The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

  CUT

  2. Full-length shot. Lia has set herself up on the rocks on a blanket. She is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, has a jumper tied around her neck and a book in hand. She is winking at the camera. Next to her is Rosa. Eyes down, she ignores the camera, pulling some filled bread rolls out of her backpack.

  Carlo: It’s like paradise, don’t you think?

  Lia: You know it’s one of my favourite places.

  3. Low handheld camera: close-up on Roberto’s face. He looks annoyed; he turns to the camera and speaks. Roberto: It’s not Black Peak, Papà! Never mind…

  4. The camera crosses to Mattia, who turns and says something. He is still carrying a fairly large backpack. Mattia is holding Dino by the hand. Dino looks annoyed, almost like he’s going to cry. He speaks to his brother.

  Mattia: The important thing is we can play war games.’

  Carlo (off camera): What’s that, war?

  Roberto (off camera): Yeah, the numbers war.

  Dino: I’m not playing, I’m tired.

  Rosa (off-camera): If you don’t want to play, then don’t. Later, though, because lunch is ready now…Sit down.

  CUT

  Elena gestured and Ada stopped the screening at once.

  ‘So there was audio! It was taken off the DVD. Why?’

  ‘Maybe the person who digitised them didn’t know, and Carlo didn’t tell them.’

  ‘And he didn’t get them redone when he found out?’

  They looked at each other. Then they continued the playback, pleased by their discovery.

  5. Full-length shots. Lia, Rosa, Roberto and Dino are on the blanket eating their lunch of bread rolls. On the tartan rug there are a few plates of potatoes and cooked vegetables, some canteens of water, a thermos. Mattia is sitting on a rock nearby, looking at the ground. He bites into a sandwich as he speaks.

  Mattia (to Roberto): You and me against the rest. I know a good spot over there for us to defend.

  Dino: If you’re forming teams, I’m not playing.

  Suddenly they all look at the camera.

  Carlo (off camera): Let’s make it Team Beltrami against Team Slat. And Dino plays too. Whoever loses has to carry all the backpacks home. But we’ll win! Agreed?

  6. Close-ups. Mattia and Roberto nod as they chew. Dino’s face darkens, but he says nothing.

  Mattia and Roberto: Oka

  7. Half-length shots. Lia is writing a number on Roberto’s forehead. Then Lia turns to the camera. She has a number on her forehead.

  Lia: Now it’s your turn, Carlo! Put the camera down.

  CUT

  8. Long shot. Roberto’s forehead is close to a rock. Mattia is around the other side. His number is partly hidden by a tuft of hair on his forehead. They go round and round the rock, trying to spot the others’ number without their own being seen.

  Dino (off camera): Mattia! (hands clapping) Mattia! Mattia…

  Roberto: It doesn’t count, your hair’s covering the number.

  9. Close-up. Roberto leaps forward and tackles Mattia, who is not expecting it. They both fall to the ground. Mattia: The rule is you can’t hide it with your hands! And stop hanging on to that rock! It’s not allowed.

  Roberto shouts. Roberto: Eight hundred and seventeen! I won! I won!

  Mattia (simultaneously): One hundred and twenty…Shit!

  10. Mattia remains on the ground, clenching his fists with rage, while Roberto jumps up and down rejoicing.

  Rosa (off screen): Mattia, no swearing!

  CUT Dino: It doesn’t count!

  The final sequence was the one in which Mattia and Roberto were playing football.

  ‘I’ve already seen this bit. Roberto was watching it a few days ago. But there was music.’

  Suddenly, as the film came to an end, Rosa appeared, just for a second.

  11. Long shot. Various angles. Lia is further away, on the blanket. She seems to be sleeping. The meadow in front of the lake.

  Silence.

  12. Long shot. The children are playing football: Mattia is in goal (formed by two jumpers), Roberto is playing against Dino, who is dribbling the ball and kicks it hard, but out. He is despairing. Roberto clearly let it go out.

  Voices of children in the distance.

  Dino: No! Not fair!

  Dino goes to get the ball.

  Close-up of Rosa, who is very near the camera. She watches the children in silence.

  Silence.

  Back to the children, Dino has returned and is in goal. Mattia challenges Roberto and tries to dribble around him, but Roberto slides and gets the ball from him. He takes off and they start all over again. Both are putting in a lot of effort. They speak to each other. As soon as Roberto tries to get around him, Mattia snatches back the ball and kicks it between Roberto’s legs. He overtakes him, kicks very hard and scores a goal. Audio (close by): I told him, Carlo. He already knew he wasn’t his. The only thing he didn’t know was that he was yours. So now we have a good reason to break up.

  Mattia, off in the distance, is celebrating.

  Silence.

  Carlo: Good, so now we all know everything.

  The camera angles down and there is a shot of the grass.

  The last image disappeared and the speakers fell silent amidst the squiggles and burnt edges of the end of the film. In the silence, all that remained was that blindingly white square.

  Elena and Ada looked at each other. Speechless.

  After a little while, Elena stood up. As though she had not understood, or wasn’t sure. She rewound the film and played it again.

  9

  The phone rang for a few seconds, there was an irritating hiss, and then the call went to a switchboard.

  ‘Stella Alpina Private Residence. All our operators are currently busy. Please wait, and you will not lose your place in the queue.’

  It was right on ten o’clock. Roberto was sitting on the bed by the window, dressed and ready to head out. While he waited to talk to a human being at the other end of the line, he looked outside.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Good morning. My name is Roberto Beltrami and I’m looking for somebody. I would like to speak to her. I’ve heard that she has been admitted to your facility.’

  ‘Residence. Are you a relative?’

  The secretary’s voice, despite her strong Trentino accent, was harder and more metallic than that of the electronic switchboard.

  ‘No, I’m not a relative.’

  ‘Then it won’t be possible. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Wait, let me explain. I’m looking for her in order to carry out someone’s last will and testament. If I don’t find this person, the whole process will be stalled.’

  The woman, who wanted to move on, was silent for a few seconds. She could hand this nuisance on to someone else—residents’ privacy was a serious matter, after all—but equally, deferring the request could cause her subsequent hassles and she was the kind of person who was always careful to avoid hassles. Roberto took advantage of this little dilemma.

  ‘I can take this through the courts if necessary, but perhaps it will be easier if you and I sort it out between us. Could you simply tell me whether Signora Rosa Slat, maiden name Lines, is staying there? Because if she isn’t, there’s no point taking this any further.’

  ‘Let me check.’

  The woman moved away from the phone, and Roberto realised that the background sounds had been muted.

  ‘Yes, she’s here.’

  Roberto felt a moment of jubilation. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sixty-nine years of age, born in Rovereto. Rosa Maria Lines, married name Slat. A fully paid-up category C resident. Is that her?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her.’

  Roberto closed his eyes a moment. He’d done it. ‘Can I come at once to meet her?’

  ‘To meet her? Right now? No, that’s impossible.’

  ‘What do you mean, impossible?’

  ‘You’re not a relative. And for category C residents, appoin
tments with outsiders are governed by certain rules and visiting hours.’

  ‘But this is urgent.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Please put the manager on the line.’

  ‘The manager is at the residence and I have no intention of disturbing her. And her answer would be exactly the same as mine.’

  Roberto gave in.

  ‘Then can you tell me when I can visit her?’

  ‘It’s all on our website. In any case, you’re in luck: the next possible day is Tuesday. From two to four p.m.’

  Roberto stifled his anger.

  ‘Shall I put you down for a visit?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that would be good.’

  ‘You also need to send us an email with all your details and the purpose of your visit. It’s best if you do that straight away. Oh, I was forgetting: a member of the support staff will be present for the meeting. Is that all clear?’

  They ended the call coolly and as soon as he’d hung up the phone, Roberto swore.

  He resigned himself to having to wait another day before meeting her. Another wasted day. He flopped back on the bed. With his toes, he pushed off his left shoe, and then his right. He stretched out and looked at the ceiling.

  Then he closed his eyes. At least he’d found her.

  A few hours later, Roberto was once again on his back with the hotel phone in his hand.

  ‘It’s me.’

  Elena did not reply.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Then, with disarming sweetness, she said: ‘I haven’t heard from you in four days.’

  ‘I know.’

  Silence again.

  ‘I tried to get you on your mobile.’

  ‘I broke it. Now you can reach me at this number.’

  No reply.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine. Waiting.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Roberto rolled abruptly onto one side. ‘I have to wind this whole business up.’

  She interrupted him at once, annoyed. ‘We’ve already talked about this.’

  Roberto paused a moment to consider what he wanted to say, but couldn’t find the right words. But then, just before she got fed up and ended the call, the words came to him almost as a surprise, a simple surprise.

  ‘I know you don’t understand me, but you’re the only person who really counts. I’m doing this for you and for me. I’ll sort out what I need to do here and then everything will be like it was before.’

  Elena laughed nervously.

  ‘We’ll be back home in no time.’

  ‘You told me that back when I was in Boston. And that was two weeks ago.’

  Roberto sat up. He took a deep breath.

  ‘I’ve found her.’

  There was a tremor in his voice. Elena couldn’t tell if it was excitement or terror.

  ‘You’ve found Rosa?’

  ‘Yes. I just have to wait to meet her.’

  This changed things. But now Elena felt another kind of urgency.

  ‘I went up into your father’s archive.’

  ‘You didn’t have permission.’

  ‘I discovered things you don’t know.’

  ‘And that don’t interest me.’

  ‘I found your notebook from that summer, 1981. The notebook of your adventures with Mattia.’

  A new and violent tension appeared on Roberto’s face. After a long silence, and with great effort, he began to laugh in a subdued tone.

  ‘My notebook?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s made up.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all fiction. And it came out badly. I wrote it around the end of middle school or at the start of high school, I can’t remember. Out of boredom. I never even finished it, I’m pretty sure. I made the whole thing up from scratch. And I added some stupid stuff that I thought was a bit provocative. I was a troublemaker as a kid, you know? You’d never guess, but I was. I don’t even know how it ended up there. I must’ve put it in the rubbish, and my father took it out thinking it was a school book.’

  She was taken aback but tried to hide it. ‘All made up, then.’

  ‘Complete invention. I wrote things that were forbidden to make dull boarding school life a bit more interesting. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘And Mattia?’

  ‘I told you. I can barely even remember what he looked like. But he was Rosa’s son, and I searched for him in the hope of asking him about her. But it seems he’s disappeared entirely.’

  It was completely plausible. Too plausible, even. Elena reflected.

  ‘So there’s nobody who could confirm or deny this story?’

  Roberto took a deep breath. He didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s all made up,’ he repeated.

  ‘And nothing happened during your climb on that last day of the summer holidays?’

  Roberto stifled a little laugh.

  ‘There was no climb. There was no best buddy. Just my grandmother. But now you have to stop looking for mysteries. I’ll come home as soon as I’ve met up with Rosa.’

  Elena didn’t know what else to say; she felt drained.

  ‘All right,’ she said coldly, ‘let me know when you’ve finished.’

  ‘I’ll see you back at the villa.’

  ‘Fine.’

  10

  The click of the gate took him by surprise.

  Several minutes had passed since he rang the bell. A light had gone on straight away, but then nobody had answered or opened up. In the absence of any signs of life, he had begun staring in at the villa through the bars, hoping to see someone appear.

  The click accompanied the opening of a small door. Roberto straightened his tie and his jacket, pulling it down by the hem. He looked at the bunch of flowers he was holding and felt reassured.

  The wet gravel muffled his footsteps as he reached the old marble staircase, which was covered by a wheelchair ramp.

  As soon as he got inside, a man in a nurse’s uniform came towards him. He held out his hand. ‘Davide.’

  ‘Roberto.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘I’m the nurse in charge of looking after Signora Slat.’

  The villa had been completely renovated to resemble a luxury hospital, although the decor and the materials on the walls had irrevocably obliterated the original interior.

  ‘I’ll just get you signed in as a guest and then I’ll take you to see Rosa.

  With the help of a keycard he took Roberto through a turnstile and together they walked along a series of identical corridors, all bathed in a dreadful diffuse artificial light. Silence reigned in the corridors, a perfect, alienating silence, unbroken even by sounds from the street. Roberto began to wonder if the clinic might be empty.

  ‘Ours is a highly specialised private clinic.’

  Roberto turned to look at the man more closely. He was extremely neatly presented, down to his clean shave and tended hands. The muscular build, the self-assured smile: he emanated a sense of calculated masculinity.

  ‘Specialising in what?’

  Davide smiled indulgently, as though the question were irrelevant, and seemed to avoid it, or to read into it something Roberto did not understand.

  ‘We take all comers. I mean, all those who can afford eternal rest in an eighteenth-century villa with all mod cons. But it’s generally unusual cases that find their way to us.’

  Roberto gave a nod of comprehension, but only to be polite.

  ‘Here we are. Just wait for me here, please.’

  Roberto sat down in a small room decorated with old-fashioned elegance. There was a shiny piano in one corner and a green striped sofa.

  He waited there for only a few minutes, then the nurse reappeared. He was holding by the hand a hunched woman, deformed by inexorable old age and struggling to put one foot in front of the other.

  ‘Rosa Slat, née Lines.’

  She looked far older than she should, at least
according to Roberto’s expectations. He had an urge to tell Davide that there had been a mistake, but he suppressed it. There had not been a mistake. This really was her.

  Roberto stayed seated, paralysed by this apparition. He simply could not bring himself to believe that this was the strong, beautiful woman he had known as a boy. She stared at him briefly and then dismissed him, engrossed in her efforts to reach the armchair and, with Davide’s help, to lower herself slowly into it, like an ancient drawbridge. Davide, still smiling, handled her as though she were made of cut crystal.

  Once she was seated, Davide went out the glass door that closed off the little room, pulled up a chair and sat down outside the entrance at a three-quarter angle, carefully positioned to keep an eye on them without intruding.

  Roberto focused on Rosa and realised she was staring at him; perhaps had been ever since she sat down. Her gaze was intense. He suddenly remembered the flowers.

  ‘Ah, these are for you, Rosa.’

  She didn’t say anything, but continued to study him. Then, as though her eyes were moving through some thick, viscous liquid, she turned her attention to the flowers.

  ‘Flowers,’ she said nostalgically.

  She held out her hand instinctively to reach for them. Her arm was raised but her body was unable to help her with the effort. Her arm stayed that way, in mid-air, about ten centimetres away. Roberto leaned over to bring the flowers closer to her, and she touched them and tore off a petal with two fingers in her effort to pull them towards her, but then her arm gave out, exhausted.

  ‘They’re lovely flowers.’ She mumbled something more.

  ‘They’re for you, Rosa.’

  ‘They’re lovely.’

  He brought them towards her face, but she remained motionless. Then, embarrassed, he placed the flowers carefully on the low coffee table in front of them and prepared a few opening words, even though it felt like climbing a mountain.