The Crossroads (35 page)

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?'

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.

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 Fabiana'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.

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.

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.

‘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.

He couldn't even look at him, he was so terrified. This guy sitting beside him had come back, like Lazarus, from the realms of the dead.

Beppe was so shaken that he couldn't even feel happy.

(
You asked for a miracle and the miracle happened
.)

But how can it be? A miracle? Happening to me? What sense
does it make? Why has God helped a pathetic little jerk like me
?

(
The will of Our Lord is inscrutable
.)

How often he had uttered this platitude to get himself out of difficult situations. Now he understood its meaning to the full.