It had been all too brief, the contact with that soft flesh. Beautiful and painful. He stopped himself putting his fingers to his lips to see if some of that moistness had clung to them.
‘What about us, then?’
‘Don’t you fancy us?’
Esmeralda picked up a Cossack hat made of phosphorescent green plush and plonked it on his head. Then she burst out laughing. ‘It really suits you.’
Fabiana got out her lipstick and ran it over his lips.
By now Cristiano was so confused and disorientated he would have let the two girls give him a shampoo and set.
Esmeraldo took a pocket mirror out of her handbag. ‘Look at yourself!’
Cristiano took the briefest of looks and cleaned his lips.
‘Why don’t we go to the games arcade?’ Esmeralda said to her friend, and walked off towards the gallery.
Fabiana crossed her arms and pouted. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re a real drag? Why don’t you ever laugh? I reckon you take after your father.’
Cristiano stiffened. He didn’t like talking about his father. ‘Why?’
‘Well, he looks so mean, with that shaven head and those tattoos … Hey, where did he get them, by the way?’
‘What?’
‘The tattoos.’
‘I don’t know … At the tattooist’s.’ Cristiano genuinely didn’t know. Rino had had most of them done when he had been too small to remember, and the more recent ones in some place near Murelle.
‘I know that. But where?’
‘I’ve no idea. Why do you want to know?’
‘I’d like to have one done.’
‘Where?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m not telling you.’
‘Go on! Where?’
‘In a secret place.’
‘Oh go on, tell me.’
‘You tell me where your father had his tattoos done, then.’
He put his hand on his heart. ‘I don’t know. I swear.’
‘I could ask your father myself, you know. Do you think I’m scared? I wouldn’t think twice about it.’
Cristiano shrugged. ‘Go ahead and ask him, then.’
Fabiana stood up, grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
The games arcade was full of young people. Some were from their school, but most were older.
It was an enormous room. There was a four-lane bowling alley, a game that involved throwing a ball into a basket, with a scoreboard recording each successful shot, cranes that picked up cuddly toys, and hundreds of videogames. The music was deafening. The place was full of Filipinos, Chinese and children jumping about on a platform trying to dance in time to the music, following the instructions of a videogame. Down at the other end was a second room, darker and less crowded than the first, with fruit machines all round the walls. In the middle were a dozen green billiard tables illuminated by low-hanging lights, with black figures armed with cues standing around them.
Cristiano had never been in there. In the first place because there was a notice saying you had to be eighteen to enter, secondly because he didn’t know anybody, and thirdly because he was crap at billiards.
Fabiana rushed into the room, ignoring the age restriction, and Cristiano was about to follow, but he stopped in the doorway when he saw that Tekken was there.
Tekken was playing a doubles match and Esmeralda was doing her level best to put him off. She would knock the cue when he played a shot, tickle him under the arms or rub up against him. He pretended to be annoyed, but anyone could see he was loving it.
He was with two other boys. Memmo, a guy with a fancily trimmed goatee beard and a ponytail, and Nespola, who thought he looked like Robbie Williams but didn’t.
Just then Esmeralda climbed up on the billiard table and Tekken fired a ball between her thighs, to the raucous guffaws of everyone present.
Cristiano closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He couldn’t breathe. He could still feel on his neck and mouth the pressure of Esmeralda and Fabiana’s lips.
‘What a pair of tarts …’ he whispered, resting his head against the wall.
His father was right – girls like that only liked rich guys. Like Tekken. Their motorbikes. Their money.
If you were poor, like he was, they just took the piss out of you.
He felt something acidic burning his stomach, as if he had drunk a bottle of bleach. He felt like throwing up.
A wild anger clouded his thoughts. His hands itched. He felt like going in there, picking up a billiard cue and smashing it over that bastard’s head. But instead he turned and ran out, panting hard. He hated this place. The people. The shop windows full of useless things he couldn’t buy.
He went into a kichenware shop, took a long knife out of a block of wood, hid it under his jacket and walked out into the car park, elbowing his way through the crowd.
He ran round behind the rubbish bins, pulled out the knife and slashed the saddle and punctured the tyres of Tekken’s motorbike. He was about to dig a deep scratch across the petrol tank when he heard a voice behind his back shout: ‘Hey! What the fuck are you doing?’
His heart leaped into his tonsils with fright.
He turned round. Sitting astride a big Ducati was a guy in a black helmet and a leather jacket. ‘You little creep, I’m going to beat you to a pulp!’ the biker shouted as he propped his motorbike on its stand.
Cristiano threw away the knife and ran off between the cars, while the guy shouted after him, ‘You coward! It’s no use you running away. I know who you are! You’re at the junior high! We’ll find you! We’ll find you and when we do …’
He came out onto the highway and kept on running.
He couldn’t believe he had been such a fool. In the space of a few seconds he had landed himself up to his neck in shit.
Of all the stupid things to do, he had chosen the most stupid one possible. Slashing Tekken’s motorbike and getting caught in the act!
He kept one eye on the ground as he ran, trying to avoid the puddles. He had a stitch in his side and pressed his hand against it. The highway, the guardrail and the car headlights blurred over and reappeared at every step.
Below the hoarse wheeze of his breathing he kept hearing the threats of the black-clad biker: ‘Where are you running to? I know who you are! I know you! We’ll get you for this!’
He felt as if it was all a bad dream, as if all he had to do was stop, close his eyes and open them again and he would be back in that dark corner of the games arcade which smelled of sweat and deodorant.
He must have been out of his mind. He had stolen the knife and slashed the motorbike in a kind of hypnotic trance. As if he’d had a kind of blackout. When he had entered the kitchenware shop he hadn’t even looked round to check if anyone was watching.
He didn’t know how he could keep on running, with all that fear in his body. Soon Tekken’s vengeance would come down on him with all its merciless, crushing force.
The guy was quite capable of killing him.
Once Cristiano had seen him get into a fight with a truck driver outside the bar.
The thing he remembered was his coolness in confronting a man who was twenty kilos heavier than him and had fists as big as shoulders of ham. Tekken had skipped about, swaying his hips like a merengue dancer. He was enjoying himself. As if he was training in the gym.
While the big ape swung his arms and hurled insults, Tekken had kicked him on the knee and the giant had collapsed on the ground. Then he had grabbed hold of his ear, jerked up his head and said, wagging his finger from side to side: ‘You’re nobody around here. So don’t try to throw your weight around.’
And all this simply because the big brute had asked Tekken, without saying ‘please’, to move his motorbike so he could park his truck.
Just think what he’ll do to me for destroying it …
His lungs were on fire and he had to slow down. He ran onto a bridge that passed over an irrigatio
n canal and stopped, panting, in a bus shelter halfway across. The timetable and walls were plastered with coloured scrawls. The bench was caked with ketchup and with the remains of chips and rice croquettes. And the place reeked of urine. A dim neon light crackled on the ceiling.
He stood there, scanning the road for a sight of the bus.
By this time the biker would have told Tekken what had happened. “Who the fuck was it?”
“A fair-haired guy. From the junior high.”
Fabiana and Esmeralda would have twigged at once that it had been him. “We know him. His name’s Cristiano Zena. He goes to our school.”
Those two bitches would never cover for him.
Meanwhile there was still no sign of the bus. And Tekken and his gang would certainly be on his trail by now. Cristiano hid in the narrow space between the shelter and the guardrail. He could hear the gurgling of the water that flowed in the canal some ten metres below the bridge.
He was just wondering whether to continue on foot when the yellow eyes of the bus appeared in the distance.
Thank God.
He emerged from behind the shelter, leaned out into the road and was on the point of raising his arm when three motorbikes overtook the bus on the right and dazzled him with their headlights. He stepped back and the bus flashed by without even slowing down. He saw the people sitting behind the windows and, immediately afterwards, the red rear lights.
It hadn’t stopped. But the motorbikes had.
He tried to make a run for it, but a black Ducati swerved round and braked in front of him and Tekken, who was riding on the back, leaped on him.
Cristiano fell down in the mud and banged his shoulder hard. He tried to struggle, to kick, but Tekken had gripped him at the base of the biceps, pinning him down with an arm across his chest. With the other hand he grabbed him by the hair, pulled him up and slapped him full in the face with the back of his hand, knocking him back against the guardrail.
Cristiano’s suprarenal glands were producing millions of molecules of adrenalin which prevented him, at least for the moment, from feeling any pain.
He jumped to his feet, trying to escape towards the road, but only managed to take a few steps before he fell down again.
Tekken had scythed his legs from under him with a kick.
Now Cristiano was gasping in the ice-cold mud, trying to get up, but his legs wouldn’t respond.
He swore to himself that he wouldn’t utter even the faintest groan.
Tekken put the heel of his shoe on Cristiano’s hand and pressed and Cristiano gave a piercing shriek with what little air remained in his lungs.
‘Why did you do it, eh? Why?’ Tekken kept repeating to him. ‘Tell me!’ His voice was plaintive, incredulous, as if he was about to burst into tears.
Cristiano couldn’t answer, because he had no answer to give, except that during those five minutes he had had some kind of brainstorm.
Tekken pressed harder and Cristiano felt an explosion of pain envelop his forearm and fingers.
‘Why? Speak!’
On the one hand Cristiano wanted to plead for mercy, to beg him to stop, to say it hadn’t been him, that they were wrong, that he had nothing to do with it; on the other hand he felt inside him a block as hard as stone which stopped him doing so. They could kill him if they liked, but he would never beg for mercy.
Tekken stepped back and Cristiano started crawling towards the shelter. Everything around him had got tangled up in a rainbow of colours, exhaust fumes, wheels and legs. His ears were buzzing and he could hear what the others on their motorbikes were saying.
He thought he could hear female voices.
Esmeralda and Fabiana.
They were there too. Another reason for not giving in.
Cristiano dragged himself under the bench of the bus shelter.
Maybe if I can get a little further in they won’t find me.
It was a vain hope. Tekken grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him back. ‘Well, what am I going to do with you?’ He gave him a kick. ‘Can you believe it, you guys? This little pillock has ruined my motorbike.’ He sounded despairing, as if someone had just shot his mother. ‘What am I going to do with him?’
Cristiano curled up, his knees against his chest. He couldn’t stop shaking. He must react, get up, fight.
‘Let’s chuck him off the bridge,’ suggested a voice.
A moment’s silence, then Tekken decreed: ‘Good thinking.’
Through a mist of confusion and pain Cristiano found the idea of dying like that, thrown off a bridge, almost beautiful, a liberation.
‘Get hold of his legs.’
They grabbed his ankles. An iron hand tugged at one of his arms. He didn’t resist.
He would be spotted next day by an old woman waiting for the bus, squashed like a cockroach on the concrete embankment of the canal. He felt sorry for his father.
He’ll die of grief.
But when he suddenly sensed a dark abyss sucking him down, heard the sound of the water and felt the icy wind on his face, he realised that they had lifted him up and something inside him snapped. He opened his eyes wide and started struggling frantically and shouting, ‘You bastards! You bastards! Sons of bitches! You’ll pay for this! I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you all!’
But he couldn’t break free. There seemed to be at least three of them holding him fast.
The blood went to his head. Below him was a black stream which gleamed silver each time a car passed by.
‘Well, you little runt, do you want to die?’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Ooh, tough guy, are we?’
They pushed him further out.
‘Fuck off, you bastards!’
He got a slap in the face which brought blood spurting out of his nose.
Tekken’s voice: ‘Listen to me very carefully. If you don’t give me a thousand euros, on the nail, on Monday, I swear on the head of my mother that I’ll kill you! And don’t even think of running away, because I’ll find you!’ And then, to the others: ‘Now let him go.’
They put him down on the ground.
The whole world seemed to be a whirl of lights and featureless faces.
Sitting there, slumped against the guardrail, Cristiano saw them start up their engines, turn round and ride off towards the village.
It was five minutes before he tried to move a muscle, and when he did so he discovered he had pissed himself.
53
When Cristiano Zena got home the lights were on.
Nothing was going right.
If his father saw him like this, with his trousers soaked in piss and covered with dirt, his jacket bloodstained and torn …
God knows what he’d do.
Cristiano limped across the yard, past the van and round to the back of the house. A concrete ramp led down to an underground garage with an aluminium rolling door. He lifted up a flower pot to find the key. He put it in the lock and, stifling a cry of pain, raised the door far enough for him to slip under it.
It was cold in the garage. He switched on the light, to reveal a room which smelt of damp and of the paint in the tins that stood on the long shelves. The pea-green walls and the yellow neon light made it look like a morgue. In the middle was an old ping-pong table covered with piles of newspapers, tyres and other junk which had accumulated over the years. A dusty, worm-eaten upright piano stood against one wall. Rino had always been evasive about its origins and why it was there. It had nothing to do with the two of them. And his father was the most tone-deaf person Cristiano had ever met. At the millionth time of asking, he had finally got a reply.
‘It was your mother’s.’
‘What did she do with it?’
‘She played it. She wanted to be a singer.’
‘Was she any good?’
His father had been reluctant to admit it. ‘She had a nice voice. But when it came down to it, it wasn’t singing she enjoyed, but tarting herself up and going to piano bars and fooling around.
I tried to sell it, but I could never find a buyer.’
So for a while Cristiano had taken to going down to the garage and trying to play it. But he was even less musical than his father.
Inside some boxes stacked up against a wall Cristiano found some old clothes. He took off his jacket and put on a moth-eaten cardigan and a pair of jeans. He washed his face in the basin and straightened his hair. He wished he had a mirror to check his appearance, but there wasn’t any.
He locked up the garage and went back round to the front door.
The problem was his swollen lip. He also had grazes on his back and hands, and bruises on his leg, but those he could hide.
Another problem, which wasn’t so much a problem as a disaster, was the thousand euros. Well, he would have to think about that later, think long and hard, because he didn’t have the faintest idea how he was going to solve it.
Now he could only hope his father was asleep or already dead drunk, so that he could enter the house, slip past him as silently as a panther and steal upstairs into his bedroom.
He took a good, deep breath. He had another quick look at his clothes, then opened the front door and closed it behind him, trying not to make any noise.
In the living room only the lamp beside the television was on. The rest of the room was in semi-darkness.
His father was in his usual place, on the lounger; Cristiano could see his shaven head. Quattro Formaggi was with him, sitting on the sofa with his back to the door. Were they asleep? He waited for a while to hear if they were talking. He couldn’t hear anything.
So far so good.
He tiptoed towards the stairs. Hardly daring to breathe, he put one foot on the first step and the other on the second, but he failed to notice a hammer and some pliers, which fell down with a clatter.
Cristiano gritted his teeth and looked up, and at the same moment he heard his father’s hoarse voice: ‘Who’s there? Cristiano, is that you?’
He suppressed an oath and replied, trying to sound casual: ‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Hi!’ Quattro Formaggi raised an arm.
‘Hi.’