Read Online Let the Games Begin by Niccolò Ammaniti - Free Book Online Page B

sudden breeze. It began to rain. Huge, heavy drops stained the bricks on the small terrace, and a lightning bolt, like a crack in the wall, tore open the shadow and for an instant the sky lit up like it was day with an explosion that shook the earth, set off burglar alarms and started dogs barking.
    Saverio Moneta, seated on the couch, saw a fleet of large and twisted black clouds heading towards Oriolo Romano. One of them, the biggest of all, right in front of him, foldedin half and stretched out, turning into a sort of face. Black eyes and mouth wide open. Straight after the shadows returned.
    â€˜Madonna of Carmine!’ he sputtered instinctively. He ran to close the windows, where the rain was drenching the parquet floor. ‘All right!’ he panted into the receiver.
    â€˜All right, what?’
    â€˜I've found your three.’ Then he beat himself on the chest. ‘I'm the fourth.’

 
    12
    Fabrizio Ciba and Alice Tyler were sitting calmly on a marble bench opposite an oval-shaped fountain. On their right was a bamboo forest illuminated by a halogen floodlight. On their left, a hydrangea. Between them a distance of twenty centimetres. It was dark and cold. The lights from the villa behind them were reflected in the water, and on Alice's splendid legs.
    Fabrizio Ciba took a sip of alcohol from the bottle and passed it to the girl, who lifted it to her mouth. He had to make his move quickly. It was so cold they risked paralysis. What to do? Jump her? I don't know . . . You know how these Anglo-Saxon intellectuals can be .
    The dominator of the bestseller lists, the third-sexiest man in Italy according to the women's weekly Yes (behind a motorcycle racer and a sitcom actor with blond highlights), could not bear to think about being turned down. It would probably force him to undertake years of psychoanalysis.
    The silence was becoming eerie. He took a shot: ‘You've translated Irvin Parker's books, too, haven't you?’ As he spoke he realised that it was the worst thing to say if he was aiming for a quick approach.
    â€˜Yes. Everything except his first one.’
    â€˜Ah . . . Have you met him?’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Parker.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜What's he like?’
    â€˜Nice.’
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Very.’
    No! This wasn't working. What's more, he felt she was distracted. The twenty centimetres between them felt like twenty metres. It was better to pull back in and leave it be. ‘Listen, mayb . . .’
    Alice looked at him. ‘I have to tell you something.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘It's a bit embarrassing . . .’ She took a deep breath, as if she was about to share a secret. ‘When I finished reading The Lion's Den , I cried . . . I felt terrible, just thinking that I was supposed to go out that evening. I stayed at home, I was too shaken. And the next day I read it again and it was even more beautiful. I don't know what to say, it was a unique experience . . . It holds so many analogies with my own life.’
    Ciba was overwhelmed with waves of pleasure, by endorphins trickling from his head downwards, swishing through his veins like petrol in a pipeline. Except that this time, unlike what happened with Sawhney, the pleasure channelled its way into the urethra, in the epididymides, into the femoral arteries and exploded inside his reproductive organ, which filled with blood, causing him a ferocious erection. Fabrizio grabbed her by the wrists and stuck his tongue in her mouth. And she, who was about to confess that she'd written him a long letter, suddenly found it between her tonsils. She muttered acollection of vowels, ‘Ae u aei!’, which meant ‘Are you crazy?!’ Instinctively she tried to free herself of the oesophagogastroduodenoscopy, but unable to do so she figured she was done for and put her hand in his hair, pressed her lips hard against his and began windmilling her small, thick tongue.
    Fabrizio,