MY SISTER SALLY. EXTERMINATION HOURS.

I

It was a cold October morning and the New York sky looked like an infinite sheet of dirty aluminium.          

        Three months had passed since the horrific slaughter of children in the beautiful children's town of Disneyland. The massacre, horrible, brutal, had not only shocked and outraged public opinion in the United States of America, but around the world.          

       That morning, the five Carter-Valenti siblings had met at Gladys's luxurious eighth-floor flat, facing Central Park, between 65th and 66th Streets. It was already five minutes past the appointed time and Sally was the only one missing from the meeting. The four of us waited in silence. I smoked cigarette after cigarette and couldn't control my nerves. I took my eyes off the skyscrapers through the large window, and once again gazed with excited fascination at the artistic jewellery box on the round mahogany table. The case, however, contained no jewellery at all, but folded slips of paper. Five to be exact. One of the slips of paper had an "X" marked on it in ink, and the one or the other of us to whom fate had given it by lot had accepted and sworn beforehand to carry out its inexorable verdict: to kill a man.         

       I lit a new cigarette and looked at my three brothers. When it comes to physical resemblances, I have always instinctively associated people with famous screen stars. Gladys, in addition to the similarity of features, possessed the elegant elasticity of the Hepburn, the divine ugly. My older sister had inherited the Carter-Valenti character, and her explosive temper was responsible for the maids not lasting her two months at a time.

       Bobby was a young Victor Mac Laglen, only without the filmmaker's smiling expression. On the contrary, my brother, a former Vietnam fighter, former baseball player and current physical education teacher, was a dour, clumsy man like a retired boxer after being knocked out a thousand times in the ring.

       I couldn't describe Jim or find any resemblance to any famous personage. The big cities of the United States, and in particular New York, have a large number of these young playboys, indolent, handsome, tireless seekers of sensual pleasures, and capable of spending the fortune of the Shah of Persia in a week.

        I flicked my cigarette butt into a marble ashtray and put another cigarette to my lips, which I did not light. 

       Gladys sipped from a glass of whisky and kept her eyes on the clock. Bobby was pacing with his hands in his pockets and Jim was stroking the glitter on his tie pin.

       The half hour on the pendulum clock chimed. It was Gladys who broke the silence. 

      - What happened to Sally? 

      - She must have regretted it - Bobby commented.

      - I don't think so - I pleaded in Sally's defence. 

      Jim stood up looking bored and ran a small pocket comb through his wavy black hair.       

      - This is all absurd - he said.

      His comment provoked Gladys's anger. As she hastily set it down on the bar counter, the glass tipped over, spilling the liquid and sending ice cubes flying across the carpet.

       - What's the matter with you, Jim? Are you the one going backwards now...? It's too late now for any Carter-Valenti to turn back! You made a promise, an oath, don't forget it! It is too late for weaknesses and scruples of conscience. Was the man, or rather the human beast, who ordered that dreadful slaughter of children in a children's amusement park, weak?

       Gladys' brief and angry tirade resounded like a whiplash in our hesitations and doubts. This time there was a tense and uncomfortable silence. The memory of a pile of children's corpses, broken and strewn about like little dolls smeared with red paint, overwhelmed us.       

       Almost unnoticed, Sally appeared furtively, still crushed by the shock of the suffering. She apologised softly for the delay and explained that she had had a minor car accident at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street. Sally was wearing black. I thought she wouldn't get out of mourning as long as she lived. I remembered that she would soon be forty-five years old. Of the five siblings, she and I were the ones who got along best. I could not imagine my delicate, grief-stricken sister Sally being drawn into the sinister game into which Gladys's persuasive dialectic and domineering spell had induced us.

      We all sat around the table. I sat between Sally and Jim. It had begun to rain, gently at first, then torrentially. No one spoke. One by one we reached into the case. I withdrew my slip of paper and unfolded it very slowly with excitement, stretching my uncertainty like a poker player. To my left, Jim's expression was one of immense relief. I heard a deep sigh to my right. Sally, stunned, stared at the open slip of paper she held with trembling fingers. The paper was blank. Mine was marked with an X.