Free God's Dog by Diego Marani Page A

ultrasound scans for certain destinations. During those same days the Roman branch was planning a deadly coup: an attempt on the pope’s life in Saint Peter’s Square on the day of Benedict XVI’s canonisation would have caused the whole world to quake. Marta and her associates had been waiting for such an opportunity for years. Preparations for the coup had exposed them to considerable risk. The members of the Free Death Brigade financed themselves through kidnapping and pushing drugs. Many of them had been arrested; the group had been virtually decimated. Marta was almost at breaking point, but she couldn’t give up now. Sometimes she regretted that she couldn’t lead a normal life, with a husband, a job and children to bring up. It hadn’t worked out with Ivan; yet while they were together, he had seemed to be the love of her life. She fell in love with him immediately, gave herself over to an all-engulfing passion, which suddenly gave meaning to her life and even had the power to deaden the all-consuming rage within her. The more helpless she felt in its sudden grip, the more serenely she yielded to it. He on the other hand had never managed to fall in love with her. He swore that he loved her, and in a sense it was true; but Ivan was a highly educated man, he used his head rather than his heart, and went about things with a doggedness which robbed his actions of spontaneity. Marta felt as though she were his daughter, rather than his lover; it was as though he were waiting for her to grow up so that he could let her go. Their being together had turned into an absurd expectation of her future maturity. They built nothing together, they were not even a real couple; he talked a great deal about the idea of the family, but the minute they were alone together all the life went out of him, he seemed to go into a decline; he seemed sad. He assured her that this wasn’t so, it was just that he was slow and careful by nature; but Marta could see that sadness was precisely what it was; or perhaps rather a repressed boredom, which was even worse. Ivan tried to convince himself that being with Marta was doing him good, but his whole nature was nudging him elsewhere. He had always scorched everything around him; he was made to be alone. So now Marta had nobody. Her father and mother were long dead, and she had no other family. This helped her to bear the weight of a life lived out in hiding. Hiding was not a problem, indeed she was quite happy to stay hidden; it spared her the need for choice. She was not vulnerable, there was no one in the outside world whom the police could pursue in order to track her down. At times, when she was sitting with those whom she helped to die, she felt that it was they who were her family: that army of dying people who looked at her with gratitude even as their faces were contorted with pain.
    The door was opened by an old woman with unkempt white hair and thick glasses. She stood in front of him without saying a word, her trembling hands pressed to her chest. Perhaps she had been expecting him. Her eyes were red; clearly, she had been crying, and her mouth was half-open, set, as though she were trying to repress further tears. She was wearing an apron over a grey wool dress, and shapeless carpet slippers; one of her stockings had slipped down almost to her ankle. Salazar went into the flat, leaving her at the door. The room at the end of the corridor, where Chiara slept, was now empty. The bed was made up in the double bedroom, though there was only one pillow. The lamps had been plugged in, and the wardrobe was now full of female garments, on coat hangers; old woman’s clothes, long and dark. The panama hat was still there, on a shelf, together with the odd towel. A large half-open suitcase stood in one corner. Salazar realised that this was the home of an elderly widow. Now at last everything made sense. He noticed things that had escaped his attention on his first