Steal You Away (22 page)

It might have been hilariously funny, like something out of Mr Bean, that poor bastard with his trousers round his ankles trying to attack him and falling over, but instead the scene had frozen the smile on his face. Suddenly he felt rather sorry for the guy. A twenty-year-old who starts blubbing like a kid and can’t face up to his own responsibilities. When he had seen the film
The Bear
, at the moment where the hunters kill mama bear and the cub understands that the Earth is an awful place populated by sons of bitches and that he is going to have to fend for himself, he had felt something similar. A lump in his throat and an involuntary contraction of the facial muscles. (
What the hell’s the matter with you?
)

The matter? Nothing!

He didn’t feel at all sorry for the girl.

Quite the opposite. He felt like giving her a good slap across the face. He found her so repulsive, with that hysterical little voice
like the whine of an electric saw, that he wouldn’t even have screwed her. Yes, he really felt like slapping her face. But that bastard had better stop crying, or he would start crying himself soon.

He squatted down beside Stan … What was his name? Massimiliano Franzini. He addressed him in a tone as sweet as a Sicilian cassata. ‘Get up. Don’t cry. Come on now, you’ll catch cold, lying on the ground like that.’

No response.

It seemed as if he hadn’t heard him, but at least he’d stopped crying. He took him by the arm and tried to pull him up, but without success. ‘Come on, don’t cry. I’ll check the car and if I don’t find anything I’ll let you go. How about that?’

He had said this to induce him to stand up. He wasn’t so sure that he was going to let them go so easily. There were still the matter of all those joints they had smoked. And he would have to ask the station to check their names. The report to write. A whole lot of things to do.

‘Get up or I’m going to lose my temper.’

Flappy Ears finally raised his head. His face was smeared with grime and a second mouth in his forehead was spewing blood. His eyes were tearful and tired, but gleamed with a strange determination. He showed his teeth. ‘Why should I?’

‘Because I say so. You can’t stay on the ground.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll catch cold.’

‘Why? Why do you do this?’

‘Do what?’

‘Why do you behave like this?’

Miele took two steps backwards.

As if suddenly it was no longer Stan Laurel on the ground but a venomous cobra swelling its neck.

‘Get up. I’ll ask the questions. Ge …’

(
Explain to him why you behave like this
.)

‘… t up,’ he stammered.

(
Tell him
.)

What?

(
Tell him the truth. Explain it to him, go on. Don’t give him
any crap. That way you’ll explain it to us, too. Because we don’t
really understand either. Tell him, go on, what are you waiting
for?
)

Miele backed away. He looked like a tailor’s dummy. The trousers of his uniform were soaked up to the knees, his jacket had a dark patch on the shoulders and back. ‘You want me to tell you, do you? Okay then, I’ll tell you, if that’s what you want.’ He went up to Flappy Ears, grabbed his head and turned it in the direction of the Mercedes. ‘Do you see that car there? That car comes on the road, without optionals, at a hundred and seventy-nine million lire including VAT, but if you add the folding roof, the wide wheels, the compute rised air conditioning, the hi-fi unit with the boot-mounted CD changer and the active subwoofer, the leather interiors, the lateral airbag and all the rest, we easily get up to two hundred and ten, two hundred and twenty million. That car has a braking system controlled by a sixteen-bit processor identical to the one used by McLaren in Formula One, it has a sealed box containing a chip produced by Motorola which controls the set-up of the vehicle, regulates the tyre pressure and the height of the shock-absorbers, even though all these things, actually, are things you could find – not quite the same, a bit worse – on a top-of-the-range BMW or Saab. The exceptional thing about that car, the thing that gets enthusiasts literally masturbating, is the engine. It has a capacity of six thousand three hundred and twenty-five cc distributed over twelve pistons made of a special alloy whose exact composition is known only to Mercedes. It was designed by Hans Peter Fleming, the Swedish engineer who created the propulsion system of the Space Shuttle and of the American atomic submarine
Alabama
. Have you ever tried starting in fifth? Probably not, but if you did you’d find that this car will do it. It has an engine so flexible you can change gear without using the clutch. It has an acceleration that will leave all those crappy coupés that are so fashionable nowadays trailing in its wake and can hold its own with a Lamborghini or a Corvette, if you get the picture. And what about its shape? Elegant. Sober. Nothing flashy. No Martian headlamps. No plastics. Sophisticated. The classic three-litre Mercedes. This car
is the preferred drive of Gianmaria Davoli, the Grand Prix presenter, who could use a Ferrari 306 or a Testarossa like I use a pair of sandals. And you know what our prime minister said at the Turin Motor Show? He said that this car is a target to aim at and that when we in Italy succeed in making a car like it we’ll be able to say we’re a democratic country. But I don’t think we ever will, we don’t have the right mentality to make a car like that. Now, I don’t know who your father is, or how he earns his money. He may be a mafioso or a corrupt politician or a pimp, I don’t give a shit. I respect your father, he’s a person who deserves respect because he owns a 650 TX. Your father is a man who appreciates things of value, he’s bought this car, he’s spent a lot of money and I bet my life he doesn’t know that you, you son of a bitch, have stolen it from him to chauffeur around a little tart with blue hair and rings on her face and to smoke joints in it and throw half-eaten sandwiches on the floor. You know what I think? I think you two are the first people in the world who have ever smoked pot in a 650 TX. Maybe some rock star has sniffed a few lines of coke in one, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever smoked pot in one. You two have committed an act of sacrilege, of blasphemy. Getting high in a 650 TX is like shitting in St Peter’s. Now do you understand why I behave like this?’

If officer Antonio Bacci hadn’t fallen asleep as soon as he set foot in the police vehicle, perhaps the Bruno Miele Magic Show, live from the hundred-and-twelfth kilometre of the Via Aurelia, would not have gone off so well and Max Franzini and Martina Trevisan would not have kept telling the story of that terrible nocturnal experience for years to come (Max, in corroboration, would point to the scar on his balding forehead).

But Antonio Bacci, as soon as he entered the warmth of the car, had loosened his bootlaces, folded his arms and, without realising it, fallen into a heavy sleep peopled by coconuts, puffer fish, silicone masks and bikini-clad air hostesses.

When the radio crackled into life, Bacci woke up. ‘Patrol car 12! Patrol car 12! This is an emergency. Go at once to the junior high school in Ischiano Scalo, there’s been a break-in. Patrol c …’

Shit, I fell asleep
, he realised, seizing the microphone and looking at his watch.
Jesus, I’ve been asleep for over half an hour! What’s
Miele doing out there?

It was a few seconds before headquarters’ instructions sank in, but at last he managed to reply. ‘Message received. We’ll get going straight away. Should be there in ten minutes at the outside.’

Burglars. In his son’s school.

He got out of the car. It was raining as hard as ever and on top of that there was a blustery wind which blew you off track. He hurried forward two steps, but immediately slowed down.

The Mercedes was still there. Handcuffed to the door was the girl with blue hair. She was sitting on the ground, hugging her legs with her arm. Miele was crouching in the middle of the lay-by talking to the boy, who was lying in his underclothes in a puddle.

He approached his partner and in an incredulous voice asked him what was going on.

‘Oh, there you are.’ Miele looked up and beamed contentedly. He was completely drenched. ‘Nothing. I was just explaining something to him.’

‘And why is he in his underclothes?’

The boy was shaking like a leaf and had a gash on his head.

‘I searched him. I caught them smoking hashish. They handed some over, but I have reason to believe that they have more, hidden in the car. We must check …’

Bacci took him by the arm and pulled him away, where those two couldn’t hear. ‘Have you gone out of your mind? Did you hit him? If they report you you’re going to be in real trouble.’

Miele shook himself free. ‘How many times have I told you not to touch me! I didn’t hit him. He fell down. Everything’s under control.’

‘Why did you handcuff the girl?’

‘She’s hysterical. She tried to attack me. Calm down. Nothing’s happened.’

‘Listen. We’ve got to go to the junior high school in Ischiano right away. There’s an emergency. Apparently there’s been a break-in and shots have been heard …’

‘Shots?’ Miele had begun to get agitated. His hands twitched frenetically. ‘Shots have been heard in the school?’

‘Yes.’

‘In the school?’

‘I said yes.’

‘Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod …’ Now those fingers as agitated as a grasshopper’s legs had clutched Miele’s face and were pinching his lips, his nose, ruffling his hair.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘My father’s in there, you fool. The Sardinians! Papa was right. Let’s go, quick, there’s no time to lose …’ said Miele in a panicky voice and went towards the two youngsters.

Oh yes
. It had slipped Bacci’s mind.
Miele’s father is the school
caretaker
…

Miele ran over to the boy, who was now on his feet, picked up from the ground his clothes, now reduced to soaking wet rags, and thrust them into his hand, then went over to the girl and released her, started back but then stopped. ‘Listen, you two, this time you’ve got away with it, but you won’t next time. Quit smoking pot. It rots your brain. And quit dressing like that. I’m telling you this for your own good. We’ve got to go. Dry yourselves or you’ll catch flu.’ Then he addressed the boy alone. ‘Oh, and tell your father from me he’s got a beautiful car.’ He rejoined Bacci and the two policemen got into the patrol car and drove off, siren blaring.

Max saw them disappear along the Aurelia. He threw aside the clothes, pulled up his trousers, ran over to Martina and embraced her.

They stood clinging together, like Siamese twins, for a good while. And silently they cried. They ran their fingers through each other’s hair while the icy, indifferent rain continued to lash them.

They kissed each other. First on the neck, then on the cheeks and finally on the lips.

‘Let’s get into the car,’ said Martina, pulling him inside. They shut the doors and turned on the computerised air conditioning which in a few seconds turned the car into a furnace. They
undressed, dried themselves, put on the warmest things they had and kissed again.

And that is how Max Franzini passed the daunting kiss test.

And those kisses were the first of many. Max and Martina started going out, lived together for three years (in the second year a baby girl was born whom they called Stella), then got married in Seattle, where they opened an Italian restaurant.

During the next few days, in the villa at San Folco, they thought long and hard about reporting that bastard, but in the end they decided to drop the matter. You never knew how it would end and then there was the problem of the hashish and the car he had taken without his father’s permission. Better just forget about it.

But that night remained for ever etched on their memories. The terrible night when they experienced the misfortune of bumping into officer Miele and the great joy of emerging unscathed and becoming lovers.

Max turned on the ignition, slotted the REM album into the CD player and drove off out of this story.

Dring dring dring
.

When the phone started ringing, Miss Flora Palmieri was dreaming that she was in the beautician’s studio. She was lying peacefully on the couch when the door opened and in came a dozen silver-coated koalas. She knew, without knowing why, that those marsupials were bent on trimming her toenails.

They had nail clippers in their hands and they danced around her, singing merrily.

‘
Trik trik trik
. We’re dear little bears, as everyone knows, we’re going to trim the nails on your toes.
Trik trik trik dring dring
dring
.’

With their clippers in their hands.

Dring dring dring
.

And the phone kept ringing.

Flora Palmieri opened her eyes.

Darkness.

Dring dring dring
.

She fumbled for the switch and turned on the lamp.

She looked at the digital alarm clock on the bedside table.

Five forty
.

And the phone kept ringing.

Who on earth can it be?

She got up, put on her slippers and hurried into the sitting room.

‘Hallo?’

‘Hallo, is that you, Miss Palmieri? I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour … It’s Giovanni Cosenza.’

The headmaster!

‘Did I wake you up?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘Well, it is five forty in the morning.’

‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have rung you, but something very serious has happened …’

Flora tried to imagine what could have been so serious as to justify the headmaster’s calling her at this ungodly hour, but she couldn’t think of anything.

‘What is it?’

‘There’s been a break-in at the school during the night. They’ve smashed the whole place up …’

‘Who?’

‘Vandals.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, they got in and smashed the television and the video recorder, sprayed paint all over the walls, and chained up the school gate. Italo tried to stop them but he’s in hospital and the police are here …’

‘What’s happened to Italo?’

‘I think he’s got a broken nose and he hurt his arms.’

‘But who was it?’

‘We don’t know. There are some things written on the wall which seem to suggest they might have been pupils from the school, but I’m not sure … Anyway, the police are here, there are a lot of things to do, decisions to take, and these scrawls …’

‘What kind of scrawls?’

The headmaster hesitated. ‘Nasty ones …’

‘How do you mean, nasty?’

‘Nasty. Nasty. Very nasty, Miss Palmieri.’

‘Nasty? What does it say?’

‘Er… Could you come here?’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Yes, of course, I’ll come right away … I’ll get dressed and I’ll be there … shall we say in half an hour?’

‘All right. I’ll be expecting you.’

She put down the phone, very agitated. ‘Oh my goodness, what can have happened?’ She wandered round the house for a couple of minutes, not knowing what to do. She was a methodical woman. And emergencies threw her into a panic. ‘Oh yes, I must go to the bathroom.’

Ra ta ta ta ta ta
…

There was a helicopter in Graziano Biglia’s brain.

An Apache, one of those huge combat machines.

And if he lifted his head off the pillow it was even worse, because the helicopter started napalming his poor aching brain.

What was that again? You weren’t going to let anyone take you
for a ride? Everything would be fine? I can get along perfectly
well without her? … Bah!

And to think that everything had been going smoothly till he’d gone into that crummy Western Bar-Tobacconist’s.

His recall of the night was like a black, moth-eaten cloth. Every now and then you found a little hole through which a bit of light shone.

He’d gone down to the seashore. That he did remember. It was bitterly cold and he’d slipped and fallen among the beach huts. He’d wandered about in the rain singing.

Wave on wave, the ship, cast adrift, the bananas, the rasp berries
…

Ra ta ta ta ta
…

He must take something, quickly.

A magic pill that would shoot down the helicopter caged inside his head. Its rotor was whisking up his brain like a vanilla Danette.

Graziano reached out and turned on the light. He opened his eyes. He shut them again. He opened them slowly and saw John Travolta.

At least I’m at home
.

Every morning Flora Palmieri had a long ritual to go through.

First of all a bath, in foam scented with Irish lily of the valley. Then listening to the first part of
Good Morning Italy
with Elisabetta Baffigi and Paolo d’Andreis on the radio. And breakfast with cereal.

This morning all that would have to go by the board.

Those nasty things written on the wall. She was sure they were about her.

What on earth could they say?

Actually, in a way she was pleased. At least now the headmaster and the deputy headmistress, faced with this crisis, would be forced to act.

For several months someone had been playing practical jokes on her. At first they had been harmless pranks. The blackboard rubber glued to her desk. A toad in her handbag. A caricature on the blackboard. Drawing-pins on her chair. Then they had stolen the register. Not content with that, they had raised the stakes by puncturing the tyres of her Y10 and jamming a potato in her exhaust pipe. And to cap it all, one evening while she was watching television a stone had smashed the sitting-room window. She’d nearly had a heart attack.

At that point she had gone to see the deputy headmistress and told her the whole story. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it,’ the old dragon had said. ‘We don’t know who’s responsible. And we’re powerless to act because it happened outside school. Anyway, in my opinion, if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Palmieri, it’s partly your own fault that things have come to such a pass. You just don’t seem to be able to establish a constructive dialogue with your students.’

Flora had reported the matter to the police, but they hadn’t done anything.

Maybe now
…

Finally she collected her thoughts and entered the bathroom, adjusted the flow of the shower and took off her clothes.

He was dressed.

Timberlands on his feet. A rancid, pungent smell of …

‘Damn I’ve puked on myself.’

Another little hole.

Graziano had been in the car and driving. Suddenly a sour stream of Jack Daniel’s had risen up through his gullet and he’d turned his head and vomited out of the window. Only the window had been closed.

Ugh, what a mess
…

He opened the drawer and began fishing out bottles at random.

Alka-Seltzer. Panadol. Aspirin. Anadin. Senokot. Nurofen.

He hadn’t made it. He hadn’t managed to hold out, to resist the enormous wave of shit that had hit him.

And to think that for a couple of hours after the phone call he’d lived in a strange, euphoric Zen-like detachment.

That Miss Palmieri had a beautiful body there wasn’t a shadow of doubt.

She was tall and slim, with long shapely legs. Maybe she didn’t have much in the way of hips, but nature had endowed her with a full bosom which was set off by her slender body. Her skin was white, pure white, the white of the dead. Completely hairless except for a little carrot-coloured tuft on her pubes.

Her faced seemed carved out of wood. All hard edges and pointed cheekbones. A wide mouth with thin bloodless lips. Strong, yellowish teeth. A long wafer-thin nose divided two eyes that were as round and grey as river pebbles.

She had a prodigious mass of red hair, a curly mane that reached halfway down her back. Out of doors she always wore it in a bun.

When she emerged from the shower, despite her haste she glanced in the mirror.

This was something she had seldom done in the past, but lately she had been doing it more and more often.

She was ageing. Not that this bothered her, quite the contrary, in fact. She was intrigued by the way that with every passing day her skin became less fresh, her hair less glossy, her eyes duller. She was thirty-two and might have looked younger if it hadn’t been for that cobweb of thin lines around her mouth and for the slightly loose skin on her neck.

She looked, and didn’t like what she saw.

She hated her breasts. They were too big. She wore a five, but when she had her period it could hardly contain them.

She took them in her hands. She felt an urge to squeeze them till they burst like ripe melons. Why had nature played this obscene trick on her? Those two monstrous, hypertrophic glands were out of all proportion to her slight figure. Her mother had never had two things like that. They made her look like a loose woman and, if she didn’t crush them into elasticated bras, if she didn’t disguise them under prim-looking clothes, she felt men’s eyes on her. She would have paid to have them surgically reduced, if she’d had the courage.

She put on her bathrobe, went into the little kitchen and pulled up the shutters.

Another rainy day.

She went to the fridge and took out some cooked chicken livers, courgettes and boiled carrots. She put them all in the blender.

‘I’ve got to go out, Mama,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m going to give you your breakfast a little earlier than usual this morning, I’m sorry but I must rush to school …’ She switched on the blender. In an instant the ingredients turned into a pink mush. She switched it off.

‘That was the headmaster on the phone. I’ve got to hurry to school.’ She took the lid off the blender and poured in some water and soy sauce. She stirred it. ‘There’s been a break-in at the school. I’m rather worried.’ She put the mixture into a large feeding bottle. She warmed the bottle in the microwave. ‘They’ve written some nasty things … Probably about me.’

She walked across the kitchen with the bottle and entered a dark bedroom. She turned on the switch. The neon crackled and lit up a small room. Not much bigger than the kitchen. Four white walls, a small window with the shutters down, grey linoleum on the floor, a crucifix, an aluminium-framed bed, a chair, a bedside table and a drip stand. That was all.

Lying on the bed was Lucia Palmieri.

Graziano had taken a long shower and gone out at nine thirty the previous evening.

Destination? The Mignon Cinema in Orbano.

Title of film?
Knock Off
.

Actor? Jean-Claude Van Damme. One of the greats.

When your heart has been ripped out of your body and mashed
to a pulp the best cure’s a trip to the cinema
, he had said to himself.

After the film a pizza, and then to bed, like a wise old man.

Everything would probably have gone according to plan had he not stopped at the Western to get some cigarettes. He had bought them and was about to leave when it had occurred to him that after all one little whisky couldn’t do him any harm, in fact it might cheer him up.

And indeed it might have, had it been only been one.

Graziano had sat at the bar and downed a series of harmless whiskies and the pain, hitherto stifled in the depths of his being, had begun to writhe and howl like a tortured mongrel.

Ditched me, have you? Fine. Who cares? No problem. Graziano
Biglia is better off without you, you slut. To hell with you. Go
ahead and screw Mantovani. I don’t give a shit
.

He had started talking out loud. ‘I’m fine. Couldn’t be better. What did you think I was going to do, burst into tears? Well you were wrong, baby. Sorry to disappoint you. Do you know how many women there are in the world who are sexier than you?
Millions. You’ll never hear of me again. You’ll miss me, you’ll come looking for me, but I’ll be gone.’

A group of children, sitting at a table, were looking at him. ‘What are you lot staring at? Come over here and tell me to my face if there’s anything you object to,’ he’d barked and then, taking the bottle from the counter, he’d sat down wounded and forlorn at the darkest table in the bar and had taken out his mobile.

Before her illness, Lucia had been as tall as her daughter. Now she was about one metre fifty-two and weighed thirty-five kilos. As if some alien parasite had sucked out all her flesh and innards. She was reduced to a skeleton covered with loose, bluish skin.

She was seventy and suffered from a rare and irreversible form of degeneration of the central and peripheral nervous systems.

She lived, if it could be called living, confined to that bed. More insensate than a bivalve mollusc, she didn’t speak, didn’t feel, didn’t move a muscle, didn’t do a thing.

Well, there was one thing she did.

She looked at you.

With two huge grey eyes, the same colour as her daughter’s. Eyes that seemed to have seen something so immense that they’d burnt out, short-circuiting her whole body. Having been immobile for so long, her muscles had turned to jelly and her bones had shrunk and twisted like the branches of a fig tree. When her daughter had to make her bed she would pick her up and cradle her in her arms like a baby.

Graziano had dialled the first number memorised in the phone book of his mobile.

‘Hallo, this is Graziano, who’s that?’

‘Tony.’

‘Hi, Tony.’

Tony Dawson, deejay of the Anthrax disco and Erica’s ex.

(Of course Graziano didn’t know about that last detail.)

‘Graziano? Where are you?’

‘At home. In Ischiano. How are things?’

‘Not bad. Too much work. How about you?’

‘Fine. Great.’ Then he’d swallowed the tennis ball in his throat. ‘I’ve split up with Erica,’ he had added.

‘No!’

‘Yes.’ And I’m glad about it, he had intended to add, but hadn’t managed to.

‘How come? You seemed so well suited to each other …’

There it was. There was the bloody question that would haunt him in the coming years.

How come he’d been such a fool as to leave an incredible piece of ass like that?