Free As God Commands by Niccolò Ammaniti Page B

his teeth.
    He continued to hold him pinned to the wall with his left arm.
    "Please ... Please ... I haven't done anything to you ..." whimpered Marchetta desperately, waving his arms like a disco dancer.
    "Well, I'm going to do something to you." Rino raised his right
arm and closed his fist. He took aim at the nose, anticipating the
pleasure of hearing the septal cartilage crunch under his knuckles.
But his fist remained suspended in the air.
    Right next to that terror-stricken face hung a photograph. It had
been taken in open country, on a windy day. The reeds with their
plumes were bent over to one side. The sky was streaked with wispy
clouds. In the center was old Marchetta, in his younger days. He
was short and round-faced. He was wearing a heavy, ankle-length
overcoat, and holding his cloth cap down on his head with one
hand and clasping his walking stick in the other. Around him stood
five workmen in blue overalls. In a corner, slightly to one side, was
Rino, sitting on the wheel of a tractor. He was thin and gaunt. At
his feet sat Ritz, Marchetta's fox terrier. A thick pipe came out of
the ground and ran across the field. Everyone was looking at the
camera lens with very solemn expressions on their faces. Including
the dog.
    Still holding Max Marchetta fast, Rino grasped the picture and
lifted it off its hook.
    In one corner was the date 1988. Nearly twenty years had passed.
    Such a long time.
    Then Rino looked again at the young businessman who stood
there motionless, with his eyes screwed up and his arms in front of
his face, whispering: "Mercy. Mercy. Mercy."
    So this was the new owner of Euroedil. A guy who spent his days
waxing his chest and looking at himself in the mirror at the gym and who as soon as anyone raised their fists started begging for
mercy.

    He grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him on the
sofa.
25
    Max Marchetta opened his eyes slowly, with the expression of a
lobster that has been dangled over a cauldron of boiling water and
then, by some inscrutable decree of fate, put back in the fishtank.
    In the chair, on the other side of the desk, sat Rino. He had
lit a cigarette and was looking straight through him as though he
was facing a ghost. He was holding the photo. A very, very
unpleasant feeling was forming inside Max Marchetta. He was
going to remember this day for a long time, if he was still capable
of remembering.
    Zena had gone mad and was dangerous. How often had he read
in the news about workers running amok and murdering their
bosses? A few months earlier near Cuneo some workers had set fire
to a young textile entrepreneur in the parking lot of his factory.
    He peeked at the cigarette in Zena's mouth.
    I don't want to be burned to death.
    "Look at this photograph." The psychopath tossed the plexiglass
frame over to him. Max caught it. He looked at it and then sat
motionless.
26
    Rino Zena leaned back in his chair and focused on a corner of the
ceiling. "Eighteen years ago. A fucking eternity. I'm the thin one
on the right. Sitting on the tractor. I still had a good head of hair
then. Do you know how long it took us to build that water pipe?
Three weeks. It was my first real job. One of those where you turn
up at five in the morning and go home at dusk. On the twenty eighth we'd get our paycheck. Your father would hand one to each
worker and every time he'd crack the same old joke: "I'm paying
you this month; I don't know if I will next month." In hindsight
it wasn't so very funny. But you could bet your life he would say
those words. Just as you could bet your life you'd get your money
on the twenty-eighth, even if the Third World War had broken out
that very same day. Do you see that workman there, the shortest
one? His name was Enrico Sartoretti; he died ten years ago. Lung
cancer. Two months and he was gone. It was him who introduced
me to your father. In those days there was only the shed where the
changing rooms are now.