Steal You Away

by Niccolò Ammaniti

  She tried to pull herself up. She tried again.

  How come she felt fine but couldn’t get up? In fact she felt herself sinking gradually down into the water. That’s what it was, her legs weren’t obeying.

  Perhaps this is how Mama felt no this is soft it’s not stiff like Mama I’m gradually dissolving and the water tastes salty and metallic it tastes of blood.

  The water came up to her mouth.

  I can’t die I simply can’t it’s out of the question I can’t do it Mama Mam who will look after Mama if your little daughter isn’t there your Flo and otherwise I’d have killed myself long ago Mama.

  Mama! Mama! I’m dying! Mama!

  139

  A blood-curdling scream, water splashing everywhere and a hard thud against the bath.

  Pietro covered his eyes, filled himself with air and didn’t scream but rushed out of the bathroom searching for the front door and went straight past it without seeing it. Everything was dark. He found himself in the kitchen. A door. He opened it. A warm stench of excrement hit him like a fist. He took two steps and there was a fence, a barrier, something made of iron, something he fell over head first and landed with his mouth open on a hard body, a little body that was wheezing and panting, he started kicking and squirming and shrieking like an epilectic and climbed over whatever it was and ran back, banging against corners and falling over the telephone table and at last he saw the front door, turned the handle and fled down the stairs.

  140

  She was breathing through her nose.

  The rest of her head was under water.

  Her eyes were open. The water was warm. It tasted bitter. Red spirals whirled around her. Circles that grew wider and wider, a vortex and a noise, a muffled noise in her ears, the drone of a plane on its way from Jamaica and sitting in it was Graziano who was coming back because I called him and there’s a hill going round and round and there’s Mama and Papa and Pietro and Pietro and because I Flora Palmieri born in Naples and a little boy with red hair and Graziano is playing and the koalas are coming the big silver-haired koalas and it’s so easy the easiest thing in the world to follow them over the hill.

  What she saw gave her one last spasm, she smiled and, when she finally let herself go, she ceased to be pulled by the vortex.

  19th June

  141

  Mouth half-open, hands clasped behind his head, Pietro gazed at the stars.

  He didn’t know their names. But he knew there was one, the Pole Star, the sailors’ guide, which was brighter than the others, though tonight they all seemed equally brilliant.

  His heart had stopped racing, his stomach was no longer churning, his head had ceased to spin and Pietro was dozing relaxedly on the beach. Gloria was beside him. She hadn’t moved for quite a while, she was probably asleep.

  They had been there for over six hours and after spending all that time agonising about what had happened, telling her the story over and over again, asking himself the same questions and debating what to do, tiredness had prevailed and now Pietro just felt drained, physically exhausted and loath to think.

  He wished he could stay there like that, gazing at the sky, lying on the warm sand, for the rest of his life. But it wasn’t easy, because the little psychologist sleeping within him suddenly woke up and asked him: Well, how does it feel to have killed your Italian teacher?

  He had no reply, but what he could say was that after killing another human being you don’t die, your body goes on working and so does your brain, but it’s not like before. No, from that moment until the end of his life there would be a before and an after. Like with the birth of Christ. Except that in his case it would be before and after the death of Miss Palmieri. He glanced at his watch. Twenty past two on the 19th June, the first day A.F.P.

  He’d electrocuted her.

  For no reason. Or if there was one, Pietro didn’t understand it, didn’t want to understand it, it was locked away somewhere inside him and he could only feel its overwhelming power, a power capable of turning him into a madman, a murderer, a monster.

  No, he didn’t know why he had killed her.

  (She said those horrible things about you and your family.)

  Yes, but that wasn’t why.

  It had been a kind of explosion. There had been tons of TNT inside him ready to go off and he hadn’t known it. The schoolmistress had touched the button that activated the detonator.

  Like those bulls in the corrida that stand there in the middle of the arena and suffer agonies without moving and there’s that bastard of a bullfighter torturing them and they don’t react but eventually he sticks in one spear too many and the bull explodes and that guy can dance as much as he likes but he’ll still get a horn in his guts and the bull will lift him up and toss him in the air with his bowels hanging out and blood trickling from his mouth and you’re glad because that Spanish game of sticking spears in your back where it hurts most until you can’t stand it any more is the most evil game on earth.

  It might have been one reason, but it wasn’t enough to justify what he had done.

  I’m a murderer. ‘A murderer. A murderer. Pietro Moroni is a murderer.’ It had a nice ring to it.

  They would find out and throw him in jail for the rest of his life. He hoped he would have a little room (a little cell) all to himself. He could read books (prisons do have libraries). He could watch TV (Gloria might give him hers) and there he would stay. He would sleep and eat. That was all he needed.

  Living in peace for ever.

  I must go to the police and confess.

  He reached out and shook Gloria. ‘Are you asleep?’

  ‘No.’ Gloria turned towards him. Her eyes glittered with stars. ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About Miss Palmieri’s boyfriend. Who could he be?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.’

  ‘She loved him so much she went out of her mind …’

  ‘She was in a very bad way. She seemed really ill, not like Mimmo when Patrizia ditches him.’

  Strange. He had never thought about what Miss Palmieri did after school, whether she liked watching films or going for walks, whether she enjoyed mushrooming, whether she preferred cats or dogs. Maybe she didn’t like animals at all, maybe she was scared of spiders. He had never even imagined what her home might be like. He saw the little balcony full of geraniums, the dimly lit, dirty bathroom, the hall with those posters of sunflowers and the little room with that creature in it. It was as if, for the first time, he had discovered that his teacher was also a person, a woman who lived alone and had a life of her own, not a cardboard model with nothing inside it.

  But none of this mattered any more. She was dead.

  Pietro sat up and crossed his legs. ‘Listen, Gloria, I’ve been thinking, I must go to the police. I must go and tell them. If I confess it’ll be easier. They always say that in films. They treat you better afterwards.’

  Gloria didn’t move, but snorted. ‘For goodness’ sake, shut up! Stop going on about it. We talked about it for two hours. Nobody saw you. Nobody knows you went there. Neither of us ever went there, do you understand? We were at the lagoon. Miss Palmieri went mad. She dropped the cassette recorder in the water and was electrocuted. End of story. When they find her, they’ll think it was an accident. That’s it. Now shut up. You said so yourself, you’re not going to change your mind, are you?’

  ‘I know, but I keep thinking about it. I can’t stop, I just can’t,’ said Pietro, digging his fingers in the sand.

  Gloria sat up and put her arm round his neck. ‘I bet I can stop you thinking about it.’

  Pietro smiled wrily. ‘How?’

  She took hold of his hand. ‘Fancy a swim?’

  ‘A swim? No thanks. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Come on. The water must be really warm.’ She grasped his arm. Finally Pietro got up and allowed himself to be led down to the waterline.

  Although there was only a half
moon, the night was luminous. The stars reached down into the sea, which was as flat as a table. There was no sound except the wash of the water shifting the sand. Among the dunes behind them the vegetation was a black tangle dotted with the intermittent lights of fireflies.

  ‘I’m going in. If you don’t come too, you’re a bastard.’ Gloria took off her T-shirt in front of Pietro. Her breasts were small, and paler than the rest of her suntanned body. She gave him a mischievous smile, then turned, took off her shorts and knickers and rushed into the sea, shrieking.

  She stripped in front of me.

  ‘It’s lovely! It’s really warm. Come on in! Do I have to beg you on my knees?’ Gloria knelt down and put her hands together. ‘Pietro, Pietro, please won’t you come and swim with me?’ And she said it in such a voice …

  Are you crazy? Go on, what are you waiting for?

  Pietro pulled off his T-shirt, slipped off his trousers and, in his underpants, dashed into the water.

  The sea was warm, but not so warm that it didn’t give him a shock which cleansed away the tiredness in his body. He took a deep breath, dived into the shallow water and started doing a vigorous breaststroke ten centimetres off the sandy bottom.

  Now all he had to do was swim. Glide further and further, follow the sea-bed out to the depths, like a manta or a ray, till he was out of air, till his lungs burst like balloons. He opened his eyes. And there was the cold darkness, but he continued to swim with his eyes open and began to be aware that the need to breathe, take no notice, keep going, was clawing at his chest, his windpipe, his throat, five more strokes and when he had done them, he told himself he could do another five, at least seven or he was a sissy, and he was close to passing out but he must do another ten, at least ten and he did one, two, three, four, five and at that point he really felt as if a nuclear bomb had exploded inside him and he shot up to the surface gasping. He was a long way out from the shore.

  But not as far as he’d thought.

  He saw Gloria’s blonde head turning this way and that, looking for him. ‘Gl …’ but then he broke off.

  She was thrashing about anxiously. ‘Pietro? Where are you? Don’t be silly, please. Where are you?’

  He remembered the song the schoolmistress had been singing when he’d entered the bathroom.

  You’re beautiful! He told me you’re beautiful.

  Gloria, you’re beautiful. He would have liked to say it to her. But he had never had the courage. It wasn’t done to say these things.

  He submerged and swam a few metres. When he surfaced again, he was nearer to her.

  ‘Pietro! Pietro, you’re frightening me! Where are you?’ She was panicking.

  He submerged again and came up behind her.

  ‘Pietro! Pietro!’

  He grabbed her round the waist. She jumped, and turned round. ‘You bastard! Damn you! You scared me out of my wits! I thought …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. That you’re a fool.’ She splashed him with water, then jumped on him. They began wrestling. And it was a horribly pleasant feeling. Her breasts against his back. Her bottom. Her thighs. She pushed him under and held him down, her legs gripping his hips.

  ‘Beg for mercy, you bastard!’

  ‘Mercy!’ he laughed. ‘It was only a joke.’

  ‘Ha ha, very funny! Let’s get out, I’m freezing.’

  They ran onto the beach and threw themselves down, side by side, where the sand was still warm. Gloria started to rub him down to dry him, but then put her lips to his ear and sighed: ‘Will you tell me something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you like me?’

  ‘… Yes,’ replied Pietro. His heart had started pounding under his breastbone.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘No, I mean, do you …’ She took an embarrassed breath. ‘Do you love me?’

  Pause.

  ‘Yes.’

  Pause.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Like Miss Palmieri? Would you kill yourself for me?’

  ‘If your life was in danger …’

  ‘Let’s do it, then …’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Make love.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow. My God you’re stupid! Now. This minute. I’ve never done it, and you … You’ve never done it either …’ she grimaced. ‘Don’t tell me you have. You didn’t do it with that tart Caterina Marrese, did you, and then keep quiet about it?’

  ‘I might as well ask you if you did …’ protested Pietro.

  ‘Yes, I’m a lesbian and I’ve never told you. I’m in love with Caterina Marrese.’ She changed her tone, became serious. ‘We must do it now. Will it be difficult?’

  ‘I don’t know. But how …?’

  Pause.

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How do we start?’

  Gloria rolled her eyes up to the night sky and then said, awkwardly: ‘Well, for example you could kiss me. I’m already naked.’

  It was a minor tragedy the details of which are best passed over in silence. It was brief, complicated and incomplete and left them full of questions and fears, confused, incapable of talking about it and locked together like Siamese twins.

  But then she said: ‘You must swear an oath to me, Pietro. You must swear it on our love. Swear you’ll never tell anyone about Miss Palmieri. Never. Swear to me.’

  Pietro remained silent.

  ‘Swear.’

  ‘I swear. I swear.’

  ‘I swear I won’t either. I won’t tell anybody. Not even in ten years’ time. Never.’

  ‘You must swear an oath to me, too, that we’ll always be friends, that we’ll never part, even if I’m in the second year and you’re in the third.’

  ‘I swear.’

  142

  Zagor was barking.

  Obsessively, as if someone had climbed over the fence and was in the farmyard. His bark strangled by the chain. Hoarse and wheezy.

  Pietro got out of bed. He put on his slippers. He pulled aside one of the curtains and peered into the darkness. There was nobody there. Only a stupid dog throttling itself and raising its blue lips over its foaming jaws.

  Mimmo was asleep. Pietro went out of the room and opened the door of his parents’ bedroom. They were asleep too. Their dark heads barely showing above the bedclothes.

  How can they not wake up with all this noise? he thought, and the moment he thought it, Zagor stopped.

  Silence. The rustle of the wind in the woods. The creak of the beams in the ceiling. The ticking of the alarm clock. The hum of the fridge downstairs in the kitchen.

  Pietro held his breath and waited. Then at last he heard them. Outside the front door. So muffled, they were scarcely audible.

  Tump. Tump. Tump.

  Footfalls.

  Footfalls on the steps.

  Silence.

  And there came a knocking at the door.

  Pietro opened his eyes wide.

  He was sweating profusely and breathing hard.

  What if she’s alive?

  If she was alive, he would find out.

  He left his bike behind the laurel hedge and cautiously approached the house.

  Nothing seemed to have changed since the night before. The road was deserted. It was still early and the lowest part of the sky was tinged with light blue. The air was cool.

  He looked up. The bathroom window was open. The door onto the balcony closed. The drainpipe bent over sideways. The glass front door locked. Everything as before.

  How was he to get in? Could he force the front door?

  No.

  They would notice.

  The drainpipe?

  No.

  He would fall down.

  An idea: you climb up as far as you can go, then you drop down, hurt yourself (break your leg), then you go to the police and say your teacher phoned you to say she was ill and you rang at the door but she
didn’t reply so you tried to climb up the drainpipe and fell off. And you tell them to go and check.

  No, wouldn’t work.

  One, she didn’t phone you. If they question Papa and Mama they’ll discover that straight away.

  Two, if she’s not dead, she’ll tell the police it was you who tried to kill her.

  He must find another way of getting in. He walked round the house, looking for a skylight, or a hole to crawl through. Behind the blackened pipes of the boiler he saw an aluminium ladder covered with leaves and cobwebs. He pulled it out.

  What he was doing was very dangerous. A ladder against a window would be seen by anyone who passed by. But he had to take that risk. He couldn’t live with this huge weight on his conscience a minute longer. He must climb up and see if she was alive.

  (And if she is alive?)

  I’ll say I’m sorry and call an ambulance.

  He carried the ladder round to the front, and with some difficulty succeeded in placing it against the wall. He scaled it quickly, took a deep breath and entered Miss Palmieri’s house again.

  143

  The British Airways jumbo arriving from Kingston, Jamaica, via London, pitching like a huge turkey landed on the runway of Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome, slowed down, stopped and switched off its engines.

  The cabin crew opened the door and the passengers began to pour down the steps. Among the first to emerge, dressed in a safari shirt, blue Bermudas, climbing boots, a peaked cap and an enormous shoulder bag, was Graziano Biglia. He was clutching his mobile phone and when, after a couple of beeps, the Telecom Italia Mobile logo appeared on the digital display of his Nokia and he saw the five bars indicating perfect reception, he smiled.

  That’s more like it, home at last.

  He selected Flora’s memorised number from the phone book and pressed enter.

  Engaged.

  He made five more attempts while he was being herded with the other passengers onto the bus, but was unsuccessful.