Free Accabadora by Michela Murgia Page B

time of weakness some would rather be believers than tough guys. Maybe the priest could convince him in the name of God to accept himself as he is.”
    Giannina Bastíu nodded, but with a hint of resignation. Deep down, the idea of her son becoming a believer was no easier to believe than the fact that her son was a cripple.

CHAPTER NINE

    THE BICYCLE WAS UPSIDE DOWN, PROPPED ON ITS SADDLE and handlebars. Andría Bastíu was turning the back wheel slowly with his hand, while his eyes searched for the thorn that was probably what had punctured the inner tube. Maria came out of the back door with a basin half-full of water, which she set down beside the bicycle.
    â€œDon’t worry, if you were on your way to Turrixeddu it’s bound to be only a little one. You should dip the tube in the water then you’ll be able to see exactly where the air’s coming out.”
    Andría did not share this view. Showing no sign of having heard her, he ran the tyre through his fingers in search of the tell-tale object, patient and silent as a miner.
    â€œAndría, I can’t stand here all afternoon just for a punctured tyre.”
    Maria’s voice disturbed his concentration, and he lifted his eyes from the suspended wheel with an interrogative air.
    â€œIf you’ve got things you have to do, go and get on with them. I have to finish this. But I couldn’t have done it at home, Nicola is only just back from the hospital. I can’t start working on a bike in the yard right under his window.”
    Maria nodded, going to sit on the kerb in front of Bonaria Urrai’s house, oblivious of the fact that she was wearing new jeans.
    â€œHow is he?”
    â€œHe makes me sick. Growling like an animal, attacking everybody and saying all the time he wants to die.”
    â€œI can understand him up to a point, but it must be difficult for the rest of you.”
    â€œHe was never an easy person, but this is the worst thing that could have happened to him. Mamma cries in secret, but dad pretends everything’s fine and that enrages Nicola even more. It seems that everything I do gets on his nerves.”
    Meanwhile Andría had taken off the tyre and extracted the inner tube, and begun to pump it up with his little white pump.
    â€œI’d like to go and see him, but I don’t want to intrude.”
    â€œIt might not be a good idea, but maybe with you he would control himself.”
    Andría turned the tube slowly in the basinful of water, until from an invisible point a tell-tale column of little bubbles rose.
    â€œGot you, you little horror! Now let’s have the patch, and we’ll seal it up,” Andría said with satisfaction. “The less there is to see, the worse it really is, that’s always the way.”
    Ever since they had cut off his right leg at the hospital at Mont’e Sali, Nicola slept four hours a night, and then only aftersedation. Dr Mastinu said this was normal, that it needed a little time. But Giannina Bastíu had her doubts, because Nicola had never been in the habit of making a fuss about pain. He had broken bones no less than seven times. As a small boy he had never been afraid either of heights or depths, with nests up in trees and snakes down in ditches always an irresistible challenge to him, and taking risks had been his favourite game, to the perpetual despair of his mother and a certain ill-concealed satisfaction on the part of his father. Once at foot-ball he had even broken a bone in his hand, a tiny little bone that no-one had ever heard of before, and his friends had teased him by saying he was so anxious to break something that he had managed to invent a bone that did not even exist. He had never been one to make a fuss about pain, Nicola Bastíu. Giannina would have been much happier if he had, because seeing him silent and hostile in bed with his stump sewn up and covered by a sheet, burned inside her like a ball of hot fat