After lunch I’ll use the excuse of a coffee at the bar and phone my partner. I got to say I’m looking forward to seeing him. It won’t be for more than a moment ’cause you never know about the bulls but I want to give him a hug.
SILVANO
To get the key to turn in the garage door I had to spray the lock with a lot of oil. The door opened onto my past. Everything that belonged to Clara and Enrico was stored there. Against the left wall stood a huge wardrobe filled with my wife’s clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, trinkets. Against the right wall stood a smaller one with my son’s things. Even his toys were packed away in large boxes.
I sat on the ground with my back up against Clara’s wardrobe and began to speak softly to her. I didn’t want Enrico to hear.
RAFFAELLO
I still can’t put prison behind me. I walk around like I did in the yard when they’d let us out to get some air. I’m always looking at the clock, amazed the cell check didn’t happen yet or the meal cart’s taking so long to dish up the swill. I can’t get used to the money; I know zilch about these fucking euros. I went into a shop to buy some clothes and the salesgirl treated me like I was some fucking Martian. I am a Martian. A Martian convict. I talk like a jailbird, always use the same words, and I can’t stop myself from slipping a cuss into every conversation. Once some shrinks from the university came to study our language. One of them was a cute chick, even if a bit up in years. She told me “in total institutions the lexicon is reduced to the minimum needed for communication.” I didn’t understand a thing she said but her cleavage was so burned into my memory I jerked off to it in the shower. Anyhow, I wanted to tell her we didn’t have fuck all to talk about, aside from the usual bullshit. We definitely didn’t rap about philosophy or history. Inmates only talk about crimes, trials, football, women. The shrink was fascinated by our foul lingo. “Do you realize that for the most part you use coarse language?” How should I talk in jail? I answered, trying to be polite. Then I explained the difference between cock and prick, between crap and piece of shit. Important differences. You couldn’t make mistakes on the inside. Finally I told her the guards and the warden talked the same way. Of course, they only did it with us inmates. But that was the language in prison; we ain’t in a monastery. What a dickhead you are! You think you’re still in jail. You’re free and don’t have any time to waste. Death is really scaring the shit out of me now. In lockup, every now and then it seemed like a way to beat my sentence but now I feel like I’m sentenced to death. I feel like I got a time bomb up my asshole. Cancer ain’t nothing but an enormous cock that fucks you till it kills you. Shit, I’m starting to get depressed. I need to get off. They told me some Albanians’re selling Turkish heroin in Piazza Martiri delle Foibe. Where are the Italian dealers these days? I don’t trust these Albanians; even in jail they’d always try to fuck you over. Let me make a phone call first and then I’ll look for something to distract me.
SILVANO
He’s contacted me,” said Siviero. I’ll be right over.” Twenty minutes later I walked into the cleaners. Daniela signaled me to go in the back. Siviero was smoking, sitting on a metal chair.
“Tomorrow at midnight on the corner of via Don Bosco and via Don Pessina,” he said.
“I’ll see you at your place tomorrow at lunch time. Don’t show up empty-handed.”
“And you remember the deal: out of our lives forever.”
“I’m a man of my word.”
I went back home and phoned Ivana Stella.
“When I dialed your number, my hand was shaking,” I lied, larding my voice with emotion.
“Why?”
“I was afraid you might have changed your mind.”
“No, my love. I can’t wait to hold you again.”
“Would you like to come to my house tomorrow afternoon?”
“Certainly. Would four be all right?”
“Perfect.”
I slept well. A deep, dreamless sleep. After a shower, I shaved very carefully. Used scissors to clip a few hairs that stuck out of my ears. Dug up an aftershave I hadn’t used in ages.
Siviero, meanwhile, looked a mess. I watched him as he got out of the SUV and went into the bar. I followed him to the cleaners. When the first customer showed up, I started the car and headed to his house.
Daniela didn’t say a word when she saw me set a long, narrow canvas bag on the floor.
“Un caffè?” she asked in a bitchy tone. She was wearing the negligé and stockings from the last time. The stocking that covered her left leg sagged around the knee. On her feet were some ridiculous high-heeled slippers. The only trace of make-up was her trashy lipstick.
“Not today,” I answered, taking a look around. The TV I destroyed had been replaced by a smaller one. The painting over the fireplace had disappeared. “I want you to take a bath.”
She shrugged. “Whatever you like.”
I watched her fill the tub and pour in a huge amount of bath foam. Then she stripped and got in. I closed the door and went through the other rooms. One of them was not too big, furnished with a single bed, a night table, and a chair. It fit my purposes. I moved the furniture to the back and went downstairs to get the bag. I unzipped it and removed several large plastic drop cloths, identical to the ones used for paint jobs. I spread out one on the floor; the others I attached to the walls with packing tape.
“The water’s getting cold,” said Daniela, annoyed, when I came back to the bathroom.
I handed her a robe and led her to the room. When she saw it covered in plastic, she tried to back out, but I pushed her inside.
“What’s all this about?” she asked, frightened.
From the bag I grabbed an axe handle and hit her in the knees. She fell to the floor, and I kept on swinging till she passed out. I examined the bruises. It still wasn’t enough. I stood up and took aim. Knee-caps, shinbones, thighbones. They broke one after another. I sat down and waited. After almost an hour she opened her eyes and started to moan. I bent over her.
“Did you see the darkness?” I asked.
“Mamma, help,” she murmured softly.
I pulled her by the hair. The rough move awoke the pain. She opened her mouth to scream, but she didn’t have the strength to do it. “I asked you if you saw the darkness.”
She looked at me, her eyes blank, lidded. “Help, call for help, please.”
I hit her in the chest with the tip of the stick, gauging the force so as not to kill her right away. I sat down again and waited. She came around a couple times, but didn’t say anything about the darkness. She sought her mamma’s comfort. I’d read that soldiers in war, when they’re in agony, call for their mothers. She never mentioned her husband. A little before one I sat on the couch in the living room. Siviero arrived a few minutes later, holding a leather suitcase. He placed his house and car keys in a bowl. Habitual, routine gestures. I did them too.
“Daniela?” he called in a loud voice.
“She’s in the bathroom.”
He laid the suitcase on the table. Showed me the money. It was in dollars.
“And the passport?”
He took it out of a side pocket. It was made out to a certain Pietro Andrea Bertorelli. The photo was missing.
“At least give that to Raffaello. It’s a copy of a real one. It’d stand up to any inspection.”
“Which one of you shot my wife and son?”
“It was Raffaello,” he answered, trying to be convincing. “We were wired from coke, and he flipped out.” Then he looked towards the stairs. “Why doesn’t Daniela come down?”
“She’s in the bath.”
“I’m going to see.”
As soon as he turned around, I hit him in the back of the head with a sock full of euro coins. He collapsed on the floor, out cold. I went to get the axe handle and smashed his back, right at the top vertebrae. Loaded him on my shoulders and carried him up the stairs to the landing. Then dragged him by his feet into the room. I brought him around by splashing
cold water in his face. The first thing he saw was Daniela. He tried to get up to help her, but his legs didn’t move. Only his arms and chest had any life in them.
“You killed her.”
“Not yet. I wanted you to see her die.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” he shouted with all his might.
I slapped Daniela to wake her up. She started moaning again. “Did you see the darkness?” I asked for the umpteenth time.
She said something, but I couldn’t hear because Siviero started to shout. “What fucking darkness? Leave her alone and call a doctor. She doesn’t have anything to do with it. Save her, I beg you.”
It was right then that the howl got free. “Everything’s gone dark, Silvano. I can’t see anymore, I’m scared, scared. Help me. It’s dark.”
I howled and howled and raised the stick over my head and let it fall on their bodies. In the end, when silence returned, there was nothing but blood. I listened to my heartbeat, my breathing. The howl was gone. It had disappeared. My chest felt light.
I stripped and threw my clothes on the sheet that covered the floor. Went into the bathroom to take a shower. Pulled a change of clothes from the bag and put them on calmly. Ivana Stella wouldn’t get to my house till four.
I detached the sheets from the walls and very carefully wrapped up the corpses and the axe handle, using packing tape to seal the openings. I dragged them down the stairs to the garage door out back.
Then I grabbed the keys from the bowl and left.
I stopped in a bar and ate a salami and cheese sandwich. With a glass of red wine. In an enoteca I bought two bottles of an excellent white wine and a bottle of cognac to quench Ivana Stella’s thirst. A hefty bill I paid with the debit card. I kept forgetting to withdraw some cash.
When I got home, I took another shower. At that hour, nothing interesting was on TV. To kill time I glued supermarket coupons in the booklet. By this point I’d collected so many of them, I could get an immersible mixer or a hairdryer. I leafed through the catalogue, searching for a more interesting prize.
Ivana Stella had just been to the hairdresser’s. She greeted me with a light kiss on the lips. She was embarrassed: she was entering a man’s house for the sole reason of having sex. I made her comfortable and offered her a glass of cold wine at the just right temperature. I noticed she was looking around.
“This is the home of a single man. It would take a woman endowed with good taste to transform it.”
She took this as a cue to inspect the house and make suggestions. Shades of paint, wallpaper, tile, furniture. When she went into the bedroom, she remarked that the brass headboard was a little out of fashion.
“But the mattress is new,” I said, embracing her from behind.
She asked me to lower the blinds. “Do you prefer the darkness?”
“No. Just this time. I’m afraid you won’t like me.”
I helped her undress. When she undid her bra, she stiffened. Ivana Stella required patience. I was tender and careful. Then I penetrated her and made her come.
We held each other for a long time, mixing sweat, kisses, and senseless words. I got up twice to bring her a drink. Cognac. After sex she preferred it to wine.
She looked at the clock. “It’s time for me to go,” she said with a sigh.
“Don’t you want to take a shower?”
“That would be great. Thanks.”
While Ivana Stella got washed, out of curiosity I rummaged through her handbag. I wanted to stick my nose into her business. In her purse I found her daughter’s photo and a slip of paper with a silly, ungrammatical love poem signed by someone named Antonio. He must’ve been one of her beloved inmates.
“Was it good for you?” she asked at the door.
“Very good.”
“It’s the first time I did it since my husband left.”
From the window I watched her get into her little Mercedes. A happy expression was stamped on her face. “Enjoy this moment,” I thought. “It won’t last long.”
I left the house a little later. Parked at the train station and took a taxi to the area around via San Domenico. The Siviero house was immersed in darkness, and the entire neighborhood was deserted and quiet. You could only hear the dogs bark when I walked past them. I opened the gate, drove the SUV around back, and struggled to load the corpses into the rear. Shut all the windows to give the impression they’d left and grabbed the leather suitcase with the dollars and the passport.
I drove slowly to the dump I visited a few nights before. Slipped between the mounds of trash to reach the one I’d already chosen. Dug a ditch, not too deep. Wasn’t necessary. Every day the municipal sanitation trucks would unload tons of trash.
I left the SUV near a hotel where taxis were always waiting. The driver put the suitcase in the trunk.
“Coming or going?” he asked without a trace of curiosity, just to make conversation.
A good question. I mumbled something incomprehensible and climbed in the back.
Half an hour later I was in position at via Don Bosco. Raffaello Beggiato arrived a couple minutes early. I let him stand there, smoking, till the stroke of midnight.
“Motherfucker, here goes Contin,” he blurted when he saw me.
“That’s right. Siviero won’t be coming.”
“Who’s Siviero?”
I burst out laughing. “Honor among thieves right to the end, eh?”
He looked around. “I expected to see the cops show up. Ten minutes ago I shook off a couple that were tailing me. But you’re a real surprise.”
“No police. Just you and me.”
“How’d you find out about Siviero?”
“You’ll never know.”
“Where is he now?”
“I assume he took off with your cash.”
He shook his head. “It can’t be. You got him locked up?”
“No.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to tell you your dream of running away has gone up in smoke. You’re fucked, Beggiato. I hope the cancer kills you real slow.”
I turned and went back to the car. If the murderer of Enrico and Clara knew his dollars and passport were in the trunk, he would’ve jumped me to get his hands on them. Instead he did nothing but stare at my back. I felt his hate. And I was happy about it.
RAFFAELLO
His mother must’ve been a fucking whore to give birth to a shit like him. He fucked me like I was wet behind the ears. The letter to the newspapers was just a move in his plan. He wanted to get off on telling me in person he figured out everything. Must’ve just happened ’cause when he came to the prison he wasn’t wise to it. I don’t know how he found my partner and I can’t imagine what’s happened to him. If the bulls grabbed him they would’ve already picked me up for questioning. And what about the ones tailing me? I don’t understand a fucking thing anymore. All I know is I got to say goodbye to my dreams of freedom. I feel like crying but I’m too fucking pissed off. What do I do now? Start chemo and wait for the surveillance judge to find out his wife’s cheating on him so he can throw me back in jail for spite? Motherfucker, I was spitting distance away from real freedom and out pops Contin to make faces at me like some snotnosed kid. You see how satisfied he was? If he had any balls he would’ve busted me in the chops. But he’s weird. He likes playing his little games. I got to be jinxed. Fifteen years of suffering for nothing. Now I’ve got two cocks up my asshole. Contin and the cancer. We’ll see which one hurts more.
Death's Dark Abyss Page 9