Lizzi Bizzi and the Red Witch

by Stefano Pastor

  He was crawling under a bush, curled up over himself. He hid her head, leaving his body exposed.

  Andrea pulled him out. The boy shrieked as soon as he touched him.

  He checked him carefully. He unbuttoned his shirt and looked at his back. He was full of bites but he would have made it, he was sure. At least he would have done it. All that suffering and pain would have served something.

  He got up and took him in his arms. The child clung to him and hide his head on his chest.

  «Stay calm, it’s over», Andrea repeated continuously. «Quiet! Quiet!».

  He stroked him, but the baby continued to tremble.

  He glanced at the two wounded on the ground and the boy he might have killed. He could not do anything for them, not at that moment. His priority was to bring that kid to the hospital. The police would pick them up if they had been alive.

  He moved away, always with the baby in his arms.

  There was a field in front of him.

  It had suddenly appeared, after a stain of trees. It seemed to him the same field where he had seen those children play. It seemed to him impossible, he was more than an hour walking, he could not have gone back.

  He could not find the motorcycle, yet. He remembered well where they had left them. He even supposed Lisa had hidden it, for revenge.

  And now that field…

  The child starts to shake. He seemed to be a little calm, but as soon as he came to that place he was back in agitation. He put a hand on his forehead to fell if he was hot.

  He felt exhausted, destroyed, could not make it any longer.

  He stepped forward and entered the field.

  It was a beautiful meadow, all green, unusual to be found in the woods.

  And there was a little girl.

  She also seemed to have seen her already.

  Andrea stepped forward and the baby in his arms tried to hide his head under his armpit. He pushed as if he wanted to get inside him.

  «Who are you?», Andrea cried. «Do you know him? Is he your friend?».

  Absolute silence.

  «Do you live nearby?», Andrea continued. «Can you tell me how to get out of the woods?».

  What a strange little girl, sitting on the floor like an Indian santone, and that bizarre dress that would have been more suitable for a doll. So little, then, that she was all alone in the woods?

  She did not answer, and Andrea got closer and more.

  Those eyes! Black ditches that seemed to scrutinize him. They put him in agitation.

  «Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing here?».

  The little girl made feel her voice lamented. «Enough! I do not want it anymore! I’m bored!».

  Andrea looked at her with open mouth.

  She continued: «I do not want to play rabbit anymore! You have understood? No more rabbit!».

  Andrea saw the baby in his arms change him. He saw the intelligence return to his eyes, though the terror remained. He spoke, for the first time, rather he started screaming. «Escape! Come on, soon! Escape! Get out of this field!».

  But Andrea was too upset and was not fast enough. Lost precious time, thinking and reasoning. And when it turned it was too late.

  «Sit down!», the girl shouted.

  Andrea stuck, he could not go on.

  «Sit down!», she ordered. «Here, in front of me».

  Andrea put the child on the ground, Luca. He was barely in charge, but staggered until he was in front of the little girl and collapsed, just like her.

  He was crying and desperate. «All right, please, enough. I can’t do it anymore».

  And she: «I’m bored! I want to play!».

  Then he ordered Andrea again: «Sit down!».

  Andrea fought with all his strength but failed. His body was no longer answering him, he only obeyed that little girl.

  He sat down on the ground with his legs crossed, beside Luke.

  What was happening? Who was that little girl? Why was he exercising that power over him? How did he succeed? What games were you talking about? Too many unanswered questions, and it was too late, Andrea had understood it.

  «Who are you?», he asked, turning to the child. «Who is it? What is going on?».

  The child continued to cry, desperate. «Stop Please! Let me go home. Please».

  And she: «I want to play! I want to play!».

  Then with a mischievous, almost mischievous smile. «Let’s play with the cat and the mouse».

  She bent down and impressed the movement at the green bottle.

  He turned, turned, and Luca and Andrea followed her with her eyes.

  The neck of the bottle stopped in front of Andrea.

  She looked at him and smiled. «You’re the mouse!». And to Luca: «And you the cat!».

  For Andrea it was like falling into a tunnel, he felt shrunk, weakened, before him saw only a monstrous cat, which became every moment bigger. He felt the terror invade him. He lost all cognition of what had been, only the blind desire to survive, not to die.

  The cat, on the other hand, looked at that little mouse and licked his mustache, already pretending to have dinner.

  There, on that green field, on a sunny summer afternoon, in front of a candy little girl who wanted to play so hard, a frail little boy jumped over to a muscular athlete almost two meters tall and started eating it.

  October 2009

  WILD HORSES

  Translation by Laura Whitaker

  The day that Patrick asked me to marry him was the day that I saw the horses for the first time.

  He had brought me to the foot of a little hillock, underneath an ancient tree, the place where we had been coming to play ever since we were children. We were sitting on a picnic blanket in the tree’s leafy shade, and Patrick was trying hard to act serious.

  The horses were right at the top of the hillock, striking a sharp contrast against the sky. There were four: two adults, whose coats were dark – almost black – and two slightly lighter foals. Undoubtedly a family. They weren’t wearing saddles, or any kind of harness. I remember being very struck by them.

  But I brought my attention back to Patrick almost immediately, because I knew just how difficult it was for him to express himself.

  I loved him to distraction, and his awkward stammerings filled me with a warm glow of affection. There had never been anyone but him throughout my entire life; we had grown up together, our love had emerged spontaneously and I was absolutely certain that it would last forever.

  He was exceptionally handsome, his hair glinting in the sun as he tried not to stutter. It was a pointless effort really: he knew perfectly well that I would say yes, just as he knew perfectly well that our parents wouldn’t give him their permission, given that we were only seventeen years old. But all the same, I appreciated the gesture.

  I reached out a hand, and stroked his cheek. He broke off mid-sentence. «Stop it, you’re putting me off. I’ve forgotten what I was saying».

  And so I carried on listening, watching the horses as they trotted further and further away.

  In that moment, I didn’t appreciate the oddity of the situation: horses running wild just a stone’s throw from the city. But however beautiful I might have thought them, within a few minutes I had forgotten them completely.

  «I’ll think about it», was my response to Patrick.

  He looked shocked.

  «You need to think about it? You mean you don’t want to marry me?».

  I skipped off laughing, with Patrick running after me.

  Patrick died the following day, at ten in the morning, although they didn’t find his body until late that evening. He was run off the road on his moped, and was thrown into a ditch. He broke his neck. The doctor said that he would have been killed instantly.

  I had already been worried for hours, almost more so than his parents. I was hysterical and I couldn’t stand to sit still. When the news arrived, I wanted to see him, and they let me, even though I was so young. We we
re truly committed to each other, the two of us, and everyone treated us as a proper couple.

  I did not take it well, most definitely not. As soon as they told me, I started screaming and I even tried to punch anyone who tried to calm me down. I had to be sedated, and I only woke up again the following day. They didn’t even let me take part in the funeral.

  I fell into a deep depression, on the level of a nervous breakdown. I shut myself up in my room, and refused to come out.

  I was convinced that they wouldn’t understand – that no one could ever understand – what it meant to be joined in one soul, and to be torn apart, to lose everything.

  I remained in this state for months, and I was obliged to take a break in my studies. When summer came, my father decided that a change of scene was what I needed to help me recover. In that place, there were too many memories; I had no way of forgetting and of moving forward. And so he sent me off to spend the holidays with his sister Vera, who had a farm in a far-off region.

  I didn’t object.

  Vera was a woman of few words. She lived alone and had never married. She was fiercely independent, taking care of everything herself, and always refusing any help. She was the least feminine woman that I had ever met. Stocky, hardy, and always dressed like a cowboy, she had with a sharp voice. I can picture her grumbling away to herself, as she often did when she wasn’t pleased about something.

  She loved her solitude so much that I don’t know why she agreed to have me stay with her, and indeed she ignored me for the whole time that I was there. We didn’t have anything to say to each other, and this to me was a great relief, after enduring months of my concerned parents’ claustrophobic love.

  I didn’t have anything to do on the farm, and the inertia finally became boring, even for me. And so one day, I gave up on being shut up in my room, and I started leaving the house once more. Since I was as keen as Vera to avoid human interaction, I ended up taking a lot of solitary walks. My favourite route took me through the forest that grew right behind my aunt’s farm.

  It was in that forest, in the darkest and most secluded part right at the very heart, that I came across them for the second time.

  The horses. My horses.

  It was them, I was absolutely sure of it. I recognised them.

  I saw them passing between the trees, but they took no notice of me and rushed away. I even tried to follow them, but I lost sight of them almost immediately.

  Of course, they couldn’t possibly be the same horses, so far away from my house, and so I asked my aunt about them.

  She said that it was impossible. Yes, there were horses in the area, but no wild ones. And what’s more there weren’t any ranches. It was impossible that they were just wandering around through the forest.

  But I saw them again, twice more. The last encounter took place the day before I left to return home. That time, I really did try to follow them, I ran so fast that it was almost like I was one of them. I even managed to touch the mane of one of the foals.

  Then I called them, I begged them, but they left me behind without even looking back.

  I felt real pain over leaving them behind and moving on from that place; a deep, incomprehensible pain.

  I finished school and I went to university.

  I was an excellent student, but very solitary. I didn’t connect easily with people; I had few friends and I never went out with any boys.

  My life continued in much the same way, right up until I graduated. It was only then, when I was going around looking for a job, that I met Aldo.

  Aldo was five years older than me, and he was a professional on his way up. He was the exact opposite of Patrick. Sensible, dependable, affectionate. Someone I could rely on, someone who would never betray me.

  He wasn’t passionate like Patrick, and he wasn’t even much fun. He wasn’t kooky, and he wasn’t brave, and he didn’t have Patrick’s excitement for life.

  I didn’t love him, but I married him all the same. I was so sure that he was just what I needed: a solid focus in my life, a companion, a friend.

  Our marriage worked efficiently, and we were happy. We were a perfect couple, and everyone envied us. I became a woman that he could take pride in: the perfect mistress of his household, always busy. Eventually, I convinced myself that I was content with that life.

  Until we decided to have a baby.

  We thought it all through, we made calculations upon calculations, we planned out the baby’s entire existence; which school they would go to, even which friends they would have. And then we created the baby itself.

  Mariastella was born a few days after my twenty-eighth birthday, and I knew immediately that I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life. In reality, she was a monster: a little red thing, all sticky and with her eyes screwed shut, who only knew how to cry and scream. But I loved her, because she was mine. I was finally able to love again, for the first time since Patrick’s death. I knew that this was something important, that I had something to live for once more.

  And then the troubles began: Mariastella didn’t ever sleep, she only cried. She didn’t want my milk, she got through mountains of nappies and she threw up all the food that I gave her. «It will pass», everyone said. «It will pass».

  But it didn’t pass.

  Gradually, my nerves started to collapse. Aldo didn’t help me; he was the breadwinner, so he had to work. He told me to hire a nanny. I did what he said, but it didn’t help one bit. The nanny wasn’t there at night, she didn’t have to go running every time that Mariastella started to cry, and she didn’t drive herself completely crazy over it.

  And so one day, Aldo came home for the evening and found me sat in an armchair in the dark, staring fixatedly into space. The nanny had quit; there was no dinner ready; and Mariastella had been crying for hours, hungry and needing to be changed. I had just broken down suddenly, at some point in the morning. I didn’t remember anything more than that.

  The doctors said that it was post-natal depression. We talked about it, and Aldo decided that what I needed was to take my mind off things.

  And so it was that I found myself once again on a train, going back to Aunt Vera’s farm. Mariastella came with me.

  Unexpectedly, things started to get better. In the peace of the farm, Mariastella’s cycles settled down: she started to sleep through the night and to take food more easily. It was a beautiful time – just the two of us – and I went back to loving her like the first day.

  She was a wonderful little girl, and every little thing that she did filled me with delight. My depression disappeared as if by magic. Aunt Vera kept an eye on us – probably under the orders of my husband – but as we regained our harmony little by little, she stopped watching me and even started to smile at us, every now and again.

  I resumed my walks through the forest, and I brought Mariastella with me. I bought a sling to help me carry her, and it was absolutely wonderful to feel her against my chest, while she tried to grab on with her little hands.

  Until one day, an unexpected encounter shattered our newfound tranquillity.

  My horses were still there, in the forest. Always the same ones.

  It wasn’t possible, because many years had passed and the foals couldn’t have stayed exactly the same, they must surely have grown up by now.

  And yet it was them, without a shadow of a doubt.

  I came across them in the very heart of the forest, where so many years ago I had seen them before. There they were, quite still, almost as if they were waiting for me.

  I ventured closer, even daring to touch them. Mariastella was giggling away, because she absolutely loved them. To me, that moment felt magical. I stopped telling myself that it wasn’t possible, that they couldn’t be the same horses. I accepted that they were there, and that was enough.

  At a signal from one of the two adults, they all took off, galloping away. I pursued them. I felt that I couldn’t leave them, that it couldn’t end like that. I leapt through
the trees, I ran, I called out to them, all the time keeping Mariastella tight against my chest.

  They didn’t find me until late that evening, after having spent the whole day searching for me. I was alone, the sling had broken: Mariastella was no longer with me.

  They bombarded me with questions, first Aunt Vera and then the farm workers who were with her. I couldn’t remember; my memory was empty, it had stopped the moment that I had started to follow those horses. They intensified the search, to find the little girl. My little girl.

  The police came, and I was subjected to constant interrogation. The officers were convinced that I was lying. Aldo arrived, and talked to them about my depression. I was hysterical, I just kept telling them that I didn’t remember, and begging them to go and look for her.

  It was a nightmare. Three days of hell, while they couldn’t find her, and then it got even worse.

  Mariastella was dead. She had been dead for at least two days. It had probably happened the night that she had gone missing, when the temperature had dropped below zero. They found her lying against the trunk of a fallen tree, perfectly uninjured, but lifeless. She had frozen to death.

  That night, shut up in the room where they had locked me away, I heard them talking for hours, and shouting. I heard them well enough, and I knew some of those voices. I was completely distraught. Aldo came to slap me, before locking me in.

  They didn’t arrest me, but only because they couldn’t. Mariastella’s corpse had been recovered forty kilometres from where they had found me. They concluded that I couldn’t possibly have taken her all that way, and then walked back through the whole forest from end to end, alone and on foot. They came up with so many theories and finally took into consideration the idea that some other person might have been involved.

  However, my nightmare wasn’t over yet. I submitted myself voluntarily to a lie detector test, to show them that I wasn’t lying. But the fact that I genuinely couldn’t remember what had happened didn’t clear my name.

  In the end, the investigation fell apart, just like my marriage. When my father came to collect me from his sister’s house, I found out that Aldo had kicked me out of the house, and had already filed for divorce. At my parents’ house, I found four suitcases, containing everything that I had left.