The Book of Hidden Things

by Francesco Dimitri

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Tony says. ‘What was that? Drugs? Boyfriend?’

  Remo doesn’t reply immediately. He licks his lips, thoughtful. He turns to me. ‘A boyfriend, sì. Silvana said it wasn’t like that, but I’m old enough to see when it is exactly like that. Mauro, I know you guys were best friends when you were little, but… ah… Arturo Musiello, are you still in touch with him?’

  A cold, cold hand takes a grip on my belly and doesn’t let go. ‘Not so much. I’m not much in town in general.’

  ‘I’m afraid he took one or two bad turns. He’s not…’ Remo pauses, then whirls a finger at his temple. ‘He’s not right in his head. Do you know that he talks to his dog?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard that.’

  ‘And don’t ask me where he makes the money to get by, ’cause I don’t know. Can’t be anything clean. I don’t like him.’

  ‘Silvana did?’ Tony asks. We shouldn’t be asking questions. We shouldn’t be going near Silvana with a ten-foot pole.

  ‘For the last few months she was always talking about him. Art says this and that. He was full of theories, that one. Full of crap. I’m sorry to say so about a friend of yours, but Arturo never was a good apple. What with all the pain he caused his poor parents when he was a boy.’

  I glance at Tony. He keeps a smile nailed to his lips.

  Fabio says, in a light tone, ‘Art’s a player now? He sure wasn’t one at school.’

  ‘He’s… what? Sixteen? Seventeen years older than Silvana? He’s got experience. And consider that Silvana isn’t well; she’s a wonderful girl, but she has history.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Mental issues. Mood swings, some difficult episodes when she was little. She’s fine now. On medication.’

  I fight the impulse to run. Young, beautiful, on meds, in the thrall of an older man with a BDSM-equipped room in the middle of nowhere: Silvana is a boon to every last newspaper, magazine, blog, kid with a Twitter account in Italy – Europe, possibly. We should leave, but Remo goes on relentlessly. ‘Arturo took advantage of her. The first time she mentioned him, she said he’d given her a book he’d written. A book, go figure. Arturo didn’t go to university, so what business does he have writing books?’

  ‘A book,’ I say, despite myself, in a deadpan voice.

  ‘Not a real book, mind, only a bundle of paper, typewritten, if you can believe that. The Book of Hidden Things. Silvana got crazy about it. It changed my life, she said. It showed me possibilities.’

  ‘Bloody hell, that’s a book I’d love to read,’ Tony says, as if it were a joke. ‘We could all do with some change, couldn’t we?’

  Remo smirks. ‘Wait here.’

  He goes to a shelf behind his desk, where he keeps, neatly ordered, stacks of black leather folders. He plucks one without hesitation. He opens it, takes out a slim bundle kept together by a bulldog clip, and returns to us. He hands the bundle to Tony. ‘Here.’ On the first sheet it reads:

  THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS

  A FIELD GUIDE

  Tony pages quickly through the bundle. ‘A bit on the thin side, far as books go.’

  ‘It’s the introduction. Silvana insisted I took it, and said she’d give me the rest after I read that. But I’m not much of a reader.’ He pats a headstone. ‘I’m a busy man. Kicking the bucket never gets old.’

  Tony laughs and waves the bundle. ‘Do you know what this is all about?’

  ‘Ravings about saints and drystone walls and I don’t know what else.’

  ‘Sort of a Da Vinci Code?’

  ‘Yeah, but less fun,’ Remo says.

  ‘May I keep it? You made me curious.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  I open my mouth to say, Thank you, we’re on our way, but Fabio speaks first. ‘Was Silvana in touch?’

  ‘Not her. The next day Saverio, you know Saverio, that no-good brother of hers? Came to the shop, looking for her. I told him she resigned the day before and I thought he knew. He said sure, he’d forgotten. When he left I tried to call Silvana. I’ve been trying every day since.’ He walks to his shop’s phone, and touches a button which starts a rapid call on speaker. The answer is the robotic voice of a disconnected phone. ‘That’s all I get.’

  Not worry, not upset, but unadulterated fear.

  None of us says a word.

  ‘Do you reckon I should call the Carabinieri?’ Remo asks, after a long, awkward silence.

  ‘No,’ Tony replies. ‘I reckon you shouldn’t.’

  And Remo, being a local, understands, and asks me how long I am staying in town, and if I am having fun, and how my mum and dad are doing, and Silvana is as good as forgotten.

  8

  ‘This is what Saverio was doing at Art’s then,’ Fabio says. ‘Looking for Silvana.’

  I say, ‘Good for him. As for us, this is where we call Michele, bring him up to date, and give our farewell to Art.’

  We are sharing a bottle of ice tea and a cigarette, sitting between two columns in the shaded archway of a minor church, in one of the alleys at the back of Remo’s shop. The alley is paved in slabs of white stone, and you would think it is too narrow for cars, but they manage to squeeze through anyway, temporarily suspending the laws of physics, their wheels skidding on the bone-smooth pavement. The shadows cast by the whitewashed houses keep the temperature in the alley below boiling point, only just. It is not midday yet, and Casalfranco is already a bubbling cauldron. The Sirocco is blowing, the wind from the sea, the hottest, muggiest, worst wind there is.

  ‘Before tracking down Silvana?’ Tony asks. ‘No way.’

  I promised Anna that I would go back home immediately after breakfast. Anna looks forward all winter to our few precious days on the beach, and I am ruining them for her, leaving her stuck with two little girls and unable to go for her endless swims. She hasn’t complained once, and that makes me feel like even more of a shit.

  I say, ‘We found bad stuff at Art’s place, and a young woman is missing. These two facts tie together in highly unpleasant ways.’

  ‘What happened to Art’s only got us?’ Tony asks.

  ‘Real life happened! We started with the idea of sniffing around for a friend who ditched us on pizza night. This is on a completely different scale.’

  Tony is going to reply – harshly, from the look on his face. Fabio interrupts him. ‘Why don’t we PM Silvana on Facebook? Mentioning Art and The Book of Hidden Things. Maybe she’ll reply to that.’

  ‘Seems sensible,’ Tony says.

  ‘On what planet?’ I snap. ‘This is a story waiting to blow. It’ll blow hard, and when it does, the fewer connections we have with Silvana, the better. She’s young, and beautiful, and we’re three older blokes, four with Art – can’t you see what that could turn into?’

  After a moment of quiet, Fabio says, ‘You have a point.’

  Tony shoots me a morose look, but doesn’t reply.

  I say, ‘Call Michele, will you?’

  9

  Tony leaves to have lunch with his mum and dad, promising to catch up later. He is curt, and angry. It will pass. Tony’s bad moods never last.

  ‘I’ll walk you home,’ I say to Fabio.

  He asks, ‘Do you need some headspace before going back to Anna? Now that it is all over?’

  I sigh. ‘Possibly. What about you? How’s Angelo?’

  ‘This morning he didn’t remember that I was staying at his. He jumped when he saw me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Fabio.’

  Fabio takes off his sunglasses, wipes the sweat from them, and puts them back on. ‘I can deal with it. With Don Alfredo, not so much.’

  ‘Why, what’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s taken control of the house. He’s always there, and when he’s not, he sends women from church. The community is here for your dad, he says.’

  ‘Maybe it’s true.’

  ‘And maybe chemtrails are bad for you. No, he’s in it for the kicks. Half of Casalfranco were my father’s students. Don Alf
redo wants the town to know that the two of them are tight.’ Fabio kicks a rock. ‘I’m not stupid, Mauro. I understand that Don Alfredo will likely get away with what he did to Art.’

  ‘Honestly? I’m not sure Don Alfredo did anything.’

  Fabio doesn’t reply. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he admits, after a while. ‘What the fuck do I know. I’m a loser worse than Art.’

  It is disheartening to see Fabio so low. Since he left Casalfranco, he always irradiated this aura of self-assuredness – he gave the impression that he could face up to a platoon of mad mutants, and emerge on the other side with a smile, a good photograph and a hot girl on his arm. I say, ‘You’re not a loser, and Art wasn’t, either. He was just strange, and unlucky.’

  ‘And what am I?’

  ‘Alive?’

  We walk in silence for a while, then Fabio says, ‘Tony told you, didn’t he? About my problems.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘I left my father to rot. You always thought I was a bit of a dick to him.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘It’s okay, Mauro, you were right: I was a dick. My father is a bigot and a bastard, but he does love me. And I left him alone, a widower in a house too big, his only son calling on the phone once a month. I suppose I thought I would make it up to him one day. Too late now.’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘I had this fantasy,’ Fabio goes on. ‘I would break big, any time now, and show everybody in Casalfranco what I was made of. Especially my father. I would show him that his expectations, all his principles, were bollocks. I didn’t hate him, not really, I only wanted to rub in his face that he was wrong. Turns out he was right all along, wasn’t he?’

  I wait a little, then say, ‘You know I like your father.’

  ‘He likes you too. He’d be happier with you as his son.’

  ‘But trust me, you wouldn’t be happier if you were me.’

  ‘I’m not counting your pocket money, but I’m sure you can afford better gelato than me.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what it means to have not one, but two children?’

  ‘Means that you’re building a family. Something solid.’

  I scoff. ‘That’s how couples with babies lie to themselves, in order to survive. The truth, though? The truth is that if you gave a choice to those couples, all of them, all of them, would go back to how things were before. Hobbies? Forget about that. Sex? Not much. Sleep? As if. You run all day, and run, and run, making a pause only to clean asses and wipe noses, and then you keep running.’

  Fabio looks bewildered. ‘That’s harsh.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, after a while. ‘I didn’t mean… I don’t want to be unfair to my girls. I love them. I was the one who insisted on having Ottavia, even before Anna and I got married. When Ottavia was born, and that didn’t make me happy, I insisted again on having Rebecca, thinking that now that I was used to all those sleepless nights, I’d learnt to cope.’ I have to hold back tears. I am a grown man and I have to hold back tears. ‘But sometimes I think. If it weren’t for them, I could change my life, do something better, something worthy. I live off the rotten, nasty financial system of this country. I’m no better than Michele. And now it’s too late to change, now that I’m responsible for Ottavia and Rebecca. They’re wonderful, yes, and I love them to pieces.’ I cross my wrists, one above the other. ‘But they’re handcuffs.’

  Fabio looks at me and says, ‘You’re nothing like Michele. You don’t kill people.’

  ‘Yeah, I only help them to ruin each other.’

  We reached Fabio’s house, a small, two-storey villa with a wrap-around garden. ‘Do you want to say ciao to Dad?’ Fabio asks.

  10

  ‘This squid is amazing,’ Anna says.

  I nod without answering. I should tell her about Silvana – I need to tell her – but I don’t have a chance, because the girls are all over the place.

  ‘It’s not,’ Ottavia whines, prodding her grilled squid with a fork. ‘It’s all squishy.’

  ‘Squishy!’ Rebecca repeats, on the edge of tears.

  We are having lunch at the plastic table of a beachside restaurant, which has been opened for no more than four years and is thus considered new by the locals. The sand underfoot is made compact by dampness. The Sirocco pumps up the waves into billows, and makes you sweat even when you sit still. Its mission is to make your day miserable. Art used to call it Suicide Sirocco, because it gives you bad thoughts. It’d be a great name for a grunge band, he would say. Mauro and the Suicide Sirocco. It is making the girls fractious. I can’t talk to Anna with them present; Ottavia is old enough to pick up more than is good for her. Private moments between Anna and me, like last night, are rare.

  Anna looks sternly at the girls and says, ‘Don’t make a scene.’

  ‘It is revolting!’ Ottavia elaborates while stabbing the grilled squid. Where did she learn that word, revolting? She’s intelligent for a five-year-old. But she is still five years old.

  ‘Eat what you have on your plate,’ I say.

  Ottavia folds her arms. ‘No!’

  ‘No!’ Rebecca joins her.

  ‘Very well. No gelato then.’

  ‘But, Daddy, I’m hungry,’ Ottavia says.

  ‘Then eat your squid! You ordered it.’

  ‘I don’t want it!’

  ‘I don’t want it!’ Rebecca echoes.

  Welcome back to your life: little girls and Excel spreadsheets. I wonder what would have happened if I had followed Art’s advice and tried my luck as a musician. A rock ’n’ roll life with no space for kids, not before hitting, say, forty. Yeah, and where did Art’s wisdom lead him? In the shadow of a tree or beneath the weight of a rock.

  Look at me, I’m quoting Concetta Pecoraro now.

  ‘I want gelato,’ Ottavia says, bursting into tears.

  ‘Ottavia…’ Anna tries.

  ‘Me too,’ Rebecca cries.

  When they throw a tantrum, they do it together, in stereo.

  I stand up.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Anna asks.

  ‘I need to go to the loo.’

  I make my way to a small toilet in the back of the restaurant, a temporary structure made of planks and corrugated sheetiron. I lock myself in. What’s my problem? The girls are acting up because of the wind, but also because they picked up on my mood. Kids are like dogs that way. I want to keep playing cops and robbers with my friends.

  I take out my phone, to look at Silvana’s profile.

  Anna would agree she is a dream made flesh. There is something in her eyes, as if they are openings into a wild, dazzling world. I can understand Art falling for this girl, doing crazy things for la Madama.

  Everything on her Facebook is public: her profile, her smile. Such a trusting girl. Casalfranco being what it is, we have twenty-odd friends in common. Her last post, from six days ago, is a quote from Nietzsche: If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you. It warms my heart. The same abused soundbite would be on every battered journal when I was her age – even though no teenager in Casalfranco had ever actually read Nietzsche (not even Art. He had pointedly refused to show an interest in him, just because, I suspect, everybody else pretended to). Considering that Silvana went AWOL soon after posting that status, it might have a more sinister meaning. But it might not. Nietzsche is the go-to guy for teenagers who want to sound a bit dark. Scrolling down, I see Silvana shared some paintings by Klimt, another mainstay of under-twenties taste.

  But she also shared, and this is more interesting, Orthodox icons: saintly figures on golden backgrounds, the fixity of their pose making them vaguely disconcerting. The saints, always the saints. She posted lots more quotes, from the obvious (J.D. Salinger, Mothers are all slightly insane, definitely appropriate for Silvana) to the puzzling (John Fowles, The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself). And photographs of herself, too: in a winter coat, in an almost non-existent bikini, smiling, pouting, always beau
tiful in a way which leaves no hope for whoever looks at her. I scroll down quickly. Further back, Silvana used to post lighter content (games she played, food photos), but they slowed to a trickle and fell to zero last year, leaving space only for culture bits and naive sexiness.

  This is a girl who wanted to impress; Art’s shadow is all over her profile. I hope to God he didn’t hurt her too badly.

  All her posts have strings of likes, comments, smileys, almost exclusively from men. Some of the male names recur over and over again – friend-zoned buddies, I feel for them. In a detective story, one of them would be the suspected culprit, or a red herring, at least, leading to the real culprit in the end. I tap on Message, and the Messenger app pops up. Silvana’s profile is open to messages from strangers. Should I or should I not?

  I know about Art and The Book of Hidden Things. And I know you’re keeping yourself to yourself, but can we meet? I’m one of Art’s best mates. :)

  My thumb shakes on the Send button, without touching it. There is no rational justification for sending the message. I should press Delete and go back to my family. The best thing that could happen at this point is for Art’s death to be ignored and forgotten. He won’t receive justice, and maybe he doesn’t deserve any.

  My phone rings.

  It makes me jump and lose the grip. I catch it just before its seven-hundred-euros weight takes a plunge in the WC. It is Tony.

  I answer. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I messaged Silvana.’

  ‘What the hell, Tony? We agreed that—’

  ‘She replied,’ he says.

  11

  ‘Why did you message her?’ I ask Tony while he drives. The coastal road is deserted; this weather doesn’t put you in a mood for partying late. ‘We agreed to call it quits.’

  ‘I read Art’s introduction to his book.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It changed my mind.’