Steal You Away (23 page)

‘The usual reasons. We hadn’t been getting on so well lately.’

‘Ah! Did you dump her or … or did she dump you?’

‘Well, let’s say I dumped her.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. You might say we split up because of incompatibility of character … We’re such different people, our outlooks on life are light-years apart.’

‘Ah …’

Despite the whisky that was marinating his stomach, Graziano had noticed that that ‘Ah…’ contained a good deal of scepticism, disbelief, pity and other things he didn’t like at all. It was as if that bastard had said, ‘Yeah, sure, pull the other one.’

‘Yes, I dumped her because, to be quite honest, she’s a bit unhinged. I’m sorry, I know she’s a friend of yours, but Erica’s got water where her brain should be. She’s that kind of girl. Untrustworthy. I don’t know how you can still be her friend. Especially as she says some pretty nasty things about you behind your back. Says you’re the kind of guy who’ll screw you as soon as he gets half a chance. If I were you – and I’m not saying
this just because I’m angry you know – I’d steer clear of her. She’s just a sl … ah, forget it.’ At this point Graziano had had a vague perception which warned him to terminate that phone call. Tony Dawson wasn’t the most, shall we say, appropriate person to confide in, being one of the Slut’s closest friends.

As if that weren’t enough, the deejay, as treacherous as an asp, had given him the final push. ‘Erica’s a bit of a gold-digger. That’s the way she is. I know, I know.’

Graziano had swallowed a tot of whisky and taken new heart. ‘So you’d noticed? Thank God for that. Yes, she’s a real slut. One of those girls who’d walk over your dead body for a bit of success. You’ve no idea what she’s capable of.’

‘What, for example?’

‘Anything. You know why she dumped me? Because they took her on as an assistant on
You Reap What You Sow
, the show presented by that poof Andrea Mantovani. And naturally she didn’t want any deadweight preventing her from expressing herself as her nature impels her to, in other words like the slut she is. She dumped me because … how did she put it?’ Graziano attempted a whining imitation of Erica’s Trento accent. ‘Because I despise you, and everything you represent. The way you dress. The bullshit you talk … You slut.’

There was a deathly hush at the other end, but Graziano didn’t care, he was unloading the wagonful of shit he had accumulated in six months of torture and frustration and even if it had been Michael Jackson on the phone, or Eta Beta or Sai Baba in person, he didn’t give a damn. He had to get it off his chest.

‘Despise me and everything I represent! Can you believe that? What the hell do I represent, eh? The fool who showered gifts on you, put up with you, loved you as no other man ever has, who did everything, everything, ev … Shit! I must be going. Bye.’

He had cut short the conversation because a pain as sharp as a bee sting had shot through his carotid artery, and the fragile Zen superstructure had by now completely collapsed.

Graziano had picked up the bottle of whisky and staggered out of the Western Bar-Tobacconist’s.

The cruel night had opened its jaws and swallowed him.

‘Here you are. It’s delicious, you’ll see. I’ve put some chicken livers in it …’ Flora Palmieri lifted her mother’s head and put the bottle in her mouth. The old woman began to suck. With those bulging eyeballs and her head reduced to a skull, she looked like a newly hatched chick.

Flora was a perfect nurse, she poured homogenised soup down her throat three times a day and washed her every morning and in the evening helped her do her exercises and emptied the faeces and urine bags and twice a week changed her sheets and gave her a revitalising drip and always talked to her and told her lots of things and gave her enormous quantities of medicines and …

… she had been in this state for twelve years.

And she seemed to have no intention of leaving. That organism clung to life like a sea anemone to a rock. She had a pump inside her that beat as regularly as a Swiss clock. ‘Congratulations! Your mother has the heart of an athlete, you can’t imagine how many people wish they had such a good one,’ the cardiologist had told her once.

Flora propped her mother up a bit higher. ‘Tasty, isn’t it? Did you hear what I said? There’s been a break-in at the school. They’ve smashed everything up. Gently, gently or you’ll choke …’ She wiped away a little stream of pulp that was trickling down from the corner of her mouth. ‘Now they’ll see for themselves what some of the pupils are like. Hooligans. They talk of dialogue. And the pupils break into school during the night …’

Lucia Palmieri went on sucking voraciously and staring at a corner of the room.

‘Poor Mama, having to have breakfast at this time of night …’ Flora brushed her mother’s white hair into place. ‘I’ll try to be
back early. But now I really must go. Be good.’ She detached the catheter and picked up the urine bag from the floor, kissed her on the forehead and went out of the room. ‘This evening we’ll have a bath. You’ll like that, won’t you?’

The fear which he had succeeded in banishing the previous evening tugged him roughly out of his sleep.

Pietro Moroni opened one eye and brought into focus the large Mickey Mouse clock ticking away merrily on the bedside cabinet.

Ten to six.

No way am I going to school today
.

He felt his forehead, hoping he had a temperature.

It was as cold as that of a corpse.

A bit of light entered through the small window next to the bed, brightening one corner of the room. His brother was asleep. His pillow over his head. One foot, as long and white as a hake, stuck out of the blankets.

Pietro got up, put on his slippers and went to have a pee.

In the bathroom it was freezing. Steam came out of his mouth. While he was peeing, he rubbed his hand over the wet window and looked out.

What foul weather
.

The sky was covered with a uniform mass of clouds which loured over the sodden countryside.

Whenever it rained hard, Pietro would catch the yellow school bus. The stop was about a kilometre away (it didn’t come to the house, because the road was too badly rutted). Sometimes his father gave him a lift, but usually he walked, sheltering under his umbrella. If the rain wasn’t hard, he would put on his yellow cape and galoshes and go by bike.

His mother was already in the kitchen.

There was a clanking of pans and a smell of fried onions.

Zagor was barking.

He looked out of the window.

His father, hidden under his rainproof cape, was in the dog’s enclosure, fetching the bags of cement heaped up near the kennel. Zagor, on his chain, was whining and flattening down in the mud and trying to attract his attention.

Shall I tell him?

His father ignored the animal, as if it didn’t exist. He would pick up a bag, hoist it on his shoulder and then, head down, throw it on the trailer of the tractor and start all over again.

Should he tell him? Tell him everything, tell him they’d forced him to break into the school?

(
Excuse me, Papa, I’ve got something to tell you, last night
…)

No
.

He had a feeling his father wouldn’t understand and would be angry. Furious, in fact.

(
Won’t it be even worse if he finds out later?
)

But it wasn’t my fault
.

He gave his willy a vigorous shake and hurried back to his room.

He must stop thinking it wasn’t his fault. It didn’t change anything, in fact it only made things more difficult. He must stop thinking about school. He must sleep.

‘Oh God, what a mess,’ he whispered, and leaped back up into his warm bed.

It was a strange business, guilt.

Pietro still hadn’t figured out how it worked.

Everywhere – at school, in Italy, all over the world – if you make a mistake, if you do something you shouldn’t do, something naughty, then you’re guilty and you get punished.

Justice should mean that everyone pays for his own misdeeds. But that wasn’t how it worked in his family.

Pietro had learned this at a very early age.

Guilt, in his home, crashed down from the sky like a meteorite.
Sometimes – often, in fact – it fell on you. At other times, by sheer luck, you managed to avoid it.

It was a lottery, in other words.

And it all depended on what mood Papa was in. 

If he was in a good mood, you might have done something really terrible, yet nothing would happen to you, but if he was in a bad mood (and this was becoming more and more common) even an air crash in Barbados or a successful coup in the Congo was your fault.

 In the spring Mimmo had broken the washing machine.

‘Stonewashed’, he had read on the label of Patti’s jeans. He liked those trousers very much. His girlfriend had explained to him that the reason they were so nice was that they were literally washed with stones. Stones could make jeans white and soft. Mimmo hadn’t wasted much time thinking about it, he’d filled a bucket with stones and emptied it into the washing machine along with his jeans and half a litre of bleach.

Result: both the jeans and the drum of the washing machine were a write-off.

When Mr Moroni had found out, he’d nearly had a fit. ‘How is it possible that I have such a boneheaded son? It’s difficult to be so unlucky,’ he had roared, thumping his chest, and then he had blamed his wife’s genetic inheritance for flooding her children with idiocy.

He had called customer service and the day the technician was to come coincided with the one when he had to take his wife to a doctor’s appointment in Civitavecchia, so he had said to Pietro: ‘Now, I want you to stay at home. Show the technician where the washing machine is. He’ll take it away. Your mother and I will be back this evening. Whatever you do, don’t go out.’

And Pietro had stayed quietly at home, done all his homework and at five thirty on the dot had sat down in front of the television to watch
Star Trek
.

Then his brother had arrived with Patti and they too had sat down to watch
Star Trek
.

But Mimmo had no intention of following the adventures of Captain Kirk and co. It was rare for his mother to leave the house and he meant to seize his chance. He squeezed and groped his girlfriend like an octopus on heat.

But Patrizia wriggled away and slapped his hands and snorted. ‘Leave me alone, don’t touch me. Stop it, will you?’

‘What’s the matter? Why don’t you want to? Have you got your period?’ Mimmo had whispered in her ear and then tried to explore it with the tip of his tongue.

Patrizia had jumped to her feet and pointed at Pietro. ‘You know perfectly well why. Your brother’s here. It’s as simple as that. He’s always hanging around … He’s a pest, he gawps at us … He spies on us. Get rid of him.’

This wasn’t true.

The only thing Pietro was interested in was what had happened to Mr Spock, nothing was further from his mind than watching those two necking and pawing at each other.

The truth was different. Patti was angry with Pietro. She was jealous. The two brothers stuck together and joked too much for her liking and Patrizia, on principle, was jealous of anyone who had too close a relationship with her boyfriend.

‘Can’t you see? He’s watching TV …’ Mimmo had replied.

‘Get rid of him. Otherwise, forget it.’

Mimmo had gone over to Pietro. ‘Why don’t you go and play outside? Go for a ride on your bike.’ And then he had tried a little ruse. ‘I’ve already seen this episode, it’s rubbish.’

‘I like it …’ Pietro had retorted.

Mimmo had wandered dispiritedly round the room searching for a solution and at last had found one. Simple. Put his parents’ two beds together to make a double.

Brilliant.

‘What time are Mama and Papa coming back?’ he’d asked Pietro.

‘They’ve gone to the doctor’s. About eight thirty, nine. Late. I don’t know.’

‘Great. Come on, let’s go.’ Mimmo had grabbed Patti by the
hand and tried to yank her away. But it was no good. She wouldn’t budge.

‘No way. I’m not coming. Not with that pest in the house.’

Mimmo had then played his last ace. With a show of generosity, he had taken ten thousand lire from his wallet and had told Pietro to go and buy him some cigarettes. ‘… and you can keep the change. Buy yourself a nice ice cream and have a couple of games in the arcade.’

‘I can’t. Papa said I’ve got to stay at home. I’ve got to wait for the washing machine man,’ Pietro had answered solemnly. ‘He’ll be cross if I go out.’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll see to it. I’ll show him the washing machine. You go and get the cigarettes.’

‘But … but … Papa’ll be cross. I don’t …’

‘Get out. Vamoose.’ Mimmo had put the money in his trouser pocket and shoved him out of the house.

 Naturally everything goes as badly as it possibly could go.

Pietro dashes off to the village, and on the way there meets Gloria who is on her way to a riding lesson and implores him to go with her and he, as usual, lets himself be talked into it. Meanwhile the Rex repair man arrives. He finds the cottage door shut and rings the bell but Mimmo can’t hear, he is fighting a ferocious battle with Patti’s elasticated trousers (she, perfidious girl, does hear but keeps quiet). The repair man goes away. At seven thirty, an hour earlier than expected, Mr Moroni and wife park the Panda in the yard.

Mario Moroni gets out of the car in a filthy mood because he has spent three hundred and ninety thousand five hundred lire on neuro-crap for his wife and, shouting ‘it won’t do you a blind bit of good, all it’ll do is fuck you up completely and put more money into the pockets of a bunch of conmen,’ goes into the storeroom and discovers that the washing machine is still there. He goes upstairs. No sign of Pietro. He feels his hands grow suddenly warm and itchy as if he had nettle rash and his bladder is exploding, so he rushes upstairs (he’s been dying for a pee ever since he left
Civitavecchia), pulls out his pecker in the corridor, opens the toilet door and gapes.