‘Right, so it’s a whim.’
Feeling injured, Roberto said nothing more. His father was right.
‘Roberto! Come on over, let’s do penalty shootouts!’
He turned towards Mattia, who was holding a football and waving at him from the grass. Roberto got to his feet and glanced across at his father as though to ask permission, but Carlo was busy playing with two stones. Perhaps there was nothing more to add. He ran off.
That evening, Carlo left early, much earlier than usual.
12
The souvenir shop was in the main piazza of San Valentino, the closest town to Madonna del Bosco. It was the only piazza, really, the one in which all the valley’s important events were held. The little shop was under a portico that was less antique than just plain old, and it was of a piece with the bar next door: a few small tables on one side, and various bits and pieces for sale on the other. They sold stationery, some basic sewing supplies, various items of use in the mountains, and a few souvenirs to take back to the city. It was a lovely sunny day and Lia was enjoying it from behind dark glasses like a 1950s diva, sitting opposite the children, who were concentrating hard with their biros in hand.
‘So?’
‘I can’t think of anything.’
‘Neither can I, goddammit.’
‘Language, Mattia.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Let’s pretend I never heard. Write something nice that you’ve done, and then an affectionate sign-off like lots of love or hugs and kisses.’
‘But I don’t know anybody.’
‘Write some for Roberto, it’ll be faster, and then sign them.’
‘Right.’
They were silent while they were thinking, as though doing their homework. Then one would write and pass the postcard to the other, who would sign it. About ten in total.
‘I’ve got an idea.’ Roberto looked at Lia to check whether he was allowed to go on. ‘Let’s send one to each other.’
‘Huh?’
‘Can we, Nonna?’
Lia’s eyes smiled, and she nodded.
‘Choose a postcard and pass it to me. I’ll write my address on it without looking at the picture and pass it back to you. Then you write what you like and send it to me without showing me. I’ll do the same.’
‘Can we do that?’
‘Yes, Mattia, you can. It will be a nice memento.’
The two boys got up and took turns to pick another postcard, this time to send to the other. Roberto did this with a certain concentration, studying the images at length, because it was a unique and special choice, a gift for his only true friend.
‘Done.’
Mattia, in contrast, was silent and embarrassed. It was clear that writing—apart from the few laborious lines demanded at school—was not something he’d ever done. Keen to avoid Roberto’s and Lia’s eyes, he got up and went to sit at a table further away. He wrote and then he drew. He spent quite some time on it. Finally, he stuck the stamp on and put it in the shop’s postbox.
Roberto and Mattia looked at each other with complicity and a kind of defiance. Neither knew if the other had taken the task on as a joke—a chance to take the piss—or as a show of affection, a chance to declare their friendship in writing, proof for all eternity of the bond between them.
While Lia finished her coffee, the boys looked around at the revolving display racks.
‘Cool!’ Mattia was pointing at a stamp inside a cheap collector’s package showing a World War I biplane on a magenta background.
‘Yeah, cool.’ Roberto looked doubtfully at the plane he was indicating. The tiny paper squares with their drawings meant little to him.
‘I’ve never seen one like that. It’s awesome! Awesome!’ said Mattia, at his ecstatic peak.
He took the packet from its place on the stand beside the other identical ones and turned it over. Ten thousand lire. Too much.
He put it back, disappointed. He gazed at it a little longer, then began looking at other things, none of which excited him. He fell silent, in fact, pretending nothing was wrong, as he always did when he was annoyed about something.
Roberto followed this sudden change of mood, even though they were each independently focused on other items in the shop. While Roberto was looking at some Swiss Army knives, he saw Mattia return to the display rack of stamps.
It was a quick movement. His jumper rose and fell again. A sharp and decisive action, born of habit. The stamp package had finished up under his waistband—if you looked closely you could tell, because his jeans were stretched around the hard plastic. When Mattia looked up to see if anybody from the shop was coming, his eyes met Roberto’s. Just an instant. Mattia stood, impassive, as Roberto turned away to hide the expression of guilt that had appeared on his own face, as though he had been the one stealing. Following the impulse to make himself useful and expunge that moment of weakness, he walked towards the counter with the pocketknife in his hand.
‘Excuse me, how much is this?’
‘It’s written on the display rack, let’s see…Seven thousand lire.’
Meanwhile Mattia had moved away from the stamps and was sitting, legs dangling, on the base of the colonnade outside, as though challenging anyone who passed to spot the packet of stamps inside his trousers.
‘I’ll ask Nonna if I can have it.’
Roberto placed the item back on the stand.
‘Now, you and Mattia go get my cigarettes and newspaper and wait for me at the fountain. All right?’
Roberto thought nothing of this. He assumed his grandmother wanted to smoke a cigarette in peace, without them around.
He went out to his friend and they walked away. After a few metres, Mattia, who was walking awkwardly, pulled the packet out from his groin.
Lia smoked her cigarette and calmly went up to the shop owner.
‘How much do I owe you for the postcards and stamps?’
He worked it out on a piece of paper and told her.
‘Add in the stamp set the boy took.’
‘Which one was that?’
‘He didn’t tell you? Well, he told me, so add that in and we’re even. And the pocketknife my grandson asked you about, which he hasn’t taken. Thank you.’
13
The green fence that cut across the field made the place look more like a prison camp than a holiday camp. And from a distance the slender icons, identical in blue skirts and white tops, hair hidden under hats that sparkled in the sun, seemed more like little clones in a video game. When you thought about it, there were tall, pale blue ghosts in the middle of it all, too. A Pac-Man concentration camp, that’s what it looked like.
Off in the distance, through the diamond-shaped holes in the outer fencing, the Pac-Men were playing Capture the Flag. The boys had all been grounded, so they had to stay indoors for the day. The boys’ section of the holiday camp was labelled ‘M’. A fence dividing the playground into two sections, which could be accessed only from the central building or from the surrounding woodland, kept them separate from the girls in ‘F’. A bit like a chicken coop. Two letters painted carefully on the front of the building clarified all this. But if you tried to go from one side to the other they’d catch you straight away anyway, because you’d be wearing a blue top instead of a white one. None of them ever tried, even though breaching the defences of the ‘F’ section would be great fun, because there was no point: they were just little boys, and apart from the occasional prank, everything they needed to have fun was available on their own side of the net. They also had more space, though the nuns, all lined up like riot police, made sure they didn’t exceed their bounds.
But right now there was no one on this side apart from Lia, Roberto and Mattia, sitting on a hotel blanket. Lia had decided that it was the perfect day for a hike plus picnic on the Rivalonga plains, near the dam and the holiday camp run by the nuns, and as usual she’d been spot on. They had arrived mid-morning, still too early for lunch, and had sprawled out on the dou
ble-bed blanket, teasing each other and laughing at nothing while Lia read and took no notice of them. Soon, though, they got sick of this and asked to be allowed to explore the area. No more than a quarter of an hour, no going into the woods, and no leaning out over the edge of the dam. These were the rules. They would obey. Off they went.
Their first stop was the dam, high above a petrol-blue artificial lake formed by an influx of glacial meltwater from several hundred metres above.
It was within sight, so Lia could relax.
They crossed the plain and then the narrow walkway, between cement balustrades, that ran from one side of the dam to the other. They reached the viewing platform that looked out over the water. It was a mountain lake, so at its widest it was not huge, but because the reservoir was not full—they must have left the floodgates open, maybe because of the rain—the drop was sheer and brutal. For some incomprehensible reason, although they were only three hundred metres away from the plain, the air there was different: darker, harder. But it was the sounds, more than anything, that made the dam feel so alien. Just a few metres away the mountain throbbed and quivered with squeaks, gusts, birdsong, growls and distant roars, yet here it seemed to have fallen silent. As though in suspension: as though holding its breath.
The platform, made of rusting iron rods, encircled them but did nothing to reduce the vertiginous effects. They looked down for a long time, stretched out on the double layer of metal rods that formed the floor.
‘Do you ever come here in winter?’
‘No, never.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s closed. You can’t get through, because of the ice. Plus, I’d be coming alone. It’s not the same.’
The water beneath them was still and black. The wall of reinforced concrete disappeared into it suddenly, swallowed up. Roberto began rummaging around in his pockets. He found it, glanced between his fingers to make sure it was only a tin bottle-top and not a coin. Throwing coins was a crime, his father said. He lay prone again and let it drop.
‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five…’
They counted in unison as the piece of metal drifted down into the void. It touched the water a few metres from the dam wall some seconds later and disappeared without a sound, but they had already lost sight of it and given up counting.
They stretched out on their backs and stayed that way until Roberto asked, ‘What are you thinking about?’
Mattia did not reply at once.
‘Nothing. The kid in the well.’
‘I think about him too sometimes.’
Mattia turned for a moment, almost with a jerk, as though he wanted to clarify something, but Roberto wasn’t looking, so he went back to staring up at the sky, into a blue so dense it looked like one of those covers you pull over a swimming pool in winter.
‘But I’m not thinking stuff like poor thing, so unlucky, if that was me I’d be dead now. I’m imagining being in the hole, in his position.’
Mattia closed his eyes as Roberto sat up on one elbow to listen to him.
‘And I see the dark, I try to feel the cold and the damp in my body, so tightly cramped that I can’t move. I can’t breathe. And I try to endure it.’
‘To endure it?’
Mattia reopened his eyes.
‘Yeah, to train myself to endure fear and pain. Because if it happens to me, I need to know what to do. I need to hold out and survive.’
‘I want to be able to as well, if it happens to me.’
He lay down on his back once more.
‘Well then, it’s necessary to work at becoming strong, and enduring pain. And causing pain, or killing, if that’s what you have to do to survive.’
Roberto thought about it for a moment, and then nodded.
‘I think so too. We have to train ourselves not to be afraid.’
Mattia looked sidelong down into the void.
‘And if somebody dies, to not be pathetic about it. Death is normal. It shouldn’t affect you, that’s what I think. That’s why I draw swastikas. It means: don’t fuck with me.’
Mattia, in his hoarse voice, had ended the discussion magnificently. ‘Fuck’ sounded damned good when he said it. The word never came naturally to Roberto, maybe because he didn’t use it often; he had felt embarrassed the few times he had said it. Other swearwords came more naturally.
‘Now I feel like diving in.’ Mattia had already sat up.
‘Yeah, right. From this height, you’d kill yourself.’
‘Let’s make a bet.’
‘Come on, do you want to lose?’
‘Bet your new pocketknife.’
‘And what are you betting?’
‘My Dallas Cowboys cap.’
‘Done.’
Mattia got to his feet. Roberto wasn’t taking it seriously, he only wanted to see how far Mattia would go. The bet was already as good as won, because it was suicide to throw yourself from that spot. Mattia would not be able to do it. Nobody would.
The local boy took off his shoes and socks.
‘These are heavy, they’ll pull me under, and it’s cold down there.’
He took off his jumper. Then he approached the railing. He took one last look in front and around, and then, with some difficulty, lifted his leg up onto the handrail.
‘What are you doing?’
Mattia stopped.
‘How else am I going to jump? I have to be on the other side of the rails.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘No, I want to win the bet. I’m going to jump.’
‘But you could fall if you climb over that.’
Roberto was already worried. He was looking towards the holiday camp to work out whether his grandmother had noticed anything, but Lia had changed position, perhaps inadvertently as she read, and now she had her back to them.
‘Don’t be a dickhead. Get your leg down off there. It’s not as though you can jump off.’
‘I win bets. Because I’ve got balls.’
Mattia pushed himself up so he was straddling the rail. Now he needed to get over to the other side by placing his feet on the barrier, which had been put there precisely to stop anyone accidentally going over the edge. The rusty iron rods sticking out from the reinforced concrete were slightly longer and somewhat curved. They were quite a long way apart, so you could stumble and impale yourself on one.
‘If my grandmother sees you, she’ll kill me.’
But Roberto didn’t dare touch him—it was dangerous enough already and he didn’t want to run the risk of sending him over the edge by mistake.
Mattia said nothing as he turned to rest one foot on the other side, on the rods. This was the hardest part because he wasn’t tall enough: to avoid falling down onto his back, he had to support his weight with his hands and slide down until his feet touched.
When his foot touched the metal and he pivoted to bring his other leg over, the rust scratched the sole of his foot and he winced as his other leg gave way under him.
Then Roberto cried, ‘You’ve won the bet! I’ll give you the knife. Come back over this side.’
Mattia moved slowly, with all his weight on the rods.
‘Did you hear me? You’ve won. I’ll help you get back over.’
Squatting, holding on to the rails of the balcony, Mattia turned slowly because the rods were hurting his feet, and readjusted his grip behind his back: he now had the lake in front of him and would be able to stand up straight and dive in.
‘Mattia, what am I supposed to do?’
Roberto had a lump in his throat. A knot tightening beneath his chin, too tight to let any thoughts through.
‘You? Watch me. A bet has to be won properly, not just because someone gives in.’
Mattia released his grip on the railings. He looked down. Then he stood up straight.
‘You’re crazy, Mattia. You’re crazy. You’re going to kill yourself. The water’s freezing, listen to me, you can’t do this, it’s too cold, even if you don’t whack your head on the cur
ve of the wall, you’ll sink and freeze to death, it’s glacial water, you can’t do this. Listen to me…’
Roberto was no longer holding back.
‘Listen to me, for fuck’s sake!’
Mattia arched his back. He lifted his arms to get ready to push off.
In that instant Roberto, in desperation, threw his arms around his friend from behind, squeezing his chest in a grip made unbreakable by fear. Mattia didn’t even try to free himself.
He started to laugh. He was choking with laughter.
‘You’re such a city kid! If it had been me I wouldn’t have paid you any attention.’
Roberto slowed his tears while still holding tight.
‘Did you think I was really going to jump?’
Roberto was beginning to understand.
‘I’m not an idiot. Jump off here and there’s no coming back.’
Then Roberto suddenly let go. He looked him in the eyes but this time he was not smiling. ‘You’re an idiot. You’re the biggest idiot ever.’
He turned away, humiliated, so he could make his way back to Lia, but slowly, so that she wouldn’t see he’d been crying.
From a distance, all he heard was, ‘Are you pissed off at me? It was only a joke…Sorry…God, sorry…’
Later on, they decided to hunt down the Pac-Men. They weren’t really interested in the identical girls, but they were drawn to the idea of challenging their defences, as though they were in a video game. They didn’t even really know what they would do, what they could do if they got in, but they would think about that later.
After the usual innocuous request to Nonna—to go and gather pine cones in the woods—they made for the part of the pine forest furthest from the camp, so as not to attract any suspicion.
They headed in among the trees then backtracked a little, walking at a distance from the field so that they wouldn’t be seen, beyond where Lia was sitting and past where the outer wall ended.
As they got to the other side, Roberto had the anticlimactic feeling that it had all been too easy, not sufficiently adventurous.
‘The hard part will be getting in to steal their ball, their little hats and their tops. We’re not just going in for nothing.’
The Mountain Page 7