by Davide Longo
“Now I feel calm.”
“Why?”
“Because I know when I ask you to do something I can’t do myself, you’ll do it well.”
Salomon looked down. Leonardo placed his hand on the boy’s head. His fair hair was smooth and shone like new grass. His blue eyes collected light, absorbing something from inside himself and releasing it again very slowly.
“I have to ask you one more favor.”
The child looked up.
“Let’s keep to ourselves what we saw in that house.”
“You mean the skeletons?”
“Yes, better not tell the girls about that.”
“I only cried out because it was such a surprise.”
“I know, but it would frighten them.”
Salomon stared at the flame.
“What happened to those people?”
Leonardo had found tufts of hair; the man and woman had died of hunger or cold, and dogs and wolves must have found some way of getting into the house.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but best keep it to ourselves.”
“I’d already decided not to say anything.”
“I can believe that.”
Salomon looked at the refrigerator and the washing machine against the wall. Apart from a pile of planks thrown down in the middle of the room, the cellar was in perfect order. There was a well-stocked tool shelf, a rack for garden tools, and a workbench with a vice and grindstone for working with metals. When he had come in there that morning and seen that equipment and the planks, he had imagined someone dreaming of an imminent flood and seized by the urge to build a barge. Someone who after buying the wood had suddenly become less confident about trusting his dreams.
“I wish Lucia and the other lady would say something,” Salomon said.
Leonardo slid his hand down his face.
“Sometimes people are happier keeping silent.”
“But they will talk in the end, won’t they?”
“It may take time. We must be patient, OK?”
“OK. Will they be happy we found the potatoes?”
“Yes, they’ll be very happy about that.”
They lit the stove and put a pan of water on to boil, then they prepared one of the beds in the upstairs room and left the door open for the heat to rise and warm it. They washed plates and cutlery and cleaned the surface of the dresser; then they put everything they had found on it, which at the moment was their whole fortune.
When the potatoes had boiled, Leonardo went into the bedroom next door and touched the bald woman’s shoulder to wake her. She opened her eyes at once, as if she had only been pretending to be asleep. She looked serious, attentive, and confident, with no trace of the terrified girl Leonardo had led out of the hotel by the hand.
“We’ve found something to eat,” Leonardo said, then interrupted himself and looked at Lucia, who was fast asleep, with her mouth half open and one hand under her cheek. Her breathing was calm and regular.
“Let her sleep,” the woman said. “That’s what she needs at the moment.”
They sat down at the table and the woman peeled the potatoes. She had on a man’s sweater they had found in the wardrobe and a pair of pants rolled above her ankles, but Leonardo noticed that she had not taken off the torn and dirty dress in which she had come. She told them her name was Silvia and asked Salomon his name. The child told her; then they ate in silence.
Salomon occasionally looked at the rope marks on the woman’s wrists and the cold sores on her face. He seemed less impressed by the way her hair had grown back in tufts over her shaved head. Their meal only took a few minutes, and they left two potatoes on a plate for Lucia when she woke up.
“Do you know what I’d like now?” the woman said.
Leonardo shook his head. She smiled, her teeth shaded by an opaque film.
“Some coffee.”
They sat in silence, watching the flame of the lamp bending toward the empty side of the table in the draft from the door. From time to time Salomon closed his eyes and his chin fell on his chest.
“Go to bed now,” Leonardo told him.
The child looked at the stairs; then started playing with a piece of potato peel, shaping it so that it looked like a whale. Leonardo wrapped the base of the lamp in the towel and offered it to Salomon.
“You take it,” he said. “I’ll blow it out when I come up.”
Salomon said goodnight and climbed the stairs to the upper floor. The light he was taking away surrounded him like a cloak. Left in the dark, Leonardo went to open the door of the stove; the fire inside cast light on the walls. He began clearing the table, carrying the plates one at a time to the sink.
“No, I’ll do that,” the woman said, getting up. “You sit down, we haven’t done much to help you today.”
She rinsed the plates and glasses in the sink, then she poured a little of the water used for boiling the potatoes into the two cups and sat down again. Anyone walking in at that moment would have seen a man with thick gray hair and a woman with a badly shaved head sitting facing one another by the weak light of the fire with two cups in front of them, as if about to embark on an existential conversation. But on closer inspection, he would have seen that the man’s face was deeply scarred and that the woman’s hands were damaged and incapable of keeping still for more than a few seconds at a time.
“How old is your daughter?”
“Seventeen.”
The woman stared at her cup.
“Now I’m going to tell you something you might think rather impersonal and insensitive, but it’s the only way I can be useful to you. Would you like to hear it?”
Leonardo nodded.
“I worked as a psychologist with an international organization and traveled in a war zone where rape was used as a weapon for ethnic cleansing. My job was to convince the women to report the rapes and to help organize assistance for them. So I know what I’m talking about.”
The woman took a sip of hot water and put the cup down over a small mark on the table.
“Lucia’s in a state of shock. It often happens to girls who suffer violence, especially if they are young and their ordeal goes on for a long time. The fact that she doesn’t speak or react to external stimuli is part of the picture, but don’t be misled into thinking she isn’t feeling anything: there is certain to be enormous anger inside her. She feels responsible in some way for what has happened to her and hates herself for not having been able to extract herself from it. She has suffered very deep humiliation.”
Leonardo met her eyes without moving a muscle in his face.
“It may take a long time before she emerges from the shell inside which she has closed herself, and it’s even possible she may never emerge from it, or not entirely. All you can do is keep close to her without trying to hurry things on. Act as if you are waiting for her to return from a journey and in the meantime are looking after her home for her. Talk to her, even if she seems not to listen. Touch her hands and feet but not any other part of her body and never hug her however much you want to, because that could make her feel imprisoned. It could even make her unconsciously superimpose you on the image of that man. In any case, it’s likely she can remember little or nothing of what you have been to her and done for her in the past. You mustn’t feel hurt by that; it’s only a defense mechanism. I know you love her very much and that you will know how to do what is right for her.”
“How old are you?”
“Twice your daughter’s age.”
“Have you anyone yourself?”
“No, not any longer.”
Leonardo looked out of the window; the moon had turned the trees to stone.
“We’ll wait until the snow melts, then make for the coast. You could come too.”
The woman got up and put another piece of wood in the stove and then filled a pan with water at the sink and placed it on the hot cast-iron cooking surface.
“Now we’ll have a little warm water to wash in tomorrow morni
ng,” she said.
Leonardo realized his thoughts would stop functioning long before dawn and that there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“Until tomorrow, then,” the woman said.
“Until tomorrow.”
When she withdrew to the other room, Leonardo went to take a little hay to Circe and David, and he talked to them for a long time about what he was afraid might happen.
The elephant and the donkey gave him their full attention, chewing great handfuls of dried grass. A full moon lit the valley and in the silence of the night Leonardo sensed life quivering under the snow as the earth softened and opened.
He urinated.
Then he went up to the bedroom, extinguished the lamp Salomon had placed on the floor well clear of the bed, and lay down beside the little boy who was wheezing lightly like a sleeping rodent. In the dark he felt Salomon’s forehead; it was warm with exhaustion, but he had no fever. On the other hand Leonardo felt himself to be burning hot. He closed his eyes but tried to stay awake so as not to miss any sounds from the floor below.
A few minutes, or perhaps a few hours later, he was awoken by hearing steps. He made his way downstairs without lighting the lamp, but the kitchen was empty and silent. Nor was there any sound from the room where Lucia and Silvia were. He went back to bed and slept.
When he woke again it was light. The room had a small window that was reflected in a mirror on the wall, making it look as if two suns were rising from opposite points of the compass.
Salomon was sleeping curled against him. It was the first time for a very long time that he had smelled a good smell, and he lay staring at the cloudless sky and the outline of the mountains beyond the faded curtains, reflecting that the scent, the color, and the shape were all one. When he delicately extracted his arm from beneath the child’s head he realized it was completely numb from the shoulder down, so he massaged it until he could feel the blood beginning to circulate again and his wound starting to throb inside the bandage. Only then did he get up and head for the stairs.
The first thing he saw when he got down was that the pan was no longer on the stove.
He found it in the bathroom with the woman’s dress and pants. He could smell the cake of soap, which was still on the basin. He picked up the clothes, threw them into the stove, lit it, and went out.
It did not take him long to find her. She had chosen an out-of-the-way spot that Leonardo was certain to find. A solitary holm oak in the middle of a pasture.
By the time Lucia and Salomon woke, Leonardo had already milked Circe.
The child and the girl sat at the table sipping milk from steaming cups. Leonardo rubbed his nails on a sponge at the sink, trying to clean them of earth. Then he joined the others at the table.
“The woman who was with us has gone,” he said. “Her family is not far away, and she wants to join them.”
Salomon looked at the muddy bandage that Leonardo had not yet changed and the scratches on his right hand, lowered his eyes and said nothing. Lucia went on staring at the stove, chewing a potato left over from the night before.
In the afternoon, while they were busy in the cellar, Salomon and Leonardo heard music from the road. They ran to the beeches at the edge of the field and, hiding in the bushes behind the great trees, they watched the familiar procession pass on the main road. The Land Rover was leading, followed by a car they had not seen before, and the coach, towed by a tractor. Most of the youngsters were lying on the roof of the coach or on an agricultural trailer that had been attached to it. The cripple, sitting on the hood of the first car, was wearing a bizarre piece of headgear and inspecting the road ahead. He was holding a pike on the end of which Leonardo recognized Richard’s head, blond hair waving in the wind like a ragged flag.
When the music faded in the distance, Leonardo and Salomon went back to the cellar where they had been struggling with the snare for a couple of hours already, trying to replace its old spring with another one taken from a sofa.
“What was the name of the lady who went away this morning?” Salomon asked.
Leonardo realized that Salomon had not recognized Richard’s head.
“Silvia,” he said. “Now let’s try again.”
He grasped the cord that he had attached to one end of the spring while Salomon tried to fasten a hook to the snap mechanism connected to the framework.
“It’s gone in!” Salomon said at one point.
Leonardo opened his eyes, which he had closed with the effort he was making.
“Good.”
The child placed the trap carefully on the floor. He studied it for a long time: it looked like the jaws of a fish, but also like a great dried flower.
“Will the lady be able to find her family?” he asked.
“Yes,” Leonardo said, not feeling he was telling a lie.
That evening, when the boy was asleep, he went down the stairs to the room where Lucia was. Placing the lamp on the windowsill, he sat down at the foot of the bed. Lucia was staring at the ceiling, a slight smile on her lips. She was still wearing the red dress and had not washed since they arrived.
Leonardo slipped off her shoes, took her little feet in his lap, and began massaging them with his remaining hand. She went on gazing at the ceiling as if her feet belonged to someone else.
“I’ll do this every evening,” he told her, “for as long as I live.”
He stopped talking and massaging her feet because it was dawn. Then he put out the light and, by the feeble light of daybreak, climbed the stairs to bed. Salomon was asleep, but some dream must have disturbed him because his mouth was twisted in a grimace and his hair, usually so neat, was in disorder. Using his fingers as a comb, Leonardo tidied the boy’s hair; then he lay down beside him and shut his eyes.
PART FIVE
With the coming of May they reached the hills from where they planned to begin their descent to the sea.
It was a clear evening and the sky was bright in the east, as if the sun setting behind the mountains was already about to appear on the other side of the world.
For twenty days now they had been trudging through the woods, avoiding roads, villages, and even hamlets with only a few houses. When Leonardo noticed the youngsters were tired, he got them to climb onto David’s back. The elephant accepted this burden without protest and proceeded at a slow, solemn pace. Circe, bringing up the rear, was saddled with two large panniers they had constructed from wicker baskets. These contained blankets, clothes, knives, the lamp, tools, and a little food collected before they left, including a pumpkin, some nuts, a handful of flour, a bottle of wine, and two onions. Along the way they had found the bodies of a woman and a man in a hut and the carcasses of cattle devoured by dogs, deer, wild boars, and other game, but no one they could exchange a word with.
One morning they saw from a distance an old man running on the road and disappearing into a factory building, but neither Leonardo nor Salomon wanted to go and find out who he was and whether there might be anyone else there.
A little before dusk Leonardo would decide where they would spend the night, and after lighting the fire would go out and set the snare.
“We’ll reach the sea tomorrow, won’t we?” Salomon would ask while they waited for the rabbit or hare caught the previous night to cook on the flames.
“Not quite yet.”
“But it can’t be very far now?”
“No, not far.”
They would eat in silence, Lucia and the child with a good appetite and Leonardo less hungrily; then he and Salomon would sew the animal’s skin together with other skins from which they were making a cover. If the day had been wet and the skin was not dry enough, they would stretch it out by the fire and postpone their work until the next day. While he was sewing, the boy’s eyes would sometimes close so that he pricked himself with the wire they used for a needle, but he would refuse to go to sleep until the job was finished. When he put the cover down he would go and greet David and Circe, who would be brows
ing in the circle of light cast by the fire; the elephant polishing off newly sprouting leaves while the donkey concentrated on young grass. Salomon would stroke them and thank them for carrying him when he was tired, then he would go back to the fire, say goodnight to Lucia without ever looking her in the eyes, and lie down under his cover.
While they chatted before going to sleep, the boy would talk about his father and mother and other people he cannot have known. Leonardo would listen without interrupting because he knew true things were spoken in those words, and he would stroke his head until he fell asleep, then get up and go to Lucia.
Sometimes the girl would be staring up at the immense vault heavy with stars above them, and sometimes she would be asleep. Leonardo would take her feet in his lap and caress them lovingly, talking to her about her childhood, places they had visited and things they had loved doing together, but never about things that had frightened them. David and Circe, attracted by his voice, would come near and listen spellbound, their round black eyes reflecting the fire.
Lucia would breathe softly, her expression never changing: even in sleep her body seemed wrapped in a shroud of stillness and distance.
By the time Leonardo lay down it would be nearly day and the air chilly, but even without covers he would quickly fall asleep and not feel the cold.
He would walk all day in bare feet, eating and drinking very little, sleeping two hours a night, defecating when he woke in the morning and urinating three times a day, yet he would never have claimed to be hungry, tired, cold, or tormented by any great physical need. The months spent in the cage had toughened his body, paring him down to the essential; his arms bundles of nerves with prominent veins and his leg muscles like sheaths of leather. His eyes, half hidden behind a curtain of hair and beard, shone sea-green. The skin of his face was brown and wrinkled. The scar of his amputation had healed well and looked as if his hand had been not so much cut off as reabsorbed into his arm.