The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

  We’re excited and happy that we were the ones who did it.

  Then the nuns come out. The children look through the windows.

  You can’t tell if the kids are scared or if they’re happy like us. But the nuns shout and run around. They look like a whole lot of black and white goats with the shepherd coming after them.

  The nuns don’t do anything because they don’t know what to do. None of them intervene. Meanwhile the trees burn.

  When there’s a nice big flame in the trees the nuns bring all the children outside. They yell that the fire might reach the camp and if they stay inside they’ll all die. One old nun faints, but it looks to us like she’s faking it. She perks up straight away, and it cracks us up. But the kids are crying.

  We didn’t want to set fire to the camp but we don’t mind.

  We approach, along with other people from the village who have come running, so we get to see the children from the camp, who are sitting on the grass in their pyjamas.

  They make us sick: the little ones are crying and the others are all clinging to the nuns. We can’t understand why their fear is so over the top.

  But a few of them are not in despair, they’re laughing and celebrating. The nuns tell them off and threaten to put them in detention. Those ones like the fire. We recognise the ones that are like us. We think about helping them to escape from the nuns, but then we don’t.

  We realise the baby-children, on the other hand, are a hopeless case. We don’t feel sorry for them.

  The people from emergency services arrive in jeeps. The nuns called them. They pump in water and in five minutes everything is black and the fire’s out.

  We go home happy that it was our fire.

  20

  ‘Roberto.’

  He thought he was still dreaming and didn’t reply.

  ‘Wake up.’

  Mattia, impatient, drove home his point with a fairly decisive shove.

  ‘But Mattia…’

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My father’s taking me hunting.’

  Roberto sat up in bed.

  ‘I asked him if you could come too.’

  In the darkness of the bedroom, with the only light coming from the spyhole in the door, Roberto couldn’t see Mattia’s face.

  ‘Did he say no?’

  ‘He said yes. Get dressed, ’cause he’s waiting.’

  When they went outside the grass was still very wet and the sun left the plain in shadow. Roberto thought of his grandmother’s departure. He nodded and waved to Leo, who did not return his greeting. Instead, he turned and headed away from them.

  ‘Take one dog each.’

  He had tied the two dogs to the fence. The children took them by their leashes and followed Leo, who made no allowances—would never have considered making any—for the fact that they were smaller. He walked at his usual brisk, decisive pace and only occasionally glanced back at them struggling to manage Grunt and Heidi.

  They climbed high, where hunting was permitted. Small animals only, supposedly, but judging by Mattia and Leo’s conversations the distinction didn’t mean much.

  As they walked, Roberto’s eyes were irresistibly drawn to the shotgun strapped to Leo’s back. It was the first time he’d seen a real gun: it made quite an impression. He felt the pull of it, the power to produce pain and death encased in that piece of wood and metal.

  They arrived quite quickly in the flat, dense part of the woods where Leo wanted to hunt. It was somewhat out of the way so they wouldn’t be disturbed. And in quiet areas there was more prey.

  Roberto asked, ‘What are we hunting?’

  Leo didn’t so much as turn. ‘Everything.’

  ‘But aren’t there specific seasons?’

  Mattia looked at him with a fleeting, slightly scornful smile, and then whispered, ‘I don’t think my father cares about hunting laws. He says it all belongs to whoever wants to take it.’

  Roberto made no comment. He lowered his gaze but soon looked again at the shotgun.

  ‘Shooting is as easy as swimming or riding a motorbike.’

  Roberto and Mattia approached and Leo started loading.

  ‘Rule number one is keep the safety on. Number two is rest the gun on your shoulder and point it at the ground, otherwise you’ll put a hole in someone before you’ve even started hunting.’

  He took a cartridge between his thumb and pinkie and guided it to the opening of the magazine, running his index finger over the guard.

  ‘When your index finger reaches the opening, point the cartridge up a little and squash it in with your thumb, like this. Then you do it again exactly the same with all the cartridges until the magazine is full. Then you load the first shot and you’re ready.’

  He pumped it back and then forward, which made a sound a little like a ballpoint pen, but multiplied by a hundred.

  Roberto had remained silent, concentrating on every little detail, one bullet after another. One day, sooner or later, being able to shoot might come in handy.

  ‘Got it?’

  As though spellbound, Roberto took a few seconds to respond. Then he nodded, but Leo had already moved on. He picked up the shotgun, holding it high above their heads, and began to advance.

  They made their way forward like that for almost half an hour. Then Leo made them take up position behind a fallen tree and at a certain point, when they had ants up to their knees, he signalled and said without looking at them: ‘Quiet now.’

  There was a hare looking around and hopping about. It sat up on its back feet and sniffed, as though it could smell something, but remained motionless, undecided.

  Leo took aim and fired. Roberto thought it was his own ears that had exploded, even though he’d covered them to protect them. The sound was astonishingly violent. An instant after the explosion, Roberto and Mattia looked at each other, with a hint of a smile. It was so, so great.

  Then they saw it through the scrub, about forty metres away. The shot had hit its target, but the creature wasn’t dead yet. A dark patch was forming in the grass as the animal throbbed, unable to escape, inflating and deflating in an effort to get air. And it made a noise. A bitter, resentful sound, full of hatred. It was a terrible thing to hear, the sound of agony.

  Only then did Roberto realise that what had seemed like a game was absolutely real. He was no longer laughing. He looked across at Mattia, who was watching the whole operation attentively but dispassionately.

  Leo had let the dogs off so they could collect the quarry. They would finish the animal off then bring it back.

  ‘I got it good. It’s done for.’

  Barking excitedly, Grunt and Heidi tore off towards the palpitating corpse of the hare but Grunt stopped suddenly a few metres away. Heidi did not run up at once; instead, hearing the other dog howling in pain she hesitated and turned, unsure what to do. From that distance it wasn’t possible to see what had happened, but the cry was that of a wounded animal. Something was wrong with his paw. Heidi started circling him and barking, as though asking for orders to follow.

  ‘Stupid dog.’

  Leo shoved the gun into Mattia’s hands and headed towards the dogs.

  The gun was very heavy but Mattia knew how to handle it. Roberto looked at him in admiration. Distracted by the gun, he failed to notice that Mattia’s eyes had lit up.

  Meanwhile, Leo had reached the dogs and was busy pulling a broken knife tip out of Grunt’s paw.

  Without speaking Mattia rested the barrel of the gun against the tree to hold it firm, just as his father had shown him.

  Roberto saw this and followed his movements without wondering what he had in mind.

  Mattia took aim. In the V-shaped sights at the end of the barrel was his father’s head, then his back, around the spot where his heart was, and then again his head. A wide target. An easy target. After a certain delay, Roberto understood. He held his breath.

  ‘It’s an easy shot. A single shot in the middle of
the back or to the head.’

  ‘Mattia.’

  ‘He’s a bastard. He makes my mother cry.’

  Leo walked on, oblivious.

  ‘Mattia, stop fooling around. Put the gun down.’

  ‘He beats me if I get something wrong. He doesn’t contribute anything. He only loves Dino because he’s little and doesn’t know what kind of father he’s got.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. I don’t want to hear this.’

  Yet he was still there. He put a hand on Mattia’s shoulder to try to shake him, but Mattia shoved him away in order to get better aim. ‘Carlo doesn’t do that,’ he said.

  ‘Every father’s different.’

  ‘And I got stuck with Leo. A worthless son of a bitch without a penny to his name.’

  Roberto was silent. There was that too. His own family was rich.

  ‘If we don’t tell, they’ll think it was an accident. No one will know I shot him on purpose. No one will care. His life’s not worth anything.’

  He spoke clearly and without expression. A single tear shone in his right eye, the one he kept open while he had Leo in his sights. One paradoxical tear.

  ‘If you keep the secret. Forever.’

  ‘I’d never betray you. But don’t ask me to do that.’

  ‘I’m doing it.’

  But for an instant he hesitated. He moved the gun to try to get into a better position and Roberto, paralysed by fear, incredulous, didn’t have the strength to move in time.

  The shot exploded with a brutal, exhilarating sound.

  They were both close. For a moment, it eliminated the sound from everything, making it confused and distant, as though they had both ducked their heads underwater and were unable to get out.

  They looked at each other. Roberto was shouting. He was shouting: Mattia, Mattia, yet couldn’t be heard, or maybe the shouting was all in his head. Mattia was smiling with that air of peace that sometimes seemed to form a halo around his face.

  An instant later, as sound began once more to flow freely and mingle itself with thoughts, he heard a voice getting closer.

  ‘What the fuck are you two doing? Hey! What the fuck are you doing?’

  Leo’s voice, agitated.

  He was running, he was almost upon them. He lifted Mattia off the ground, looked as if he was going to punch him. Roberto threw himself at Leo in a clumsy, belated attempt to get between them and ended up on the ground. He was hurt, but he got straight back up.

  Leo shouted: ‘Are you stupid?’

  He’d already taken the gun back and had his son by the throat.

  ‘You’re going to kill him!’

  Leo left him alone because he too was shocked, trying to make sense of it. The shot had only missed by three metres, which from that distance was nothing.

  ‘I saw a baby hare in the grass,’ Mattia tried to explain, gasping for breath and whimpering. ‘I saw a hare, I thought you’d be proud of me.’

  ‘There was a hare,’ Roberto repeated mechanically.

  Leo looked at them both. ‘You almost shot me, you idiot,’ he said, more calmly now. He rapped his knuckles so hard on his son’s forehead that the noise resounded. The pain produced a spurt of tears from Mattia’s eyes, like when you step on a bottle of water, but he made no sound.

  ‘I’m not letting you hold the gun again. You’re a pair of idiots, you don’t deserve it.’

  The day’s hunt was over. They picked up the dogs and the hare and made their way home in silence. Grunt was limping because of his injury and Heidi trotted around him. The hare ended up stashed inside Mattia’s schoolbag because it wasn’t the right season. No one breathed a word until they went their separate ways.

  21

  They didn’t see each other for the rest of the day. Roberto didn’t go looking for Mattia, and Mattia didn’t appear. His mountain friend was undoubtedly being punished, for admitting to something that in fact was far less serious than what he had intended. Roberto was disinclined to seek him out partly because of what had happened, the imagined crime they had shared so thoughtlessly. A feeling of transcendent guilt had passed between them, like some viscous fluid gluing you to a commitment. During the afternoon, before definitively burying the episode, he asked himself over and over why he hadn’t stepped in to stop his friend, grabbing the barrel of the gun, or pushing him to the ground. He didn’t have the courage to answer. He knew the answer all too well.

  They had begun thinking differently about life and death. Mattia’s suggestion had been a leap, but it was not that surprising. They considered Leo a man-child, the worst race of them all.

  For the rest of the day he loafed around the hotel on his own. He went to check the treehouse. He re-read the Notebook.

  The rains of the previous days had been merciless, demolishing their hut. It would take a long time to fix it up, but he didn’t feel like it anymore. He left it as it was and took the Notebook away with him.

  He filled the time around Madonna del Bosco as he always had, curious about the tiny changes that were happening in an anthill, among the weeds, on the bark of a branch, in the flight of the bees. He remained in this state of fusion with the mountain until evening, when he heard a call somewhere in the distance.

  He reacted slowly, as though to the sound of a memory: it was dinnertime, the hour when Lia used to come looking for him.

  But the voice urgently calling to him was not hers. It was Rosa, from the steps of the hotel.

  ‘Roberto! Roberto, come here!’

  He saw her beckoning him to come in immediately; she was in a hurry. He ran.

  ‘Roberto, your father’s on the phone, it’s urgent.’

  He kept running until he reached the phone, red-cheeked and panting. He took the receiver from Emma and all he could say, as always, was, ‘Hi, Papà.’

  ‘Hi, Roberto.’

  His father beat around the bush for a while. He was trying to sound natural, in control, but there was an off note in the background. It came through the telephone and into Roberto’s ears, and from there into his brain, confusing him, hammering at him—a note of pain so intense it was unbearable, yet almost hypnotic.

  He had a sudden urge to take the phone away from his ear. Instead he said, ‘Papà. Say what you have to say.’

  Carlo went quiet. He probably would have told Roberto off, had it not been for the sadness of the news he was imparting; the vast distance it created between normality and what was happening now.

  ‘The day after tomorrow I’m coming with Lia to pick you up.’

  ‘What do you mean, the day after tomorrow? Five days early?’

  The shattering announcement came like an encrypted message, a metaphor for something concealed far beneath.

  ‘Yes, Roberto. I’m sorry but…’

  ‘But why? You wanted to keep me here and now you want to come and get me.’

  ‘Unfortunately, you have to come home.’

  ‘Is it about my grandfather? Has he died?’

  ‘It’s not about your grandfather, Roberto.’

  ‘What then? Why don’t you want to tell me?’

  Now that it was all clear to him, his father’s reticence took on the shape of cowardice. A dark rage grew in him at the thought that he had so little time left to spend with Mattia.

  ‘What then? Tell me!’

  His father took a deep breath. ‘It’s because of your mother.’

  Roberto was left speechless for a few seconds.

  ‘She’s not well. And she wants you near.’

  He wanted to ask but didn’t have the strength to say anything. All he could do was listen.

  ‘We’ll come and get you the day after tomorrow, first thing in the morning.’

  His mother was dying.

  Carlo had not wanted to come out and say it, but his words now appeared extraordinarily clear. And his extended holiday, alone, now took on an entirely new—and terrible—meaning.

  Summoning all his strength to hold back his tears, he went upstairs to his
room. He moved slowly, vaguely, to the bed and lay down.

  Then the tears started. He wasn’t even reacting, they had nothing to do with his rage, his pain. It was uncontrolled, as though he had wet himself. The flooding of his eyes made the ceiling look deformed, the walls and the furniture distant and unfamiliar. He realised that he felt nothing. He dried his eyes and thought of the Curiosity Corner in his puzzle magazine, where he had read about soldiers hit in the stomach by artillery fire, who continued to advance for a few minutes, oblivious. That was how he felt. As though they had shot him in the stomach with a cannon and the pain was enough to shut down his whole body.

  It became a struggle to think, as though the thoughts in his head were unable to find the right words or even the right emotions, as though they had all been locked away together somewhere inside him.

  He fell asleep fully dressed.

  Later, when it was already dark, he went down to the ground floor. He had missed dinner, but he wasn’t hungry. He sat on the stairs out the front. The night chill was on its way, entering his bones, and he liked it. Out here he could briefly stop thinking about his mother.

  He sat there, huddling into his jumper, until he saw Mattia appear.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Aren’t you grounded?’

  ‘Come on.’

  And he began dragging him towards the road, looking around to make sure no one was coming. They took the main road. Mattia was walking fast.

  ‘I came as soon as my father went out.’

  ‘But what if he realises?’

  ‘We’ll be back before him.’

  ‘But where are we going?’

  ‘To San Valentino.’

  ‘How come? We’ve only just been there.’

  At first Mattia didn’t reply. But he had something in mind.

  ‘Earlier on I saw everyone from the holiday camp walking in that direction.’

  It wasn’t difficult to spot them. They were a white patch at the far end of the piazza. What was difficult was reaching them. There were big crowds around the stalls and they had to elbow people to get through to the other side.

  Once they did get through, they saw that the nuns’ control over the girls in their white tops and little hats had evaporated. To keep them in check they’d have had to tie them up or carry them away—these young ladies wanted to enjoy the party too. So, after a few words of caution, they were free.