The Crossroads (11 page)

Rino broke the silence: ‘It was a good essay. I liked it. What you said was right. Immigrants out, jobs for the Italians. That's right.'

Cristiano scooped up a handful of sand and made it into a ball. ‘Sure, we don't even have the freedom to write what we think.'

Rino zipped up his jacket. ‘Don't give me that crap about freedom. Everybody talks about freedom. Freedom here, freedom there. They fill their mouths with it. What good is freedom? If you're penniless and jobless you have all the freedom in the world, but you can't do a thing with it. You're free to go away if you want, you say. But where to? And how are you going to get there? Tramps are the freest people in the world, but they freeze to death on park benches. Freedom is a word that only serves to delude people. Do you know how many fools have died for freedom when they didn't even know what it was? Do you know who are the only people who really have freedom? The rich. They have freedom, all right …' He mused in silence for a while, then put his hand on his son's arm. ‘Do you want to see what my freedom looks like?'

Cristiano nodded.

Rino pulled out a pistol from behind his back. ‘This young lady's last name is freedom and her first name is Magnum 44.'

Cristiano's jaw dropped. ‘My God, it's beautiful.'

‘It's a peach. Smith & Wesson. Short barrel. Chromium plated all over.' Rino held it in his hand approvingly. He pulled out the chamber, spun it round, then snapped it back into place.

‘Let me touch it.'

Rino held it out to him butt first.

‘Wow, it's heavy. Is this the gun that's used by …?' Cristiano held it in both hands and aimed into the distance. ‘What's his name? The detective in
The Enforcer?
'

‘Dirty Harry. Only his has a long barrel. What do you think? Isn't it great?'

‘It's incredible. What would have happened if I'd shot Castardin's dog with this?'

‘You'd have blasted him out onto the road. This girl's an orphan, like you. Only she's lost her father as well as her mother. Her serial number has been erased.'

Cristiano closed one eye, held his arm out full length and tilted the gun over at an angle. ‘How much did you pay for it?'

‘Not much …'

‘Why did you buy it? You've already got the Beretta …'

‘That's enough questions! Aren't you going to ask me if you can try it out?'

Cristiano gazed at his father incredulously. ‘Can I?'

‘Yes. But mind the recoil. This gun's not like the other one. It's got a real kick. Release the safety catch. Hold it in both hands. Stay loose. Don't stiffen up or you'll hurt yourself. And keep it well away from your face.'

Cristiano obeyed. ‘What shall I aim at?'

Rino looked around for a target. When he found one he smiled. ‘Hit the bowl of macaroni. We'll give those two a heart attack,' he whispered in his ear.

Cristiano laughed.

On the other side of the yard Danilo and Quattro Formaggi were working on the old tractor. About five metres away, near a beaten-up old sofa, there was a plastic container full of rigatoni al ragù, a crate of beer and the now half-empty bottle of grappa. Danilo's picnic.

‘Aim carefully, though. Don't hit them. Don't hit the bottle either, because if bits of glass go flying around …' Rino said in a low voice.

Cristiano closed one eye and squinted with the other. He moved the sight till it framed the bowl. It was hard to keep the gun on target; it weighed a ton.

‘If you don't shoot now your arms will start to ti …'

Cristiano pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang, the bowl disintegrated as if it had been hit by a cruise missile, and rigatoni, splashes of ragù and fragments of plastic were scattered over a radius of ten metres.

Danilo and Quattro Formaggi jumped in the air with fright.

Cristiano and Rino laughed so much they rolled down the hill of sand while the other two, spattered from head to foot with rigatoni and ragù, stood there, cursing and swearing.

They took some calming down.

Danilo in particular was furious. They had stained his trousers; he would never get the grease out, even in the washing machine.

Cristiano knelt down and pleaded, with his arms round his feet. ‘Please don't be cross, Danilo. It was only a joke. And you're such a nice guy …'

‘Fuck you! You could have killed us! And that pasta had ragù! Ragù with carrots, celery and onions. Teresa only makes it once a month.'

Quattro Formaggi was walking quietly round the yard, picking up the rigatoni and putting them into a plastic bag.

Finally Rino had to promise that as soon as he earned some money he would treat them both to a pizza at the Vascello d'Oro.

They sat down on the sofa, each holding a beer. They passed round the plastic bag and fished out the rigatoni.

‘How's the work on the tractor going?' asked Cristiano, trying to blow the sand off a piece of pasta.

‘Quite well,' replied Danilo, after taking a swig from his bottle of beer. ‘Quattro Formaggi says we only need to repair the clutch discs, then the engine should work perfectly.'

‘And is the tractor strong enough to break through the wall?'

‘Are you kidding? I've studied the problem carefully. The wall of the bank is made of such crappy little bricks you'd only have to fart and they'd come tumbling down.'

When they had finished their meal the three men sat on the sofa in a drunken stupor. Cristiano was getting impatient. It was cold, and next day Beppe Trecca, the social worker, was coming round for his regular visit and the house was in a mess.

‘Can't we go, papa? It's Saturday tomorrow. Trecca's coming. We've got to tidy up.'

‘Another five minutes. Why don't you run off and play?'

From the tone of his reply, Cristiano understood that he wouldn't move his arse off the sofa till nightfall.

‘Shit!' he muttered, and started throwing stones at a fire-blackened barrel.

Quattro Formaggi lay on the battered old sofa, gazing at the clouds that swirled in the sky.

‘Do you … do you know … Liliana?' he said, as his mouth twisted and his arm began to quiver.

Danilo, befuddled by the beer, was gazing into the void. He raised his head, but it fell back against the sofa. ‘Who's she?' he muttered, without much interest.

She works
… ‘at Euroedil.'

‘Who is she?'

In the accounts department. She has
… ‘black hair. Long. She's …'
beautiful
.

Rino, who was lying nearby with his feet up on an empty gas cylinder, nodded. ‘She works in accounts. I know her.'

‘Oh, I know who you mean! That fat cow with three kilos of make-up plastered all over her face?' asked Danilo.

Quattro Formaggi nodded.

‘Good old Liliana,' Rino said to himself, and put the empty bottle to his lips, searching for the last drops of grappa.

Quattro Formaggi, by now twitching all over with tics, could only manage to say: ‘Well … Well …'

‘Speak up! What?' Danilo goaded him.

‘I'd like … I'd like to ask her out to dinner …' and he swallowed something that was blocking his throat.

Danilo guffawed. ‘She wouldn't go out with you even if …' He pondered for a moment. ‘No, I can't think of anything that would make her go out with someone like you.'

‘Let him speak …' Rino sighed.

Quattro Formaggi was encouraged. ‘I'd like to … mar … ry her.'

Danilo belched and shook his head. ‘What bullshit!'

‘It's not bullshit. I want to marry her.'

‘Do you like her?' asked Rino.

‘Yes. A lot. And …' Quattro Formaggi broke off.

Danilo, sprawled out like an albino gorilla, was shaking with laughter. ‘Have you taken a good look at her? She's got a bum as big as Sardinia. And the worst thing is, she thinks she's Marilyn Monroe. Forget her. She's not for you.'

But Quattro Formaggi was undaunted. ‘You're wrong. I can make her like me.'

Danilo nudged Rino. ‘Well, go and tell her you want to marry her … But call me first. I want to be there to enjoy the show.'

Quattro Formaggi picked up a stone and threw it into the distance. ‘I've got a plan.'

Danilo scratched his stomach. ‘For what?'

‘For getting to talk to her.'

‘Let's hear it …'

Quattro Formaggi gave himself three thumps on the chest. ‘She likes Rino.'

Rino looked up in surprise. ‘Me?'

‘Yes. She's always looking at you.'

‘Really? I'd never noticed.'

Danilo didn't get it. ‘Hang on a minute, if she likes Rino you're in the shit.'

Quattro Formaggi narrowed his eyes irritably. ‘Let me speak.'

He turned to Rino: ‘You invite her out to the restaurant. But you turn up with Danilo. And you don't talk to her, you only talk to Danilo – about football. Women hate football …'

‘How would you know? Since when have you been an expert on women?' Danilo interrupted him yet again.

Quattro Formaggi ignored him. ‘Then I appear … You go away and I stay with her.' He paused. ‘What do you think, Rino?'

‘Who pays for the meal?' Danilo asked.

‘Me. I've saved up.'

‘But what's in it for us?'

Quattro Formaggi looked around in bewilderment. He wasn't prepared for that question. He thumped himself hard on the leg. ‘The pizza.'

Rino stood up and stretched. ‘That's enough talk, let's go home. I'm not feeling too great. Cristiano, you can drive as far as the highway!'

Cristiano didn't feel like driving, but his father insisted: ‘You need the practice. You're still having problems with the clutch. Don't argue, I've got a splitting headache.'

Cristiano had started driving a few months earlier. And he thought he was quite good at it. He wasn't very good at starting – when he released the clutch he couldn't control the accelerator, and the van would either stall or lurch jerkily forward – but once he got going it was fine.

With his father shouting in his ear, though, it was a nightmare. ‘Look out! Change gear! Can't you hear the engine?'

But that day Rino had one of his headaches. They had been getting more and more frequent lately. He said it was like having a swarm of bees inside your skull. And he could hear the blood throbbing in his ears. Sometimes it would last all day and he would have to lie down in the dark, in silence, and the slightest noise would drive him wild. In such cases Cristiano had to stay in his bedroom.

When Danilo had advised him to see a doctor, Rino had given eloquent expression to his thoughts on the matter: ‘If there's one thing doctors don't know the first fucking thing about it's the brain. They fire out theories off the tops of their heads. They stuff you with medicines which cost an arm and a leg and which fuck you up so badly you don't even have the strength to pull out your pecker and have a piss.'

Cristiano drove while the other three, still knocked out by the alcohol, lay slumped across each other, snoring. The sun had set, leaving pink streaks on the horizon, while the seagulls dived into the river.

When they reached the highway Quattro Formaggi took the wheel.

By the time they got home it was already dark.

Rino, without saying a word, set about washing the pile of dishes that had accumulated in the sink over the past two weeks and Cristiano started tidying up the sitting room.

Both of them hated the day of the social worker's visit.

They had dubbed it ‘keeping-up-appearances day'. But what they hated even more was ‘the day before keeping-up-appearances day', because they had to straighten up the whole of the ground floor. Not the first floor, because, in Rino's words, you only need to clean the parts where the bishop's going to walk.

This happened every other Saturday.

For the rest of the time the house was left to its own devices.

They used all the plates and forks till there were none left. They washed their clothes in Danilo's washing machine once a month and then hung them out to dry in the garage.

The sitting room wasn't hard to clean, being almost completely empty.

Cristiano cleared away the beer cans, the pizza boxes and the foil trays from the takeaway. They were everywhere. Even under the cupboards and the sofa. With the beer cans alone he filled a whole rubbish bag.

Then he gave the floor a token wiping-over with a cloth.

In the kitchen, while his father was rinsing the dishes, he removed from the fridge the remains of a piece of provolone that was green with mould, some rotten vegetables and some peach jam covered with white tufts. Then he cleaned the greasy table top with a damp cloth.

Athough Christmas was long since past, the Christmas tree, all
withered up, still stood in the hall. Cristiano had decorated it with beer cans and stuck a little bottle of Campari Soda on the top.

It was time to chuck it out.

‘I've finished!' he said to his father, wiping his brow.

‘What food have we got?'

‘Pasta and …' he looked to see what was left in the fridge: ‘some cheese spread.'

You squashed it down in your dish and dumped the partly drained pasta on top.

The good old stand-by.

He put the water on to boil.

After supper Cristiano lay down on the sofa to watch TV. It was nice there. The heater gave off a pleasant warmth. He loved to fall asleep like that, wrapped up in the tartan blanket.

His father stretched out on the lounger with a beer in one hand and the broomstick for changing channels in the other.

That evening Cristiano would have liked to watch
You Reap
What You Sow
, the show where they played tricks on people (which even if they weren't genuine were funny anyway), but his eyelids were heavy, and without realising it he fell asleep.