The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

  He checked all the common areas. He found her as he was going down the corridor that led to the TV room.

  ‘…You need to anticipate problems, not run after them. You should know that by now.’

  In a small dedicated room, the hotel’s only coin-operated telephone was mounted between two wooden panels for the purposes of privacy. Phone calls were made only rarely, both because of the cost and because a coin-operated phone was a drag: you needed a lot of tokens to make a longer call, and you had to phone after dinner otherwise nobody would answer.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? I’m not angry, Carlo, you know how I feel. Even if we don’t see eye to eye, that doesn’t mean…’

  A new kind of tension was threaded through Lia’s voice.

  ‘Please, spare me that kind of talk. When the time comes…’

  Lia emerged for a moment from behind the wooden panel, shaking vigorously, and then disappeared again.

  ‘How can they say that?’

  Then she was quiet, listening to Carlo at the other end of the line.

  ‘Well, let’s consult some others. Overseas, maybe—’

  But she didn’t finish what she was saying; she was interrupted by her son. She listened and then rested her head against the panel. Roberto saw her bring her hand to her forehead, bent over under the weight of the words.

  ‘You’re telling me there’s nothing left…Is that right?’

  Another long silence. The words had come out in a breath of air. They were full of restrained pain, a desire to weep that Lia would never ever have succumbed to.

  Roberto had understood everything. He summoned his strength. They were talking about his grandfather. His mother’s father.

  ‘We’ll see,’ and straight after she added, ‘but what am I supposed to do? If I head back I have to bring him with me…it’s not appropriate.’

  There was silence. Then Lia coughed and started up again.

  ‘Listen to me. For now, we’ll stay here. We’ll be in touch in the next few days and if the situation worsens…’

  ‘Nonna.’

  She turned and looked at him, uneasy.

  ‘Nonna, are you talking to Papà? Can I talk to him too?’

  She took a few seconds to reply.

  ‘Are you back?’ And then she spoke almost immediately into the receiver: ‘Carlo, Roberto’s here…We’ll talk again in a few days. I’ll put him on.’

  Roberto took the phone.

  ‘Papà.’

  ‘Hi, Roberto.’

  There was already expectation in the boy’s voice.

  ‘Are you coming on Sunday?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I heard that Nonno Giulio’s sick.’

  Carlo hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Nonno? Yes, Nonno’s not well.’

  ‘But you’ll at least come on Sunday?’

  Silence.

  They both knew that it was a badly timed request, considering what was happening at home. At the same time Roberto felt he had the right, because having his father—and his mother, if she was up to it—in the mountains with him for at least one day seemed like something he was owed, a priority of such importance as to override everything. In the end, he wasn’t asking for anything out of the ordinary.

  And this was the year of their great undertaking. He had no intention of giving up on that.

  Carlo answered only when he was sure he could hold back all his frustration and disappointment at the request.

  ‘Roberto…’

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘Don’t start. You’re no longer a child and you have to understand that when there are serious unexpected events…’

  ‘You promised! This year we have to go to Black Peak. You promised!’

  ‘Roberto, calm down at once or…’

  ‘If you don’t come, I’ll climb up there on my own.’

  ‘If you try to do anything of the sort I promise you I’ll come up and take you home and I’ll never send you back up there again! Do you hear me? Never again. I promise you that. Do that and it’s over.’

  The boy at the other end of the phone was silent, terrified by the threat, and clearly already defeated.

  ‘In any case I never said no. We’ll see. Now put Nonna back on.’

  Roberto obeyed. He handed over the receiver and left the room. He didn’t want his grandmother to see him crying like a dumb snotty-nosed kid, like the dumb snotty-nosed kid that he was but didn’t want to admit to being.

  8

  A rainy morning. The kind of rain that makes you angry when you’re in the mountains, because it wasn’t an uninterrupted cascade, an aerial river in spate. Instead it was a continuous watery attrition, enough to call off any outings, or even just being outdoors.

  When it was like this, there was nothing else for it but to sit in the hotel bar. But it wasn’t as much fun as on a sunny morning, because no one came in from outside.

  Mattia and Roberto had decided to devote that morning to one of their favourite board games, the murder mystery game Cluedo. They’d pinched it from the games room and now they were seated at a little table in the middle of the bar with the board showing all the murder locations in front of them. But you needed at least three people to play Cluedo, so there was a third chair occupied by two red cushions, one on top of the other, with a child’s sweater draped over the back. This was where Dino, Mattia’s little brother, was sitting. They didn’t usually let him play with them, but this time they needed a third person. Dino was a mini-dictator, partly because he was really little and partly because he was a big pain in the neck. Whenever they invited him to do something with them, he immediately realised his presence was required and took maximum advantage of the opportunity to boss them around.

  They had been waiting for quite some time to be able to start the game. He’d disappeared to the toilet and didn’t seem to want to come out again. He’d insisted on taking a comic with him, saying he wouldn’t be long. And so they waited.

  Just then Aldeno turned up with the mail. He handed it to the barman and ordered that weird drink of his.

  ‘Have you heard anything?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  The barman poured the white wine into the glass, opened the lime soda and placed it all in front of Aldeno, exactly the same as every other time, down to the millimetre.

  ‘About the hikers, Alden. The three who have gone missing.’

  That morning Aldeno could barely stand, he was so tired, but he did love to tell a tale. However, he put a high price on his information; he liked to give due weight to every detail when he knew everyone was listening. He did a three-quarter turn, like a stage actor.

  ‘They still haven’t found them.’

  He said it with an air of boredom, as if to say that everyone already knew that much, but he knew something more.

  ‘But…’ said the barman, who knew him all too well.

  ‘But’—he rubbed his eyes to draw out the suspense—‘I spoke to Dario and he says they fell. He reckons the birds will have eaten them by the time anybody finds them.’

  Silence had fallen in the bar, like when the bell tolls at a funeral. Everyone wanted to know, and would have liked to ask, but in the unwritten code of mountain communication, the barman had asked first and he had to proceed. If anyone else intervened it would seem like undue curiosity.

  Dario was an emergency services volunteer, quite expert, and everyone knew that when something like this happened he was the first person the carabinieri would take along to help with the search and investigation.

  ‘Alden, are these just rumours or have they seen something?’

  ‘Oh, they’ve seen something. A slippery patch that goes right off the edge of the precipice. It’s all woods at the bottom, who knows when they’ll find them. They were hiking up to Black Peak.’

  ‘Were their tracks on the south side?’

  ‘Yeah, they all make the same mistake. Dario reckons it started to rain, t
hey decided to keep going anyway, and rather than take the via ferrata they decided to take the southern route, where there’s that track that goes up to the precipice. Always the same old story. They think it’s not so dangerous up there, and then one of them slips and brings the others down with him.’

  ‘It’s not hard to see how people lose their footing up there in heavy rain. You can’t see properly.’

  ‘It’s not hard to see but it’s still throwing your life away. It’s not as though it’s that difficult to get up to Black Peak.’

  ‘They’re not careful enough. That’s how people die.’

  ‘At least ten have snuffed it that I can remember. They head up there thinking it’s a walk in the park. One guy that got lost, they found him frozen stiff on the glacier, looking like he’d been mummified.’

  ‘A lot of people go up there, and once in a while…’ said the barman, wiping down the bar.

  Aldeno let those words drift off, and then added, with a certain pride, ‘It’s the most beautiful spot in the valley, Black Peak, and like all beautiful things it requires some sacrifice. There’s nowhere else like it anywhere in the world, not even in America. You climb up there and if it’s clear you can see as far as Lake Garda. It’s like you can see straight down to the blue patch of water below you. When you look down from up there you feel like you’ve got the eyes of an eagle. The sky above you, and below you.’

  The poet took his last sip of lime wine, banged the glass down on the bar and turned to leave.

  As he was going out he noticed the two boys at the table. Dino still wasn’t back from the bathroom. Mattia watched him pass and Aldeno winked at him. Meanwhile Roberto, who had listened wide-eyed to the whole story, was crumbling a Tuc cracker into his milky coffee, and looking off into space, lost in thought.

  9

  Another rainy day.

  Roberto and Mattia were staring silently out at the grassy plain opposite the hotel, sitting at the top of the stairs, under the eaves.

  They were bored. You could play board games for a day but no longer than that. Roberto was so disenchanted that he didn’t even feel like talking and Mattia, who understood this, felt responsible. After all, he was the host.

  They stayed like that for a good half-hour, then, unable to think of anything else, Mattia played his only card, a trump. He’d kept it especially to be able to pull it out at the right moment.

  ‘Go get your K-Way jacket, I’m going to show you this place.’

  Roberto looked at him sceptically. What place could there be around there that he didn’t already know?

  ‘Should I tell Nonna? Is it far away?’

  ‘No, not far. We’ll be back by lunch.’

  When Roberto returned, enthusiastic about the outing and ready to go, they took the asphalt road to where it curved around on the other side and entered the woods before leading down into the valley. They soon left the road and took a path through the trees. It was raining heavily, but the tall trees of the forest grew thick, and the path was protected. They continued until they were a few hundred metres below the road and the fast-flowing Ronca hill-stream meant they had to deviate. Mattia led the way, never turning around.

  He continued along the path in total silence, almost absently, as though this immersion in nature required him to interrupt all non-essential activities.

  They walked along the edge of the stream as it flowed on downhill, getting wider while the natural embankment became higher, turning into a kind of ravine. Roberto kept looking around him, marvelling at how he had returned on holidays so many times and never seen, not even off in the distance, the pathways this close to the watercourse.

  As the rain continued to work slowly but relentlessly away at their patience, Mattia headed decisively along a tiny path, almost invisible, that ran along the edge of the escarpment.

  ‘Be careful here. It’s very slippery: if you fall you’ll drop fifty metres.’

  Roberto descended very slowly, checking every step. His sneakers were not suited to the wet, leaf-covered terrain.

  Eventually they reached the river, which filled the gully with a low, omnipresent rumble. It was clear in places and could be crossed by jumping from one rock to the next without dipping into the water. Beyond the ridge of the gorge from which they had come, Mattia turned just once and said briskly, ‘There. It’s mine.’

  At the bottom of the sheer ravine, leaning against the bank with its nose all crumpled up against rocks that were half a metre under the flowing water, a blue bus—rusty but pretty much recognisable—lay abandoned. Looking around, you had to wonder how it could have got there, where the escarpment, far from the road and in the midst of thick woodland, was a hundred metres high.

  It must have been during a flood, an unprecedentedly violent one, a mass of water capable of filling the ravine almost completely. Now, among the rocks and the thundering water, it was a majestic and surprising sight. Roberto stopped a moment to gaze at the blue carcass, bewitched by the vision.

  They hopped down towards the bus, each following the route he preferred, but as they approached the doors Mattia jumped ahead of Roberto.

  ‘It’s mine. I found it and it’s mine. You can’t come here on your own. You can’t come here and play unless I give you permission. And when we come here, I’m in charge.’

  Unconvinced, Roberto nodded with a defiant half-smile that his friend picked up on immediately. He put his arms out and, looking serious, blocked Roberto’s way forward.

  ‘Understood?’

  ‘Understood. You don’t have to go on about it.’

  ‘Now let’s climb in.’

  Mattia led his friend to the main entrance, which was a large glass window towards the front of the vehicle, just past the spot where the metal shell was crushed like a dirty handkerchief.

  Inside, the bus was in unexpectedly good condition. Sure, the seats were a bit damaged and there was some rust, but apart from that it could have been the inside of any bus. Standing on its nose, or almost. Its relatively good state might have been due to the fact that the rear window was cracked all over but hadn’t fallen out—the same went for some of the side windows—protecting the interior.

  ‘Follow me.’

  Mattia began climbing up to the back of the bus, clinging on to the seats.

  ‘Pull yourself up by putting your feet on the seats. We’re going to sit up the top.’

  Roberto started climbing with a certain amount of apprehension. He hadn’t thought of it at first, down the bottom, but as he climbed up he began to feel afraid of falling. The back end of the bus was quite high up. Fifteen metres below him was the vehicle’s crumpled snout, and sharp rocks poked through the metal. In free fall you’d be killed for sure. Mattia sat on the second-last row of seats, his legs dangling. Roberto settled down next to him. He looked around him: it was spectacular sitting like that, and they had the bus all to themselves.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s fantastic. The best place I’ve ever seen. It’s like a space shuttle on the launch pad. When did you find it?’

  ‘In the spring.’

  ‘And it’s your domain.’

  Mattia nodded.

  ‘You alone are the lord and master: power of life and death over everybody.’

  Mattia looked at Roberto, saw he was making fun of him, and said, ‘Go to hell. I found it. That’s all there is to it.’

  They were back in sync. Straight away Roberto decided that it was important to mark your property, so that if somebody found the wreck of the bus and decided to go inside they would know that Mattia had found it first and was the rightful owner. They climbed back down to the lower part to look for something suitable and found a long screw that was good for the job.

  The discovery needed to be dated. Mattia couldn’t remember exactly, but the date was important, in case other explorers in the area tried to lay a claim, so they decided to bring it forward to February, even though Mattia couldn’t have been there before the end of
March.

  Along the roof, right by the window they had climbed through, they engraved the words:

  Today, 20 Febuary 1981, I Mattia Slat discovered this abandoned bus, which is now my property. Witnessed by Roberto Beltrami.

  The city boy took the role of scribe. Then they both signed it, although it was difficult to do cursive writing on the roof of the bus. They realised only afterwards that February was misspelt so they corrected it, but the inscription came out looking a bit botched. Never mind.

  Then, when Roberto had finished his signature, Mattia wanted the screw back. He started to engrave something else. Roberto watched in awe and was even more surprised when he saw what he’d drawn. The four hooked arms looked like a spider.

  It was a swastika.

  In pride of place beneath the inscription.

  ‘Why did you draw that thing?’

  ‘Because I like it. It’s powerful.’

  Roberto said nothing. He had no clear understanding of the symbol, but his parents didn’t like it, in fact if it turned up anywhere they reacted with disgust. This gave him the sense that he and Mattia had done something wrong, though he didn’t know what. It was not necessarily an unpleasant sensation. It felt like a shiver.

  They looked at each other.

  ‘It means we’re powerful. That we’re not afraid to do serious damage.’

  They sat in silence. Inside Roberto, those words moved something. The bitter taste of arguing with a schoolmate and feeling a wave rise up in him, a violent urge with no outlet.

  ‘You know what the difference is between the weak and the strong?’

  Roberto shook his head earnestly, almost regretful that he didn’t know the answer.

  ‘It’s not how big and tall you are, or how many muscles you’ve got. That doesn’t count. All that counts is not being afraid to hurt someone. And that you won’t let pain stop you. It’s all there. In that symbol. That’s why I like it.’

  They went back to their games, and continued them for the rest of the morning, at ease in the giant doll’s house that was the upturned bus. To begin with, as proposed by Roberto, it became a shuttle departing for Mars. Then a submarine gone to ground at the bottom of the sea, whose sailors, thanks to mysterious algae and the huge water pressure, had developed improbable mental powers.