He had never thought he would die in the mud, like an animal.
Or that it would happen so soon.
But it’s fair enough.
It all added up. He had started by taking his mother away and now he was taking his father away.
I mustn’t cry, though.
He longed to pull him out of the mud. He longed to hug him, but he was paralysed. As if he had been bitten by a cobra. He opened his mouth and tried to spit out the thing that was stopping him breathing.
He kept looking at him because he couldn’t believe it, he just couldn’t believe it, that that dead man there was Rino Zena, his father.
Finally Cristiano took a step forward. The cone of light from the torch lit up a segment of forehead immersed in the grey slime, the nose, the eyes splashed with earth. The foam at the side of the mouth.
He took the torch between his teeth and with both hands grabbed hold of his father’s wrist, trying to pull him up.
Rino Zena’s helpless body bent slowly over and leaned sideways against a big rock covered with moss. His head drooped onto his chest and his arms opened out like the wings of a dead pigeon. The rainwater trickled down his forehead and over his earth-clogged eyebrows.
Cristiano put his ear to his father’s chest. He couldn’t hear a thing. All other sounds were drowned out by the pulsing of the blood in his eardrums and the rustle of the rain falling on the trees.
He knelt there, drying his face with his hand, not knowing what to do, then, after a moment’s hesitation, he raised his father’s head and pulled up one of his eyelids with his forefinger, revealing a glassy eye like that of a stuffed animal.
He picked up the mobile phone from the puddle. He tried switching it on. It didn’t work. He put it in his pocket.
His father couldn’t just lie there in a heap like that.
He grabbed hold of his shoulders and tried to sit him up. But he wouldn’t stay put. Cristiano straightened him up, but as soon as he let go he slowly flopped down again.
In the end he bored a stick into the ground and propped it under his armpit.
What on earth did he come here for? Why did he leave the van and go into the wood?
He must have had some kind of turn. He’d had a headache all day. He must have got into the van, perhaps intending to go to hospital.
Does this road lead to the hospital?
He had no idea.
But he had been too ill and hadn’t made it, and had got out of the van and gone to die in the wood.
Like a wolf.
When wolves are sick they leave the pack and go off on their own to die.
‘Why didn’t you wake me, you bastard?’ he asked him, and kicked the stick, whereupon his father slid back into the mud.
He had to get him out of there. The only way was to grab him by the feet and drag him down to the road.
He got hold of his ankles and started to pull, but immediately let go again as if he’d had an electric shock.
For a moment he had thought a tremor had passed through his father’s legs.
Cristiano dropped the torch, knelt on the ground and started frantically feeling his thighs, arms and chest and shaking his head, which lolled from one side to the other.
Was it just my imagination?
He put his hands on his chest, trying to push and repeat ‘One, two, three’, as he had seen them do on ER.
He didn’t know how to do it or what the purpose of it was, but he went on doing it for a long time, with no discernible effect except that the muscles of his arms became as hard as marble.
He couldn’t go on; he was wet through and frozen stiff. Suddenly all the accumulated tiredness and anxiety crushed him and he collapsed on his father’s chest.
He must sleep. Just for a short while. Five minutes.
Then he would take him to the van.
He curled up on the ground beside the corpse. The cold was relentless. He hugged himself, squeezed his arms against his chest to stop the shivers, rubbed his shoulders trying to warm himself up.
He took the mobile phone out of his pocket, but it didn’t come on.
Perhaps I could leave him here.
Better in a wood than in a fucking graveyard, with a bunch of strangers …
He would decay into compost. No priests, churches, funerals.
The torch, on the ground, painted a luminous oval on a carpet of dead leaves, of twigs, on a tree stump where a cluster of long-stemmed mushrooms grew and on his father’s hand.
Cristiano remembered one time when Rino, halfway across a bridge, had pulled the car over to the side of the road and jumped up onto the parapet. Down below ran the river, flowing between the rocks that protruded from the eddies.
Then he had started walking along, holding his arms out on either side like the acrobats in the circus.
Cristiano had got out of the car and started following his father on the pavement. He didn’t know what to do. The only thing he could think of doing was to walk along beside him.
Cars passed by on the road, but nobody stopped.
Without looking at him, Rino had said: ‘If you’re hoping somebody will stop and talk me into getting down, forget it. Those things only happen in films.’ He had looked at Cristiano. ‘Don’t tell me you’re scared I’ll fall!’
Cristiano had nodded. He was tempted to grab him by the foot and pull him down, but what if he accidentally knocked him down into the river?
‘I can’t fall.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I know the secret of how not to fall.’
‘What is it?’
‘Do you think I’m going to tell a snotty-nosed little kid like you? You’ll have to find out for yourself. I did.’
‘Come on, papa, please, tell me!’ Cristiano had protested. His stomach ached as if he had eaten too much ice cream.
‘No, you tell me something. If I fall and die, will you go to my grave and pray for your father?’
‘Yes. Every day.’
‘And will you bring me flowers?’
‘Sure.’
‘Who’ll give you the money to buy them?’
Cristiano had thought for a moment. ‘Quattro Formaggi.’
‘Some hope … He hasn’t got a penny …’
‘I’ll take them from the other graves, then.’
Rino had burst out laughing and jumped down from the parapet. Cristiano had felt his stomach ache disappear. Then his father had picked him up and hoisted him over his shoulder like a sack. ‘Don’t you dare. I’ll be watching you from heaven. I won’t miss a thing from up there …’
On the way home Cristiano had asked a million questions about life and death. Discovering the secret of how not to fall off the bridge had suddenly become the most important thing in the world for him. And with an eight-year-old child’s persistence he had kept pestering his father till one morning, while they were sitting on the sofa, Rino had given in. ‘You want to know the secret? I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t tell anyone else. Do you promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘It’s simple: I’m not scared of dying. Only people who are scared get killed doing stupid things like walking on a bridge. If you don’t give a damn about dying you can be sure you won’t fall. Death picks on the faint-hearted. Anyway, I can’t die. Not until the Lord decides I must, anyway. Don’t worry, the Lord doesn’t want me to leave you alone. You and I are as one. I’ve got you and you’ve got me. There’s nobody else. So God will never separate us.’
Cristiano, curled up in the mud, took hold of his father’s hand and sighed: ‘Why did you take him, then? Explain to me, why?’
172
Beppe Trecca was still sitting in the Puma at the side of the road, watching the windscreen wipers do their best to dry the glass.
He couldn’t bring himself to drive on.
He was thinking of his mother.
“Don’t worry about me, Giuseppe. Go. Go …” Such had been Evelina Trecca’s words to him, from her bed in a ward
of the Gemelli hospital in Rome.
He had sat there beside her, hardly able to recognise her, she was so withered up … The cancer was sucking her away.
‘Mama, you know if you’d prefer me not to go, I won’t. It’s no problem. I don’t mind,’ he had said in a low voice, squeezing her bony hand.
Evelina had sighed, with her eyes closed. ‘What’s the point in your staying here? With all the poison they put into my veins I can’t keep my eyes open. I sleep all day long. Don’t worry about me, Giuseppe. Go. Go … Enjoy yourself a bit, while you can.’
‘Mama, are you sure?’
‘Go … Go …’
And he had gone. Five days. Just long enough to go and see Giulia Savaglia in Sharm-el-Sheikh and come back.
He had met Giulia Savaglia at university and now she was working as a group leader in a tourist village, and she had so warmly invited him to pay her a visit that Beppe had thought …
On his third day at the Coral Bay she had explained what he was to her.
How had she put it? “A special person. A dear friend.”
That same day his mother had died. She had died without her son holding her hand. And she had probably wondered where he had gone after the twenty-five years they had spent together without ever parting. She had died alone.
Beppe Trecca hadn’t forgiven himself.
He had shut himself up in his mother’s flat at Ariccia, depressed and grief-stricken, not wanting to see anyone. His plans of becoming a sociologist, of applying for a job as a university lecturer, had gone to the devil. Doped up on antidepressants, he had vegetated for a year, and the only things he had succeeded in doing, apart from putting on ten kilos, had been going to church and praying for his mother’s soul and taking a diploma in social work without even opening a book.
And the twentieth time that his cousin Luisa had told him there was a vacancy for a social worker in Varrano, he, in exasperation, had applied.
“Don’t worry about me, Giuseppe. Go. Go … ”
I left you to die alone. Forgive me. I ran away. And it wasn’t because of Giulia Savaglia, it was because I knew you were going and I didn’t have the strength to stay beside you and watch you die.
Suddenly, like a dazed boxer who gets a bucketful of water thrown in his face, Beppe Trecca realised the monstrosity of what he was doing.
Sobbing, he jumped out of the car, ran over to the African, who was lying where he had left him, seized him by the shoulders and said: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take you to hospital.’ He started dragging him towards the car, but stopped, panting, and laid the body on the ground to regain his breath. He took two steps backwards, then like a madman grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket and started shaking him. ‘Why do you have to ruin my life? Why did you step out in front of me? What do you want from me? It’s not fair! It’s not fair! I … I haven’t done anything to you.’ He froze, as if he had no more strength in his arms. The dead man’s face a few centimetres from his own.
He looked peaceful. As if he was having a lovely dream.
No, I can’t do it.
I wish I could, but I can’t.
The realisation that he didn’t have the guts to put that man in his car and take him to hospital made him burst into floods of tears. He opened his mouth and, sobbing convulsively, addressed the Eternal Father. ‘Please, help me. What must I do? What must I do? Tell me! I can’t do it. Give me the strength. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t see him … Please, God, help me.’ He started walking around the corpse, then put his hands over his eyes and implored: ‘You who can do anything, do it. Perform a miracle. Bring him back to life. I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. I swear to you that if you save his life I’ll give up everything … I’ll give up the only beautiful thing in my life … If you save him I promise I’ll …’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘… I’ll give up Ida. I’ll never see her again. I swear to you.’
He dropped to his knees and knelt there, motionless, with his head bowed, no longer crying.
173
Cristiano Zena opened his eyes again.
He must have dozed off.
I must get papa home.
It took him a few seconds to realise that the dark thing slowly moving in front of his nose was his father’s forefinger.
Wait. Don’t move.
It must be another hallucination, like the tremor he had felt earlier when he had taken hold of his legs.
Cristiano slowly raised his head.
No, he hadn’t been mistaken. It was moving. Only slightly, but it was moving.
He couldn’t restrain himself, he let out a whoop and grasped his father’s hand.
The thumb, the forefinger, the ring finger … were bending, as if trying to squeeze an invisible ball.
Rino Zena started twisting his mouth and blinking his eyes, and a trickle of white foam emerged from the corner of his mouth.
Cristiano shook him by the shoulders. ‘Papa! Papa! Papa! It’s me!’
His father started coughing and opened his eyes.
It was too much. Cristiano, in the dark, lost all control; the torch slipped out of his hand, he hugged him and, sobbing, thumped him on the chest. ‘You bastard, you bastard. I knew you couldn’t die. You can’t die … You can’t leave me … I’ll kill you … I’ll kill you, I swear it …’
He picked up the torch and shone it in his face. ‘Papa, can you hear me? Give me a sign if you can hear me … Squeeze my hand if you can’t talk …’
Suddenly a ten-thousand volt electric shock seemed to go through his father’s body, and Rino opened his eyes again, rolled them upwards and started trembling, grinding his teeth and shaking his legs and arms and head as if he was possessed by the devil.
It all lasted less than twenty seconds and then, quite suddenly, the convulsions left him.
Cristiano gave him several slaps on the face, trying to revive him, but it was no good …
He wasn’t dead, though. His chest was rising and falling.
He must rush to the hospital at once, call an ambulance, doctors …
Quick! What are you waiting for?
Cristiano got up and dashed towards the road, but he had only gone a few steps when he tripped, the torch flew out of his hands and he found himself in darkness lying on top of something …
He reached out and touched it, trying make out what it was. It was soft, wet and covered with wool and cloth and it had …
Hair!
He jumped to his feet as if he’d been snatched by an invisible hand and, backing away, put his hands in front of his mouth and shouted: ‘Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!’
He picked up the torch and with a trembling hand shone it down on …
Fabiana!
With her eyes open. Her mouth open. Her arms open. Her legs open. Her jacket open. Her blouse open. Her head open.
A gash began from her hairline, ran down her rain-spattered forehead and split one of her eyebrows in two. Her piercing hung from a strip of pink flesh. Her hair was soaked in blood and earth. Her eyes staring. Her bra torn. Her bosom, breastbone and stomach covered with some reddish stuff. Her trousers pulled down to her knees. Her legs scratched. Her violet panties torn.
His guts churning, Cristiano backed away and opened his mouth, trying to gulp down air, but a wave of warm stuff came up and he puked out a stream of sour liquid and then, groaning, fled into the wood, but after a few dozen metres he fell to his knees and, clutching a tree trunk, tried to vomit again but without success.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and told himself he hadn’t seen anything, that it was only a nightmare and that he must pull himself together, get out, out of there, and everything would be all right again.
‘Pull yourself together. Now you’re going to go away, very calmly.’
He must go out onto the road, pick up his bicycle, ride home and get back into bed.
I can do it.
So why couldn’t he get to his feet, why did he keep seeing Fabi
ana’s eyebrow split in two and that strip of flesh with the ring hanging from it and those blue eyes flooded with rainwater?
The secret was not to think, to give yourself simple orders and to carry them out one by one.
Now get up.
He breathed in and, using the tree trunk as a support, got to his feet.
Now go out onto the road.
He stood up and although his legs seemed to belong to someone else he started to walk, holding his arms out in front of him, through the dark vegetation. And at last he came out onto the road. He climbed over the guardrail and started running down the slope, forgetting his bicycle. Suddenly the wood was lit up by a beam of light.
Stop them.
He stood in the middle of the road and raised his arms, but at the last moment, when the car’s headlights were about to light him up, an impulse made him dodge sideways and jump behind the guardrail before he could be seen.
Lying in the stream that flowed along the roadside he wondered why he hadn’t stopped that car.
174
Beppe Trecca got back into his car, sniffling.
The Lord hadn’t performed the miracle, but he hadn’t given him the courage to take the man to hospital either.
The social worker turned the heating right up, pushed down the clutch, selected first gear, glanced in the mirror and nearly dropped dead on the spot.
The African was standing there peering in at him through the rear window.
175
Stop it. Stop thinking.
He must get his father and carry him away and stop wondering what the hell had happened in that wood. Cristiano Zena returned to the van, banishing the vision of Fabiana dead. He climbed into the back and started rubbing his body with a piece of cloth to relieve the cold that had penetrated his bones.
He hauled out the wheelbarrow and went into the wood.
176
‘What happened? I can’t remember anything.’ The African was sitting next to Beppe Trecca, who was driving along at twenty kilometres an hour with an expression of terror on his face.