by Davide Longo
This evening, after the children had gone to sleep, I talked at length to Sebastiano about Clara. While I talked he looked steadily into my eyes without nodding or shaking his head. When he saw I had finished, he lifted one of his great hands and laid it on my head. I felt my ankles and knees and my other joints stop hurting and melt with warmth.
Then he withdrew his hand and lay down under the cowhide he uses as a cloak by day and as a blanket at night, and his breathing told me almost at once that he was asleep. I settled a branch on the fire. A mass of sparks rose to skim the ceiling of the stall where we have taken refuge. Watching them fall back and go out, I ask myself whether I am being subjected to an act of purification. Or whether sentence has already been passed and a bizarre judge has placed the scaffold a long way from the cell.
January 26
A day of full sunlight. The snow has been thawing and we have had to leave the fields to walk on the road.
We had been walking on the asphalt for about an hour when a car appeared from nowhere. We were aware of it at the last moment and dived for cover as it rounded the corner behind us. The youth who was driving it looked at the clump of birches where we had thrown ourselves. He didn’t slow down and I’m not sure he saw us, but I can’t be sure he didn’t see us either. I got the impression of a painted face and blond hair. The car was a little urban two-seater painted yellow in an amateurish manner with flames on the hood. The bass notes of a stereo could be heard from behind its closed windows.
Afraid the youngster might come back, we left the road. I was pretty sure we weren’t far from the pass, but it was dark when we reached the hillside. A slice of moon lit the last stretch of the climb.
Where the road descends the hill into Liguria we found a hotel, a bar, a children’s summer camp, and a few houses, all these places abandoned. Even so it seemed risky to stop there for the night because anyone coming over the pass would be able to see or smell the smoke from our fire. Of course we could do without a fire, but we need to eat something hot and dry our shoes. So I told the children and Sebastiano to shelter from the wind, and I set off by myself along the crest of the hill where great revolving wind turbines stand. After a kilometer I came across a small building with two floors. I think it must have been a base for the installation engineers. On the ground floor it has a kitchen and a room with a computer and other instruments, and on the upper floor two small bedrooms.
I went back for the children and we settled in. We lit our fire in the most sheltered room, the laboratory, and Sebastiano went to look for wood. Some of the equipment seems to be in working order, and two red indicators go on and off intermittently on one of the consoles. We ate some cured meat and then, while the soup heated, I told the children the road would be downhill the next day and within two days we’d be at the sea. Lucia said she had been to A. on vacation with her mother. For a few minutes the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the chomping of Bauschan’s jaws.
“I want to go to Switzerland,” Alberto said.
He spoke with none of the usual arrogance; it was the voice of a terrified child I had not heard before.
“Perhaps we’ll be able to get there from France,” I answered.
He looked at me across the flames of the fire. It seemed to me his mind must still be working on one of those decisive questions I have only read about in books, never experienced in real life, like crossroads crucial to a man’s destiny. His eyes were gentle and full of grace; for the first time, they were like Lucia’s eyes. Then suddenly his mouth hardened and he looked away. I understood he had made his choice.
When everyone was asleep I went out to urinate. Tonight the sky is covered with a thin gauze that magnifies the moonlight. The wind is cold but carries the smell of trees and of something unfolding.
I sat on a stone and searched the sky for some deficiency or excess that might explain what is happening. But the sky was the same as it always is, offering no signs. The powerful steel turbines were turning with a sound like enormous bicycles struggling uphill. I could see the red lights on their towers delineate the watershed between two valleys. I imagined this land after our own time, with the turbines still revolving and filling the silence with their powerful humming, cradling sleeping animals and driving them to mate as the sound of water does.
I am writing these last lines by the weak light of the dying fire. This act of writing that I had put behind me has returned to be part of me again, emerging from the dark place into which it had slipped. Before pulling my cover over me I kissed Lucia’s brow. I have a daughter, the night outside is deep and indifferent and everything seems destined to last longer than us. Yet I see beauty.
January 27
The snow has gone. The vegetation has changed. We haven’t yet seen the sea, but we’ve come across the first olives and can already feel the warm and pleasant wind rising from the coast. We walked all day at a good pace and after lunch allowed ourselves an hour’s sleep with our faces turned to the warm sun. There are no villages in the valley, only an occasional group of abandoned houses along the constant curves and hairpin bends of the winding road. No problems to report except that Bauschan has trodden on a tin can or a piece of broken glass and cut his paw. It was Lucia who told me he was limping and leaving bloodstains on the leaves. I disinfected the wound and tried to put a Band-Aid over it, but as soon as we began walking again it came off. I’ve tried a handkerchief, but he rips it with his teeth. This evening I repeated the medication. But it doesn’t seem to be anything serious. For the first time we’ve decided to sleep in the open. The marin, the wind rising from the sea, warms the air, and inside a ruin or other building it would be colder.
We’ve lit a small fire, screening it with stones. We’re tired but calm. It’s been a good day. I don’t know what we’ll find tomorrow when we reach the coast, maybe only other people like ourselves who have gotten so far and hope to be able to leave the country. Even if they haven’t yet succeeded, they will probably have organized themselves somehow and will be able to accept us. And if some have succeeded, it means it must be possible for us to find a ship and leave too; we do have a little money. If not, we’ll walk to France. I’ve copied the address Elio left me into this exercise book.
PART FOUR
It was not the sharp pain that woke Leonardo, but the sound of his nose being broken: a clean snap without an echo, like a stick breaking. Stunned, he opened his eyes, but barely had time to recognize the leaden first light of daybreak between the branches before something hard and hollow hit him on the cheekbone. As he sank into darkness he heard Lucia cry out. Opening his left eye, he saw her on all fours being dragged along by a man with an antique-looking rifle in his free hand.
“Lucia!” he tried to yell, but blood filled his mouth and turned her name into an incomprehensible choking sound. Then someone grabbed him by the collar. He kicked out in an effort to break free, but with the speed of someone who has done nothing else all his life, the man tied his head against the tree behind him with two turns of wire, forced his arms behind his back, and bound his wrists together. Leonardo felt his shoulder pop out of joint. He shrieked. Someone kicked him in the mouth, breaking several teeth.
When he opened his eyes again, a youth with blond hair was crouching beside him, his face a few centimeters from Leonardo’s. His hair was divided by a central part, and he had the nut-colored eyes of a young dog. Two glossy black marks on his cheeks looked as if they had been made with pitch or tempera. He had no eyebrows.
Leonardo began to say something, but the boy was too quick for him.
“Take it easy,” he said in a friendly voice.
When the boy got up, Leonardo saw Sebastiano and Alberto still lying where they had fallen asleep the night before. Raised on their right elbows, they were looking at him in astonishment. Sebastiano was holding Bauschan firmly under his arm; the dog was barking but could not drown Lucia’s cries.
The blond youth went to sit near them in front of what was left of the fi
re. He rubbed the bare, nervous arms emerging from his green leather waistcoat, and then he took a plastic pouch from his pocket, opened it, and lifted it to his nose and inhaled violently, before looking without interest at Sebastiano and Alberto. Nor did Bauschan’s barking seem to bother him. The part dividing his hair continued down the back of his neck, giving his head the appearance of a fish cleft in two on a serving dish. He had a large pistol stuck in his jeans.
Leonardo spat out his loose teeth and watched them disappear in the pool of blood forming in his lap. His nose felt enormous and shapeless and his right eye was throbbing as if trying to expel the eyeball. He began praying. The first thing that came to mind was the Act of Contrition, and he recited it straight through without hesitation even though he had not heard it for at least forty years. When he reached the end he realized Lucia was not shouting anymore. He looked at Alberto, whose eyes were fixed in spellbound terror on the boy before him.
“That’s enough,” the blond youth said, indicating Bauschan. “If you don’t silence him, I’ll shoot him.”
Sebastiano covered Bauschan with the cowhide and he stopped barking. In the enormous silence this created, Leonardo heard a sound from his right, like the sound of a garment being rubbed on a washboard. Weeping, he tried to turn his head, but the wire around his neck stopped him. He looked down. The grass around him was dark with his blood.
The noise stopped and footsteps could be heard among the dry leaves. A thickset dark-skinned youth went to sit next to the blond one. Leonardo recognized him as the man who had dragged Lucia away. He had the sawn-off antique rifle in his left hand.
“Have you left her on her own?” the blond youth asked.
“She’s passed out, and in any case I’ve tied her up. And the others?”
The blond boy looked at Alberto, who was staring at him without moving.
“Push off! Move! Get lost!”
Everyone stayed exactly where they were.
“See? He’s not moving. He’s shitting himself. And the one with the dog is bonkers.”
“Have you looked if they’ve got any food?”
“No.”
“So what have you done?”
The blond youth turned to glance briefly at Leonardo. He said nothing. On the other hand the dark thickset youth went on staring at the tall man before him, the child without shoes, and the dog under the cowhide. He seemed little enthused by what he saw. At the base of his skull was a round tattoo representing the Tao.
“Do you want to fuck the girl?”
“ ’Course I do.”
“Take her from behind then, that’s what I did. She could be a virgin.”
“Who cares if she’s a virgin or not?”
“But if we bring Richard a virgin, he’ll maybe take us back again.”
The blond youth got up decisively, but once on his feet, stopped to stare at the tattoo on the neck of the other. The thickset youth, still sitting on the ground, reached for Sebastiano’s bag, pulled it over, and began rummaging through it. The blond one spent a moment in thought; then thrust his hands in the pockets of his jeans and moved away. Leonardo heard his steps getting more distant. He counted to ten, realizing Lucia could not be far away. The light had changed: a pale sun had risen and the trees were beginning to produce vague shadows.
With a furious jerk he tried to get up, but the wire smacked into his Adam’s apple, threatening to make a shelled bean of it and taking his breath away. He began weeping or at least thought he was weeping, since all he seemed to have left for a face was a shapeless mass of flesh.
The dark youth, hearing his struggles, stopped inspecting their luggage and turned. His forehead sloped down in steps like that of a primate, and his gestures were graceless, but his little black eyes were evidence of an intelligence that was far from crude.
Leonardo wanted to kill him, kill him and then walk over to the blond boy and kill him too. It was a wonderful sensation, a revelation that lifted him and freed him from pain. Despite his dislocated shoulder and his smashed nose and eye, he knew his hands would have no difficulty in squeezing the necks of those two youths until they were dead. And he knew it would bring him joy and satisfaction. Guilt seemed something for others but not for him. Everything he had thought, done, written, and loved up to that moment meant nothing compared to this naked urge to kill.
The shaven-headed youth gave the other a smile as if welcoming someone who from now on will be a member of the family.
“What have you found?” the blond youth asked, fastening his trousers as he returned.
The dark one showed a package he had found in Sebastiano’s bag.
“What’s that?”
“Dried meat.”
“And the other one?”
“Coffee, I think.”
“Is it coffee or do you just think it is?”
“It is coffee.”
“Where did they get it?”
“How do I know?”
“Let’s ask them.”
“OK, let’s ask them.”
The thickset youth picked up the rifle and pointed it at Alberto.
“Where did you get this stuff?”
Alberto and Sebastiano stared at him in silence.
“Well?”
“In a house,” Alberto said.
“What’s this mumbling? Get up and speak up properly!”
Alberto stood up carefully. Once on his feet he looked down at the ash in the circle of stones. He had his hands between his legs as though he were naked.
“Some people in a house gave it to us.”
“What?” shouted the blond youth.
“They . . .”
The shot echoed through the valley and two huge birds rose from nearby bushes and passed close over their heads. The bullet must have hit a branch because something could be heard falling through the leaves and hitting the ground, but no one could see what it was. Bauschan started barking again. Alberto was crying and trembling.
“In a house!” he shouted.
“Where?”
“I don’t know! A long way off.”
“How far off?”
“Three days back,” Alberto shouted.
The thickset youth smiled at his companion.
“Do you believe him?”
The blond youth laughed. The thickset one lowered the gun and indicated to Alberto that he could sit down again.
“OK, OK,” he said. “Take it easy. Just joking.”
Alberto sat down with the same care as when he had got up and wiped away some snot hanging from his chin. Leonardo thought he could detect the shadow of a smile on his face even though it was contorted with terror.
“What now?” the blond youth said.
“Let’s move. Can the girl walk?”
“I think so, we just have to wake her up.”
“So go and wake her then.”
“And the others?”
“We’ll take the kid, to hell with the others.”
“Don’t we kill them?”
“I’ve only got one round left; I’m not going to waste it. You?”
“I’ve got two. We could kill them with the knife.”
The thickset youth passed a hand over his head. He had blue overalls over a short-sleeved shirt. His olive-colored arms bore little circular scars.
“I don’t feel much like it.”
“What if they follow us?”
“Their problem. Get the girl. You, nitwit, empty your knapsack.”
Sebastiano released Bauschan. The dog, once free, looked around uncertainly, then walked with his ears down to Leonardo and began licking his face. Sebastiano emptied the knapsack on the ground. A sweater, a pair of trousers, some children’s clothes, the exercise book with the brown cover, medicines, gloves, hats, powdered soup, two pans, a plastic bottle, two knives, a shoebox, a comb, some gauze. The thickset youth examined each item carefully, then he told Sebastiano to open the shoebox. Seeing the contents were only letters, he launched a kick at one of the stone
s around the bonfire. A cloud of ash danced in the air and was pierced by a ray of light before settling again.
“Haven’t you any money?”
Sebastiano went on staring at him in silence. His long, thin face seemed on the point of giving way to an emotion, but he stayed serious and distant.
“The girl had the money in her pants,” said the blond youth, who had disappeared to Leonardo’s right again. The thickset one looked at Alberto.
“Is there any more?” he asked.
Alberto shook his head.
“OK, put on your shoes.”
The blond youth came back, supporting Lucia with an arm around her back. She had lost her shoes and her sweater was torn. One foot was bloodstained.
“Make her put on her shoes,” the thickset one said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to carry her over my shoulder. Where’s the money?”
The blond youth took it from his pocket and handed it to his companion, then made Lucia sit down and looked around for her shoes. While he was putting them on her feet, Leonardo shooed Bauschan away with a sudden movement of his head and looked at his daughter’s face. She seemed to have aged by many years, years in which she had neither slept nor eaten nor seen the sun, just wept in the dark, until in the end she had forgotten life itself and what the experience of living can be. She had a bruise on her chin and her trousers were stained with earth. A leaf had settled in her disheveled hair.
“Shall I untie that one?” the blond youth asked when he had finished with Lucia’s shoes.
“Of course not! Take the food and let’s go.”
They filled a knapsack with the food and coffee, then the thickset youth signaled to Alberto to come over and put it on his back. The blond youth helped Lucia to her feet and supported her under the arms; she accepted this without protest. Leonardo watched them walk off. After a dozen steps, the forest swallowed them. All that remained was the silence of branches moving in the wind.