As God Commands by Niccolò Ammaniti Read Free Book Online

ditch her son and husband if she liked, but not her dog. You
had to be a real cow to do a thing like that.
    Rino didn't want Peppina in the house because he said she was
a stupid little beast and if he was in a particularly bad mood he
would threaten to kill her. The real reason he didn't want her around, in Cristiano's opinion, was that she reminded him of mama,
but when it came to it he never gave her away.

    Cristiano was different, he liked Peppina. She always made a fuss
of you, and if you picked her up she would nibble your earlobes.
She lived for tennis balls. She woke up thinking of them and went
to bed thinking of them.
    You would throw a ball for her and she would keep going to
fetch it and when you got fed up she would sit down beside you
with the ball between her little paws and keep nudging at you with
her nose till you threw it for her again.
    One day-it must have been in the summer because it was
very warm-Cristiano had arrived home from school, and the
school bus (which brought primary school children right to their
doors) had left him opposite the house, on the other side of the
highway.
    He had a treat in store for Peppina: he had gone all the way to
the sports club and behind the fences of the tennis courts, in a
drainage ditch choked with weeds and nettles, he had collected a
lot of balls. He was on the point of crossing the road when Peppina
emerged from behind the house, running like crazy. She looked
funny when she ran, like a furry train. How on earth had she heard
him arrive? The wooden gate was usually closed, but that day it
had only been pushed to.
    Cristiano realized that the silly little mutt intended to cross the
road to join him.
    He looked right and left and saw a constant stream of trucks. In
a split second he realized that if he shouted to her to stay where she
was she would think he was urging her on and dash across the road.
    He didn't know what to do. He wanted to cross the road and
stop her, but there was too much traffic.
    Peppina had pushed her nose between the gate and the gatepost
and was trying to open it.
    He had to stop her. But how?
    Of course, he must throw her a ball. A long throw. Toward the
back of the house. But not too high, or she wouldn't see the ball
and it would all be in vain.
    He took a tennis ball out of his pants pocket, held it up so that
she could see it, took aim and threw it, but even as it left his hand he realized he had misjudged it. For a moment he clutched at the
air as if trying to pull the ball back, but it flew straight and fast
and too low and hit the front of an approaching tractor trailer. The
yellow sphere shot up into the air and fell back into the middle of
the road, where it started bouncing wildly up and down. Peppina,
who had managed to wriggle her way out, saw the ball in front of
her and ran to get it. By some miracle she avoided the first truck,
but not the second; it ran over her, first with its front wheels, then
with those of the trailer.

    It was all over in a few seconds and Peppina was nothing but a
heap of flesh and fur squashed on the asphalt.
    Cristiano, rooted to the spot on the other side of the road, wanted
to do something, wanted to pick her up off the ground, but there
was a river of metal flowing in front of him.
    For the rest of the day he stood at the window crying and
watching Peppina's corpse being turned into a little mat. He and
his father had to wait till evening, when the traffic had slowed
down, to remove her remains from the road. There was hardly
anything left of her-just a furry brown scarf, which his father
had chucked in the trash bin, telling Cristiano to stop blubbering,
because a dog that only lived for a ball didn't deserve to live.
    So, Cristiano said to himself, Castardin's beast was the second
dog he had killed in his life.
17
    After turning the key in each of the three locks that sealed the door
of his apartment, Quattro Formaggi went up the steps that led to