They heated the tomatoes and peas in a big saucepan, taking turns at stirring them and competing to see who could stay longest near the fire. When the soup was ready, they poured it out into their dishes and devoured the warm, tasteless but filling mixture.
Neither Pietro nor Astor had said anything about the motorbike, and Anna was dying to know. ‘How are you getting on with the Vespa?’ she said casually.
Pietro ran his finger along the edge of the saucepan to polish off any remaining sauce. ‘Not too badly. It started for a moment, but then it cut out and we couldn’t get it going again.’
‘Well, you can try again tomorrow.’
He stopped, his finger smothered in sauce. ‘What? I thought you wanted to leave? You kicked up such a fuss …’
‘One day more won’t make much difference. And it’s true that we’d get to Messina more quickly.’
Astor tapped his forefinger against his temple, looking at Pietro. He stroked Fluffy, who opened his jaws in a yawn. ‘What about him?’
All three of them became pensive.
‘Sleeping pills!’Anna said suddenly. ‘Mama wrote that some sleeping pills can knock you out for a whole day. We’ll give him some, wait till he goes to sleep and put him in the sidecar. By the time he wakes up, we’ll be in Messina.’
Pietro wasn’t convinced.
‘It’ll work, you’ll see,’ she reassured him. ‘I’ll go and look for some at the chemist’s tomorrow. And if I can’t find any, we’ll go on foot.’
‘On foot!’ Astor repeated, aghast.
Too tired to talk any more, and full of doubts, they sat and watched the glowing embers.
11
The clouds lay on the horizon, passive observers of a sunny day warmer and clearer than the one before. Doves were cooing in the little pine wood behind the restaurants.
Anna was sitting on the beach, wearing a new blue balcony bra with a pretty white ribbon in the middle. It was too big for her, and her breasts fitted into it like scoops of ice cream in two bowls. Lower down, she’d kept the shorts. The tampons were doing their job, but the blood showed no sign of stopping.
A big black insect flying out of season hit her on the forehead, fell down, stunned, and lay quivering in the sand. Anna took the exercise book out of the rucksack, put it on her lap and started turning the pages, looking for the name of the sleeping pills she had to give to Fluffy.
It was the first time she’d opened the book since retrieving it in Torre Normanna. There’d been no need for it on the journey. She knew it by heart and there were many things in this new world that Mama could never have dreamed of.
She found the page about sleeping pills. There was a list of names: Minias …
The other names had been washed away by a splash of water.
It didn’t seem likely that she’d find them in any pharmacy: sleeping pills had been among the first medicines to run out. But there was no harm in trying. She skimmed through the book and came to the final pages, which had been left blank. She gazed at the horizon, the wind ruffling her hair.
Could I write something in it myself?
It was like a revelation. She’d never dared to contemplate such a thing before. This was the book of Important Things which Mama had given her before she died.
And which I’ll pass onto Astor.
She counted the blank pages. There were thirty-two. Would Mama mind if she wrote on them? She gazed at the clouds, took out a pencil and began.
MAIZE
Never eat maize, Astor – those little yellow balls that give you tummy ache and make you shit all day. Don’t even think about it. Just forget about maize, for goodness’ sake. All other kinds of food …
*
‘Anna!’
She looked up and saw Fluffy racing along the promenade, followed by her brother. ‘Anna! Anna!’
She put the book in her rucksack and started walking, then running, towards him.
Astor stopped in front of her, bent double and panting hard.
‘What’s the matter?’ Anna asked him.
‘Pietro …’The little boy put his hand on his chest. ‘Pietro managed to turn on the engine. It started!’
Somewhere in the old village an engine was roaring. It seemed only yesterday that the sound of motorbikes racing along the road beyond the wood had been a common experience.
‘Come on,’ said Astor, running off.
Anna ran after him, with the dog at her heels.
Pietro came out from between the houses on the Vespa. With the sidecar attached, it was nearly as big and cumbersome as a car.
He advanced slowly, trying to avoid the sand which covered much of the road.
He reached them in front of the restaurant, The Fishing Lamp, pulling up next to what was left of a fishing boat. The sidecar bucked and the engine cut out with a loud bang.
‘I’m not very good with the gears.’ Pietro was dripping with sweat, his face was red, and there were big dark patches on his shirt under the armpits.
‘That’s incredible …’ Anna murmured, walking round the sidecar. It was a beautiful blue colour, with chrome mirrors glinting in the sun. There was an advert on the side: ‘For hire’.
Pietro was bubbling. ‘The lights work, so we can travel at night too.’ He dismounted and pushed down hard on the kickstarter. The engine obediently started roaring again. ‘How about that?’
‘Fantastic,’ Anna applauded.
Astor jumped up and down in delight.
Pietro grinned knowingly. ‘Be honest, you didn’t think I could do it, did you?’
‘Yes, I did. It’s just that …’
‘What?’
‘It’s funny. That’s all.’Anna ran her hand over the bodywork.
‘It’s a Vespa 125, with four gears. You change gear by twisting the handle.’
Astor jumped onto the saddle and gripped the handlebar eagerly. ‘Can we go for a ride? Can we go for a ride?’
‘All right, but we’ll have to get it out of the sand first. Give me a hand.’
Astor and Anna pushed from behind while Pietro steered, perched on the tip of the saddle. The scooter kept getting stuck and the engine cutting out.
Exhausted with the effort, they reached the beginning of a straight, upward-sloping road towards the hills. As soon as the back wheel touched the asphalt, the scooter moved off, skidding from side to side and spraying gravel, with the dog behind it, barking and trying to bite the tyres.
‘Fluffy!’ shouted Anna. ‘Come back!’
Pietro smiled and accelerated away, pursued by the Maremma.
Anna watched them, still out of breath. ‘That stupid dog will never let us put him in that sidecar.’
The combo swerved erratically, just missing the cars parked on either side of the road, then, somehow, Pietro managed to get it under control, steered out into the middle, slowed down as he approached a hairpin bend and disappeared round the corner.
Anna and Astor listened to the sound of the engine grow ever fainter, until silence returned.
‘Has he gone for good?’ Astor asked.
Anna shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘What about Fluffy?’
‘No, he’ll come back all right.’
A few minutes later they heard the engine revving up again, then the combo came back round the corner and accelerated down the straight.
Anna and Astor waved their arms, like fans cheering on the winner of a race.
Pietro came racing down the middle of the road, sounding the buzzer, but suddenly something happened. As if blown by some invisible giant, the Vespa swerved to the left, and without slowing down, without braking – without any reason – ran into the kerb. The sidecar broke off and smashed into the stone wall at the side of the road. The scooter and its rider were flung into the air, turning over and over, and disappeared down the embankment with a crash of crumpling metal.
The whole thing took no more than a few seconds.
*
Anna
and Astor leaned over the wall, breathing hard.
A three-metre drop ended with a spur of rock covered with prickly pears, caper bushes and litter.
The wreck of the Vespa was near the edge overhanging the beach.
‘Where’s Pietro?’ the little boy asked.
‘He must have fallen down below.’ Anna felt the blood running down through her legs and was afraid she was going to faint. She dropped down on her knees and brought up the chickpeas she’d had for breakfast.
Astor leaned further out. ‘I think I can see him.’
Anna wiped her mouth with her hand. Her head was spinning, but she managed to say: ‘Where?’
‘Under the scooter.’
She tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t support her. ‘Go and see, but be careful.’
Astor climbed down, clinging onto rocks and bushes. On reaching the spur, he crawled through the prickly pears and approached the Vespa. ‘He’s down here.’
She straightened up and climbed to her feet.
The sky was blue. The clouds white. The sea grey. The beach yellow. The calm indifferent background which hadn’t changed since their arrival. Underneath it all, she was certain now, was something evil.
‘Is he alive?’
‘I don’t know.’
As she climbed over the wall, fighting off the nausea, she saw Fluffy to her right. He was whining and rocking forward, trying to summon up the courage to jump down.
‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘Be a good boy. Stay there.’
He flattened down obediently on the ground, moaning.
She threaded her way between the pads of cacti. Astor was sitting beside the Vespa, biting his thumb and looking at Pietro’s arm reaching from the wreckage, the hand on a blackened bottle of bleach. The rest of his body was hidden by the metal. The wind had dropped and the silence was broken only by Fluffy’s whimpering.
‘We’ve got to pull him out,’ she said to her brother, though there was a risk of him being crushed when they moved the scooter. ‘Do you hear me?’ She turned towards Astor, who was gazing blankly into space. ‘Pull yourself together! Help me! Take his hand and hold onto him while I lift the scooter.’
Automatically the little boy gripped Pietro’s wrist with both hands.
‘Now don’t let go, whatever you do.’
Anna took hold of the rear end of the Vespa and pushed with her legs. She managed to lift it about ten centimetres, but had to lower it again. It was just too heavy. She tried again, but without success; it seemed to be stuck somewhere. She sat down, put her forehead on her knees and whispered, ‘I can’t do it.’
Why on earth had she let him repair the scooter? She was the one who’d said, ‘You can try again tomorrow.’ All she’d have needed to say was: ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going on foot.’ Just a few different words and they’d be walking towards Messina now.
She gazed at the two yellow towers of the cathedral. ‘We’ll both have to lift it. Me at the back and you at the front.’
At the first attempt they only managed to move it a little way. One of Pietro’s shoulders and one of his hips came into view, with his striped shirt. There was no blood. The second time Astor changed his grip slightly, and Anna pulled with a desperate scream. The scooter rose up, but didn’t roll over. Anna pushed forward, supporting the frame with outstretched arms. ‘Astor, here. Come here. Quickly.’
He let go of the handlebars and came to stand beside her.
‘On the count of three, we push. We shut our eyes and push. Even if we hurt him, it doesn’t matter.’ She gazed into his blue eyes. ‘Like you’re the strongest man in the world, okay?’
Astor nodded.
‘One … two … three!’
The scooter swung over, carrying a cloud of earth and prickly pears with it, and crashed down onto the beach.
Anna instinctively threw her arms round Astor and hugged him against her chest.
Pietro lay with his arms spread out. His head was turned to one side, buried under pieces of cloth and plastic bags. Below the knees his trousers were soaked in blood. One ankle had been crushed into a mixture of socks, bones and flesh. A jagged piece of pink bone protruded from one elbow.
Anna knelt down and put her ear to his mouth.
‘He’s alive.’
Three days later he was dead.
*
During those days Anna tried to carry Pietro up to the road. She found a ladder and some ropes, but as soon as she tried to move him he’d start screaming in agony and quiver as though an electric current were passing through him. Then Anna would take fright and withdraw.
They cut down the prickly pears, lit a fire and carefully laid him on an inflatable mattress. Anna slit his trousers and T-shirt open with a knife. There was a dark bruise starting below his navel, covering his stomach and running down one side. On his bottom and under his armpits there were, as she’d suspected, the scarlet blotches of the virus.
He lay unconscious, with a high fever. When they tried to get him to drink, he spat the water out as if it were poison.
During the night he started screaming.
In pitch darkness, escorted by Fluffy, Anna walked down Cefalù’s narrow streets in search of medicines. There wasn’t much left in the drawers of the chemists’ shops. Skin creams, deodorants and boxes gnawed by rats. She found a bottle of melatonin, some paracetamol and some antibiotics, but nothing that could alleviate the pain.
The next day Pietro fell into a state of panting drowsiness from which he would re-emerge shrieking, as if waves of pain were breaking over him. He kept saying he was cold; not even the fire and blankets could warm him.
The following morning a pale cold sun rose out of a sea as grey as the rocks. Astor and Anna were sleeping curled up beside Pietro, who had lost consciousness. The blood had coagulated into a dark, pitch-like substance, sticking him to the surface of the mattress. The purple patch on his distended belly was warm.
Towards midday he became delirious. He kept talking about someone called Patrizio. He said he must stop typing – the tapping of his keyboard was driving him mad.
‘I’ll tell him straight away,’ Anna reassured him, raising his head. ‘There! Do you hear that? He’s stopped.’
Pietro’s mouth stiffened in a grimace of horror, and he stared at the grey sky with frozen eyes, as if something terrifying were hovering above him.
Anna ran back to the chemist’s, opened all the boxes in the storeroom and found pills and some ampoules to inject, but no syringes. She poured the liquid between his cracked lips and tried to push a handful of pills into his mouth, but he clenched his teeth, as though to spite her. She tried over and over again, but without success. Finally she threw the pills in the air and started kicking empty jars and prickly pears and uprooting bushes, screaming all the time. Astor clung to her legs, begging her to stop.
They crawled around picking up the pills and put them into his mouth one by one, until he calmed down. His face relaxed and he fell into a deep sleep.
On the third day Anna was woken up by Pietro’s voice calling to her: ‘Anna … Anna …’
She threw off the blankets, knelt down beside him and held his hand. ‘Here I am. I’m here.’
He screwed up his eyelids, as if dazzled by a headlight, raised his head a fraction and directed his unseeing gaze at her. ‘The wheel. It jammed. I tried …’ A fit of coughing shook his chest and he spat out a gob of dark blood. He touched her fingers, seeking her in the darkness. ‘You must find the shoes.’
Anna dried her tears and stroked his sweaty forehead. ‘Yes, I will.’
‘You must find them, do you understand? They’ll save you.’
‘I understand. Now you rest.’
Anna’s words seemed to reassure him. A hint of a smile curled his lips, and for a few minutes he lay there in silence. Then he spoke with his eyes closed. ‘Anna … Get two plastic bags.’
‘What for?’
‘Two plastic bags. Without any holes in them.’
<
br /> *
TWO PLASTIC BAGS
Vita is an inland village in the province of Trapani. In one of the village streets, Via Aleramo, there was a small block of flats surrounded by a garden of fruit trees, owned by the Lo Capo family. The ground floor was occupied by Signora Costanza, the widow of Domenico Lo Capo, a prosperous builder who had died of a heart attack when he was sixty. The first floor was the home of their eldest daughter Laura, Pietro’s mother, who was divorced from Mauro Serra, a mechanic in the Ducati motorcycle racing team. The second floor was divided into two flats for the other two daughters, Annarita and Celeste.
Annarita, the youngest, was studying architecture. Celeste was in her early thirties and single, and ran a china shop in the centre of the village. People said Celeste was neither fish nor fowl: one of those creatures who are simply not interested in sex, with either gender. Annarita, by contrast, was rumoured to be a lesbian, and her university studies were said to be just an excuse for going to Palermo and seeing her girlfriend, who worked for the city council. Such was the village gossip.
At any rate, after Domenico’s death the house in Via Aleramo was inhabited exclusively by women who doted on Pietro, a little king pampered by his aunts and spoiled by his grandma.
Only one other male was allowed to stay in this gynaeceum: Mauro, the little boy’s father. The mechanic, constantly travelling around the world, would find a weekend every month, and two weeks in the summer, to return to his son and his ex-wife, who with the help of her sisters would fatten him up on helpings of caponata without too much vinegar, frittedda and cannoli and sheep’s milk ricotta. During those days Pietro’s star was dimmed and his papa’s shone.
Mauro Serra was tall and red-haired, with blue eyes and a thick beard framing his face. He wore flannel shirts and pointed Texan boots. The sisters said he was the spitting image of Robert Redford. He was a consummate ladies’ man.
When the three of them watched the Grand Prix on Sundays, they’d try to guess which of the umbrella girls on the podium next to the riders Mauro had seduced.
Anna Page 19
