The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

  When that game was beginning to lose its appeal, they started fantasising about what disasters could befall the submarine.

  ‘They come across an enemy super-submarine that attacks them with nuclear warheads.’

  ‘An alien meteorite turns the water to lead.’

  ‘So the captain of the submarine puts a kilo of secret algae into the water supply, and that will enable them to breathe under lead.’

  ‘And then they all end up dying.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the algae gives special powers but it’s also poisonous.’

  ‘…Maybe there’s another algae that’s an antidote to the first one and gives them back all the same powers as before and it saves them.’

  ‘Could be. But then we’d have to go looking for it.’

  But they didn’t want to go looking for it. The game was over. Roberto sat crossways along the back of the second-last row of seats and Mattia did the same on the other side of the aisle.

  ‘If it did exist I’d have to take it to my grandfather.’

  ‘Is he sick?’

  Roberto wanted to tell him all about it, but he paused. Not for effect, but because he knew that if you were going to talk about it, you had to be serious. Otherwise it was disrespectful, and he wanted to show his grandfather due respect.

  ‘Lia was talking about it on the phone to my father. It seems there’s nothing more they can do.’

  Mattia looked at him with great interest but was silent. After a long time, in his usual hoarse voice, he asked, ‘Are you sad? I never knew my grandfather and I couldn’t care less.’

  ‘I haven’t seen much of mine, only when I was little. He’s my mother’s father but they had a fight so they never take me to see him.’

  ‘Pity, ’cause grandparents give loads of presents.’

  ‘So does he. Even though he doesn’t know me. Every so often something arrives, and usually they’re really great things.’

  ‘It’ll be a pity if he dies, if he gives you gifts and you don’t even see him.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I don’t even remember what he looks like. There’s no stopping my mother when she’s angry.’

  ‘But it’d be cool to go and see him die.’

  ‘I’ve never seen someone die.’

  ‘Neither have I. I’ve seen some snakes and wild animals when I’ve gone hunting with my father, but usually they’re already dead. And when we slaughter a pig. But never a real person. Only in films, but it’s not the same.’

  ‘I don’t know if they’ll let me see him. They always avoid talking about it when I’m around.’

  ‘Pity.’

  10

  We go back to the artesian well.

  We decide to make it deeper and wider. We work for two hours without complaining. By the end, it’s not big enough for one of us to fit in, but it is big enough for a little kid.

  One of us says: my brother would fit in.

  The other one says: your brother would die in two minutes in the artesian well. He’d be so scared he’d drown in his own piss.

  We laugh.

  We recite the rules of our new project and the things we thought when we were preparing.

  One of us says: we’re not afraid of death. We’re not afraid because it means nothing to us. It’s not our time to die. Only grown-ups are afraid of death.

  The other one says: that’s not true. Life and death are like dark and light. It’s either one or the other. If you’re alive and afraid you’re an idiot. If you’re dead there’s nothing to be afraid of. Life and death are constantly alternating, even right now. Every moment, whether we realise it or not. The life–death alternation is a fact of nature. There’s nothing mysterious or surprising about it.

  We call it the life–death alternation. We like that. Neither of us had ever thought of it. WE together come up with things that we couldn’t think up alone. We’re pleased.

  We decide that just between us we’ll call it THE ALTERNATION. Like night and day.

  We decide to shout out a few statements we really like, to help us remember them.

  We’re not afraid of the alternation.

  We keep digging. And we realise that having something boring to do gets lots of new ideas moving in our heads.

  We make a list of ways people react to the alternation.

  There are four ways:

  1) denying the existence of the alternation (like children)

  2) concentrating on the first part (life) and pretending the second (death) doesn’t exist

  3) pretending that life exists as a preparation for death (catechism, which we don’t believe in)

  4) doing alternation exercises. So that we’re no longer afraid of it.

  We reflect on this and decide that the fourth way is the only way that doesn’t make you into a child. Children make us sick.

  We like the fourth way and we want to try to become non-children. We call it the NON-CHILDREN way.

  One of us says: the exercise with the well is useful for understanding the alternation. Exercises like that are life–death exercises. We’ll do a lot of them to learn to become non-children.

  The other says: before we become strong in our bodies we have to become strong in our thoughts.

  At least fifty centimetres of water is now coming up from the bottom of the well. We do the exercise. We use a different pretend person—an old cushion tied up with our shoelaces. It gets all soggy and heavy, just like an almost-dead child.

  We decide that during alternation exercises we have to speak our thoughts immediately, because our thoughts are the most important thing. We take turns in saying our thoughts out loud and writing them in the Notebook.

  We lower the pretend person into the well.

  One of us pretends to be the child nineteen metres below the surface. He lies down on the ground and has to stay completely still with a jumper over his eyes. To make it seem real, the other one puts rocks on his hands, feet and stomach.

  We take it in turns to try it out and we say how it feels to be stuck. To slip further down.

  One of us gets the other to put a big rock on his throat, so he can try to suffocate better.

  The other one plays the rescuer.

  The rescuer really struggles and often the pretend person falls into the well.

  We both have a go.

  We have lots of thoughts and strange sensations.

  We also write down: if there’s no dead body to look at, it’s not that frightening and you don’t feel bad, you tell yourself it’s okay and so the alternation is no longer a problem. If there’s no dead body the alternation is not frightening.

  We experiment with various situations and obstacles.

  After a lot of attempts we decide that’s enough.

  We have learnt.

  We agree that we’re very satisfied. The exercises help us to understand how not to be children. We feel different from before.

  We call our changes EVOLUTION.

  We’ve understood, and we write down the rules of alternation exercises.

  Rule number one is that the rules are established before starting and if you don’t follow them you suck and you’re a bastard.

  Rule number two is that training ends and begins when we say so.

  Rule number three is that training can never take place if we’re not both present.

  Rule number four is that outside training times we have to behave as normal. Always.

  We forbid ourselves to speak and think about these secret matters outside exercise times. If one of us thinks about it on his own he’s a bastard and he’s not one of us anymore.

  We decide to leave the fake artesian well open and hidden under leaves so we can use it again. We figure that if someone falls in we’ll be able to do an even better exercise.

  We hide the leftover earth.

  11

  Finally, it was the weekend Roberto had been waiting for ever since the last summer. Time for the hike up to Black Peak.

  The pr
evious year his parents had arrived on the Saturday morning and had spent the whole time with him, coming up with activities he would never have thought of and days he would never forget. When they were on song, Anna and Carlo were completely nuts. Roberto was possibly the most reserved of the three, but he would let himself go when he was with them; nothing embarrassed him because nothing embarrassed them. Even his mother, who was often serious and withdrawn at home—especially this last year, since she had been unwell—seemed to explode with health and happiness on holidays and, despite being quite genteel, she was capable of thinking up complicated practical jokes and eccentric games, like that time she drew a cartoon picture of Carlo on a rock thirteen metres high, and the whole valley came to have a look at it before it rained.

  This year, though, things would be different: Lia informed Roberto that his parents would be coming not on Saturday morning, but on Sunday. Roberto hid his feelings behind an adult façade and made no protest—he didn’t want to talk about it—feeling quite the opposite inside. He knew that the delay would lead to other changes in the plans he had been dreaming up.

  He was not wrong.

  On Sunday morning the car arrived at around half past ten, the wrong time because there’s nothing you can do in the mountains when the morning’s half gone. Like the other times, the Ami 8 came off the sealed road and hopped along a half-curve to pull up beside him on the grass. Roberto looked into the car: only his father had come. He was at the wheel, waving through the glass, but you couldn’t hear what he was saying, like in a silent film. His warm, sincere eyes, which were never afraid to look into Roberto’s, were reassuring. The boy squinted and compressed his lips, a pained greeting that managed to convey, in a sliver of facial fold, both his disappointment at his mother’s absence and his determination not to complain, not to be demanding.

  ‘She wasn’t well, Roberto. She wanted to come but the doctor advised her not to tire herself out. She’s following doctor’s orders.’

  They dropped the subject and spoke instead of their plans. The gap created by his mother’s absence meant the day was already ruined, so Roberto listened with resignation to his father and forced himself to keep his anger and frustration at bay.

  It only took a few minutes for his father to make clear that they would not be going to Black Peak that day.

  ‘I looked into it. The weather’s bad up there and the bureau of meteorology advises against going.’

  The climb that he’d been looking forward to for months, if not years, which had been planned and promised with almost religious devotion—cancelled just like that, from one moment to the next, without a second thought. It hurt him to think how little his feelings mattered.

  Lia had already been told and they had decided on a new plan, just as much fun in their opinion, a lot less demanding and easy to cut short should the weather require them to make a hasty return.

  Roberto thought to himself that being an adult could sometimes be a good excuse for lying, or being lazy or cowardly.

  In short, it became clear that the day would involve an unremarkable walk to the Laghetto Azzurro, a glacial pond a slow half-hour away. An enchanting spot—sure—but one he had seen enough to know it held no surprises. Mattia would also be coming, with his mother Rosa, who would be taking a day off work; Lia, of course. And, finally, Dino, Mattia’s little brother.

  They would be taking in their backpacks everything they needed for an old-fashioned picnic lunch on the grass near the lake, and then they would play all afternoon, until late. In this way his father tried to fire up his enthusiasm, to convince him that it was going to be great. He might even have succeeded had it not been for the fact that Dino, with his screaming tantrums and his insistence on playing with his stupid toys until late morning, managed to delay their departure intolerably.

  On the way up, his father had to take Dino by the hand so that he wouldn’t keep stopping every two minutes, leaving everybody else exasperated. Roberto stayed well away from him.

  The little boy’s presence put Roberto in a bad mood, so much so that for almost the entire walk up he did not say a word to anyone, not even Mattia, who appeared unconcerned. He only said once, when they were near each other and far from the rest of the group: ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’

  His friend looked at him strangely, as he had before. ‘Your father drove up to spend time with you, and with me. Leo hardly ever spends any time with us. We have to make do with what we get.’

  Roberto looked away. When he turned back his expression had changed and he was smiling. He couldn’t quite work out how a boy who could barely string two words together almost always managed to find exactly the right words to change his mood. It was as though Mattia had his hand on the button that controlled his feelings.

  The outing went smoothly. Laghetto Azzurro, on the right day, was a paradise of sunlight, meadows and aromatic woodland, with spectacular rock formations embracing the hollow with the little glacial lake at its centre. The small but sturdy stone pier that jutted out into the lake was their favourite spot, and they made it their base.

  Carlo had his Kodak super 8 in his hand throughout the day, filming and commentating on everything that happened. Sometimes it became a weapon, sometimes a toy, but mostly it was little more than a notepad to which none of them paid any attention.

  After their long chatty picnic, it was time for the numbers war. This was a game that needed to be played outdoors, ideally somewhere maze-like and full of hiding places. It really required a larger group, but it could also work with two small teams like they had. The area around the lake was perfect for it. They split up into Slats and Beltramis, an arrangement devised to placate Dino. Roberto wasn’t keen on the division, which required him to play against Mattia, but it wasn’t so bad in the end. At least it gave him a worthy adversary.

  They had fun, all of them, because the adults made a genuine effort, unlike the usual pathetic play-acting designed to let the kids win. Only with Dino, Carlo went a bit easy, but he didn’t make it too obvious. Roberto won with a daring performance, beating Mattia by spotting and shouting out the number on his forehead. But they were all happy in the end.

  After the victory and an afternoon snack, Carlo and Roberto went to sit at the tip of the pier and listlessly throw a few stones into the water.

  ‘How’s the holiday going?’

  The question came as a surprise, a little awkward, rather like the stones they were throwing into the water—the skimming action always slightly off.

  ‘I’m having fun. I’m learning things.’

  Roberto was referring to his exercises with Mattia, the new discoveries they’d documented in the Notebook, but he forbade himself to think about it. That was the rule.

  After a moment, it seemed to both of them as though the words he had said needed to stop there, and an expectant silence drew out between them. Then Roberto took another throw and said: ‘Maybe you don’t love me as much as before, that’s all.’

  He said it quietly, staring gravely ahead, not allowing himself to become upset, though as he said it he wanted to cry.

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Roberto.’

  Carlo turned to his son, as though to bring their divergent gazes closer together, but Roberto did not move. Struggling to hold back tears, he said, ‘I’m not talking nonsense! Maybe you guys just wanted me to turn out different than I have, but this is the way I am. And maybe you don’t like having me as your son anymore…’

  Carlo did not reply. He had the urge to hug his son, but he wanted him, his adored son, to say everything that was in his head.

  ‘Anyway, I’m not sure I’ll like making books. I like it up here in the mountains. Maybe I’ll come and live here.’

  ‘Is this because of Mattia?’

  ‘He’s my friend. But it’s nothing to do with him.’

  ‘You’ll do whatever you choose. We’re not going to be the ones to stop you.’

  They were silent once more.

  ‘You�
��re angry, Roberto, but you’re going in circles around the problem. You need to be honest, otherwise it’s pointless talking about it. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Lots of things. Like today. Everything’s gone wrong. That doesn’t matter, but Mamma didn’t come and we haven’t seen each other for a whole week.’

  Carlo shut his eyes, struck with a violence only he could understand.

  ‘Maybe you think I’m still a child. I am. I’m trying to stop being one, being a child makes me sick. I can’t stand it any longer.’

  ‘Roberto.’

  ‘But one thing I don’t understand is why I’m a child when you want me to be, but then I’m supposed to be grown-up and go without seeing Mamma. And then I’m supposed to be a child again when you don’t want me to know about any bad stuff.’

  At this point, a little too hastily, Carlo asked: ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about Nonno. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Nonno’s fine. What can I say?’

  Roberto gave him a hard look, though inside, all he wanted to do was whimper.

  ‘If it’s serious and that’s why Mamma can’t come, maybe you ought to let me see him. Maybe seeing Nonno dying would be instructive. Did you ever think of that?’

  Carlo regarded him with a mixture of astonishment and annoyance. He stood up and said, ‘Do you realise you’re talking complete rubbish, Roberto?’

  Roberto did not react. He listened with his back turned.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re referring to but I really don’t like this talk. It’s neither clever nor entertaining. I don’t know where these ideas have come from, certainly not from us, and I hope they don’t stick around. In any case, Nonno is sick, but not that sick. Mamma stayed home because she’s also not well. And if you miss her so much, if this isn’t just a whim, you can come home with me this evening.’

  At this point Roberto began staring up at his father, taken aback. He looked ahead once more.