‘One every race,’ snorted Laura, serving the parmigiana.
Laura Lo Capo was an attractive woman, dark-skinned with two coal-black eyes, but since the divorce she’d put on weight and allowed regrowth to whiten the roots of her long hair. She referred to her ex-husband as ‘the Playboy’, but far from being jealous, she was proud of the fact. ‘Is it possible to stop a lion hunting? You’d have to lock him up in a cage. I can’t do that. It’d be a crime against the female sex.’ The fact that she was the only lioness Mauro had had offspring with flattered her self-esteem, and was enough for her. As long as he didn’t forget Pietro, and brought her magnets to stick on the fridge whenever he returned from his travels, she was happy. The younger sisters were susceptible to their brother-in-law’s charms too, and whenever he came home would put on their best clothes, doll themselves up and play at who could be the most seductive. The dream of living in a harem and sharing the mechanic’s favours stimulated their libido.
‘Right! Since he liked the cannelloni I made with my own fair hands, tonight the Playboy’s coming to bed with me,’ said the younger one, casting aside all modesty.
‘What would he want with a skinny little thing like you?’ said Celeste. ‘I’m the – what’s the word, Mauro? – the cougar.’ And she made a gesture as if to support her ample bosom.
‘There’s no need to quarrel! If you squeeze up together, there’s room in bed for all three of you. Oh yes, Mauro, I know you’re not averse to that kind of thing!’ cried Laura, warming to the game as she rinsed the dishes.
As excited as schoolgirls, they burst into fits of giggles, feeling unconventional and modern.
The mechanic could already see himself in retirement, in a state of grace, with the three women serving him and kowtowing to him, like some Babylonian king.
Little Pietro, too, grew up revering this handsome, special father who brought him Ducati T-shirts and gadgets. He’d spend hours in the garage watching him repair an old Laverda Jota.
On sunny days the two of them would ride out to the seaside, with the little boy astride the petrol tank.
In short, things were going very well, but as in every self-respecting plot, an event occurred which shattered the harmony of the Lo Capo family. The arrival in Via Aleramo of Patrizio Petroni, Annarita’s new boyfriend. He was from Rome. Weight: over one hundred kilograms. Short and wide, a guy it would have been quicker to jump over than walk around. A mass of black curls stuck to his forehead, a few centimetres above one long continuous eyebrow. Thick-rimmed glasses on a pug nose. A fat stomach, bulging out over surf shorts which hung down from low buttocks, and calves as plump as turkey legs slotting into a pair of black high-top trainers without the mediation of ankles.
Annarita was reluctant to talk about how they’d met, but it was clear from some details that Facebook had played its part. Patrizio explained to the sisters in his inner-city drawl that he and Annarita had loved each other since the beginning of time, since the Big Bang. They had finally managed to meet up in this life, after spending thousands of other lives searching for each other.
‘Those two are about as well suited as crusty bread and a blunt knife,’ old Costanza observed, sadly.
‘Patrizio is going to stay with me for a while; he’s got to finish his novel,’Annarita explained to her sisters, who listened open-mouthed.
The writer settled into his girlfriend’s flat and converted the living room into his study. Before the week was out he’d contrived to turn the whole family against him.
Pietro didn’t like him because he ate his Kinder Buenos. Grandma complained that he was domineering. Laura hated him because, she said, he was dirty and as ugly as sin. And Celeste because he’d duped her sister, who was a little naive, poor thing.
Patrizio was about as sensitive to the Lo Capos’ scowls as a buffalo to a bite from a sandfly. He’d sit down at the table and scoff food, then sprawl on the sofa with his arms round his girlfriend, watching barbecue competitions on TV. The rest of the time he spent writing. The sound of his keyboard echoed down the stairs day and night. He only left the flat for sporadic trips to the takeaway to buy French fries and kebabs.
Celeste and Laura held a conspiratorial meeting on a patch of waste land to work out a plan for getting rid of the ‘Universal Shitbag’ (that was the nickname they’d given him) without hurting their sister too much. They decided it was Mauro’s job to convince him. By fair means or foul.
The mechanic invited Patrizio out for a pizza and a man-to-man chat, and when he came home he found the two sisters still up in their nightdresses. ‘How did it go?’
‘He scoffed two patapizzas, a calzone with ricotta and frankfurters, and four jugs of beer.’
Laura flopped disconsolately on the sofa. ‘What’s a patapizza?’
‘A pizza with chips on top.’
Celeste walked round and round the room, pulling on a cigarette. ‘Did you ask him when he’s leaving?’
‘He said he’s got to finish his novel.’
Laura cut a slice of jam tart and handed it to her ex-husband. ‘Did you manage to find out what this novel’s about?’
‘He’s rewriting the whole history of the world, with giant hamsters instead of humans.’
The two women gazed at him expectantly.
The mechanic took a bite from the tart. ‘He’s just finished the prehistoric era.’
Nothing changed over the next three months, until the TV news reported that an unknown disease was raging in Liège, and that children, for some obscure reason linked to their lack of puberty hormones, seemed to be immune to it.
Mauro had been in the Netherlands for a month, carrying out tests on a new motorbike, and on the plane back to Palermo he started to feel really bad. It was as if two knives were stabbing at the base of his nose and an iron clamp gripping his temples. When he went to the toilet to throw up, he noticed a red blotch on his hip.
Laura went to pick him up at the airport. She saw him emerge from Arrivals looking worn out, and with his eyes glistening. On the way home in the car he started coughing. They put him to bed, but despite lemon juice and aspirin his temperature shot up. He was examined by Dr Panunzio, the family doctor, who reassured the sisters. ‘It’s nothing serious. A touch of flu. He just needs to rest.’
The news from northern Europe was not encouraging: the virus had crossed the borders of Belgium and was spreading inexorably throughout the continent. A team of German scientists was trying to develop a stable vaccine.
Fortunately the few cases recorded in Italy had been isolated ones.
Two days later Mauro suffered an acute respiratory failure, and Laura went with him in the ambulance to Palermo. She returned with a fever and a runny nose. She said the hospital was in chaos and Mauro had been parked in a corridor along with hundreds of other patients who had the same symptoms.
A week later the Lo Capo family, with the exception of Celeste, who was confined to her room with a heavy cough, were sitting together in front of the TV waiting for a message from the Prime Minister which was due to be broadcast simultaneously on all channels. In the event it was the Minister of Health who appeared before journalists. Coughing, he apologised for the Prime Minister’s absence and advised the population to stay at home, going out only if it was strictly necessary. ‘Anyone who suffers from acute respiratory syndrome, associated with blotches on the skin, a high temperature and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory conditions, must be isolated at once, because they may have contracted the virus and constitute a threat to those around them.’
Laura, worried and feverish, and having received no news of her husband for several days, asked Annarita to go to Palermo. Her sister found the autostrada blocked by an interminable queue of cars piled high with luggage, all trying to leave the island. She was told the regional capital had been placed under army guard and it was impossible to get out or in. The airport had been closed too, and the ferries to Calabria weren’t running.
The first person to die i
n the block in Via Aleramo was Grandma. It took the virus less than a week to finish her off. Annarita was the only one of her daughters who was able to go to her funeral. There was hardly anyone else in the church, except Patrizio and Pietro. Even the hearse failed to show up, and one of the girls’ cousins loaded the coffin into his station wagon. The village was deserted and most of the shops were closed. Everyone in Vita who was not in bed was either in front of the TV or on the phone to distant relatives.
Patrizio would spend all day on the computer, searching for news. The whole planet had been contaminated, from India to the United States; not even Australia had been spared. By now it was clear that the original infection had occurred much earlier than the cases documented in Belgium. There was a terrible – human, according to some people – deviousness in the way the virus was propagating itself and in its long quiescence, which had transformed it into a biological bomb. The speed at which it mutated made creating a vaccine impossible. Not even the researchers working on it, despite rigorous anti-contamination procedures, could avoid succumbing.
Vita, which before the epidemic had had a population of 2,500, lost half of it in less than a month. Some people died waiting hopefully for a vaccine; others, more sceptical, barricaded themselves in their homes, sealing them up with duct tape, but still didn’t escape the disease. Children, the only healthy inhabitants, went round the village in search of food and water for their parents and grandparents.
The television had suspended news broadcasts and only showed old films. The telephone networks failed, one by one. When the electricity supply failed too, the bird of the Apocalypse spread its dark cold wings over Vita.
In the apartment block, after the death of Signora Costanza, it was Celeste’s turn. The body was thrown into a common grave without any funeral rites. Laura and Annarita lay in their beds, racked by fever, and unconscious. Pietro sat for hours beside his mother in a sweltering silence, playing with toy soldiers. One morning, making an excuse, Patrizio took hold of his hand, led him into his room, locked the door and said: ‘They’re dying. We can’t do anything for them; they’re doomed. We must stay here and wait.’ Inside the room he’d stacked boxes of food and cans of beer.
But Pietro would cry: he wanted his mother. Then the fat man would lose his temper and start kicking the wardrobe, ripping arms off teddy bears, pouring Lego bricks over his head. ‘Why don’t you understand? Why can’t you accept things for what they are? Forget about the old world. You’ve got your whole life in front of you. We’ve entered a new era.’
As soon as the first light crept between the curtains, he’d sit down at his desk and start filling reams of paper with his old Olivetti typewriter. He was enthusiastic: ‘This is a masterpiece.’ He’d go over to little Pietro and stroke his head. ‘It’s a no-holds-barred chronicle of the Apocalypse. I haven’t censored anything.’
Pietro didn’t know what the Apocalypse was.
‘It’s when everybody dies because God has said that’s it. I gave you a game and you ruined it. I gave you a beautiful planet and you messed it up.’
The epidemic, in Patrizio’s opinion, was the most amazing thing that could possibly have happened to humankind. He walked round and round the small room like an orang-utan, talking, talking, asking questions and answering them himself, until he fell back drunk on a small chair, with his legs apart.
Pietro knew Patrizio kept the key to the door in his trouser pocket. One night he got out of bed and tried to take it. But his fingers struggled to get into the pocket, buried beneath layers of flab.
The ogre woke up with a grunt. ‘Looking for the key?’ He pulled it out. ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ He opened his mouth and swallowed it like a Saila Mint. ‘Magic. All gone.’ He folded his arms and went on snoring.
On another occasion it was Patrizio who woke the little boy up. ‘Pietro … Pietro …’ He was whispering, as if there were hidden microphones in the room. ‘Do you hear that?’
The little boy, clutching his panda, hadn’t heard anything for days. Not even the muffled groans of Aunt Annarita and Mama. Even the cars had disappeared.
‘Well? Do you hear it?’
‘The wind?’
‘It sounds like the wind, but it’s not. It’s the rustle of millions of souls leaving the planet, a constant stream of spirits who rise out of our atmosphere, fly across the solar system and join up together again.’
Pietro was worried. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You’re not dying, are you? You’re not going to leave me in here on my own?’
‘No, don’t worry. I’m different. Look.’ He did a pirouette. ‘I haven’t got a single blotch on my body, and I’ve never felt better in my life. I’m imbued with grace. There’s a small number of chosen people whom God spares and whose job is to found the human race anew. I’m a bard. My mission is to tell the story of the end and the new beginning. And you’re going to be my assistant.’
The food was beginning to run low, and Patrizio decided to ration it. As soon as darkness fell, the two of them would lie down among the soft toys on Pietro’s blue camp bed. His breath reeking of alcohol, Patrizio would tell him tales of hamster armies fighting against ancient Egyptian gods. Or whistle Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’ to him.
One morning Pietro woke up to find Patrizio sitting there staring at him. He’d changed his T-shirt and shaved. The bedroom door was open.
‘Good morning, assistant. Did you sleep well? Today we’re going back into the world. A bard can’t tell his story if he’s locked up in a room.’
The little boy trotted out to see his mother. She wasn’t in her bedroom, or in the living room. He went out into the stairwell and found her lying on her back on the landing. Swollen and covered with flies. He shrank back against the wall, covering his eyes with his hands.
Patrizio picked him up. ‘You see what happens to a body when the soul leaves it? It becomes smelly. Food for worms and flies. You mustn’t cry. That thing there isn’t your mother. Your mother has been set free. Right now she’s flying over Alpha Centauri.’
‘What about Papa? Where’s my papa?’ sobbed the little boy.
‘Same thing. He’s gone too. His atoms have merged with your mother’s in a world of perfection.’
They found Annarita still alive, lying on a double bed. The virus had shrivelled her into a panting little skeleton. Pietro went up to her and stroked her hair. She opened and closed her mouth like a fish, her eyes veiled by a grey patina.
Patrizio put his ear to her lips. ‘She’s asking us to help her.’ He took the little boy into the living room and sat him down on the sofa. ‘That sick body is keeping Annarita’s soul prisoner. We must set her free. In the end she’d manage it on her own, but she could suffer for a long time yet, and we don’t want her to suffer, do we?’
The little boy sat in silence, with his head bowed, then looked at Patrizio. ‘Are you going to kill her?’
Patrizio sat down beside him. ‘Have you ever seen those videos of wild animals when they’re released? Sometimes the gamekeepers open their cages, but the animals don’t go out, and they have to drive them out with sticks. Do you know why they don’t go out? Because they’re scared of freedom. It’s the same with the soul.’ Patrizio rippled his stubby fingers as if writing on a keyboard. ‘The soul, that mysterious essence – that particle of God that has made your aunt’s flesh live – is frightened by the idea of leaving the body. But as soon as it does, it’ll feel an infinite joy. We’re going to be the gamekeepers. Do you understand? We’re going to set her free.’
The little boy nodded.
Patrizio looked around. The sun was cutting the living room in two and the dust was shimmering in the musty air, making everything golden. ‘Where do you keep the plastic bags?’
‘In the kitchen. Under the sink.’
‘Go and get two. Without any holes in them.’
Patrizio stood at the head of the bed over Annarita’s shrunken skull, clutching two plastic bags, one inside the other. He
looked at his little assistant who was standing beside the mattress, holding his aunt’s hand. ‘Now I’m going to put it over her head. She’ll struggle. I want you to jump on her and hold her down; use all the strength you have. You mustn’t let go.’
The little boy nodded, seriously.
‘When your aunt’s soul leaves her body, it’ll pass through you; it’ll live for a few more seconds inside your body. You’ll feel it slip through you, like a caress. That’ll be her way of saying goodbye. Are you ready?’
Pietro climbed up onto the bed, lay on top of the dying woman and put his arms round her. ‘Ready.’
It didn’t take his aunt long to die.
Patrizio, dripping with sweat, took a deep breath. ‘Did you feel her go?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was it like?’
‘It was nice.’
Annarita Lo Capo was the first. Over the next few days the two liberators of souls dealt with all the dying people in Via Aleramo, then in the rest of Vita. They went out early in the morning and came home at dusk. They proceeded in order, according to the house numbers. Often they had to break down doors, climb up walls of buildings. The sick people had locked themselves in for fear of being burgled. There were still quite a number who were teetering between life and death. The few adults who could still walk would take them to their dying relatives. The notary Botta’s Ferrari 458, which Patrizio drove, shattering the silence of the village, was often chased by gangs of orphans.
The double-bag method worked; the only trouble was that sometimes the liberatees, as they called them, would go into convulsions, and Pietro would be thrown onto the floor. So the two perfected their immobilisation techniques, strapping patients down onto their beds with bungee cords before the little boy lay on top of them.
One day Patrizio decided to extend their range of action to a hamlet near Vita. They parked the Ferrari outside a bar and got out armed with plastic bags and bungee cords. The road was straight, with a row of two-storey buildings on either side. The continuity of the buildings was broken by small fenced gardens planted with palm and lemon trees. A pack of stray dogs slipped away between the houses as soon as they saw them.