Anna

  Astor looked at the T-shirt with the slogan: ‘On My Way To Mexico’.

  ‘Mexico …’ he stammered.

  The boy shook his head incredulously. ‘No! You can read too? What a clever boy!’ He picked Astor up by the hips and lifted him onto his lap.

  Astor felt faint. His head seemed as heavy as lead, but the thoughts inside it were as light as gas and merged into one another. He looked around. The blues were quarrelling over a scarf. He studied the boy who was holding him on his knees – the hairs on his chin, the white paste on his cheeks. ‘Are you good guys?’ he asked him.

  The other squeezed him hard, as if trying to guess his weight. ‘Who taught you to read?’

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Good for Anna. This is the first time I’ve found a little kid who could read. My name’s Rosario. What’s yours?’

  ‘Astor.’

  ‘What kind of a name’s that?’ He pointed to the mandolin. ‘Can you play this?’

  The little boy took it and plucked the sole remaining string.

  Rosario said: ‘Do you know what it’s called?’

  ‘A guitar.’

  ‘No, it’s not a guitar, it’s a mandolin.’ He tilted his head to one side, sizing him up. ‘That’s it … I’ll call you Mandolino. I like that better.’ He put him down on the ground and shouted in a tenor voice. ‘Angelica, we’ve got to go, it’s late.’ He put his hand in his pocket and took out a Mars bar, unwrapped it and took a bite, looking around as if searching for something to take with him.

  Angelica came downstairs, draped in jewels like the Madonna of Trapani. She had Maria Grazia Zanchetta’s skull in her hands.

  And everyone, large and small, left the house laden with loot.

  Astor found himself waddling after them like a duckling. He didn’t stop to ask himself any questions, but walked barefoot among the others, trailing the dress behind him. He’d forgotten everything: Anna, the house, who he was.

  The blues ran on ahead, but he stayed beside Rosario, who was pushing the wheelbarrow full of food, smoking a cigarette. Angelica stopped, examined the skull, shrugged and tossed it among the weeds.

  Astor ran to fetch it and brought it back to her. ‘It’s my mama.’

  ‘Throw it away,’ she said.

  The blues had gone through the gate. Angelica let Rosario pass and looked at Astor standing in the middle of the drive with the skull in his hands, like a basketball player preparing to take a free shot.

  ‘Get moving,’ she ordered him.

  Astor stood there, staring at her.

  Beyond the boundary was the Outside. He couldn’t cross it, he’d be suffocated.

  ‘Get moving,’ the girl repeated.

  He shook his head.

  Angelica called to Rosario. ‘He won’t come.’

  Rosario stopped, put down the wheelbarrow and after one last drag threw away the cigarette. ‘Mandolino? What’s up? Aren’t you coming?’

  Astor didn’t move.

  The girl turned back, rolling her eyes, and grabbed him by the wrist.

  He took two steps, then dug his heels in with a cry of protest.

  Angelica pulled hard. The skull rolled into the grass. ‘You idiot. Come on!’ she snarled, showing gappy pointed teeth and dark gums. She grabbed him round the neck, but Astor sank his incisors into her arm.

  She screamed and slapped him across the head with her other hand, knocking him over. ‘I’ll teach you …’

  Astor couldn’t understand it. There was no way he could go through that gate. Did they want him to die? He felt a lump form in his throat. He raised his hands to defend himself and Angelica kicked him in the backside.

  He tried to get up, tripped over, crawled along for a few metres on hands and knees, then got to his feet again. Whirling his arms and legs, he jumped over a dog rose bush and ran off.

  The wood welcomed him.

  Behind him he could hear whistles, shouts and Rosario’s voice. ‘Catch him! Catch him!’

  Astor slipped between holly bushes which snatched at his dress, stepped through a maze of fallen branches, jumped over moss-covered rocks, sank ankle-deep in mud.

  They couldn’t catch him. He was in his own territory, he’d been born there, he’d explored those four hectares of land centimetre by centimetre, finding holes, burrows, trees to climb. Those guys might be special creatures, but none of them knew the wood better than him. If only he wasn’t wearing that damned dress that kept getting caught on things. He tore it off, slipping out of it like a snake from its skin, and started galloping faster through the thickest part of the wood, stark naked.

  The sun penetrated the green vault, dappling the under-wood with patches of golden light; balls of midges buzzed among the tree trunks. Astor ran through them with his mouth open, and found some on his palate.

  He turned round.

  Well done. You’ve given them the slip, the long-haired lizards whispered from up on a branch.

  Deafened by his own breathing and by his heart beating beneath his breastbone, he sat down on a rock and removed a thorn from his heel.

  In his headlong flight he’d gone a long way from the house, into a more open area, close to the Outside. The fire had consumed the younger trees; there were only charred trunks, jagged spikes and the twisted wire netting of the fence. A big, gnarled dark-brown oak, which had withstood the flames, leaned out beyond the boundary, where the fire had burnt its fingers.

  When the whirl of thoughts had died down, Astor checked his wounds. Red welts across his thighs and calves and the tender skin of his belly. They didn’t hurt yet, but he’d feel them soon enough.

  He was sure he’d shaken them off. But he was wrong.

  He spotted them because the blues stood out in that mixture of browns and greens.

  There wasn’t a single hole to hide in.

  Up the tree.

  He scrambled up the trunk and with an agile leap caught hold of the first branch, and from that another and then yet another. He didn’t stop till he thought he was out of reach.

  The blues were pointing up at him from the ground.

  Two of them started climbing up the oak tree exactly as he had.

  He tried to go higher, but the next bifurcation was too far up. In desperation, he started walking along a branch, with his arms stretched out on either side, but soon it became too thin to support him. He crouched down, clinging to the dry foliage and grinding his teeth.

  Down below, Angelica and Rosario had joined the others.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mandolino? Don’t you want to come with us?’ said the fat boy. ‘We’ll take you to see the Little Lady.’

  His two pursuers, as agile as Barbary apes, started crawling along the branch towards him.

  Astor backed away, the wood swaying between his buttocks, then, without any thought of the height, the harm he might do to himself and the fact that he would fall right into his enemies’ laps, he jumped. Turning an untidy somersault in the air, he landed on his side on a carpet of grass soft enough to stop him breaking his back.

  His head was pulsing as if someone had put his heart where his brain should be. Flashes of yellow light kept hitting his pupils. The acid taste of lentils coated his tongue. He struggled to his feet.

  The world around him was swaying. The sun between the yellowed leaves of the oak tree. The wood. Rosario. Angelica. The blue children. The scorched fields. The remains of the fence.

  He was in the Outside.

  He opened his mouth in a silent scream, put his hands to his neck and fell to his knees. The toxic air, the invisible gas, seeped into his pores, the holes of his ears, his nose, his bottom. He couldn’t breathe. He was dying. He gasped for breath, inhaling the poison. In the distance, with heavy, earthshaking steps, the smoke monsters were advancing, as big as mountains and as thick as the fear that was suffocating him. Tramp. Tramp. Tramp. They were coming. Soon, very soon, he would die. He would join all the ants, grasshoppers and green lizards that he’d killed. He would go to
his mother, wherever she was.

  Rosario was standing in front of him. Talking to him, hands on hips, shaking his head. Why was he laughing? There was nothing to laugh about.

  Astor was dazed by the buzzing of a million bees, yet a flurry of words reached his ears.

  ‘You’re not dying, are you, Mandolino?’

  He opened his eyes and nodded.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  The little boy raised his arm towards the sun. ‘They’re coming …’

  ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘The monsters …’ He let himself fall back on the ground, stretching out his arms and legs, grinding his teeth and making guttural noises.

  ‘What on earth is he doing?’ asked Angelica.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Rosario turned towards the blue children, who had gathered round Astor. ‘Pick him up, it’s late.’

  7

  ‘Stop. Wait a minute.’

  Anna was walking, with her fists clenched, up the slope from the quarry to the hotel, followed by Pietro.

  ‘Where are you going? Stop.’

  She speeded up.

  Pietro tried to keep up with her. ‘Wait …’ He grabbed her by the shoulder. ‘Anna!’

  She twisted out of his grasp and started climbing up a bank of loose earth from a landslide which covered a hairpin bend. Her feet sank into the earth. After two more steps she kneeled down, out of breath.

  ‘Anna, will you let me speak?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  He swallowed. ‘Angelica was there … I couldn’t let her see me. We’ll get him during the night. I know where they sleep.’

  A bitter smile curled her lips. ‘Him? Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Your brother. We’ll wait until nightfall, then we’ll get him. Me and you. I promise you.’

  Anna cocked her head on one side, as if Pietro was speaking a foreign language. ‘You’re a bullshitter. In fact, you’re a coward. And what’s all this talk about me and you? Who do you think you are? And what do you want from me?’ Her voice grew louder, and was breaking. ‘Do I know you? Are we friends? Brother and sister?’ She pushed him, and he fell down on his backside. ‘You’d better keep away from me. I’m tougher than Angelica. Go away and look for your shoes.’ Scrambling up on all fours, she got over the rubble and started walking again.

  Pietro didn’t follow. He shouted: ‘I took you to your brother. You just dashed out … I tried to stop you, but you …’

  Anna put her hands over her ears.

  He hadn’t helped her, the coward. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was a coward.

  *

  She walked past the hotel and started along a path which ran down a hillside shrouded in mist.

  She must banish Astor and Pietro from her mind and go away. She imagined her heart covered with mud, like a giant wasps’ nest.

  You can do what you want now. You’re free.

  A gust of wind cleared the scene. On a slope covered with burnt rubbish there were three large concrete pools, arranged stepwise one above the other, surrounded by palm trees wrapped in blue plastic and by big yellowish-brown rocks. The lowest pool, covered with a pall of steam, was full of water that smelled of bad eggs. A smoking yellow stream gushed out of a concrete pipe into the pool, encrusting the sides with limescale. Heads bobbed up and down among the clouds of steam, like buoys in a foggy harbour.

  Anna went down the steps, passing a group of children asleep around the ashes of a bonfire. She picked up a bottle half-full of black liquid, like the stuff she’d seen being handed out in the amphitheatre.

  She stripped naked, bundled up her clothes and hid them behind a row of barrels. Then she sat down on the edge of the pool and, with a push of her arms, dropped in. The warmth pressed on her chest and spread through her aching muscles, making her sigh with pleasure. Half a metre down, a seat jutted out from the side. She sat on it, her head still above the surface. With her legs floating free, the back of her head against the side of the pool, and the sound of water sloshing in her ears, she put the bottle to her lips. The thick concoction flowed down into her stomach. It was sugary and bitter.

  She heard the low voices of other bathers, sparrows in the trees, the wind in the palm trees.

  Astor had grown up and left home. He didn’t want her any more.

  So much the better.

  ‘What do they call him? Mandolino,’ she whispered, amused.

  The black liquid was taking effect. She was floating not just in the water, but inside herself.

  Some heads came towards her, as if carried on the current, and clustered around her.

  Her eyelids were heavy and in that opalescent vapour she couldn’t distinguish the faces. They looked like seals.

  An alarm bell rang in her sluggish brain, but she didn’t listen to it, tired of keeping up her guard.

  They snatched the bottle out of her hand. She wanted to protest, but the words didn’t come out of her mouth. She thought of moving away, but it was too much effort. She shut her eyes. Dazed and distant from everything, she dreamed of taking her sad thoughts, rolling them up into balls and throwing them down a dark tunnel.

  The sun printed a glow on the clouds of sulphur. The warmth that rose from the bottom of the pool brought up seaweed, lazy bubbles and earth. It seemed to her as though the other side had moved away and the pool was a big saucepan of steaming broth into which a cook had put all this stuff to stew.

  At Christmas, Mama used make tortellini with boiled meat and potatoes. Here she is, placing the soup bowl on the living-room table. ‘This is a recipe from Bassano.’ She fills Anna’s dish with little green frogs swimming in broth streaked with olive oil.

  She rocked up and down inside her body, fell down through it, undulating slowly, like a feather in a well with flesh walls, and found herself in a warm cosy cavern. If she looked up, above her there was a round dark hole, ending in her mouth. Through the arches formed by her teeth she could see clouds drift by.

  The people pressed in on her, rubbed against her; someone spread mud on her face and spoke to her in a distorted voice that seemed to be coming out of a pipe. She felt fingers touching her nose, her cheeks, her lips. They made grooves in her skin, like a ploughshare cutting through wet earth.

  ‘I want a drink,’ she moaned, spitting out the foul water that filled her half-open mouth.

  Now the concoction tasted salty. The mist changed colour, from grey to green and from green to pink.

  ‘You’re beautiful. Have you had the blood yet?’ asked a voice.

  She couldn’t speak. Words reached her palate without the requisite strength to become sounds. They collected in her mouth like sour-tasting silver jewels. Her tongue touched the sharp edges of rings and earrings. She raised her hand. It was transparent. Golden streams flowed under her skin between sheaves of new-mown hay.

  ‘You’re very beautiful,’ the voice whispered.

  Anna burst out laughing.

  Hands slid over her legs and her stomach, squeezed her breasts and nipples. Fingers explored her mouth, searching for her tongue, pulling her lips; others slipped between her thighs. She arched her back. Twisting her body and stretching out her arms, she grabbed one boy’s neck and buried his face in her wet hair, scratching his back. They breathed in her ears, pressed their lips against hers. They fought over her, opened her legs, holding her feet and supporting her by the armpits. She screamed when someone bit one of her nipples hard, but a hand was clapped over her mouth. In a surge of anger, consciousness re-emerged and she started to kick out and thrash about with her arms; she writhed, gasping and swallowing the liquid, which ran warm and fetid down her throat. Coughing, she grabbed the side of the bath and reached out over the poolside, but a vice-like grip closed on one of her calves, trying to pull her back.

  Anna stretched out her arms and dug her fingers into the earth. She rammed her heel into a nose and succeeded in breaking free, to cries of protest.

  Panting and shivering,
she stood up, with her hands on her stomach, still coughing and spluttering. Her pink skin was steaming, as if it had been boiled. She took a few uncertain steps in the cold, rubbing her chest, her teeth chattering. She went to the barrels where she’d hidden her clothes, but they weren’t there any more.

  Leaning over a wall, she opened her mouth and released a warm, acid gush of vomit which wetted her feet. That made her feel better immediately, but her head was still spinning and she couldn’t stop shaking. She ran round the pool, threading her way between bodies. Finding a tattered red cardigan which reached down to her knees, she rolled up the sleeves, put on a pair of shoes and staggered over towards the steps.

  The hill skewed to one side and she tried to straighten it up by leaning the other way. There were black figures everywhere. The hotel walls bent over and rolled towards her like concrete waves. Terrified, she raised her arms to defend herself and backed away, bumping into someone who pushed her away, saying, ‘Easter ducks.’

  Bent double, as if she’d been stabbed in the stomach, she made her way to a shed.

  The door was bolted. She walked around the prefabricated building, hammering on the metal walls with her fists. With her forehead against the drainpipe, she burst into tears, exhausted, and slid down to the ground.

  The building rested on two concrete blocks, and she slipped underneath. No one would find her there.

  The effects of the concoction evaporated from her body in slow green fumes.

  *

  The Fire Festival was held on 2 November 2020, All Souls’ Day. The fact that it fell on that day was certainly a coincidence.

  According to Sicilian tradition, during the night between the 2nd and the 3rd the dead returned from the afterlife to visit their relatives, bringing gifts and sweets for children. The little ones would wake up and, with the help of their parents, find ‘Dead Man’s Bones’, chocolates, crunchy pupatelli filled with toasted almonds, and other treats, hidden beneath bedclothes, in wardrobes or under sofa cushions.

  Some of the orphans of the Grand Spa Hotel Elise perhaps still remembered the hunt for sweets, but all sense of time had been lost. Public holidays, name days and birthdays no longer had any meaning. Now it was the Red Fever that marked out the intervals of time with blotches, lumps and pustules. If anyone wore a watch, it was out of vanity. On the exchange market a watch was worth as much as a mobile phone, a computer or a Boeing 747. Less than a packet of Smarties.