As God Commands Read Online Free PDF Page A

left leg.
    The lock-keepers had found him lying on the ground, burnt
almost to a frazzle.
    For several years he hadn't been able to speak and had moved
jerkily, like a green lizard. Then gradually he had recovered, but he
still had spasms in his neck and mouth and a crazy leg which he
sometimes had to thump awake.

    Quattro Formaggi took some minced meat out of the fridge
and gave it to Uno and Due, the turtles who lived in three inches
of water in a big washing-bowl on the table by the window.
    Someone had thrown them into the fountain in Piazza Bologna
and he had brought them home. When he had found them they had
been the size of two-euro pieces; now, five years later, they were
nearly as big as cottage loaves.
    He looked at the clock shaped like a violin that hung on the wall.
He couldn't remember exactly at what time, but he was supposed
to be meeting Danilo at the Boomerang Bar, after which they had
arranged to go around together to wake Rino up.
    There was just time to reposition the little wooden church by the
lake.
    He went through into the sitting room.
    A room about sixty square feet in area, completely covered with
mountains of colored papier-mache, with rivers of tin foil, with
lakes made out of plates and bowls, with woods made of moss,
with towns dotted with cardboard houses, deserts of sand and
roads of cloth.
    And the surface was populated by soldiers, plastic animals,
dinosaurs, shepherds, little cars, tanks, robots and dolls.
    His nativity scene. He had been working on it for years.
    Thousands of toys retrieved from trash cans, found on the dump
or left by children in the public gardens.
    On the highest mountain of all stood a stable with Baby Jesus,
Mary, Joseph and the ox and the ass. They had been a gift from
Sister Margherita when he was ten. Quattro Formaggi, moving with
surprising agility, crossed the scene without knocking anything over
and repositioned the bridge across which a troop of smurfs was
walking, with a Pokemon at their head.
    When he had finished the job he knelt down and prayed for the
soul of Sister Margherita. Then he went into the tiny toilet, had a
cursory wash and put on his winter gear: some long johns, a pair
of cotton pants, a flannel shirt with a blue-and-white checkered pattern, a brown sweatshirt, an old quilted jacket, a Juventus scarf, a
yellow poncho, woolen gloves, a peaked cap and some heavy working
shoes.
    Ready.

12
    The alarm clock went off at a quarter to seven and jolted Cristiano
Zena out of a dreamless sleep.
    It was a good ten minutes before an arm emerged like a hermit
crab's pincer from under the bedclothes and silenced the ringing.
    He felt as if he had only just closed his eyes. But the most terrible thing was leaving the warm bed.
    As every morning, he considered the idea of not going to school.
Today it was particularly tempting, because his father had told him
he was going to work. That didn't happen often these days.
    But it wasn't possible. He had a history essay. And if he skipped
it again ...
    Come on, up you go.
    One corner of the room was beginning to brighten with the dull
light emitted by the overcast, gray sky.
    Cristiano stretched, and checked the scratch on his thigh. It was
red, but it was already forming a scab.
    He picked up his pants, fleece, and socks off the floor and pulled
them under the bedclothes. Yawning, he sat up, slipped on his
sneakers and shuffled, zombie-like, toward the door.
    Cristiano's room was large, with still unplastered walls. In one
corner two trestles supported a wooden plank on which exercise
books and textbooks were piled. Above the bed, a poster of Valentino
Rossi advertising beer. Sticking out from the wall by the door were
the truncated copper pipes from a radiator that had never been
fitted.
    With another yawn, he crossed the hall floored with gray linoleum,
passed the tatters of the bathroom door that still hung from its
hinges and entered the room.
    The bathroom was a