The Mountain

by Massimo Donati

  The two adults stared at Tobia, who until then had not uttered a word.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Rovereto’s where the municipal archives are. They’ve got every single issue there.’

  Elena looked at him with renewed interest. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘School assignments. The history teacher’s always sending us to the archives. She says it’s good to work with the printed page instead of the internet.’

  14

  ‘Yes, I found her. She’s in a nursing home in Trento.’

  The full midday sun was beaming through the glass windows that looked out over the valley. It shone on square tables that had been set with a certain cheerful earnestness: simple cutlery, wildflowers in the centre. There was nobody left in the restaurant apart from Roberto.

  ‘I’d lost it. I bought a new one yesterday.’

  It was closing time and he was sitting comfortably in his spot enjoying the sun, after a farewell meal of local specialities. Those hadn’t changed, fortunately. He had little interest in what he was hearing through his new mobile phone.

  ‘There’s not much to tell, Ciprini. Signora Rosa can barely understand a thing these days. She couldn’t remember anybody, much less me.’

  The elderly waitress emerged from the kitchen. She cleared the table with a calm, pleasant manner and disappeared again.

  ‘I requested the contact details of the nursing home administration. If you check your email, you’ll find it all there. So now we can go ahead with the donation stipulated in the will, and unblock everything else.’

  He fell silent. Ciprini’s words were coming through his phone in an ordered and concise buzz. Out of politeness, Roberto listened to him outlining the technical details of the procedures that needed to be carried out. Then Ciprini asked him whether he had made a decision regarding the publishing house.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, I’ve come up with an idea. Now that things can move forward, we’ll sort out the question of the business too. I expect to be back this evening. There’s nothing more for me to do here. Then I’d like to discuss it face to face, once and for all. I think that would be for the best. Come by the villa the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon.’

  Back in his room, it did not take long to organise his luggage. He folded everything carefully, separating dirty clothes from freshly laundered ones. He laid out the trousers, jacket, shirt, tie and shoes he would wear for the trip. Then he had a long, hot shower.

  As he was getting dressed he looked around the luxury room he had been given and thought that it was a place it would be impossible to become attached to; that in future he would not even remember it. He admitted to himself, with some bitterness, that for too long he had passed through places and met people that left no trace in his life. He thought this knowing he would let things continue as they always had, ignoring the knot that sometimes formed in his throat, because it was the only way he knew to survive. It would require too much effort, too many failures, to look for another way.

  He carried his bags down to reception to settle the bill.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m having some trouble with the credit card machine. It usually only takes a few minutes to fix. In the meantime, please take a seat at the bar and we’ll offer you a coffee on the house.’

  He didn’t feel like a coffee, but he ordered one anyway. The barman was not the same one as when he’d arrived; he hoped the other one had not been fired over their unfortunate misunderstanding. This man looked more than fifty years old. When he brought the coffee over to his table, Roberto asked, ‘The other barman’s not here today?’

  The man smoothed his full grey whiskers in a reflex action.

  ‘He’s got the day off. I fill in when he’s not around.’

  Without asking, he sat down at the table next to Roberto. ‘Are you heading off?’

  ‘There’s nothing more for me to do here.’

  ‘It wasn’t a holiday, then.’

  ‘I was looking for some people. I found one of them. That’s enough for me.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘People I’d lost touch with.’

  The man had assumed a relaxed manner. He leaned in a little too close. Roberto let this go. The man stared at him, with something seductive in his eyes.

  ‘If I can help…I know everybody around here.’

  ‘Have you always lived here?’

  The question threw him; he seemed caught out. ‘Well, no, actually. My parents separated when I was little, you see, and I lived in the city with my mother, in Trento. My father owned the sawmill here.’

  ‘So you used to come here, to Madonna del Bosco, thirty years ago?’

  ‘Thirty years ago precisely?’

  ‘In ’81.’

  He did some calculations, first in his head, then on his fingers.

  ‘I was seventeen, eighteen years old then. To tell you the truth…I didn’t come here very much in that period. My parents didn’t get on, you know, and I didn’t see eye to eye with my father.’

  ‘But maybe you can remember the lady who ran the hotel?’

  He replied cheerfully, excitedly, as though taking a guess in a quiz show. ‘Signora Slat?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her.’

  ‘You bet I remember her! Every so often my father would take me there for breakfast. She was always kind. And I thought she was so beautiful. And then there was her elderly mother—Emma, was it?’

  Roberto felt a flash of hope.

  ‘And what about her son Mattia? Mattia Slat? You remember the son?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I remember there was a son…Or maybe two?’

  ‘Then perhaps you know where I can find them, the son Mattia and his father Leo. They’re the ones I haven’t been able to find.’

  The man thought this over at length.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can remember them all, but I haven’t heard anything of them since then. At some point I just stopped seeing them around, now I think about it.’

  Then he added, by way of apology: ‘When you’re young, you don’t think about these things. People you don’t know well disappear and that’s the end of that, you don’t really wonder why. You don’t think about it. They simply aren’t important, and nothing changes once they’re gone.’

  Yet another blind alley, and shorter than the others. Roberto didn’t give it any importance. He sipped his coffee while enjoying one last view of the countryside through the large windows. Down below, the ruins of the old hotel seemed destined to disappear, swallowed by the cliff’s edge.

  The owner stuck his head in and said, ‘The connection to the bank is back up again. If you come through you can settle the bill, I’ll give you your receipt, and you can be on your way.’

  ‘The coffee’s on the house?’

  ‘Of course.’

  As he was getting up from the table, the door to the bar banged and in came a man with his thinning hair in a ponytail, not much more than a tuft at the back of his neck. He was carrying a package.

  ‘Mail!’

  There was something familiar about the stranger. His brown uniform from a private courier company hid a body that seemed weighed down, yet still energetic.

  ‘Just leave it there and I’ll serve you.’

  ‘The usual.’

  The barman placed a half glass of white wine on the bar, a lime soda alongside it.

  The postman took a sachet of sugar and poured it in.

  Roberto stared. The man was a ghost, emerged from the land of the dead. Roberto could not believe it.

  ‘This gentleman is looking for somebody, Alden. Stuff dating back thirty years. Maybe you’re old enough to remember.’

  ‘Let’s see if you look this good at my age.’

  ‘Would you be able to help me?’ Roberto had approached the man and was now standing alongside him. Aldeno turned slightly, reluctantly, and leaned one elbow on the bar. He regarded Roberto without interest for a few seconds, not finding anything familiar.

 
‘Who were you looking for?’

  ‘Mattia Slat. He used to live here with his family.’

  As soon as he heard the name, the old postman looked away and turned, in the same slow manner, towards the bar.

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  The barman looked at him with some surprise, but did not say anything more.

  ‘Are you sure? Have a think about it.’

  ‘I’m sure. Never heard of him.’

  He finished his white wine with lime in a single gulp, left a few coins on the table and waved goodbye to the barman. ‘See you.’

  The hotel owner came back in.

  ‘Signor Beltrami, would you mind coming through? I wouldn’t want the connection to—’

  Aldeno heard the name and could barely hide his astonishment.

  They stared at each other for just an instant, one so dense that it seemed to both of them, alone in the room, as if a chunk of the past had come crashing down off the wall of time. More damage: now and in perpetuity.

  Aldeno, his face bright red, turned and left, banging the door.

  ‘I’ll be there in a moment, excuse me.’

  The door banged yet again.

  Aldeno was getting behind the wheel of a small red truck. There was another man on board who’d been waiting for him. Aldeno turned on the engine.

  ‘Wait a moment. You know who I am.’

  Aldeno hesitated. The man alongside him asked something, but Aldeno silenced him. He wound down the window.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what happened to Mattia. You can help me, I know you can.’

  Aldeno looked at the man next to him.

  ‘We’ve got to go. We’ll be late,’ the other man said.

  ‘I can get in with you. I’ll walk back.’

  The two men from the courier company looked at each other. The younger of the two looked puzzled, but when he got the signal from Aldeno he shrugged. He opened the door and slid over.

  Soon afterwards, the rumble of the truck was diffused among the tall, ancient trees that opened and closed before the grassy plain like the curtain of a theatre.

  15

  Although they had explained how to get there, it took Elena a good half-hour to find the Rovereto archives. It was a mountain building exactly like all the others, with a steeply sloping roof, balconies and painted external walls.

  Her first impression was of a parish library: the entrance was a small room just a few metres square, and the reception was a tiny semicircular counter designed for a single person. As she went in, Elena stopped to look through the glass doors at the immense filing cabinets that stretched all the way to the ceiling.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The voice came from the reception desk, where a young woman had got to her feet. She, too, was tiny: it seemed they had built the counter to scale. She looked wary, in fashionable heavy glasses and heavier makeup, both of which contrasted with her uniform and demure chignon. She looked about twenty or a little older. Elena had not even noticed her when she came in; it was as though she had emerged from a trapdoor.

  ‘Good morning. Can I be of any assistance?’

  ‘Good morning. I was told you keep copies of local papers here.’

  ‘Yes, in the archives. Which one are you interested in?’

  ‘I’m really interested in any that have been around for many years.’

  ‘That’s only a few. Some go all the way back to the early postwar years, but you need a permit to look at those. Are you a historian?’

  ‘No, but I don’t need to go that far back. I’m interested in the summer of 1981. July, to be precise.’

  As though she had suddenly lost all interest, the girl reluctantly waved one hand and pointed the way. ‘Through there, the room on the right. Archive thirteen.’

  Then, as Elena was leaving, she added: ‘You’ll need a bit of patience.’

  Elena turned, her face quizzical.

  ‘See, the newspapers have never really been put in order. They’re arranged according to masthead. The truth is, nobody’s really interested in those old ones.’

  The newspaper archive really was a mess. As that sank in, she thought about giving up.

  But she stayed, and began by taking entire bundles of newspapers from the drawers and placing them on the floor. She went through them all. The situation was better than she had anticipated: they were not completely out of order. She grouped issues from the same year together and removed those that did not belong, later slotting them into the right position.

  The girl came twice to see how she was doing, declining to lend a hand as it was not part of her role.

  However, at lunchtime she said: ‘According to the regulations you’re supposed to leave now and come back at two, but you don’t look like someone who’s planning to set the place on fire. Let’s do this: I’ll leave for lunch and lock you inside. I’ll be back in half an hour. Is that okay?’

  Elena, engrossed in her work, nodded, thanked her, and resumed. By early afternoon, stacked up on the table provided for visitors were two piles of papers from the second half of July 1981. Her search was really only beginning now.

  She looked through them one by one, page by page. No more than half an hour later she found what she was looking for.

  It was a full-page article. The headline at the top read:

  YET ANOTHER HIGH-ALTITUDE TRAGEDY

  The children had run away to climb to Black Peak

  A few lines were enough to fill her eyes with tears. She thought of Roberto, and of the secret origin of his pain. It was all so damn clear now.

  And she suddenly realised that perhaps she was the only one who truly knew the whole story.

  Only one more step was required to draw a line under it all: she needed to find Mattia.

  She stood up and went to the counter. ‘Is it possible to make photocopies?’

  The girl looked at her. ‘We don’t have a proper photocopier, but if you don’t mind waiting I can turn on the computer to access the electronic archive, and then I can scan for you.’

  Elena’s eyes opened wide. ‘You have an electronic archive?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? It would have taken about a tenth of the time.’

  The girl was unfazed. ‘You said the article you needed was from July 1981. The electronic archive only goes back as far as 1988. Any earlier than that and you need to consult the printed copies.’

  Elena felt embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No problem.’

  She handed over the article to be scanned.

  ‘So if I was looking for something and didn’t know the date, I could do it through the PC?’

  ‘We have an excellent internal search engine. Take a seat and type in some keywords. Then it will list all related articles.’

  Elena sat down. She positioned the cursor and typed in: Mattia Slat.

  16

  It was not long before his handmade black patent leather shoes were scuffed and covered in mud from the climb up the hill. Even the cuffs of his dark trousers were stained and, since they were long and getting in his way, he paused to roll them up a few centimetres before going on.

  If anyone had seen him climbing the stony track in his dress shoes, dark suit and tie, they would have taken him for a mirage, or a ghost. But there was nobody around to cross paths with him.

  One step after another, Roberto proceeded slowly but with no uncertainty. His expression was focused, his eyes staring at something that wasn’t there. Something that was happening within him.

  ‘I can’t tell you much about Mattia. After what happened Leo’s family fell to pieces. They hadn’t had time to come to terms with it and then there was the arrest, and everything went to the dogs.’

  The truck was labouring along the mountain road that led to Mori. Aldeno’s foot was light, perhaps due to a habit acquired later in life of not drawing attention to himself, ever.

  ‘What arrest?
’

  Aldeno did not reply at once.

  The man sitting next to him turned angrily towards him. ‘Tell him. There’s nothing for us to be ashamed of anymore.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Our family. We’re brothers. I’m Alvise.’

  Aldeno hesitated again.

  ‘Leo and I used to carry drugs over into Switzerland.’

  Roberto thought back on the hidden bags, the abandoned coach, the arguments in the bar, and suddenly all those questions that had always been left lingering found answers. Perhaps he would have preferred not to know, as though knowledge could retrospectively collapse what little illusion of innocence he had left.

  ‘They nabbed us in the end. They were waiting for us, and Leo and I ended up going down for the lot. Especially me. Leo got probation and was out in six months.’

  ‘Why’s that? Weren’t you in it together?’

  A bitter smile appeared on Aldeno’s leathery lips. ‘He sent me across. He didn’t feel up to it. He was a wreck. I said we ought to pack the whole thing in, but the Swiss wouldn’t have taken that well, not to mention the fact that holding on to the gear was going to be dangerous anyway. So I went.’

  The truck stopped on the side of the provincial road. In front of them was a large shed with a few buildings around it. Alvise got out one side, climbing over Roberto, walked around the back, looked through the parcels that were to be delivered, and disappeared into the building.

  ‘Tell me about Mattia.’

  ‘I don’t know much about him. I was inside when they left, but Leo came to see me one last time. He was a different man. He talked to me about Rosa. They couldn’t stay together. He told me he couldn’t take it anymore, that she’d gone mad. People said they went to Australia, but I don’t know if it’s true. Maybe he had some contacts overseas. And he took Mattia with him.’

  ‘You never heard any news of them?’

  ‘Not so much as a postcard. As far as I know nobody has ever had any news of them, and I think they did that on purpose—father and son, they both wanted to erase the past. To forget everything.’

  ‘And Mattia? He never came back to see his mother?’

  ‘I don’t know. As far as I know, nobody’s seen him.’