In the end I decided to write because I needed to tell you something I’ve often thought about in all these years and which perhaps concerns you too, in a way – the reason why, that day in the piazza, I told Pierini about Miss Palmieri. If I’d kept quiet, maybe nobody would have found out and I wouldn’t have been sent to the institute. The psychologists kept asking me why I’d told him and for a long time I replied that it was because I’d wanted to show Pierini and the others that I was strong too and that I didn’t let people push me around and that after they failed me I was wild with rage. But that wasn’t the truth, I was lying.
Then a few weeks ago something happened. A new boy arrived, a Calabrian boy who had killed his father. He’s fourteen. He speaks broad dialect and when he talks – which isn’t often – nobody understands a word he says. Every evening his father used to come home and beat up his wife and sister. One evening Antonio (but everyone here calls him Calabria) took the bread knife off the table and stuck it in his chest. I asked him why he’d done it, why he hadn’t gone to the police to report him, why he hadn’t talked to anyone about it. He didn’t answer me. It was as if I didn’t exist. He just sat there by the window smoking. So I told him I had killed someone too, when I was about the same age as him. And that I knew how it feels afterwards. And he asked me how it did feel and I said, awful, terrible, with something inside you that won’t go away. And he shook his head and looked at me and said it wasn’t true, that afterwards you feel like a king, and then he asked me if I really wanted to know why he had killed his father. I said yes. And he said: because I didn’t want to become like that bastard, I’d rather be dead than like him. I’ve thought a lot about what Calabria said. He understood more quickly than I did. He understood at once why he had done it. In order to combat something evil which we have inside us and which grows and turns us into beasts. He cut his life in two in order to escape from that. It’s true. I think the reason I told Pierini I’d killed Miss Palmieri was that I wanted to get away from my family and Ischiano. I wasn’t conscious of it when I did it, nobody would do such a thing if they were conscious of it, it was something I didn’t know at the time. I don’t really believe in the subconscious and psychology, I think everyone is what they do. But in that particular case I think there was a hidden part of me, which took that decision.
That’s why I’m writing, to tell you that when I promised you that night on the beach (how often I’ve thought about that night) that I’d never tell anyone, I really meant it, but then maybe the fact that you were leaving for England (but you mustn’t feel guilty about that) and seeing Miss Palmieri’s body again broke something inside me and I had to say it, spit it out. And I really believe I changed my own destiny. I can say that now, having spent six years in this place which they call an institute but which in so many ways is just like a prison and I’ve grown up and finished high school and maybe I’ll go to university myself.
I didn’t want to end up like Mimmo, who’s still there fighting with my father (my mother tells me he’s started drinking, just like him). I didn’t want to stay in Ischiano Scalo. No, I didn’t want to become like them, and soon I’ll be eighteen and I’ll be a man, ready to face the world with (hopefully!) the right attitude.
Do you know what Miss Palmieri said to me in the bathroom? She said that promises are made to be broken. I think there’s some truth in that. I’ll always be a murderer, even though I was only twelve, it makes no difference. There’s no way of atoning for such a terrible thing, not even the death penalty. But in time you learn to live with it.
That’s what I wanted to tell you. I broke our pact, but maybe it was better that way. But now I’d better stop writing, I don’t want to make you sad. My mother tells me you’re beautiful and I knew you would be. When we were small I was sure you’d be Miss Italy one day.
Love,
Pietro
P.S. You’d better watch out – when I come to Bologna I’m going to grab you and steal you away.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Hugh and Drusilla Fraser, who gave me the tranquillity to finish the book. And I’d like to thank Orsola De Castro for standing by me and Graziano Biglia. And I’d like to thank the wonderful Roberta Melli, and Esa de Simone and Luisa Brancaccio and Carlo Guglielmi and Jaime D’Alessandro and Aldo Nove and Emanuele and Martina Trevi, Alessandra Orsi and Maurizio and Rosella Antonini and Paolo Repetti and Severino Cesari. I’d like to thank Renata Colorni and Antonio Franchini and the whole Editoria Letteraria Mondadori team for their help (Daniela, Elisabetta, Helena, Lucia, Luigi, Silvana, Mara, Cesare, Geremia, Joy). And finally I’d like to thank my whole family (including the Grancereale Gang) for being such a great support. Thank you again.
Also by Niccolò Ammaniti
I’m Not Scared
About the Author
Steal You Away
Niccolò Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He has written three novels and a collection of short stories. He won the prestigious Italian Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction with his bestselling novel I’m Not Scared, which has been translated into thirty-five languages.
Jonathan Hunt currently divides his time between Italy and Britain. His translations include Niccolò Ammaniti, I’m Not Scared and Tommaso Pincio, Love Shaped Story.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2006
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
First published in Italy as Ti Prendo e ti porto via
by Mondadori Editore s.p.a
This digital edition first published in 2009
by Canongate Books
Copyright © Niccolò Ammaniti, 1999
English translation copyright © Jonathan Hunt, 2006
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
This English translation was supported by
the Italian Cultural Institute, Edinburgh
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters,
places and events are figments of the author’s imagination and
are used fictionally. Any resembance to real persons, alive or
dead, or to real events and places is purely coincidental
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 693 1
www.meetatthegate.com
Steal You Away Page 41