned to her to go, and all her classmates stood up in the pews to let her pass, giving her pats of encouragement.

The church was so quiet that the heels of her black shoes echoed in the reinforced concrete arches.

Esmeralda walked gracefully up the three steps, passed the coffin and stood behind the lectern. She put her mouth to the microphone and had to take three breaths before managing to say, in little more than a whisper: ‘This is a poem. I wrote it for you, Fabiana.' Her hand brushed her eyes. ‘Fabiana, with your smile. Fabiana, with your great heart. Fabiana who could light up the darkest days … Fabiana who made us laugh … Now you are …' She bowed her head and began sobbing. She tried to go on. ‘… now you are … now you are …' but she couldn't. She murmured between her sobs: ‘We'll miss you, sweetheart.' Then she left the lectern and hurried back to her seat, covering her face.

Alessio Ponticelli looked at his wife and squeezed her hand tightly. He took a deep breath and went to the microphone.

Cristiano had seen him sometimes outside the school. He was a handsome, athletic man, always suntanned. But now he looked ill, as if all the strength had been sucked out of him. He was pale, unkempt, and his eyes were tearful and feverish. He took a folded piece of paper out of his jacket, opened it, looked at it, then put
it back in his pocket and started speaking quietly. ‘I had written about Fabiana, my daughter, about what a wonderful creature she was, I had written about her dreams … but I can't do it, I'm sorry …' He sniffed, dried his eyes and started speaking again, with more vigour. ‘They say God can forgive. They say God, in his infinite goodness, created human beings in his image and likeness. But I don't understand: how could he have created the monster that killed my little girl? How could he have stood by and watched all this? A poor little girl being knocked off her scooter, beaten up, raped and then having her head smashed in with a stone? On seeing that, God should have cried out from highest heaven in a voice so loud as to deafen us all, he should have turned day into night, he should have … But instead he did nothing. The days pass and nothing happens. The sun rises and sets and a vile murderer skulks among us. And they ask me to speak of forgiveness? How can I forgive him? I haven't got the strength. He's taken away the most beautiful thing I had …' He rested his elbows on the lectern, put his hands over his face and burst into a flood of tears. ‘I want to see him dead …'

Fabiana's mother got up, went over to her husband, hugged him tightly and led him away.

Behind the altar Cardinal Bonanni, an ancient hunchback, began to read the service in a hoarse voice. ‘Give them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them.'

The whole congregation rose to their feet and repeated: ‘Give them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them.'

Cristiano remained seated, crying silently, sobbing so hard he could hardly breathe.

I'm a monster, a monster
.

How could he have lugged Fabiana's blood-soaked body about without feeling any pity? How could he have lived through those days without feeling any shame? Without thinking that he had destroyed a family? Where had he found the strength to clean the corpse without any remorse? Why had he been able to do all this?

Because I'm a monster and I don't deserve forgiveness
.

It was warm in the Carrion Man's living room.

The sun, high in the sky, was shining through the panes of the French windows, and dawn was breaking over the eastern region of the crib.

Through the open window of the bathroom came the twittering of sparrows, the hooting of cars and the blare of the loudspeakers broadcasting the mass that was being held in the church of San Biagio.

The Carrion Man came out of the kitchen holding a chair.

‘Out of the depths I call to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice; may your ears be attentive to the voice of my prayer,' croaked Cardinal Bonanni through the loudspeakers.

The Carrion Man, taking care not to knock anything over, placed the chair in the middle of the crib. One leg rested on a little lake made out of a blue plastic bowl. One leg on the railway line. One leg in the midst of a pack of polar bears which were tearing a Pokémon to pieces. One leg in the centre of a square lined with tanks and fire engines.

‘I hope in the Lord, my soul hopes in his word. My soul longs for the Lord more ardently than watchmen for the morning.'

Then the Carrion Man went back and undressed. He took off his cape. He took off his black-and-white Juventus scarf. He took off his cardigan and vest. He took off his shoes and socks. He took off his trousers. He took the pistol and laid it on the pile of clothes. Lastly he took off his underpants.

‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'

He spread his arms as if they were the wings of a crippled pigeon, pushed out his swollen belly, cocked his head on one side and looked at his reflection in the French window.

The arms, long and gangly. The right shoulder, purple and swollen. The Adam's apple. The black beard. The small round head. The crucifix among the hairs on the chest. The emaciated torso dappled with bluish bruises. The dark penis perched in front of the balls which dangled like ripe fruit. The right leg, gnarled, withered by the lightning. The scar, as hard as a knot in a tree trunk, running across the calf. The feet with their black nails.

He saw a shadow flit across behind him. He didn't turn around. He knew who it was. He thought he could hear the
TOC TOC
he made as he walked on his crutches and the rustle of his black cloak brushing across the floor.

‘Brothers and sisters, to celebrate this Holy Eucharist for our little sister Fabiana, in the hope that comes to us from the Risen Christ, we humbly confess our sins,' bellowed the priest.

The Carrion Man pulled the plug of the battery charger of his mobile phone out of its socket, strode back, like a colossus, over the deserts, rivers and towns and got up onto the chair. A little black-and-white cow had stuck to the sole of his foot. He removed it and wrapped it in the chain of the crucifix.

‘Almighty God, have mercy on us, forgive us our sins and lead us to eternal life.'

The Carrion Man stretched his arms up towards the ceiling. Just above him was the hook for the lampshade and two electric wires which stuck out from the plaster like the forked tongue of a snake.

He passed the wire of the battery charger round the hook several times and then tied it round his neck.

‘O God, you are the love that forgives; welcome into your house our little sister Fabiana, who has passed to you from this world; and since she has hoped and believed in you, give her happiness without end. For the sake of our Lord …'

How strange. It was as if he was no longer in his body. He was near it. Just to one side. He saw himself, naked, tying the black wire round his neck. He saw his laboured breathing.

Is that me
?

(
Yes, that's you
.)

What on earth had made that naked man get up on a chair and put a noose round his neck?

The Carrion Man knew the answer.

His head.

His small head, covered with hair as black as the feathers of a raven. His crazy head. That head that had ruined his life. There was something inside it that had made him hear too many things, that had made him always feel out of place, different, that had made him do things he couldn't tell anyone about because nobody would have understood them, that had terrified, exhilarated, blinded him,
that had made him hide away in a rubbish-filled hole, as frightened as a mouse, that had made him dream of a crib so big as to cover the earth, to replace mountains, seas and rivers with papier-mâché mountains and tin-foil seas.