Let the Games Begin (24 page)

The model offered one glass to Chiatti. ‘Wine?'

Sasà closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. The fine perfume, pleasant, ethereal was perfect. He wet his lips. Dry, warm and lightly tannin-flavoured. He smiled in satisfaction. It was exactly like him, the Aprilia Merlot. He necked it.

Ecaterina wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. ‘How do you feel?'

He finished the glass and threw it over his shoulder. ‘Like the eighth King of Rome.'

 

43

Mantos, Murder, Zombie and Silvietta, all dressed as waiters, were marching on sandy, soggy ground dotted with puddles and marshy areas. It was crawling with mosquitoes, midges, worms, flies, dragonflies and a heap of disgusting little animals hidden amidst the reeds, sedges and lotuses.

Mantos turned around in confusion. ‘I don't remember this swamp . . . What about you guys?'

‘No, me neither,' said Murder, looking down at his muddy shoes.

‘I came here a couple of times when I was a kid. My dad used to bring me on Sundays after he'd taken me to hear the Pope. I remember the rides, but not the swamp.'

‘Are we going the right way?' Silvietta asked. In reality, she didn't really care. She had to make peace with Zombie. He was at the end of the line and was walking with his head hung low.

‘I think so. I saw them heading north.' Mantos overtook Murder to head-up the line. He had tied the Durendal to his backpack. ‘What sort of trees are those? They're so weird.'

Trees with contorted trunks sank hundreds of long dark fingers into the sand. A colony of guenon monkeys observed them from the tree tops.

Murder chased off a silver-coloured fly. ‘Ummm . . . They're probably olive trees.'

‘What are you talking about? They're mangroves. Haven't you ever seen them in documentaries?' Silvietta sighed.

Mantos was starting to run out of breath. ‘Hang on . . . Do mangroves grow in continental climates?'

Murder burst out laughing. ‘If you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk. This is not a continental climate, it's temperate.'

Mantos pointed at him, using his hand like a paddle. ‘Listen to him. The professor is here. You just confused mangroves for olive trees.'

‘Would you two stop fighting? Let's hurry up, the mosquitoes are eating me alive,' said Silvietta, hanging back so she could get to Zombie. She began walking next to him. ‘Muffin, I know
you're really, really angry, but you can't keep sulking right up to when we commit suicide. These are our last hours together, and we're doing the most important thing of our lives. We have to band together and love each other. I am asking you for forgiveness, but you have to give me a smile. Am I or am I not your best friend?'

He grumbled something that might have been a yes or a no.

‘Come on, please. You know how much I love you.'

He ripped a reed out of the mud. ‘You hurt me.'

‘I've asked you to forgive me.'

‘Why didn't you tell me you decided to get married?'

‘Because I'm an idiot. I wanted to tell you, but I was ashamed. If there wasn't this mission, I would have asked you to be my best man.'

‘And I wouldn't have accepted.'

She laughed. ‘I know . . . Please, don't say anything to Mantos about us wanting to get married, he'd be so disappointed.'

‘All right.'

‘Now, will you give me a smile? Just one, little little one?'

For a second Zombie turned his head towards Silvietta, and a smile as quick as the flap of wings flashed across his face before being immediately covered over by his hair.

Hunt

44

As a young man, Fabrizio Ciba had been a fairly good yachtsman. He had crossed the Adriatic Sea on a catamaran, and he had taken a two-masted ship to Ponza. During these crossings he had faced Burian winds and storms and never, not even once, had he suffered from sea-sickness. Now, sitting inside that fucking basket on an elephant's back, he was feeling madly nauseous. He was holding on to the edge of the sedan chair and he could feel the spider-crabcakes and the rigatoni floating around in the Jim Beam.

What a pain. Now that he could finally spend some time with Larita, he was feeling like shit.

The singer looked him over. ‘You look a bit pale. Are you feeling all right?'

The writer swallowed an acid burp. ‘No, it's nothing, just a bit of a headac . . .' He was unable to finish the sentence because the barrel of Dr Cinelli's rifle hit him on the nape of the neck.

Ciba turned towards the old man. ‘That's enough! That's the third time you've hit me in the head with it. Be careful.'

The old man, in his perfect deafness, didn't pay him any attention and kept waving the weapon to the left and right, pointing it into the bushes.

We fucked up big-time when we decided to listen to Chiatti
.

Not only were there four of them shoved inside that one square metre of swinging basket with an old fuckwit, but their elephant was at the head of the convoy, which meant
they had to watch out for low-lying branches, too. But there was an even more subtle torment that distressed the writer. He had the feeling that he had lost a bit of shine and wasn't as charming as he usually was. Perhaps Larita had made that promise to see him again out of politeness, just as she had accepted to take part in the hunt out of politeness to Chiatti. Unbelievably, he felt like the clumsy teenager he was at high school. Back then he wasn't the confident and brazen Ciba of today, the old smooth sailor, the hitman, but was instead an awkward adolescent with a tuft of messy hair and glasses, hiding inside huge stretched jumpers and grubby trousers. Every time he tried to pick up a girl, it turned into a tragedy. He would put together really complicated plans in order to meet her in the most natural way possible. He hated showing how he felt, appearing weak, so he always wanted them to make the first move. He would lie in wait in front of the entrance to his prey's house, and pretend he was just passing by coincidentally. He would ignore her on purpose or be unpleasant to her, hoping to get her attention. He would think up brilliant Woody Allen-style dialogues in which he would look like an adorable loser.

Now, with Larita, he felt clumsy and as awkward as he had in his younger years.

‘Duck!' the singer shouted.

Ciba lowered his head, only barely avoiding a trunk that cut the path in two. Cinelli copped it straight in the face, losing his glasses and spinning a full circle before sticking the tip of the rifle under Fabrizio's armpit.

‘Ouch! Bloody . . . I've had enough of this bloody thing!' The writer ripped the gun out of his hands. ‘It's even loaded. If he accidentally fires a shot, he'll kill me!'

The boy took his grandfather's defence. ‘Who do you think you are?
What a nerve! Do you normally pick on elderly gentlemen?'

Larita offered the grandson a handkerchief. The boy started patting the scratches on the old man's face. He stoically didn't make a sound.

Someone from behind shouted: ‘Hey! Get a move on! It's like being in a funeral march.'

Ciba turned towards the elephant that was following them. The basket on its back was carrying Paco Jimenez de la Frontera and Milo Serinov, and their dates.

Fabrizio gestured to them to keep calm. ‘Is it our fault? The Indian's the one who's driving.'

‘He's no Indian, he's Filipino. And anyway, tell him to get a move on,' said Mariapia Morozzi, the ex-television presenter and girlfriend of the Russian goalkeeper.

Larita turned around. ‘Can't you see it's an elephant? If you wanted to go faster, you should have gone on the fox hunt.'

‘¡
Yo te quiero, señorita
! ¡
Por la virgen de Guadalupe
! Move that big ass!' shouted the Argentinian soccer player. He had the fixed gaze and the stretched smile of someone who was addicted to cocaine.

Ciba stepped in to defend the girl's honour: ‘Hey, bello! Calm down. Don't be rude!'

‘
Desculpe
, it's a game . . .' Paco Jimenez giggled nervously and kissed his girlfriend, Taja Testari.

A voice from the third elephant shouted out: ‘Excuse me? Does anyone have any Travelgum?' It was Fabiano Pisu, the famous television actor. As green as a string bean, his eyes were wide open. He was with his boyfriend, the Maghrebi designer Khaled Hassan, the head of drama at RAI Television Ugo Maria Rispoli, and the film agent Elena Paleologo Rossi Strozzi. ‘Anyone? Anyone got any Travelgum?'

‘No. I've got a Mars,' said Milo.

In the basket of the fourth pachyderm there was supposed to be Cachemire and his Animal Death, the heavy metal group from Ancona, the revelation of the festival of Castrocaro. But the basket looked empty. A lone army boot stuck out. The four of them were below deck, soaked in alcohol and a mix of mind-altering drugs.

I hate all of you
, Fabrizio Ciba thought to himself.

He felt vulnerable and confused, like a non-European Union citizen at the residents' permit office of the police department. He was in a cage, on the back of that elephant. His secret was to keep close to life, in order to observe the horror of humanity with sarcasm, but never get inside it. Right now he was smack-bang in the middle of that circus, and he didn't feel any different from those clowns. He was even looking like an idiot to Larita. It was best if he just kept quiet and behaved as a writer reflecting on life.

He began to study the Filipino pensively, as the man continuously flicked the beast's neck. The track was getting narrower and darker, and there was no sign of the tiger. The last rays of sunshine were cutting through the undergrowth and strange calls could be heard in the air – it was impossible to tell whether they were birds or monkeys.

A weak moan rose up from the third elephant. Pisu's face had taken on the colour of Terra Di Siena. ‘Come on, I beg you, give me . . . a Travelgum . . . a travel plaster . . . a banana . . . I'm dying.'

‘Again!' the Russian's girlfriend answered impatiently. ‘You hard of hearing? We haven't got one.'

‘You think it's funny, but I . . .' The poor guy didn't get to finish his sentence because a river of yellow vomit spurted out of his mouth and spilled down the neck of the elephant driver.

The Filipino turned around. ‘Fuck you!' he said, and shook the clam-and-baby-calamari-ring salad off his turban. ‘Gross!' And with a flick of his wrist, he whipped the soap star in the face.

‘Ahhhhhh!' screamed Fabiano as he wobbled out of the basket and flopped down into an enormous puddle at the elephant's feet.

‘Hombre at sea!' shouted Paco Jimenez de la Frontera.

Except for Khaled Hassan, who was waving wildly at his fallen companion, nobody really cared what happened to poor Pisu. The elephants, in their ancient wisdom, kept up their slow onward march, abandoning the actor from
Marquess of Cassino
to the mercy of the wild beasts in the park.

 

45

The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon was full of energy. He was heading straight towards death, and the Beasts were with him again. He turned to tell them to start singing a conciliatory song to Satan and saw Murder and Silvietta walking along calmly, hand in hand, as if they were off on a picnic.

Murder really is lucky
, Mantos said to himself.

Saverio Moneta, in forty years, had never been loved like that. Before Serena, the leader of the Beasts had only had a couple of affairs during the dark years of accountancy. Nothing special, they lasted a couple of weeks, because if you went out with a girl then in the eyes of your classmates you were less of a loser. More than going together, they were associations of mutual aid.

He had noticed Serena Mastrodomenico as soon as he had been hired at the furniture shop. She was so tanned and slim,
she reminded him of Laura Gemser, the actress from
Emanuelle Nera
. An onanistic topos of his years of puberty.

He was crazy about Serena, but he saw no way of making her his. He was the last of the accountants and she was the owner's daughter. She paraded like a goddess in a miniskirt through the corridors of the shop and Saverio dreamed of just being able to talk to her, to invite her out to dinner on the Bracciano lake. She didn't even condescend to look at him, though. Even if she walked by him every day, she had never even noticed him. And that was the way it should be. Why should an elegant, worldly woman be interested in a no-hoper like him? A guy who didn't even have a car. A guy whose eyesight had faded reading huge volumes on the mysteries of the Templars and the Bermuda Triangle.

One evening Saverio was in the office, checking over the six-monthly budget again. His colleagues had gone home and he was alone in the furniture shop. He had bought a slice of mushroom-and-prawn pizza, and every now and then he took a bite, making sure he didn't stain the books. He had his headphones on and was listening to ‘The Ride of the Valkyries' at full volume.

Suddenly he'd raised his eyes. On the other side of the corridor, the door to Egisto Mastrodomenico's office was open, and the light was on.

It couldn't be the old man. He had left for the Country Style Furniture Fair in Vercelli.

A thief had slipped in and he hadn't noticed? He was just about to call security, when Serena came out of the room carrying loads of shopping bags in her hand. Saverio Moneta's heart had exploded. Shaking all over, he had taken the headphones off and shyly raised one hand to say hi, but she hadn't even responded. But then she came back in and had tipped her head to study him better. ‘All on your lonesome?'

‘Ummm . . . yeah . . .' he had managed to say, trying to sit upright in his chair.

She had walked into the accounting office and glanced around as if to check that there really wasn't anybody else there. Saverio had never seen her looking so good. She must have just come from the hairdresser and she was wearing a little pink leotard as tight as the skin on a snake, the zip well splayed over the top of her neckline, and white leather boots that came up to her knees. From her ears hung two gold rings as big as CDs.