The Crossroads by Niccolò Ammaniti Page B

attack, if it manages to survive, a pilchard starts swimming around again just as energetically as before.
    Max stood up, smoothed down his suit with his fingers and straightened his hair. His hands were still shaking and his armpits felt as cold as if they had ice cubes under them.
    He took a deep breath and wondered if the whitening strip he had swallowed when he had been rammed against the wall would be bad for his stomach. Should he ring his dentist? Or a gastroenterologist?
    How on earth had his father been able to stand working with such people? That psychopathic Nazi, along with all those other layabouts, had nearly been the ruin of Euroedil.
    The niggers were different: they had respect. And he thanked his father’s arteriosclerosis for enabling him to take up his rightful position and steer the ship back into safer waters where he could repair the leaks and drive out the parasites that had been infesting it.
    At least Zena wouldn’t show his face round there again. Something advised him not to mobilise lawyers and make official complaints, but to overlook what had occurred and keep out of his way.
    But there was someone else who was going to have to pay. That stupid bitch of a secretary hadn’t warned him of Zena’s arrival, and hadn’t even taken the trouble to call the police.
    He lifted the telephone, pressed a button and said in a quavering voice: ‘Mrs Pirro, could you come here, please?’ He hung up and straightened the knot of his tie.
    For weeks he had been looking for an excuse to get rid of the old bat. Well, she had presented him with one on a silver salver.

28
    The Nazis originated in Germany in the early twentieth century. And they owe everything to Adolf Hitler who thought up the whole idea.
    Adolf Hitler was a penniless painter but, he had a great dream of glory making Germany the strongest nation in the world and then conquering the whole of Europe. In order to do this he had to drive, out of Germany all the Jews who were polluting the Aryan race. The Jews had come and now they owned the factries and practised usury, forcing the Germans to work in the steel factories. The Aryan race was the strongest in the world, only: they needed a leader and Hitler knew he had to get power and take it by force and then send all the Jews to the concentration camps because, they were polluting the master race. He invented the sign of the swastika, which is the sign of the rising sun and he told the Germans that if they believed in him they would get rid of the politicians and then he would create an invincible army. And he did all this because together with Napoleon, he was the greatest man in history. Though really Hitler is greater than Napoleon;
    today we need a new Hitler, to drive out of Italy all the niggers and the im migrants who steal work and to help real Italians to work. The niggers and the im migrants are creating a mafia in Italy: worse than that created by the Jews in the second world war. The trouble is nobody in Italy is patriotic any more.
    The European community is wrong every nation is different and the Slavs must not be allowed to steal the Italians’ jobs and women. Because the Italians, have always been the strongest just think of the ancient Romans and off Julius Caesar who conquered the world and brought civilization to the barbarians who were Germans too by the way.
    People hate Nazism today because they pretend it’s right to be open to different cultures. They always say that, but they don’t really believe it themselves. The Arabs are worse than the Jews: look at what they do to women they treat themlike slaves and make them go around dressed in black cloaks. And they should cut each others’ throats in their own countries. They want to distroy us. They hate us. Because our culture is superior. We must fight back. Attack them with our army and exterminate them, like the Jews.
    Cristiano paused for a moment. It was as if he had opened a tap and