The Crossroads by Niccolò Ammaniti

In the centre 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 gymand 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 car park of his factory.
    He peeked at the cigarette in Zena’s mouth.
    I don’t want to be burned to death .
    â€˜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-eighthwe’d get our pay cheque. 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. And your father worked in a sort of glass booth. But you must remember that. I used to see you sometimes. You used to turn up in a red sports car. We must be about the same age, you and me. Anyway, to cut a long story short, your father took me on on trial the very day they started building the pipe that took the water out of the river and carried it to the power station. Twenty days to finish it. And there were six of us. In all my life I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard as I did in those three weeks. On the last day we worked till four in the morning. And fuck me if we didn’t finish