Black Mountain

by Venero Armanno

  In a fluttering sea of death I watched the birds’ heads whipping from side to side, wings shuddering, crooked, out of their natural shape forever. Their screams seemed human. As I dragged myself away from the smoking remains of the fire more birds came out of the air and continued to attack this unexpected gift.

  I stumbled forward in a daze, ready to give up, not knowing if I was already poisoned and would simply die here with these creatures, wishing I would be found and shot quickly so that this endless fear and anxiety could stop. But when I saw the horsemen in the near distance, riding hard, having doubled back to the site, and to me, I turned and ran into the trees, wings on my feet. I passed the severed head of the deer and a collection of its raw, bloody hindquarters and legs. My bad leg gave me no pain at this moment and I had no hunger either, and my eyes barely saw where I was going. I simply ran without thought. There was nothing left to do.

  The cat and mouse lasted another three days. By that time I’d made a way through the cultivated regions at the base of the volcano, and had started climbing higher into the thickening mountainous woods. What had saved me from being overtaken almost immediately was the almost impassable nature of the forests in the flatlands surrounding Etna. The men had horses that had to navigate thick trees and steep inclines and declines; I could scramble along unfettered by belongings, always losing myself far ahead of them. But they kept coming. Sometimes from some wooded plateau I’d see one man holding both horses, so I knew the other had taken off after me on foot, but I barely stopped to gather my wits, barely paused to catch my breath, and didn’t sleep at all. They did, I imagined, snatching hours here and there and finding time to eat. Then something would let me know they were still pursuing their quarry – a burst of birds through the treetops, a shrilly whistle between them – and I’d run, climb, fall, trudge even further, now always heading upward but barely knowing where I might emerge.

  Though it had stopped snowing I could see the volcano’s peaks painted white. Black smoke poured into the sky. A single tall, sputtering fire jet exploded against the snow. No more came. I’d seen for myself that in the lands surrounding Etna farms grew corn, maize, asparagus and fruit. Then there were the mountain’s encircling forests, through which I’d tried to lose myself. Now, higher up the slopes, there began these dry and arid regions burned by fires and lava and sulphur – I imagined this zone would be no different to the ruined valley and the stinking mines I’d left behind.

  Exhausted and starving, stumbling forward, the vague plan renewed in my mind was to climb as high as I could and find the deepest cave. Surely amongst such a vast terrain of caverns, terraces, ridges and towers of rock, Salvatore and his man would never find me. They might try waiting me out till thirst or starvation drove me into the open, but the truth was that I would rather perish in some hole than give in to their rifles.

  But I wouldn’t let myself perish – and when this time they really did give up, and I was sure of it, I’d stay hidden in the mountain even longer, making infrequent journeys into the forests and farmlands to raid whatever I needed to survive. I’d bring up food and water and live alone for months on end. I wouldn’t leave until I was certain the world had completely forgotten about one insignificant boy.

  And Salvatore and his hunter would give up, for how could it profit them to keep hunting a worthless chattel? The seams of Salvatore’s mine were so profitable yet he wasn’t working them while he was trying to find me. He was earning no money, only making expenses for himself. His tracker had to be paid; why wasn’t Salvatore thinking about the funds he could have directed to his life with his handsome wife? Why was he bothering with me, what issue of useless pride was the point?

  There were times when a blind hatred rose up in me and I would curse myself for not having taken the opportunity to sink that serrated blade into my master’s eye until it punctured his brain. My fate would be no different than Angelino’s, than Natale’s. Than the deer’s. Maybe they’d nail my skin to a tree as a warning to other escapees.

  I might hear the shot before the slug hit me. I might have a moment to realise. One moment to reflect on my life. Or no moment at all.

  My hands constantly shook. Fear, hunger and now the urge to kill.

  The last thing I’d feasted on? Raw corncobs and tomatoes, perhaps two days earlier. I’d taken them from a field that abutted the first line of Etna’s thick trees. I’d even been able to drink from a pail of goat’s milk. A solitary farmer had been working with his flock and for some reason had gone away. I’d made the most of my luck – just as I’d made the most of my luck the night before, by sleeping in the high slats under a short wooden bridge. Apart from the bright eyes of several rats, I’d been completely undisturbed there, comfortable in the enclosure like some kind of rat myself.

  Now my stomach was in knots of hunger and I trudged along a surprisingly well-worn path through very crowded trees leading into the crags above. This had to be a route used by hikers and workers, and it only increased my anxiety, as it indicated that this region might be more populated than I imagined.

  There was no other way to go – the slopes were now too precarious to try to find another route. And so Salvatore and his tracker would soon come this way too.

  I passed a pair of scops owls in a branch. Their heads didn’t move but their eyes followed me. There would be snakes here, and those cats I kept thinking about, but what bothered me were the seas of colourful birds. Though it seemed as if the tracker used magic or sorcery to keep on my trail I knew he was reading nature’s signs – and birds startled by my passage revealed where I was better than a flag.

  Inside Salvatore’s boots my feet felt as raw as meat but I told myself not to worry: at most there was another day’s hiking then I’d be in the wasteland of the volcano’s higher reaches. Among arid rocks and canyons, I couldn’t possibly leave signs for men to follow. There I’d find myself a cave, take the load off my feet and live with infinite patience.

  As I was considering all this I came to a natural clearing. The dense canopy cover had separated and there was an uninterrupted vista of the great mountain’s highest slopes, the perfect blue day around it. I kept to the clearing’s edges then slipped through several lines of towering pine trees, stopping, pressing myself behind the trunk of the largest. I listened and listened, as had become my habit. I’d already discovered how well sound could travel in this place, almost in direct contradiction of all the crowding vegetation.

  There was nothing. Small insects chirruping and birdsong far away: not the slightest indication that nature was being disturbed by men or horses. Now more confident, I moved back to the clearing and squinted up into the daylight. This was the closest I’d been to the volcano’s canyons. As I stood there I saw something I could barely understand. An immense ring of smoke floated in the sky. It was perfectly formed and looked as if it had been suspended there by design. Whose design I couldn’t say.

  It didn’t fade, and gave the illusion of being strong enough to support a rope you could throw up and climb. Then, in a way that suggested the volcano meant to put on a show for any sad creature that needed uplifting, a second smoke ring soared away from the volcano and hovered in the blue. I couldn’t see which particular crater or breach produced these miraculous effects but a third soon joined the first two, then a fourth.

  There were no more. I stood in that clearing with my mouth agape and my eyes drinking the miracle in. Then a bullet pierced me and the shot rang out through the trees and into the canyons of stone.

  I was flung, face first, into the ground cover but I immediately picked myself up and ran without even looking back. I was too close to the start of the arid region of this mountain for the forest to be any more help – the pine trees here were scattered wide and the foliage had thinned, giving no cover. Yet up in the rocks I thought I could see myriad plateaus to hide behind, and plentiful terraces and walls to throw off my hunters.
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br />   The upper right of my chest and back were burning, as if a fire had been pushed through me. Another shot rang out, and another. I was hit one more time, but I couldn’t tell where. I scrambled over a low wall of rocks and landed heavily on my side. At least I had a moment’s protection. I slipped my hand under Salvatore’s heavy coat and shirt and pressed my palms to the bloody wound in my chest. It was the size of a fist and blood was pouring out. Pain radiated from the hole so that all the muscles in my body clenched and unclenched, as if to the dying pulse of my heartbeat.

  I was already lightheaded, more lightheaded than injured and suffering, and I knew I ought to already be dead. Why I wasn’t, I had no idea. But I could see what little hope I might have was to keep heading upwards into rockier and more treacherous terrain. Salvatore and his tracker would have to abandon their horses, and maybe I could outrun them or find a place to hide where they wouldn’t be able to find me.

  There would be a blood trail, the easiest thing to follow. They needn’t even hurry; perhaps by the time they came to my body it would be absent of life.

  Gasping, I picked myself up and forced myself to crouch, traversing the length of this natural wall until I saw a vast plateau of rock ahead. A rifle shot scattered stone, but not very close. Another shot echoed far and wide.

  Turning a corner, slumping against a nest of boulders, I realised that while I’d been travelling through the upper regions of the forest belt I’d actually climbed much, much higher than I’d realised. A dizzying view of patchworked land and tiny, dotted villages spread out before me. It was a panorama offered by the top of the world, a gift to climbers determined enough to come up this way. I’d never travelled so far or so high. This was the place I was going to die, but I didn’t feel any pain nor the slightest amount of fear. It was all right. Everything was fine. I’d travelled further from the sulphur mines than I could have hoped, maybe more than any escaping boy before me. I’d seen the sort of beauty in our Sicily’s natural world that none of the carusi had experienced with their own eyes – and it was still in front of me, real enough to touch.

  Above that panorama were the ghostly smoke rings. If I had the chance I would run and jump from the highest cliff, rather than let myself be shot again. My body would tumble to the rocks below but my spirit would rise up into the rings, maybe make a game of it.

  Before he raised the black muzzle of his rifle again I would have liked to tell Salvatore that I’d hoped to stay out here a little longer, and been able to drink from more cold streams, and to sleep on more forest beds.

  I stole a glance: the riders had dismounted and now each was forcing his horse up a small hill of stepped rocks. Both Salvatore and his companion had their reins in one hand and their rifles in the other. They couldn’t aim properly and couldn’t risk letting go their reins in case the horses panicked.

  For a brief moment I met my master’s eyes. I remembered how he’d waved to Angelino as the boy had tried to scurry away, so I raised my hand in greeting. In that moment, in the way he looked at me, was the reason he’d chosen to hunt me down. In his life he’d dominated the earth, he’d dominated his mine and probably everything and everyone he’d ever known. He’d buggered small boys, and to his great bulk the world had always shifted aside, making way. I was the only one who’d come close to beating him; I’d shamed him; I’d made him as helpless as he’d made those who had to succumb to him. Then he’d been found, and other men had seen him trussed and gagged, and they’d known that a thin nothing of a boy with a limp had made the terrible Salvatore into a fool. All of that was in his eyes. I knew that even my execution, my total eradication, wouldn’t wipe those memories from him.

  But it would be a very good start.

  Salvatore kept his eye on me as he slipped his rifle into its scabbard and reached into his coat. His hand emerged with the very same serrated blade that I’d held to his eye and that had fallen from the hessian sack I’d carried over my shoulder. He dangled the blade between forefinger and thumb, and smiled.

  I knew what he planned to do.

  My former master slipped the blade back into his coat and with clicks and whistles encouraged his horse to traverse the precarious rocks. The tracker, who was close enough now that I could see exactly what sort of light-skinned, fleshy jowelled, pointy-nosed piece of inhumanity he was, did the same.

  While the rocks slowed these men down, and guiding the horses made shooting problematic, I used the last of my strength to make a dash across the plateau.

  If I could get across it, turn the corner, there might still be hope, but when I was no more than halfway, the might of the world smashed into me from behind and I was joined to the rock. A booming explosion echoed out from the hills, amplified a hundredfold. I struggled to my hands and knees and made a faltering crawl. To one side I saw a drop into the nearest fissure, and though it was very cold on the mountain I felt the immense heat that radiated upwards, warming my cheek. There was another gunshot and the rock by my right hand exploded, then my shoulder slammed forward as I was hit again.

  I tried to crawl, but I was finished. Looking ahead, I saw a stranger stride out from the spot I’d been trying to reach. He quickly pulled a long-barrelled bolt-action rifle up to his eye and sighted.

  How could it be that there was a third man, and that he was ahead of me? I hadn’t imagined that possibility, couldn’t begin to understand how a previously unknown member of Salvatore’s party had managed not only to track me invisibly, but even to get in front of me.

  I wanted to face him. I didn’t want to crawl on my knees in my last moment. I struggled up to my feet and then I was swaying, but standing too. In a way I felt as if this was as great an achievement as any chattel had ever made. There was a gunshot from behind; the slug whizzed off the rock wall nearest to the stranger’s face. He flinched slightly but strode straight past me, his long rifle up and steady. I turned and as I did the world also turned and I fell to my knees.

  The man shouted something, someone fired, then he shot once, reloaded and shot again.

  Salvatore and his tracker lay on the rocks, their horses standing quietly. Neither mare had panicked during the gunfire. I reached out a hand. I think I meant to pat the horse’s heads the way I’d used to do with Pino’s mule, Luisa. Of course, they were too far away. Everything was too far away. The sky whirled, and now I was on my back and I admired those four immense halos floating in the blue. I could have touched them. There was no sound anywhere, my ears had become like stones. I knew that this was my end and I liked where I lay and the last things I saw. In a moment, a darkness would descend and I could have the peaceful sleep I’d always longed for.

  The stranger came and kneeled beside me. He had a satan’s face, ugly as sin. He followed my gaze and he watched the halos too, then his eyes brimmed and he did the oddest thing, which was to weep, also without sound.

  Green Book

  Behind the stranger, the azure sky framed immense canyons. I could see the two horses standing idly. This man must have moved me into the shade because the sun wasn’t in my eyes. Still, I wasn’t very far from the spot where I’d fallen.

  ‘You can hear me, can’t you?’

  He spoke without any trace of a peasant’s accent or a localised dialect. I wanted to answer, but couldn’t. If I could I’d have asked why I was still alive. This was simply not possible. How many times had I been shot, and in places that should be fatal? It was also extremely unfair, to have the end dragged out like this.

  He nodded encouragement. ‘You’re aware, that’s a good thing.’

  Now he had saddlebags and a goatskin water sack over his shoulder. Putting the saddlebags down, he helped me drink a little water.

  ‘For now that’s all I can give you. You’ve been shot three, maybe four times. From what I can tell a couple of the slugs passed through you but they mightn’t have been intact. You could have metal fragments . .
. maybe other whole bullets. And bone fragments of course. All of that will make you very sick, if you manage to live through the next few hours.’

  He looked down at me, maybe trying to work out how much I understood or how much he should say about my condition.

  ‘I can’t risk moving you but I’ve staunched your wounds as best as I can. If I put you on my horse you’ll be dead before we’re through the forest. So you’re going to have to stay here while I find help. I know a very good doctor. He’ll come.’ The man squinted up at the position of the sun. ‘You’re shaded now but you won’t be in the morning. It’ll take me longer than that to get back. You’ll have to cover your own face when it gets bad, do you understand me?’

  I neither nodded nor shook my head, simply lay there looking at him. He had odd features, odd because they were so much at variance to the kindness he displayed. His lips were thin and his eyes narrow, his face seemed arched into a mask meant to resemble Satan’s cruel countenance. Yet every word he spoke was full of kindness.

  ‘I’ll leave water but no food, it wouldn’t do to try and eat and I doubt you’ll be hungry anyway. You might not have the strength to drink but the problem is that I can’t stay. You’re wrapped in blankets, do you understand? Lie still. When you need to urinate or defecate, do so. Don’t wait on niceties. We’ll clean you up before the dance,’ he smiled.

  I struggled to say a word. Just one word. He heard it.

  ‘How? You mean how am I here or how are you alive?’ He took a sigh and made himself more comfortable. ‘Those two bastards found me last night. We joined camps for a while. My whisky was better than theirs. Let’s say the night was more to their benefit than mine. I came here to observe the phenomena of the halos. Wondrous. I don’t believe Etna has produced an entire series like that in fifty years. And I saw the women flying through. Did you?’