The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

  ‘So as not to arouse suspicion.’

  ‘That was what he wanted. He didn’t want to get me involved.’

  Her throat closed over. She looked for a moment towards the stairs and clumsily wiped away her tears.

  At that point Alina came quietly down the stairs and stood in front of her mother with a handful of colouring pens in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.

  She stared at Ada. She stared at Elena. The expression on her face was indecipherable, while her mother tried and failed to summon her earlier cheerfulness.

  In the end, the child said with a terrible seriousness: ‘If you did something good, you can’t have done anything bad, Mamma. Isn’t that how it is? Isn’t that the way it works, Mamma?’

  12

  This time the sky was clear and walking was a pleasure. Roberto hurried along the path that cut through the fields and emerged onto the sealed road that crossed the valley: the wooden house was already in sight, not more than ten minutes away.

  In the opposite direction a car was travelling up towards the plain. It passed him.

  The car continued for a hundred metres, slowed down and made a U-turn—a little awkwardly in such a narrow road—then pulled up alongside him.

  ‘Need a lift?’

  Roberto bent over just enough to see the driver’s face, but he had already recognised the voice.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ said Roberto. He kept walking.

  Suddenly Elena, having come all that way for him, didn’t know what to say. She followed him, silent, for a short distance.

  ‘Can we stop a moment?’

  Roberto stopped.

  They embraced.

  ‘There was no point coming, Elena.’

  ‘I just wanted to help you.’

  ‘We already talked about it. I’ll be heading back later today anyway. I’ve already met Rosa and my search is over.’

  Elena was surprised: the other day she hadn’t believed him.

  ‘I was going to call you later this morning, but you’re too impatient.’

  ‘I’m here to talk to you about something I’ve discovered. And to show it to you.’

  She took the notebook out of the pocket of her jacket and handed it to him. Roberto could not hide the mixture of surprise and disappointment on his face. He let her stay that way, arm outstretched, until she lowered it and said, ‘Do you recognise it?’

  Roberto nodded icily. ‘You can throw it away. It’s just a nasty little story by a sad kid.’

  ‘It’s a child’s handwriting. The dates are from the summer of ’81.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do about my handwriting. It’s always been like that. And I had a lot of imagination as a kid.’ Roberto smiled affably.

  At this point Elena ran out of patience. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He regarded her for a moment, then turned and continued walking towards the wooden house. She yelled after him: ‘I don’t believe you!’

  Her voice was shaking.

  She followed him as he walked quickly on ahead. ‘I’ve discovered some things.’

  Roberto kept walking.

  ‘About your father and Rosa.’

  Roberto turned angrily. ‘I’m not interested, all right? I am not interested. I don’t want to know any more than I know already.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And I think you should take the car, drive back down the road, find an armchair at the villa, sit there without unpacking your bags and wait for me. In two days we’ll be back in Zurich and we will never speak of this business, the mountains, my father, again. There’s just one more person I need to meet, alone. And then I’m leaving. If you really want to help me, go back to the villa.’

  Humiliated, Elena made one last effort. ‘I thought you wanted to know more about your past.’

  Roberto shook his head. He took a few steps back towards her. He smiled affectionately and gently stroked her cheek.

  ‘I know you’re doing all this for me, but now I just have to go. And draw a line under this whole story.’

  ‘All right. If that’s what you truly want.’

  She turned and walked back towards the car. A minute later she was already far away.

  Shortly afterwards, Roberto was standing in front of the wooden building. He rang the bell and waited. The elderly man expecting him took some time to reply. He unlocked the gate and slowly opened the door, as though it was very heavy.

  ‘Come inside.’

  Although it was morning, the living room in which they sat was immersed in a greyish gloom. The shutters were half-closed. The former mayor disappeared into another room, leaving Roberto alone for a few minutes. He looked around him: between the sofa and the slightly creased armchairs was a low piece of furniture in lacquered wood. On top was a box for sweets, but it was empty.

  When the ex-mayor returned, moving with difficulty, he was carrying a large tray with two small coffee cups and nothing else except a folded sheet of paper.

  They drank their coffee in silence and Roberto was able to observe him closely. He was a small, stocky man, a little stooped, as though his body were permanently contracting in a defensive posture. If Roberto’s calculations were correct, he must be around eighty—and every one of those years showed on his face, in the blemishes and the wrinkles that had accumulated over time like the rings in a tree trunk. But what really struck Roberto was the expression in his eyes. The glassy pupils staring at him in agitation were like a frightened animal’s.

  ‘What did you want to talk to me about, Pichler?’

  The man placed his cup on the table, trying to control his trembling hand. ‘I want to talk to you about what you don’t know about that terrible summer.’

  ‘I think I know it; I always have. But I’ll listen. I have the sense you need it more than me.’

  ‘That may be.’ He lifted the cup to his lips. Placed it straight back down. ‘This story has been tormenting me for more than thirty years.’

  Roberto’s expression changed. ‘I’ve already told you. I don’t see what you’ve got to do with any of this.’

  ‘I’ll explain it to you.’

  The man brought his hand to his mouth and coughed vigorously, as though to free himself from a restraint and propel himself forward. Then he calmed down and took a deep breath.

  ‘I was the mayor. In those days, even a small village like this had a mayor. And that was the person who had to look after things. Which I did, in every respect.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There were direct links between us all, and if it came to my attention that any behaviour was getting out of hand, I would intervene.’

  ‘For the benefit of the community, and your good name.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And there were also the tourists to think about.’

  ‘I fear it didn’t go quite the way you hoped.’

  The man nodded. ‘It would have ended badly anyway. People have changed.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  They sat in silence.

  ‘During those months in ’81 I was constantly on edge. There were rumours.’

  ‘What kind of rumours?’

  The old man ran his finger around the edge of the cup.

  ‘There was talk of drugs being trafficked back and forth over the border. And of the base being here in the valley.’

  ‘People didn’t talk about that sort of thing back then. I never heard anything.’

  ‘You were a child.’

  ‘Drugs were a city thing.’

  ‘Those were the heroin years. Kids were shooting up, but around here their families didn’t talk about it. They kept it to themselves. And many were afraid that drugs would take lives here among us too.’

  Roberto sighed, as though the conversation did not interest him and was becoming tedious. ‘Same everywhere, Signor Pichler. I still don’t see what this has to do with what happened that year.’

  ‘Leo Slat was one of the traffickers. Though a pretty third-rate one.’ />
  Roberto turned serious.

  ‘Do you remember that afternoon you went up to Black Peak?’

  ‘Every minute of it.’

  ‘For the first few hours, no one went looking for you. Not even Leo.’

  Roberto was regarding him with more interest now.

  ‘Shortly after lunch four police officers from Trento searched Leo’s workshop. They didn’t find anything, but instead of leaving it at that, they arrested Leo. Took him to the police station.’

  ‘Why was that? If they didn’t find anything…’

  ‘Leo was at his worst just then. He wasn’t himself; it was as though something had happened. I don’t know what. When they started the search he flew into a rage, and the longer they took, the madder he got. He was shouting at them, insulting them. Suddenly he started saying he had to leave. That he had to get home. And when they tried to stop him, he got physical.’

  ‘Resisting arrest.’

  ‘They’d have brought him in to the station regardless, to teach him a lesson. They released him later in the afternoon, when it was already too late.’

  Roberto brought his hand to his temple. Then he said angrily: ‘He could have called Rosa! Why didn’t he call her?’

  ‘He did!’

  ‘And?’

  The former mayor whispered, ‘The phone was out of order.’

  Roberto’s eyes clouded over. Suddenly it was all terribly clear.

  ‘It’s true, it was out of order.’ Roberto leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

  ‘And you boys began the climb.’

  The old man, his eyes bright, his face that of a drowned man, tried to summon the strength to get to the end.

  ‘If the police were so intent on getting Leo, it was because I had reported him.’

  Roberto stared at him once more. ‘You?’

  ‘The chief of police in Trento was a friend of mine. I’d talked to him about Leo. In private. I’d even made a statement, but he made me withdraw it. That’s it there. I’ve kept it all these years.’

  Roberto opened the folded sheet of yellowing paper. It was a short text, typewritten.

  ‘Look at the date.’

  It read: 10/7/1981.

  Roberto picked it up. His eyes flashed.

  ‘Why did you have to withdraw it?’

  ‘He didn’t want me to be exposed. I had no grounds for reporting Leo. But I gave my word. And he gave his. That was why the police turned up at Leo’s for the second time in a few days: they were on his case.’

  Roberto wasn’t following.

  ‘But why did you do it?’

  ‘The rumours.’

  He closed his eyes, as though seeing once more the moments that had returned to persecute him so many times.

  ‘Rumours mattered more than anything. And Leo was an arsehole. Even with Rosa. I wanted to frighten him. Put pressure on him. Make him behave.’

  ‘Was that the only reason?’

  The man did not answer. Roberto raised his voice.

  ‘You reported him just for being a bit of a hothead?’

  A moment earlier the old man’s face seemed to have lost all strength, but now a surprising energy was unleashed upon it—rage. His body tensed, towards an answer he had been wanting to give for thirty years.

  ‘I was certain he was trafficking. And then there was Rosa.’

  Roberto looked at him in surprise. ‘What’s she got to do with it?’

  The man closed his eyes once more. ‘We were together for a while. Rosa and me. She was seventeen, I was ten years older. That was before Leo arrived on the scene.’

  Roberto slowly got up from the couch and approached Pichler.

  ‘You wanted to settle an old score.’

  The old mayor did not reply.

  ‘It was a dumb act of revenge.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And then everything that happened…happened.’

  A long silence.

  ‘Why are you only talking about it now?’

  The man seemed to regain some life, a sharp, pained brightness in his eyes. He bent forward, a small figure sinking into the worn sofa.

  ‘I kept quiet at the time for fear of getting implicated. And then it became too late, way too late.’

  There was a long pause. Then he said: ‘If I hadn’t reported him, maybe…’

  His voice gave out.

  Roberto did not move. He let his thoughts wander through all the ifs and buts of the story. The unfolding of the tragedy had relied on a delicate mechanism of minuscule gears. Any one of them could have locked up the machinery, undone its effects. Instead, all the parts had worked perfectly: every cog, every tooth, had slotted in exactly where it should never have been, until the springing of the trap was unstoppable.

  Extremely slowly, Roberto picked up his coat. He put it on calmly and walked past the couch on which the ex-mayor was sitting, and towards the door.

  ‘Thank you for telling me. But it’s not your fault. You could not have predicted what was going to happen.’

  Pichler stayed in his seat, absorbed in his thoughts.

  The metal and wooden bolt on the door opened with a click. Light and cold air from outside brought some freshness into that grey, cluttered space of the past.

  Roberto took a step towards the outside, forcing himself to overcome the inertia that was holding him there in the company of those ghosts, when the old man, with one last effort, said: ‘Leo knew about your trip up the mountain. That was why he went crazy when he couldn’t come up after you and drag you back down.’

  Roberto turned around.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Vigni, the arresting officer. Leo begged him to let him go and in the end confided in him. Vigni sent up some officers, but it was too late.’

  ‘Where can I find this Vigni?’

  ‘In Trento cemetery. He died of a heart attack seven or eight years ago.’

  13

  The car slowed down on the descent and gave one last sputter as it pulled in next to the closest bowser. An old man, wearing a red and yellow windcheater from the oil company, approached the car window with a smile.

  Elena hopped out, keys in hand. ‘There’s something wrong with it. Can you help me?’

  The man felt slightly annoyed, then took a closer look—she was an attractive woman in a simple dress that allowed a glimpse of her figure—and changed his tune. A chubby boy of around fourteen, in the same uniform, stuck his head out from the service area and sat down to watch the spectacle from the little garden chair the old man had been sitting in a moment earlier.

  ‘I’ll pay whatever it costs if you can fix it right away. It keeps cutting out. It’s been a nightmare on the bends.’

  ‘Open the bonnet for me and we’ll see if I can work something out.’

  The man poked around for a few minutes. He turned on the engine while a concerned Elena stood watching him with her arms folded. He let it idle. Then he took a screwdriver and tightened up the carburetor, and suddenly the car stopped sputtering.

  ‘It was the clamp on the carburetor, it must’ve got loose. It’s probably best to change it.’

  ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘Twenty seconds, if I had one. But we need to get one from the parts shop. Tobia can go. It’s a fifteen-minute walk.’

  ‘Not as bad as I feared. That’s absolutely fine.’

  ‘Tobia!’

  The kid looked around him, as though waking from a deep sleep, then stood up awkwardly and came to stand in front of the old man.

  ‘Tobia, you need to go down to the parts shop and get a carburetor clamp for this lovely lady. I’ll show you.’

  Elena ignored the pleasantry and fixed her eyes on the boy, who was leaning in over the engine.

  ‘That’s it there,’ said the old man, tapping the part with the screwdriver.

  Tobia took out his phone and took a picture of it while the old man nodded to himself.

  ‘Off you go now.’

 
The boy walked off up the hill at an unexpectedly brisk pace.

  The old man and Elena followed him with their gaze as far as they could. She sat back down in the car, while he stood stiffly by and asked, ‘Are you here on holiday?’

  ‘No, actually I was at Madonna del Bosco to pick up my partner.’

  He clicked his tongue in the gap where his teeth were missing.

  ‘But as you can see, I was unsuccessful in my attempt.’

  ‘And what did he come here for?’

  ‘To look for some people he lost track of in ’81.’

  ‘That won’t be easy.’

  ‘No indeed, it’s ridiculous.’

  ‘But if he finds them will he return home?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The man gave it some thought.

  ‘I lived in another valley back then.’

  ‘But can you remember if anything significant happened in ’81?’

  He tried to recollect. ‘Wasn’t that the year that little boy died in the artesian well? Or was that 1980? I can’t remember now, it’s been too long. But that wouldn’t be related anyway: that was in the south, not here.’

  Tobia returned after a while with the part wrapped in newspaper. The old man unwrapped it and left the paper nearby, on top of one of the headlights. While he was unscrewing the old part to replace it with the new one, Elena noticed the dirty, crumpled page. A nice green masthead: not a national newspaper. She smoothed it out. The news items were quaint: minor events in the valley, local council politics; even the crime section had nothing worse than a dead cat and a failed suicide attempt. Just a few pages. Something heartwarming, domestic, about them.

  ‘Has this newspaper been around for long?’

  ‘I reckon it’s been around forever.’

  The man smiled toothlessly and Tobia agreed, as though this were some kind of in-joke. Elena took a look at the margin of the front page where the editorial information appeared. It read: 58 years in print.

  ‘If I wanted to look at some issues from 1981, do you think there would be anyone who still keeps copies? Maybe at the offices of the newspaper?’

  ‘I don’t know…But that’d be in Trento.’

  ‘The question is, are they open to the public?’

  ‘This time of day you’d be better off going to Rovereto.’