Andrei intervened right away.
“Do not get hasty conclusions. They probably left it here because they could not carry it over. They will be loaded with her husband on their shoulder and they will continue.”
There was a note stunned in my voice, shaky and annoying. Was it terror?
“Where to go?”
“Tell me, this is your home. Where can you go from here?”
I struggled to think, then pointed to a door open.
“There is a staircase leading up to the roof. There is no other way out.”
Andrei looked at the other doors of the floor. They were all intact, they could check their interior later, comfortably. He organized the small group and completely opened the door. The staircase was narrow, steep and dark. He pressed the switch unnecessarily: the light bulb was smashed. Pushing the gun in front of him, Andrei began to climb. After an endless minute, there was a variation of brightness, a sign that had opened the roof door. A whistle was the order to follow him.
The roof, now lit by a livid moon, was deserted. It was flat, square, with supports to stretch the linen. In the center, a high centralized antenna. On the other side, there was a pair of lockers where the tools were to be cleaned and worn. There were no gaps where such a large number of people could hide. We were all disappointed.
Spini broke the silence.
“I’m afraid there’s no other place but the cellar.”
It was a nonsense, I was certain. I almost shouted.
“It is not possible. They went up, they all climbed up, this is obvious. From the outset, the crowd grew and eventually everyone came here.”
Andrei came to my aid, supporting my hypothesis.
“I understand that too, but now they aren’t here. You also see that there is no one! If they have even come here, someone has reached them. Those who pursued them have caught them and are forced to follow them. It seems like a fairly probable explanation.”
How could I accept such an idea? Guido was there somewhere. I turned round in that deserted plaza, shaking my hands, desperately looking to see something that had escaped other in the pale light of the moon. It was all so clean, as if it had just been washed, as if the weather had never dared to scratch that surface. Too clean. The antenna looked like a sad stone on that dead house, the goblins two dice thrown on the playing table. Then I noticed the cloth and screamed.
“Come on, soon! Look here!”
Andrei was right next to me. I pointed to one of the box room: from under the door a piece of cloth was protruding, probably a rag. Pieces of the same fabric went everywhere, around the perimeter of the door. Someone else used the same expedient of the Chinese.
Suddenly, from the small window that adorned the door, two eyes appeared. Folly and strenuous, full of terror. I screamed.
The cops pushed me away and surrounded the building. Then they tried to open it. The door was clogged and did not moving.
They pushed it they are four, and the door opened with a dull noise. Inside, scorned in an absurd space, a small, slim, middle-aged man looked at us horrified, trembling.
I went straight ahead.
“Mr. Durante, do not be afraid, I am…”
Addressing the agents, I added, “That’s Mr. Durante. He lives on the first floor!”
Two policemen forced the man to come out. They had to fight, he seemed to have no intention of leaving his hiding place. Once outside, he started to tremble pathetic, looking around with terror. He started shouting disconcertingly.
“Get me out of here, take me away!”
I tried to resist, I told myself that the poor man was under shock and that I had to leave him time to recover. It was all worthless: I jumped almost on him.
“My husband, Mr. Durante, what happened to my husband?”
The man lowered his eyes, embarrassed, pretending not to see me either. He continued to stutter.
“I want to leave, get me out of here.”
Andrei moved me gently, shaking her head.
“I doubt that there are many chances to question it under these conditions. He needs a doctor right away.”
Then, with resignation.
“All right, let’s all go down.”
Mr. Durante retreated with a groan, trying to break out of the arms that imprisoned him.
“No! I will not go down there below. No! No!”
Immediately, like a puppet to which they cut the threads, he dropped to the ground, muttering.
The situation was getting tense. Mr. Durante had also plagued with fear the cops, who were now looking around scared in search of invisible enemies. Andrei sat down on the floor next to the little man.
“Then you have to tell us what happened.”
Mr. Durante shook his head.
“I do not know, I do not know.”
“What was that of others?”
“I do not know.” And bitterly, “I do not want to know.”
Andrei was impatient. It was all so absurd.
“Tell us what happened. Start where you prefer, but tell us. Tell us something. If you want to be helped, you must tell us what scare you.”
Mr. Durante looked at him apologetically.
“But I want to get out of here!”
“I understand. But you refuse to get off the roof. What do you want to do, fly?”
Mr. Durante lit up with joy.
“Yes sure! This is the solution! You could call a helicopter! Maybe we can still waddle!”
Andrei was astonished, for the first time I read on his face a trace of fear, but he decided to take advantage of it.
“I’ll will do it as soon as you tell me what happened in this house. Not a moment before!”
“But I do not know anything! I did not understand anything!”
I knelt beside them, trying to speak with all the kindness that I was left, while in fact my only desire was to shake it and slap it to force it to tell the truth.
“But you taped the slits of the door! Something had to imagine if you did!”
“The Chinese have told me. When I went to call them, they refused to leave home and told me what to do to save me. But I did not give them straight. Not at all, at least.”
Andrei tried to take the situation back.
“Tell me what happened from the beginning!”
“How did it begin? The current was missing, it was five and a half, it was her husband the first to notice it. He phoned Mrs. Paoli. Paoli doing, he did, the duties of the administrator when he was away, she was the only one to have all the keys to the palace, she was dealing with these problems. My wife was from her, they were chatting when Mr. Guido phoned. Paoli was annoyed, took the keys and went down to the cellar and my wife came home to tell me what had happened. She knows, we are in front of us, and Mrs. Paoli.”
Mr. Durante paused, breathing again.
“Mrs. Paoli did not return. My wife was impatient, then worried. She asked me to go and see, but I did not want to know that she would go there. She got angry and I heard him knocking out of neighbors. She asked Mr. Giuliani to accompany her. You know, Giuliani was the taxi driver and he was an imposing guy, of those who incite fear. So, they went down.”
Mr. Durante’s voice began to shake.
“Not even five minutes later, Giuliani knocked on my door. He was agitated, scared. He told me that for my wife there was nothing left to do, that we had to go away there, right away. Then he went to call his family. I was tired, I did not know what to do. Do you imagine it? For my wife there was nothing to do, what did he mean? Was she dead?”
He flew past his eyes, before continuing.
“There was no time to think about it: Giuliani was back on the landing that prompted his wife and children to follow him as soon as possible. He carried his youngest son in his arms, and his wife had stopped to close the door. I tried to ask him questions, but he hit me aside, then went down the stairs. We heard him scream, he and the baby. The poor, stupid wife, she ran down, dragging her behind the oth
er children, I tried to stop her, but it was useless. The ladder was immersed in the dark, I could see nothing, I did not know what had happened. Then she yelled and I ran away. I got up, there was nowhere else to go.”
Andrei was left open. The story was crazy, but the man seemed sincere. I no longer knew what to believe.
“I knocked on all the doors, flat on the floor, I explained to everyone what had happened. Two men have decided to go down to see. I think they were Alberto and Mr. Cattaneo. Of course, they have not come back again. Everyone was talking, shouting, and we could not decide what to do. It was dark, dark everywhere and we started to climb the upper floors. A couple refused to go up on the second floor. After a while, we heard screaming them too. And so, floor by floor we came to the top, to the sixth. There was only the roof.”
“And my husband, was he with you?”
Mr Durante spoke more slowly, embarrassed.
“Yes, of course. Right there, at least. But the wheelchair did not pass, the ladder for the roof was too tight. We offered to take him in the arm, but he insisted on staying. Without the wheelchair, he felt lost.”
Guido was dead. This chilling certainty enveloped me, taking my breath away. I felt it clearly, indeed I was surprised that I did not understand it before. I knew it since I got home and saw the police in front of the door. I knew he was dead, but I had tried to deceive me. I wanted to weep but I could not, I wanted to scream but I did not voice any more.
“So, we got up on the roof.”
Andrei interrupted him.
“Is it possible that none of you have come to look out for a window and cry out for help?”
“But there was nothing, nothing outside of us. Outside it was dark, very dark. There was no trace of life. Just looking at those black glasses dreaded. None of us had the courage to approach, let alone touch them.”
Andrei was astonished: what the man was saying was absurd, he had no sense.
“On the roof, all happened in a moment. I do not know how to explain it. There was no time to do anything, even to think. Those who tried to reach the edges were the first. Everyone ran, yelling. I did not resist, I was terrified, locked in the closet, and I plugged all the holes with a rag, as the Chinese had told me. I locked the door with the sticks. Outside they stopped shouting almost immediately. Then the door began to shake. I thought it was over for me too. Instead it worked and left.”
“Who?”
“I do not know, I do not know, I have no idea. I have not seen anything. I tried not to see, I even taped the window to not be seen. I do not know what happened out there. I only remember the screams, I will never forget them.”
Andrei could not believe it.
“Is absurd! A roof full of people screaming and nobody noticed anything!”
Almost I did not recognize my voice: how calm and cold it was, determined. What was happening to me?
“This house is taller than the others. Look around: they are all houses of three, four floors at most. And then it was the peak time, the streets full of traffic. Look, though, even if you pretend to scream, it’s hard to hear it from this height.”
“And the nonsense on the glasses? Do you have an explanation for this too?”
“No, I have no idea.”
Andrei weighed the situation.
“We go down. All we have to do is look at the cellar.”
Mr. Durante started screaming again.
“Not you, of course. I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“With the helicopter?”
“Please, be silent. You go down with us!”
The man kept whining, but he let the cops carry him with them, in front of the stairs they were forced to lift him.
The most terrible time was when I had to pass next to Guido’s wheelchair. I forced myself to look at it. All my fears, my anguish, my sorrow, strengthened my hate, that deadly mixture of ice and fire that supported me. A ruthless, monstrous hate, which I never dreamed of being able to test, against anyone who had accomplished those horrors. It was this to keep me alive and I was looking for any pretext to feed it.
Andrei was at my side and never left me. He looked at me with fear, trying to interpret my feelings, for his good fortune without being able to do it completely. The descent was a nightmare: none of us had the courage to enter the elevator and the stairs seemed endless. From floor to floor, the silent and abandoned house looked more like a tomb. The policemen, agitated, branded weapons with excessive zeal. Andrei, with a barely audible voice, confided to me his fear that someone get on his nerves-it would have been a hassle for us all.
Eventually, after an endless time, we came to the ground floor. The exit was there, in front of us. Through the glasses, we could see the guard policemen who smiled and raised us. Andrei turned to Spini.
“Get out of that poor guy and bring him to the hospital. I recommend, do not talk to anyone. Journalists need nothing to know. At least until we find out what happened.”
Then he pointed to me.
“Take out Mrs. Landi and take care of her. Do not let them assault her.”
Mr. Durante was happy to leave, he was already starting out at the exit without any need to be supported. I did not mean to move one step further.
“Not at all! I come down with you. There might be my husband down there.”
I read the answer in Andrei’s eyes: “That’s it, he thought. For this reason, he was unmovable.”
I was dragged out against my will. Wherever curious or worried faces were looking at me. What did I do there? I had to be downstairs, along with the others. A cop brought me a chair and I fell on it. I was so tired, exhausted. And they were coming down…it was as if I heard them, step by step, they were meeting…to what? What was waiting for them, down there? Probably nothing: it would have been all empty and lindy and ordered as on the roof and in the rest of the house. They were all gone, as if they had never existed. The nothing had swallowed them. How could you hope to find a logical and rational explanation of what had happened?
Two policemen struggled hard to keep the curious, but for me it was as if they did not even exist. I stood there, motionless, with a fixed look, emptied of everything. Mr. Durante was shouting and Mr. Spini had been forced to drag him up to the ambulance. The survivor swirled, warning the present against the dangers of the damned house. Everywhere the confusion reigned.
Then the youngest policeman ran out of the house, panting.
“Torches, we need torches. It’s all dark down there, we don’t see nothing…”
New confusion, the cops dispersed in search of what they had been asked for. Almost immediately an agent came running.
“I only found this one.”
“Better than nothing.”
The young policeman catch it and went back to the house in a hurry.
There was another one.
“I found this too!”
I did not think but acted as an impulse
“Give it to me, I give it to him.”
And I pulled it out of his hand.
I was not doing the right thing, I was aware of it, I had taken him by surprise and my presence could have been an obstacle to Andrei and to his men. I had taken advantage of an emergency situation to impose myself, disregarding the problems I could generate. But, at the moment, it did not bother me at all. I had a task, an enemy to destroy, and nothing else was important. Nothing.
At the door of the cellar I was waiting for a second, stunned by the unnatural silence that enveloped me.
It was overwhelming: below there was something, something that sounded. Crunches, suckles, just as mentioned, seemingly distant and so floppy enough to doubt my hearing. But there, in that absolute silence that surrounded me, they grew to look like boats. I realized that it was probably house noises, water flowing through the pipes, perhaps just the boiler that had to be somewhere down there, but I was not comforted by it. The voice of reason could not calm down much. The noises remained, and they did not give any good news.
>
Someone had come out of there and had taken away all the inhabitants of the house. Probably had already gone, but how did you not feel terror in that place? I was nearing the collapse when I heard the steps coming down the stairs. The ray of a flashlight illuminated the entrance and I heard a policeman launch a sigh of relief. Their companion came down the stairs. In one hand he had the torch, the other in the gun.
I hurried to follow him: the ladder was lost in the dark. Even this was narrow and steep like the one on the roof, and here too the bulbs were broken.
I heard Andrei’s annoyed voice.
“You have just brought a torch, what kind of morons! What about a flashlight? We’re in six!”
“Seven!”
I walked so that he could see myself.
“We’ve only found these two, we’ll have to do enough”, I said.
The young policeman smiled embarrassed in front of Andrei’s gaze.
“I did not notice”, he tried to apologize.
“Where was that fool Spini? He had to deal with her.”
I was answering him.
“He was forced to accompany Mr. Durante with the ambulance. The journalists had even besieged it. It was not prudent to leave it alone.”
Andrei opened his mouth to counteract, then realized that it would have been useless. Now I was there and we had to move on. It had been my choice, and I knew what we were likely to find there. Andrei had to accept the fact that, if I considered myself able to withstand it, maybe I was really.
I gave my torch to Andrei, who immediately illuminated the cellar. It was a large, mackerel. At a couple of feet from us there was the electric panel. Andrei motioned to the other policeman with the torch to go see.
“Go check it out. We cover your shoulders.”
The man struggled to repress a rejection, then he started. He wandered the wall, illuminating the floor in front of him, then reached the plant. He slid the light beam over cables and switches, then gave a whistle.
“Damn it, but here we risk jumping all over. There is a collapse here, just on the current cable. It was sliced, that’s why light has missed. Then there must have been another collapse, and the cable fell on the lead, next to the other segment. The two cables have touched and made contact. The current is back. What a fatality.” Right at that moment, sparks sparked from the cables, causing the policeman to retreat. “Fuck, you’re risking being stuck!”
The Prison Page 53
