The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

  Now the view was clear, embracing almost all the field and the entire playing area, but he needed to be careful because the tree had thinned out. He braced himself against a branch so he wouldn’t have trouble supporting himself. For a few minutes he watched the game from his perch. It didn’t interest him. Finally, he spotted her. Barbara. It was lovely to watch her from up there, her effort on the field. He couldn’t see her face very well but her manner was unmistakable. Even at that distance he had the sense he’d had before that her movements were different from everyone else’s. More elegant. Distinctive. He watched her for a long time. Suddenly Barbara stopped, in the middle of the game. She looked up. He had the impression she’d seen him.

  The branch he was on suddenly gave way.

  He collapsed onto the one below, which also snapped, and his hands slipped. Just for an instant.

  Then he got his grip back.

  His heart was thumping in his head but the branches around him were fairly solid and he quickly pulled himself together. He could have been killed, but it had worked out all right. He began making his way down.

  Back on the ground, it just wasn’t the same. He watched the girl he had met in the woods with Mattia for a little longer. Then he left.

  That evening, at his own request, Roberto ate dinner with Emma and Rosa. He was tired of being alone. They ate early and quickly, before the hotel restaurant got busy, seated at the staff table by the kitchen door.

  He liked Rosa. And Rosa liked him. Sometimes he had the feeling she treated him like a son, which he didn’t mind at all. But they were also very different. Her silences sometimes made him uncomfortable. Roberto thought she was very beautiful, but she always seemed a bit tired.

  Rosa and Emma took advantage of the dinner break to ask Roberto the routine questions about his stay in the mountains. Perhaps they realised that, apart from lunch and dinnertime, they weren’t really looking after him, unless you counted the indirect supervision of knowing he was with Mattia. Of course for them it was normal to give kids their age that kind of freedom, but they didn’t know if it was the same in the city. Roberto answered calmly, laconic on some aspects, evasive on others. Because you couldn’t talk about the most interesting things, or the saddest.

  ‘And in a few days’ time you’ll go back home.’

  ‘Yeah, unfortunately.’

  ‘You don’t want to go back?’

  ‘I prefer it here.’

  ‘But you’ll be able to see your mother. Don’t you miss her?’

  ‘Yes, a lot.’

  ‘Let’s hope she gets better soon.’

  Roberto picked up on some veiled meaning: the dim, unexpected flicker of concern in their eyes.

  ‘My mother? My grandfather’s dying. My mother’s fine, she’s just tired.’

  The two women looked at each other, alarmed. They were silent.

  ‘My mother just has a bit of a temperature and some tiredness. In a few days we’re going to the beach,’ Roberto repeated, seeking confirmation. ‘We’re going to the beach,’ he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

  ‘Exactly. I was talking about her fever. So then she’ll be able to come and get you like last year. By the way, if you want to call home, we’ve organised some phone tokens for you, you just have to ask for them at the bar.’

  The women got up from the table together, needing to return to work, but to Roberto, their sudden and poorly disguised haste looked more like an escape. It was just an impression. His mother was fine. She was just tired.

  He didn’t call his parents that evening. He had spoken to them the previous night, it wasn’t appropriate. It was just a misunderstanding. Instead he went to bed early, much earlier than usual. He wanted to bring the day to a close and start the next one as soon as possible.

  Even though we’re not together all the time, we always wear long pants and long-sleeved tops. We discover that this makes us different from before. Other people see us differently too. We can feel it.

  The bruises are gone. Almost. But we’re not going to change. We decide that now we’ll always wear red T-shirts (short-sleeved) and blue jeans.

  We like red. We like both having the same T-shirt.

  One of us says that red is the colour of blood, that’s why the partisans were reds. We discuss blood and say that blood is by definition involved in the ALTERNATION.

  Without blood you die.

  Thanks to our identical clothes we look more and more alike and we like this. We’re the same as each other and different from other kids.

  Now others see us and recognise us.

  We get the sense that they know we’re not like them. When we talk they shut up and listen to us. But we don’t talk much to them because they make us sick and they’re hopeless at almost everything.

  We’re all we need.

  We decided not to let them know that they make us sick. We pretend to be just like them. We never talk in front of them about what we do on our own.

  In Mattia’s encyclopaedia we look up that symbol he drew. It’s called a swastika. We learned that it’s like an Indian sun, but the other way round. In the encyclopaedia it says it’s something to hate because it’s about death. We like it even more.

  The swastika contains the alternation.

  We decide it’s our symbol, along with the red partisan T-shirt. They were good even though they killed people.

  Whenever we can we draw the swastika. We swear that we always have to deny it, even under torture. Especially if our parents ask us, because if they find out they’ll get angry for sure and beat us (not one of us, but his will get really really angry).

  We do another exercise. We have to watch what they do and listen when they talk. Everyone: adults and children. So we set ourselves up in transit spots: the bar, or down in the village.

  We find the baby-children make us sick more and more. They all look the same. Like they’re all boring copies of one original baby-child. They have no thoughts of their own, and only understand basic things like: hungry, poo, sleep, want.

  Listening to the bigger ones among them we find some signs of non-children, like in us. There are differences between them. We’re glad we’re not the only ones.

  We also see that the adults are always complaining. They have tantrums. They do stupid things. They criticise each other in front of us and want things we don’t understand.

  Then they pretend it’s not true. But we can see that they’re like baby-children.

  And we find them even more disgusting.

  We decide that we have to act in order to stop being baby-children.

  After the exercise we talk about violence.

  One of us says: violence isn’t always bad. Sometimes it’s useful. Adults mess up and use violence when it suits them and then they say that it’s no good. If a kid uses violence then they send you to juvenile detention, but adults use it without even thinking.

  If you kill an insect like a mosquito or microbes in the toilet that’s fine. Cutting down a tree is fine too. Killing a pig for meat is fine. It’s violence. But adults keep quiet about it.

  The second one of us says: violence can actually be good. Take the partisans. The partisans shot fascists and Germans because they wanted to be free and happy. Good violence is what heroes do and we want to be heroes. Children use violence just whenever and don’t know that there’s good and bad sorts.

  We understand that to be non-children you have to know the difference between good violence and bad violence. And you have to know how to use good violence when necessary.

  We decide that soon we’ll do some exercises with good violence and we’ll be non-children forever and also heroes. We don’t know when, but we know how.

  One of us says: we don’t hate baby-children.

  Baby-children are wrong like spelling mistakes are wrong. It’s not their fault. But they make us sick. Mistakes need to be corrected.

  We know that baby-children don’t want to be baby-children, but they don’t know it yet. S
o they need to be woken up.

  We will wake them.

  We know that with good violence it can be done. We will carry out heroic actions and this will show which ones are baby-children even though they’re our age, and which ones are more like us.

  We start our training exercises in the woods again. We do gruelling things, like carrying tree trunks and running uphill till we feel like we’ll explode.

  We climb trees and time ourselves using the stopwatch one of us has. Then we sharpen some branches so they’re really pointy and if they stick into you it makes a hole. We saw how to do it in the film Lord of the Flies. We need to know this because someone might have got into our treehouse and we have to stop it happening again. If they took the Notebook there’d be trouble. We put the spikes so they’re pointing down, that way if someone is coming up and doesn’t know, they’ll get stabbed right through and be disembowelled for sure. Apart from us. We climb up and down lots of times until we know by heart how to climb up without getting disembowelled.

  18

  ‘This morning we’re doing a new training exercise.’

  Mattia began with these words and said no more. But he seemed fairly sure of himself. They took two broom handles from the hotel and headed for the village. As they passed his house, Mattia gestured towards it and said, ‘I could kill him sometimes.’

  The city kid said nothing, though there was the hint of a malevolent smile on his face. He just listened.

  ‘He’s useless. All he can do is throw tantrums. He has to be looked after like he’s some kind of idiot, and I’m always the one who has to do it.’ He shook his head. ‘And you know what the best bit is? That everybody, including me, just takes it for granted that I have to take care of him, and help him with all the things he doesn’t know how to do, and go along with his stupid jokes, and put up with his retarded games. And there’s only four years between us.’

  He snorted, and with a nervous jerk brushed some hair out of his eyes.

  ‘He’s no use to me. I don’t have any fun when he’s around. He gives me the shits. He’s just a job I have to do for the benefit of everybody else, that’s all. And lately it’s like my father’s gone crazy. He always takes Dino’s side and I get in trouble for everything. And Dino loves it when Dad beats me because of him.’

  Roberto let the words settle. And then he said, lucidly and without pity, ‘You can’t stand Dino. He’s a baby-child.’

  ‘My brother makes me sick. Sometimes I wish he’d die.’

  Roberto nodded and said, ‘I should’ve been your brother.’

  They walked for about half an hour in the fresh, biting morning air. It was nice walking with Mattia. At that hour, there was little chance of meeting anybody on the path, so they had the feeling that the mountain was all theirs, that they could do anything.

  When they were a few hundred metres away, Mattia began to explain about a secret he’d been holding in. He needed to let it out.

  ‘Yesterday when I was at the bar I heard that everyone from the sawmill is away on a job.’

  He turned towards Roberto and smiled, in his own way, as though everything should now be clear. It wasn’t clear in the least.

  ‘So what?’

  A steel cable had come into view. Curving softly along the side of the mountain for about thirty metres, it hung suspended over the void.

  ‘So they can’t be here, that’s what.’

  Roberto stopped for a moment to think. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Look.’

  It was part of a cableway for transporting wood, linking the forest to the sealed road some way below, where cars could get in.

  Roberto was beginning to understand. Mattia had talked about this once or twice before.

  Throwing yourself into the void while clutching on to the cable. More than anything it had sounded to him like a fantasy.

  Climbing the ladder was no problem, despite its height. Getting over the grating was less easy. You had to squeeze between the pointy bars of a gate and get over some barbed wire.

  Roberto got his head through to the other side but then found himself trapped. Leaning forward and off-balance, he couldn’t get free. He was floundering about three metres above the ground, in danger of falling headfirst. He managed to pull himself together, regained his balance, unhooked the jumper that was keeping him attached, and finally came down on the other side, bringing his feet over the grating.

  Mattia gave him a good-natured smile. ‘Sometimes you’re a real city kid.’

  Roberto said nothing. He didn’t like it when Mattia said that sort of thing.

  But they were in now. The raised platform gave them direct access to the cable.

  ‘It’s easy. You straddle the broom handle like a horse, hold it right in the middle. Just be really careful not to lean more to one side. If the cable touches your hand, it’ll hurt and you’ll fall.’

  Roberto nodded. He had become serious and focused. He followed Mattia’s explanation with a great deal of attention and a certain amount of disbelief. He had never done anything of this kind before and couldn’t say whether he wanted to do it or not. He was afraid but didn’t want to admit it.

  ‘When you’re not far from the end you have to slow down, otherwise you’ll bash into the pylon that’s attached to the other end of the cable. There’s some rubber there, but if you hit it hard, you can hurt yourself.’

  Then he took his broom handle, clutched on to it and stood with his friend looking down into the void. From up there it was daunting. It was like throwing yourself off a cliff.

  ‘We want to be stronger than other people. We want to be heroes.’

  Mattia turned, smiled, and let himself go.

  Roberto saw him speed off, legs dangling in the air. He watched his whole flight with some apprehension. Mattia did not slow down, quite the opposite. He moved very fast: from behind he looked like a missile.

  ‘Slow down,’ Roberto whispered.

  Mattia only started to brake three metres from the arrival platform. He stretched his legs out in front and used them to soften the impact. He leapt down from the cable. And immediately stretched his arms high in the air as a sign of victory. And then, facing Roberto, he cried out. It was a cry of joy so loud that it reached him even over all that distance.

  It had been great to watch him fly down. Truly like the flight of a bird. Mattia was good. He’d done the whole thing perfectly.

  Roberto looked at the cable up above his head. Now it was his turn.

  He straddled the broom. He needed to stand on tiptoes to be able to reach. He tried to hang there, and the cable curved slightly. He looked down. Before him was an almost boundless space, and beyond that, the other platform seemed inexorably far. It was now empty. Mattia had climbed down from it and perhaps was already on his way back up to do it all again. Roberto leaned out to try to see the ground below. He was very high up, too high. He was breathing heavily. He thought he would fall, that he wasn’t up to it. He tried to push off using his legs. They gave way under him. He tried again, but he’d lost belief in himself. He began to feel a lump in his throat: both shame at his own fear, and the fear itself. He let go of the handle and sat down.

  He was still like that when Mattia arrived.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Roberto didn’t answer.

  ‘Why didn’t you go? It’s awesome. It’s so much fun.’

  Roberto lowered his head, frowning.

  ‘What is it? Are you scared?’

  He waited a moment, becoming more tense as Roberto remained silent and looked away. Suddenly, as though the ride meant far more than it appeared to, he lost his patience. ‘Jump!’ he shouted breathlessly. ‘If you don’t do it, you’re not my friend anymore. Did you hear me? Because I’m not hanging around with some cowardly city kid. Jump, you coward!’

  Roberto turned slowly, with a murderous air.

  ‘Fuck you, Mattia,’ he said softly.

  ‘Jump, you coward!’

  Robe
rto leapt to his feet, his eyes welling up with tears and anger, and shouted in Mattia’s face, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ and gave him a decisive push that made him stagger. But Mattia was as fired up as he was and responded with a harder push, and then the blows came raining down. They wrestled each other to the ground by their T-shirts. They went on like this, pulling and squeezing, rolling around on the platform, until they came so close to the edge they might have fallen. Then they both let go, panting. They stretched out on their backs and lay there in silence.

  ‘Now are you going to jump?’

  They both started laughing.

  ‘Fuck. You.’

  Shortly afterwards, Mattia convinced Roberto that they should do the jump together. It took a while, but in the end Roberto agreed to the most dangerous of the proposals: he would grab on to Mattia and they would go down together.

  Roberto’s only concern was Mattia’s strength.

  He needn’t worry, his friend said—he’d done it before.

  Roberto climbed on to Mattia’s back. He wrapped his arms around his neck and his legs around his middle, and Mattia launched them into the void.

  It was beautiful. Just beautiful. It was like flying.

  They descended slowly. Slower than he’d imagined.

  At the end Mattia stretched out his feet and Roberto placed his on top. A perfect landing. Once they had come to a stop, Roberto turned around to face the platform they had started from and, as though overcome by an irrepressible impulse, roared with all the breath he had in his body.