Power to Burn

by Fienberg, Anna

  chapter 3

  ROBERTO

  I stuffed my hand luggage into the locker above and sat down in seat 51A. A window seat. That’s a good sign, I told myself.

  The stewardess was now showing us the exit doors and demonstrating how to pull the oxygen mask down from the ceiling. I wish they wouldn’t do that. Don’t they realise there are people on board trying to be optimistic? I did a quick check around to see who would help me if I got the mask tangled.

  Seeing the oxygen mask made me think of Virginia Westhead. When Virginia heard that I was going to Italy, she brought out her piece on aeroplane disasters. ‘Two years ago,’ she said grimly, ‘312 people were killed when the same plane as you’re taking crashed in the Pennine Alps. They recovered all the bodies except one, and they found him six months later, all in one piece except for the wolf bites. It was the ice of course that kept the body intact. Have a good time, Roberto, and why don’t you lose your red socks while you’re away?’

  For the twenty-sixth time I reached into my pockets and felt for my passport, my wallet, travellers’ cheques, rabbit’s foot (you never know), and my keys. My heart lurched. What did I bring my keys for? I wouldn’t be needing them for weeks: six weeks and two days, to be exact. What if they fell out somewhere, my poor lonely keys, stranded in some muddy gutter on the other side of the world? I’d never be able to get back into our house. I saw myself wandering through unknown lands, the soles of my shoes thinning and my hair receding as I spent a lifetime looking down drains and through rubbish bins.

  I was a nervous wreck and we’d only just left the ground.

  Of course I knew that if I lost my keys I only needed to knock on the door. Of course I knew that. And anyway, Dad was going to meet me at the airport on my return. I wished I was on my way back instead of forward!

  My heart lurched again at the thought of where I was going and I started to sweat. I tried to turn on those little air-conditioning doodahs on the ceiling above but the man next to me gave me a look, so I gave up. Sure as eggs, he wouldn’t help me if I got the mask tangled.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to stay in the air, I just didn’t want to arrive. Maybe the plane could be swept into some miraculous pleat in the universe, you know, like the place where all the lost socks and library books go, and we could just float around, like a big dust particle in eternal suspension.

  Because there was something horribly final about arriving. Like thudding down on another planet.

  ‘They’re your grandparents, Roberto,’ Mum had said. ‘I grew up in Italy, your own mother! In no time you’ll feel at home there. And it’ll be a lovely change for you. It’s such a beautiful country.’

  I’d asked then that if it was such a beautiful country, how come we’d never been back for a visit? All of us?

  ‘Oh, it’s too . . . expensive,’ and she’d looked as alarmed as if I’d suggested a journey to Mars, without space rations or oxygen. Her face closed off then, the way it does when she goes into her glass bubble all alone. She’d turned away and busied herself with the fish (it was Wednesday). Her back was like a big broad full stop.

  I took a deep breath and looked out the window. But all those squiggly lines and mountains just made me feel sick.

  Maybe I’m not so different to my parents after all. Maybe I’m allergic to change, too. Perhaps it’s in your genes, this hankering for routine.

  The thing was I couldn’t forget that conversation I’d overheard late at night, the day I fought Pig Rogers and burst into flames.

  ‘We’ve got to send him back,’ Mum had said. As if she and Dad had only left there yesterday! And even though I had the return ticket home in my left pocket, next to the passport and travellers’ cheques, I had this awful doomed feeling that I’d never see my parents again.

  It’s amazing how, even though people irritate you till you go cross-eyed, once they’ve gone, you begin to miss their nagging and their dull conversation and even the swallowing noises they make when they eat.

  Suddenly, sitting there alone, staring down at the lakes as small as fish ponds, I remembered being eight years old and going to stay at Alex Dunn’s place. There was cricket and cards all weekend, and I couldn’t play either. By Sunday night I was so depressed and homesick that I began to cry. I was convinced my parents were never coming to get me, and so, to explain my tears, I said my leg was aching unbearably, and I was sure it was a terminal tumour. Afterwards, I was so ashamed that I never spoke to Alex Dunn again.

  Now the stewardess bent over and asked us if we’d like tea or coffee.

  ‘Coffee,’ I told her, and then I remembered how dry my throat was. (Another symptom of panic.) ‘And milk, please.’

  ‘Do you want them separate?’ she asked.

  I thought she said, ‘Are you desperate?’ and wildly I replied, ‘Only a little.’

  After we got it sorted out (I know she thinks I’m peculiar now and it’s a shame as I’m dying to talk to someone) I settled back and sipped from my plastic cup, and tried to relax.

  Well, it’s hard to relax when you’re thousands of feet up in the air and a baby is screaming in the aisle next to you. But you know what is really alarming is to make an earth-shattering discovery about yourself and your parents and then fly away for twenty-six hours and stay on the other side of the world without even discussing it.

  Goosebumps prickled up my arms as I thought about my mother’s voice that night.

  ‘He has the power,’ she’d said, as if she knew about every little secret buried inside me.

  She knows. She knows. It’s so strange to think of her like that – Mum, who only worries about steak on Mondays and whether I’ve done my English homework. But Mum knows about the power – knows more about it than I do! So why hasn’t she mentioned it all my life? I must have really missed something all those years I was asleep.

  I wished I could fall asleep now, and stop thinking. This anxiety was exhausting, like carrying a big package around and never being able to put it down. I kept trying to look over it and under it and around it, but it was always there, right between my eyes.

  All around me people were pulling down the little blinds on the windows and wriggling like puppies under their airline blankets, trying to get comfortable. I took a quick glance at the man next to me. His head lolled to one side and his mouth was open, just like a dead person. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people being able to sleep when I can’t. It seems so rude, the way they just shut their eyes and zoom off into slumberland, leaving me there at the station.

  I had this uncontrollable urge to shoot out my bony elbow and give the man a sharp nudge in the ribs.

  ‘Whaa, what, am I late?’ His head snapped up straight and he looked around, bug-eyed.

  I stared out the window. Only twenty-four hours to go.

  We arrived at Rome airport at eight in the morning. The wait for the baggage was endless, and my mouth felt cracked and crusty from lack of sleep. But my nerves were racing and reluctant tingles of excitement were inching up my back.

  I’d seen photos of my grandparents, but they were all about twenty years old. As I lumphed out of the terminal with my fat bag thumping against my knees, I peered at the waiting crowd. People were kissing each other and crying and suddenly I felt as lonely as a seagull in the desert.

  A plump grey-haired woman was pushing her way through the crowd. I saw the dark eyes, almond-shaped like my mother’s, and the little mole beneath the long nose. This was my Nonna.

  ‘Roberto, oh my Roberto, how tall you are!’

  And what big teeth you have! I couldn’t help thinking.

  Nonna flung her arms around me and crushed me to her and all the soft parts of her were spilling against me. It was like drowning in pillows.

  I took a long whiff of her cheek. She smelled like damp talcum powder mixed with roses. Holding my face in her hands she looked into my eyes and suddenly I felt as if I’d known her forever. I knew those eyes, so black and lively. Maybe it was going to be
all right.

  We climbed into one of the yellow taxi cabs waiting outside. The air was startlingly cold and I huddled up beside Nonna.

  ‘The worst winter in history, this has been,’ she told me. ‘Imagine, snow on the streets of Roma.’

  Now I could see great patches of white on the footpaths and men in coats sweeping the snow from the gutters. It felt so strange to think I was wearing boardshorts and a singlet only twenty-six hours ago.

  ‘Take us to the Pensione Suisse, on Via Gregori-ana,’ Nonna told the taxi driver.

  ‘I thought we’d have a few days’ holiday in Roma together before we go back to the apartment at Firenze. Nonno is away in Padua, he had some business to do there. But you’ll see him later on. So, it’s just you and me and the ancients. Va bene, Roberto?’

  I told her it was perfect, and as I looked out at the faded ochre buildings the colour of flesh, and the narrow cobbled streets, I felt my anxiety gradually dissolve and the magic of the city stream into me. Great arches, tall enough for the carriages and cavalry to ride through, slipped past our window. It was like seeing a movie set centuries ago. I wanted to reach out and stroke the stone where hands had touched, thousands of years before.

  Instead I hung onto my knees to make sure they were real, and Nonna looked at me and smiled.

  ‘Bella Roma, eh?’ she said, as if she were showing me a secret she’d saved up for years.

  The cab driver tooted his horn every two minutes (like all the other drivers) and then we swung into Via Gregoriana. At the top of the street was a church with two tall spires. I craned my neck to see the Spanish Steps that flowed like a frozen waterfall down to a piazza below.

  We climbed out of the cab and I was so busy looking that I tripped over the bags that the cab driver was hauling onto the footpath. Nonna laughed and told me to stare all I liked, while she fixed up the driver and called the porter.

  I’d never seen such elegant people. Men in long overcoats with silk scarves stood talking in huddles, their breath mingling like smoke clouds in the sharp air. A woman trailing a coiffured poodle lingered idly at a shop window. Little outdoor cafes lined the streets that led off the square and people clustered around them, their hands deep in their woollen coats, their collars turned up.

  Eat your heart out, Virginia Westhead. I just saw a pair of neon red socks under that man’s trousers.

  I decided to drink a cappuccino at one of those cafes lining the Piazza di Spagna. But before that I’d buy a wool coat (I wonder if you can get them second-hand?) and maybe a poodle.

  Our hotel room had French doors that opened onto a small balcony, looking over the Spanish Steps.

  I stood gaping at the view, and I heard Nonna chuckling behind me. She squeezed my shoulders and held up a tiny packet of hotel soap.

  ‘You know what I like about hotels?’ she grinned. ‘All those neat little packages. Soap and shampoo and shoe cleaners and shower caps, wrapped up as small as buttons – like things in a doll’s house! And in the morning, butter and marmalade in little plastic packets and fresh rolls still warm from the oven. Come mi piace! Oh, I love hotels!’

  Nonna’s face was alive and cheeky like a girl’s and for a moment I saw my mother’s face in hers. But Mum didn’t know how to laugh like that, or maybe she’d just forgotten.

  That night we strolled to a restaurant around the corner. Nonna poured me a glass of red wine, dark as blood, and we ate gnocchi alla Romana while an old man with a moustache like a shoebrush played melancholy songs on his guitar.

  It was like slipping off the edge into a dream, and I’d stopped trying to pinch myself and hang on to things I knew. I just wanted to melt in and see what happened next. But Nonna wanted to talk.

  ‘So tell me about your house and your school and what you like to do most,’ she said, and settled back with an expectant air.

  So I raved on about my teachers and my crowded bookshelves and awful Virginia Westhead and Dad with his collection of Self Improvement books, and she laughed. I think she was enjoying herself.

  But sitting there hearing people’s heels clattering over the ancient cobblestones outside, the life I was painting seemed so ordinary and far away.

  What I really wanted to tell her about was Pig Rogers and the flames.

  And, I suppose, although I already knew somehow that I shouldn’t, that it would spoil everything, I wanted to test her.

  I got to the part about the fire and her face closed over, like a lake swallowing a stone. Blank and implacable.

  ‘Sì, your mother told me about your fondness for fairy tales,’ she said dryly. ‘Well, it’s late, and you must be exhausted. I’ll get the bill, caro.’

  We walked back across the piazza and stood watching some young people playing guitars. Although I was with Nonna, I felt lonely again and anonymous, detached from everything around me. She was silent now and she looked at the ground as she walked.

  At dinner we’d been getting so close, and yet as soon as I’d begun to tell Nonna what I was really like, she’d shut me out as if I’d just murdered somebody. Why was it that the people I was supposed to be closest to – my own family – didn’t want to really know me?

  Even Dad, with all his reading about Family Relations, never opened his ears to listen. I guess he mustn’t have ever come across the right paragraph about ‘What To Do When Your Son Spontaneously Combusts’.

  Thinking about this made even my flames seem small and silly, as if my power had all been just a dream.

  The next morning we had crispy white rolls and marmalade, just as Nonna had described. She seemed to have forgotten our silent walk across the piazza last night, and was intent on the day ahead.

  ‘Before you see the Roman Forum, have a look at St Clement’s, the little church near the Colosseum. It’s small and friendly, and once you’re inside, you’ll be surprised!’

  Nonna was going to do some shopping and so, equipped with my map and an extra jumper, I set off.

  Considering I have a terrible sense of direction and got lost twice at the hotel coming out of the bathroom, I felt rather brave striding along these foreign streets. This is how real adventurers must feel, I thought, like Hansel and Gretel wandering around in that big old forest.

  I turned down Via Cavour. At the corner there was an old woman sitting on a stool beside a small fire. She was roasting chestnuts. I almost expected her to ask me what my three wishes were, but instead she offered me a cone of paper full of smoking hot nuts. As I paid her the duemila lire, her hood slipped back a little from her face and I caught a glimpse of her eyes: dark, like bitter chocolate, and the last few lashes of her left eye were snow-white, as if there hadn’t been enough pigment at the end. I felt a sharp jab of uneasiness in the pit of my stomach.

  I walked quickly away and looked at my map. I wanted to forget the old woman, and those eyes.

  I saw I was heading in the right direction and soon I came to the small dark archway of a church. This had to be St Clement’s.

  I opened the iron door and walked up the marble steps into the church.

  It was so dark inside that I had to blink several times before shapes emerged and I could see a bent old man coming toward me. We talked for a while and he told me that there were catacombs directly below our feet. The church had been excavated so that you could step down on to a level built in the first century. Lower still there were buildings almost destroyed in the fires of Nero, in 64 AD!

  The old man led me down to the first level, then shuffled back to the church. I wandered along, descending into the dark alleys lit by small irregularly placed lamps. With each step I went down into layers of history. The outside world peeled away like skins of an onion. I forgot about Nonna and the hotel and the elegant people and finally I was left with the core itself.

  I stood in the dark stone room, and my legs were rooted to the ground. Like a maze, alleys led off in every direction and I began to follow them: the original streets of Rome. Neatly lined up along the ‘street’ were ba
re oblong rooms where people had once slept and ate and dreamed. If you closed your eyes, you could feel the cold rise up from the ground; the icy breath of the stone seemed alive. It was as if the stone had absorbed every noise, held every word ever uttered – the silence throbbed with secrets.

  I stood in the dark, listening. Suddenly my mind was as still and clear as the silence and I knew the thing I wanted most was to find my origins, my original self.

  I don’t know how long I had been standing there when the lamps began to flicker. For a second they sputtered hesitantly and I held my breath. Then they died. There was total darkness; just the lonely sound of water trickling somewhere down a stone wall.

  My heart raced with fear. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I was lost in the streets of first-century Rome.

  The thought drove me to move. I began to run wildly, shouting and calling until my throat ached. I tripped over a loose stone and fell. The ground was freezing. I felt moisture and slime move under my palms.

  As I groped my way along the walls the alleys wrapped around me like icy arms. The silence was complete.

  But the fear in my head was deafening and suddenly I knew I had to still the screaming, I had to stop staring at the dark. I closed my eyes and as I looked at the dots behind my lids I saw a small flame take shape.

  I hung on to the flame, blocking out all other thoughts. I concentrated on summoning the force that had welled up before, the day of my fight with Pig.

  I relived the feeling, believing in the flame, and now I felt the power rise up in waves. My fingers were on fire, lighting the walls and the ceiling and every crack and crevice where pale strands of fungus grew.

  I laughed out loud to see the walls spotlit with flames, as light as day, and I ran along the passage with my arms straight out in front of me like burning torches. To the right I saw steps and I galloped up them to the next level and when I saw an archway, and daylight beyond, I felt the tingle of fire in my hands grow dull. The old man came hurrying towards me.