Let the Games Begin (28 page)

Fabrizio was suddenly decisive. Despite his fear of ferocious beasts, having this woman beside him in need of protection made him feel strong and fearless. He got to his feet and helped Larita to pull herself up. ‘Hold on to my belt and stay behind me.' He put out his arms like a sleepwalker and, wobbling over the rocks, he took a few uncertain steps in the dark. ‘This way we'll hurt ourselves, though. We're better off on all-fours.'

And so they crawled until the two of them felt the gravel beneath their hands.

There, in the centre of the ravine, where there were no trees, the sky reflected the lights of the city and they were able to make out a fence that surrounded the trench in the middle of the road.

‘Here we are!' Fabrizio stood up. ‘Let's hold on to the fence and walk along here. But first I need something, otherwise I can't go on any further.'

‘What?'

‘Another kiss.'

He opened his mouth and felt her tongue slide over his, lapping at his palate and tonsils. He hugged her tight, he pulled her up against him, but he held back from making her feel his erection.

Yes, we really are a beautiful couple.

I'm going to marry this girl
. . .

I'm so lucky to have met her. And it's all thanks to that clown Salvatore Chiatti and his rubbish party.

All right, Sasà, I'll let you off. I won't write an article against you
.

 

55

‘Yes! Zombie, you're the best!' the leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had screamed, pushing his fists into the air when darkness had shrouded the Villa.

It was about time something went in his favour. Now all he had to do was grab the singer.

Mantos shone the torch around, to try and understand where he was. The road he was walking continued on into a sort of ravine that split the wood in two. He pulled the small map of Villa Ada out of his backpack and studied it carefully.

‘Perfect!' He was in the right direction, he had to go down the canyon and would come straight to the lake where they had organised the bivouac for the participants in the tiger hunt. That's where he would find the singer, along with the other guests, all of them afraid. In the confusion and under the cover of the darkness, it'd be a piece of cake to drug her and kidnap her.

Elated, he began to run, the Durendal in his left hand, the torch in his right, and adrenalin flooding his arteries. What a weird phenomenon:
now that he was about to die, he felt more alive than he had felt in his whole life, capable of doing anything. Satan was finally on his side. He was a free swinger, an anarchical spirit, a bloodhound of chaos. Someone like him was not afraid of death, and gave his best when chaos reigned.

You'll finally see who you're up against, my dear Mr Kurtz Minetti
.

Just as he was jumping over a puddle, a flash of light behind him lit up the road. The leader of the Beasts turned off his torch, threw himself to the side, hiding behind an oak tree.

A car was coming. He could see the headlights coming closer, but he couldn't hear any noise. It had to be one of those electric buggies that they used to move around the Villa.

He stood still and waited for it to go by. There was only the driver inside the small convertible.

And if I hijacked the car? I could use it to load up Larita and take her to the sacrificial spot
.

Without stopping to think, he took off, head down, following the small car.

 

56

Fabrizio Ciba, feeling happy, was thinking that in a couple of days' time he would be with his beautiful girlfriend in Majorca, at Capdepera, in his house. But then he remembered how humid it was, the dead spiders in the bath tub, the central heating with air locks. And the table with the novel on it, waiting for him. He had to reconstruct the entire storyline, cut out some charac . . .

The writer's brain stalled for a second and reset, wiping out that last thought.

What was the name of that five-star hotel with the spa
. . .?

They should go on a proper holiday, go to a far-off place where they could unwind and live out their love affair. He laid an arm across Larita's shoulders, as if they were old companions. ‘Listen, what do you say to a nice little holiday to recover? How about the Maldives? You know those bungalows by the sea, the sultry nights beneath the dome of stars, the beds with mosquito nets . . .'

‘Of course. I'd like that.' Larita was silent for a moment. ‘Listen, Fabrizio . . .'

‘Yes?'

It took her a few too many seconds to ask him the question. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?'

‘Me? Don't be silly!' Ciba answered quickly.

‘Does the idea make you sick?'

‘No, not at all. It's just that I'm a writer . . . Well, you're a musician, maybe you can understand me. I'm a little afraid of my feelings. If they're too strong, I worry they'll dry me up. It's an irrational fear, I know, but I have the feeling that when I let love into my life, I don't have enough to give to the characters in my books.' He was revealing something that he had never told anyone before. ‘That doesn't mean that I'm not ready to give it a go. What about you?' He would have liked to look at her, but the darkness only let him intuit her silhouette.

‘I ended a relationship with a guy who didn't love himself at all. In other words, an arsehole. And I risked my life following him. Don Toniolo's rehab centre, and my faith, saved me.'

While Larita spoke, Fabrizio recalled having read somewhere that she had been in a relationship with a drug addict singer, and that they both nearly died of overdoses.

‘And then since I got back to a normal lifestyle, I haven't
had the guts to get into other relationships. I am afraid I'll meet another arsehole. Even if being on my own, sometimes, is sad.'

Fabrizio pulled her towards him and wrapped his arm around her waist. ‘The two of us could really be happy together. I can feel it.'

Larita laughed. ‘Who knows why, but I was convinced you had a girlfriend. After the lunch back in the Villa, I tried to call my agent to find out, but he had his mobile off. Do you believe in destiny?'

‘I believe in the facts. And the facts say that we are both survivors. And they say that we have to give it a chance.' He hugged her hard, as if she might run away, and kissed her. What a pity they were in the dark, he would have liked to look in her eyes.

She suddenly pulled away. ‘And if we went to Nairobi instead?'

‘You want to go to Kenya? I went there once. Malindi. The sea isn't bad, but nothing compared to the Maldives.'

They began walking again.

‘No . . . No . . . What are you thinking? To the slums of Nairobi, to vaccinate children. I do it every year. It's really important. If you came, too, a famous writer, you would be giving them a gift. You would help the missionaries to throw light on this terrible situation.'

Fabrizio rolled his eyes up at the sky. Bloody fucking hell, he wanted to spend a quiet week relaxing and she, in answer, offered him a humanitarian nightmare.

‘Well, yeah . . . Sure . . . We could . . . But . . .' he stuttered.

‘But what?'

Fabrizio was unable to be insincere. ‘Well, I was thinking of a holiday. Five-star. Breakfast in bed. That sort of thing.'

She caressed his neck. ‘You'll see . . . It'll be a thousand times better . . . I'm sure the experience will help you to write, too. You can't imagine how many ideas come to mind standing amidst all that pain.'

The writer didn't speak. If he wanted to have a serious relationship with a woman, he had to learn to take into consideration her wishes, and to trust her. And Larita was special. She had a strength greater than he would ever have imagined; she was a typhoon that swept away everything that stood in front of her, and at the same time she was vulnerable and innocent in a way that made you reconsider who you were.

‘Yes,' said Fabrizio. ‘All right, I'll come. I'll bring my computer so in the evenings, after the vaccines, I'll write.'

Larita squeezed his hand hard and, in a voice charged with emotion, said: ‘Come on, let's get out of this place. The real world is expecting us.'

 

57

Luckily, that little contraption was slow.

Mantos, out of breath, grabbed on to the back hatch and, with a clumsy leap, climbed on board. The driver didn't notice a thing.

There were huge saucepans on a tray on the back, which smelled strongly of curry.

Now he had to knock out the driver. He pulled on his hood, shrank back like a cat and, roaring like Sandokan, he jumped on the man, who, upon hearing that bestial scream and believing it was the tiger, instinctively slammed on the brakes.

The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon, sword in hand, continued to fly, gliding over the hood of the car and landing
bear-rug style in the middle of the street. The Durendal flew from his hand. The bumper bar stopped twenty centimetres from his feet.

Mbuma Bowanda, originally from Burkina Faso, where he'd been a shepherd for years, had seen a strange creature zoom over his head, overtake him and disappear in front of the car.

In his small village near Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, there was an ancient belief that, on nights of the full moon, winged demons formed from the mud of the rivers, as black as tar, and stole sheep and cows. They called them Bonindà. He didn't believe in such folkloristic fables, and yet this creature was exactly like the monsters his grandmother told him about when she used to put him to bed as a child.

He got up off the seat, trembling. The demon was still lying in front of the car. It looked dead.

Now I'll just drive over him
. . .

But he didn't do it. To begin with, he wasn't sure that demons could be killed like that, and anyway the wheels were too small to drive over the top of it.

He'd put the car into reverse when the black demon raised himself from the earth, his head low, placed his hands on the bonnet and let out a terrifying scream.

Mbuma had been told that people pissed themselves in fear, but he'd always believed they were exaggerating. He was forced to reconsider. He'd just pissed his pants.

He jumped out of the car and, in long strides, ran straight towards the Villa.

Despite his hands and knees being grazed by the gravel, the leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon almost had an orgasm, seeing that poor guy run away in terror.

The Sandokan scream really was scary. He had discovered he had a natural talent for screaming. If he'd known earlier, he would have screamed at Serena to scare her to death when he'd walked into their bedroom naked and armed with a sword.

He limped over to get the Durendal, which had been thrown in the field next to the car. He was about to take off when he realised that someone was shouting at him to stop. He couldn't see them, but they couldn't be far away.

Frightened, eh
?

Mantos laughed out loud, and decided to go pick up Zombie. It would be much easier for them to kidnap Larita together, and it would save Zombie walking all the way to Forte Antenne.

Return to Villa Reale

58

When Fabrizio Ciba and Larita had seen the headlights appear, they started screaming and waving their arms about. But the car stopped a couple of hundred metres away and after a few minutes it turned around and drove off.

The writer shook his head. ‘How about that!'

Larita was ahead of him. ‘Come on, it doesn't matter, we're almost there. I think I can see some lights.'

Fabrizio realised that at the bottom of the valley the shadows diluted into a reddish haze. ‘It's true! The camp isn't far off. Let's go.'

They started walking again with more vigour, the gravel crunching beneath their feet. The glare at the bottom of the canyon was strong enough to tinge the road red. A scarlet cloud was rising from the lake, hanging above the trees.

‘What on earth are they doing?' Larita wondered aloud.

‘They must have lit some fires to grill the meat.' Fabrizio sped up the pace. ‘I'm starting to get hungry.'

‘I'm a vegetarian. But maybe tonight a little steak . . .'

After another fifty metres a suffocating smell of burnt wood began to scratch their throats. In the middle of the cloud of smoke they could now see long tongues of fire reflected in the black waters of the lake.

Larita held her hand over her mouth. ‘Isn't that a little too much smoke for a barbecue?'

Finally the canyon opened out onto a wide plain, with the artificial lake. Right at the centre of the basin a house boat
was wrapped in flames. The stern had already disappeared into the water and the bow was lifting upwards, like a funeral pyre.

Larita grabbed Fabrizio's hand. ‘What's happening?'

‘I don't know. It must be some sort of show. Chiatti would kill his mum to surprise his guests.'

They walked a little further on. Larita pointed at a buggy overturned against a pine tree. Steel saucepans had spilled their contents on the ground and basmati rice was spread everywhere. They looked at each other wordlessly, then Fabrizio took her hand.

‘Stay close to me.'

They walked around the edge of the lake to get to the other pontoons that were moored opposite a pier protected by a long gazebo. In the water, where the glare of the pyre could be seen, they could hear strange movements and splashes and the slapping of fins. As if some huge fish were fighting over food.

Moving closer, they found overturned mushroom heaters and buffet tables. Broken bottles. Charcoal paper lanterns. And in the middle of that disaster a herd of warthogs and vultures scratched about in what was left of the Indian-style dinner. It looked as if a horde of barbarians had just passed through.

A sensible voice in Fabrizio's mind suggested that it would be best for them to get away from there as quickly as possible.

Perhaps a pride of lions has attacked the bivouac
.

And yet it didn't appear like something done by animals, but by human beings. The tents had all been ripped and rolled into balls.