Anna

by Niccolò Ammaniti

  She crouched down in front of him. ‘Fluffy has come with us this far. Nobody made him; he chose to follow us. Now he’s decided not to come any further. If he wants to stay here, we can’t do anything about it. He’s free to do what he likes.’ She gave a forced smile. ‘He’s a Sicilian dog; he’ll survive.’

  Astor sniffed. ‘He’s not a Sicilian dog. He’s our dog.’

  Anna held out her hand. ‘Come on.’

  He lowered his head, moaning: ‘I’m not coming.’

  ‘Please …’

  The little boy slapped his palm on the ground. ‘I’m staying with Fluffy.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She tried to grasp his hand.

  He folded his arms. ‘No.’

  She looked at him in silence, then very calmly said: ‘Come on.’

  The little boy wound a tuft of his hair round his forefinger and pulled it. ‘No. No. No.’

  Anna bit her lip and clenched her fists.

  Why was everything so difficult? They’d found the pedalo, the lifebelts, the clothes, but that stupid dog was scared of water, and now her brother was playing up too.

  ‘You’re coming!’ she murmured, eyes closed.

  Astor lowered his head. ‘No. I’m not coming. I’m not coming. I’m not coming.’

  At the third ‘I’m not coming’, anger swept through Anna, stiffening the muscles of her arm. She made one last desperate attempt to contain it, whispering: ‘Astor, do as I say. Go to the boat. It’s for the best.’ But the answer was another no. ‘That’s it! I’ve had enough!’ She seized her brother by the hair and dragged him bodily towards the pedalo, shouting, kicking, wriggling and trying to cling onto the rocks. ‘Now get on the damned boat.’ She grabbed him by the seat of his trousers and pushed him onto the sun lounger, accidentally knocking his head against the handrail. Astor howled, eyes swollen and bloodshot, face flushed, nose running. Anna didn’t hear and felt neither pity nor remorse. She wasn’t going to let anyone stop her, let alone a neurotic dog.

  Without looking back, she pushed the pedalo off, grazing her knees on the pebbles as she did so, and jumped in. She climbed over Astor like he was a sack of potatoes, sat down and started pedalling.

  Fluffy’s yelps were lost in the wind.

  *

  Anna pushed on the pedals while Astor cried. The pedalo advanced slowly through a maze of buoys.

  After a few experiments she understood that if she pulled the tiller to the left the boat went to the right, and vice versa.

  Astor had stopped crying, but was still sobbing and sniffing.

  He’ll get over it.

  Once they reached the mainland he’d forget about Fluffy. We forget about everything. Everything passes. Mama. The house with the mulberry tree. Pietro. Now there was only her and him.

  And if he doesn’t get over it, who cares.

  The current was carrying the boat out to sea. Anna had no way of knowing how long it would take them to get to the other side. She took another swig of wine and concentrated on the pedals.

  ‘Anna! Anna!’ Her brother squeezed her shoulder hard and started jumping up and down. ‘Anna! Look!’

  She jumped to her feet and turned round. A little white dot was appearing and disappearing among the waves.

  At first she thought it was a buoy, then a floating seagull, then she saw her dog’s head.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ she whispered. ‘How did he do it? We’re too far out.’ A wave of heat spread over her throat. ‘What a bitch I am.’

  Astor sat down beside her and started pedalling. ‘Come on, quick.’

  Anna pulled the tiller and the pedalo went into a slow curve, leaving a white wake behind it. They pedalled away with gritted teeth, clutching the armrests, trying not to lose sight of him. He was there, but a moment later he wasn’t.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘There he is! There he is!’ Astor pointed at the dog’s head, which had re-emerged.

  They started pedalling again, even harder than before, though their legs were stiff with the effort.

  ‘Hold on, hold on. Please, Fluffy, hold on,’ begged Anna. But the boat, going against the current, was advancing too slowly. The Maremma was drowning in front of them, flapping his legs in the spray.

  ‘Fluffy! Fluffy!’ they shouted.

  They were close. For a moment they saw the dog’s muzzle: he was gasping, eyes popping out of his head, then the sea sucked him down.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ Anna shouted to her brother. ‘Keep pedalling.’ And she jumped onto the bow, leaning out with her chest and arms. A white mass was coming fast towards her, sliding along below the surface like a ghost. She reached out and grabbed his coat with both hands, but the current drove him under the boat. Searching for some hole to plant her foot in, but not finding one, she overbalanced and fell into the sea. She passed under the pedalo, swallowing water, banging her head against the hull, but didn’t let go. Holding the dog with one hand, she managed to grab hold of the ladder with the other. Half-drowned and stretched as taut as a hawser between Fluffy and the boat, she held on until the impetus eased. Astor, in trying to help her, slipped on the wet sun lounger and nearly fell into the sea himself. He got up again and grabbed his sister by the wrist.

  They tried to hoist the dog onto the slide at the bow, Anna pushing from below, Astor pulling him by the legs from above. He seemed to be made of lead.

  ‘Hold him, hold him,’ said Anna and climbed up to her brother’s side, gasping. Together, by pushing against the handrail with their feet, they managed to pull Fluffy onto the boat.

  Anna was exhausted, shivering with cold, and could hardly breathe. She brought up seawater and Chardonnay. Astor’s chest was heaving.

  They shook the dog, trying to revive him, but the head, with its open, glassy eyes, bounced limply on the fibreglass surface.

  ‘Is he dead?’ stammered Astor.

  Anna started thumping the dog on the chest, shouting: ‘No, he’s not dead.’

  This animal was like a cat; he had nine lives. He’d survived the tortures inflicted by the scrap merchant’s son, fire, fights to the death with other dogs, hunger and thirst, wounds, infections, and now he was dying like this.

  Anna bent double, hiding her face in her hands. ‘It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.’

  Astor cried, his mouth buried in the Maremma’s neck. The sea splashed and shook them, pulling towards the coast of Calabria.

  Tock. Tock. Tock.

  Fluffy’s tail beat feebly on the sundeck.

  He hadn’t used up his seventh life yet.

  *

  ‘I’m going to marry this guy.’ Anna was hugging Fluffy, who lay panting next to a puddle of drool and water. ‘Is it possible to marry a dog?’

  Astor spread his arms. ‘I don’t know.’

  Trembling, she planted a kiss on the Maremma’s nose and whispered in his good ear. ‘Forgive me. You’re my darling. And I’m a complete shit.’

  ‘I want to marry him too,’ said the little boy.

  ‘Okay. We’ll both marry him.’

  Her teeth chattering, Anna took off her wet things, rubbed her skin hard with the towel and put on her spare clothes.

  She poured some wine into Astor’s cupped hands, but Fluffy didn’t like it. A few moments later, as if nothing had happened to him, as if he hadn’t just been resuscitated, he stood up of his own accord, shook himself a couple of times, staggered unsteadily forward and sat down at the bow like a figurehead.

  Brother and sister started pedalling again, while the sun continued its westward descent. The current pushed them rapidly towards the land as the waves broke over the bow, splashing them with salty spray which dried on their faces like masks. Every now and again a flying fish emerged from the water and glided into the distance.

  They passed a large yellow buoy with solar panels and a small tower with a beacon emitting flashes of red light.

  That’s what I saw from the balcony.


  As they drew nearer to the coast, they could make out empty beaches, breakwaters, and silent, lifeless houses and blocks of flats.

  Anna didn’t speak; a weight lay on her heart. During the journey, day after day, she’d been infected with hope, and had silently started to believe that Calabria was different.

  *

  They left the pedalo on a beach full of small boats heaped up one on top of the other and set off towards the city.

  They crossed a field of olive trees, passing the gate of a villa with a weed-filled swimming pool. They walked between rows of half-built blocks of flats with exposed brickwork and rusty reinforcement bars protruding from columns. They forded a putrid marsh streaked with coloured strips of petrol.

  In the distance, supported by huge piers rammed into the mountainside, ran the autostrada. They came to a piazza where there was a little bar whose sign had fallen down, a looted mobile-phone shop and a big grey concrete church from whose pediment the mosaic had broken off. They went up a wide street full of burnt-out shops and bars. A lorry lay on its side in the middle of the road, its nose as one with the crumpled remains of a Smart car.

  ‘Where are the Grown-ups?’ Astor complained.

  Anna didn’t reply.

  A black and white cat materialised from nowhere and crossed the road. Fluffy raced off.

  The cat darted and swerved, but the dog kept after it, trying to bite its behind. With a prodigious leap the cat sprang onto the roof of an Opel. From there it flew towards a shop and slipped under its shutter, which was raised half a metre. The Maremma followed.

  ‘Cats again.’ Anna was incredulous. ‘Wasn’t he on his last legs?’

  Faint, muffled barks came from inside.

  ‘Fluffy! Fluffy! Come out of there,’ Astor called him.

  ‘Could you go and get him?’

  Astor sat down on the pavement, rubbing his calves. ‘You go.’

  Raising her eyes to the sky, Anna took the torch out of the rucksack, switched it on and ducked under the shutter.

  The large rectangular room had no windows. The walls were hung with surfboards, photographs of singers, T-shirts, boots and old jeans. In one corner there was a red telephone box and a pinball machine. The shelves, made of wooden planks, were empty, the clothes scattered on the floor. She could hear Fluffy barking furiously, but couldn’t see him. She went over to the counter, which was decorated with rows of padlocks. The cash register lay on the floor. Behind, a steep narrow staircase led down into the storeroom.

  Anna pointed the torch, went down the stairs and entered a cube-shaped room; skylights on the ceiling provided a murky light.

  The Maremma was growling at the cat, now a bridge of fur looking down at him from its vantage point on a pile of boxes. Suddenly the dog leaped at it, bringing the boxes tumbling down. The cat flashed across a wall and disappeared up the stairs.

  A blue box had fallen open on the floor in front of Anna. There was a pair of shoes inside it.

  She picked one of them up and squeezed it between her fingers. A pleasant smell of fresh rubber and leather. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth; she moved it, catching a bitter taste. She shone the torch on the label.

  Adidas Hamburg. Made in China. US 8 ½ UK 8 FR 42.

  Three black stripes, yellow suede vamp, nut-brown sole.

  She sat back on her bottom, leaned forward and put her head against the cold tiles.

  She tried to call Astor, but had lost her voice. She breathed out the air she’d held back in her lungs. The dog, the coat rack with the jackets, the water dispenser, the red fire extinguisher, the blue boxes, were all spinning around her.

  ‘Anna. Are you down there?’

  *

  They opened all the boxes, searched all over the storeroom and upstairs in the shop. But there weren’t any others.

  Astor turned one of the shoes over in his hand, as if it wasn’t real. Then he held it out to his sister. ‘Put them on. Go on.’

  Anna looked at him in silence, tears in her eyes, lips pressed tightly together. Slowly she took off her walking boots, wiped her feet with a vest, loosened the laces, pulled up the tongue of the shoe and put in her foot. Then she tied a double bow.

  Her brother passed her the other one.

  She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘One each.’

  *

  They ducked out under the shutter, each wearing one oversized Adidas and one of their old boots, and shuffled off, with Fluffy trotting beside them.

  The sun had gone down behind the grey buildings, but the lower part of the sky still had its red glow.

  A butterfly rose up from a carob tree, floating in the air against the wind. A gust carried it towards them. It brushed against Anna’s hair and was pushed towards Astor, who reached out his hand; it paused for a moment on his palm, then resumed its uncertain flight. Then another appeared, and yet another, until they were surrounded by hundreds of wings, which filled the street in a black and yellow snowstorm.

  Leaving the houses behind them, they started up the slip road towards the autostrada, which ran along a hillside stepped with vineyard terraces.

  When they came to the tollbooth, Astor stopped, straightened his leg and looked at the shoe. ‘What if it doesn’t work if you only have one?’

  Anna took hold of his hand and said: ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  OTHER TITLES BY NICCOLÒ AMMANITI

  I’m Not Scared

  Steal You Away

  The Crossroads

  Me & You

  Let the Games Begin

  Niccolò Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He has written several novels, of which Anna is the sixth to be published by Text. He won the prestigious Strega Prize for The Crossroads in 2007. His bestselling novel I’m Not Scared has been translated into thirty-five languages.

  niccoloammaniti.it/eng

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Niccolò Ammaniti, 2015

  The moral right of Niccolò Ammaniti to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh, 2017

  This edition published by The Text Publishing Company, 2017

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Cover design by Sandy Cull, gogoGingko

  Cover images: background by Ebru Sidar/Arcangel, additional images from Shutterstock

  Typeset in Bembo by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Author: Ammaniti, Niccolo, 1966- author.

  Title: Anna / by Niccolò Ammaniti

  ISBN: 9781925498561 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925410808 (ebook)