The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

‘So how can I find him?’

  ‘Use your legs. He lives at the bottom of the gorge, right here in Madonna del Bosco. It is a one-storey wooden house, just where the trees begin. You can’t miss it.’

  Shortly afterwards, the blue light from his screen illuminated his face as silent images from that time ran by. The same sequence over and over. Each time it ended, he would move the bar back across to the left and start over. A few hundred frames. His father held the camera and the microphone. In front of the camera, he and Mattia were dribbling a football in a black-and-white tango on the lawn. Dino was in goal, a tiny goal made out of jumpers. Suddenly the camera turned and Rosa appeared in the frame, silent. Just an instant. She was so beautiful. Then the camera returned to Mattia, who kicked the ball hard towards Dino. It passed between the jumpers. Mattia raised his fist in exultation. A silent celebration, forever silent.

  4

  The building at the end of the gorge was one he knew well: it couldn’t be more than a kilometre from the hotel. That was why, as he headed out, he hadn’t asked for an umbrella, and now he was paying for that decision. He was walking along with his coat over his head, and no real hope of protecting himself.

  He passed the trees and spotted the low, rough wooden building. As he approached he could see a light on in a window on the side of the house. Despite the rain, he stopped for a while in front of the gate. He was not sure what to say.

  He rang the bell.

  No answer. The light in the window went out. He rang again. Nothing.

  He tried again.

  Nothing.

  Then he shouted: ‘Signor Emidio!’

  No one looked out, no light appeared.

  ‘Signor Emidio Pichler, I need to talk to you! Please open up, please.’

  He pushed the gate, but it was locked. It would be easy to climb over it, but he didn’t dare.

  ‘I need to ask you about Rosa Slat!’

  He raised his voice some more and articulated the name and surname as clearly as he could. ‘Slat! I need to ask you the whereabouts of Rosa Slat!’

  He took a breath. ‘Do you remember Rosa Slat?’

  Anyone inside the house would have to have heard him. He waited in the rain, as the sky darkened. He rang again. There was no response.

  Some minutes passed and then the front door opened a few centimetres. From the shadows, the man asked in a brusque tone, ‘Who are you?’

  Roberto approached and pushed the gate, forgetting it was locked.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  He stopped at once and raised his hands as though he had a gun pointing at him.

  ‘I’m a lawyer. Ciprini’s the name. I’m a legal consultant.’

  The old man remained unmoved.

  ‘I’m looking for Rosa Slat. Are you Signor Pichler?’

  The man was about to close the door, so Roberto said as loud as he could over the sound of the rain: ‘It relates to an inheritance! We can’t find her. If you could just…’

  The door slammed.

  ‘Even if you could just remember whether you’ve seen her, or some relative.’

  The door opened slightly. Less than a slit.

  ‘Who are you working for?’

  The question was left there suspended, while Roberto reflected on his lie. ‘For the Beltrami family.’

  And the old man shut the door again.

  ‘We’re unable to proceed unless we can find her.’

  No reaction.

  ‘We’re completely stymied. Please help us if you can.’

  Roberto leaned heavily on the gate, exasperated.

  ‘I’m begging you! This is important for Rosa as well. I can pay you if you help me!’

  The man did not answer. Roberto waited a few minutes, and then gave up.

  As he was walking away, soaking wet, he turned one last time and spent a few seconds staring at the locked and definitively hostile door.

  5

  We put on our backpacks. They don’t weigh a thing. We’re strong now. And angry.

  We go down to the end of the meadow where the track begins. No one has seen us, no one has noticed us.

  One of us says: it all begins here. And ends here.

  The other one says: it all ends here. And it all begins.

  We start the climb.

  She re-read the last lines as though it were possible to deduce from them what happened afterwards.

  What was missing.

  Because the last few pages had been torn out.

  With meticulous care. The binding that kept the earlier pages attached to the spine of the book was very thin, almost hidden in the gap between the cover and the remaining pages, which were all empty.

  Seated on the floor, Elena reflected on what she had just finished reading. And on what was missing.

  It was not the things that had been recounted that had changed Roberto’s life, although it was surprising to think of him in that light. As an arsonist, and all the rest: the extermination of children, swastikas, experiments, attacks. That was what the diary recounted from that summer. And it seemed unimaginable that a twelve-year-old could even think of such things. And yet the handwriting was unmistakable. It was the adventure diary of a pair of lunatics.

  Or of just one lunatic.

  Because a contradiction leapt out at her: in the notebook it was clearly stated that both were entitled to write. And yet there was only one style of handwriting.

  But it was not the death-wish fantasies that had changed Roberto’s life. There was nothing all that momentous here, apart from some acts of vandalism—and these thoughts that she didn’t even know how to describe.

  No, it wasn’t that. Something was missing, something that happened afterwards. During the trip up the mountain.

  She emerged from her reading as if waking from a nightmare. She realised how much it had upset her: it was light outside now and she felt she needed that daylight. She came down from the attic and went out into the garden.

  But she couldn’t stop thinking about the notebook. About Roberto.

  And about Mattia.

  Now she knew who Mattia Slat was.

  Suddenly, as she was tracing her thoughts and the contrasting images that both connected the child writer to the man she loved and held them apart, she began to wonder whether Mattia might be invented. Perhaps for Roberto he was an imaginary friend he could use to explore crazy ideas without fear of being judged. Perhaps the notebook itself related a made-up story.

  She nursed this idea, which seemed to make sense of all the others, but in the end she rejected it. Roberto’s life had changed in 1981, she was certain.

  And Roberto had not gone looking for Rosa Slat, or at least not only for her. There was more to it. There was a vein deep within his life that was still bleeding.

  She wondered whether she was allowed to enter like this, unwanted, into her partner’s buried past. She wondered whether she might be committing some kind of violence, albeit with the best of intentions, in the hope of helping him return to normal and get over the pain—she still did not know its origin—that had always been with him.

  She wondered whether it was either possible or justifiable to be free of it.

  Perhaps some suffering should not be extinguished.

  Perhaps this was the question Roberto was trying to answer, although it had been hanging there for so many years.

  She realised, with some sadness, that her need to get to the truth was an act of selfishness. It was born of a desire to find a way back into their old life together—not a perfect life but the only one that seemed desirable to her. And now that she had gone too far, now that she had violated with her own hands the memories that he had consecrated to secrecy, she had no way of stopping herself.

  She closed her eyes with the notebook still in her lap. She felt as though she were sitting on the edge of a precipice, her legs dangling.

  6

  On Saturday morning Roberto woke naturally, lay alert in bed for a long time an
d then slowly began his day. It seemed every gesture required profound reflection, and not because he felt serene, relaxed: quite the opposite. After the previous day’s episode, his search seemed more than ever a ridiculous and infantile task that he was nevertheless obliged to complete. His response was a violent desire to return home, to Zurich. He resisted the urge.

  With half the morning already gone, he showered and went down to the hotel bar. This place, which had seemed vaguely lugubrious when he arrived, was now completely different: the subdued chatter—of locals and families of tourists who had come up by car or on foot to enjoy the good weather—brought a new and unexpected cheer, consonant with the clear, bright light through the large windows that looked out over the valley.

  He found a table and sat down. Nearby there was a family with identical twin boys sharing a handheld video game. They sat mostly in silence, intent on the screen, and every so often they conversed in a secret language, theirs alone, appearing completely cut off and isolated. It brought to Roberto’s mind the rainy mornings when he and Mattia would sit in the bar playing Cluedo.

  Roberto stood up and took his breakfast elsewhere. He sat with his back to a group of elderly regulars who spoke little, just occasionally exchanging a few words in dialect. He realised at once that he had lost what little familiarity he’d had as a boy with the valley’s dialect. He tried to follow the conversation.

  ‘And did he tell her?’

  The others nodded. Then the one telling the story replied, ‘In tears.’

  They laughed.

  ‘He’s a sly one.’

  ‘That’s not true: he regrets it. That’s why he confessed.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘It’s not as though he’s a young kid. He’d be the wrong side of fifty.’

  ‘And he’s a policeman.’

  ‘Anyone can get that disease, even priests.’

  ‘But Flavia’s not stupid. Problem is, she loves him. That’s her only mistake.’

  ‘Has she taken him back?’

  ‘Don’t know. She’s thinking about it. He’s at his parents’ place. He’s going over to see her tomorrow, he reckons he can’t today.’

  ‘He can’t keep anything to himself, he’s going around baring his soul, telling everyone everything. Once upon a time you didn’t talk about those things in public.’

  ‘He’s up the mountain today because of that group. Him and the whole team.’

  They fell suddenly silent.

  ‘Terrible business.’

  ‘The usual story. That’s the mountain. You get too complacent and then, sooner or later, it’ll punish you.’

  The entertainment of the bar gossip had been tempered by tragedy. Now the man finished off the white wine left in his glass and whispered, ‘They weren’t even thirty years old.’

  Nobody spoke, as though an unwritten rule said that when talking about the dead you needed to show respect, and a little silence was called for before you went on with your banter.

  That was when Roberto turned towards them and asked, ‘Are you all from around here?’

  The three elderly men looked at him. They turned their bodies and chairs slowly, as if they’d been choreographed, to open up their circle to the new arrival. Then they waited.

  One of the group, the eldest, with a stocky build, large hands and an incredibly calm, measured look about him, spoke up.

  ‘Not Magni, no,’ and he pointed to the skinny one, whose head was completely white, his hair shaved too short on the sides, like the peak of the mountain. ‘Not Magni, he’s a foreigner. He’s been here for thirty years, but he wasn’t born here. You’re from another valley, aren’t you, Magni?’

  He said this in all seriousness. Magni nodded, and they all smiled but just with their eyes: it was an in-joke.

  ‘Then you can give me a hand.’

  ‘Depends what you need, kid.’

  That last part—‘kid’—felt to Roberto like a powerful term of endearment. It had been many years since anyone had used it around him.

  ‘I’m looking for some people I haven’t seen for a very long time. I need to find them.’

  They nodded and listened attentively.

  ‘The first is called Rosa Slat. And then there’s her son Mattia Slat. Slat is the husband’s surname. Rosa’s maiden name was Lines.’ The three old men sat motionless, apparently indifferent. For a few instants, as though they were waiting for further elaboration or some crucial piece of information, they didn’t so much as breathe.

  ‘Why are you looking for them?’ asked the third man, who until now had not said a word.

  ‘It’s about an inheritance. They’ll lose it if I’m not able to find them.’

  It was a good reason.

  The men exchanged glances as they tried to think.

  ‘Rosa would be about your age, Mattia about mine.’

  When they began to talk among themselves, they used half-sentences in a dialect that was so thick and fast as to seem to him like a whole other language. A condensed language, suitable for important topics.

  The stockiest and eldest ended the conversation with a peremptory gesture.

  ‘There was a Rosa around that age, but we don’t know if her surname was Slat. People just used to call her Signora Rosa. People say she was a very beautiful woman, but I don’t remember her when she was young and neither do these two. We don’t know anything about the son.’

  This triggered something inside Roberto. He felt sure it was her. Quite sure, and he didn’t know whether to be happy or worried.

  ‘Where can I find her?’

  ‘Magni’s older sister, she’s in a bad way, poor thing, lives in a nursing home down in Trento. And Rosa is her neighbour, her room’s in the same corridor.’

  ‘Do you know what the home is called?’

  ‘I know it. Stella Alpina. The full name would be something like Stella Alpina Private Residence.’

  Magni nodded again, imperceptibly. Roberto was not sure whether to ask another question—he seemed the least likely to respond. He hesitated, and in the end he didn’t do it. But the third man said something and then Magni started poking around in his wallet, extremely slowly. Roberto waited in silence.

  He went through all the scraps of paper he had, bringing each one up to his right eye—his good one—until he found what he was looking for. It was yellowish, about four centimetres square, like it had been torn out of an old-fashioned school exercise book, and had neat and slightly childish handwriting on it. Magni said something to the other man, who translated.

  ‘The phone number. So you can call them.’

  Roberto copied it down. It was a landline. He handed back the piece of paper, which the man very carefully put back in with all the others, as though there were some established order that could not be changed.

  There was nothing more to say, but these elderly mountain men were now staring at him, waiting for more. Eventually Roberto worked it out. He felt for his phone in his pocket, and it took him a few seconds to remember he had thrown it away.

  He borrowed the bar’s cordless and punched in the number. The old men smiled in satisfaction.

  It rang three times and then went to an answering machine.

  ‘Stella Alpina Private Residence. Our switchboard is open ten a.m. to six p.m. Monday to Friday. For urgent matters, please call directly or phone the emergency number.’

  7

  Travel.

  Travel, visit, wander, rove, roam, ramble, loiter, saunter, dawdle, amble, hobble, limp, trudge, plod, stroll, stray, perambulate, advance, not stop, not stay, go, pursue. Pursue, seek, search, scrutinise, rummage, ransack, root, dig, scratch, scrape, rasp, graze, rub, chafe, grate, abrade, carve, mark, excoriate, flay, skin, peel, cut, slice, sever, slash, lacerate, claw, disembowel, beat, batter, strike, crush, damage, devastate, burn, tear, rend, disfigure, desecrate, violate, dismay, embitter, offend, mortify, humiliate, torment, debase, displease, wound, injure, hurt.

  To hurt.

&nb
sp; When the chain of synonyms in his little electronic diary had taken him along the semantic path from travelling to hurting, he felt satisfied. Travel led to hurt. It was an idea that made sense to him. And so he broke off the search, which sometimes calmed and distracted him, but which this time seemed to capture that series of pauses and delays, one inside another, that he had been living through ever since coming back to Italy. He wondered whether the chain might be broken or, conversely, whether it would go on to infinity. But as far as the most recent and literal of those many delays was concerned, there would be a clear ending: Trentino’s public transport system was both efficient and punctual, that much he knew. He couldn’t complain: he was the one who had got himself into this situation by reading the timetable wrong.

  He had begun his expedition on foot, but then, halfway there, changed his mind and took a seat on the bus, convinced it would be departing soon.

  Now, from the back seat of this bus connecting the various villages in the area, including the less populated and touristy ones, Roberto studied his fellow passengers. A very old lady who looked like she had worked the land all her life, but who carried herself proudly, in a floral dress and heels, and was holding a motorbike helmet in her hands. A middle-aged gentleman in a rather threadbare cardigan, wearing glasses that looked like they belonged to a German theatre director and a priest’s cloth cap. He sat completely motionless, his arms folded. An overweight young lad wearing a rapper’s hoodie. He was reading a book so thick it might have been a bible but was in fact a fantasy novel.

  They sat far apart and might have come from parallel worlds, were it not for the fact that the boy had greeted everyone respectfully when he got on.

  The driver hopped onto the bus, settled into his seat, closed the doors and turned on the motor which started with the roar of a tractor. The seat vibrated violently as well, but only for a moment.

  Shortly afterwards the bus was proceeding along winding roads that Roberto could see through his window, like a videotape that constantly presented the same image with a few barely noticeable variations. He let himself drift, thinking without nostalgia about the morning’s little discoveries, past the wide river and the cable car.