Steal You Away

by Niccolò Ammaniti

  Never mind, I’ll surprise her.

  He went through customs and took off the carousel his suitcase and a huge wooden sculpture of a black dancing girl.

  He cursed.

  Despite the packaging, the dancer had lost her head during the flight. The present for Flora. It had cost him the earth. They’d have to pay him compensation. But not now. Now he was in a hurry.

  He left the arrivals lounge and went straight to the Hertz counter where he rented a car. He wanted to get to Ischiano Scalo as soon as possible, and travelling by rail was out of the question. In the car park they gave him a purple Ford with no stereo.

  The usual crappy car, but for the first time in his life Graziano didn’t argue till he got one that was to his liking, now he just had to rush to Ischiano to do the most important thing in his life.

  144

  She was dead.

  Dead.

  Quite dead.

  As dead as dead could be.

  The thing in the bath was dead. Yes, because that was no longer Miss Palmieri, but a swollen, livid thing, floating in the bath like the inner tube of a tyre. The blue mouth open. The hair plastered against the face like long seaweed. The eyes, two opaque spheres. The water was clear, but at the bottom lay a crimson carpet over which the schoolmistress’s corpse seemed to be levitating. A black corner of the cassette recorder protruded like the bow of the Titanic from the red sludge.

  It had been him. He had done that. With one movement of his leg. A simple movement of his leg.

  He backed away till the wall stopped him.

  He had really killed her. Until now he hadn’t completely believed it. How could he have killed a human being? Yet he had. She was dead. And nothing could be done about it now.

  It was me. It was me.

  He rushed over to the toilet and vomited. He knelt there, hugging the bowl and gasping.

  I must get out at once. Away. Away. Away.

  He flushed the toilet and left the bathroom.

  The house was dark. In the hall he replaced the table he’d knocked over when he’d run away, and put the receiver back on the telephone. He looked into the kitchen to check that everything was in the ri …

  What about the creature in there?

  Pietro hesitated in front of the door and then, driven by something that was both curiosity and need, entered the dark room.

  The smell of excrement was even more penetrating and now beneath it there was another smell, if possible even more unpleasant and sickening.

  He slid his hand around on the wall by the door jamb, groping for the switch. A long neon light crackled, came on, went off, came on and lit up the room. There was a bed with an aluminium frame and on it a dead, sexless creature. A mummy.

  Pietro wanted to leave but couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  What had happened to it? It wasn’t just old, it was all twisted and didn’t have an ounce of flesh on it. What had reduced it to this state?

  Then he remembered the ladder out there, doused the light, shut the front door behind him and went down the stairs.

  The White Cliffs of Edward Beach

  ‘There’s someone to see you in the other room,’ Gina Biglia had said with a smile that extended even beyond her ears.

  ‘Who is it?’ Graziano had asked, and had entered the sitting room.

  Erica. Sitting on the sofa, she was sipping a coffee.

  ‘So this is the Erica I’ve heard so much about?’ Gina had asked.

  Graziano had slowly nodded.

  ‘Well? Aren’t you going to give her a kiss? You are rude …’

  ‘Grazi, aren’t you going to give me a kiss?’ Erica had repeated, opening her arms with a merry little giggle.

  If there’d been a sexologist hidden away somewhere in that sitting room, he would have been able to explain to us that Erica Trettel, at that moment, was pursuing the most effective strategy for regaining the affections of a wounded ex-partner, namely displaying herself as the sexiest and most fuckable woman on the planet.

  And in this she had succeeded to perfection.

  She was wearing a pea-green miniskirt so tight and short he could have rolled it up in the palm of his hand and swallowed it like a meatball, a woollen jacket of the same colour with a single button which squeezed her wasp-like waist but left her ample cleavage exposed, a silk blouse, also green, but of a paler tone, left casually open down to the third button so as to allow, for the joy of the male universe and the envy of the female one, tantalising glimpses of a black lace wonderbra which moulded her mammary glands into firm globes. Black tights patterned her long legs with geometrical motifs. Her apparently sober black shoes concealed six-inch heels.

  So much for her clothing.

  As far as her coiffure was concerned, her hair was long and platinum blond. It formed soft waves which fell with studied naturalness on her shoulders and down her back in the style of the L’Oreal adverts.

  As far as make-up was concerned, her lips (noticeably fuller than a few months earlier) were covered with dark, shiny lipstick. Her eyebrows were two thin arcs that crowned her green eyes, which were emphasised by a faint line of kohl. A dusting of light powder crowned the whole.

  All in all, the impression she conveyed was that of a young professional woman, confident that no man whose hormones were functioning properly could fail to like her, well integrated in society and ready to devour the world in a single mouthful, with all the slick sensuality of a Playboy full-page spread.

  You may wonder what on earth Erica was doing in Ischiano Scalo. In the sitting room of the man to whom she had said: ‘I despise you, and everything you represent. The way you dress. The bullshit you talk in that know-all tone of yours. You don’t know anything. You’re just an ageing, failed drug dealer. Get out of my life. If you dare call me again, if you dare come and see me, I swear to God I’ll pay someone to smash your face in.’

  Now we’ll try to explain.

  It was all because of the television. All because of those damned audience ratings.

  The Tuesday evening variety show on Channel One, You Reap What You Sow, where Erica had made her debut as an assistant, had been such a monumental flop that it had shaken the foundations of the entire national network (in the corridors of the Italian Broadcasting Corporation malicious tongues recalled, in between guffaws, how about half an hour after the beginning of the second episode the audience monitoring system had registered zero for about twenty seconds. In other words, for about twenty seconds not a single person in Italy had been watching Channel One. Incredible!) There had been just three episodes and then the show had been jettisoned, and with it the heads of department, assistant managers, producers and writers. Only the chairman of the network had more or less survived the debacle, and even he was a marked man for ever more.

  Mantovani, the presenter, had ended up making commercials for body-toning Dead Sea mud on Channel 39, and apartheid had been practised on the entire staff of the show: the comedians, the band, the telephone operators, the dancers and the showgirls, including Erica Trettel. After being thrown out by the IBC, Erica had stayed for two months at Mantovani’s home, hoping to receive offers from the rival networks. Not a single phone call came.

  Her relationship with Mantovani was fast deteriorating. He would come home in the evening, strip down to his underpants and slippers, gulp down some Edronax and wander around repeating: ‘Why? Why me?’ Then one evening Erica had caught him in the bathroom sitting on the bidet, trying to commit suicide by swallowing a 500 cc bottle of Dead Sea mud, and she’d realised that once again she’d backed a loser.

  She had put on the sexiest clothes she possessed, dolled herself up like Pamela Anderson and packed her bags. Then she had headed for the station and, tail between her legs, caught the first train for Ischiano Scalo.

  That is how she came to be there.

  Two days later, Erica had won Graziano back and they’d left for Jamaica.

  They’d got married straight away, one beautiful nigh
t under a full moon on the cliffs of Edward Beach, and had started living life the Biglia way.

  Albatrosses borne on positive currents.

  Beach morning and evening. Huge joints of cannabis. Swimming. Surfing. Deep-sea fishing. They had even organised a little show to make a bit of money. Two evenings a week, in a night club catering for American tourists, Graziano played the guitar and Erica danced in a bikini for the delectation of both sexes.

  And yet our feathered friend was not happy.

  Wasn’t this what he’d always wanted?

  Erica had come back, saying that she loved him, that she had made a big mistake, that television was crap, he had married her and they managed to make a living without too much difficulty and there was the intention, in a not clearly defined future, to return to Ischiano and open the jeans shop.

  What more did he want, for Christ’s sake?

  The problem was that Graziano couldn’t sleep any more. In his bungalow, under the fan, while Erica was in the land of dreams, he stayed up all night smoking.

  Why? he asked himself. Why, now that his dream had come true, did he feel that it was not his dream and that Erica, now that she was his wife, was not the wife he wanted?

  Deep down, somewhere in his lower belly, there lurked a feeling which made him feel like shit. One of those feelings that consume you little by little, which eat away at you like a slowly incubating disease, and which you can’t tell anyone about because if you admit the truth the whole damn puppet-show will come crashing down about your ears.

  He had left Flora without telling her anything. Like the meanest and sneakiest of thieves. He’d stolen her heart and run off with another woman. He’d dumped her unceremoniously. And all the fine promises, all the declarations he had made to her gnawed at his conscience more cruelly than the three Greek Furies.

  … I asked her to marry me, can you believe that? I had the gall to ask her to marry me, I’m a shit, a shit of a man.

  One night he had tried to write her a letter. And then he’d torn up the sheet of paper after two sentences. What could he say to her?

  Dear Flora, I’m very sorry. You see, I’m a gipsy, it’s just the way I am, I’m a …

  (bastard. Erica turned up and I … and I … oh, to hell with it …)

  And when he eventually got to sleep he always had the same dream. He dreamed that Flora was calling him. Graziano, come back to me. Graziano. And he was only a few metres away from her, calling out that he was there, in front of her, but she was deaf and blind. He grabbed her, but she was a cold, synthetic mannequin.

  Sitting on the beach, he lost himself in memories. Their little dinners and the video recorder. The weekend in Siena, where they had made love all day long. Their plans for the jeans shop. Their walks on the beach at Castrone. He kept remembering when he had given her the ring and she had blushed bright red. He missed Flora terribly.

  You fool. You’ve blown it. You’ve lost the only woman you ever succeeded in loving.

  But one day Erica had arrived on the beach bubbling with excitement. ‘I’ve been talking to an American producer. He wants to take me to Los Angeles. For a film. He says I’m just the kind of girl he needs. He’ll pay our fare and give us a house at Malibu. I’ve made it. This time I’ve really made it.’

  To be fair, Erica had tried hard, she’d held out for quite a while, she’d kept her resolution to have nothing more to do with show business for two whole months.

  ‘Really?’ Graziano had said, lifting his head off the sunbed.

  ‘Yes. I’ll introduce him to you this evening. I’ve told him about you too. He says he knows a lot of people in the music business. He’s a big shot.’

  Graziano had closed his eyes and, as if in a crystal ball, seen his immediate future.

  Los Angeles, in one of those crappy apartments with cardboard walls next to a freeway, without any money, without any work permit, watching TV and out of his mind with boredom, no, worse, out of his skull on crack.

  Everything the same. Exactly the same. Like in Rome, only worse.

  This was his chance! His chance to put an end to this dismal farce.

  ‘No thanks. You go, I’m not coming. I’m going home. This is your big break, I’m sure of it. You’ll be a great success,’ he had said, as he felt explode within him a happiness he had never thought he would feel again. Blessed, blessed American producer, God bless him and all his family! ‘Don’t worry about our marriage, it doesn’t mean a thing if we don’t have it rubber-stamped in Italy. Consider yourself free, as free as the air.’

  She had goggled at him and asked in amazement: ‘Graziano, are you angry?’

  And he had put his hand on his heart. ‘No, I’m not. I swear on the head of my mother. I’m perfectly happy. I’m not angry at all. You must go to Los Angeles. If you don’t you’ll be making a mistake you’ll regret for the rest of your life. I wish you all the luck in the world. But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a plane to book.’ He had kissed her and dashed off to a travel agency.

  And when he was in flight ten thousand metres above the Atlantic Ocean, after a while he had dozed off and dreamed of Flora.

  They were on a hill with some other people and some little silver-haired bears and they were kissing and there was a little Biglia crawling on all fours. A little red-haired Biglia.

  145

  Pietro entered Gloria’s bedroom, out of breath.

  ‘Hi!’ said Gloria, who was standing on the table trying to reach a book on the top shelf of the bookcase. ‘What brings you here at this time of day?’

  At first Pietro didn’t notice the large suitcase open on the bed and full of clothes, but then he saw it. ‘Where are you going?’

  She turned and hesitated for an instant, as if she hadn’t understood the question, but then explained: ‘This morning my parents gave me a surprise. As a reward for pas … I’m leaving for England tomorrow morning. I’m going to do a horse-riding course in a village near Liverpool. It only lasts three weeks, fortunately.’

  ‘Oh …’ Pietro flopped down in the armchair.

  ‘I’ll come back in the middle of August. So we can spend the rest of the holidays together. Three weeks isn’t long, after all.’

  ‘No.’

  Gloria grasped the book and jumped down from the table. ‘I didn’t want to go … I even quarrelled with my father. They told me I had to. They’ve already paid for it. But I’ll soon be back, you know.’

  ‘Yes.’ Pietro picked up a yo-yo from the table.

  Gloria sat on the arm of the chair. ‘You will wait for me, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure.’ Pietro began to spin it up and down.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, don’t worry. You’ll soon be back and I’ve got a lot of things to do at the place, with all the fish I’ve put in the net … Actually, I’m on my way there now. Last night when we left I forgot to feed them, and if they don’t get anything to eat …’

  ‘Shall I come with you? I could finish packing this afternoon …’

  Pietro gave a forced smile. ‘No, better not. We made a lot of noise last night and the wardens might get suspicious. It’s better if I go on my own, really. It’s better. Listen, have a great time in England and don’t ride so much that your legs go bandy.’

  ‘No, I won’t. But … won’t I see you this afternoon, either?’ said Gloria, disappointed.

  ‘I can’t this afternoon. I’ve got to help my father mend Zagor’s kennel. It rotted during the winter.’

  ‘Oh, I see. So this is the last time I’ll see you?’

  ‘Three weeks soon pass, you said so yourself.’

  Gloria nodded. ‘Okay. Bye, then.’

  Pietro stood up. ‘Bye.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?’

  Pietro briefly rested his lips on Gloria’s.

  They were dry.

  146

  Graziano drove across the main street of Ischi
ano and down the road that led to Flora’s house.

  He had no more saliva in his mouth and two waterfalls were dripping from his armpits.

  The emotion and the heat.

  He would go down on his knees and beg her to have pity on him. And if she refused to see him, he would stand outside her house day and night, it didn’t matter how long, without eating or drinking, until she forgave him. It had taken Jamaica to show him that Flora was the woman of his life and he wasn’t going to let her get away again.

  There were two hundred metres to go when he saw, behind the cypresses, blue flashes in the yard in front of the house.

  And now what’s happened?

  An ambulance.

  Oh God, Flora’s mother … Let’s hope it’s not serious. Well, anyway, I’m here. Flora won’t be alone. I’ll help her and if the old lady has died, it’s probably just as well, at least Flora will be relieved of a burden and her mother will be at peace.

  There was a police car too.

  Graziano left the hire car at the side of the road and entered the yard.

  The ambulance was parked, with its doors wide open, beside the front door. The police car, ten metres away, also had one door open. There was a blue Regata as well. Flora’s Y10, however, wasn’t there.

  What the …

  Bruno Miele in his police uniform emerged from the house, turned round and held the door open.

  A male nurse emerged, carrying a stretcher.

  On the stretcher was a body. Covered with a white sheet.

  The old woman has di ….

  But then he noticed a detail.

  A detail that froze the blood in his heart.

  A lock of hair. A lock of red hair. A lock of red hair stuck out. A lock of red hair stuck out from under the sheet. A lock of red hair stuck out from under the sheet and dangled down from the stretcher like a grisly paper streamer.

  Graziano felt as if the ground beneath his feet were sucking away all his strength. Underneath him was a magnet which had drained him of all vital fluid and reduced him to a heap of bones devoid of energy.