The Book of Hidden Things

by Francesco Dimitri

  In their day, the Mazzianis owned much land, people, law, and other such goods which no one should ever lay a claim to. In the mid-1700s a young man from town was found dead, hanging from a tree in an olive grove belonging to the family. There were rumours of an unholy relationship between Vittorio Mazziani, the family elder, and this young man (a peasant who does not merit a name in the archives). The official verdict was that the young man had committed suicide. The priest was quick to point out that suicide is a mortal sin and the man would burn in Hell for eternity. Even prayer was wasted on him, and he was to be buried on unhallowed ground. Vittorio’s reputation remained unblemished. Indeed, the men ‘calumniating’ him (the young man’s father and cousin) were condemned to pay a fine they could scarcely afford.

  There were other stories, before and after that – prostitutes, shady deals, land said to have been acquired by blackmail. I don’t wish to make out the Mazzianis as a heinous line of arch-villains; dig deep enough in the past of any powerful or once-powerful family, and you will inevitably find similar episodes. You don’t gain power by being nice. You gain power by lying and slaying and raping and stealing. It is not power that corrupts, but the road to it.

  To return to the young man’s death: the Mazzianis could not have a property of theirs cursed by the sin of suicide, and thus they called the priest to consecrate the olive grove. They organised a gathering in the very spot where the young man had died, inviting the entire town. The priest came in full regalia, with altar boys carrying consecrated water and enough incense to smoke a hog. He showed off his best Latin and sprinkled the trees with water and incense, while the Mazzianis offered food, wine and music. Whatever misgivings the townsfolk still harboured they drowned, and buried deep, and forgot.

  Vittorio was devoted to the Virgin Mary. His second name was Maria (giving male children the indisputably female name of the Virgin was and remains a common quirk of noble southern families, and of families with pretences to gentility). To mark the renewed purity of the grove, Vittorio had a shrine to the Virgin built on its western edge. So now the saints were there, and the grove had, it seems, become part of the Hidden Things. Or rather, it was marked as such. Some places have a sacredness of their own, which might or might not be recognised by human beings, but is there nonetheless.

  The nameless young man was not the last person to meet their end in the grove. Members of the Mazziani family continued to use it for their secret vices. In 1875 there is a report of a girl of fifteen who was found dead in a local olive grove, seat of a ‘well-known’ shrine to the Virgin. Her body had been violated, her throat sliced, and the blood from her ‘exquisite neck’, a contemporary paper reports, had blemished the statue of Mary. The victim had been so uncouth as to bleed to death on the shrine.

  An ‘inquest’ found that the victim, Rosa, was a woman of ill repute, surely killed by one of her customers. Good Christians rightly condemn paying and butchering a prostitute, but they undoubtedly consider being a prostitute a more serious offence. She had it coming, so why waste time and money looking for the killer? The case was quickly forgotten, another sinner was burning in Hell, and there was nothing more to be said.

  When blood is spilled over a Catholic altar or shrine, a priest must consecrate it again, but the sources I found don’t mention whether that happened, or if the shrine was abandoned, spoilt beyond repair in the collective consciousness. Be that as it may, eight years later the Mazzianis sold the grove to the diocese. The fortunes of the family were dwindling, and in order to pay back the debts accrued at the gambling table, they had to sell more and more of their land. The diocese entrusted the grove to the parish of Casalfranco, and, with no fanfare, the place ceased to be used for worship, or for anything else. Today no one picks olives from its trees, and no trace of the shrine remains.

  Men have left; the adders took over.

  XI

  This olive grove is an example of the sort of place you stumble upon when you start exploring the Hidden Things. The junctures between the Hidden Things and us brim with enlightening stories, and enlightening stories are rarely happy. Suffering, more than any other state of mind, allows us to glimpse beyond the obvious, the everyday, the expected.

  The Hidden Things are slippery and changeable. My research brought me into contact with people as different as dancing masters and bogus psychics, and led me to act in ways which polite society frowns upon. But I cracked, I think, the message of the adder; I found an extraordinary key.

  You see, everything goes back to what my father told me: you can’t move the wall. I don’t like to be told what I can and cannot do, yet I will agree that some actions are not practical. If I tried to move a drystone wall, rock by rock, I would be found before my work was done, and I would be stopped. It is true in practice, if not in theory, that you can’t move the wall. It doesn’t mean that you are stuck where you are.

  A drystone wall divides and conjoins. You can’t move it, but you have the option to study its innards, its mechanics, the microcosm of stone and biology which lies inside. The Hidden Things move inside the walls, so why shouldn’t you climb over them? You can trespass. You can trespass to the next field; you can trespass on the side of Hidden Things. What’s more, you have an intellectual obligation to do so. Wherever there is a boundary, wherever it is said that you are not allowed to walk any further, any intelligent person will be moved to do just that. Hic sunt leones? Here are the lions? Let me see them.

  In this sense, then, this pamphlet is a ‘field guide’. I will write down, in plain words, what I learnt about the Hidden Things, and I will explain how to get to their side of the wall. With the caveat that trespassing means breaking the law, which is a dangerous enough act.

  But laws are made by men of power, and their jealous God; and I have no love, or respect, for either.

  FABIO

  1

  I am standing in a dead man’s room.

  My father hasn’t touched a thing since I left for university. My comic books are still stacked on the shelves. My posters still hang from the walls. A cheap portable fan Tony got me as a joke (It’ll help you to survive evil, evil summer) rests on the small desk where I used to do, and not do, my homework. Even my Walkman is still there. A Walkman! I have seen a video on YouTube where a group of kids were handed one of those. They had no idea what it was or how to use it. My generation’s adolescence has been wiped out quickly and thoroughly. It is not a big deal, I guess. The young man I was is dead, but he was a bit of a prick anyway.

  I don’t understand why my father left everything as it was in here. Is it a shrine? In that case, he loves me more than I ever gave him credit for. Or perhaps he just couldn’t be bothered? In all likelihood, it is a statement: You are still a kid, this room tells me, and you are still from Casalfranco and you can do fuck all to change that. The person you were will never die, that awkward person always making excuses for himself, because time is not a river, it is a mountain – motionless, eternal, and you are not on the top of it, you are buried under it.

  The door opens and my father comes in.

  I have to suppress a flicker of irritation. He never knocked. He never admitted, in his house, the presence of boundaries. I had to bury beneath the wardrobe the first portraits I made, because if I had left them in one of my drawers, he would have found them during one of his regular searches. Do no evil and you will have nothing to fear, was his refrain. I wouldn’t have to check on you continuously if you were a better son.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asks me now, in the tone of someone who has a right to know.

  I am looking at myself in the mirror on the door of the wardrobe, buttoning up my shirt. I have bought a fresh pair of jeans and a white shirt; nothing that will get me in a fashion magazine any time soon, but a step up from the crumpled, sweaty t-shirts I have been wearing so far.

  ‘I’m seeing Mauro and Tony.’ Which is a lie.

  ‘You boys must decide what to do about Arturo.’

  Today is
a good day for my father. He was energised by Mauro’s visit, and hasn’t slipped once since then. The Internet tells me that good days are to be expected, with early-stage Alzheimer’s. Someone wrote on a forum, Good days are the worst, in a sense, because they remind you of what you’re losing. I understand the sentiment, though I am not sure I agree. Good days are the worst because even when he is dying, even with his brain deserting him, your father still thinks he knows better than you. And you know what? It is possible he does.

  ‘You must decide soon,’ he insists, when I don’t reply. ‘Mauro agrees.’

  ‘There are complications.’ The mirror reflects a passable image. At least I look clean. I spent half an hour in the shower, making up my mind about tonight.

  ‘It does not come as a surprise that Arturo was in bad company. Don Alfredo has known for some time that he was selling drugs.’

  I feel a surge of anger. The fucking priest, always meddling, always judging, preying on the weaklings, in saecula saeculorum. ‘Yeah? And how come he knows that?’

  ‘He is a priest.’

  I stop myself just before uttering a cocksucker. I am not fifteen and I won’t pick a fight with my dying father. ‘I have to go.’

  He closes his hands and opens them again. It is a nervous gesture of his, which, I am not pleased to say, I have inherited. ‘Listen…’

  ‘I’m listening,’ I answer. It comes out as more of a snarl than I would have wanted.

  ‘I want to thank you, Fabio. The two of us don’t often see eye to eye. You don’t like me and I am not sure I like the man you have become. But you are my son, and that means something, no, everything, to me. I am grateful that you agreed to stay in town a little longer. Lord knows I need company. Thank you.’

  I am taken aback. I honestly don’t remember the last time he talked to me like this, if ever. ‘Dad…’

  He turns his head. ‘It is not a ploy to keep you here. You went above and beyond what you consider your call of duty. I am simply giving credit where credit is due.’

  And I notice it in his voice: a tremor, a stifled twitch.

  He says, ‘I enjoy our time together, Fabio. Soon, I might not be lucid enough to say it.’

  He is holding back tears.

  2

  I walk through Casalfranco in a daze. My father just gave a roundhouse kick to my already shaky sense of reality. I enjoy our time together, Fabio. And he was crying. He taught me that crying is an act of self-indulgence, pointless, shameful, that it doesn’t solve problems, it makes them worse. The only other time I saw tears in his eyes was when Mum died, and even then only once, when they closed the coffin after the funeral.

  I wish I could convince myself that my father played a trick on me, that he concocted a story with Don Alfredo to make me feel this heart-wrenchingly guilty and miserable.

  The town is oppressed by the Sirocco. But it doesn’t stop holidaymakers and locals from filling the bars. There is a summer buzz in the streets, a merging of drunk voices and pop music and teenagers doing their struscio. I feel like a ghost. I could pass through them, through solid walls and flesh, and all they would notice is a drop in temperature. I envy each one of them for how connected to each other they are, for how much they belong.

  I pass by the Carabinieri station, that yellow fascist monstrosity. I know very well that I didn’t stay in town because of my father. Neither did I stay for Art. I stayed because at first the town forced me to, and then I stayed for an entirely different reason, one which is selfish, and wrong.

  I knock on Mauro’s door.

  It was a half-hour walk from my father’s place, and my once-crisp shirt is soaked in sweat. After a short wait, Anna opens the door. She wears shorts and a tiny vest, her nipples surfacing under the flimsy pale green fabric.

  ‘Fabio?’ she says, surprised to see me.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  She stands aside to let me in. ‘Weren’t you spending the evening with Angelo?’

  ‘That was a lie.’

  Anna doesn’t reply, but she closes the door. ‘The girls are sleeping,’ she says, in a soft voice.

  I whisper back, ‘Can I get some water?’

  She walks to the kitchen, barefoot, and I tiptoe behind her, following her through a dark corridor. There is no air conditioning, but the air is fresh nonetheless, between these thick white walls. A calendar from 2002 hangs on the kitchen’s wall. The year when Mauro’s parents moved to Milan, and this home officially became a holiday house. The past is everywhere in this bloody town.

  ‘Water or beer?’ Anna asks, opening the fridge.

  ‘Beer, since you’re asking.’

  She takes out two icy bottles of Peroni, opens them, and hands me one. ‘You guys didn’t tell me everything that’s going on with Art,’ she whispers.

  I shake my head. ‘But this is the last night.’

  ‘Is it? Mauro said the same thing. What he didn’t say was where he and Tony were going.’

  I swallow half of my bottle. ‘The nitty-gritty is, we’re done. It’s over.’

  ‘Well, as long as they’re not doing anything stupid.’

  ‘They’re safe, Anna.’

  ‘I don’t like being kept in the dark.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  Anna leans with her back on the fridge, a smile on her lips. ‘Why are you here, Fabio?’

  ‘Because this is the last night.’

  ‘And?’

  I take a long breath. The better angels of my nature hurl insults at me as I say, ‘And Mauro is not here, and when things go back to normal, I don’t know if and when you and I will have another chance to be alone together. And I crave being alone with you, Anna. I don’t… I don’t know if I love you, I don’t know. But I want you, I want you more than I ever wanted anyone, and this is our last chance. I…’ I swallow some more beer. ‘I’m making myself ridiculous.’

  Anna comes closer. ‘Not in the kitchen,’ she says.

  She takes me by the hand, and silently guides me out of the room, through a short corridor, to the bedroom she shares with Mauro. Those better angels, those sanctimonious pricks, are shouting and rattling their wings, but I barely hear them, enchanted as I am by Anna, by her bum gently swaying with every step she takes, by her long, healthy legs. She pushes the door closed behind her. ‘I’m in love with Mauro,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Can you handle that?’

  I don’t reply; I don’t have enough self-control left to talk. I put my hands on her shoulders, and kiss her on one cheek. Not on the lips; not yet. I remember vividly the only other time we fucked. I remember every moment and every gesture, and I remember she liked to play rough. I bring my mouth on her neck and bite, and she exhales happily as my tongue licks the skin I hold in my teeth, and the thought crosses my mind that Mauro might notice the signs on Anna’s neck tomorrow, and I don’t give a damn.

  Anna pushes me back, and takes off her vest. In the semi-darkness of the room, her skin shines with sweat. She grabs my head and forces it to one breast, and I close my teeth around the erect nipple, and she whispers, ‘Go.’ I bite her hard while she fumbles with her shorts and her knickers, and I keep biting when she undoes my jeans, and grabs hold of my cock.

  ‘Harder,’ she says.

  I slide my hand between her legs, and rest a finger on her clitoris, slowly tracing circles, my mouth filled with the salty flavour of her skin.

  Anna slaps my ass, laughing.

  ‘How dare you,’ I laugh, under my breath, and slap her back.

  ‘Don’t stop biting, dude.’

  I bring my lips to the other nipple and bite, as hard as I can, and she exhales again; not a moan, not yet, but almost there. I keep my finger on her clitoris, then I slide it further back, and I touch Anna’s wetness, complete, excessive, as is everything about her. Nothing in this world is as erotic as the wetness of a woman; it means that she likes you, that you are worthy of her. Nothing is as erotic as the wetness of Anna.

&n
bsp; I want to die here; I want to die while I fuck her, and forget my damn life.

  My phone rings.

  Anna jerks. ‘It’ll wake up the girls!’ she whispers.

  I fall on my knees, frantically fishing for my trousers, as the stupid phone keeps ringing. I finally find it. ‘It’s Tony,’ I say, raising my head.

  Anna is sitting down on the bed. She lies down on her belly, raises her legs behind her, and puts her chin on her cupped hands. ‘Already on their way back?’ she says. ‘We should hurry.’

  I turn off the phone, and hurry.

  TONY

  1

  My ears ring. Silvana stares at me. Her fazed eyes say that she can’t believe there’s a link between her finger on the trigger and the man falling in front of her. Mauro’s body hits the sand with a soft thump, louder to my ears than the gunshot in the crashing of waves. The girl snaps out of her daze and turns her back to us, and flees.

  I make a start behind her, but Mauro starts yelling, and I stop in my tracks. What am I doing? That bitch can run all the way to Hell for all I care. Mauro comes first. I fall on one knee beside him.

  ‘How bad…’ he swallows, ‘…how bad is it?’

  He’s brought his hands to where the bullet hit the flesh – just under the ribcage, which could be good or very bad. ‘Let me see.’

  Mauro moves his hands away. If only all my patients were this obedient. I sink my fingers in the blood of the entry wound. The wound itself is no biggie, and there’s no exit wound, meaning the bullet is lodged inside. I bring an ear to Mauro’s heart, which is beating fine, and then focus on the sound of his breath. I’ve heard worse. I don’t think there’s major internal damage, and the bullet didn’t touch the bones. ‘It looks worse than it is,’ I say, taking out my phone.