“‘What happened, Bern?’ I asked.
“‘He destroyed all my books.’
“‘Who destroyed them?’
“‘Cesare.’ He paused, but I knew he would go on. ‘One evening he came into our room and knocked them off the shelf. He ripped them in half, one after the other. They weren’t mine, they were from the library. He said, I’m doing it for you, Bern, let the Lord free you!’
“A tear formed in the corner of his left eye. I lay down next to my brother, my head very close to his. He turned his face toward me. When he spoke again I heard his rasping breath: ‘We haven’t spoken since that night. And I swore to myself that I would never speak to him again.’
“We didn’t say anything more. We held hands instead, not talking.
“On the motorbike he clung to my waist, and at one point he rested his head on my shoulder. Reaching out an arm, he opened his hand as if he wanted to stop the flow of air coming at us. The plastic bag in which we’d crammed the food leftovers fluttered in the wind.
“I had never driven for so long. By the time we got close to Speziale, my arms were aching. But Bern said: ‘Keep going toward the sea, let’s go to the Scalo.’
“‘It’s spring, there won’t be anybody there.’
“‘Let’s go there.’
“So we made a loop around the hill in Ostuni. The sight of the city surprised me, as if I had forgotten all about it. I loosened the grip on the brake and let the descent alone carry us down to the coast. We rode the Atala to where the brush began, then continued on foot. The trail was barely visible, but Bern moved confidently, headed toward the tower. He lifted the fence post and set out through the nettles. Turning on a pocket flashlight, he traced a flourish on the wall. ‘Do you remember how to do it?’ He climbed up first. Then he lit up the area below so I could clamber up too. I scraped my knee on a projection. It was all exactly as I remembered it from the summer, but without the reassuring sound of the music outside. In the silence, the interior of the tower was eerie. When we were almost at the bottom, a glow reached us.
“‘We’re here,’ Bern announced.
“I was about to reply that I knew, when I realized he wasn’t talking to me. In the room, lit by a battery-powered lantern, were Nicola and a girl. They were sitting on the mattress, her legs crossed, his stretched out.
“‘Ciao, Tommaso,’ Nicola said, as if finding ourselves down there wasn’t at all a surprise.
“‘Is he the third one?’ the girl asked, though she made no move to get up or offer her hand. Instead she reached for the plastic bag. ‘What did you bring?’
“Bern tossed the bag onto the mattress and she started rummaging through it like a savage. ‘You didn’t get any Snickers?’
“‘Whatever was there,’ Bern replied vaguely. Then, turning to me: ‘Violalibera likes Snickers. If you can, get a few next time.’
“‘So he’s not staying here?’ Nicola asked.
“‘No, he likes it where he is. With olive trees pruned so that they look like ornamental sculptures.’
“Violalibera asked: ‘Is it true that TV actresses come there?’
“I nodded, but I was still confused.
“‘What are they like? Do they have huge boobs?’
“Nicola sniggered.
“‘They’re normal.’
“‘What, you don’t like actresses?’ Violalibera asked. She was wearing a small headband that lifted her curly hair into a crown. She had a lot of hair. ‘Are they much prettier than me?’
“Bern said: ‘Violalibera arrived here a month ago. You expected to enter a place like this and not find anyone, or at most a rat, and instead.’
“‘Actually, there was a rat,’ the girl said.
“Bern ignored her. ‘And instead, I come in and get frightened to death. Violalibera was sleeping in pitch darkness and I lit her up with the flashlight. When she woke up and saw me she wasn’t even scared, not a bit.’
“Meanwhile, he too had flopped down on the mattress, very close to her. I was the only one still standing.
“Violalibera gulped down a yogurt from the container. She licked the inside obscenely. Mildew: that’s what the refuge smelled like. Bern had placed a hand on her leg, up on her thigh. If he’d spread his fingers he would have touched her crotch. She opened the other container of yogurt, ate some, then handed it to Nicola. ‘There’s no room for one more,’ she said.
“Bern may have squeezed her leg harder. ‘I already told you he wasn’t staying.’
“I felt dizzy, I needed to sit down, but there wasn’t enough space on the mattress and I didn’t want to sit on the ground.
“‘You sleep here?’ I asked Bern.
“‘When I feel like it,’ he replied. ‘We can live as we please.’
“Nicola smiled, his teeth gleaming in the lantern light. There was something different about him, a kind of excitement.
“‘Are you all pale down there too?’ Violalibera asked.
“‘Even paler than that,’ Nicola answered.
“‘So, he’s the third one,’ she said again.
“Bern unwrapped one of the bundles of leftovers; the grease had soaked through the paper. ‘Take some, eat,’ he said, and the others went at it with their hands.
“‘And do you sleep here?’ I asked Nicola.
“‘Only if I don’t have a class the next morning.’
“‘We can live as we please,’ Bern said again. Then, from a pile of odds and ends, he produced a tape player.
“‘Start it at the beginning!’ Violalibera said.
“Bern rewound the tape. The music started, distorted because the cassette was worn and the speaker tiny. Violalibera jumped up, reaching one hand out to Bern and the other to Nicola. Obediently, they got up and started to sway at her sides, practically glued together. Nicola buried his nose in her hair, behind her ear, maybe kissing her, and she shrugged him off, ticklish.
“She brushed my scraped knee with her toe.
“‘You, what are you waiting for?’
“Now Bern had a hand on her stomach and waved the other one just over her head. I went over to Violalibera and she pulled me to her. Nicola and Bern made room for us. I inhaled the scent of her hair and the lingering tang of yogurt that came from her mouth. Then the others closed in around us. ‘I should . . .’ I murmured, but that was all I had the strength to say.
“Bern whispered to me, ‘No one gives us orders anymore.’
“Then someone started to undress me, or maybe I did it myself. We undressed one another, as the music grated on the walls. We collapsed on the mattress in a tangle.
“I found my face very close to Violalibera’s breasts. Nicola, next to me, was sucking one of them and I felt I had to do the same. Bern slipped between us, every part of us was in contact, he and I, I think I was paralyzed for a few seconds.
“We attached our mouths to Violalibera’s nipples in turn, as if drinking from a fountain. Someone, maybe she herself, took my hand and moved it lower, and down there I found that all four of us were naked and excited. I let myself be guided, shifted, then the hand that had steered me was lost and I went on blindly, until I found Bern. I was terrified when I gripped that forbidden part of him, just as I had imagined doing countless times, certain that it would never happen. But he didn’t notice, we were so entwined with one another, or maybe he did and let me do it. I knew he wouldn’t have let me if the two of us were alone, but in there, in the tower, everything was permissible.
“Before he broke away he smiled at me and I caught my breath. All I could see of Nicola now was his broad, smooth back, bluish in the gleam of the lantern. His face was still buried in Violalibera, who was breathing harder and harder, her arms flung out and her eyes wide open, staring upward. She looked limp, as if she could no longer put up any opposition, as if we three were one huge tangled anim
al, an animal with many heads and legs and arms, which crawled over and inside her, making her moan.
“For a moment I looked toward where she was staring, but there was only the gray ceiling. I pictured what still existed beyond those walls, the nettles, the rocks polished by the sea foam, darkness everywhere. But down there none of that mattered anymore. We were protected and alone, unreachable. And I wished it would never end.”
* * *
—
FOR A MOMENT we returned to the present: Tommaso and I as adults, Christmas Eve, his daughter asleep on the other side of the wall. He threw his head back and I instinctively looked up at the same point of the ceiling, but there was nothing there, except for the glowing halo cast by the lamp. I knew that was not what he was seeing.
I shifted in the chair. I felt a kind of nausea, nausea and disbelief, and something less confessable: envy because I had not been with them in the tower? For a moment I thought of telling Tommaso enough, that he should keep the rest to himself. What was the point of knowing all that now? But he slowly straightened his head and I let him continue.
“It’s wrong, I told myself, what we’re doing is wrong. It’s immoral. But I went back there whenever I could. It didn’t happen often, though, four, maybe five times in all. Yes, five at the most,” he repeated, “maybe six. When I finished my work at the Relais, I got on the Atala, cut across Martina Franca, and swung down to the coast. I wanted to get to the tower as fast as I could.
“‘There’s some girl involved,’ Nacci said when I asked his permission to leave yet again. I didn’t answer. It wasn’t a lie, after all. ‘A wonderful age, yours,’ he added, ‘once in a lifetime,’ then he took a bill out of his pocket: ‘Take her to a restaurant.’
“I used the money to buy some pasta and pancetta, Snickers, and two bottles of Primitivo. We cooked on the camp stove, near the stairs, so the smoke would at least partially clear out. Outside the tower the days were lengthening, making me edgy. By then I preferred the perennial night of the tower, the cold gleam of the lantern.
“That evening we smoked a hookah that Nicola had bought at a flea market in Bari, with apple tobacco; we blew it at one another. Then we made hand shadows on the wall: Nicola was a dog in profile, Bern a mouse, I a bat, and Violalibera a peacock. Our animal silhouettes touched, teased one another on the wall. But we were worse than animals, we four.
“One day, during a reception, Corinne grabbed me by the sleeve. I almost tipped over the antipasto tray.
“‘So you don’t feel like getting high anymore?’ she asked.
“‘No. I mean, sure. Why?’
“‘You haven’t come down to the cellar anymore.’
“‘I’m just a little tired.’
“‘Where do you go all the time?’
“‘Nowhere.’
“The guests had already taken off their shoes and were wandering around the lawn among the sago palms.
“‘They say you have a girl in Pezze di Greco,’ she persisted.
“‘And you believe it?’
“‘Why shouldn’t I believe it?’
“She couldn’t contain her bitterness.
“‘It’s not like that,’ I said softly.
“‘After all, there’s no reason why I should care, right?’ she hissed. Then she looked me straight in the eye. ‘Right, Blade?’
“She crushed out her cigarette in the crack between two stones in the wall.
“‘Suit yourself,’ she said, bumping my shoulder as she passed me.
“The tray really did overturn this time. The little glass cups with the shrimp in cocktail sauce scattered on the floor. I placed those that weren’t too damaged back on the tray and served them to the guests.
“Later I wrapped up the party’s leftovers: meatballs, small squares of eggplant parmigiana, and batter-fried vegetables that would get mushy in the paper napkin, but that we would eat anyway, soggy and cold.
“It was June, at the Scalo the season was about to begin. The tables and benches were already stacked on the flat stretch of rocks, the pink trailer-bar silhouetted against the sea.
“By then I could climb the tower and go down the steps without turning on the flashlight, feeling the crumbly walls.
“‘Fried food,’ I said, yanking the backpack off my shoulder. Then I repeated it, because nobody had answered me.
“I noticed Nicola first. Sitting on the mattress, he was holding his head in his hands. He didn’t turn toward me. A moth was flapping against the lantern. Who knows how it had gotten down there.
“Bern was lying on the floor, on his back, hands crossed over his chest. I took the bag of leftovers out of the backpack and waved it in front of him.
“‘Leave him alone,’ Nicola said, ‘his back hurts.’
“Bern didn’t move, his eyes were closed. If I hadn’t been sure he’d stopped praying a long time ago, I would have sworn that’s what he was doing. Though maybe he really was, just that one time, or so I tell myself today.
“‘Where’s Violalibera?’ I asked.
“No one answered me. I was relieved not to find her there. For once it would be just the three of us, like before.
“I looked at Bern, who was now pressing his chest with his fingers.
“‘It must be the dampness,’ I said, ‘it got into your bones.’
“‘How much money do you have?’ Nicola asked me.
“I rummaged in my shorts pocket, opened my wallet under the lantern. ‘Fifteen. Why?’
“‘How much more do you have set aside?’
“‘I always bring you stuff to eat.’
“No one else contributed. Nicola spent his parents’ monthly allowance on living expenses in Bari and on gas; Bern and Violalibera had nothing.
“‘Doesn’t that guy pay you to play cards?’
“‘I don’t play cards. I’m the croupier.’
“I realized only then that Nicola’s eyes were wet. When I told him how much I had, not the real figure, about half, he put his head in his hands again.
“‘What do you need it for?’
“No one answered. The moth had alighted on the brightest spot and seemed to pulsate. Finally, Bern spoke to the ceiling, his voice strained: ‘Go on, Nicola, tell him.’
“‘Why don’t you tell him?’
“‘So, what do you need it for?’
“‘Looks like we messed up,’ Nicola said. His laughter was explosive in the small space, completely unexpected. ‘Messed up but good, yeah.’
“He abruptly stopped laughing and started trembling. The moth resumed flying nervously in circles, grazed my face.
“‘She’s pregnant,’ Bern announced from the floor.
“When Nicola had calmed down, his eyes bored into mine. ‘Could it have been you? Maybe it will have white eyelashes.’
“Slowly Bern heaved himself up. He crossed his legs and tried to move his shoulders. The spasms that seized him, he said, started at his temples and came together like two branches of a river and coursed down his spine, to his groin. They lasted as long as a week. But you already know this.
“‘Let’s go out,’ Bern said.
“I helped him stand up, then climb the stairs. Where the steps were missing, he let himself slide. We walked through the nettles and sat down on the trailer hitch. Bern spoke the words slowly.
“‘There’s this doctor,’ he said, ‘in Brindisi. He does everything without anyone finding out. But they say he wants a million lire.’
“I asked again where Violalibera was. Nicola started crying. Bern looked at him coldly.
“‘For now we have two hundred thousand,’ he went on. Only half of his mouth moved. ‘Floriana will give Nicola the same amount next week. Adding yours, it comes to almost five hundred thousand.’
“Nicola was in a panic. ‘Do you remember what Cesare says? Huh
? Do you remember?’
“I was worried someone would hear us if he went on talking so loudly, but there was nobody around for miles, only the geckos hunkering under the scrubwood, only the crabs wedged in the cracks between the rocks.
“Bern gripped his arm, but Nicola shook him off. ‘What happens to babies who are killed before they’re born, do you remember that?’
“‘You’re acting irrationally. There is no reincarnation, no punishment, no divine being. We’ve already talked about it. If you had read The Ego . . .’
“‘Shut up! It’s because of that fucking book that we ended up like this!’
“‘The fish,’ I murmured.
“Some tribes, Cesare used to tell us, threw dead newborns into rivers because they didn’t yet have a soul, and without that they would not be reincarnated. They gave them to the fish to eat so that a soul would find them there.
“‘We’ll be damned,’ Nicola whimpered.
“Anyone who doesn’t welcome a visitor will be reincarnated as a tortoise, Cesare used to say. Anyone who kills a large animal will go insane. Anyone who eats meat will be red, a ladybird or a fox. Those who steal will slither. Whoever kills a human being will be reborn as the most abominable of creatures, that was what Cesare used to say. Then he’d say: pray to the Lord God that He may have mercy on you, pray incessantly for His forgiveness.
“‘I have two hundred thousand. I lied before. At the Relais I have two hundred thousand liras,’ I said.
“‘Then that makes six hundred. We need four hundred more.’
“‘Maybe two hundred and forty, I don’t know. I have to count it.’
“Nicola jumped to his feet. ‘Didn’t you hear me? Don’t you remember anything anymore? God will abhor us for it! God already abhors us!’
“Again Bern answered him calmly: ‘There’s always a second solution if this one doesn’t satisfy you.’
“Nicola looked around for a moment, bewildered. He took a few steps away from us, then stopped. All that emptiness around us reflected his dismay.
“‘You see?’ Bern said. ‘Only we exist. The great egoists. There is no god who can abhor us.’
“His serenity scared me almost more than Nicola’s despair. With some effort he added: ‘Everything that Cesare told us is a lie. Human life is only . . . ,’ but Nicola leaped at him and started shaking him.
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