God knows why he had slashed Tekken’s motorbike like that … What was he trying to do? If she and Esmeralda hadn’t interceded they really would have chucked him off.
Zena certainly had guts. But he was a difficult guy. Very touchy. You couldn’t say anything to him.
She had been thinking about Cristiano Zena a bit too much lately.
‘Well?’
Fabiana turned towards her friend. ‘Well what?’
‘Are we going to have this bath?’
‘I can’t, I’ve got to go home.’
She had promised the Turd – aka her father – that she would be home by ten thirty.
The next morning, at half past eight, skipping the first lesson at school, she had an appointment with the dentist for a check-up.
Fabiana calculated that even if she left straight away she would be late home. It took a good twenty minutes from there. So she might as well take her time.
Lucky she’d switched off her mobile.
The Turd would have just got back from …
Where was it he went?
… and not finding her at home had no doubt jammed her voice-mail with messages.
62
Rino had switched off the television and was staring at the rain that beat against the sitting room windows, trying to understand what had made him watch that film. He knew it by heart, he had seen it dozens of times, yet he hadn’t been able to tear himself away from the screen.
Dog Day Afternoon. Starring Al Pacino. One of his two favourite actors, along with Robert De Niro. If Rino should ever happen to meet the pair of them in the street he would bow down before them and say, ‘You’re two of the greats, and you’ll always have Rino Zena’s respect.’
They succeeded in portraying the crummy lives of ordinary folk better than anyone else.
But that evening he shouldn’t have watched the film. Al Pacino went into a bank to carry out a robbery and it turned into a bloodbath.
He had realised that the raid on the cash machine was a mistake. A terrible mistake that he would regret for the rest of his life.
And although reason suggested that the downpour was a stroke of luck (the streets would be deserted), his stomach told him that this film shown by Channel 4 exactly two hours before the raid was a God-sent sign that he should drop the whole idea.
Now he kept thinking about the plan and his mind was haunted by images of blood and death. Raids like this, seemingly foolproof and unambitious, were exactly the kind that suddenly turned into massacres.
Are you out of your mind …?
How many reports had he read in the newspapers about service station robberies and car thefts that had ended in massacres? You could bet your life that as soon as they got there with the tractor, police would pop out from behind every corner.
Why did I let Danilo talk me into this? He doesn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground.
If anything went wrong it meant prison. And a long sentence at that. A couple of years at the very least.
And if he went to jail, Cristiano would be put in a home or a foster family till he was eighteen.
How much money would there be in a cash machine, anyway? Splitting it three ways, too …
Peanuts.
He must bite the bullet, phone Danilo and tell him he was backing out.
He won’t be happy.
When they had told Danilo, on the way home from the Frecce Tricolori air display, that the raid was on for that evening, he had almost burst into tears of joy.
But what does that matter to me?
It was a stupid plan, and the only reason he had listened to Danilo was that he had nothing to do all day. If Danilo really wanted, he could still do it with Quattro Formaggi. No, on second thoughts he couldn’t do it with Quattro Formaggi either.
He’ll just have to find someone else.
Lucky he was still in time to drop out.
But what if that presentiment had been nothing but fear? What if I’ve lost my balls?
He turned to look at Cristiano, curled up on the sofa fast asleep.
Maybe I have. So what?
He was about to pick up the phone and call Danilo, but he changed his mind. It was better to wait for him to arrive with Quattro Formaggi and tell him to his face.
63
At the same moment when Rino Zena was being assailed by doubts, Danilo Aprea was sitting in front of the television and smiling.
What a stupid film he had been watching. A story where two crooks got trapped in the middle of a bank robbery. His own plan was perfect. There would be no people around, no weapons, no hostages or any crap like that.
He picked up the newspaper and, with his glasses on the tip of his nose, leafed through the pages of the property ads, reflecting that, if you had plenty of capital and a bit of intuition, there are a million ways of getting rich.
And since he was sure he had a natural instinct for business (he had predicted that the Quattro Camini would be a great success), he would soon have the cash to prove it to the rest of the world.
He had already drawn circles with his biro round at least five hot properties among the business premises for sale. All in shopping malls or in newbuild blocks near the bypass. Strategic points which would see immense commercial growth over the next few years.
After the shock of the euro, which had brought the country to its knees, there was bound to be an economic recovery.
The theory of flow and counterflow.
That was what Berlusconi said, anyway. And how could you not believe an industrialist of the north who was a self-made man and had become the richest person in Italy, despite everything the commie judges had done to thwart him?
And when the recovery came, Danilo would be there, ready and waiting, with his lingerie boutique.
Now the problem was that he couldn’t imagine how many square metres it would take to set up a decent lingerie shop.
Would forty be enough? The important thing is to have a small back room you can use as a store and where you can put an armchair to relax in and a little fridge in case you get peckish …
And then, a crucial point, it would have to be tastefully decorated, but Danilo wasn’t concerned about that. That was Teresa’s territory. He wondered if his wife would like a shop in a mall …
You must be joking.
He was sure she would want one right in the centre, on the main street, to make the whole village green with envy. And, all things considered, she was right.
Eat your hearts out, you bastards. Look at the Apreas’ boutique.
Danilo breathed in deeply, closed the newspaper and went over to the window.
The wind had snatched all the clothes off the clothesline on the balcony of the flat opposite, and they had blown onto the leafless branches of an apple tree. The streetlamp was swaying to and fro and the alley had turned into a torrent which was gushing out into the canal beside his house. Through the double-glazing he could hear the roar of the current held in by the banks of the canal.
So much the better. There’ll be nobody around.
The display on the video recorder showed ten forty-five.
In a quarter of an hour Quattro Formaggi would be there.
He had lost track of time while looking at the small ads. He must get ready, and he’d better wrap up warm, or he’d catch pneumonia out in that downpour.
For too long his life had been parked in a dusty hangar; it was time to taxi it out onto the runway, ready for take-off.
Rino had told him the news on the way back from Murelle, and he had been so delighted he had almost burst into tears. Then, when he had got home, he had spent several hours sitting anxiously on the toilet, but now that the great moment had arrived he felt as calm as a samurai before a battle. Something told him that everything would go like clockwork, without a hitch.
He went over to the television and was about to turn it off when he saw a big painting on a green panel which occupied the whole screen.
They were showin
g the usual auction on Channel 35.
In the middle of the painting there was a clown, complete with top hat, lozenge-patterned tie and a round, cherry-red nose.
The clown was clinging like a climber to the peak of a mountain and stretching out his arm in an attempt to grasp an edelweiss which grew alone among the grey rocks.
The painter had succeeded in freezing the movement, like when you put a video recorder on pause.
It was easy to imagine the conclusion: the clown picks the flower and puts it to his nose to smell its scent.
But that wasn’t all there was to the picture. Behind the figure that occupied the foreground there was a breathtaking sunset. It reminded Danilo of those summer evenings when he was a child and the sky was something different, as if the Eternal Father himself had painted it. The colour tones shaded and blended into each other as they do on the peace flag. From black to blue to violet to the orange of the distant valley, over which floated the ball of the sun, enveloped in white clouds like a bride in her veil. Above, where the night had already gained possession of the sky, some distant little stars were twinkling. But lower down, the plain, with its villages and roads and forests, was still bathed in the last rays of the sun.
Danilo knew nothing about art and had never wanted to own a painting. Pictures, to him, were just receptacles of dust and dust-mites. But this one was a real masterpiece.
You can keep your Mona Lisas and your Picassos. This is something else.
What he found most moving was the clown’s expression.
Sad and … even Danilo himself couldn’t describe it.
Stubborn?
No, not exactly.
Proud.
Yes, that was it. The proud clown had defied the mountain and all its dangers to get up there. Although he wasn’t an expert climber, but just a poor clown. What an incredible effort it must have been, in those long, broken shoes. And just imagine the cold …
Why had he made all that effort? Of course, to pick a rare little flower to offer to the woman he loved, along with his heart.
He and that clown had a lot of things in common. He too had been treated like a bum, almost like a murderer, an alcoholic who was a public laughing stock, but tonight he would defy the mountain, he would risk his life just for the sake of picking a flower, the boutique to give to Teresa, the only woman he had ever loved.
Yes, he and that clown were sad and proud. Two misunderstood heroes.
The picture widened out to reveal a man at the side of the painting. His hair was flecked with grey, and he wore a blue blazer and a pink shirt with a white collar.
Danilo seized the remote control and turned up the volume.
‘This painting is one of the magnificent series of clowns in the mountains by maestro Moreno Capobianco,’ said the telesalesman, who spoke with a pronounced guttural R. ‘But of the whole series, if I may say so, this is undoubtedly the most effective and accomplished, a consummate work of art, where the artist has given of his best and has most poignantly expressed the … how shall I put it … the titanic, timeless struggle between man and nature. The meaning is clear, even to the layman: the clown represents farce, which ranges beyond the confines of the world as we see it, to reach places where no one has ever gone. Travelling towards God and love, on a mystico-religious journey.’
Danilo was incredulous. The expert was saying, in more precise terms, the very things he had thought himself. He turned the volume up even higher.
‘But, ladies and gentlemen, leaving aside the philosophical implications, let us look at concrete things: the magnificent landscape, the light, the refined phrasing, the confident brushwork … Capobianco’s brushwork is so delicate that … Just imagine for a moment having a picture like this in your sitting room, in your hall, if I may say so, wherever you wish, this is an unrepeatable opp …’
Danilo glanced at the bare wall beside the door. A rectangle measuring one metre by two seemed to pulse out from the rest of the wall.
That’s where it must go.
With a little halogen light just above it, it would be a knockout.
‘Imagine making yourself a gift of this masterpiece … Imagine having it, owning it, being able to do what you want with it, and for a mere seven thousand five hundred euros! An investment, ladies and gentlemen, which in the space of five years will multiply seven or eight times over, never mind your unit trusts and ISAs … If you pass up this opportunity, I would almost …’
Danilo turned back towards the television and then, as if in a trance, picked up the telephone and dialled the number that was scrolling across the screen.
64
Quattro Formaggi, too, had absently watched Dog Day Afternoon, but hadn’t made any connection between the film and the raid. Afterwards, growing bored, he had switched on the video recorder and started up Ramona’s Big Lips.
He had fast-forwarded to the scene where she was fucking the moustachioed sheriff.
‘Don’t you know that only whores hitch-hike in this county?’ he recited in the voice of the lawman. And then, in falsetto, imitating Ramona’s female voice: ‘No, I didn’t know that, sheriff. All I know is I’ll do anything to avoid going to jail.’
While he was performing the dialogue he squatted down on the floor and started building a new railway station with Lego.
The window, pushed by the wind, suddenly blew open, and a gust of rain spattered his face and toppled a big table lamp which, like a crippled spaceship, crashed down onto a cardboard bridge lined with cars, destroying it, and then plunged into a papier-mâché mountain on which herds of rhinoceros and blue smurfs were grazing and scattered them among the flocks of sheep and Tiny Toons that were advancing into the mouth of a canyon.
Quattro Formaggi rushed over to shut the window.
On closer inspection he saw that the wind had wrought further havoc. The troops of blue soldiers, snakes and galactic robots had fallen over and some of them were floating in a lake made out of a Danish biscuit tin.
He ran his fingers through his hair, making strange grimaces with his mouth.
He must tidy up at once. He couldn’t do anything else while he knew that the crib was in such a mess.
‘But I’ve got to go round to Danilo’s. What am I going to do?’ he said to himself, pinching his cheek.
A minute. It’ll only take a minute.
What if Danilo rings me?
He switched off his mobile and started tidying up.
65
‘Fabi, listen, I’ve had a brilliant idea!’ Suddenly, as if someone had pressed PLAY on her remote control, Esmeralda woke up and jumped off the desk.
‘What?’
‘Let’s play a trick on Carraccio.’
‘What kind of trick?’
Esmeralda and Fabiana were sure Nuccia Carraccio, their maths mistress, hated them, because she resented the fact that they were pretty and she was a monster. And as well as never giving them good marks, they were sure she held black masses with Pozzolini, the PE teacher, against them.
‘Listen, you know the fat boy?’
‘Which fat boy?’
‘The one in 2C.’
‘Rinaldi.’
‘That’s him.’
Matteo Rinaldi was an unfortunate little lad. He suffered from a serious pituitary imbalance, and weighed a hundred and ten kilos at the age of twelve. In his fifth year at primary school he had won a certain notoriety by doing a testimonial for a campaign against child obesity promoted by the local council.
Fabiana stretched and yawned: ‘Well, what about him?’
‘Ravanelli said he was in the scouts with Rinaldi and that once Rinaldi crapped in a field. And out of curiosity he went to look at the turd …’ Esmeralda shook her head. ‘You can’t imagine the size … He said it was as big as …’ She struggled to remember. ‘… as a packet of precooked polenta. You know what that’s like, don’t you?’
‘No. I’ve never seen one. My mother usually makes it herself. What’s it like? Does it taste g
ood?’
‘No, not really. You cut it into slices and heat it up in the oven. The home-made stuff’s much better. Anyway …’ Esmeralda indicated the size with her hands and then added: ‘He says it was really hard, like a torpedo.’
‘So?’
‘We must get Rinaldi to crap on the teacher’s desk. On Wednesdays we have gym just before maths. During that lesson we could take him to the classroom and get him to climb up on the teacher’s desk and crap.’
Fabiana laughed scornfully. ‘What a stupid idea!’
Esmeralda looked at her in disappointment. ‘Why?’
‘How are you going to get Rinaldi to do it?’
Esmeralda hadn’t thought about that. Their weapon, seduction, which bent practically all the males in the school to their will, had no effect on that sexless lump.
‘What if we offered him cash? Or food?’ hazarded Esmeralda.
‘No, he’s got pots of money. I suppose maybe if you gave him a blow-job …’
Esmeralda made a disgusted expression: ‘Yuck … Not even if they killed me.’
Fabiana touched her kidneys with a grimace of pain. ‘How much would you charge him for a blow-job?’
‘There’s no price!’
‘A thousand euros?’
‘Are you crazy? Too little.’
‘Three thousand?’
She smiled. ‘Three thousand. Well, I might consider it …’
It was their favourite game. They spent hours imagining giving hand-jobs and blow-jobs and letting themselves be sodomised by the ugliest guys they knew for money.
‘Suppose you had to choose between Rinaldi and …’ Fabiana couldn’t think of anyone more disgusting, but then had an inspiration: ‘… the tobacconist in the shopping mall?’
‘The one with the toupee stuck on with Bostik?’
‘Yes!’
‘I don’t know … Neither of them.’
‘If you don’t do it, they’ll kill your brother.’
‘You bastard! That’s not fair!’
‘Yes it is! Yes it is!’
Esmeralda reflected for a moment. ‘Well, if I think about it carefully, the tobacconist. At least he might throw in a few packets of fags.’