The Crossroads (33 page)

Cristiano closed his eyes, threw his head back and opened his mouth.

The bicycle!

What a fool he was! There was the bicycle in the garage.

He ran round to the back of the house, lifted a flowerpot and picked up the key. He put it in the lock and wrenched up the rolling door so violently he could have given himself a hernia. He switched on the long neon light and the bicycle, a green-and-grey mountain bike, was there, hanging by its wheel from a hook.

His father had given it to him six months earlier. He had won it with fuel points. But Cristiano hated pedal bikes, he only liked motorbikes. And it had remained hanging there, with the transparent plastic still covering the saddle and handlebars.

Cristiano stood on an old radio and took it down. It was covered in dust and its tyres had gone down quite a bit. For a moment he hesitated, wondering whether to look for the pump.

There's no time
.

He hoisted the bike onto his shoulders and carried it out onto the road, then he took a run-up, jumped on and started pedalling for all he was worth.

As the Puma slid through the rain as silently as a torpedo, Beppe Trecca sang at the top of his voice: ‘More than this … There is nothing …' He wagged his head in time with the windscreen wipers.

His knowledge of English was pretty basic, but he understood what the great Bryan Ferry was saying.

More than this there is nothing
.

It was absolutely true. What more could he want? Ida Lo Vino was crazy about him and he about her. And that was a truth, like the fact that that night it had seemed as if the end of the world had come.

There was so much joy and love in the social worker's heart that next day he was personally going to clear up the sky and make the sun shine again.

I feel like a god
.

He remembered the camper. The banana.

Ernesto would have a fit when he saw what had happened to his motor home.

But he's so cautious, he's bound to have an insurance policy that
covers natural disasters. And anyway, quite frankly, who gives a
damn about such material things?

He felt like dancing. For a while he had attended a samba course organised by the local council and had discovered the pleasures of the ballroom.

Ida likes dancing too
.

But this called for something with a bit more beat. He took the CD box out of the pocket in the door and looked for something more lively. He didn't have much, to be honest. Supertramp, the Eagles, Pino Daniele, Venditti, Rod Stewart. Then in the last compartment he found a Donna Summer compilation and put it in the stereo.

Perfect
.

He turned the volume right up.

The singer started screaming: ‘Hot stuff. I need hot stuff.' And Beppe joined in.

Hot stuff. I need hot stuff
.

‘You must be a little raver, then, like Ida,' Beppe chuckled.

Who would ever have thought Ida was such a sex-bomb? Even in his wildest fantasies he had never imagined that the coordinator of voluntary activities, that quiet, retiring woman, that loving mother, had so much fire inside her.

A thrill of pleasure ran up into his neck and ignited his spinal nerves.

What about me? I held out like the Alamo. Not a hint of a wilt.
As steady as a rock
.

It must have been those three Xanaxes and the melon vodka that had enabled him to stop himself coming immediately.

Different music. He needed different music. He took out Donna Summer, picked up the box and was putting in a Rod Stewart CD when suddenly he heard a bang on the front of the car and for a split second something dark slid over the right-hand side of the windscreen.

Beppe let out a yell and, without even thinking, rammed his foot down on the brake and the car skidded across the wet asphalt like a crazed surfboard and came to rest on the roadside verge, half a metre away from the trunk of a poplar.

Beppe, terrified, with his arms stiff and his hands glued to the wheel, heaved a sigh of relief.

Phew!

A little further to one side and he'd have crashed into that tree.

What had happened?

He had hit something.

A tree trunk. A dog. Or a cat. Or maybe a seagull
.

The place was full of those big birds that had abandoned the seas for the inland rubbish dumps. It must have been dazzled by the headlights.

He switched off the radio, unfastened his seat belt and got out of the car with a plastic bag from the Esselunga supermarket over his head. He walked round the front of the Puma and with clenched fists exclaimed: ‘Noooo! Sod it!'

I'd only just had the bodywork repaired
.

The right side, above the front wheel, was dented, and there were bumps on the bonnet too. The right windscreen wiper was bent.

What did I hit – a brown bear? Will the insurance cover something
like this?
he wondered, getting hurriedly back into the car.

He shut the door and selected first gear, then changed his mind, put it into reverse and started driving backwards.

I want to have a look, just out of curiosity
…

He travelled less than fifty metres and then braked. The white light of the reversing lights had fallen on something brown curled up on the edge of the asphalt.

There it is!

A dog! A damned dog
.

He reversed three more metres and noticed that the dog was wearing a pair of trainers with the Nike ticks on their soles.

He must have done about ten kilometres and he still hadn't reached the turning for San Rocco.

Maybe it's been blocked off. Or perhaps I didn't see it and I've
come too far
.

Cristiano Zena was pedalling in the middle of the deserted highway. The dim light produced by the dynamo barely lit up a couple of metres of road in front of the wheel.

He was shivering with cold, but inside his jacket he was boiling. The rain was stinging his eyes, the back of his head and his ankles were frozen and he had lost all feeling in his chin and ears.

He had been a fool not to pump up the tyres. It was costing him three times the effort. If he didn't find the turning soon he was sure his legs would give out.

Now and then, for an instant, the electric glow from a flash of lightning would light up the storm-battered fields as bright as day.

Since he had spoken to his father on the phone more than half an hour must have passed.

If only I had a motorbike … I'd be there by now
.

It was incredible, whatever he did his brain always returned to motorbikes.

An articulated lorry with a German number plate came up behind him, immense and silent like a humpback whale. It honked its horn and emitted a yellowish glare.

Cristiano dived in towards the side of the road.

The HGV went past very close, drenching him from head to foot.

While he was still recovering from the fright he saw up ahead a blue sign proclaiming:
SAN ROCCO
1000
METRES
.

So the turning did exist and he was near to it!

Though his fingers were stuck to the handlebar and his nose was an icicle, he stood up from the saddle, leaned forward, gritted his teeth, and with his muscles flooded with lactic acid pushed on the
pedals, which were as stiff as rusty cogwheels, and shouted: ‘Go, Pantani! Go!' Finally he took the turning at full speed and found himself, leaning over steeply to the side, in a puddle just around the bend. The wheels lost their grip and the bicycle skidded as if on a sheet of ice.

When he opened his eyes again he was lying on the ground. He got up and checked what he'd done to himself. He had grazed the palm of one of his hands, his jeans were torn at the knee and the sole of one shoe had been pared away by the asphalt, but apart from that he was all right.

He straightened up the handlebar and set off again.

I've hit a man
.

Beppe Trecca, with his head turned back over his shoulders, continued to gaze through the rear window at the bundle on the road. His heart was pounding and his armpits were as cold as ice.

(Go and see.)

It wasn't my fault. I was driving very slowly
.

(Go and see.)

The idiot must have crossed the road without looking
.

(And you were putting the CD into the stereo.)

A second. It only took me a second
…

(Go and see!)

If he's
…

(Go and see!!)

He must be hurt. Maybe he's not too badly injured, though
.

(GO!!!)

He ran his tongue over his teeth in his dry mouth and said: ‘Okay, I'm going.'

The road to San Rocco was narrower and had no reflectors at the sides.

Cristiano, with his head down, was pedalling and following the white line painted on the asphalt. The wind had dropped and the rain fell so straight and fine that, in the feeble light from the bicycle's lamp, it resembled the silvery hair of a witch.

He didn't want to look up. Hidden in the darkness that surrounded him there might be castles haunted by skeletons, alien spaceships standing in the wilderness, chained giants.

When he finally did raise his head he saw a luminous dot which grew into a yellow patch and then turned into a sign, in the middle of which a black patch formed and became a dog-like creature, with six legs and with fire coming out of its mouth.

The Agip service station
.

The man was lying at the edge of the road, curled up, as if he was asleep in bed.

Beppe Trecca walked around him, his left hand pressed to his lips. His tracksuit was already soaking wet and his hair drooped over his forehead like a mass of blond fusilli.

He's black
.

One of the many Africans who worked in the local factories, or more likely one of the countless illegal immigrants.

The man wore a heavy beige jacket, and underneath it a coloured tunic from which protruded two long black legs and two enormous basketball shoes. Beside him lay a big red rucksack.

Senegalese, I should think
.

His face wasn't visible. His head was tucked into his chest. His hair was short and flecked with grey.

Breathe deeply
, the social worker told himself.
And take a look
at him, to see who he is
.

He felt like throwing up. He breathed in several times through his nose, then at last found the strength to bend down over the body. He reached out, stopped for a moment with his hand five centimetres from the man's shoulder, then gave a gentle push, and the man rolled over on the asphalt.

His face was round. His forehead broad. His eyes closed. Well shaven. About forty years old.

I've never seen him before. I don't think so, anyway
.

Beppe often met Africans in the course of his work. In the factories. In the centre for hospitality and orientation. Or when he went to visit them in the dormitory houses.

What now?

He tried shaking him and then stammered: ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?' but the man neither replied nor moved.

What now?

The only thing his mind was capable of producing was that fatuous question.

What now?

He felt bewildered, so confused that he didn't even notice the rain and the wind.

What if he's …?

He couldn't even bring himself to finish the sentence.

That word was too terrifying for him even to think of it.

No! He can't be
.

He tugged at his arm.

If he was … Beppe's life would be over.

His first thought was for Ida. If he went to prison all his plans for a life with her would be destroyed. There would be lawyers, court cases, police …
But Ida and I must
… He couldn't breathe.
It wasn't my fault. It was an accident
.

Why did I get out that CD?

Two yellow headlights appeared out of the darkness and dazzled him.

This is it
.

Beppe Trecca, bent over the body, raised his arm and shielded his eyes.

‘Papa! Papa! Rino! Rino!' shouted Cristiano Zena, with the crossbar of the bicycle between his legs.

The huge yellow canopy of the filling station cast a cold light on the pumps and on the pools of rainbow-coloured fuel oil.

His father wasn't there. Nor was the van. There was nobody there.

Not once along the way had it crossed his mind that when he got to the filling station his father might not be there.

The panic that had lain hidden in the coils of his guts, and that had only made itself felt when instilling in him the doubt that the turning for San Rocco might have been closed off, now invaded his head and blocked his throat.

‘You said … the Agip … And I'm here. I know … I've been a long time, but it was a long way. You … said … the Agip. Where are you?' he moaned, running his fingers through his wet hair.

He took another turn around the carwash and the cashier's booth.

Go and look further on
.

He started pedalling again, but barely two hundred metres from the petrol station the road began to rise gradually and went into the wood.

The light of the bicycle lamp fell on the black tree trunks that lined the roadside.

I don't like this place. He can't be here
.

Perhaps the van had been parked before the petrol station and he hadn't seen it as he had gone by.

He was about to turn his bike round when something stopped him. Music, so faint as to be almost imperceptible. It mingled with the rain that lashed the road and the foliage of the trees and with the rustle of the wheels as they turned on the asphalt.

He stopped, with his guts twisting tight and an unpleasant tingling at the back of his neck.