Power to Burn

by Fienberg, Anna

  Every day I practise, and the anger feeds my spells. I’m still only up to illusions, but the old lady nearly had a heart attack yesterday when she found my snake in the bread box. It was real enough to her!

  I know that one day I will do something great. I’ll show Mamma a darkness she never dreamed of. My darkness will be cold and terrible, and it will ice their bones.

  If he’d only said he was sorry. If for just once in his life Papà had listened to me. But he didn’t and he never will, and all I have in the world is the power, and the darkness.

  But I’ll think about it later. All of it, later. Right now I’m so tired, I’m so dreadfully tired.

  chapter 7

  ROBERTO

  My bedroom was upstairs next to Angelica’s. There was a fireplace, and a thick red rug spread over the stone floor. But Nonna was right – it was freezing and I didn’t spend much time up there unless I was under a doona in bed.

  The bed was soft and floppy like an old friend. Actually it was old, Nonna said when they were young Mum and Lucrezia used to sleep in it together before the other room was added on, and now it dipped in the middle so that you always rolled smack into this little valley no matter what side you started on. I could imagine Cornelia and Lucrezia giggling late at night as they rolled into each other like bowling pins.

  Well, I imagine it, but how do I know what they really did? I’d thought this holiday would have been like climbing into one of those time-warp machines, whooshing me back further and further into Mum’s childhood. But I reckon there’s been a crash and all I’m discovering is just how far apart we’ve been flung, arms and legs and twin parts ricocheting around the world.

  To tell the truth, though, I haven’t been doing much thinking. Somehow I don’t want to think about Mum, and anyway, Nonno’s been keeping me busy. We’ve gone on long walks almost every morning, wading through the snow in boots that came up to our knees. He introduced me to Maria and we drank coffee in her little house where the chickens wandered in and out from the yard.

  Maria is incredibly fat and her husband is quite skinny and small, and every now and then he came up and leant against her so that he looked like her very old child.

  But one morning at breakfast Angelica suddenly perked up with a plan for the day. I nearly fell off my chair.

  ‘I’d like to take Roberto to see San Gimignano,’ she said. ‘We can take the bus that leaves at ten.’

  There was silence for a minute while everyone thought their separate thoughts. No one asked me, of course, if I’d like to go.

  ‘I was going to take him –’ Nonno began.

  ‘That’s a lovely idea,’ said Nonna firmly. ‘Just be back in time for dinner.’

  ‘Would you like to go, Roberto?’ I asked myself loudly. ‘Oh well, I’m very busy here drinking my coffee,’ I answered, considering, ‘but I might be able to find an hour somewhere in my hectic schedule.’

  Angelica smiled at me. ‘Be ready to leave in thirty minutes then,’ she said, and went upstairs.

  We didn’t talk much on the bus. It was hard to know where to start, but we kept giving each other these quick furtive glances. I’m sure she was peeping too because I caught her looking at my chin, and then her hand went up to her own in an abstracted way and she fingered the dimple there in the middle, half-smiling to herself.

  It was funny watching her do that because it was a habit of mine, especially when I was thinking. I always stroked my chin that way, it was satisfying somehow, feeling the dip and rise of the dimple under the ball of my finger.

  When we stopped at Poggibonsi though, I couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘Poggibonsi,’ I crowed, ‘what a fat round name. Can you imagine, “Where do you live?” “Oh, I live at Poggibonsi.” ’

  Angelica giggled. ‘It does sound funny in English. The people at Poggibonsi are all podgy and boncy – that’s how you say it, no?’

  ‘Yes, sort of,’ I said, ‘and did you know that no one needs cars at Poggibonsi because the people “bonce” everywhere?’

  ‘Like boncing balls,’ laughed Angelica.

  ‘Says one resident of Poggibonsi to another, “Where are you going this fine morning?” “Oh, I’m just taking my little podge out for its morning bonce.” ’

  We laughed hysterically for about five hours, well, no, it was really only five minutes, but it was the best laugh I’d had in years. The laughs kept exploding in my chest like guns going off and every time I looked at Angelica it started all over again. Holy Moly, it was good. I think I got a bit light-headed with all the laughing because suddenly I felt I could float right off the seat and out through the window.

  ‘Roberto!’ Angelica hissed into my ear. ‘You’re levitating!’

  I was. My bottom was about ten centimetres off the seat. It was a lovely feeling, like sitting on a cushion of air. I imagined myself floating higher, as light as a snowflake, and I rose a few more centimetres until I was looking down the neck of the man in front of me.

  ‘Come back here! People will see,’ Angelica whispered up at me.

  ‘I can’t,’ I whispered back. ‘Don’t know how.’

  ‘Just think about how heavy you are. Imagine you swallowed a brick.’

  I sat down with a thump.

  ‘Don’t you know anything?’ Angelica stared at me.

  ‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘Since no one tells me a bloody thing around here. But that floating felt good, it really did.’

  ‘I know,’ said Angelica. ‘I do it every night before I go to sleep. It calms me.’

  ‘Really?’ I stared at her.

  ‘Yes.’

  We were quiet for a moment and then I said, ‘What if Nonno saw you? Floating around, I mean. You’d be executed, or whatever the word is.’

  ‘Excommunicated?’ Angelica laughed. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not again. No, Nonno’s just a bit conservative, old-fashioned, narrow-minded and – how do you say it? – tunnel-visioned, that’s all. He’s all right when you try to understand him.’

  I stared at her for a while longer. It was pretty weird how someone who looked so much like you on the outside could be so different and complicated inside.

  ‘How on earth have you lived with him all this time?’ I burst out finally. ‘How do you dare practise magic with him around?’

  ‘I do it discreetly. I’m very good at being discreet.’

  She looked into my eyes then and said, ‘Sometimes, I can be so quiet that I almost fade into the air. People forget I’m there. It’s as if I become invisible. Then I wait. I draw my own space around me and inside it, in the end, I do exactly what I want to do.’

  As we looked at each other the air seemed to become very still and I had such a tingle of deja vu, as if I’d looked at her and known her like this, so serious and intent, sometime before, but then the bus chugged up again and the feeling passed like a light dream dissolving.

  Ten mintues later we were walking through a huge gateway into the medieval town of San Gimignano. It made me think of the Narnia stories, where the kids open the wardrobe and step into another land, another season. And I was here!

  We strolled along the narrow cobbled streets, bounded by buildings cut deep with arches, and towers rose up from the roofs all around, reaching high into the sky.

  ‘It was a fortified township,’ Angelica said. ‘From the top of the towers you could see the enemy approaching from miles away.’

  We could have done with a tower or two at school. No surprise attacks then from Signor Pig and his blackshirts!

  When the streets opened into a piazza with an old stone well in the centre, Angelica pointed to the tallest tower.

  ‘That’s the Devil Tower,’ she told me. ‘The legend says that it was named that way because when its owner returned from a long journey he found it higher than when he left it. He thought the devil had raised it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Some say it is haunted.’

  Angelica grinned at me, but looking at the square-shaped tower raised like
a mighty fist against the sky, I felt a chill crawl along my back.

  I wondered if Angelica believed in haunting. I wondered if I did.

  We came to a church and as we walked over its marble floors the cold seeped up into my legs. When I stood still for a moment I could feel it eat into the soles of my shoes, icing my socks so that it hurt even to wiggle my toes.

  The vaulted ceiling was so high and the marble columns so tall and solemn, I felt about as big as an ant standing there.

  ‘Fourteenth century,’ Angelica said softly into my ear as I looked at the frescoes on the walls. There was the creation of the world, Noah building the ark, Adam and Eve. The face of Eve was amazingly beautiful. She looked shy and at the same time worldly-wise.

  And then I came to the scenes from Hell. Nightmare on Elm Street had nothing on these guys! Devils with tails and horns were stabbing sinners in the stomach, weaving snakes through their hair, ripping their tongues out, and each little devil wore a maniacal grin as if they were all sharing the greatest joke in the universe.

  It was gruesome. I couldn’t stop looking.

  Angelica came up to stand beside me. ‘Orribile, no?’ she murmured. ‘You know, witches were thought to be agents of the devil. They were tortured like that. Hell on earth, it was then.’

  We walked, without speaking, away from the frescoes and out into the cold fresh air.

  ‘Nonno took me to see those frescoes,’ Angelica said after a while, ‘on my seventh birthday.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Why?’ I blurted. ‘Does he think you’re a witch?’ And then an even stranger thought occurred to me. ‘Am I a witch?’ I’d certainly never thought of myself that way.

  Angelica shrugged. ‘Witches, warlocks, gremlins, ogres – they’re just words, labels. Haven’t you noticed that when people are labelled, their faces disappear?’

  My mind was racing, puffing up the cliff, trying to keep up with her.

  ‘That day, on my birthday,’ Angelica went on, ‘Nonno told me how much people hated the idea of magic. He said they hated it so much they committed murder. A thousand times over. He said he never wanted me to be hated or hurt that way.’

  What a great birthday present, I thought. A horror film and dinner afterwards.

  ‘But all that witch torturing happened centuries ago. Is Nonno still on about that? Is that why he’s so negative about the power?’

  ‘Yes, partly. He says that “we’re all beads along the chain of history”. He was a history professor, you know. He sees everything in terms of patterns, and cycles. I don’t think he can see any of us as individuals. He squeezes us all into his theories, until we fit. I suppose he just tries to ignore the pieces left over.’

  ‘But how can Nonna have stood it? She must have known what it was like to have the power. And to have it taken away!’

  Angelica nodded. ‘I’ve only talked to her once about it. She said on the day she married Nonno he forbade magic to be used in his house. But he loves her, you know. He’s just frightened, deep down.’

  ‘How can you be so calm about it? So tolerant?’ I was almost shouting, I couldn’t help it. ‘He’s such an old tyrant – calling it “his” house, for God’s sake!’

  Angelica smiled. ‘I know, I know. But I told you, I’ve learned to watch and listen. Knowledge is a great power, too. It helps you rise above fear.’ She patted my arm. ‘I’m not really like your Hansel and Gretel, abandoned in the woods. Nonno and Nonna have been very kind to me. Nonno’s taught me so much about this country, about art and history. And ever since I was little they made sure I had good English teachers. I’ve been studying it since I was six. My best friend, Elizabeth, comes from London. She says my English is better than hers! What do you think?’ She gave me a playful punch in the ribs.

  ‘It’s awesome,’ I told her truthfully.

  ‘Scusa?’

  ‘It’s just about perfect, I’d say.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Angelica smiled proudly. ‘I paint quite well, too, you know. And in school holidays, in summer, we go on trips all around the country. Last year we went to Sicily. It was bellissimo! Everywhere the scent of lemons.’

  Angelica’s words were painting travelogues in my head, blue seas and ancient volcanoes. But bubbling below were her words that I couldn’t forget.

  ‘You said “partly”. Before, when you were talking about Nonno. You said history was partly responsible for his fear. What else is there?’ I grabbed Angelica’s arm. Suddenly I needed to know everything, right then. I had to know who I was, who we all were. ‘What was this family tragedy, what did Lucrezia do?’

  Now Angelica lifted her head and I felt she was really looking into the heart of me.

  ‘That is something we’ve got to talk about, Roberto,’ she said. ‘And you know much more than you think. It will be like the beginning of a long journey for you, going back, back the rest of the way until you remember our first years.’

  We sat down on small wooden chairs in the cloister outside the church. A man stood nearby, playing a violin. He wore a blue velvet beret on his head and a patchwork velvet coat. At his feet the wooden case of the violin lay open, sprinkled with coins.

  He was playing medieval music, I think, but I’d never heard anything like it. The notes trickled out in long ribbons of sound, coiling like smoke around the walls. It was mournful and beautiful, stroking you with sadness, flicking you into joy, making you feel alive.

  I sat back and let the music drift over me. It was speaking a language that seemed familiar, even though its notes were so foreign.

  I felt tears in the back of my throat, and I had no words for them. I thought of Nonna saying ‘grief’ and ‘pain’ and ‘separation’ and for a lightning moment I saw a steamy room, a bathroom perhaps, and a damp soft cheek was brushing against mine.

  At that moment Angelica reached over and took my hand. I saw with amazement that she had tears in her eyes, too, and as I held her hand, smaller than mine and so soft, I remembered; it was too strong to be a new thought, I remembered a little hand in mine, swirling under the water. There was a yellow duck and the chrome of the taps and I was too little to turn them.

  When the man finished his song and was packing up his music, Angelica went over and threw some coins in his case. She came back to our chairs and I said, ‘Do you remember our baths? Did we have baths together when we were young?’

  I suddenly realised that she was very much more grown up now and I went hot with embarrassment.

  But she smiled and took my arm. ‘Oh yes, Roberto, every night. And I used to squirt you with the yellow duck. It had a hole right where its beak was and if you filled it up with water then squeezed its tummy a jet of water would shoot out – right in your mouth. You used to drink it!’

  ‘How can you remember stuff like that, I mean so clearly?’

  Angelica looked down at the fish-boned paving at our feet. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot. I practise with the power. I haven’t wanted to think about much else, especially when I knew you were coming.’

  She looked up then and said in that intense way that was starting to be familiar, ‘It’s important to remember, Roberto.’

  Her face seemed different somehow, more naked, as if she’d peeled away a mask and there was an eagerness underneath.

  ‘What else do you remember?’ I pestered her. ‘What was I like as a baby?’

  Angelica laughed, throwing back her head. ‘Absolutely – how do you call it? – fiendish! Mamma could never leave you alone for an instant. The minute her back was turned, you would be tipping the sugar and flour onto the floor, or examining ink by pouring it all over Papà’s maps, or throwing the morning newspaper onto the fire to watch it burn. You were never very interested in your food and Mamma used to try everything to make you eat.’

  ‘She was probably giving me the same menu way back then!’

  ‘And at your high chair,’ Angelica went on (she seemed to be enjoying this), ‘your tray was littered with books. Mamma
cleverly discovered that you’d only take a mouthful while you’re mind was on something else, so she flooded you with books –’

  ‘Mum? With books? What kind, fairy tales?’

  ‘Oh yes. The Three Pigs, everything. They were piled high in the kitchen, next to the coffee machine and the toaster and the cutlery drawers.’

  ‘You remember all that?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Angelica. ‘I have to remember everything to know who I am.’

  I suddenly had a terrific urge to tell her about myself, the things that mattered to me, and as we walked back through the streets I began to tell her about Pig and the Indian lady – and my fire. As I was telling her I felt again the tingle and surprise of the power – like the adrenalin rush you get when the plane takes off from the ground – and the words were flowing out of me, painting exactly the pictures in my head.

  ‘Holy Moly!’ she said at last, and we laughed so loud that a woman passing by almost dropped her loaf of bread.

  It was so good to be sharing this with Angelica, with someone who understood, and I felt special and interesting for once, as if I had so much to say, and I was saying it well. I was almost bouncing along the street by now and in a crazy, glad-as-mad moment I put my arms around her and said, ‘You’re more than a twin sister, Angelica, you’re a twin spirit!’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘and together we can do something great in the world.’

  I looked at her and she’d grown all serious again, but I just wanted to keep skipping like a crazy man along the cobblestones.

  ‘And that’s the reason they separated us,’ she said quietly. Then she pointed to a small archway ahead with a sign flapping over it, ‘La Vernaccia’. ‘Here’s a lovely restaurant. Si mangia bene. They serve the best spaghetti. Let’s have lunch.’

  We walked into a room yellow with light and there were starched white tablecloths on the tables and polished silver that gleamed like jewellery.

  ‘Let’s sit here by the window,’ I said, as if I had lunch every day in a medieval town in a posh restaurant with my long-lost sister.