dicks.
After the epidemic, Anna had gone past the Despar from time to time. The shutter was up and the chewing-gum and liquorice machines stood by the door, near a neat row of trolleys. Dirt and destruction surrounded the shop, but inside it everything was tidy. And at a particular time the shutter came down, as if the Red Fever had never existed. The only difference was that the shop sign didn’t light up.
Anna had wondered if the twins’ father had returned from the afterlife. Every time she felt an almost irresistible desire to discover the truth, but was scared. She hung around nearby, gazing at the door with its notice: a dog behind a cross, and the words ‘We stay outside’.
One day, after walking backwards and forwards, she’d pushed the glass door open. A bell had rung. Inside, it was just like when she used to shop there with her mother on the way back from the beach. The food on the shelves, the panettone on special offer, the display case with the radios and razors for card-holders. Only the cheese and cold meat counter was empty and there were no crates of vegetables.
Anna had wandered around the shop as if in a dream. If she’d reached out her hand, the jars, boxes of cereal and bottles of balsamic vinegar would surely have vanished.
‘Can we help you?’
The twins were standing side by side, in their tracksuits and white shoes. One was holding a shotgun.
‘Would you like a trolley?’
Anna gestured that she wouldn’t.
‘We’ve got everything, including Easter eggs with a surprise, and Nutella,’ the one with the shotgun had explained.
Nutella was very hard to find. It had been one of the first things to disappear after the epidemic.
Anna had looked around. ‘Ferrero Rocher, too?’
‘Certainly.’
‘How do I pay you? With money?’ But she knew the world was full of money and nobody cared about it.
‘We swap things. Have you got anything to swap?’
She’d searched in her trouser pockets. ‘I’ve got a Swiss knife.’
The two teddy bears had shaken their heads in unison. ‘We’re interested in batteries, but only if they have some charge left – we check them. We’re also interested in medicines and Massimo Ranieri CDs.’
Anna had raised an eyebrow. ‘Who’s Massimo Ranieri?’
‘A famous singer. Our father used to like him,’ the one with the shotgun had replied. ‘In exchange for him we can give you three large jars of Nutella or six small Toblerones. Everything you see in here can be swapped. It’s a mini-market.’
Anna had never heard the twins utter so many words in succession.
Over the next few months, wherever she went, she looked for Massimo Ranieri CDs. There was plenty of Vasco Rossi and Lucio Battisti, but no Ranieri. Then one day, in an autostrada service area, she’d found, among mobile phone cases, deodorants and sodden books, a triple album titled Naples and My Songs.
That would buy her the antibiotics.
*
She’d gone the wrong way. There was a shorter route to the twins’ shop and yet, as if her feet had made their own decision, she’d found herself on the autostrada.
The car with the dog in it was there.
Anna stared at the open door, biting her thumbnail. She wanted to see him before the crows left nothing but bones.
She drew the knife from her rucksack, went up to the car and peered inside. A patch of dirty hair. She screamed; there was no reaction. Leaning further in, she saw the dog through the gap between the front seats. In the same position as when she’d left him. The blood had dried below the neck and the back seat was soaked in it. Big metallic grey flies settling. Tongue hanging out of the open mouth, over dark gums covered in drool. One visible eye, as big as a biscuit and as black as diesel, wide open, staring into the void. Breathing so faint it was barely audible. Tail limp between the back legs, twitching slightly.
Anna touched him on the side with the tip of the knife. No movement of the body, but the pupil shifted, focusing on her for a moment.
As if he was looking forward to death. It happened to all dying creatures, human beings and animals.
In the past four years Anna had seen many children become covered with blotches and fade away. Slumped in a dark recess under the stairs, in a car like this dog, under a tree or in a bed. They would put up a fight, but eventually they would all, without exception, realise it was over, as if death itself had whispered it in their ear. Some kept going for a little while longer with that awareness; others discovered it only a second before they died.
Anna’s hand, almost of its own accord, reached out and stroked the dog’s head.
Still motionless and indifferent, but for a moment the tail lifted and fell back down in what might almost have been a feeble wag.
Anna shook her head. ‘Aren’t you dead yet, you ugly brute?’
Among the rubbish in the gutter beside the guardrail she found a deflated plastic football. She cut it in two and got back into the car with one half. Taking the bottle out of her rucksack, she poured half its contents into the improvised dish. She held it near the dog’s mouth. At first he ignored it, then he lifted his muzzle slightly and, almost reluctantly, dipped his tongue in the water.
She pushed the dish closer. ‘Drink! Go on, drink.’
The animal gave a few more licks, then flopped down again.
Anna took a tin of peas, opened it and poured the contents out beside his mouth.
She’d done what she could.
*
Buseto Palizzolo, a small village of modern houses clustered under a hill, had also felt the effects of the fire. But the flames had only caressed the Michelinis’ Despar, blackening the walls of the building and melting the green plastic blinds on the upper floors.
Anna knocked on the shutter. ‘Open up, I want to do a swap.’ She waited a few moments. ‘Is anybody there? Can you hear me? It’s Anna Salemi, from 3C. I want to do a swap. Open up.’ Growing impatient, she walked round the building.
The tradesman’s entrance at the back was barred, and through the small grilled windows she couldn’t see a thing. Going back round to the front, she tried to lift the shutter, but it was locked. She kicked it. All those months spent searching for that stupid CD! She’d come all that way for nothing. Where was she going to find antibiotics now?
‘All right, then, I’m going. I had a Massimo Ranieri CD. It’s a really good one and I don’t think you’ve got it.’ She put her ear to the shutter.
Somebody moved inside.
‘I know you’re in there.’
‘Go away. We don’t swap things any more,’ replied a sleepy voice.
‘Not
