Roberto did not answer but he thought there was a kind of telepathy between him and Mattia, as though their thoughts passed unfiltered from one to the other, where they would then head off in different directions. Mattia had raised the stakes.
Roberto nodded, decision made.
When they reached the edge of the woods they began to plan their guerrilla raid. The prey roamed free, oblivious, and there were also poised and ferocious predators to be outwitted. But the real scene that presented itself to them was the least adventurous imaginable: some fifteen girls in three separate groups playing half-heartedly with a ball under the early afternoon sun. Some girls were sitting on the ground looking bored, others sat with the three nuns who were overseeing their charges from the shade of the benches alongside the building. All this was happening a few dozen metres from Roberto and Mattia, which made any sudden action impossible. There was too much distance between them and the girls. The nuns—the enemy—would intervene before they had a chance to get across the field.
Before giving up they brainstormed a few wild plans, the silliest of which had one of them going to ask for help for the other, who would have to pretend to be hurt. They rejected that idea almost immediately.
They were about to give up on the whole enterprise, if you could call it that, when more girls, a lot more, came out of the building. They took up almost the entire space, bringing with them balls, little hats and almost identical bodies in those institutional uniforms.
The boys watched them for a long time.
One small group moved into the area right next to the line of trees. They were kicking a ball around and seemed to be having a hell of a time, laughing at their own clumsiness, unseen by anyone but themselves as they played their boys’ game. Roberto and Mattia would both have loved to go and join them—what a coup that would be—but it was so far from imaginable that neither of them confessed it to the other.
Seen from a little closer up, the girls were not really all the same. As they ran after the ball, something emerged from beyond the uniforms that was not simply the shape of their bodies—something invisible animating their movements, their laughter. The girls were all around twelve years old. In some more than others, it was as though the exhilaration that came from being among other girls was calling forth the self-aware adolescents they would soon become: a kind of anticipation of life that would disappear as soon as they became still. Some of them had it and some didn’t, that much was evident, though Roberto and Mattia didn’t know why. It was simply lovely to watch, this obscure grace; it made the boys want to continue spying on them.
They forgot about their planned theft almost entirely—did not, in fact, say another word about it, it seemed so absurdly and embarrassingly childish. Then, in a moment of clumsiness, one of the girls sent the ball flying beyond the edge of the woods. There was a long argument, then they must have drawn lots because the girl, shy and rather chubby, was scared to go into the woods on her own. But the second girl, the one who had been selected, didn’t want to go in either, so a third stepped forward with an air of disdain for the others and set off after the ball.
Meanwhile Roberto had picked up the ball and was crouched behind a tree with his friend.
The third girl set out at a fast pace but then, at the edge of the woods, she slowed down and began to look around her. From their position just a few metres away, they could see her very clearly. Under her little white hat and auburn hair—a colour Roberto had never seen—she was frowning, perhaps because she was not so keen to go into the woods alone either and had volunteered only to resolve the impasse. Watching the girl so closely, you could see that she moved in a decisive, practical way, like a boy—a detail, together with the precociously feminine shape of her body, that made her even more attractive. She was among the ones Roberto had studied most attentively from a distance. She was beautiful.
Meanwhile, Mattia had stepped away and crept up behind the girl. He was hidden behind a tree, watching her: Roberto, uneasy, saw him reappear at the last moment.
Mattia stayed there for a few seconds and then revealed himself. ‘Hi.’
The girl jumped. She turned and looked him in the eye.
‘Hi.’
‘Did I scare you?’
‘No.’
‘I’m Mattia. Are you looking for the ball?’
‘Yeah. Have you seen it?’
‘We’ve got it. Come on out, Roberto.’
Roberto emerged timidly from behind the bush where he was hiding, right in front of the girl. He had the ball in one hand and an awkward expression on his face. The girl stood between them, a little apprehensive. They were children like her, like all the others at the camp, but she was not sure what was going on in their heads.
‘It’s from the camp.’
‘We’ll give it back to you, don’t worry. But we need payment.’
The girl looked at Mattia in surprise, while he smiled reassuringly back at her.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Barbara.’
‘I like your little hat, Barbara. Will you give it to me?’
‘I can’t. It’s not mine. If I go back without it the nuns will punish me.’
She turned towards Roberto. ‘Will you give me back the ball?’
She had a nice voice, smooth, and there was no reproach in her tone. She moved towards him.
‘Give it here, Roberto!’
Roberto hesitated a moment, and then threw it without conviction to his friend. She looked at him, annoyed, and he immediately cursed himself, but he couldn’t turn on Mattia.
‘If you can’t give us your hat,’ said Mattia, holding the ball tight under his arm, ‘then you can give me a kiss on the lips. Have you ever done that before? It’s nice.’
He said it in that hoarse smoker’s voice of his, smiling confidently, not in the least embarrassed. Barbara’s surprise lasted only an instant. The expression on her face changed minutely, she lowered her eyes and when she looked up again, the tone and manner of an adult had insinuated itself unmistakably into her words.
‘Yes, but I don’t want to.’
Roberto was confused. In his world, you simply didn’t ask such a thing; it was impossible, unthinkable. As was a response like hers.
‘Mattia.’ He looked at him. ‘Give her the ball and let’s go.’
He only said it out of envy. He would never have had that kind of courage himself. Girls were mysterious, inaccessible creatures. Mattia said nothing. He took the ball from under his arm and held it out with both hands.
Barbara approached uncertainly. She kept her eyes on Mattia, as though expecting a trap, while he stood still and waited for her, smiling innocently. The girl grabbed the ball, and Mattia held on a little longer but didn’t pull back.
‘You can give me a kiss on the cheek, at least.’
She looked at him seriously as she pulled the ball sharply towards her and he let her do it. In the same movement she leaned forward with a clumsy, experimental lurch, lightly touched his cheek and ran away, towards the field.
Roberto and Mattia looked at each other. Roberto turned away almost immediately and headed off without a word. Neither of them spoke until Nonna asked where they had been all that time.
They returned to the hotel early. The sun was still high and there was still plenty of daylight to be enjoyed, but Lia wanted to get back so, after consulting with Rosa, she said Roberto and Mattia could entertain themselves for a while, provided they stayed together and did not venture too far away. They couldn’t have asked for more.
Someone found the artesian well. We weren’t around. We’re writing down what the old people at the bar say. We believe them.
A little kid was playing at the pond and he fell into our artesian well. It was well hidden. When he fell in he landed right in the water and couldn’t get out. His parents pulled him out. He was crying.
We’re sorry we weren’t there: we could have done the rescue operation with a real child. It would have been gre
at. We’re sorry we didn’t get to see the boy’s fear. It would have been useful for understanding the alternation better.
We’re also sorry because it could have been an exercise in feeling guilty but pretending nothing had happened.
He was just a baby-child so it doesn’t really count for much. Children make us sick, they don’t know how to do anything, they’re afraid of everything.
We think it would be better if it happened to an adult. To see their reaction.
We decide we need to make other hidden artesian wells all over the place, especially in the woods. So sooner or later an adult will fall in. If not on their own, then we can help. To show that we’re heroes, and non-children.
We do a new alternation exercise.
We decide that we have to train our bodies and also our minds so we can tolerate pain, because pain brings fear.
Pain causes confusion and you remain a baby-child.
We stand face to face and count to five and then one punches or kicks the other, or does something else, whatever he feels like. It’s very important not to say what you’re going to do. That way the other one is more afraid because he doesn’t know what you’re going to do and so there’s the element of surprise.
Then the one who’s been hit says out loud what he thought and felt while he was waiting.
And then that one does it.
The rule is that each blow is what it is, and that’s it. There’s no paying back and if someone does he’s a bastard and the exercise is over.
To begin with we don’t go too hard, so as not to do serious damage. Then we hit harder and harder.
We increase the power and the more it hurts, the more we’re afraid of the pain that’s coming.
We discover that if you repeat the same punch or kick the fear decreases.
One of us says: before each one I’m afraid and I wait. I’m afraid but I’m also curious. After a while the curiosity makes you less afraid.
The second one of us says: after a bit you actually want to be hit so that then you’ll know you can do it and not cry.
We feel less like baby-children.
We say that the exercise is good and useful, but it’s not enough for us.
One of us says: we thought the good thing about the exercise was feeling pain and withstanding it.
It’s not true. The best thing of all is hurting someone and pretending nothing happened. Not worrying about hurting someone is the hardest thing. You have to train for that.
We continue until we can’t do it anymore. We’ve got bruises and scratches all over and feel like crying. But we don’t cry because that makes you a baby-child.
So we lie down on the ground and laugh.
We agree: we must always wear jeans and long-sleeved tops so nobody will know that we beat each other up during an exercise.
14
Roberto was lying in wait for Lia in the small armchair by the phone. He wanted to speak to them both—his mother and his father—like an adult, to ask them how they were, tell them about his outdoor life, the discoveries he’d made, at least those he could talk about. But the truth was different. He felt a disquiet that he could not explain. Perhaps he had picked it up from Lia, in the obscure lane-hopping of attention and inattention that she reserved for him, a jangling symphony of gestures that nobody but him would ever have noticed.
When Lia found him there, she smiled at him, but he did not miss the slight frown of irritation.
‘What’s up, Nonna?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’
She stroked his head and sat down next to him. They waited their turn in silence, then got up. Nonna dialled the number and let Roberto talk first.
‘Hi, Papà.’
‘Hi, Roberto. How are you? Are you having fun?’
The questions were always the same when he was away, but the routine never grew old. There was always something new, a shade of difference in the details or in their voices, some discovery to relate, and that day for both of them—for different reasons—the exchange had a consoling power. But that was not enough for Carlo. Behind his usual natural cheerfulness, his encouragement of the son he adored, there was a darkness of tone, a low, dull frequency that entered Roberto’s head and distracted him. It was an unmistakable sound.
It was the sound of pain.
He heard it with excruciating clarity when Carlo put Roberto’s mother on the phone—just for a quick hello, he said, because the coins were running out and soon there would not be enough to speak to Lia.
‘Hello, little one.’
‘Hi, Mamma.’
They were silent for a few moments. Roberto could hear his mother breathing. She seemed tired.
‘Are you well, Roberto?’
It was a sad question. It was the same one he’d heard a thousand times before, and yet now it seemed empty to Roberto, intentionless and remote, as though held in suspension.
‘Yes, I’m well. What about you, Mamma? Everything okay?’
Anna let out a long sigh and said something to Carlo that Roberto couldn’t hear.
‘Everything’s okay here. Good.’
She coughed, holding the receiver away, and tried to continue, but her son stepped in, anxious to tell her how he was feeling, as though he needed to hurry because his mother was about to run away.
‘I love you, Mamma. I miss you. I miss you both.’
She was silent. She had never been a demonstrative woman, but he knew how to feel the love she was able, in her own way, to give. Roberto pictured her smiling: one of those swift, true smiles of hers that bloomed so rarely and so suddenly, and were for him the essence of pure joy.
‘Me too, you know. I miss you too. If I don’t come up there it’s because I really can’t.’
Perhaps his mother would have gone on like that, but there was no more time.
‘Just think—the Sunday after next we’ll be coming up to take you to the beach! Finally, some real holidays! Now put Nonna on, please. We’ll talk the day after tomorrow.’
It was Carlo. He’d taken back the receiver. Roberto passed his to Lia, who had been behind him the whole time. She put it to her ear, nodded, and then turned back to Roberto, who was listening.
‘Roberto, wait for me in the restaurant, please. I’ll come and meet you shortly.’
He hesitated, surprised, took a few steps back towards the corridor, and then stopped.
‘Please,’ Lia repeated, in a decisive tone that allowed no objections. Roberto looked at her again, then turned suddenly and walked quickly away.
He sat in his usual spot at the usual table. It was early and the room was almost empty. He turned his attention to the television.
Another report on the early evening news recalling the death of the boy in the artesian well. A local amateur film-maker had rushed to the scene with a super 8 camera in the early hours of the tragedy and had filmed the whole thing. The sound was low, but Roberto was struck by the unedited images of those first moments before the crowd and the journalists and the special response team had turned up.
In the footage, the first policemen and villagers who had arrived for the search looked around them in the grainy sun in the middle of the barren, desolate countryside. They seemed both worried and surprised, astonished by so momentous an event, as though someone had set up the whole scene to play a trick on them—to film them and then laugh at them.
Perhaps that was what death was: a stage deserted apart from a few incredulous spectators looking for another explanation. Nothing more.
Lia arrived soon afterwards, along with a number of the other guests. The noise levels in the room ballooned with chatter, cutlery and children’s cries, and the buzz briefly swallowed up the tense, inscrutable silence between him and his grandmother. Roberto was miffed but Lia, prickly and closed down, did not appear to even notice.
They waited until after the antipasto and the first course, neither of them inclined to speak first.
‘You all have to stop treating me like a child.’
Lia regarded him with a mix of impatience and sarcasm.
‘On the contrary, it seems to me we’re treating you like an adult. Perhaps you’re the one who thinks childish whims can pass for adult requests.’
Roberto stared at his grandmother resentfully.
‘Before. In there. Why wasn’t I allowed to stay and listen?’
‘You need to understand that an adult knows his place, and how to occupy it with dignity. Not everything can be talked about before it’s been properly thrashed out.’
‘All I know is you guys are keeping secrets.’
‘Like everybody. You too, I imagine. In any case, ours won’t last long.’
Roberto tried to read her face for the correct response. Lia dabbed her mouth primly with her napkin, placed it next to her on the table and said, ‘I have to go back home, Roberto.’
His rancour evaporated immediately. He looked at her in astonishment, unable to speak.
‘Anna’s father is very ill.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘He’s getting worse. He needs care. I have to return to help Carlo.’
Roberto began to breathe heavily, now that he understood the situation.
‘Do we have to go back home? Halfway through the holidays? But we’ll come back up here, won’t we? In how many days’ time?’
Roberto’s fear at missing even one single day of mountain life with his only true friend had begun to overwhelm him.
‘You’re not coming. You’ll stay here.’
That statement was all it took to start a landslide of grown-up conjectures that he tried laboriously to piece together. Now there was room in his head only for children’s thoughts.
‘I’ll go back alone. You’ll stay here with Emma and Rosa. They’re just like family to us anyway. They’ll take care of you, but I don’t think they’ll need to do much’—she attempted a clumsy wink—‘because you’re big and responsible now, and you don’t need anyone keeping an eye on you.’
She resumed chopping up the small amount of food that remained on her plate, as though the discussion was closed.
‘Didn’t you want to be treated like an adult? This is your chance to prove that you know how to behave. Now finish your meal.’
The Mountain Page 8
