‘Go!’ Tony shouted behind him, as Art half walked, half ran towards the olive grove. ‘Show the werewolves who’s boss!’ His quips fell flat.
Mauro was trying to adjust the telescope. ‘This damn thing,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t make it work.’
I didn’t need the telescope to see Art get to the tree line, hesitate one moment, and then step into the grove and out of sight. I squinted to make out what he could have seen. I have gone through those moments a million times, both on my own and during the investigation, but honestly: I only saw Art, until I didn’t see him anymore.
Art shouted.
We all sprang back.
Then – silence.
‘Art…?’ Tony said.
‘Art!’ Mauro called.
Art didn’t reply.
Tony said, ‘What the fuck…?’
We looked at each other. My skin was turning into scales. If I was uneasy before, I was rapidly sliding down towards full-fledged terror. ‘We should…’ I started, then I stopped. We should go and see what happened, I was going to say. We all knew that, but no one wanted to make the first step.
Tony whispered, ‘He’ll get bored.’
‘You think it’s a prank?’ Mauro asked.
‘What else?’
I was tempted to call out Art’s name one more time, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to call attention to myself, even though I didn’t know whose attention I didn’t want to call. If only we were braver, or more generous, we would have moved sooner, and perhaps we would have found Art before it was too late. We were very young, that is all I can say. As you grow up, you stockpile a lot of if onlys.
Eventually we managed to unfreeze. Tony put the cork back on the wine bottle and brandished the bottle as a club, and, thus armed, we walked cautiously towards the grove. Olive trees live for centuries, and the older they are, the more twisted they get; these ones were positively ancient. Thick and warped, they looked like the damned in Gustave Doré’s illustrations to Dante’s Inferno – one of my father’s favourite books.
We stood on the tree line, as on the threshold of a temple, not daring to enter.
‘Art?’ Tony called. ‘We left your telescope behind. Unattended.’
Mauro gestured for him to shut up. Listen, he mouthed.
I could hear my heart thumping. I could hear my friends breathing. But no noise came from inside the grove. In that perfect silence, I would have heard Art, or anybody else, in there. Or would I? I had no inclination to step inside and see for myself. The grove gave off a sense of danger, and not the sort of Hollywood danger you defeat with some wit and a brawl. It was a stranger crawling into your bedroom, a priest forcing a boy to his knees and not to pray; it was real danger, the one that takes something away from you.
And suddenly I couldn’t stand it anymore. I turned around and dashed towards the Vespas, running with all the energy I could gather, running running running. Mauro and Tony ran behind me. We arrived at the mopeds short of breath. While Mauro and Tony fumbled for the keys, I cast a glance at the olive grove: it was motionless; not bigger, not stranger, not darker than any other clump of trees. I have been asked by so many people to explain what happened that made us run, and I always give the same answer: nothing. We didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything, and yet we were afraid. No, not of ghosts, I had to say endlessly to smart-asses with or without a uniform. Whether ghosts exist or not, you know what they are supposed to be; they have a name, a definition. But we didn’t know what we were afraid of; we were just afraid, and our incapacity to put a name on that fear made it infinitely worse.
I don’t know the reason why we were afraid, but I will swear, until the day I die, that it was a good one.
We rode back to the last house we had passed, and called the Carabinieri from there. They thought it was a prank at first, but finally they accepted they had to move their ass out of the station and come have a look. They wouldn’t find Art that night, or the next day – or, in one sense, ever. The world as we knew it was turned topsy-turvy. Casalfranco was on the news; townsfolk discovered a hitherto unheard-of reserve of love for Art; and when the hope of finding him alive started dimming, a local crook hinted not so vaguely that we, his friends, might have killed him. It was madness.
It lasted seven days.
7
Those seven days were the sort of real-life horror story that pops into your mind when you are in a particularly low mood and you want to hurt yourself a little more. The guys and I would rather forget about it, but considering that is impossible, not talking about it is the next best thing. We never talk about it. Never, ever. I curse Mauro for digging it up.
‘This has nothing to do with that,’ Tony says.
Mauro shoos away the fat fly that tried to land on his forehead. ‘Try and convince the journos.’
‘So what do we do?’ I ask, to steer the conversation away.
‘It’s very possible that Art’s crashing somewhere and he left the kitchen in that state because that’s how he rolls now.’
‘Or he’s stoned in a field with his dog.’
‘Or that. I say we wait a little, and if Art doesn’t reappear, we go to the Carabinieri. But it won’t come to that.’
Mauro doesn’t want to land Art in trouble, and he doesn’t want his own name to get attached to that old freakshow. It crops up on crackpot websites as an unexplained mystery and the like; the official version is not convincing, they say. Must be some sort of cover-up. Thank goodness our names aren’t part of the story. That’s because in the early nineties the Internet was still graduating from American computer freaks’ pastime to global revolution. But now? It would take all of five minutes for us to get famous, which would do no good to Mauro’s career.
Tony says, ‘Last year Art mentioned he was seeing Carolina. Maybe she knows where he is.’
‘Carolina Mazziani?’ I ask. Once she would have been out of our league, but time passes, and someone goes up, someone goes down.
‘Her. He called her la Madama.’
Art’s touch is unmistakable; in medieval times, madama was what you called a noblewoman, or alternatively, a brothel keeper.
Mauro says, ‘Why not? We’ll talk to her tomorrow.’
I say, ‘She won’t like it.’ The thing with Carolina is, she is married – to a pharmacist. By Italian law, there are a set number of pharmacies in a certain area; you can’t just open a new one. So pharmacies are passed from father to son, like feudal titles. On a small-town level, pharmacists are well heeled, and well connected.
Mauro says, ‘Too bad for her.’
Tony brushes his hands. ‘We’re playing True Detective then. Is it now that I blather on about the meaninglessness of life?’
I check the time on my phone. I hadn’t realised it was this late. ‘Guys, I’m not joining the party. I’ve got a flight in, uh, six hours.’
‘Stick around one more day,’ Tony says.
‘I really can’t. I’ve got a mountain of work to do.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Mauro says. ‘We all have jobs.’
‘You’re on holiday!’
‘I’ve got my little girls with me. Trust me, that’s harder than being in court.’
I shake my head. ‘I won’t play third wheel to your bromance.’
Tony punches my shoulder lightly. ‘All those ladies won’t photograph themselves, eh?’
‘Exactly,’ I say, and it comes out far less convincing than I would have hoped.
8
Mauro drops me off at the B&B well after midnight. It is a detached house on the way to the sea, with a Greek-style arched portico and a huge Mediterranean pine in the front garden. When the car stops, a toothy bulldog runs to the gate, barking furiously. We already said our goodbyes and our let’s-be-in-touch-more-often, so I wave to Mauro and Tony and they drive off. There is a doorbell next to the gate, and I press on it, twice, while the dog keeps barking. At last the front door slams open and the landlord comes out, pointedly cross. With his s
andals, his large belly and a bald patch on his head, he looks like a dodgy Friar Tuck.
‘Sorry,’ I say, as he calms down the dog. ‘I said I’d be late.’
‘Not this late.’
I refrain from saying sorry again. In the south you must never apologise twice. Once is fine, in the right context, but do it twice and you’ll come across as a pushover, and, consequently, fair game. Not even your friends and family will pity you if you get screwed. Però te la sei cercata, they’ll tell you. You went looking for it. You deserved to be overcharged, insulted, beaten up. Swim or drown, boy, that’s the way it is.
‘I’m here now,’ I say.
On entering the garden, I make a point of petting the dog – look, I’m not scared. He licks my hand; he’s a softie, to his master’s disappointment. The man’s mood manages to turn even sourer. He pulls me inside the house with all the grace of a dancing hyena, shows me my room and shoves a set of keys in my hand. ‘Mind the front gate,’ he says. ‘Arnie’ll clear off at the first chance.’
Arnie being the dog, I suppose. I can see why he is eager to skip. ‘I’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning, and don’t worry, I’ll be careful with the gate. If Arnie’ll let me go,’ I add, pretending for his master’s benefit that Arnie is a bad boy.
‘He legs it, you’re paying for a new dog, capito, sì? Leave the keys in the room, and pull the gate behind when you leave. Breakfast’s already in the room.’
I would love to be locked somewhere with this man and a hammer. I suppress my homicidal fantasies, wish him goodnight and close the door. The room is smaller than my first bedsit at university, with no hints of local charm. There is a pixie-sized fridge with an open carton of milk in it, and two stale croissants on the top of it. (Fabio, meet your breakfast. Breakfast, meet Fabio.) I see no kettle, and, consequently, no tea or instant coffee. You never find them here in the south. There is a tiny en suite though, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
Art is all right, I say to myself, as I brush my teeth. But I’m lying and I know that. The state of his house, the weed, his ditching the Pact: it looks bad. The fact is that Art has disappeared for seven days before, and we still don’t know what happened then, so what hope is there of us understanding what is happening now? There was the wildest speculation at the time (my personal favourite: UFO abduction, because there was a telescope involved, and telescopes plus teenagers equals aliens), but after his return, everybody in town convinced themselves that it had been a juvenile attempt to run away from home. Tony, Mauro and I knew that everybody in town was wrong, and our wildest speculations never stopped. Mine were probably the wildest of all.
Art is all right, I repeat. I am being a shit, leaving my mate like this, but I won’t allow Casalfranco to suck me in. A girlfriend waits for me in London, and a life which is a mess in urgent need of sorting out. I won’t get stuck in this godforsaken corner of the world. Art is all right, I repeat as a mantra.
Art is all right.
9
Art got me into photography. My motivating force was a burning desire to see boobs, in general and, in particular, Marta D’Antonio’s boobs. Marta was a redhead, a year younger than us, with freckles all over her face, her arms, and (I fantasised) the rest of her body. I would have committed unspeakable acts to confirm those suspicions, but I couldn’t think of any unspeakable act that would actually help me.
I used to be helpless around girls. I was comparatively smooth as long as we stayed friends, but when the moment came to make the next step, the moment to ask them out, or try and kiss them, I would freeze, and become unable to act. I could hear my father’s stern voice saying, Don’t be ridiculous. A proper, polite young man didn’t do that sort of thing, though it wasn’t clear how proper, polite young men were supposed to reproduce. I was stuck.
Art suggested photography. Since the end of the summer before he had been testing a theory, namely that you can get girls to undress more or less as you like if you tell them it is for artistic (‘artistic’ was the key word) purposes. Like that Helmut Newton guy (he had to tell me who Helmut Newton was). To demonstrate that it was more than a theory, Art showed me one of his photographs – only one, because he had an understanding with his ‘models’ that his artistic oeuvre would stay private, and Art was a man of his word. In that photograph, though, was the nipple of Gina Ostuni, one of our classmates. She was covering the other breast with her hand, and pursing her lips towards the camera. That photograph made me feel like an archaeologist who has just discovered a lost civilisation. It also gave me an immediate hard-on. (This was before camera phones, selfies and Internet porn; we were way less used to nipples than the lucky bastards born in the next decade.) Art’s theory worked. Art’s theories almost invariably did.
‘The secret is,’ he explained, ‘that we all, boys and girls, think we are the centre of the universe. We think we are significant. You make someone believe that you think that too, that you think they are significant, and they’ll do whatever you want, just to please you and confirm your belief. It’s as simple as that.’
Every now and then Art’s cynicism made me uneasy. But not enough to beat the indisputable reality of Gina Ostuni’s nipple.
I borrowed a third-hand camera from Mauro and, my heart beating like a marching soldier, I approached Marta D’Antonio, telling her that I meant to take a few portraits of her, like, for an artistic project of mine. In keeping with Art’s instructions, I used the word artistic at least three times, and I didn’t mention the nude thing, yet. You had to build up to that one.
‘I thought Art was the photographer,’ she said.
That caught me by surprise. The next moment would be a defining one for my life. If I had caved to my first instinct (blush, stammer out a lame answer, and split), I don’t think I would be a photographer today – which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, considering. I didn’t cave though. By miracle an answer came to my mind, perfectly formed, the only answer that could save the situation. ‘Yeah,’ I said, in a jaded voice. ‘I’m teaching him the basics.’
It was pure Art; he loved it when I told him.
And it worked. It took me three Kodak films (which were expensive, but well worth it) and around eighty poses before Marta D’Antonio agreed to drop her bra, that last bastion of virtue, and show me her boobs, for my purely artistic purposes, giving me proof that, yes, she had freckles all over. I was in heaven. It was a strictly see-don’t-touch basis, and nothing ever happened between me and Marta D’Antonio, but I learnt that naked girls did happen, and that gave me the boost of confidence that would lead, in time, to real girlfriends and actual sex. And it made me fall in love with photography – I felt a burning gratitude towards the camera, that magic gizmo, to the point that Mauro granted me an ‘indefinite lease’ on it.
My first camera; I still have it, in my London flat.
10
I wake up with the sun.
The sun.
I jump out of bed, cursing myself, and grab my phone to check the time. The phone is out of juice. I look out of the window. The sky is cloudless, clear and ruthlessly blue. It is nowhere near an early morning sky. That fucking phone. Old as Yoda and I can’t afford to replace it. Its battery has the lifespan of a haiku, and yesterday I was too strung up to remember to charge it. The phone died so the alarm didn’t ring and the cab driver couldn’t call me when I didn’t show. Of course he didn’t try the doorbell; you never expect a southerner to do more than strictly necessary. The booking was on my card and he would get the money one way or the other. Fuck him, fuck this phone, fuck my life.
And fuck this town. I sit on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. I’m not in the best of places, financially. Another plane ticket, even low-cost, and another night in a B&B, even a cheap one, are a strain I could do without. ‘Fuck!’ I shout. It is this cursed town. It never eases its grip on you. It never lets go. When Casalfranco decides that you will stay, you stay. Sometimes I fear that the rubber band will have its way and pull me
back. That I will never manage to break free for good.
I plug the charger into an adapter and the adapter into a socket, and when the goddam phone comes back to life, I dial Lara’s number. She doesn’t pick up. I text her:
I overslept & missed my flight. I’m a moron. Coming back tomorrow. Call me when you can.
It is half past ten. I have an entire day to spend in town, and I won’t bloody spend it in this shoebox.
I call Tony.
11
Carolina was one of the Beauties – Art’s capital – of our generation, the aristocracy of school. The Beauties were all good-looking, there is no denying that, but no more so than so many other girls (fabulous women being the only good thing Southern Italy ever gave to the world). What set them apart from us members of the peasantry was their ancestry; to qualify as a Beauty you had to come from a notable family, one which had been in town long enough for at least one or two cases of incest in their tree. The Mazzianis, Carolina’s family, had money once, and then, after copious amounts of drinking and gambling, no more. Their surname still carried some weight, of history, if nothing else. I once managed to get one of the Beauties, Gemma Pizzi, naked for my camera, but that’s as far as any of us went, until many years later, when Art came back to town and started banging Carolina. I have not seen her in maybe ten years, which suits me fine. Her voice had always grated on me.
Tony knocks at her door, under a fierce sun. It is only me and him; we told Mauro we would handle this, so he could stay with Anna and the girls. I hope I will be spared Anna. This trip has already turned ugly enough.
It takes me a moment to recognise Carolina when she opens the door. Her beauty is gone. She’s put on some weight, but it’s not that – in a different world she would still be very attractive, in a more mature way. In this world though she has lost her magic, that elusive spark that made her a Beauty. Everything about her – her looks, her hair, her eyes – is dull. Carolina has fast-forwarded from teenager to middle-aged housewife, without the charisma of wisdom.
The Book of Hidden Things Page 4