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continued to see Danilo. Unknown to the tire dealer
she brought him trays of lasagna, spezzatino and rabbit cacciatore to put in the freezer. She would always arrive out of breath,
sweep the apartment and iron his shirts and he would start begging her to stay and give it another try. She would retort that it
was impossible to live with an alcoholic. And, in the early days, sometimes she had felt sorry for him, and had lifted up her skirt
and let him screw her.

    Danilo watched the little girl happily eating a huge croissant. Her
mouth all smeared with powdered sugar.
    He took the glass off the counter and went back to his table.
    He knocked back the grappa. The alcohol warmed his esophagus and his head became lighter.
    That's better. Much better.
    Until five years before the most Danilo Aprea had been able to
drink was a finger of moscato. "Alcohol and I don't get on," he
would say to anyone who offered him a drink.
    This remained the case until July 9th, 2001, when alcohol and
Danilo Aprea decided that the time had come to bury their differences and become friends.
    Until July 9th, 2001 Danilo Aprea had been a different person
with a different life. He had worked as a night-watchman for a
freight firm, had had a wife whom he loved and Laura, a threeyear-old daughter.
    On July 9th, 2001 Laura Aprea had choked to death, with the
cap from a bottle of shampoo stuck in her windpipe.
    A year later Teresa had left him.
16
    Cristiano arrived at the bus stop, but the bus had just gone. And
with it his chances of making the first lesson.
    If only he had been a year older... If he'd had a motorbike he
could have got to school in ten minutes. And he would have had
the fun of riding across the fields and rough tracks. As soon as he
finished school next year he was going to get a job-he should be
able to earn enough to buy one in six months.
    The next bus wasn't due for half an hour.
    What do I do now? he asked himself, kicking at a little mound
of snow that was melting away on the pavement.
    If he could find someone to give him a lift maybe he could slip
into class without being noticed.

    But who's going to stop here?
    Along that stretch of the highway everyone drove flat out.
    He set off, with his woolly hat pulled down over his head, his
headphones in his ears and his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
The air was saturated with water; the drops were so small you could
hardly tell it was raining.
    With Metallica shrieking in his eardrums he looked around and
lit a cigarette.
    He wasn't really all that keen on smoking, though he enjoyed the
sensation when his head started spinning. But if his father caught
him with a cigarette in his mouth he'd kill him.
    "One of us committing suicide by nicotine is quite enough," he
always said.
    In front of him was a strip of asphalt that ran as straight as a
ruler and faded into a leaden haze. To the right lay the fields of
sodden earth, to the left the row of industrial buildings. When he
came to the Castardin furniture factory with its red banners proclaiming special discounts he stopped. The gate was closed and the
dog lay there on the ground, tangled up in his chain. Head framed
by a dark pool. Jaws open. Eyes rolled back. Gums flecked with
foam. Stiff as a piece of frozen cod. One paw sticking out, as straight
and stiff as a walking stick.
    Cristiano inhaled a mouthful of smoke as he looked at the corpse.
    He didn't feel sorry for him.
    He had died like a fool. And for what? To defend some assholes
who kept him chained up day and night and beat him with sticks
to make him even more ferocious than he was by nature.
    He threw the butt on the ground and walked on as cars and
trucks drove past him, churning up a spray of filthy water.
    He remembered Peppina, a little mongrel with a long body and
legs as short as jam jars.
    His mother had got her from the dogs" home in the days before
she left home. How often Cristiano had said to himself that a woman
could