Tony steps forward. ‘Art…’
‘Don’t move another step, or I swear, I’ll jab a hole into your prissy face!’ He whips round. ‘I won’t let you trap me in your miserable world!’
He turns his back, and starts running.
TONY
1
Art starts running and I set off after him, choking down the impulse to stay and beat Fabio to a pulp.
Art runs deeper into the olive grove, far from the candlelight. It’s hellish terrain, with surfacing roots and jagged rocks. I’ve got to mind where I’m going, but Art is too crazy to bother; he runs and jumps like a gnome on cocaine, pulling away from me. When I get to the end of the grove, he’s a silhouette in the distance, barely visible against the countryside. He runs towards a narrow lane. I force my legs to a final sprint, but I still have to mind rocks and bushes, and Art skims them. He gets to his moped, and I put all of myself into my legs, praying for them to run faster, faster yet. The engine roars.
When I get to the lane, Art is gone.
‘Fuuuck!’ I shout to Art, to the sky, to the unmoved fields.
There is an emptiness, in me, I don’t know I’ll ever fill again.
2
Fabio leans against a tree, bug-eyed. The kitten’s body is at his feet, where he shoved it as if it were on fire.
‘Hey!’ I shout.
I’m ready to have a go at him, but Mauro stops me. ‘Let him be,’ he says.
‘He fucking killed a…’
‘It’s all right, Tony. It’s all right.’
I look at Fabio. Blood has stained his hands and his face and his t-shirt. He doesn’t care. A fog is lifting from my brain. Yes, what Fabio did is unforgivable, and he knows that as well as I do. But Fabio’s falling apart, and when a mate falls apart, you be there and keep him together.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I thought…’ he stops. ‘I don’t know. I just did it.’
I close my eyes and take a few long breaths, with the diaphragm, as I do before an operation. ‘It’s Art. He’s good at making people do things.’
‘I just did it,’ Fabio repeats.
Mauro says, ‘We should go.’
I ask, ‘Where?’
‘To find Art. In his mind, he has only a few hours left before this window of Time closes. Killing a cat wasn’t enough, and he doesn’t have other pets that he groomed. So: what’s he going to do next?’
Shit.
3
We drive by Art’s place. We know it’s chancy – Michele could have someone on it – but it’s a risk we must take. Art’s not there. That was our only idea. We go back inside Mauro’s car, but we don’t start the engine.
Mauro says, ‘We need to regroup and think.’
Fabio says, ‘We must call Michele.’
He’s slowly coming back to life. The blood on him is drying, and some colour is returning to his skin. ‘How’re you holding up?’ I ask.
‘Better than I deserve.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Mauro says. ‘We’re all looking for a way out.’
I’m not, I’d like to say. I was fine before all this, and I thought my mates were too. It’s been a non-stop reality check. Instead, I say, ‘Calling Michele is precisely what we must not do. He gets the picture that we’ve been keeping information from him, he’ll do unpleasant things. To us.’
‘What do we do then?’
‘Let’s go to Elena’s. We need to bring the tension down a notch, and you need a shower.’
Mauro says, ‘Is that safe?’
‘Fabio’s covered in blood. Do you want your girls to see him like that? Or my folks, or Angelo?’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘I trust my sister.’
Mauro hesitates, then turns the key. ‘If you say so,’ he says, as the engine comes to life.
FABIO
You don’t realise how easy it is to kill until you do it. It doesn’t take courage, or skill. It only requires you to stop thinking for one moment – and there, the deed is done. As long as you have a tiny patch of nothingness inside you, you will find that killing is as easy as breathing. Human beings are not the guardians and masters of earth, we are its alpha predator.
Water, boiling hot, pours over my body, in one of Elena’s many shower rooms. I killed a living being. It was only a kitten. I have seen local kids doing far worse. I eat meat every day. Every day someone kills for me: chickens, pigs, fluffy little lambs. Someone – not me, though, and that is the key. This is not about reason, this is about the visceral feeling of blood on my hands, of a warm body becoming stiff and lifeless because of an action I committed. I wonder what sort of actions Art committed. I wonder what sort of actions were committed on him, to propel him so far from the boundaries of everything we consider decent, and proper, and normal.
God, am I jealous of him.
How free he must feel. How invincible. Beyond the rules of men, beyond the vile shackles of this reality. In his mind it all holds together, the magic, the wonder. For a heartbeat, he managed to make it true in my mind too – and I will be damned if that heartbeat wasn’t the most beautiful of my life. I did believe. Of course I would sacrifice a kitten to hold on to that. Who wouldn’t? A life of beauty, enchantment and freedom, all that we strive for when we are children, all that we think will be ours one day, and then, invariably, one day we find does not exist. A life resplendent with all the colours we used to see before our world turned the hue of a charcoal-grey suit.
I turn the water off and ease myself into a fresh towel Elena has prepared for me. There is no way out. Photography doesn’t matter; sex doesn’t matter; all artistic endeavours are pathetic; there is no intuition, no blessing to be had. We live and then we die, and some of us are better players than others, but that is all there is: a poorly designed game. Mum died and she’s not singing happy hymns, in Heaven or with the Hidden Things. My father has Alzheimer’s and no wizard will cure him. I am a zero, and not even Art, a mad genius, could make me better. I killed a living being and magic didn’t happen.
Didn’t it?
I put on some clean clothes of Rocco’s and head downstairs. Tony, Rocco and Elena sit in the kitchen, with lukewarm coffee they will never drink. Tony’s phone is on the table, and Tony doesn’t move his eyes from it, as if he were in contemplation of a sacred icon. His face is the darkest I’ve ever seen it.
‘Where’s Mauro?’ I ask.
‘He couldn’t reach Anna,’ Tony says. ‘He went to check on her.’
‘You don’t think…’
‘I don’t know what to think tonight.’
The phone rings.
MAURO
1
The front door is open.
The front door is open.
I storm inside, calling at the top of my voice the name of my wife, of my girls. Nobody replies. I call Art’s name. The ground floor is empty. I run to the upper floor, where the bedrooms are.
Anna is lying on our bed, her legs akimbo, her face turned on one side. Not a natural pose. ‘Anna?’ I call. ‘Anna!’
I touch her skin. It’s warm. I put two fingers on her neck. There is a pulse, albeit slow. A new surge of panic. I rush to the girls’ bedroom. Oh my God, thank you. They are both here, in their beds. I turn on the light.
No.
Only Ottavia is in her bed, and I distractedly register how strange it is that she didn’t wake up. The bundle in Rebecca’s bed is crumpled linen. Rebecca is gone.
I have to grab the doorframe so as not to tumble down. My eyes fall on a note, on the floor, in Art’s handwriting.
Don’t call the Carabinieri, it says. Call me.
I take out my phone. It slips and falls down. The screen cracks, but the phone still works.
I dial Art’s number.
2
‘Art, you’re a fucking psycho.’
‘It is perfectly normal that you’re mad at me right now.’
‘Where’s my daughter?’
‘I want yo
u to understand the context. I want you to understand it perfectly. I’m tougher than any of you. The things I did… I did things, let’s leave it at that. Every time you commit an Action to trespass, you toughen up, and the next Action will necessarily need to be tougher in turn, do you understand that?’
‘Cut your crap, Art.’
‘No, the context is important, the context is everything indeed. You refuse to listen to me, even though I never let you down, I never let you down. Why do you refuse to listen to me? I tried to have one of you guys open the way, so that we wouldn’t have to do anything too horrible, but it didn’t work. You have to understand, Mauro, that killing animals is not enough anymore for me to trespass. Not remotely. I’ll tell you more. I wouldn’t say that just any girl would work, not after what I’ve been up to. My mate’s daughter, though? A girl I love as if she were my own? The thought alone gives me goosebumps. That’s just what we need.’
‘You’re going to kill my girl.’
‘I’m going to make her sacred! I have to leave, I have to; this world is too small for me. And it is too small for you too. How can you accept this travesty of a life? Find a job, sell your time, and then retire, in silence, and die. Isn’t that horrible?’
‘Art…’
‘You guys are the only reason I find myself in such an ungainly predicament. Do you think that taking Rebecca’s life doesn’t fill me with dread? It is exactly because it does that it will work. You will understand, Mauro. I promise you will understand.’
‘You’re at the olive grove.’
‘Mind, I want only the three of you here with me. No, wait, you can still bring Anna and Ottavia, if that makes you happy. If I see anybody else, I will sacrifice Rebecca and trespass all alone. But I’d rather go with my buddies, you see that? I’m sorry it had to go this way. When we’re on the other side you’ll come to see things my way. We’ll laugh about this, mate. One day we’ll laugh about this.’
Art rings off.
3
I sit on the sofa, and wait. My legs slightly opened, my arms resting just above my knees, my back bending forward, I wait. I look at the wall behind the TV and wait. After a century or two, I hear Tony’s car, I hear the front door open and my mates’ steps rushing in.
‘Upstairs,’ I say.
Tony runs, and I still wait, sitting on the sofa. Fabio clears his throat. ‘Dude…’ he tries, but he knows better and stops. I have no interest in whatever he could say. I wait; I wait for Tony to come down, and tell me if my life is over or not. Another century goes by, then another, and I wait, on the sofa, looking at the switched-off TV.
At last, Tony’s steps climb down the stairs, and I lift my head.
‘They’ll be fine,’ he says in a clipped voice. ‘Art injected them with anaesthetic. He knows how to use it.’
I take a few moments to ensure I didn’t make up his words. ‘They’ll be fine,’ I repeat. ‘They’ll be fine?’
Tony nods. ‘The anaesthetic will run its course and they’ll wake up.’
‘Good.’ I stand up; I am done waiting. ‘Let them sleep through this.’
I wish I could do the same.
FABIO
1
It is dawn when we get to the olive grove. I have not seen the sun rise in a long time. It is a red sphere between the red sky above and the red dirt below, in one of those dawns so common in southern summers – the air still retains a small measure of coolness, which is only there to tantalise you, and will be swept away in the next few minutes. Many things will be swept away in the next few minutes.
Tony is packing a gun. He asked one of Elena, and she produced a small selection to take his pick from. We don’t talk about what he’s going to do with it. He said he’s not going to do anything at all – but.
‘Jesus,’ says Tony now.
The olive grove is on fire. I make out trees burning. Each tree is a different flame, red as everything else is red, with smoke billowing up in long, long spirals.
Then I move my eyes to the side of the lane, and what I see there frightens me even more. We were expecting to find one car parked – Art will have stolen one to come here with Rebecca. But there are two.
Sitting on the boot of a blue Fiat Punto is Michele, smoking a cigarette.
Tony swallows. ‘Fuck you, sis,’ he mutters. Friends and family are what he lives for, and friends and family are letting him down one after the other. This is the worst thing that could happen to him, worse than financial ruin, perhaps worse than a terminal illness.
Tony pulls in and we get out of the car. Michele has a gun stuck prominently in his jeans. He jumps down from the car with the agility of a man thirty years younger. ‘Compari,’ he greets us. He takes out his gun.
Tony spits. ‘Thirty pieces of silver? Was that the price you paid to Elena?’
‘Elena did the clever thing, for her family. Means for you too.’
Tony marches towards him, with a stride I have seen him taking in the past, when he was going to deliver his idea of punishment on some would-be bully. ‘Elena is a bitch.’
‘That girl is the one reason you will probably get to live after disrespecting me. Do you hear that? The only reason, son.’
‘You’re not coming with us,’ Mauro says. ‘Art was clear: only us, and my family if I wanted. He’s going to kill my girl when he sees anybody else.’
Michele waves his gun. ‘I’ll do what I please.’
‘You’ll do what’s clever,’ says Mauro. ‘We can take Art. Then he’s all yours.’
Tony says, ‘A little girl is a difficult body.’
Michele points his gun at us. ‘Go. I’ll follow you at a distance.’
Mauro sets off towards the olive grove, and Tony and I go behind him.
‘Oh, and, Tony?’ Michele calls. ‘Don’t be smart. The shooter Elena gave you: it’s unloaded.’
2
I smell petrol. Art has soaked the olive trees, one by one, and set them on fire, in an amped-up version of the candles he lit earlier tonight. It’s not all the trees, but enough of them to make the grove hotter than the beach at noon. The trees burn like uncanny torches, stuck in the soil, reaching deep underground. Each of them is hundreds of years old. Such a squandering of life. Such a boost, in Art’s troubled mind, to his spell.
We walk through trees on fire. The thick smoke makes it almost impossible to discern the shape of objects and people. The scrub will catch fire any moment, and then the entire grove will burn and it will be an inferno. But for the moment, I don’t feel an immediate sense of danger. What few animals dared to tread this grove have fled the fire; the only sound comes from the crackling flames. It is not silent in here, but it is very quiet, in its own way.
Wading through the mist-like smoke we finally come across Rebecca. She is lying peacefully asleep in the lap of the root of a majestic tree, which the fire has spared so far. I did not notice this particular tree the other times I was here, and I wonder how that’s possible, considering how tall and thick it is. It has seen centuries upon centuries; its trunk seems to be made of numerous smaller trunks winding around each other and reaching to the sky with a forest of arms and fingers. Rebecca could be a creature of the wild, a changeling, more in her place here than in a city. Art sits beside her, with the kitchen knife. Tidy as always, he’s wiped it clean of the kitten’s blood.
When he sees us, he jumps up with a broad smile. ‘You came!’ he says. ‘Oh, I knew you’d come!’ He’s excited like a boy who just robbed Santa. ‘This is going to be epic, guys!’
‘Let her go,’ Mauro says, advancing towards him.
Art’s expression darkens. He swiftly kneels down and brings the knife to Rebecca’s throat. ‘Don’t.’
Mauro stops in his tracks.
My eyes are welling up from the smoke. I wipe them. Art’s eyes are filling too, but they are real tears. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he says. ‘After you’ve danced with the Hidden Things, being trapped here,’ he beats the soil with a foot, ‘is miserab
le. It is… I can’t take it, dude. I can’t take it.’
‘You’re right, it sucks,’ Tony says.
Art lifts his head to him. ‘You understand, then.’
‘I do. It sucks and it’s unfair. The Hidden Things are all you ever wanted, and you renounced them for us, and we’ve been much too big sissies to get back on their side with you. That’s unfair, and it’s unfair that we didn’t trust you.’
‘Yes…’
‘But you know what? Life’s unfair. Deal with it, man.’
‘I can escape. We can.’
Tony kicks a stone, lazily. ‘At the price of a mate’s daughter? Seriously?’
‘You still don’t believe me.’
‘No, Art, it’s not that I don’t believe; it’s that I don’t give a fuck. Mates come before anything else. Your crew, your family, that’s all that matters. So when life is unfair, and it is, more often than not, you do fucking take it. Not for you, for them. I’ll forgive my mates almost everything. Letting me down, though? That’s where I draw the line. Open me the secret gates to the universe! Show me wild magic, show me your Madama, show me a horny Lord for me to shag forever after, and I still won’t give a fuck, because you’re a sell-out who’d double-cross a mate to get what he wants. I won’t say thank you and I won’t have a laugh and I won’t come with you, and I swear, man, I will never forgive you. So. Your call.’
Every muscle in Mauro’s body is tense. Mine, too. We are ready to jump on Art, to try and disarm him before he can hurt Rebecca.
But Art’s grip on the knife releases; he bows his head, his eyes streaming, and lets go of the blade.
‘Pick it up,’ Michele says.
He comes out of the blazing trees, pointing his gun at Art. ‘Come on, pick it up.’
Art looks at him. ‘You’re the last person I was expecting.’
‘Show me the saints, Art,’ Michele says. ‘Pick up the knife and show me.’
The Book of Hidden Things Page 27