The Prison

by Stefano Pastor

  Lili had a gluttonous look, and held a pair of big scissors. “You can’t want to go again! I will not even allow you this time! I will not let you go, never!”

  It rang as a fury against him. The boy stepped back screaming and nearly fell from the stairs. He just managed to cling to the railing.

  But Red was also thrown. He jumped over the woman’s shoulders, sinking his claws, and then continued climbing to his neck, biting and scratching as he went crazy.

  Lili started to scream, twisting to get rid of the cat. He managed to reach his face and sank his nails into soft skin. Lili’s screams became desperate, while that infernal rage tried to strike her in her eyes. Then it was just a moment and they both rushed down the stairs. They almost overwhelmed him but he managed to cling to the railing.

  When he got down under the tragedy he was done. Lili lying on the ground, his head turned in an unnatural position. She had stopped breathing.

  Red was on the sofa arm, letting the wounds lick. He just paid him a glimpse of it.

  The boy could even turn a faint smile on him. “Thanks buddy.”

  So they went away together, a boy and his cat. The cat was old and scared, yet it was the first time he saw the world. The first time both were free, with great desire to know, to discover the wonders surrounding them.

  With the hope of living together a fantastic adventure.

  December 2010

  GOLD

  Translation by Paolo Tullii

  “Are we going to discuss about it?”

  “There’s not much to discuss about, I already told you what I think about it.”

  It has always been like this, every time, whenever she came up with an idea, there was no way of making her change her mind.

  “In the end, it’s just a weekend, and he’s fourteen already. He’s not a kid anymore. I could have understood if it was a female, but…”

  His voice aggravated. “So, you think so? Do you believe I’d make such distinctions? And what makes you think a female would be less judicious? Look at yourself! Look! Don’t tell me you could be entrusted!”

  “What’s wrong, now?”

  “That hat! Those boots! How could an adult man end up like that?”

  I started growling, without even noticing. “I’ve been fishing! How do you think I’m supposed to dress up for fishing? In a suit?”

  “See? That’s the kind of example you give to your children. No wonder they want to go camping! It’s all your fault!”

  “What’s wrong with camping? Sleeping beneath the stars, breathing fresh air?”

  “You really can’t see anything wrong about it, uh? Don’t you think about the dangers he could run into! Oh no, you love wild life! Too bad you’ve never gotten further than a hundred meters from home, ever since I’ve known you! Even for fishing, you’re just going to the jetty!” She quickly took a breath. “Then why don’t you take him fishing? Since I’m used to that now, it doesn’t make a difference, having a slacker or two around!”

  I promised it to Giulio, and he entrusted me to resist, but I doubted I could have taken it any longer.

  “Do you want him to be considered a pimp by everybody, always stuck to his mom’s skirts? That’s what you want for your son?”

  “Who cares about others! Oh yeah, I shouldn’t care about my son’s safety, just to make the others happy!”

  “You’re not the one that has to live with the others, it’s Giulio! While you’re here at home, he’s being made fun of in school! They say he’s being kept on a leash by his mom, that he’s always ready to spring at all her orders.”

  “You’re really an asshole, do you know that? Do you think I’ve ever treated him that way? You’re making that up now. You can’t stand me disagreeing.”

  “Why? At least tell me why! Give me an actual reason that’s not that danger nonsense.”

  “Nonsense? Do you know how many people died on that mount last year? Three!”

  “Those were particular situations, and you know that. They set their minds to climb it. The kids won’t do anything like that, they will camp by foot, and…”

  “Of course, they won’t do that! Because I’ll impede it!”

  Giulio was smiling. Sitting on the edge of the window, a leg hanging outside, he was playing with a blade of grass. He heard every word, and I felt ashamed. It’s not good that your son realizes how little influence you have in the house. But he discovered that years ago.

  “It’s ok, dad, I was expecting it.”

  Even more depressing, he already knew I would have failed.

  I settled with muttering: “I’m going to tidy up the garage.”

  I couldn’t do anything else, whenever I was depressed. And it happened way too often. I just tidied up the garage.

  It was just beside the farm, but it was part of the main building. It was barely more than a cabin, but I modernized it. I called it a garage, but in reality, there has never been a car in there. I didn’t drive, to be completely honest, I would almost never move away from home.

  Maybe the hundred meters that Sandra reproached me were excessive, but I couldn’t remember taking longer walks than two kilometers.

  I didn’t like people, I didn’t like direct contact. Above all, I didn’t like strangers. That clearly did not imply my family. I sometimes accused Sandra of my phobia, and in fact, I wasn’t affected by it when we first got married.

  The garage was my kingdom. My collection of rods and hooks was there. I also had to keep my pipes in there, because using them inside the house had become a deadly sin. Peace and silence were there, and most of all, loneliness.

  “Come here, dad! Dad!”

  I spoke too soon. Alessadro, the youngest of my kids, invaded my kingdom while screaming. He always ran, he has never had a moment of rest.

  “Come here, dad! Come take a look at what I found!”

  “It’s not a good day, Ale! Mom is already trying to…”

  He grabbed my arm and started pulling like a maniac. “Come!”

  I had to grab on to a counter to avoid falling. “Have you gone crazy?”

  Damnit, what a strength did that flea have! He had clearly taken that from his mother.

  “Come, hurry, before it runs away!”

  “Has he tried with you too?”, asked Giulio, when I got back inside the house. “I told him to get lost.”

  He must have seen me return with Alessandro.

  Giulio knew he was my favorite, but that didn’t matter much. In the end, I wasn’t worth much. He resembled me a lot, he had my tranquility, maybe that’s why it was so easy for Sandra to keep him under control.

  “What’s wrong, aren’t you feeling well?”

  I was so pale, I even struggled at walking, and I still couldn’t say a word.

  We heard Alessandro’s voice, in the distance. “Mom! Mom! Come take a look at what I found!”

  Giulio heard that too, and gave me a questioning look. “What has he found?”

  Good question, I just didn’t have an answer to give.

  That night, during dinner, Giulio was the only one not knowing what Alessandro had found.

  It was a very unusual dinner to us, since nobody had said a word yet.

  Sandra was the first one to talk. “You should go camping, I changed my mind about it.”

  Giulio stopped chewing, certain he misheard that.

  “Yeah, you have to go”, I added. “You can leave tomorrow in the morning, it’s all ok. Your mom agrees.”

  Giulio almost choked as a bite went down the wrong way.

  Meanwhile, Alessandro was skipping like a madman. “Camping! Yeah, camping!”

  Sandra didn’t even reprimand him, and didn’t even remind him the rules of good manners.

  Giulio gave me a desperate look.

  “It’s like this”, I whispered to him. “There’s no choice. If you want to go, you have to take him with you.”

  I knew he would have done that. Sandra knew that too.

  “Will it
be enough?” asked Sandra once we got in bed.

  She laid her head on my chest as I was caressing her hair, for the first time in a long time.

  “Are you worried they could get hurt?”

  She shook her head. “They can’t stay here. They have to go.”

  I absolutely agreed with her.

  She then turned her head to look in my eyes. “Will we make it?”

  The fact of me being once again the head of the family, even if just for a short while, should have pleased me, but the situation was too serious for me to savor that little triumph.

  The next morning, we accompanied the kids to the street, where the trip bus would have taken them on.

  Giulio realized something was off when Sandra let them leave without kissing them to death.

  He looked at us, with perplexed eyes, from the window, as the bus drove off.

  “Will Alessandro tell him?” asked Sandra.

  Alessandro could hardly keep his mouth shut, and Giulio would have certainly squeezed it out of him.

  “It doesn’t matter”, I answered. “It will all be over when they get back.”

  Someday, a long time ago, I believed money could bring happiness. I gave my hated farmer job up to the devil, it had been passed on by my family for centuries, I abandoned every plantation, letting the weeds invade my fields, and I decided that I would have spent the rest of my life fishing.

  Well yeah, I was a simple man. That was the best pleasure I could imagine. Fishing. And, at night, smoking my pipe while drinking a beer mug.

  Sandra had been more creative. She first improvised painter, she then discovered her passion as an interior designer, that’s when she drove us crazy, changing the house furniture at least ten times. She then tried a bit of everything: ballerina, cyclist, trumpeter, she even tried writing. She then gave up for the past few years, her only task was to torment us. She decided to be a mom and a wife, full time.

  Living together, with a lot of free time and no occupation, could be destructive. Living side by side, twenty-four hours a day, day by day, could bring to hate. We luckily didn’t get there yet, but we were very close.

  “I don’t know”, said Sandra, while cooking the lunch.

  The kids had already been gone for a couple of hours, but we hadn’t gotten out of the house yet.

  “The kids won’t be back until Monday. We don’t have to take an immediate decision, we’ve got time.”

  “Alessandro saw it.”

  “Don’t worry, Giulio won’t ever believe him.”

  “And what if he asks us? Should we tell him Alessandro is a liar? That doesn’t seem right.”

  “He won’t ask us.”

  I knew Giulio, he would have been embarrassed to ask such questions. And whom to? Clearly not to his mother. He would have talked with me at most. I wouldn’t even need to lie, smiling would have been enough. He would have immediately convinced himself that Ale fooled him.

  “It’s not right! It wasn’t right the last time and not even now!”

  We took the decision together, Sandra remembered well, and this time too it would have been like that.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  I didn’t go fishing after lunch, and when she asked why, I answered: “Do you want to come with me?”

  She remained speechless. In another moment, she would have covered me in insults. “Do you want me to come?”

  I had never shown so vulnerable in front of her, so scared, but I didn’t feel like being alone in that moment. I shook my head. “No fishing today.”

  “That may be best”, she said.

  I sank in an armchair in the living room, and turned my pipe on. It was instinctive, just like the old times. When Sandra noticed, she came to me and asked. “Let’s have a beer?”

  That was enough to prove how shocked she was.

  She brought the beer, overflowing mugs and sat beside me. She drank almost half of her mug, in just a sip.

  “Do you think it’s him?”

  Who else could it have been?

  “It’s the same place. You very well know it’s impossible for it to happen twice in the same place.”

  A long silence. Then: “Is it still there?”

  “Do you wanna go take a look?”

  She didn’t move from the armchair. It was me then who got up and approached the window. I moved the curtain. The view was perfect. There were no houses for kilometers. Around us were just uncultivated fields. You couldn’t see the river from there, it was on the other side. It must have rained during the night. A rainbow was painting the sky.

  The fields were motionless, there was no wind.

  I went back sitting.

  She didn’t even ask what I had seen. “Why has he come back? Five years passed, I thought he gave up.”

  “How can we know how he reasons?”

  “We have to get it over with.”

  I feared she would have said that. “He’ll leave soon.”

  “No, he won’t! Last time he stayed for three months! Do you realize the risk we ran into? Luckily it was during the winter and the kids were too small. It wasn’t hard to keep them inside the house, but now… If only Alessandro would have touched it… if only he touched it instead of running to us!”

  She was shivering, and I probably should have consoled her, but I couldn’t get up.

  “We don’t need it”, I whispered. “We don’t need any more of it.”

  “Do you believe I’d do it for that? Is that what you think of me?”

  She got up and started walking around the room. “The kids will be back on Monday. Alessandro will surely tell him. And he will immediately take him to look at him. Do you think prohibiting it will be enough? Do you think they would listen to us?”

  Clearly not Alessandro. I might have been able to convince Giulio, but I wasn’t sure about it.

  “We would be forced to tell them what we’ve done! I don’t feel like it, I don’t want them to find it out.”

  “Sooner or later they will need to know anyway, don’t you think so?”

  She stopped in front of me. “Why? Give me a reason.”

  “We could die, someday. They need to know what we’ll leave them, and who they’ll have to go up against.”

  She went back sitting, even more shocked. “Will this curse ever cease?”

  We were the ones that would have made it cease. We were the ones who needed it. Sandra knew that too, she has never thought of leaving everything as we found it, not even for a second.

  She got more explicit. “We have to kill him.”

  “We don’t even know if that’s possible.”

  “Anybody can die.”

  “He will leave”, I muttered. “He always leaves.”

  But this time Sandra was determined. “I don’t want him to be here when the kids get back!”

  A certain time lapse always runs in between words and actions. In hour house, that time lapse was usually dilated. Sometimes for a long long time, even years.

  We tended to postpone, do the least possible. That had almost become our life, a long wait. As of now, it has been years since we last got out of the house, me at least, but even when one of us was forced to do so, the other one remained to guard. Yeah, in certain moments I felt like I regressed, I felt like I was only an animal, defending its territory.

  “We should have left”, said Sandra, while looking at the fields from the window.

  “Away from here?” I was horrified she even thought about it. I was born in that farm, and my father before me. Abandoning it was to me unthinkable.

  “We could have afforded it, no? We could have afforded anything!”

  “We didn’t need it…”

  “Then why have we done that?”

  It was a question that I also asked myself, thousands of times. Did we really need that money? Of course, I was doing a job that I did not like, but when I got home my family was waiting for me. Sandra worked too, yet she wasn’t much happier then? Then we
changed, I became a person that I didn’t like anymore, and I was certain it has been the same for her. Was it the greed? Was the greed devouring us?

  She kept staring out the window.

  “Do you wanna go take a look?” I asked.

  “We can do that tomorrow.”

  Yeah, always postponing to the day after.

  “If you’re convinced about it, we can go right now.”

  “Do you think he’s there?”

  “Where else could he be?”

  “He wasn’t there the first time.”

  “He wasn’t setting up a trap the first time!”

  She remained silent.

  “I’ll take the carabine”, I said.

  I may have hoped her to oppose it, but she didn’t.

  As I was loading the gun she arrived, holding a big kitchen knife. She chose the biggest.

  “It’s madness”, I said.

  She remained silent.

  We were funny. Five years changed deeply. We gained weight, quite a lot. I was balding and forced to use glasses, she had an horrible dressing taste, and dyed her hair with obscene colors.

  Now, armed to the teeth, we were the most unlikely killer couple that was ever seen.

  “Do you remember where he is?”

  She also knew very well where he was, always in the same place.

  We ventured into the field. It was fall and the grass was dry, colored of a dirty yellow, sick. As we proceeded it became sparse. “You take a look too”, I said.

  We were almost in the middle of the field, you could still glimpse the rainbow in the sky. Our eyes were set to the ground instead, we were looking for it.

  I saw him first. “Look, he’s there. Don’t get close!”

  She didn’t even try, she let me move forward.

  Something was protruding from the ground. It was round, and a bright orange color was coming from its inside, almost like a fire.

  “Where is he?”, Sandra whispered.

  “He’s got to be somewhere around here.”

  “I can’t see him.”