Sun Alley

by Cecilia Stefanescu

  He motioned to her to get going, and she got up heavily, dragging her backpack, and followed him quietly. They didn’t utter another word until they left the neighbourhood; once on the main road, they took one look behind them and breathed a sigh of relief.

  They headed for the tram stop and got on the second carriage of the first tram. Sal gravely took out two tram tickets and punched them. They snuggled into each other somewhere at the back and he took her in his arms, holding her tight, for he knew she had been brave and proved her confidence in him, and that he couldn’t have asked for more from any other girlfriend or from the first and only sweetheart he would ever have. After a few stops, the tram started to get crowded, and shortly afterward they found themselves squeezed amid a swarm of rowdy people, mostly women, who were elbowing their way through with bags and trolleys already crammed full of secret trifles. Sal was sizing up everyone from behind the two backpacks, which they had raised like a fortress wall. Emi had fallen asleep, her head resting on his shoulder, when he suddenly pulled on her hand.

  She sprang up in her seat, startled. ‘What is it? What’s happening?’

  ‘We have to get off!’

  His voice had grown rougher and was as hoarse as an adult’s. They got off the tram, jostling their way through the many pairs of breasts that had mushroomed in the empty space like sponges. Outside on the platform, they stood befuddled.

  ‘Why did we have to get off?’ Emi asked dozily, barely moving her jaw.

  Sal didn’t answer; he kept looking around, weighing up their options. It was out of the question to go back, and he didn’t want to return to the chatty women who had penned them in, eyeing the two clean, well-groomed kids with backpacks that looked suspicious for their age and for the early hour. He beckoned her to cross the road, grabbed her hand and pulled her among the few cars that had stopped at the lights.

  They were still on the main road, caught in a bustle that was growing by the minute. Sal quickly decided to get away from the crowded area, to leave this place where they still risked being spotted. They got on another tram, which was almost empty, and only when he stretched out his legs on the seat in front of him and squeezed Emi next to him did he finally give out a sigh of relief and let a smile cross his face. ‘I think we’re OK now. Are you hungry?’

  She nodded and pressed her nose against the window, her breath shaping a tiny, steamy, coin-like imprint. He was worried about her, of course, wondering if he would be able to defend her from the perils they were going to run into and remembering the attack that had happened in which Toma was hurt. He had nicked his father’s hunting pocketknife, the one with a wooden handle, a bottle opener on one side and a tin opener on the other. He took it out now, fixed his soft nail in the slit and strenuously pulled out the blade. It came out slowly, rusty and blunt, but the aggressors would have no way of knowing this; it was a pretty impressive pocketknife, with a blade that went the whole length of his palm. Holding it like this, with the tip pointing toward the enemy, he felt he was actually holding a sword. He folded it shut and cautiously put it back in the pocket of his backpack.

  Through the window, they could see rows of houses in grey uniforms marching by like tiny soldiers: long houses with dusty windows, flanked by small, narrow yards with only enough space to let one person strain in through their rusty, wrought-iron gates. Looking out the window as the tram sped on, the houses might have been deserted but for those with open windows through which you could barely distinguish, just behind the dirty curtains, the crooked, famished silhouettes of the people living there.

  Sal was surprised to see how variegated the city was and how little he knew it. Before deciding to leave, it had seemed to him that no matter how threatening their newly-conquered freedom might be, it was by far less threatening than the exile lying ahead. This exile was summed up by two words that had previously meant nothing to him: ‘moving house’. It meant leaving the house where you had been born, where you had grown up, the house on whose walls your pen had scribbled important words discovered from the range of ever-growing books that you were reading faster and faster, words to be later hidden behind the pop-star and racing-car posters. Moving house meant leaving behind every nook and cranny, every corner and every secret, the entire building site that you had raked over stone by stone, every grain of sand, every person, every acquaintance; it meant having to start from scratch, toiling up the mountain of friendship again, climbing it under the spell of the same fear, repeating the same common mistakes over and over again. So what choice did he have but to search on his own for freedom, despite the obstacles that waited for him in the outside world?

  And now the city was cutting its belly open with sharp, narrow slits, revealing its repulsive entrails to him. He had expected neither so much squalour and poverty, nor this sadness that had befogged the neighbourhood they were cutting across by tram. He had grown scared of getting off; the window seemed to be disintegrating, exposing him as easy prey to the passing people: men carrying their vinyl briefcases and women wearing calico skirts and shoddy blouses, home-knitted from linty wool. He squeezed the pocket holding the money he had pinched from his father’s wallet and felt the knife once again through the waterproof pocket of his backpack. Leaning her entire weight on him, Emi was purring like a cat on its master’s lap. She had become somebody else: a frightened girl trusting enough to embark upon a journey without knowing which way she was heading, escorted by a skinny, chatty boy who had lured her in with so many words, but who had carefully concealed the fear and insecurity that had governed him ever since he could remember.

  The tram moved on with a jerk, passing over a railway switch; Emi’s head swayed forward and rested on his chest in shaky balance. He kept taking deep, steady breaths, wincing at times. Two gypsy women had come on board and sat down a few seats away at the back of the tram, nibbling sunflower seeds. They were cracking the shells with their teeth, pulling out the kernels with the tip of their tongues and eventually spitting the scraps out on the floor. After a while, a black-and-white carpet lay at their feet, while the bulging pockets of the women’s skirts were deflating by the minute. They were whispering to each other, the older one completely leaning over the younger and her knotty fingers pulling back the scarf that kept sliding on her forehead. As she continued whispering and spitting, from time to time her prying eyes searched the back of the tram. Suddenly, she sprang up from her seat, ‘Yuck! Stop spitting on me, bitch!’

  After shaking some pieces of shell off, a flood of words gushed out from her mouth, leaving Sal dumbfounded. She ruffled her skirts, giving off a rancid, oily stench. Then she gazed at the cowering boy holding the girl in his arms.

  ‘What you looking at, chavi1? Hasn’t you seen a cunt before? Say, do you wanna see one?’

  She fanned out her skirts again, spreading them in front of his eyes as if at a bullfight, while Sal raised his hand, trying to protect himself against the invisible threat. The commotion woke up Emi, and she was now watching Sal in a daze as he defended himself against the two laughing women, baring their white teeth streaked with bits of sunflower shell.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked him softly.

  The two gypsy women stopped laughing and fumbled through the pleats of their skirts. They took out two handfuls of seeds and offered them to her.

  ‘Here, take this!’

  Emi eyed them with suspicion, but the older one beckoned her once more to take them. She looked at the seeds, then stretched the edge of her T-shirt into a pouch and moved closer to the two women so they could pour them inside. She turned to him, beaming, and started cracking seeds, spitting the shells together with the kernel. The gypsy women got off at the next stop, leaving them alone.

  ‘Why did you take them?’ Sal boiled over.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Because you’re drawing attention to us, that’s why!’

  Sometimes he felt like killing her, especially at times like this, when she peeked at him through her eyelashes i
n overt mockery of his fears and his claims to be the superhero. He could hear her crunching and spitting, and he would have gladly scolded her, would have told her – perhaps loudly enough for other travellers to hear – that what she was doing was wrong; that she shouldn’t have been spitting shells, that the tram belonged to the people, including them, and they should therefore take care of it. But he realised that Emi wouldn’t have spoken to him for hours, maybe the whole day; rash and thoughtless as he knew her to be, it was likely she might even want to abandon him in a fit of rage or, even worse, to return home. So he braced himself and swore he would be deaf from then on.

  But five minutes later his thoughts were already drifting away, and he was trying to figure out where they were and when was best to get off. Emi had stopped cracking seeds and emptied the rest into her backpack, explaining that he might appreciate the stash later when he got hungry enough.

  ‘Mum says that gypsies roast the seeds in the same pots they pee in,’ she added, laughing.

  ‘That’s so disgusting! Why did you eat them, then?’

  ‘First of all, it’s silly and it’s not true. Secondly, I ate them because I was hungry. And finally, let’s assume that what Mum says is true and that they really do roast them in the chamber pot – when you’re hungry and you have no food, it hardly seems to matter, does it?’

  He thought about it and agreed. The grey houses had vanished in the distance, and they were now crossing a tunnel made up of monolithic blocks of flats that loomed above their heads and only allowed them to glimpse bits and pieces of the sky. He envied all those who could melt away in that massive concrete anonymity envied the tiny balconies, the proximity, the well-planned and apparently cosy houses. He was drawn to the spiral staircases winding all the way up to the tenth floor, bringing together so many different people that you could hide among and pass unnoticed. Despite his parents’ prejudice against such estates, he felt that, at this moment, finding a hideout in one of those buildings could have been their lucky escape. Trying to find them would have been like searching for two needles in a haystack, and he was sure that, after long, strenuous and fruitless searches, after shedding bucketfuls of tears and after countless sleepless nights, their parents would have eventually given up. But it would have been risky to get off now and start looking for such a place at random.

  He thought of the conversations his parents sometimes had when they were driving through this kind of neighbourhood. He remembered them saying that in these kind of places people spied on each other, eavesdropping from behind closed doors, and that this would be the best place for a burglar to break into any flat: in spite of the vigilance and the cunning they displayed, the neighbours would never come out to save a victim. Of course, Sal knew very well that these were the exaggerations of people who had chosen to live in seclusion in a small neighbourhood cut off from the rest of the city, a place where the squalor, the ash scattered in the air and on the pavement, the gloom and the languor that here were so obvious, remained unseen, so they could go on with their lives ignoring them.

  Lost in these thoughts, at first Sal didn’t even hear the man in uniform, who had taken out his badge and asked to see their tickets. The brute in front of him, with a horseshoe moustache and oily, wavy hair gleaming in the late-morning sun, had to repeat his question, visibly annoyed and growing suspicious. Only then did Sal stare at him, thunderstruck, taking in his size for the first time and shivering deep down. Emi had shrivelled next to him and almost closed her eyes. He fumbled through his pockets, trying to stall him off, then went on to search intently inside his backpack, mumbling that he had the tickets somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where he had put them.

  Somewhere in the distance, he saw the passenger platform and the sign announcing the next stop. Another few more seconds, and – if he estimated properly the distance between the seats and the door and if Emi had been able to read his mind – they could give him the slip. Once out on the street, he knew they would have had chance to scuttle away and nobody would be able to catch them, neither the moustached brute nor his colleagues who were busy with other suspects at the front of the tram.

  He counted silently, and when he heard the clank of the opening doors, he grabbed Emi’s hand and jerked her, rushing down the stairs. But in the chase that followed, the brute seized the girl’s clothes and stopped her short. Sal was already down in the street, balancing his full weight and pulling Emi’s hand downward, while the inspector gripped her other hand. The girl started to cry and struggle, scolding him as her terrified eyes, bulging with fear, begged him not to leave her behind.

  ‘Hit him in the balls! Emi, kick him in the balls!’

  His cry was so loud that he could feel his lungs expand. At that very same moment, the doors snapped shut, leaving Emi’s hand, still tight in his own, hanging through the rubber band between the doors. Immediately, he started to kick the tram’s metal side; then, realising that the driver wouldn’t hear him over the street racket, he flung himself against the door and with his free fist broke one of the narrow windows.

  The sound of shattering glass startled even the inspector. The door opened again, and from the front of the tram they could hear someone swearing and hurried footsteps approaching. But Sal and Emi had managed to scuttle away on a street perpendicular to the main road; now they were running for their lives, leaving a trail of large drops of blood, gushing from the boy’s hurt fist, and the bitter tears shed by the girl.

  They kept on running until they sank into the concrete jungle. When the blocks of flats thinned out, they stumbled upon shabby houses where colourful yards full of tomatoes, herbs, sour cherry or apricot trees could be seen through the cracks of the wooden fences. They stopped in front of one of the gardens, and Sal poked his nose through two wooden planks to peer inside. The blood on his hand had dried up and become darker. Emi ran her fingers over the wounds and asked him in a whimper, ‘Can you see anything?’

  His face was pale. Two purple half-moons, streaked with small red veins, had appeared under his eyes. He hunkered down, leaning against the fence, and she huddled at his side.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘You stay here. I’ll go in to see if I can find some shelter.’

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ she pouted. ‘What would I do if something happened to you? I’d better come along.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to me. Maybe a dog could bite me, but we would’ve heard it bark by now. Stay here, and if somebody passes by, just pretend you’re busy doing something, okay?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Say it! I want to hear you!’

  ‘Okay, yes, sir, I got it!’

  ‘There. It’s very important not to raise any suspicion.’

  She gave him a rueful look, trying to brace herself. Then she watched him slip through two crooked wooden planks in the fence; when the tips of his trainers vanished on the other side, she heaved a sigh, as if to herself, fearing the worst. He heard her, but he knew that it wasn’t yet the time to soothe her. First, he should find a place where they could hide, and once they had managed to settle in, there would be time for soothing and belated moans.

  On his right there was the one-storey house, with white, lace-curtained windows and some thick cushion rolls, probably homemade from ladies’ stockings and old family socks, placed between the windowpanes against dust and the winter cold. On his left and in front of him: the vegetable garden, reaching out as far as his eyes could see. Beds of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, celery and parsnips lay at his feet; beyond them, he could see raspberry bushes separating the vegetables from what could have been an orchard. If you followed the path winding among the beds and the small fir trees guarding the grey walls like tiny soldiers, you would get to the front door. He crept stealthily along the path, passed by a water pump where a thick hose for watering the garden lay on the ground with a tiny stream trickling from it, dodged under some quince trees and arrived under the vine vault, where he could make out a glade and the front
door, just on his right. There were a few steps, a wide-open door and, apart from the flies and bees buzzing around, dazed by the sickly sweet scents in the yard, there was not a soul in sight. He took another step, rustling the thick blades of grass that had grown between the paving slabs, and stopped short.

  In front of him, a scrawny old man, wearing a pair of soiled boxer shorts and a greyish net vest, was resting on a deck chair. He had straggly white hair and a tanned face, wrinkled from sunlight and old age. His skin was sagging, and his lion-like head seemed heavier than his body. He was sprawled on the chair, legs apart, feet out of their plastic slippers, his arms hanging limp over the armrests, his eyes closed. Two flies were strolling on his face, but he didn’t seem to mind them. At first, it flashed through Sal’s mind that the man was dead, but he noticed his toes twitching regularly at short intervals, as if he had wanted to chase away the annoying buzzing of the insects whirling about him. Next to the house on the steps lay several unwashed dishes and some leftovers on a plate – bits of tomatoes and crumbs of bread. Above the old man, a vine vault, held up by a few iron pillars painted green, cast a cooling shade. Beyond him, there stretched a labyrinth of trees and grapevines and a dense orchard that one could sneak through and lose oneself inside, watching the motion around the house yet sheltered more safely than in a fortress.

  Who would have thought of searching for two lost children amidst the weeds in an old, deaf man’s yard? It didn’t take him long to make up his mind. Before going back to fetch Emi, he only wanted to make sure there wasn’t any other risk. He walked cautiously, passing by the old man and his muffled snores, tiptoed into the green labyrinth so as not to break the frail balance around him and kept on going, minding his step. Finally he reached the far end of the garden, closed in by a fence just as rickety as the one he had slipped through, yet revealing one final surprise: a woodshed. This shabby, ramshackle hut, wrapped in cobwebs at every corner and every hinge, was going to be their new home. All he had to do was help Emi across the fence and lead her quietly through the garden to this unexpected shelter, then settle there and see more clearly next morning what important decisions they would have to make.