The Crossroads Read Online Free PDF Page A

eat the worm and leave him with nothing but a hook that needed re-baiting.
    Maybe he should try further out.
    He had made a long, vigorous cast, describing a perfect curve through the air. The hook had cleared the foliage of the trees but not the electric cables that ran right over his head.
    If the rod had been made of plastic he wouldn’t have come to any harm, but unfortunately for him it was made of carbon, which on a scale of electrical conductivity is second only to silver.
    The current had entered his hand and gone right through his body, leaving via his 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 five centimetres 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 Bar Boomerang, after which they had arranged to go round 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 twenty square metres in area, completely covered with mountains of coloured papier-mâché, 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 rubbish bins, 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 Pokémon 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 trousers, a flannel shirt with a blue-and-white checked pattern, a brown sweatshirt, an old quilted jacket, a Juventus scarf, a yellow cape, woollen 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. There was the history essay. And if he skipped it again …
    Come on, up you get .
    One corner of the room was beginning to brighten with the dull light emitted by the overcast, grey sky.
    Cristiano stretched, and checked the scratch on his thigh. It was red, but it was already forming a scab.
    He picked up his trousers, fleece and socks off the floor and pulled them under the bedclothes. Yawning, he sat up, slipped