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“Come,” Dino heard Saeed say from inside the corrugated iron gate.

  All the external plasterwork had been stripped from the house and was gradually being replaced by stone. Part of the roof still had to be done, and all around the house there were heaps of sand and rubble.

  The big blue three-wheel van was parked to the right of the house, half hidden by the facade. Saeed went round to the side, opened the door, reached a hand inside and pulled on the gear stick.

  “Come,” he said again. “Give me a hand, we push three-wheeler to heap of rubbish, not to make mess.”

  Dino looked in the direction Saeed had pointed. Next to a shed, there was a little mountain of rubble and dust and earth that was waiting to be carried away. Dino nodded, walked to the three-wheeler and started pushing hard, while Saeed pulled from the door and every now and again gave a few turns to the steering wheel to move the three-wheeler where he wanted.

  “Good,” Saeed said when the bed of the van was close to the heap of debris. He again reached inside the three-wheeler and gave another pull on the gear stick. “Other shovel over there,” he said, pointing to a corner of the shed, while he walked around to the rear of the three-wheeler and pulled a shovel from a hole just over the back transmission.

  They began shovelling all the debris and earth that they could onto the bed of the van.

  “How about also throwing in a bit of good earth?” Dino asked after a few minutes, more as an excuse to stop for a moment.

  Using the same excuse, Saeed stopped and leant on his shovel. “Better not,” he said after thinking about it for a moment, wiping his forehead with his sleeve and puffing a little. “If police stop you and policeman smart, he recognise good earth and get suspicious.”

  Dino looked at him gravely. “You’re right,” he said and went back to shovelling rubble onto the bed of the van.

  When they had finished they both leant on their shovels, breathing heavily and wiping their faces with whatever they had. Then for some reason they smiled at each other, and then shook their heads and even laughed a bit, their laughter echoing in the silence of the evening as if they were in the theatre.

  “Do you have a plastic sheet?” Dino asked after a while, still with a half-smile hovering over his lips.

  Still panting, Saeed frowned. “Maybe yes,” he said, and put the shovel down on the bed of the three-wheeler and disappeared inside the house. By the time he came back, carrying a big sheet of transparent plastic folded several times into a perfect square, Dino had grabbed a trowel from somewhere and for some reason was knocking a hollow brick into shape.

  “Here,” Saeed said, coming level.

  Dino raised his eyes towards Said. “Thanks, just throw it inside,” he said, then bent and gave the brick another knock with the trowel.

  Saeed threw the plastic sheet into the bed of the three-wheeler, over the pile of earth, then looked at that funny, mixed-up little man he would always think of as his boss. He watched as Dino gave a last little knock to the brick, which was now practically half the size it had been before, examined it, got to his feet, carefully laid it down in the bed of the van, secured it with the plastic sheet, and rubbed his hands to wipe them clean.

  “OK,” he said, turning to look at Saeed. “I’m going now.”

  “Yes,” Saeed said.

  The two men looked at each other for a moment in silence, thinking with some part of themselves that they really belonged in another story, but that this one wasn’t too bad after all.

  “Thanks,” Dino said, holding out his hand.

  Saeed took it and gave it a firm shake. “You’re welcome, boss. And be careful.”

  “Yes,” Dino said. “Don’t worry.”

  Dino opened the door and got in the front seat, which was actually more like a bench.

  The three-wheeler started up, spluttering and juddering as always, in a way that aroused a certain sympathy.

  “Maybe tomorrow morning I can bring the three-wheeler straight to where you live,” Dino said with an amused little smile, his elbow on the window and his other hand on the wheel. “That way, they won’t see me come to the site.”

  “OK,” Saeed said, smiling. “Drive safe.”

  Dino gave a little laugh, and Saeed gave two slaps on the bonnet of the three-wheeler, which resonated with the impact, then walked back to the gate and opened it.

  “Goodnight, Saeed,” Dino said as he drove past his friend, who was holding the gate open.

  “Night, boss,” Saeed said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  DINO DROVE BACK ACROSS the town centre, the three-wheeler backfiring in the darkness, and drew up in a little alley next to his building. He got out of the van, closed the door, walked round to the front of the building and put the key in the front door, looking around to make sure there was nobody nearby, and went inside. He went to the far end of the entrance hall and opened the cellar door, then reached an arm inside and switched on the light.

  “Who is it?” a deep voice came from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Father Christmas,” Dino said, seeing Blondie’s head emerge from behind the corner, and actually felt like laughing. “Do you think it’s a good idea, when you’re supposed to be hiding, to ask who it is when someone comes in?”

  Blondie grunted something and started coming up the stairs.

  “How’s it been?” Dino asked, when Blondie had climbed a few steps.

  “Everything OK,” Blondie said, throwing him a slight smile. “Only kill couple people, but clean everything.”

  This time, Dino could not hold back the laughter, but when the boy was almost at the top of the stairs, he grabbed him and pulled him up by the elbow. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said.

  Blondie smiled and dipped his head below his shoulders, as if to shield himself from a blow.

  “And be quiet,” Dino whispered as he switched off the light and closed the cellar door.

  “Wait,” he said still whispering, as he approached the front door. “I’m going to make sure no one’s about.” He pulled back the catch and slowly put his head out and looked right and left, then right and left again but more slowly. Then he raised his hand, inside the building, as if to say stop, and was silent for a few seconds, listening. There was nothing to be heard in the air but the nocturnal respiration of the town, that silent rumbling like the monotonous breathing of an old man.

  “It’s OK,” Dino whispered. “Let’s go.”

  They both slipped out through the door, as if wriggling out of a box, and, hugging the wall of the building, reached the alley where the three-wheeler was parked.

  “Here,” Dino said.

  Blondie gave him a puzzled look.

  “Let’s just make a little space in the middle,” Dino went on, moving the brick and the plastic sheet to one side. Then he leant over inside the back of the three-wheeler, took out the shovel from the pipe over the transmission and holding it at shoulder-height started to hollow out a valley in the middle of the debris.

  Blondie watched him, still puzzled, without saying a word, wondering once again like thousands of others if this strange person, his boss, was a genius or completely stupid, or even crazy.

  “Stand over there and don’t move,” Dino said after a while, continuing to excavate his valley.

  When there was a trench running the whole length of the bed between two parallel piles of debris, Dino turned towards Blondie and wiped away a drop of sweat trickling down his temple. “Come,” he said. “Lie down here in the middle.”

  Blondie looked at him again, still puzzled.

  “Hurry up!” Dino whispered more loudly. “We don’t have all week.”

  Blondie moved away from the wall against which he had been leaning, walked to the side of the three-wheeler, climbed in, clambered over one of the two heaps of debris, and lay down in the middle like a dead man in his own coffin.

  “You completely crazy,” Blondie said, looking at Dino with a vaguely worried expression.

  “I’m not the
one planting bombs, you idiot,” Dino said, putting the shovel aside and walking around the back of the van. He bent down to the ground, pulled up the plastic sheet, unwrapped it, and laid it over the bed. Then he got in the back, put the brick to one side, and started to tuck the sheet around Blondie, who lay there as still as a corpse, still with that worried look on his face. When Dino reached Blondie’s head, he pulled the sheet up a bit, sized it up, then grabbed it with both hands at the level of Blondie’s mouth. He took a penknife from his pocket—he always carried it with him—and, taking care not to slice through his finger, cut the sheet just below where he was holding it, making a small hole. Then he smoothed the sheet out again and tucked it under Blondie’s head. The little round hole rested just over Blondie’s mouth.

  “Can you breathe?” Dino asked, looking Blondie in the eyes through the semi-transparent sheet.

  Blondie nodded without saying a word. He looked more like a corpse than ever, and for a moment Dino hoped it wasn’t any kind of omen.

  Dino turned and grabbed the brick, moved it close to Blondie’s head and told him to take it. Blondie gave him another puzzled look and did not move.

  “Take it!” Dino whispered again, loudly, waving the brick in front of Blondie’s eyes. Blondie moved his hands slowly from his sides, as if trying to push his way out from under a barber’s gown, and grabbed the brick.

  “Congratulations,” Dino said, letting go of it. “Now put it over your mouth.”

  Blondie did not move.

  “Hurry up,” Dino whispered again. “Rest one of the holes over your mouth.”

  Blondie again moved his hands slowly and placed the brick on his face. From inside the brick he could be heard sighing softly.

  “Can you breathe?” Dino asked, quickly tilting his body first to one side, then the other, to make sure that his invention was working as it was supposed to.

  Blondie nodded, looking Dino in the eyes through the sheet, said a soft “Yes” through the hole in the brick and gave a little laugh.

  Dino smiled, pleased with his invention. “Now keep still and don’t move for any reason until I uncover you. Have a nice trip.” He patted Blondie’s side twice and jumped down from the van.

  “Bye,” Blondie said from inside the brick, with another little laugh.

  Dino picked up the shovel and, looking around to make sure nobody was about, completely covered Blondie in a single heap of earth and debris, from the top of which the half-broken brick peeped out for a few centimetres, although nobody would ever notice it, expect Saeed.

  When he had finished, Dino stuck the shovel back in the pipe at the back of the three-wheeler, then gave a last tap to the brick and said into it, “We’re leaving. Don’t worry.”

  He got in the driver’s seat and started the engine and, with a lot of grumbling and backfiring, the three-wheeler began reversing out of the alleyway. He passed the door of his building, rumbled through the side streets and slowly headed westwards, driving alongside the river for a while. It seemed a particularly quiet evening, and seagulls were circling between the bridges.

  Chapter Twenty

  IT WAS SOME TIME NOW since the rumble of the three-wheeler had stopped echoing between the walls of the houses and had been swallowed up by the wider spaces between the warehouses on the outskirts of town. Dino felt almost relaxed now, thinking that perhaps he had been overzealous, and that no one was going to search for a bomber, to search for anyone for that matter, if they didn’t even know what the person looked like. So he opened the window and put his elbow out to feel the coolness of the night on his face and was looking forward to a brief excursion into the country, when from the end of the street, just where one of the last warehouses gave way to the first cultivated field, he saw the outlines of two police cars.

  A uniformed officer walked quickly into the middle of the road and ordered the three-wheeler to stop. Dino’s heart started pounding in his chest, and that pleasant coolness he had felt just a moment earlier suddenly became an icy current that howled through his nerves and veins.

  “Hello there,” the officer said. “Switch off the engine, please.” He was quite a tall, thin man, with hollow eyes and a thick grey moustache.

  “Of course,” Dino said, bending slightly and groping for the key, knocking his hand on the wheel as he did so.

  “Can I see your papers, please?” the officer said when the three-wheeler had finally shuddered into silence.

  “Of course,” Dino said, putting a hand in his pocket.

  The papers. How was it possible he hadn’t thought of that? How was it possible he hadn’t thought of the one thing you needed if you ran into the police? For a moment, as he leant to his right, praying that the papers were where they ought to be, he remembered that moment of amused self-satisfaction when he had seen how the brick and the sheet worked out. Now he wouldn’t find the papers, which were the only things that mattered, and he would start to stammer some embarrassed excuse and they would become suspicious—another policeman, shorter and stockier than the first one, was already walking towards the back of the three-wheeler—and they would ask him to get out … and there the documents were, in the little drawer in front of the passenger seat, all dusty and creased, but shining with a light that no sheet of paper had ever had.

  “Here,” Dino said, with a clear sensation of heat on his skin, like a tropical breeze. He took a deep breath. “Nice weather we’re having.”

  The policeman took the papers, thanking him. Then all at once he frowned and looked Dino straight in the eyes. “Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “Nice weather.”

  The policeman looked at Dino for another moment from the corner of his eye then walked off towards the cars to check the papers and confer with his colleagues.

  In the rear-view mirror, Dino saw the other policeman looking in the bed of the van and almost distractedly moving a few bits of rubble with his truncheon.

  The tall policeman with the moustache came back, and the two of them approached the window.

  “Where are you going at this hour?” the policeman with the moustache asked, handing Dino the papers back, while the other one stood a little further back, looking at him gravely, with both hands on his truncheon.

  Where was he going? How should Dino know where he was going?

  “I’m going to unload some rubble at the dump.”

  “Now?”

  “We were working late, the councillor wants the villa ready the day before yesterday, so we even have to work at night.” Dino didn’t know where that thing about the day before yesterday had come from, but all things considered he liked it, and for a moment he even thought of swearing and spitting on the ground, but then changed his mind.

  “Aren’t there any dumps in town?” the policeman further back said, in a harsh, sibilant voice that seemed to belong in a different story altogether.

  “At this hour? If you know of one open, then tell me, because I can do without having to drive around in the middle of the night, damn it,” and this time he did spit on the ground, hoping he wasn’t exaggerating. “A few kilometres from here,” he went on, pointing down the road, “there’s a dump that’s always open.” Dino knew his story wouldn’t stand up, but he hoped the policemen didn’t know too much about the subject.

  “All right,” the policeman said. “You can go. Have a good evening.”

  “Good evening my arse,” Dino said. He had started to get a taste for this. “Thanks anyway.” He started up the three-wheeler, and the two policemen nodded gravely and watched him drive away.

  Dino even put his hand out of the window to wave goodbye, and as he pulled it back inside, with even the last warehouse now behind him, along with a smile and another warm breeze Dino seemed to see a meadow strewn with daisies growing on the rumbling bonnet of the three-wheeler. Life wasn’t so bad really, and maybe you never knew where a new theorem capable for a moment of putting things in order might emerge from. You expected theorems to emerge from places and dynamics with prec
ise co-ordinates, instead of which for some reason they might spring up even from a noisy clapped-out old three-wheeler.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  DINO HAD BEEN CHUGGING along for several kilometres now in the middle of the countryside, past tilled fields and occasional patches of scrub, when all at once, along a white side road, in a clearing half covered with a clump of poplars, he stopped the three-wheeler and listened to it spluttering in the night as it fell asleep.

  The door squeaked as he opened it. He walked to the back of the three-wheeler, took the shovel from the pipe just over the transmission, rolled up the sleeves of his jacket and started throwing the earth and debris and rubble to the sides of the bed. Before long, Blondie’s legs, then his trunk, still under the dusty sheet, saw the light of the countryside. Finally, Dino put the shovel to one side and with his hands freed and dusted off the part of the sheet covering Blondie’s face, then took off the brick, put it to one side and, grabbing the top of the sheet from behind Blondie’s head, pulled it away, uncovering the whole body.

  “Go on, son,” Dino said. “You’re free.”

  Blondie lay there for a moment looking at Dino, then sat up, still staring at him. “You genius,” Blondie said.

  “Forget that,” Dino said. “Get out of that thing, I need to empty it.” He started folding the plastic sheet as best he could.

  Almost in a single bound, Blondie stood up and jumped out of the three-wheeler like a cat, then picked up the shovel, unhooked the back flap, and started unloading the rubble and earth.

  “Are you doing that?” Dino asked as he finished folding the sheet.

  “Yes,” Blondie said, and for a moment they both felt the way they used to when they had worked together on the roads, placing stones in the wet earth.

  When he had finished, Blondie put the shovel back in the pipe and went up to Dino, who was leaning calmly and silently against one side of the three-wheeler, looking up at the sky.

  “Thanks, boss,” Blondie said, also leaning back against the side of the van, breathing hard.