“We desperately needed to do something. By then we had our passports, our new immaculate identities. Daniele sent us photographs of the olive-tree reserve at the Relais dei Saraceni, or what used to be the reserve. Craters instead of trees. In the first weeks, at least people talked about us, hunted for us, we felt movement around us, but once autumn came the monotony became unbearable. ‘We’re sitting here twiddling our thumbs while they destroy everything,’ Bern kept saying.”
She sighed, as if she’d told that story dozens of times already and repeating it was getting to her.
“One day I hacked into Nacci’s computer. Exactly as I’d done with Daniele and with you. I had gotten the hang of it and his password was so obvious that I guessed it on the fifth or sixth attempt. I found all sorts of filth there. And in particular I found his correspondence with that European Parliament member, De Bartolomeo. Proof that we were right from the beginning, about the golf course and everything else. If someone had only listened to us, well, none of what happened would have happened.”
Suddenly, her willingness to tell all made me furious.
“What are you really sorry for? Are you sorry that Nicola was killed? Are you sorry about the olive trees? Or are you only sorry for yourself?”
For the first time Giuliana looked at me with a hint of uncertainty.
“The olive trees were the most important thing,” she murmured.
“The olive trees? Do you really believe that olive trees are more important than a human life?”
“At the time I thought so. We all thought that, I think. Maybe we were wrong.”
Yes, you were wrong. You sure as hell were wrong!
But I didn’t say that. What I said, with the same accusatory tone, was: “You had explosives.”
She shrugged, as if it no longer mattered. She remained silent for a few minutes before continuing: “The investigation into Nacci’s affairs seemed to awaken Danco. He had already decided to turn himself in, but none of us could have imagined it.”
Giuliana’s arm was propped against the window and her head was resting on her arm.
“One morning Bern and I woke up and Danco wasn’t there. None of us was supposed to go out without having first discussed it with the others, even the German had recommended that, and especially not at that hour, when the streets were full of people on their way to work. We sat and waited for him for a couple of hours, then Bern couldn’t stand it anymore and went out looking for him. When he came back he looked terribly weary, forlorn. He’d understood.
“Something changed in him, afterward. I don’t know why exactly, but I think it was seeing Danco on television, handcuffed, letting himself be led into the police station. ‘Doesn’t he seem free?’ he asked me. ‘Free?’ I repeated, pretending not to understand, but it was true. Danco in handcuffs looked free, much more so than we two were, stuck in that garage. But there was no time to think about how we felt. We had to leave immediately. Danco might already have revealed our hideout to the police. We packed our bags. Bern preferred that we didn’t notify the German. He wrote a goodbye note, stood staring at it for a long time, then crumpled it in his fist. He couldn’t even say goodbye to his father the way he wanted to.”
* * *
—
GIULIANA HAD TEARS in her eyes, overcome by tenderness. And seeing her so moved, lost in that memory of Bern and his father, I understood. Not as though I were realizing something that had earlier been wholly mysterious or inconceivable, but the way you catch a puff of dust fluttering through the air after having followed it for a long time with your eyes. I understood what I already knew and had never wanted to admit. I’d known it from the moment I had looked for my husband in the small crowd at the airport arrivals hall and instead of him I’d found her.
I said, “Why did you cut your hair like that?”
She made that gesture again, which I’d seen her repeat numerous times since the night before, her fingers searching for the long hair that no longer existed.
“I don’t know.”
“To be less recognizable?”
“No,” she said, but corrected herself immediately. “Maybe. I thought . . . I liked it better this way.”
“It’s Bern who likes it like that, right?”
Yes, I’d known it long before I landed on that cold, remote island. The hostility with which Giuliana had welcomed me to the masseria, which had never really abated, the way she stared at Bern, the habit of putting her hands on his back at the end of the day, massaging his neck and shoulders, and him closing his eyes; a friendly gesture, nothing more than that, I told myself, yet each time I had to find something to do, so I wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t see the expression of surrender that came over his face.
“You slept together.”
And since Giuliana still didn’t speak, conceding only mute assent, it was I who said: “It happened even before. Before I arrived at the masseria.”
“What difference does it make now?”
She looked for the pack of cigarettes, took one out, lit it. Her fingers were shaking.
“And while I was there?”
“Stop being paranoid.”
I grabbed her arm. I squeezed as hard as I could. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I just didn’t want to let her get away, as if her body were bound to the truth that she refused to tell me. Giuliana stiffened her muscle but didn’t try to break free.
“I have a right to know,” I said softly.
“Only twice. At the beginning.”
I let go of her arm, sat back.
“And Danco?”
Giuliana shrugged, a movement that could mean she didn’t give a damn about Danco anymore. Or it could mean that Danco had known about it. That the whole story, his abrupt rift with Bern, and maybe even his arrest were linked to that awareness.
All of a sudden I felt a familiar, distancing sensation wash over me: of objects moving away and getting smaller, except that this time it wasn’t them moving away, but rather me: I was receding at a frenzied speed, farther and farther back, in a tunnel that had opened up inside my head.
“Stop!” I ordered Giuliana, but she continued driving and I didn’t have time to say it a second time before the first acidic surge rose from my stomach and filled my mouth; I held it in with my hands as Giuliana jammed on the brakes. I opened the door and vomited the rest of the soup, all those venomous mushrooms.
She handed me a tissue, and when I didn’t take it, she laid it on my knee. I used it to wipe my mouth.
Then I leaned back in the seat again, my eyes closed, the beating of my heart slowly returning to normal. With a nod I told her she could continue on.
* * *
—
WE REACHED the lake a couple of hours later. The sky had opened up, you could feel summer now. A dense vapor issued from a fissure on a barren mountainside. There was the smell of sulfur there too, stronger than in the guesthouse.
We skirted the lakeshore for a while; the surface of the water glittered, and tiny green islands sprouted here and there. This was a more recognizable setting, more reassuring than the miles of uninhabited, alien nature we’d driven through in the preceding hours.
Giuliana turned into a slightly sloping parking area. She switched off the engine.
“The bathrooms are in there.”
I felt weak, dazed. I asked if we were stopping there.
“We have to change vehicles. With this one we can’t get to the cave.”
The new off-roader had gigantic, overly inflated tires, as if someone had blown them up disproportionately as a joke. It belonged to a guided tour agency, a name with the word “Adventure” in it, or “Outdoor.” On one side it had the image of a group of people rafting, with splashes of foam surrounding their smiling faces.
Giuliana introduced me to our guide, Jónas. He was no more than twenty-five, and was in shor
t sleeves despite the temperature, a waterproof jacket knotted around his waist. They spoke in a rapid, clipped English that I wasn’t able to understand. Then Jónas asked me with the utmost cordiality if I had gloves and if the shoes on my feet were the only ones I had. In both cases, Giuliana answered for me: I would use her gear. Jónas helped me climb onto the jeep’s high footboard, while she watched from below, and a moment later we were on our way.
We took the road that circled the lake, back the way we’d come. We continued on for another half hour or so past the point where we had turned in, before Jónas turned right onto an unmarked dirt road. Giuliana and I were sitting in different rows. There were a dozen or so seats in the jeep, all empty except ours.
I was observing the landscape, beginning to get used to the vastness. I found myself imagining what Bern had felt when he saw that terrain for the first time, the wonder that must have riveted him, because in him the sense of wonder was always boundless.
“We were looking for a place that had not been corrupted by man. Something intact,” Giuliana had said earlier.
I wanted to ask her to explain it to me better, but I couldn’t stand the idea of hearing her talk about Bern again, not then.
After a few miles the road became rougher. The mule track at the beginning had narrowed to double dirt ruts, barely visible, which had probably been made by the abnormal wheels of the same jeep we were traveling in. Grass grew in between. It reminded me of the dirt track at the masseria, but a treacherous, forsaken version, as it might have looked after a flood. There were depressions and dips and protruding boulders; the jeep swayed on its suspensions as if about to overturn.
In the rearview mirror, Jónas signaled to me to hold on to the rubber strap hanging from the ceiling, and I grabbed it a moment before an even deeper hole bounced me out of my seat.
A little farther on he stopped, got out of the vehicle, and bent over to examine one of the tires. I saw him go around and open the rear door. He returned to the wheel with a toolbox.
“Did we get a flat?” I asked Giuliana. Instinctively, I turned to look at her, and that simple gesture seemed to sanction a truce. I immediately regretted it.
But she barely looked at me: “He has to decrease the pressure to improve the traction. The road gets worse from here on out.”
When Jónas had completed the operation on all the tires, we set out again. It seemed impossible to me that the condition of the track could get any worse, but I was wrong. In the hour that followed, I had to hold on tight to the strap with one hand and grip the base of the seat with the other.
The shaking continued even after the bumpy road ended abruptly and we kept driving on a soft carpet of dark sand, at the base of a volcano. That tremor came from within now, from the fear of finding myself with Bern after all that time. The sky was even stranger than it was elsewhere, a dull blue, scored with white streaks that crossed in all directions.
Jónas repeated the operation with the tires, in reverse. I stared at the low trees, similar to rhododendrons, that grew at the foot of the volcano. Then I spotted a trailer in the distance, the only trace of humanity in the midst of all that emptiness.
* * *
—
INSIDE THE TRAILER, climbing boots were arranged by size on wooden shelves. On the opposite side, tossed chaotically in a box, were mud-splattered safety helmets.
“We’ll change our shoes,” Giuliana said.
“I can keep these on.”
Given the situation, accepting a favor from her was unthinkable. But the severity with which she answered made me bend down and untie my Adidas. I put on her hiking boots.
“Cross the laces at the top. Pull them tighter,” she ordered me with the same commanding tone as before.
Then Jónas gave me a pair of snow boots, a helmet, and heavy wool socks that smelled of sweat. He explained to me that I would put them on before entering the cave; we had to walk half an hour to get there. He pointed in the direction we would set out.
“Lava camp,” he said, turning to the expanse of wide, flat boulders that stretched before us. Small canyons ran through it like veins. The cave was somewhere in the middle of it—Bern was somewhere in the middle of it.
The walk was longer than predicted. Maybe I was slower than Jónas expected, or maybe we took a circuitous route, because they too seemed to be proceeding instinctively, with a precise destination point in mind but no fixed course through the rocks.
I was exhausted, yet tension kept me going. I stepped on a rock and my foot twisted. Giuliana reacted quickly to support me from behind and keep me from stumbling, but I had to stop for a few minutes. Jónas crouched down in front of me and made me place my leg over his knee while he unlaced the boot and moved my foot cautiously from side to side. He asked if I could continue, telling me I needed full mobility to enter the cave. My ankle hurt, but I said yes, then I did my best not to show that I was limping.
At last, at the entrance to the cave we found two other young men. They had set up a tent and were sitting at a camp table, with two thermoses in front of them. Introductions were made hastily. They exchanged a few words with Giuliana about the delay, maybe we shouldn’t go, they said, better to wait until tomorrow. Giuliana insisted. They agreed, but said we would have to be out within an hour.
As they debated, I approached the edge of the crater, which was about ten yards wide, yet invisible until you reached it. At the bottom a gleaming mantle of shimmering moss covered a heap of stones, probably the remains of the collapse that had created the opening. On one side ran an iron ladder, with only a rope to act as a handrail. I took a step forward to get a better look, but I got dizzy and had to back away.
I didn’t listen to much of what Jónas advised. My desire to go down there was as intense as my desire to get away from there as soon as possible, to go home. I understood that the inside of the cave was covered with ice, that the soles of the snow boots were studded with cleats to provide traction, but that I would have to be careful. Jónas asked me if I suffered from claustrophobia; he had to repeat the English term, twice.
Then he and I went down, him in front. Giuliana did not follow us, but remained at the entrance with the other two guys. I went back up the few steps. “You’re not coming?”
She had her arms folded, and her eyes had dark circles under them, or maybe it was just the light.
“He wants to talk to you,” she said. “That’s what he asked me, so go.”
Then she turned, and I saw how much it had cost her to say those words, how much it had cost her to meet me at the airport in Reykjavík and share a bed with me and then be in the same car together for ten hours, all to bring me to the man for whom we’d silently been rivals for years. I felt sorry for her.
At the bottom of the ladder the light was poor, but you could see the metal gate that marked the entrance to the cave. We stopped a few steps from the ice. Jónas told me to put on the woolen socks, the cleated boots, and the helmet with the front-facing light on top, which he switched on for me. He also had an additional sweater. I was already warm the way I was, but he forced me to put it on, since the temperature inside was close to zero. Soon enough I’d see what he meant.
The entry was the hardest part, but I didn’t yet know that. You had to clamber up a slippery boulder and crawl on your belly through a slit about half a yard wide. Jónas went ahead of me, showed me how to do it, but it took me five attempts. Then I had to make my way through a tunnel, stooped over. I couldn’t breathe, and felt my heartbeat accelerate wildly. Maybe what I’d told him wasn’t true, maybe I did suffer from claustrophobia. I remembered the night when Bern had taken me to the tower, the dark steps and the panic that had made me beg to leave there as quickly as possible.
The ice was thick and the beam of light revealed forms trapped inside it, colorful stones made brilliant by that crystalline layer.
When the tunnel sloped do
wnhill, Jónas told me to let myself slide, holding on to the rope. He would help me with the landing. For a while my arms refused to loosen their grip on the rope, but I heard Jónas encouraging me, his voice terribly distant, and I let myself go.
Finally we found ourselves in a chamber, a large cavern with ice as its floor and dark rocks overhead. Jónas warned me to be careful not to bump into the stalagmites that were scattered everywhere; some were a few inches high, others came up to my forehead. He said it had taken hundreds of years for them to form, but that just brushing them with my foot would be enough to shatter them. I had to step exactly where he stepped.
At first, I proceeded very slowly, until I became familiar enough with the slippery floor. We crossed the chamber and entered another through an opening in the rock. I looked around to gauge how big it was. It was smaller than the first one and there was no visible way out this time. It looked like the terminus of the cave.
Jónas raised an arm and pointed to something ahead of us, up above, and only then was I able to make out a very narrow, horizontal cleft.
“He’s in there.”
He cupped his hands around his mouth and called Bern’s name. It produced an echo that seemed never-ending.
The silence had not yet been fully restored when Bern answered: “Yes.”
Then I could no longer contain myself; a gush of emotion flooded my chest and tears streamed from my eyes. Later, much later, remembering that moment, I would think about how those tears spilling onto the ground had joined the perennial layer of ice, but not at that moment. At that moment there was only Bern, beyond a rock whose thickness I could not imagine.
Jónas helped me climb a couple of yards closer to the cleft. He pointed to a ledge where I could sit. Going any farther up would have been impossible for me, but from there Bern was able to hear me, I just had to speak loudly. Jónas would stay at the base of the chamber; he couldn’t risk leaving me alone.
“Bern,” I said.
There was no answer. Jónas told me to raise my voice. I repeated the name, nearly shouting.
Heaven and Earth Page 35
