Sanctuary

by Luca D'Andrea

  He was a friendly fellow, even though he had good teeth and not so much as one broken fingernail. A bit too much of a city slicker for their liking, but you never said no to free beer. So they chatted, laughed and told stories.

  A man dressed in an old-fashioned black greatcoat, the kind they don’t make anymore, which can withstand rain, snow and cold. Do you know him?

  Of course we do. We’ve seen him.

  Then they nudged each other and began to snigger. The Trusted Man kept his smile. He raised the beer to his lips and pretended to drink.

  “We saw him forty years ago.”

  And they laughed hysterically.

  “Forty years ago?”

  “Give or take. They called him Voter Luis. A Bau’r. A Kräutermandl. He was a good man. Peter here can tell you what a good man he was, isn’t that so, Peter?”

  The old man with the ruddy nose and watery eyes nodded so energetically that he spilled some beer on himself, right on the crotch of his trousers, triggering more laughter.

  “He saved my wife. It was in . . . Let me think. Was the war over or not?”

  “There’s just one problem, stranger,” one of the three old men said. “Voter Luis died a long time ago. Looks like you’re chasing a ghost.” And he slapped the table.

  The Trusted Man signalled to the barman to bring more beer. “The man I’m looking for is still alive. But it’s a beautiful evening and we’re all friends. You’ve made me curious. Are there really ghosts around here?”

  The three old men laughed, but not the way they had earlier.

  “That’s just nonsense.”

  “I like nonsense.”

  The old men exchanged looks, and the drunkest of the three, who was also called Peter but unlike the other one had a bloated belly and not a single hair on his head, stroked his thick beard and knocked back his drink.

  “They say that towards the end of his life,” he said, tapping his own temple, “Voter Luis wasn’t all there. He went mad and started messing about with fire.”

  “If you’re going to tell it,” the other Peter interrupted, “then tell it properly. He wasn’t mad, he—”

  “Oh, he wasn’t, was he?” The third old man muscled in. He had a droopy moustache, like a Viking. “What would you call someone who starts worshipping the devil?”

  The Trusted Man raised an eyebrow. “The devil? Voter Luis worshipped the devil?”

  Fat Peter slammed his hand down on the table. “You see why it’s nonsense? Voter Luis, may he rest in peace, was a decent man. But after his wife died he became a little . . . strange. That, definitely. I remember it well. And maybe his daughter’s death made him more solitary than before. Of course it did. My brother, down in Monguelfo, lost his son. He had an accident while he was taking the hay down the mountain on a sledge – he was crushed, poor boy – and my brother almost lost his mind from grief. It’s only natural, don’t you think?”

  “Except that no one ever found out how Voter Luis died,” the Viking said suggestively.

  Fat Peter snorted. “People die, that’s all.”

  “So where does the ghost come in?”

  “I’ve never believed in ghosts.”

  “Oh, really?” the other Peter said. “And what about people going missing? You don’t believe in that, either?”

  “What people?” the Trusted Man asked.

  “It’s all part of the story,” the third old man said, while the two Peters hunched over their glasses. “Because we’re all talking about the same story, stranger. And if you want to hear it, you should treat us to something better than this cow’s piss.”

  The Trusted Man did not need to be asked twice. The innkeeper left a bottle of grappa on the table, together with the keys to the inn. “You lock up,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

  He left.

  “Voter Luis dies, but his ghost makes people disappear?” the Trusted Man asked, after the first round.

  “He makes them disappear. Quite a few people. He kills them, so they say. Not that the rest of us” – he coughed – “really believe that.”

  “It’s just a story.”

  “It’s just a story.”

  “And where would I find this ghost?”

  “In Voter Luis’ maso,” fat Peter said. “At the far end of the valley, high above the treeline. A hellish place.”

  “What’s beyond the valley?”

  “Mountains. Glaciers. That’s what.”

  “And beyond the glaciers?”

  “Austria, obviously,” the other Peter replied.

  The Trusted Man took out his map with the marks all over it and put it on the table, shifting the empty glasses and the bottle of grappa out of the way. “And no one goes through there?”

  The three old men didn’t reply.

  The Trusted Man smiled. “Smugglers?”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. And do they all come back?”

  The Viking toyed with his glass. “A person doesn’t always have to come back the same way he went, does he?”

  “So is there or isn’t there a ghost?”

  Fat Peter refilled the Trusted Man’s glass. “There certainly are three old men enjoying making fun of a stranger. There’s only rocks, snow and death up there in the mountains if you don’t know what you’re doing. And you’re not a mountain man, am I right?”

  The Trusted Man spread the map on the dirty table. “No, but I’m curious. Can you show me where Voter Luis’ house is?”

  The Viking stood up. “I’m going to have a pee, and then I’m going home. My wife will be worried.”

  The other two laughed. No one put a finger on the map.

  “Please.” The Trusted Man moved the map towards the two Peters.

  It was the thinner Peter who pointed a thick finger at the far end of the valley. “Here.”

  “And where’s the area where they say people go missing?”

  The first Peter drew a circle large enough to encompass mountain peaks, glaciers and depressions. “More or less here,” he muttered.

  The Trusted Man examined the map. The image he had formed of the Wolf suddenly vanished. Instead, he pictured a spider. A long-legged spider lying low amid these mountain peaks, surrounded by an invisible web, waiting for a victim: an unfortunate little fly. That explained his familiarity with death. The clean cut to the throat, the indifference, the madness.

  Especially the madness.

  But not his connection to the Vixen.

  “This entire area?”

  The two Peters exchanged glances. “More or less.”

  “It’s many, many hectares,” the Trusted Man said. “At an altitude of two thousand metres.”

  “A hellish place.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  In the meantime, the Viking had come back and sat down, grumbling. “It’s a dangerous area, my boy. We had a laugh, a joke. We had fun, didn’t we? But that’s still a dangerous area. I wouldn’t set foot there for love nor money.”

  “Bullshit,” the second Peter said.

  “Would you go there?” the Viking said, challenging him.

  Both Peters bowed their heads.

  The Trusted Man waited. This was the right moment. The moment when the three old men would either continue bullshitting or spill the beans.

  The Viking knocked back the remains of his drink. “Listen,” he said in a low voice. “Here’s the story. Forget about ghosts and all the rest, alright?”

  The Trusted Man smiled. “Clean slate.”

  “Voter Luis was a good man. A man of faith. We all know he saved quite a few people before he went mad. His wife died in childbirth, and then a few years later his daughter died. Whenever he came down to the village he’d talk nothing but rubbish. Then he also died and his son was left behind. All the rest, about Voter Luis starting to worship the devil, is just nonsense, something to scare the kids.”

  “And nosey strangers,” fat Peter
added, pouring himself a drink.

  “Voter Luis had a son?”

  “He’s the ghost. He comes down to the village every now and then. Doesn’t talk much. He’s . . . he’s different.”

  “What does ‘different’ mean?”

  “He wears his father’s clothes,” the Viking said. “That’s why they say he’s Voter Luis’ ghost. But it’s just spite.”

  “What about the people who go missing? Could it be that . . .”

  “People disappear here same as anywhere else,” the Viking said emphatically. “Some end up in a crevasse, others get killed over a gambling debt. Then there are those who drop everything and move to town without telling anyone. It’s just that the loudmouths always have to have their say. When they say it was the ghost, they’re actually blaming the poor fellow. Believe me. I’ve spoken to him. He’s a man of faith, like his father. An eccentric, yes. And a lone wolf, that’s for sure. Who on earth could live all alone up there? But” – and here the old man leaned towards the Trusted Man and looked him straight in the eye – “Voter Luis’ son isn’t dangerous. He’s got his maso, his mountain, and he doesn’t want anything else.”

  “Everybody wants something else,” the Trusted Man said with a sneer.

  “Not him.”

  Finally, the second Peter spoke, his eyes swimming in drink. “You’re going up there, aren’t you, son?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “It’s a dangerous place for a city slicker.”

  “Appearances can be deceptive.”

  “You like dancing with the devil, don’t you?”

  The Trusted Man held out as long as he could, then burst out laughing, tears running down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I . . .” He sniffed and tried to catch his breath but could not stop laughing, despite all his efforts. “Please excuse me if I seem rude. It’s just that I, too, in a way, was raised by a man of faith and . . .”

  He could not go on. He rolled up his shirtsleeves. His arms were covered in burns. The three old men, who had seen many horrors in the war, were taken aback.

  The Trusted Man still could not stop that irrepressible laughter. “Please excuse me, really . . .” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “The devil . . . I’m really sorry . . . the devil doesn’t exist. I know. These scars are my witnesses.”

  105

  Six. Nine. Four. Four.

  Another combination for accessing the past. Two things happened in Bolzano on 6 September 1944. The blinding flash of a meteorite lit up the night sky, and a baby was born. A blond little angel with a downturned mouth.

  The baby was a little angel, but a sulky little angel. A seraph. He did not laugh and he never cried. A thoughtful child, the doctor told his mother, who was concerned about her otherwise healthy son. And who could blame her?

  He had been born during the bombardment (although this was not true: the first bomb fell on Bolzano on the ninth of September, not the sixth; the sixth was the day of the meteorite) and had had to take life seriously from his first breath.

  It was a joke, and his mother laughed. Deep down, she thought the doctor was a prize idiot.

  The child grew, a self-absorbed boy who did not laugh or cry.

  At school, he was top of the class. The teacher never missed an opportunity to praise him in front of schoolmates and colleagues. If he had conformed to the cliché, he would have been hopeless at sports, but this was not the case. He was always in the top three at competitions. He was nimble, accurate and tireless.

  His father was very proud of the prizes the boy would bring home, and displayed them in a row, like soldiers, behind the cash register in the family shop in Dodiciville, northwest of Bolzano. Unlike his wife, he was not worried about his son’s behaviour. His ancestors were made of strong stuff, heroes who had fought under Andreas Hofer against Napoleon and the French. They certainly weren’t people who gave in to their emotions. Besides, he thought the boy looked happy.

  And indeed he was.

  Until the age of nine, the world of the boy who did not laugh or cry was perfect. Everything around him – cars rushing past over the cobbles, women chatting at the market on Piazza Erbe, the aroma of cakes in the oven, sparrows chirping on the windowsill – was pure illusion. The world would start when he opened his eyes in the morning and sink into darkness as soon as he drifted into sleep. That was why the boy did not laugh or cry. Nothing could touch him because nothing really existed.

  Except for him.

  He was the only real thing in this perfect world. At least until, aged nine years and six months, he was scratched by a cat.

  The boy had reached out to touch it, and the cat had reacted. As simple as that. Except that when the boy pulled his hand away, he was horrified to realise that he could see through it. Overcome with panic, he ran home and looked at himself in the mirror. His suspicions were confirmed. His image was blurred and grainy.

  He was disappearing, the way the chalk vanished whenever the caretaker washed the blackboard. Worse still, as the days went by, this process did not stop. On the contrary, it accelerated.

  People in the street bumped into him without apologising. Children playing in the courtyard did not invite him to join them. The teacher’s eyes drifted from one side of him to the other. He was stung by a bee, and his mother did not notice.

  As he disappeared, his thoughts went in bizarre, unexpected directions. He had fantasies so vivid they seemed real: his father in a pool of blood, the sweet girl in knee-high socks who sat next to him in class writhing in flames, his mother blue in the face, strangled.

  Unlike the sense of disintegration, which filled him with anxiety, these imaginings were pleasant. And since his anguish was becoming increasingly stifling, the boy clung to these fantasies with all his might.

  Until these thoughts gave him an idea for arresting the process of disintegration. No sooner did he conceive it than he felt relief.

  How come he had not worked it out sooner?

  He lured the stray cat with bacon he had pilfered from the pantry at home, ran it through with a sharpened stick (imagining he was doing this to his mother’s stomach, which excited him so much that he almost fainted) and, as he looked into its dying, suffering eyes, he saw his own reflection reappear. By the time the cat breathed its last, the process was complete.

  The boy laughed. He laughed for the first time in his life. He laughed with tears in his eyes. He laughed as though the sun had exploded inside his chest. Because when it came down to it, he was the sun.

  Nobody noticed anything. Time passed.

  Thirteen years after the night of the meteorite, as is customary in good families, the boy was entrusted to the care of a holy man, so that the latter might add a spiritual dimension to his intellectual growth.

  The holy man took him with him to the fortress of the Lord: the Vinzentinum, the seminary in Brixen. He taught him to cultivate friendships and feel love towards all creatures, to be sensitive to art and beauty and see talent as a precious gift. He taught him to cook (the boy proved a genuine prodigy, although his father turned his nose up at the prospect of his son as a cook) for the soup kitchen.

  Above all, he taught him self-discipline and mercy.

  The boy, now a young man, made sure he learned these lessons. Self-discipline allowed him to keep his fantasies of death at bay, although they still haunted him. The excitement of seeing the life draining from the cat’s eyes, followed by a violent sense of completeness, had a powerful appeal. The temptation to repeat the experience was strong, almost irresistible at times. Perhaps he could kill a dog? Or one of the cows grazing in the fields outside the city? Every so often, he flirted with the idea of killing a human being. What stopped him, besides self-discipline, was the holy man’s other teaching: mercy.

  Mercy, the holy man had explained, helped us to see the world with the eyes of God. That was true. Looking at the world with the eyes of God was like watching a show from the top of a mountain and realising just how unrea
l everything was. Apart from the person looking and his mercy.

  When neither mercy nor self-discipline was able to chase away his death wish, the young man learned to use pain. Feeling a little pain made the desire vanish.

  During the long years of study that took him to the verge of qualifying as a schoolteacher, the young man was once again the only real thing in the world.

  Until a drunken prostitute mistook him for a priest. Not exactly a huge error. After all, the young man enjoyed going for walks with his mentor, during which the holy man would indulge in digressions about the nature of God. These digressions never failed to fascinate him. He had been struck by one in particular. The Lord is the point from which all trajectories unravel, the holy man said. In His infinite mercy, God traces the life of every one of His creatures. Trajectories no one can avoid.

  “Irreversible” was the word he had used.

  The woman was no beauty. She was drunk and not soliciting. She was sad, she wanted to confide in somebody, and she had mistaken him for a priest. So she approached him.

  His first instinct was to run away. He sensed danger in this woman. Perhaps it was her weary expression, or her strong resemblance to the black-and-white photographs of his mother as a young woman. He did not know.

  Still, he did not leave.

  They walked through the slumbering town. She told him about her wretched life, and he listened, feeling increasingly uneasy. He kept looking at their shadows cast by the street lights, worried for no apparent reason. Then, all of a sudden, in an alley, the woman pressed her lips to his. Her hands started touching him in places where no woman had ventured before.

  Confused, he pulled away from her and, without even thinking, grabbed her by the throat with both hands and squeezed with all his might. He would have killed her, had he not noticed that his hands were starting to disappear. The panic he had felt as a child returned a thousandfold.

  He ran away, his legs barely supporting him. He was growing weaker by the minute. He reached the seminary thinking only of pain. Pain would help him.

  He found two cans of kerosene in the basement. One was empty, and the other he poured over his arms. The pain of the flames was atrocious. So were his screams, which drew attention. The last images registered by his mind before he lost consciousness were his companions’ horrified faces and the holy man’s devastated expression as he recited the expulsion ritual. The holy man was performing an exorcism. And for the second time in his life, the young man laughed, genuinely laughed.