Anna - Niccolo Ammaniti

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Or maybe ‘worked’ isn’t exactly the right word for it: he sat in front of a computer watching pornographic videos in a container that had been turned into an office. He was a slim, nervy boy, with bushy hair and a pointed chin which he highlighted by wearing a goatee beard. He also had a second job – selling expired pills outside the local high schools. His dream, however, was to become a rapper. He loved the way rappers dressed, the gestures they made, the women they had and the killer dogs they owned. Though it wasn’t easy to rap with a lisp.

      Observing Dopey through sunglasses as big as TV screens, he felt that the puppy, which was growing into a quick, strong dog, had potential.

      One evening, sitting in his car outside a shopping mall, he told Samuel, his best friend, that he was going to turn Dopey into ‘a ferocious killing machine’.

      ‘That name, though, Dopey . . .’ Samuel, who was training to be a fashion designer, didn’t think it suited a killing machine.

      ‘What should I call him, then?’

      ‘I don’t know . . . How about Bob?’ ventured his friend.

      ‘Bob? What kind of a name is that? Manson is more like it.’

      ‘You mean as in Marilyn?’

      ‘No, you fool! Charles Manson. The greatest murderer of all time!’

      Christian dreamed of some illegal immigrant or gypsy breaking into the scrapyard at night to steal something and being confronted by Manson. ‘Just imagine some poor guy trying to get away by climbing over the fence with his guts hanging out and Manson snapping at his arse,’ he guffawed, slapping Samuel on the back.

      To make Manson more aggressive, Christian studied websites about fighting dogs. He bought a Taser and, using it and a broomstick wrapped in foam rubber, started a training course of electric shocks and beatings designed to turn the dog into a killing machine. In the winter he doused him with buckets of icy water to harden him against the weather.

      Before a year had passed, Manson was so aggressive the only way of feeding him was to throw him food from a distance and fire a jet of water into his bowl from a hose. They couldn’t even let him off the leash at night for fear of losing a hand.

      Like thousands of other dogs, Manson seemed destined to spend his whole life chained up.

      The virus changed everything.

      The epidemic wiped out the Oddo family in the space of a few months, and the dog was left alone on his chain. He survived by drinking the rainwater that collected in the metal remains of cars and by licking up dry scraps of food from the ground. Now and then someone would pass by in the street, but nobody stopped to feed him and he’d howl in despair, his nose to the sky. His mother answered his calls for a while, then she fell silent, and Manson, exhausted by hunger, lost his voice too. He could smell the stench of the corpses in the common graves of Trapani.

      Eventually instinct told him his owners weren’t going to bring him any more food and he was going to die there.

      The chain round his neck, about ten metres long, ended at a stake fixed in the ground. He started pulling, using his back legs for leverage and his front legs for support. His collar, now that he’d lost weight, was loose, and in the end he managed to wriggle out of it.

      He was weak, covered in sores, riddled with fleas and unsteady on his feet. He passed his mother’s body, gave her a perfunctory sniff and staggered out of the gate.

      He knew nothing of the world and didn’t stop to wonder why some human beings had become food while other, smaller ones were still alive, but whenever the live ones crossed his path he ran away.

      It didn’t take him long to get back into shape. He fed on street litter, entered houses to devour whatever he found there, and chased off crows feasting on corpses. During his wanderings, he met up with a pack of strays and joined them.

      The first time he started eating a dead sheep, the others snarled at him. He learned by experience that there was a hierarchy in the group – that he must keep away from females on heat and wait his turn before eating.

      One day, on a piece of waste land behind a warehouse full of tyres, a hare crossed his path.

      The hare is a difficult animal to catch; it’s quick and its sudden changes of direction can disorientate the pursuer. It has only one weakness: it soon gets tired. Manson’s body, by contrast, was a mass of hardened muscles. After a long chase he caught it, shook it to break its backbone, and started devouring it.

      A shambling hound slightly higher in rank in the pack than him, with pendulous ears and a mushroom-like nose, appeared in front of him. Manson retreated with his tail between his legs, but, as soon as the other started to eat, Manson jumped on him and ripped off one of his ears. Surprised and terrified, the other dog turned round, dripping with blood, and sank his teeth into the Maremma’s thick coat. Manson backed away, then jumped forward and with one twist of his neck tore out the other dog’s jugular, windpipe and oesophagus, leaving him writhing in a pool of blood.

      Fights among dogs and wolves are seldom lethal; they serve to clarify the hierarchy, to distinguish the lower ranks from the leaders. But Manson wasn’t in the habit of playing by the rules; he didn’t stop till his adversary was dead. Christian Oddo’s intuition had been right. Manson was a killing machine, and all the pain and torture he’d undergone had made him indifferent to wounds and merciless in victory.

      Blood excited him, gave him energy, won him the respect of other dogs and the favour of bitches on heat. He liked this world: there were no chains, no cruel humans, and all you had to do to gain others’ respect was use your fangs. In a few weeks, without even having to fight the chief, who rolled over on the ground with his legs apart, he became the alpha male, the one who had first choice of the food and impregnated the females.

      Three years later, when the explosion of a natural gas tank surprised the pack as they surrounded a horse in the car park of the Sunflowers shopping mall, he still hadn’t lost his rank. What a horse was doing in the car park was a mystery of interest to none of them. Emaciated and covered in sores, it had got one of its legs stuck in a shopping trolley and was standing there in a cloud of flies, near the cashpoints, its big brown head hanging between its legs. The horse was in that state of dumb resignation that can sometimes come over herbivores when they realise that death has caught up with them and that all they can do is wait. The dogs were closing in slowly, almost casually, certain that they were soon going to eat some fresh meat.

      Manson, as leader of the pack, was the first to attack the horse, which barely even kicked out when it felt his teeth sink into its hind leg. But a wall of fire, fanned by the wind, suddenly enveloped the scene in a blanket of acrid, scorching smoke. Surrounded by flames and terrified by exploding petrol pumps, the dogs sheltered behind a household appliance store. They stayed there for several days, nearly asphyxiated, under a vault of fire, and when everything had been burnt and they came out, the world was an expanse of ash devoid of food and water.

      *

      Anna pulled back her hair.

      The Maremma crept forward and stopped, ear cocked, eyes fixed on his prey.

      She looked at the fence. It was too high. And there was no sense in going back to the car: he’d tear her to pieces in there.

      She opened her arms: ‘Come on then! What are you waiting for?’

      The dog seemed uncertain.

      ‘Come on!’ She sprang up and down on her toes. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

      The dog flattened down on the asphalt. A crow passed overhead, cawing.

      ‘What’s the matter? Are you scared?’

      The dog sprang forward.

      She sprinted towards the car and reached it so fast she hit her hip against the side. Groaning, she slipped in through the door and shut it behind her.

      There was a thud, and the car swayed.

      Anna grabbed the seat belt, wound it round the

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