A brief silence ensued, the testicle brain seemingly awestruck.
Then he cleared his throat, trying to sound as macho as he could. “OK, then. But no matter what you say, Rose, you’re still so divinely ravishing that you make me tingly inside.”
Carl didn’t know whether to feel incensed or crack up laughing. What was it he said? Divinely ravishing? Tingly inside?
Had police headquarters gone entirely round the bend, or was it just him?
5
Autumn 2010
As the night progressed, Marco realized the necessity of finding somewhere to sleep, a pair of shoes, and some dry clothes. The people who were after him had called off the search, so the question now was whether they still had a man posted at the edge of the woods or somewhere else.
On the opposite side of the road, away from the trees, it was a good way up to the closest smallholdings and farms, but how was he to cross the road without being seen if someone was keeping watch? It would be just like Zola to make sure.
Marco knew the next few hours would be decisive. If he failed to get far enough away from Zola and the rest of the clan, they would track him down. Walking through the woods on bare and battered feet was out of the question, so there was no alternative: he had to cross the road.
In Italy the children’s favorite game had been a version of hide-and-seek. The objective was to run from one’s hiding place back to base unseen and kick over a tin can. Marco had always been best, so he tried to imagine himself back in Umbria on a carefree sun-drenched day, lying in the bushes, waiting for his chance to kick the can.
He imagined that the base was across the fields, behind the farms whose lights he could see in the distance. All he had to do now was stay low, emerge at the top of the ridge, and then leg it like a ferret after its prey.
Think of it as a game, Marco, then it will work, he told himself.
He waited until the beam of an approaching car’s headlights swept across the landscape, allowing him to see whether the coast was clear. He saw the silhouette of a figure some fifty meters farther down the hill. Marco couldn’t tell who it was, but the way he stood huddled it was obvious the sentry was struggling to keep warm, just like him.
This wasn’t good.
He’d have to crawl flat across the road. If he got to his feet and ran, he would be discovered.
He lifted his head and peered into the darkness across the fields. Not only would he have to crawl over the tarmac in pajamas as luminous as a magnesium bomb, but afterward he would need to continue in the same way at least two hundred meters across the black furrows of the field. And what then? Who could tell what awaited him if he made it to one of the dwellings? Perhaps Zola had someone over there, too?
He hesitated, waiting until the moon slid behind denser clouds. If he was lucky, he would need ten seconds at most, and then he would be over in the opposite ditch.
He wormed his way forward, easily at first, but farther out the wet road surface glistened in the moonlight, drawing everything into relief, so he turned his head toward the figure and studied its movements before pulling himself up. He would have to be ready to run if he was discovered.
The two of them heard the heavy vehicle at the same time, coming toward them from the other side of the hill. The figure drew back instinctively, turning in the direction of the sound, directly toward the place where Marco lay.
Marco lay still as a mouse in the middle of the road. The hard tarmac felt like ice, his heart pumping like a threshing machine inside his chest.
In a moment, headlights would bathe the road surface in light and he would be exposed. Seconds later the vehicle would be upon him, crushing him flat if he didn’t move, but the man keeping watch still stood with his eyes turned in Marco’s direction.
He felt the road tremble beneath him. It was as if the gates of hell were slowly being opened with the sole purpose of dragging him down into the depths.
And maybe that was what was about to happen.
Marco closed his eyes. It would all be over in an instant. Perhaps the world after this one would be better.
The rumble of the approaching diesel motor gathered intensity and as Marco submitted to his fate, he filled his last seconds with thoughts of his mother, of where she might be now and how things might have been if they had fled together when they’d had the chance. Then he thought of how he was about to be killed and the next morning, when birds would peck at what was left of him.
In these final moments of life he felt for the first time that he had never really meant anything to anyone. And thus he lay, consumed by sorrow and loneliness, as the blinding headlight beams appeared over the ridge and descended toward him with alarming speed.
At that moment, a dog began to bark at the bottom of the hill.
Marco was in no doubt: it was Zola’s hound.
Instinctively he opened his eyes, realizing at once, as the headlights lit up the night, that the figure had reacted to the barking and turned toward the sound.
As though by reflex he sprang to his feet as the truck and its driver, whose attention was on the mobile phone at his ear, bore down on him without noticing his presence.
He leaped for his life with an eruption of sudden strength. The edge of the front bumper grazed his back, the blast wave sending him flying into the ditch.
Pain seared through his body, and yet as he lay half submerged in drainage water with his lungs wheezing and the adrenaline pumping, his abdomen cramped up with suppressed laughter. Maybe in a minute or two the dog would pick up his scent, the hunt thereby coming to an end. But right now the moment was his.
He had crossed the road in one piece.
And as he skulked through the landscape like a fox, his head down and his body bent, he continued to laugh as the shouts behind him grew fainter and fainter.
–
The door of the woodshed on the outer edge of the yard was fastened only by a stick through the hasp. It was an open invitation, a gift in the cold, black night that warned of approaching winter.
Marco looked up at the house, his teeth chattering. The windows were dark and only the wind made a sound. He sighed with relief. He would bed down here for the night, and in the smell of cat piss, woodchips, and pine resin he settled with his legs drawn up to his chest and a pair of old sacks covering his feet and lower body. Now it was just a matter of waiting until morning and then hoping the family inside the house had errands to run during the course of the day.
Even before the sun rose he was woken by laughter and voices from within. People at ease, seeking each other’s company. So different from the harsh commands to which he had become accustomed in his life. He felt the sorrow and yearning of the night return to him. For a moment it was superseded by hatred and anger, though he couldn’t say toward whom it was directed. Was the family here at fault for loving each other? And could he be certain that his father, or even Zola, had not at some point loved him?
How will I ever know? he wondered, again feeling overcome by solitude. What use were such thoughts, anyway?
He dried his eyes. He promised himself that one day he would make a family of his own and he would be certain what they felt for him.
With this solace he waited four more hours until the family drove away. Perhaps to do the weekend’s shopping or to take the children to some leisure activity. The kind of thing of which he had only ever dreamed.
He crept up to the house and made sure no one was inside before picking up a stone that seemed heavy enough.
It took only a single blow against the pane of the back door and he was inside, a comforting landscape of material wealth of the kind all Danes took completely for granted. He stood for a while, taking in the blending of smells he’d had to do without for so long. The sweet variety of scents of the bathroom, a mother’s perfume, yesterday’s cooking, and the sharp aromas of new purchases. Furniture, wood, cleaning agents.