Papa was standing up and seemed to be following the conversation, but he was on the other side of the room. The barber was leaning against the door as if the house was likely to fall down at any moment and mama, sitting on the sofa, with a vacant expression on her face, was watching the television with the sound turned off. The lampshade was enveloped in a cloud of midges that fell down black and stiff on the white plates.
‘Listen all of you, listen, let’s give him back to her. Let’s give him back to her,’ papa said suddenly.
The old man looked at him, shook his head and smiled. ‘You’ll keep quiet if you know what’s good for you.’
Felice glanced at papa, then went over to the old man. ‘Reckon I’m a poof, do you, you piece of Roman shit? Well you can have this fistful from me.’ He brought his arm up and punched him in the mouth.
The old man crashed to the floor.
I took two steps backwards and clutched my head in my hands. Felice had hit the old man. I started shaking and my gorge rose, but I couldn’t help looking again.
In the kitchen papa was shouting. ‘What the hell are you doing? Are you out of your mind?’ He had grabbed Felice by one arm and tried to pull him away.
‘He called me a poof, the bastard …’ Felice was almost blubbing. ‘I’ll kill him …’
The old man was on the ground. I felt sorry for him. I wanted to help him but I couldn’t. He tried to get up again, but his feet slipped on the floor and his arms wouldn’t support him. Blood and saliva were dripping from his mouth. The glasses he wore on his head were now under the table. I kept looking at those thin, white, hairless calves that emerged from his blue cotton trousers. He clutched the edge of the table and slowly pulled himself up onto his feet. He picked up a napkin and pressed it to his mouth.
Mama was crying on the sofa. The barber was flat against the door as if he had seen the devil.
Felice took two steps towards the old man even though papa tried to hold him back. ‘Well? Did that feel like a poof’s punch, then? Call me a poof one more time and I swear you’ll never get up again.’
The old man sat on a chair and with his napkin stanched an enormous split in his lip. Then he raised his head and stared at Felice and said in a steady voice: ‘If you’re a man, prove it.’ An evil light flashed in his eyes. ‘You said you’d do it and you chickened out. What was it you said? Slit him open like a lamb, I will, no problem, I’m not scared. I’m a paratrooper. I’m this, I’m that. Loudmouth, you’re nothing but a loudmouth. You’re worse than a dog, can’t even keep guard over a kid.’ He spat a mouthful of blood on the table.
‘You piece of shit!’ Felice whimpered, dragging papa along behind him. ‘I’m not doing it! Why should I have to do it, why?’ Two trickles of tears ran down his shaven cheeks.
‘Help me! Help me!’ papa shouted to Barbara’s father. And the barber threw himself on Felice. The two of them together could barely hold him.
‘I’m not doing it, you bastard!’ Felice repeated. ‘I’m not doing time for you. Forget it!’
He’s going to kill him, I said to myself.
The old man got to his feet. ‘I’ll do it, then. But don’t you worry, if I go down, you go down. I’ll take you down with me, you arsehole. You can be sure of that.’
‘Take me down where, you Roman shit?’ Felice drove forward, head down. Papa and the barber tried to restrain him but he shook them off like dandruff and charged at the old man again.
The old man took his pistol out of his trousers and put it against Felice’s forehead. ‘Try and hit me again. Try it. Do it, go on. Please, do it …’
Felice froze as if he was playing one-two-three-star.
Papa got between them. ‘Calm down, for Christ’s sake! You’re a pain in the arse, the pair of you!’ And he separated them.
‘Try it!’ The old man stuck the pistol in his belt. On Felice’s forehead there was still a little red circle.
Mama, sitting in a corner, was crying and repeating with her hand over her mouth: ‘Quiet! Be quiet! Be quiet! Be quiet!’
‘Why does he want to shoot him?’
I turned round.
Maria had got up and was standing behind me.
‘Go back to bed,’ I shouted at her in a whisper.
She shook her head.
‘Maria, go back to bed!’
My sister pursed her lips and shook her head.
I raised my hand, I was about to give her a cuff, but I restrained myself. ‘Go back to bed and don’t you dare cry.’
She obeyed.
Papa in the meantime had managed to get them to sit down. But he himself kept walking to and fro, with glistening eyes. A mad gleam had ignited in them.
‘Right. Let’s take a count. How many of us are there? Four. In the end, of all that number we started out with, there are just four of us left. The dumbest ones. Well, all the better. The loser kills him. It’s so easy.’
‘And gets life,’ said the barber putting his hand on his forehead.
‘Good man!’ The old man clapped his hands. ‘I see we’re beginning to use our heads.’
Papa picked up a box of matches and showed it around. ‘Right. Let’s play a game. Do you know the soldier’s draw?’
I shut the door.
I knew that game.
* * *
In the dark I found my T-shirt and trousers and put them on. Where had my sandals got to?
Maria was on her bed watching me. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’ They were in a corner.
‘Where are you going?’
I put them on. ‘Somewhere.’
‘You know something, you’re nasty, really nasty.’
I got onto the bed and from there onto the window sill.
‘What are you doing?’
I looked down. ‘I’m going to see Filippo.’ Papa had parked the Lupetto under our window, luckily.
‘Who’s Filippo?’
‘He’s a friend of mine.’
It was a long way down and the tarpaulin was rotten. Papa was always saying he must buy a new one. If I fell on it feet first it would tear and I would crash down onto the floor of the truck.
‘If you do that I’ll tell mama.’
I looked at her. ‘Don’t worry. The truck’s there. You go to sleep. If mama comes …’ What was she to tell her? ‘Tell her … Tell her anything you like.’
‘But she’ll be cross.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I crossed myself, held my breath, stepped forward and let myself fall open-armed.
I landed on my back in the middle of the tarpaulin completely unscathed. It held.
Maria put her head out of the window. ‘Come back soon, please.’
‘I won’t be long. Don’t worry.’ I climbed onto the driver’s cabin and from there got down to the ground.
The street was gloomy, like that starless night. The only lighted windows were the ones in my house. The street-lamp by the drinking fountain was surrounded by a ball of midges.
The sky was overcast again and Acqua Traverse was wrapped in a thick black mantle of darkness. I would have to enter it to get to Melichetti’s farm.
I must be brave.
Tiger Jack. Think of Tiger Jack.
The Indian would help me. Before making any move, I must think what the Indian would do in my place. That was the secret.
I ran round to the back of the house to get my bike. My heart was already hammering at my chest.
Red Dragon, bold and brightly coloured, was resting on top of the Crock.
I was on the point of taking it, but I said to myself, am I crazy? How far am I going to get on that stupid contraption?
I was flying along on the old Crock.
I urged myself on. ‘Go, Tiger, go.’
I was immersed in ink. I could hardly see the road and when I couldn’t see it I imagined it. Now and then the feeble glow of the moon managed to seep through the quilt of clouds that covered the sky and then I glimpsed for a few moments the fiel
ds and the black silhouettes of the hills on either side of the track.
I gritted my teeth and counted the turns of the pedal.
One, two, three, breath …
One, two, three, breath …
The tyres crackled on the grit. The wind stuck to my face like a warm cloth.
The screech of a little owl, the bark of a distant dog. There was silence. But I could still hear their whispers in the darkness.
I imagined them at each side of the road, little creatures, with foxes’ ears and red eyes, watching me and talking among themselves.
‘Look! Look, a boy!’
‘What’s he doing here at night?’
‘Let’s get him!’
‘Yes, yes, yes, he looks tasty … Let’s get him!’
And behind me were the lords of the hills, the earthy wheat-covered giants following me, just waiting for me to go off the road so that they could roll over me and bury me. I could hear them breathing. They made the same noise as the wind in the wheat.
The secret was to keep in the middle of the road, but I must be ready for danger.
Lazarus wasn’t scared of anything.
You’ll see, I said to myself.
In the night Lazarus was luminous. He winked on and off like the sign outside the La Perla bar in Lucignano. And when he lit up you could see the ants crawling in his veins. He didn’t move fast, I was sure of that, if he started running he would fall to pieces. The important thing was to go past him, without stopping, without slowing down.
‘Filippo … I’m coming … Filippo … I’m coming …’ I repeated, panting with the effort.
As I drew nearer to the farm a new, even more suffocating terror grew inside me. On the back of my head the hair stood up as straight as needles.
Melichetti’s pigs.
The lords of the hills and all the other monsters terrified me, but I knew that they didn’t exist, that I imagined them, that I couldn’t talk about them to anyone else because they would have laughed at me, but the pigs I certainly could talk about because they really existed and they were hungry.
For living flesh.
‘The dachshund tried to get away, but the pigs didn’t give him a chance. Torn to shreds in two seconds.’ That’s what Skull had said.
Maybe Melichetti let them out at night. They prowled around the farm, huge and vicious, with sharp fangs and noses in the air.
The further I kept away from those brutes the better.
In the distance a dim light appeared in the gloom.
The farm.
I was almost there.
I braked. The wind had dropped. The air was still and calm. The sound of crickets came from the nearby gravina. I got off the bike and dumped it among the brambles, beside the road.
You couldn’t see a thing.
I moved swiftly, hardly breathing, and kept looking over my shoulder. I was afraid the sharp claw of a monster would sink into my neck. Now I was on foot there were a lot of noises, rustles, bumps, strange sounds. All around me was a thick black mass that pressed against the road. I wet my dry lips, I had a bitter taste in my mouth. My heart was pounding in my throat.
I put the sole of my sandal on something slimy, I jumped, gave a muffled cry and fell over, grazing my knee.
‘Who is it? Who is it?’ I stammered and curled up in a ball, expecting to be enveloped by the squelchy stinging tentacles of a jellyfish.
Two dull thuds and a ‘Bwaa bwaa bwaa.’
A toad! I had trodden on a wheatfield toad. The stupid thing had been sitting in the middle of the road.
I got to my feet and limped on towards the dim light.
I hadn’t even brought a torch. I could have taken the one in papa’s truck.
When I reached the edge of the farmyard, I hid behind a tree.
The house was about a hundred metres away. The windows were dark. There was just a little lamp hanging beside the door, lighting up a bit of flaky wall and the rusty rocking chair.
Just beyond, in the darkness, were the pigsties. Even from there I could smell the revolting stench of their excrement.
Where could Filippo be?
Down in the gravina, Salvatore had said. I had been down in that long gully a couple of times in wintertime with papa, looking for mushrooms. It was all crags, holes and rock faces.
If I went across the fields I would come out on the edge of the gravina and from there I could get down to the bottom without having to go too near the house.
It was a good plan.
I ran across the fields. The wheat had been cut. In the daytime, without the crops, I would have been seen, but now, without the moon, I was safe.
I stopped at the top of the gorge. Below it was so black I couldn’t make out how steep the rock was, whether it was smooth or whether there were footholds.
I kept cursing myself for not bringing the torch. I couldn’t go down that way. I might get hurt.
The only thing for it was to get closer to the house. At that point the gravina was shallower, and there was a little track that went down between the rocks. But that was also where the pigs were.
I was covered in sweat.
‘Pigs have a better sense of smell than any other animal, hounds are nothing like as good,’ Skull’s father, who was a hunter, used to say.
I couldn’t go that way. They would smell me.
What would Tiger Jack do in my place?
He would face them. He would mow them down with his Winchester and make them into sausages to roast on the fire with Tex and Silver Hair.
No. That wasn’t his style.
What would he do?
Think, I told myself. Try.
He would try to get the human smell off himself, that’s what he would do.
The Indians, when they went buffalo hunting, smeared themselves with grease and put furs on their backs. That was what I must do: smear myself with earth. Not earth, shit. Much better. If I smelled of shit they wouldn’t notice me.
I got as close as possible to the house, keeping in the dark.
The stink got worse.
As well as the crickets I could hear something else. Music. The sound of a piano and a hoarse voice singing: ‘The water’s icy cold, nobody will save me. I fell into the foaming brine while the dancers danced in line. Wave on wave …’
Was Melichetti a singer?
Someone was sitting on the rocking chair. On the ground, next to it, there was a radio. It was either Melichetti or his lame daughter.
I watched for a while, crouching behind the old tractor tyres.
The person looked dead.
I moved closer.
It was Melichetti.
His wizened head lolling on a filthy cushion, his mouth open and his double-barrelled shotgun on his knees. He was snoring so loud I could hear him from there.
The coast was clear.
I came out into the open, took a few steps and the shrill barks of a dog shattered the silence. For a moment the crickets stopped singing.
The dog! I had forgotten the dog.
Two red eyes ran in the darkness. He was pulling the chain behind him and emitting strangled barks.
I dived head first into the stubble.
‘What is it? What’s up? What’s got into you?’ Melichetti said with a start. He sat on the rocking chair and rotated his head like an owl. ‘Tiberius! Quiet! Be quiet, Tiberius!’
But the brute just wouldn’t stop barking, so Melichetti stretched, put on his orthopaedic collar and got up, turned off the radio and switched on his torch.
‘Who’s there? Who’s there? Is anyone there?’ he shouted into the darkness and made a couple of listless circuits of the farmyard with his shotgun under his arm, pointing the band of light around. He went back grumbling. ‘Stop making that row. There’s nobody there.’
The dog squashed down on the ground and started growling between his teeth.
Melichetti went into the house slamming the door.
I kept as far away as possible from the d
og and approached the pig enclosure. I could see, in the darkness, the square silhouettes of the sties. The pungent smell increased and burned my throat.
I must camouflage myself. I took off my T-shirt and shorts. Dressed only in pants I dipped my hands in the piss-soaked earth and screwing up my face I spread that foul muck over my chest, my arms, my legs and my face.
‘Go, Tiger. Go and don’t stop,’ I whispered and started crawling forward on all fours. It was a struggle. My hands and knees sank into the mud.
The dog started barking again.
I found myself between two pigsties. In front of me was a passageway less than a metre wide that disappeared into the gloom.
I could hear them. They were there. They made deep low noises that resembled the roar of a lion. I could sense their strength in the darkness, they were moving in a herd and trampling with their trotters, and the bars shook under their shoves.
Keep going and don’t turn round, I ordered myself.
I prayed that my armour of shit would work. If one of those beasts put its snout through the bars it could tear my leg off with one bite.
I could see the end of the pen when there was a sudden scuffling and some grunts, as if they were quarrelling.
I couldn’t help looking.
A metre away, two vicious yellow eyes were watching me. Behind those little headlamps there must be hundreds of kilos of muscles, flesh and bristles and claws and fangs and hunger.
We stared at each other for an endless moment, then the creature gave a sudden jerk and I was certain he was going to knock down the fence.
I shouted and jumped to my feet and ran and slipped in the dung and got up again, I started running again, open-mouthed, in the blackness, clenching my fists as tight as could be and suddenly I was in the air, I was flying, my heart was in my mouth and my guts closed in a fist of pain.
I had gone over the edge of the gravina.
I was plunging into the void.
I fell, a metre below, into the branches of an olive that grew out at an angle among the sheer rocks and spread its foliage over the drop.