As God Commands (48 page)

The traffic, pouring in from all the roads of the plain, had slowed
down till it got stuck in a motionless, honking mass.

Now, less than thirty-six hours after the storm, one lane had been
reopened and the column, made up of trucks travelling to or from
the frontier and cars full of commuters, was moving fitfully forward, controlled by temporary lights and police.

Right in the middle of the bridge, in a Mercedes S-Class as black
as the wings of a condor, sat Mr. and Mrs. Baldi.

Rita Baldi, thirty-one years old, was a pale, thin little woman,
dressed in a pair of jeans and a short T-shirt which left exposed her
navel and a strip of seven-month pregnant stomach. At that moment
she was painting her fingernails with polish and now and then
glancing up unseeingly at the somber sky.

The bad weather had returned.

Vincenzo Baldi, thirty-five years old, looked like a cross between
Brad Pitt and the brown long-eared bat that lives on the island of Giglio. His unkempt beard merged with a pair of dark glasses. He
was smoking a cigarette and blowing the clouds of nicotine out
through a gap above the window.

They had been sitting in the line for nearly two hours.

In front of them was a German tractor trailer that was transporting organic compost (cow shit) to somewhere or other. The
phosphor-escent bottle of air freshener attached to the air vent was
doing its best, but the smell of excrement filled the car.

They would never make it to the appointment with the engineer
Bartolini now.

Bartolini had found what he claimed was a definitive solution
to the problem of the damp which afflicted their little house like
a mysterious curse. The moisture was rising up through the walls,
which were becoming covered with multicolored molds. The
plaster was cracking and crumbling away. The furniture was
warping and the clothes in the drawers were rotting. The solution, according to Bartolini, was to cut horizontally through all
the outer walls of the house and to insert an impermeable
sheathing patented in Scandinavia, so as to block the fatal rising
of the damp.

That traffic jam had raised the tension in the car. And since they
had got into the vehicle the two hadn't exchanged a single word.

As a matter of fact they hadn't had a dialogue of more than a
few words for a week (they had quarrelled, though neither of them
could now remember exactly what about), so Rita was amazed when
Vincenzo said: "I've bought a new car."

It took her a moment to recover from her surprise and another
moment to wet her lips and reply: "What? I don't understand."
Though she understood perfectly well.

He cleared his throat and repeated: "I've bought a new car."

Her nail brush hung suspended in the air: "What car?"

"Another S-Class. But the next model up from this one. Gas
again. A few more horsepower. A few more accessories."

Rita Baldi breathed in.

Her childhood friend Arianna Ronchi, who had become a member
of parliament, said that, thanks to that profession, she had learned
that before replying impulsively and regretting it later you should
always touch an object and let out your anger, as if you were dis charging the electricity from a live battery. But it was in Rita Baldi's
nature to reply instinctively, the same nature that induces a porcupine to raise its quills even on the approach of a predator. So she
couldn't restrain herself: "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

It is a painful experience shared by many people that, once the
conjugal knot has been tied, the man/woman whom you thought to
be a brilliant, intuitive creature turns out to be a complete dickhead.

At that point what do you do?

In thirty-six per cent of cases, according to a recent survey, you
call your lawyer and ask for a separation. Rita Baldi was one of
the other sixty-four per cent. She had resigned herself to the situation, but her husband's idiocy never ceased to amaze her.

"That you wanted to change the car! When did you get this one?
Not even six months ago! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why do I have to tell you everything?"

What drove her wild with rage and gave her an irresistible desire
to pick up things and smash them was that Vincenzo always answered
a question with another question.

Rita took a deep breath and in an apparently placid voice tried
again: "All right. I'll explain to you why. In the first place..."
Another deep breath. "Because you've just bought a BMW motorbike. Then you bought a Danish refrigerator for..." she didn't want
to but couldn't stop herself, "...your crappy wines. Then you
bought that thing ... What's it called? The tractor for cutting the
grass. Then..."

He interrupted her. "Well? What's the problem? Who pays for
them?"

"Not you. Seeing that we have to pay instalments until 2070. Your
son will still be paying them and probably his son will too..." She
was too furious to be able to express this microeconomic concept.
"Tell me something. Isn't this car all right? What's wrong with it? Is
it crap? Well, if it's crap..." She kicked out with the stiletto heel of
her Prada shoe at the air-conditioning control unit. And then at the
display of the GPS.

Vincenzo Baldi's left arm moved with the deadly speed of a
scorpion's tail and she was pinned to the back of her seat by a hand gripping her carotid artery. Only then did her husband turn
his head and smile. His sunglasses concealed two furrows burning
with hatred. "You do that again and I'll kill you! I swear I'll kill
you."

And she, at this point, like a kid, a fawn or something of the kind,
started thrashing about, screaming, wriggling and muttering: "Oh
that's great! That's really great! Go on and kill me, then! Kill me!
Kill me and your son, you pathetic... " and she was about to insult
him when her survival instinct advised her to stop.

He withdrew his hand and she, gasping for breath, twisted away,
picked up her handbag and got out of the car.

Vincenzo Baldi lowered the window: "Come back here. Where
are you going?"

Another question.

Rita didn't reply. She threaded her way through the line of cars,
stepped over a barrier of traffic cones and, holding onto the guardrail,
looked down from the bridge.

She knew she wouldn't jump off. Though imagining that she
would made her feel much better.

Little one, if I jumped off I'd save you from a shit of a
father... But don't worry, I'll leave him sooner or later, she said
to the son she carried in her womb.

She closed her eyes and opened them again. A pleasant smell of
water and mud rose up from the river, which seemed to be exploding
between its concrete banks.

Her gaze fell on the remains of some trees which had got caught
against the pier that supported the bridge. The branches were covered, like a tramp's Christmas tree, with colored plastic bags. Nearby
two ducks were resting. A male with a shiny green head and a female
in her light-brown livery. That couple of fowls certainly got on well.
They lay there serenely, one beside the other, cleaning their wings
on a big plastic parcel...

"What's that?" she said out loud.

Rita Baldi squinted and put up her hand to screen her eyes from
the glare.

She couldn't make it out. It looked like...

She reached into her handbag for a pair of thin Dolce&Gabbana
glasses and put them on.

With an instinctive gesture she touched the place where her baby
was growing, and then started screaming.

The Carrion Man was rotting.

In his whole life he had never felt so bad. Not even after he'd
had the electric shock. On that occasion he had felt fire shoot
through him, then darkness.

Now it was different. Now he was slowly rotting.

He was lying on the bed and kept rubbing his stomach, which
was as hard and taut as a drum.

He could feel them. The fly larvae moved, they fed on his flesh
and corroded his guts. The pain began from there and spread through
his whole body, right out into his hair and toenails.

Maybe I should go to hospital.

But they would ask him a lot of questions. They would ask him
how he had got into that state and then they would make him stay.

He knew what people were like. People wanted to know. People
asked questions.

They would put him next to Rino. And Rino would open his
eyes, he would sit up, pointing his finger, and shout: "It was him!
It was him! He killed the girl."

And you'll go to prison, where at night they take you and ...

At the thought of going to prison a blade of searing pain cut
through his shoulder and released a thousand sparks up through his
neck and into his head. He felt the pain spurt out from his tainted
flesh, penetrate the sweat-soaked mattress, seep down through the
legs of the bed, spread over the floor and down through the walls,
through the bricks, into the foundations, along the pipes, into the
dark earth and from there into the roots of the trees, which dried
up and shed their leaves and withered in silence.

The Carrion Man placed on his stomach the crucifix given to
him by Ricky, the messenger of God, and it seemed to bring a little
relief.

He got up, shuffled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

The skull of death showed through the skin of his face. He raised
the hood of his bathrobe and his bony face disappeared, swallowed
up by shadows. Only his glistening, bloodshot eyes and yellowish
teeth stood out, as if hanging in the void.

That was the face of death. And when it came out of his corpse
it would smile as he was doing at that moment.

When he was small he'd had meningitis and his temperature had
risen above one hundred and four.

"It was a miracle you didn't die. You must thank the Lord," the
nuns said to him.

The fever had been so strong they had immersed him in the fountain opposite the orphanage. He remembered there being eels in the
basin and the water boiling and the eels being cooked and turning
white.

But perhaps it never happened.

He remembered the aspirin that dissolved. That had happened.

He saw it in front of him. An enormous white disc which
undulated in the glass and broke down into bubbles, spray and
froth.

He wanted the aspirin that dissolved. He would give everything
he owned to feel its salty taste on his dry tongue.

He went into the kitchen. On the dresser was a jamjar full of
cents and half-euros. He had enough money to buy some aspirin.

The problem was going outside. The mere thought of meeting
people made him feel as if he was drowning, as if he was being seized
by a thousand hands and dragged down to the bottom of the ocean.

(If you don't take an aspirin you'll die.)

At first he didn't recognize the voice. Then he smiled.

Cristiano.

It was Cristiano's voice.

How long was it since he had last thought of him? How could
he have forgotten him? He was his best friend, his only true
friend.

A pang, sharper than the pain he felt in his body, gripped his
heart and something hard and pointed pierced his throat.

It had only taken one night and everything had changed.

(What have you done?)

(How could you?)

It wasn't me. It was God. I didn't want to do it, truly I didn't.
I swear to you, I didn't want to. It was God who made me do those
things. It's nothing to do with me.

"Everything has changed," he said, and he felt his eyes brim with
tears.

He thought of his strolls around the shopping mall with Cristiano,
their walks by the riverside, the evenings they spent eating pizza and
watching TV with Rino and Danilo.

None of that would happen any more.

He was no longer Quattro Formaggi. He was the Carrion Man
now.

He put on-yelping with pain as he did so-some pants, a highcollared cardigan, his cape and scarf, and stuck a pompom hat on
his head.

(You must go straight to the pharmacist's, buy the aspirin and
come home as quickly as possible. If you do that you won't come
to any harm.)

He took a handful of coins from the jamjar, crossed himself,
walked toward the entrance and opened the door of hell.

"Why all the traffic? I don't understand," grumbled Beppe Trecca
at the wheel of his Puma. Cristiano, with his hoodie pulled down
over his forehead and his arms crossed, barely heard the social
worker.

Drowsily he gazed out of the window at the factory buildings,
the sales outlets, and the long fences on each side of the road.

They would move five yards, then stop. It was torture. They were
on the highway and in half an hour they had only moved about
half a mile.

Trecca thumped the steering wheel irritably. "Something must
have happened. An accident. It's not normal, this traffic."

Cristiano observed him out of the corner of his eye. He had never
seen him so agitated.

He closed his eyelids and rested his head against the window.

Why hasn't he sent me to the judge yet?

He felt too tired to answer his own question. He wished he could
sleep for another twelve hours. And he couldn't face the thought of
going back to his father and seeing him on that bed.

The idea that the sun rose and set, that people sat in traffic jams,
that they could drop an atomic bomb, that Christ could come back
down to Earth, and that the male nurses could take the piss out of
his father, laugh at him, while he lay there stretched out like a
puppet, made him feel sick, and so angry that his hands were beginning to tingle.

If I catch anyone making fun of him I'll kill them, I swear to
God I will.

"Learn to sleep lightly, Cristiano. It's when you're asleep that
they fuck you over!" his father had said the night he had sent him
to kill Castardin's dog. It seemed as if a century had passed.

No, he couldn't face going to see him.