A Child To Kill

It’s snowing.

The large flakes fall slowly and solemnly to transform the world into a single heap of confused white silhouettes, while the wind, with a soft murmur, spreads a scent of sweets, resin and tangerines in the streets. Hurried figures run towards their lair, towards a burning fire, towards two open arms, and the noises of the city slowly fade away in a muffled silence.

It is especially on evenings like this that it becomes hard to stay alone.

A shadow crosses the large window illuminated by the dance of colored lights of the tree. It looks like that of a big-bellied woman with huge and deformed breasts. Daniela. Daniela with little Gianni in her arms. A slow and undulating pace; it’s time to go to bye-byes. Close your little eyes, baby, and let yourself go. There awaits you a warm bed, a tender kiss, a vain smile. Yes, it is hard to stay alone on an evening like this.

Daniela. She came into my life a little more than a year ago, when winter was still approaching, and she’s gone out of it a little less than a week ago, as it was in the agreements. With one disastrous variation: Gianni stayed with her.

This is not how it was supposed to be. But it has happened, and it is now late to go back, and it is now late to try again, and it is now late to...

But it is hard to stay alone on evenings like this.

The wind was having fun scrambling dead leaves that day as I entered the hospital. Appropriate signs showed me the way, so I managed to extricate myself in a maze of corridors and reach the ward. I gave the name to a nurse with a sullen air, and she pointed out to me a girl sitting on a bed in the middle of the large dormitory, staring into the void. Is that the look of a murderer?

I delayed to study her a moment before approaching her. It was obviously time for visits, and her place was the only one that wasn’t surrounded by a small crowd of people. Slender, she didn’t look very tall, long, slightly wavy blond hair, a face more sweet than beautiful. I tried to imagine that face contracted in a grimace of pleasure at the climax, but the result was something grotesque. Strange how easy it is to forget how a creature with an angel face can also have a body eager to be touched, squeezed, possessed. Strange how this seems absurd and repugnant when the arms that surround her are those of another, and how simple, instead, and natural, it is to enjoy her cravings when the lips that rest on them are one’s own.

- Miss Magone? - I asked in a low voice when I reached her. Only then did she notice my presence. She raised her head, looked at me, and lowered it hesitantly in an affirmative sign.

- My name is Rossi. Giorgio Rossi - the “Giorgio” was a touch of originality, to partially repair the stupid obviousness of the surname. Incredible how it comes spontaneous, when you give a false name, resort to the usual ” Rossi”. It’s a classic, like the “Smith” in America: who knows if, in the end, there is someone really called like that? - I would need to talk to you for a few minutes, do you mind? No, I’m not a doctor.

- Do you know me? Excuse me, but I can’t remember...

- You cannot. We have never seen each other before, and I myself have known of your existence for less than twenty-four hours. I asked for information... I hope you won’t take it badly, and, in any case, I will never give the name of the person who gave it to me.

- Information? But... what does it mean? - she seemed dazed.

- I should propose a... deal, if I may call it so.

- What kind of deal?

- You are pregnant, not married, the man who put you in trouble has disappeared without a trace, and you came here to abort the baby in your womb.

- That’s how it is. But who are you? What do you want? Why are you interested in me?

- I need you. Or rather - I specified in a breath - I need your son. I want your son.

She stiffened and looked at me with her mouth wide open. - What did you say?

- You are here to kill him. If you do not do it, and you give birth to him for me, it will be three hundred thousand euros for you. On my conditions.

- Three hundred thousand euros? - stammered. - For... Are you making fun of me?

- I am making you a business proposal, nothing more, nothing less. You don’t want or can’t keep this baby; I need him. I’m just proposing an alternative way to get rid of him. We can agree, and the three hundred thousand euros are only a first offer, if you believe that it is not enough you can ask for more, the price is a detail of no importance.

- The price? But do you realize what you are saying? You are talking about buying a child as if it were a dress. But what are you, a monster?

- Apart from the fact that I pay much less for my clothes, I would like to point out that I am asking you to save your son’s life, and allow me to offer him everything you don’t feel able to give him, and maybe even more. And you are here to kill him. Are you sure that the monster is me?

Her eyes filled with tears as she shook her head, trying to find an answer to my observations. - But what do you know about it?

- Only what I was told - I answered, ignoring the true meaning of her question, determined to handle the case coldly. - Your name is Daniela Magone, you are twenty-seven years old, and you work in a department store as a shop assistant. You were engaged for a couple of months to a guy from another city, who had fun with you and disappeared perhaps without even knowing he got you pregnant... Or after having known it? - I asked, but did not wait for the answer. I didn’t care, and I don’t even know why that question escaped me. - Your family, instead of helping you, kicked you out of the house, and since you can’t afford to give birth to the child, and, given the circumstances, I guess you don’t even want to, you came here to get rid of him, making him die. I propose, as I have already said, an alternative way to get rid of him.

- I should sell him.

- What you are planning to do has nothing nobler.

- A moralist - she finally sprang. - Just what I needed! Judging by the way you dress, your hands without calluses, your well-groomed appearance, you must be one of those who always know how to behave, one of those who always know what is right and what is not... Of course, it is easy for you gentlemen to be good Christians, to keep the sacred commandments, and to flaunt your irreproachability. Those who are full of money can afford the luxury of behaving in a “noble” way, as you say, and can turn their noses up and be scandalized against those who are not able to do so. If I could keep him, I wouldn’t be here now. Even despite “the circumstances”.

- But you can’t - I reminded her, a little harshly, touched by her observations.

Finally, tears began to fall on her cheeks. “She’s a killer,” I thought, “a little slut before, and a killer now”. It’s not that I enjoyed playing the judge, I don’t like to pose as a “moralist”, as she said, and I knew that I was trying to impose some beliefs on myself that I didn’t have. On the contrary, if I was there, it was because I didn’t think at all that way. But I had to be hard on her, even cynical, perhaps, to have the strength to go to the end. And it was not easy. But I “had to” go to the end, I needed it, maybe more than she needed to not. I couldn’t and I shouldn’t be moved by her tears, I could not put myself in her shoes to understand what she was feeling, for her situation before, and for my interference now. She had to be just a body without a soul, a vehicle, an incubator. I had to forget what I had been told, “a good girl, naive and inexperienced, who has paid dearly for having loved a rascal”, even if for this very reason my choice had fallen on her. “My son” must not be the son of a nymphomaniac or a prostitute. But now I had to forget, that was only a parameter on which to make a choice. The girl I had in front of me was just a stupid little slut who had decided to fix her mistakes in the simplest and quickest way, making die a helpless creature that had not asked her to be born; and ours had to be normal business relationships, without personalisms, and without emotional involvement. She didn’t have feelings, she didn’t feel anything, those tears were just suitable for the occasion, and now, on the contrary, she had the opportunity to earn a nice nest egg with that child she didn’t want. So it was. That’s the way it had to be.

- You talked about conditions - she finally said, recovering. - Which ones?

- You will come to live with me, immediately, and of course you will declare that the child is mine. You will have everything you need to bring your pregnancy to a successful conclusion, and you will stay with me and the baby for the nursing period, the bare minimum. We are going to live in a small cottage in the suburbs, of which I have just come into possession, which I will buy in your name and will remain to you in addition to the three hundred thousand euros. Then the baby and I will leave, and you will forget you ever had a child.

- You cannot ask me this.

- I can ask you, it is up to you to decide whether to accept or not. And since you seem uncertain, and I recognize that this is not an easy decision to make, the offer rises to five hundred thousand, and it is not the last one I can reach.

- But it is not a question of figures!

- I know - I reluctantly admitted, although I would have preferred it to be. But I immediately recovered: - I know very well: it is the question of deciding how to get rid of the child. Whether you come with me or stay here, you will lose him. The only difference is that, in the first case, your son will live, and I assure you that I will do everything in my power to ensure that he grows up healthy and happy. And this you should do it for free. The price I offer you is only for the time that you will have to lose for it to happen. If you stay here, you will be fine in a couple of hours, if you come with me it will take, say, a year from now. Five hundred thousand, and a house, in exchange for a year of your life.

She laid her hands on her lap and burst into a silent, repressed cry. She reflected for a long time, shaking her head, biting her lower lip, closing her eyelids. It seemed, at a certain point, that she was withholding a scream. Then, amidst the sobs, she said: - All right, I’m coming with you.

(continue)