Read Online As God Commands by Niccolò Ammaniti - Free Book Online Page B

been going steadily downhill and its workforce had
dwindled to a few employees. Only when he won bigger commissions did the owner call in Rino and his friends to do manual labor.
This happened two or three times a year. And it would only tide
them over for a few weeks.
    For the rest of the time the three made do with whatever work
they could find. They did small transporting jobs. Emptied cellars and cesspits. Delivered plants for a nursery. Painted walls.
Mended roofs. That kind of thing, often arranged at the very last
moment.
    They were perennially hard up and could barely make it through
to the end of the month. And while Danilo and Quattro Formaggi
only had themselves to think about, Rino had Cristiano to support
as well.
    According to a recent survey, the area comprising Varrano and
the surrounding villages had one of the highest per capita incomes
in Italy. Thanks to a generation of small and medium-scale businessmen who had known how to exploit the region's resources and
human capital, unemployment was practically non-existent.
    Our heroes were probably the only citizens of Varrano with an
income of less than six hundred euros a month.
    But that morning Rino was pleased. At last a bit of well-paid
work was in prospect. Euroedil had won a big contract to build a
new BMW showroom and was looking for laborers.
    The Ducato went through Euroedil's wide gateway and into
a large area of beaten earth, which that day was nothing but a
quagmire, surrounded by a high fence. On one side of the yard
stood the dumptrucks, the mechanical diggers and the bulldozers, on the other the workmen's and secretaries' cars and the
Porsche Cayenne of Max Marchetta, the owner's son, who during
the past year had taken over the running of the firm from his
father.
    In the middle of the yard was a prefabricated building which contained the offices and a meeting room. Next to it, a corrugated iron
shed that served as a changing room for the workmen.

    Rino parked next to a big yellow bulldozer and the three men
got out of the van. The rain had stopped, but there was a cold,
biting wind.
    "We're going to have to get out with the bulldozer in a moment.
Can you move your van?" a black man in a hard hat said to Rino.
    "Move it yourself!" Rino threw him the keys and the other man,
taken by surprise, dropped them and had to fish them out of the mud.
    "Isn't it amazing. They're even giving the orders now." Rino
smirked at Danilo as he set off toward the offices. "I'm going to
see Marchetta. What about you two?"
    Quattro Formaggi and Danilo stopped. "We'll wait for you here... "
    Rino wiped his boots on the mat, opened the glass door of the
offices and entered a small square room. The floor was covered with
imitation parquet. A glass-fronted noticeboard hung on a wall next
to a closed door. Two shabby armchairs and a table littered with
building trade magazines stood in a corner. Opposite them was a
desk covered with an incredible number of little wooden Pinocchios.
    Behind a computer screen sat Rita Pirro. The secretary had
always been there, at least in Rino's memories. In her youth she
hadn't been bad looking, but the years had robbed her of whatever beauty she'd had.
    Her age was impossible to determine. She might have been fifty,
might have been sixty. Long years of sitting in that windowless little
room suffering the cold in winter and the heat in summer had shrivelled her up like a kippered herring. She was tall and thin, had a
thick layer of foundation cream on her face and wore a pair of redrimmed glasses with a string of pearls dangling down from them.
Behind her back, stuck to the wall, were some faded photographs
of three toddlers playing on a seashore thick with beach umbrellas.
Her children, probably all married by now.
    According to Rino, Rita Pirro had once been old Angelo
Marchetta's mistress. "A blow job now and then. That kind of thing.
Short and sweet. In the office, during the lunch hour, so as