The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  So you can imagine how he feels right now, all alone in the dark, lying on a moldy bed in Ghost House. He hadn’t wanted to stay here. He’d wanted to go back to his place with Rambo, and instead Rambo had gone alone and left him here; he’d given him one pill for the pain and one to sleep and sayonara. What’s more, at the hospital they administered half a pill each, but Rambo told him that didn’t make sense, that if half a pill were enough then why didn’t they come like that in the box, halved. So he’d made him swallow them, and now Marino doesn’t feel any pain; he doesn’t feel anything besides a heavy sleep closing his eyes and a terrible fear keeping them open. And in the battle between the two he lies there motionless staring at the shadows of the woods outside entering through the little window, cast by the light of the full moon.

  Long and strange, they stretch from the dirty floor to the walls then taper and climb to the ceiling, sharp and menacing and black. Marino turns to look at them, dark shadows faintly shifting in the evening wind; as he watches them he feels his eyes closing, sliding downward into the sands of sleep. But then something rouses him, a whisper or a glimmer. He looks around and a lump forms in his throat.

  Standing at he foot of the bed are five malicious figures. Five men armed with rifles, dressed in rags, and pointing their narrow, twinkling eyes at him.

  “Yo,” says the tallest, and his deep and distant voice comes from the deep of night, from the center of the mysterious spiral of fate. “Hey there, doofus.”

  “Who are you?” asks Marino, his voice trembling. “Please don’t hurt me, I’m begging you.”

  “You know exactly who we are.”

  “No, I—I really don’t. Are you the owners? I didn’t want to come here, I swear. Rambo’s to blame. I wanted to go to my place. I own an apartment in the Querceta Skyscrapers. Not to brag, but it’s the penthouse.”

  “Skyscrapers? In Querceta?” asks another shadow, a white kerchief around his neck. “I’m from Querceta and I’ve never heard of them before.”

  “Really? They’re famous. They’ve been around since the sixties.”

  “Ah, that explains it. We died in ’44.”

  Silence. Or a kind of silence disrupted by Marino’s heart, which is now beating in his ears so loudly it nearly knocks him out of bed.

  “Come on, Marino, you still don’t know who we are?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. Are you Mom’s friends? Friends of Franco from the veggie mart?”

  “No. We’re not anybody’s friends. We’re the five partisans,” says the tallest one, coolly. And he looks at Marino with one eye protruding from its socket.

  “What do you mean? Which partisans?”

  “The five partisans murdered tragically.”

  “Eh? In what sense?”

  “What do they call this place?”

  “Ghost House!”

  “Attaboy. This is the house and we’re the ghosts. Got it?”

  Marino nods unconvincingly. “The partisans they hanged?”

  They all nod once, slowly.

  “But . . . but I’d heard they were four men and a woman. You’re all men.”

  “I’m a woman!” says the one with the white kerchief.

  Marino looks at her, examines her closely. “Really?”

  “Really, asshole.”

  “Sorry. Maybe standards have changed. And what with the war, the suffering . . . okay, I’ll take your word for it.”

  The ghost with the kerchief springs forward but is held back by the one next to her.

  “Would you listen to this asshole? We come to save him and this is how he treats us.”

  “Save me?”

  “That’s right. Although you don’t deserve it.”

  “Save me from what? Oh God, what’s happening?”

  “Calm down and listen. You know how we died, right?”

  “Sure, strung up from those trees outside.”

  “Exactly. We were hiding out here. We’d gotten wind that German command was looking for us and we needed to leave. But it was raining hard, so we decided to stay another night. We’d get some rest and leave for the mountains by sunup. Only the Germans came that night and we never lived to see sunup.”

  The supposedly female ghost with the kerchief finishes her story and all five hang their heads and stand silently with the light of the moon casting a chilly glare over them, like morning frost on the grass in winter. Then the tall one speaks again: “Anyway, you don’t have to make the same mistake. We stayed another night but there was no such night for us. There’s no such night for you either, Marino.”

  “Huh? What do you mean? Pardon me but what do the Germans want from me?”

  “Germans? You wish! The war’s over, the Germans have other fish to fry. They’re working hard and kicking our keisters—what would the Germans want with you?”

  “Right, my point exactly. So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is time’s up, Marino, you have to hustle. Tomorrow it will be too late.”

  “But what can I do? Can’t you see the state I’m in?”

  “Enough with the excuses. For forty years you were just fine, and what did you do? Zilch. So now that you’re in a bind you have to use your head. Drop the dead weight, Marino, or it’ll sink you. Whatever’s dead doesn’t exist anymore. Dump it, Marino, throw it away.”

  “Look who’s talking, you died in ’44 and you’re still here.”

  “Listen, dickhead,” says the one who claims to be a woman, “we died for your sake. We sacrificed ourselves so that future generations could be free. And frankly, seeing what you’ve done with all that freedom, I don’t think I’d do it again.”

  The others look at each other and nod. “We sacrificed ourselves for you and you spend your days zoning out with your cell phones and computers and televisions. We should have fucked off into a hole and waited out the end of the war there.”

  Marino looks at them, but they’ve stopped looking at him. They stare at the floor and sigh. They don’t want to talk anymore. They don’t want anything.

  “Listen, I’m sorry. We didn’t do it on purpose. It’s not our fault. When you were young, there was no such thing as the Internet. There were no cell phones, no videogames, none of that stuff. Had there been, maybe you would have used it the same as young people today.”

  “Young people? Marino, you’re not young anymore. You ought to be a man and you’re not even that. You’re nothing. You’re forty years old and you still haven’t begun living. But if you don’t get a move on tonight, you’ll run out of road before you’ve even launched. Understand?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I don’t know. But—”

  “But nothing, Marino. We warned you. Now it’s up to you. Just remember there’s no time to lose. It’s now or never. Now or never.”

  The last words echo as if they were coming from far away. The trembling light of the moon fades and the five profiles blur and bleed into the wall behind them until all Marino can see is that wall. As a matter of fact, Marino can see nothing, because his eyes are closed.

  He only opens them now as he feels a powerful grip shaking him. Above him, right on top of him, stands another ghost, as white as the others, same eyes spilling out of their sockets, same words spilling out of his mouth: “Marino, wake up, there’s no time to lose, we’ve got to get a move on!”

  Marino pulls himself up as best he can, smiles, and tries to bring his friend Rambo into focus. “I know, they told me already.”

  “Huh? When?”

  “Just now. They’ve been telling me for the last three hours.”

  “Okaay . . . Anyhow, listen carefully. Something bad happened. I called you and you didn’t pick up. I called Sandro and he didn’t pick up. So I had to make a decision. I had to, Marino. I brought your Mom here.”

  “Really? That’s fantastic, Rambo,
where is she? Why hasn’t she come to say hi?”

  Rambo looks at him and frowns. “Isn’t she dead, Marino?”

  “Yes, of course, I just thought that . . . seeing as the partisans were here, see—”

  “She’s in the kitchen. I’m sorry but I had no other option. We couldn’t keep her in your house. And she can’t stay here either. We’ve got to get going immediately. I’m sorry, pal, but we have to.”

  “I know we have to, Rambo, and right away. We owe it to the partisans.”

  Rambo pulls backs but continues to stare at his friend. His face, the expression written on it.

  Sometimes nothing is more unsettling than a smile.

  THE MUSHROOMS OF TRANSYLVANIA

  George keeps walking in the dark. He looks around but sees nothing. He’s desperate. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s given up looking for mushrooms. All he wants is to reach the road back and find his friends, but he doesn’t know which way to go, so he stops for a minute. And that’s when he hears it. It sounds like a sigh, although maybe someone was whispering. But who? And what could they be saying? George doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know. All he wants is to get out of there. He starts to run, but he’s traveling in circles in this really intricate forest, and he’s getting tired, and that evil sigh keeps getting closer and closer . . . ”

  Mr. Sandro makes these really weird scary faces while he tells this story, the flashlight pointed under his chin. It’s completely dark except for the lone light contorting his face and this huge shadow on the side of the tent behind him, all the scarier given that the tent should be taut and firm but instead it sags and looks like it could collapse on top of us at any moment.

  Ferro’s tent is real old. It’s not even really his. Some German tourists ditched it years ago. They’d tried to camp out on the beach at night but that’s illegal, and Ferro had gone to tell them to leave. And seeing as you never know who you might come across in the dark, he’d gone out there armed with a paddle. He woke them by thwacking the tent a couple times and they ran off as they were and were never seen again. What can still be seen are the holes the paddle made, two or three on one side. Mice have made some smaller holes.

  So what if it’s saggy and bitten-through? The tent’s still standing and we’re here sitting in a circle while Mr. Sandro tells us this story about poor George who had gone looking for mushrooms with his friends and instead got lost in a freaky forest.

  “And all of a sudden, from up in a chestnut tree, he hears a different sound, a sinister sound. He looks up and sees a large bat flying in circles above him, diving toward him, poised to strike. So George throws his basket of mushrooms at it—it was empty anyways—and runs toward the trees, and each step brings him farther into the mysterious dark, and George is desperate because he knows that the Apennines are unpredictable, dangerous mountains and who knows what’s hiding around every corner in that—”

  “The Apennines?” says Zot, his voice trembling. “Excuse me, Mr. Sandro, I thought this was in Transylvania?”

  “Right, sorry, did I say the Apennines? I meant Transylvania. Moving along—”

  And like George, we hear this weird noise come out of nowhere, like when something nasty gets caught in the sink and the water goes up and down. But it’s not a sink; it’s Ferro, lying in the back of the tent, trying to speak.

  “You can find . . . porcini there . . . thick as table legs.”

  “Where, Grandfather? In Transylvania?”

  “No, no, in the Apennines.”

  “But we’re not in the Apennines. We’re in Transylvania.”

  Ferro doesn’t say anything else. He lifts his arm and waves it around at random. Then it flops back down at his side. He snorts, maybe falls asleep, and the tent fills with his poisonous breath. Since they hadn’t bought him wine and he and water don’t mix, he’d eaten his cheese and anchovy sandwich with half a bottle of Dry Death he’d brought along for the trip. Now his breath is making my head spin.

  “Anyways, George is running in the haunted forest in Transylvania. The trees coil together right in front of his eyes, and the branches look like skeletons’ arms reaching out to grab him, and behind him the bat continues its pursuit, and around him he hears moaning and the rattling of chains getting closer and closer. But just when he thinks his time is up, George reaches a place where the trees thin out. He sees the sky and the moon shining above. The moon is gigantic and full, just like the moon tonight, kids. So George stops and feels this force burning underneath his skin. He feels these hairs shooting up from his body, mounds of wiry hair. He feels his face warping and stretching. He feels his nails fall out and in their place spring these long sharp claws. He raises his head to the moon and out comes a frightening howl: Owooooo!”

  “So it’s a werewolf story!” says Zot with what little breath he has left. “At first it had all the makings of a ghost story.”

  “Or a vampire story,” I say. “What with the huge bat.”

  “Phooey,” says Ferro, splayed out behind us, “more like a shitty story.”

  Mr. Sandro doesn’t answer, just goes: “Fine. Then I won’t tell you how it ends.” He removes the flashlight from under his chin and switches it off. Suddenly the tent goes real dark. Zot and I would like him to switch it back on and continue so we can find out what happens, but maybe it’s better this way. It could be too scary. So we keep quiet, and Mom gets the final word: “More like not the kind of story you tell kids who are about to spend the night in the woods.” She gets up. “Well, I’m tired. I’m going to sleep. Are you sure you kids still want to sleep in this stinky contraption?”

  We don’t answer immediately but as soon as I say I’m sure Zot seconds me. Just the two of us sleep here, and the grown ups go sleep in the back of the jeep, since there’s room enough for them to be almost comfy. I’d liked this idea of sleeping in the tent, I still like it, but in the dark I’m slowly beginning to see the shadows of trees moving across the tent, and they sort of scare me.

  And anyhow the forest is still wonderful. We totally lucked out coming here. We left the little square by the church and there was a sign indicating SELVA DI FILETTO—PICNIC AREA. And maybe we didn’t come here to picnic, but we did have the sandwiches, and wherever there’s a picnic area there’s space. So we came here. And on the way Zot opened the guide to Lunigiana, flipped to the page about these woods, and cried, “Saint Catherine of Siena!” He grabbed my arm and squeezed it so hard my skin stung. Then he read it to me:

  “The Filetto Forest is a goldmine of stele statues. Many have been rediscovered in this ancient forest. Some are still standing in their original spots. They may have been placed here by the people of Luna to protect this thousand-year-old forest, which was considered magical even in prehistoric times, when tribes would gather in the night for pagan rituals.”

  That’s what the guide said and no one had anything else to add. Even Mom quit complaining. Clearly we were supposed to spend the night here.

  Only now, after Mr. Sandro’s story, this forest is beginning to scare me, and while he and Mom get up to leave us, it makes me happy to hear Ferro snoring heavily. Even if we wanted to wake him up, it would be impossible to drag him out of the tent.

  “So you’re staying, kids?” asks Mom.

  “Yeah, we’ll hold each other a little.”

  “Luna, do you want me to stay here too?”

  “No, really, Mom, Ferro’s here. We’re good.”

  “Okay. But I’m right next door, all right? Should anything happen, I’m right here.”

  “Okay. I’m good.”

  “And tomorrow we’ll visit the museum with the Luna statues, okay?”

  “Yeah, Mom, we’re psyched. Can you believe practically all of them were here? The people of Luna planted them all right where we are.”

  “Precisely,” says Zot, “and who knows how many have yet to be discovered.” I ha
d been about to say the same thing. I turn toward him and we nod at each other for a bit, and we don’t stop till Mom leans over and kisses me, then goes to kiss Zot, who flinches at first because he doesn’t know what Mom wants, whether she intends to slap him or spit on him. When she kisses him on the cheek, Zot lets out this jittery, excited laugh. Then he gets real quiet.

  “Goodnight, kids,” says Sandro, “may the Lord be with you.”

  “Goodnight,” I say. “Tomorrow you’ll tell us how George’s story ends, right?”

  Sandro chuckles and nods, then zips the tent shut and he and Mom become two real long shadows headed for the jeep. And we lie here in silence.

  Well, sort of silence. Ferro’s snoring and every so often mumbles what could be words but sound more like broken stuff rattling inside a large box. I lie tummy up with Zot next to me and we watch the light of the moon turn red across the deflated, torn tent. I pull the blanket up and it feels much better to be under here, lying on the ground, on top of us the blanket, above us the tent and the trees of the forest that stretch out right in front of us and finally the moon, way up there, fuller than full.

  “How do you think it’ll end, Zot?” I whisper.

  “How will what end? George’s story or ours in Lunigiana?”

  “George’s.”

  “Ah, unfortunately I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe now that he’s a wolf he can get away faster or his instincts give him the passion he needs to fight back or . . . I couldn’t say. The possibilities are endless.”

  “And ours? How does ours end?”

  “Oh boy, who knows how ours ends, Luna, who knows.”

  And we lie there, in the silence of the night, while the crickets play their song to make the females fall in love with them. How can the female figure out who plays best inside all that music? It’s one unchanging noise on all sides, and if you ask me, the female cricket must tire of listening at some point and pick one at random, must latch onto the first cricket she finds, fine by her.

  And Ferro piles onto the crickets’ song, snoring and drowning everything out, only stopping occasionally, and when he does stop, he makes these noises with his mouth that sometimes seem like words.