Then he recognised it. His anal sphincter contracted to the diameter of a stick of macaroni.
It was Zena.
Rino Zena.
24
Rino Zena examined the terrified face of that pansy Max Marchetta. His moustaches had gone limp and looked like two rats’ tails, his glistening, greasy quiff hung down over his forehead like a shed roof.
Rino couldn’t make out what that piece of cellophane was that was hanging from his teeth.
He continued to hold him pinned to the wall with his left arm.
‘Please … Please … I haven’t done anything to you …’ whimpered Marchetta desperately, waving his arms like a disco dancer.
‘Well, I’m going to do something to you.’ Rino raised his right arm and closed his fist. He took aim at the nose, anticipating the pleasure of hearing the septal cartilage crunch under his knuckles. But his fist remained suspended in the air.
Right next to that terror-stricken face hung a photograph. It had been taken in open country, on a windy day. The reeds with their plumes were bent over to one side. The sky was streaked with wispy clouds. In the centre was old Marchetta, in his younger days. He was short and round-faced. He was wearing a heavy, ankle-length overcoat, and holding his cloth cap down on his head with one hand and clasping his walking stick in the other. Around him stood five workmen in blue overalls. In a corner, slightly to one side, was Rino, sitting on the wheel of a tractor. He was thin and gaunt. At his feet sat Ritz, Marchetta’s fox terrier. A thick pipe came out of the ground and ran across the field. Everyone was looking at the camera lens with very solemn expressions on their faces. Including the dog.
Still holding Max Marchetta fast, Rino grasped the picture and lifted it off its hook.
In one corner was the date ‘1988’. Nearly twenty years had passed.
Such a long time.
Then Rino looked again at the young businessman who stood there motionless, with his eyes screwed up and his arms in front of his face, whispering: ‘Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.’
So this was the new owner of Euroedil. A guy who spent his days waxing his chest and looking at himself in the mirror at the gym and who as soon as anyone raised their fists started begging for mercy.
He grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him on the sofa.
25
Max Marchetta opened his eyes slowly, with the expression of a lobster that has been dangled over a cauldron of boiling water and then, by some inscrutable decree of fate, put back in the fishtank.
In the chair, on the other side of the desk, sat Rino. He had lit a cigarette and was looking straight through him as though he was facing a ghost. He was holding the photo. A very, very unpleasant feeling was forming inside Max Marchetta. He was going to remember this day for a long time, if he was still capable of remembering.
Zena had gone mad and was dangerous. How often had he read in the news about workers running amok and murdering their bosses? A few months earlier near Cuneo some workers had set fire to a young textile entrepreneur in the car park of his factory.
He peeked at the cigarette in Zena’s mouth.
I don’t want to be burned to death.
‘Look at this photograph.’ The psychopath tossed the plexiglass frame over to him. Max caught it. He looked at it and then sat motionless.
26
Rino Zena leaned back in his chair and focused on a corner of the ceiling. ‘Eighteen years ago. A fucking eternity. I’m the thin one on the right. Sitting on the tractor. I still had a good head of hair then. Do you know how long it took us to build that water pipe? Three weeks. It was my first real job. One of those where you turn up at five in the morning and go home at dusk. On the twenty-eighth we’d get our pay cheque. Your father would hand one to each worker and every time he’d crack the same old joke: ‘I’m paying you this month; I don’t know if I will next month.’ In hindsight it wasn’t so very funny. But you could bet your life he would say those words. Just as you could bet your life you’d get your money on the twenty-eighth, even if the Third World War had broken out that very same day. Do you see that workman there, the shortest one? His name was Enrico Sartoretti; he died ten years ago. Lung cancer. Two months and he was gone. It was him who introduced me to your father. In those days there was only the shed where the changing rooms are now. And your father worked in a sort of glass booth. But you must remember that. I used to see you sometimes. You used to turn up in a red sports car. We must be about the same age, you and me. Anyway, to cut a long story short, your father took me on on trial the very day they started building the pipe that took the water out of the river and carried it to the power station. Twenty days to finish it. And there were six of us. In all my life I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard as I did in those three weeks. On the last day we worked till four in the morning. And fuck me if we didn’t finish on time.’
What the hell has got into me? Rino asked himself. Why was he telling that son of a bitch all these things? And yet he felt that it was doing him good. He picked up a paperweight made from an old brick faced with a brass plaque, and turned it over in his hands.
‘Your father cared about his workers. I don’t mean he was like a father to us or any of that crap. If you didn’t do your job properly you were out on your ear. No two ways about it. But if you didn’t complain and you worked hard he respected you. If there was work, you could be sure he’d call you.
‘One Christmas he turned up with panettoni and bottles of spumante and gave one to every other workman but none to me. I was upset. Then I thought I must have fucked something up and that he was angry with me. That job was important; if he sacked me I was in the shit. He called me into his office and said: “Did you see that? No panettone for you.” I asked him if I’d done something wrong and he looked at me and said yes I bloody well had – I’d brought a son into the world without having the wherewithal to give him a decent life. I told him it was none of his business. He was beginning to piss me off. Who did he think he was to pass judgement on my life?
‘But he burst out laughing. “Are you planning to bring him up in some ramshackle hut? The first thing is a house; everything else comes afterwards.” And he told me to look out of the window. Well, there was nothing outside but a truck loaded with bricks. I didn’t understand. “You see those bricks?” he said “They’re for you. They were left over from the last job. If you use them sparingly you might even get two floors out of them.” And using those bricks, working at weekends, I built my house.’ Rino continued to turn the brick over in his hands. ‘They were just like this one here. I don’t expect your father has ever told you that story; he’s not the type. And when the phone calls started getting less frequent I realised Euroedil must be in trouble. There are more building firms around now than there are dog turds. The last time I saw him was about six months ago, in the little park near Corso Vittorio. He was on a bench. His head was nodding and his hands were shaking. There was a Filipino who treated him like a baby. He didn’t recognise me. I had to repeat my name three times. But in the end he understood. He smiled. And do you know what he said to me? He said there was no need to worry, you were there now. And Euroedil was in good hands. Can you believe that? In good hands.’
Rino slammed the brick on the table, splitting it in two, and Max Marchetta shrank even further back into the huge black leather armchair.
‘You’re a lucky man, you know. If I hadn’t seen that photograph you’d be in an ambulance by this time, believe you me. But you got away with it, as you always will, because the world is made for people like you.’ Rino smiled. ‘The world is made to measure for nonentities. You’re clever. You take the black slaves and those bastards from the East and you pay them peanuts. And they put up with it. Hunger’s an ugly beast. And what about the guys who’ve worked their arses off for this firm? Sod them. You don’t even waste a phone call on them. The truth is, you’ve got no respect for those sons of bitches who come to steal the bread from our mouths, or for us, or even for yourself. Look at y
ou, you’re a clown … A clown dressed up as a manager. If I’m not going to break every bone in your body it’s only out of respect for your father. In the end, you see, it all comes down to respect.’
Rino got up from the chair, opened the door and left the office.
27
It took Max Marchetta about two minutes to get over the fright. His behaviour in such situations was much the same as that of a pilchard. After an attack, if it manages to survive, a pilchard starts swimming around again just as energetically as before.
Max stood up, smoothed down his suit with his fingers and straightened his hair. His hands were still shaking and his armpits felt as cold as if they had ice cubes under them.
He took a deep breath and wondered if the whitening strip he had swallowed when he had been rammed against the wall would be bad for his stomach. Should he ring his dentist? Or a gastroenterologist?
How on earth had his father been able to stand working with such people? That psychopathic Nazi, along with all those other layabouts, had nearly been the ruin of Euroedil.
The niggers were different: they had respect. And he thanked his father’s arteriosclerosis for enabling him to take up his rightful position and steer the ship back into safer waters where he could repair the leaks and drive out the parasites that had been infesting it.
At least Zena wouldn’t show his face round there again. Something advised him not to mobilise lawyers and make official complaints, but to overlook what had occurred and keep out of his way.
But there was someone else who was going to have to pay. That stupid bitch of a secretary hadn’t warned him of Zena’s arrival, and hadn’t even taken the trouble to call the police.
He lifted the telephone, pressed a button and said in a quavering voice: ‘Mrs Pirro, could you come here, please?’ He hung up and straightened the knot of his tie.
For weeks he had been looking for an excuse to get rid of the old bat. Well, she had presented him with one on a silver salver.
28
The Nazis originated in Germany in the early twentieth century. And they owe everything to Adolf Hitler who thought up the whole idea.
Adolf Hitler was a penniless painter but, he had a great dream of glory making Germany the strongest nation in the world and then conquering the whole of Europe. In order to do this he had to drive, out of Germany all the Jews who were polluting the Aryan race. The Jews had come and now they owned the factries and practised usury, forcing the Germans to work in the steel factories. The Aryan race was the strongest in the world, only: they needed a leader and Hitler knew he had to get power and take it by force and then send all the Jews to the concentration camps because, they were polluting the master race. He invented the sign of the swastika, which is the sign of the rising sun and he told the Germans that if they believed in him they would get rid of the politicians and then he would create an invincible army. And he did all this because together with Napoleon, he was the greatest man in history. Though really Hitler is greater than Napoleon;
today we need a new Hitler, to drive out of Italy all the niggers and the im migrants who steal work and to help real Italians to work. The niggers and the im migrants are creating a mafia in Italy: worse than that created by the Jews in the second world war. The trouble is nobody in Italy is patriotic any more.
The European community is wrong every nation is different and the Slavs must not be allowed to steal the Italians’ jobs and women. Because the Italians, have always been the strongest just think of the ancient Romans and off Julius Caesar who conquered the world and brought civilization to the barbarians who were Germans too by the way.
People hate Nazism today because they pretend it’s right to be open to different cultures. They always say that, but they don’t really believe it themselves. The Arabs are worse than the Jews: look at what they do to women they treat them like slaves and make them go around dressed in black cloaks. And they should cut each others’ throats in their own countries. They want to distroy us. They hate us. Because our culture is superior. We must fight back. Attack them with our army and exterminate them, like the Jews.
Cristiano paused for a moment. It was as if he had opened a tap and the words had gushed out. He hadn’t said much about how the Nazis had seized power because he couldn’t remember the dates. The essay was a bit on the short side, too, but there was only a quarter of an hour left before they had to hand their work in and he still had to make a fair copy.
29
While Rino was talking to Max Marchetta, Quattro Formaggi had slipped away from Danilo and gone to the personnel office.
He had looked in through the window. Sitting at her desk was Liliana Lotti.
For a while Quattro Formaggi stood there looking at her, knowing he himself was unobserved. She was a bit plump, but she was beautiful. Not at first sight. You had to look carefully and then you discovered that her beauty was hidden beneath her fat. She kept it covered as grasshoppers do with their colourful wings.
Besides, he and Liliana had a lot of things in common. They weren’t married. They lived alone. And they both loved pizza (though her favourite was the Napolitana). She had a little dog. He had two turtles.
He often saw her at San Biagio, at the six o’clock mass. When they exchanged the sign of peace she would smile at him. And once, a few days before Christmas, he had met her in the high street carrying a lot of plastic bags.
‘Corrado!’ she had called out.
No one ever called him Corrado, so it had been a few moments before Quattro Formaggi had realised she was talking to him.
‘How are you?’
He had straightened his glasses and thumped himself on the thigh. ‘Very well, thank you.’
‘I’ve been buying the usual presents for my relatives …’ Liliana had opened the bags, full of brightly coloured parcels. ‘How about you? Are you giving any presents?’
Quattro Formaggi had shrugged.
‘Look what I’ve bought … But this one’s for me.’ Out of one plastic bag she had taken a statuette of a fishmonger standing behind a market stall covered with octopus, mussels and silvery fish. ‘This year I took my crib out of the cellar. And I thought it needed a new character.’
Quattro Formaggi had turned it over in his hands, astonished.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes. It’s beautiful.’ He wanted to tell her that he had a crib too, but supposing she asked to see it? He couldn’t let her into the flat.
‘Listen, why don’t you take it? As a Christmas present from me. I know, I really should wrap it up …’
Quattro Formaggi had felt his face flush with embarrassment. ‘I can’t …’
‘Please take it. I’d be so happy.’
In the end he had accepted it. He had put it beside one of the lakes in his crib. He considered it, together with the Barbapapa, the finest piece in the whole scene.
If now, for example, he were to enter the office and greet her, he was sure Liliana would be pleased. The problem was that he found it impossible to speak to her. As soon as he came anywhere near her the words dried up.
Quattro Formaggi gave himself a thump on the leg and a slap on the neck, summoned up his courage and grasped the handle of the door, but then he saw her answer the phone and start fiddling with a large envelope full of papers.
Some other time.
30
Danilo Aprea, leaning against the van, saw Rino come striding out of the prefabricated building. From his manner it was clear that he was furious. He must have found out that they had been dumped.
Danilo had known for a couple of days that Marchetta’s son didn’t want them, but had kept the news to himself.
He had heard it from Duccio, one of the old team, who had also been ditched.
But that job with Euroedil was a serious problem. It would have gone on for a month, if not longer. And Rino, who wasn’t really that keen on the bank raid, would have dropped out as soon as he had the money in his pocket; and if he had dropped out
, Quattro Formaggi would have followed suit.
It was madness to slog your guts out for others when you had a foolproof plan for making a million.
At the moment, however, Rino was too angry; this wasn’t the time to discuss the raid with him. Like a pressure cooker: he needed to have his steam let out before you opened him up.
Danilo had a two-and-a-half litre bottle of grappa in his bag. The perfect extinguisher for spitting rages and similar complaints.
‘Let’s go. Come on. Get in.’ Rino climbed into the Ducato and turned on the engine.
Danilo and Quattro Formaggi obeyed without a word.
The van moved off, raising a spray of mud, and shot out onto the road without stopping at the give-way line.
‘What happened?’ asked Quattro Formaggi hesitantly.
Rino stared at the road, his jaw quivering. ‘We’ve finished with that dump.’ Then he went on: ‘I should have killed him, but … Why didn’t I? What the fuck’s got into me lately?’
‘… for Cristiano’s sake,’ Quattro Formaggi prompted him.
Rino swallowed, squeezing the steering wheel as if he was trying to snap it. His eyes were glistening, as though he had put them too close to a flame.
‘Yes, that’s it. I held back for Cristiano’s sake.’
Danilo realised that this was the moment to produce the extinguisher. He opened his battered old bag and pulled out the bottle. ‘Surprise, surprise!’ He unscrewed the top and waved the grappa in front of Rino’s nose.
‘If it wasn’t for you two …’ Rino was overcome by emotion and couldn’t finish the sentence. He opened his mouth and gulped in air. ‘Give it here.’ He took a good swig. ‘Shit, what hooch! It tastes like turpentine. Where did you get it, the DIY store?’
The three of them passed it around in silence. None of them was thinking about where they were going. On either side, beyond the rows of skeletal trees, the fields of black earth ran by, with their rows of high-tension pylons resembling little Eiffel Towers.