Vango

by Timothee de Fombelle

  Zanzibar.

  He couldn’t remember the words of the song exactly, but there was something about the sea breeze in Zanzibar leaving a sugary taste on your tongue.

  That was enough to make him pack his bags.

  “I don’t want to go back home,” said Pippo Troisi.

  Vango was scanning the horizon. He couldn’t even hear his passenger’s sobs anymore. He was tired, but he was also excited to be discovering unknown worlds. It was the same joy he had experienced when he had first explored his island, finding a forest of chestnut trees at the bottom of the south volcano or unearthing a hot spring under a rock . . .

  Now, more than anything else, he was steering a course over his fear. The sea was becoming a pathway. He was proud of this victory.

  When Vango spotted land, he almost regretted their voyage coming to an end. They were back already. The mist revealed only a few scraps of the coast. Pippo was using his left elbow to push himself up and kept saying over and over again, “I don’t want to go back home.”

  He knew that Pina, his wife, would screech like a turkey and impose a raft of punishments, but his greatest cause for despair was that he would no longer have, deep down inside him, the dream that had sustained him. Zanzibar . . .

  In one night, Zanzibar, along with its palm trees and sugary taste, had been swallowed up by the waves.

  Vango didn’t recognize the beach where he landed the boat. As it rolled over the first large pebbles, the hull creaked one final time before splitting from fore to aft. You could get a whole arm into the gap.

  Vango wanted to help Pippo Troisi stand up, but the latter gently pushed him away.

  “Leave me here for a bit. I’m out of danger now.”

  “Signor Troisi . . .”

  “Please, little one. Leave me in my own boat for a while. Afterward, I’ll go back home.”

  Vango hesitated. But when he remembered the terrifying figure of Giuseppina, he felt sorry for Pippo. He could perfectly well spend a few more hours in his wreck. He was out of danger now. A little imaginary voyage on the spot toward Zanzibar wouldn’t do any harm. Vango crouched down and looked Pippo in the eyes.

  “I swear I won’t do anything silly,” insisted Pippo.

  He watched Vango head off; he had hardly heard him speak all night. He was a strange boy, he really was.

  Ever since Vango had arrived in Salina, seven years earlier, nobody had approached him. You saw his shadow sometimes, in the evening, on the island’s craters. Some people said that he fed the swallows from his hand. But surely that was a myth.

  A steep wall rose up above the creek. The mist was still there. Vango didn’t yet recognize the place where he had landed the boat. Behind the curtain of fog, he couldn’t even locate the sun. And so he climbed without asking himself any questions, always picking the most vertical path ahead. High up, he would be able to see more clearly — he always did.

  The more he climbed, the thicker the air became and the more it soaked his face. He thought of Mademoiselle’s breakfast, waiting for him somewhere behind these clouds.

  Mademoiselle was a magician in the kitchen.

  On her little stone stove, on the edge of this forgotten island in the Mediterranean, she created fresh miracles every day that would have brought tears to the eyes of food lovers in the world’s greatest gastronomic capitals. At the bottom of her deep pots, vegetables performed a dance in sauces whose aromas cast a spell on your mind and your soul. A simple thyme tart became a magic carpet that transported you to faraway lands. Cheese gratins made you weep even before you’d stepped across the threshold. And as for her soufflés . . . my God. Those soufflés could have floated up to the ceiling they were so light, so barely there, so fluffy. But Vango pounced on them before they melted away.

  Mademoiselle would prepare impossible soups and pastries. She made mousses with forbidden flavors rise by hand. She served up fish in black juices flavored with mysterious herbs.

  For a long time Vango thought everybody ate like that at home. He had never eaten in anyone else’s kitchen. But ever since the day they’d sent for the doctor because the little boy had pneumonia, when he was five or six years old, he had understood that Mademoiselle was no ordinary cook.

  Dr. Basilio had invited himself to lunch. This normally talkative man was unable to utter a single word throughout the meal. He ate with his eyes closed. He had kissed Mademoiselle four times on both cheeks before leaving.

  He had returned that same evening, by chance at suppertime, to take Vango’s pulse again. And the next day at midday. By chance. Each time, he had sat down at the table, a little embarrassed at first, then less and less so.

  When Vango returned to full health, the doctor had appeared so traumatized by his recovery that Mademoiselle had suggested he join them for lunch every Monday.

  It became a little custom. The doctor was the only outsider who entered the house in Pollara.

  Over in the hut with his donkey, Mazzetta watched him pass by.

  “Did you use to do this professionally?” the doctor asked Mademoiselle one day.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Between his fingers he held a sliver of translucent potato in which a sage leaf was held prisoner.

  “Were you a cook, before . . . ?”

  “Before? I can’t remember anything about before.”

  “Were you a cook?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  She seemed sad.

  “How do you do it?” he inquired, biting into the crusty mirage of potato.

  “It just comes to me,” she answered.

  One morning, when the doctor had once again refused to receive payment for treating them, Mademoiselle had confided in Vango, “I think the doctor is courting me.”

  She seemed a bit embarrassed.

  Courting . . . Vango had never really understood what that activity really involved, but he had worked out from different situations that it meant wanting to help someone out, doing someone a favor. Yes, the doctor was certainly courting them.

  But this didn’t explain why he looked at Mademoiselle in that strange way or why, when she smiled back at him, he turned pale at first and then as red as his scarf. He was like a flashing beacon.

  Climbing through the mist in a regular rhythm, Vango was dreaming of Mademoiselle’s delicacies.

  The moment came when he couldn’t go any higher. He stopped and bent down to pick a little blue flower right by his foot. He stared at it and then turned around. Still that wall of fog. But the flower had just delicately confirmed something he’d sensed ever since setting foot on dry land.

  He didn’t recognize this flower.

  This wasn’t his island.

  “I was expecting you later on. Which way did you come?”

  Vango couldn’t see the person who was speaking just behind him.

  “I went straight ahead,” he instinctively replied. “I don’t know.”

  “You climb quickly.”

  Vango almost felt he should apologize for being early for an unknown appointment.

  “Hello.”

  A hand was being held out toward him and a face rose up from the fog.

  Vango shook the hand.

  “Come with me. I was told to collect you from here.”

  It was an old man with a long goatskin coat and a gun.

  Vango stopped thinking. He followed him blindly through a maze of exploded rock. He was surprised by the scent of flowers assailing their nostrils. They could hear a gentle babbling noise. Where were they?

  Minutes later, they reached a door. Before pushing it open, the man took off his coat. Underneath he was wearing a black cape and a rope belt around his waist. He propped the gun against the wall.

  They walked into a long, low-ceilinged room that was dimly lit by a fire. At the far end, by the flames, the shadow of a plump man sitting on a stool could be made out. He gave Vango a delighted look and waved a slice of bread dripping with olive oil in his left hand.

&nb
sp; “You’ve got a treat in store,” the man said. “They really know how to put on a good welcome!”

  How had Pippo Troisi gotten here already? They had tended to his hand. He was a different man.

  Vango turned toward the old man with the gun, who said very softly, “The problem isn’t welcoming you. The real problem will be letting you leave Arkudah. We’ll have to ask Zefiro.”

  Arkudah. Vango had heard that name before, in the old pirate stories people told on the islands.

  “It’s time,” said somebody.

  At which point, Vango saw the darkness of the room suddenly come alive. Shadows rose up all around him. He hadn’t seen them until now. But since the moment he had walked in, dozens of men dressed in black, sitting on stone benches, had not taken their eyes off him for a second.

  The same place, the following day

  Vango felt as if he’d dropped off to sleep in the bowels of the earth, but when he woke up, he was close to the sun. A thick ray slid across his face like warm oil.

  “I’m not sure what to do with you, little one.”

  The speaker was standing in front of the window ledge. There was a wide horizontal window, which the man didn’t altogether obscure. It was impossible to see his face because he was backlit, and the ray of sunlight over his shoulder was blinding Vango.

  “Your friend over there, what’s he called?”

  “Pippo Troisi,” said Vango. “He’s not my friend.”

  “Yes, Troisi. That’s it. He’s going to stay here. But as for you . . . How old are you?”

  “Mademoiselle is waiting for me.”

  “Mademoiselle?”

  Vango didn’t answer. He didn’t really know who he was talking to. And he didn’t like that.

  “These days, I’m not very good at telling how old children are,” said the man. “I can tell you the exact age of a bee or a vine. But I haven’t met any children for a long time now.”

  “I’m fifteen years old,” said Vango, seizing the opportunity to grow up by five years in a single breath.

  This was his first lie. It had never occurred to him to lie before, and he’d never needed to either. It was quite fun.

  “Have a little drink.”

  A tumbler was put in front of Vango. He stood up to drink.

  The man watched him putting down the tumbler. He moved away from the window and headed over to the door.

  Vango had a strange taste on his tongue. What had he just drunk? His head was spinning.

  “If you’d been ten, for example,” said the man, “I’d happily have let you go. A child of ten is no danger. But at fifteen . . .”

  He slammed the door and turned the lock. Vango lost consciousness.

  This time, Vango woke up in a haze of familiar smells.

  He was lying on a blue tiled bench, near the table where Basilio and Mademoiselle were sitting. The doctor was eating almond cookies, which he enjoyed dipping in his hot chocolate. Mademoiselle smiled at Vango.

  “Where are they?” he croaked through dry lips.

  “Here they are,” said the doctor, holding out the basket of little cookies. “We’ve left some for you.”

  Vango shook his head. He wasn’t talking about cookies.

  “The people, where are they?”

  “What people?” Mademoiselle inquired gently.

  “The pirates.”

  Dr. Basilio smiled, made a reassuring sign to Mademoiselle, and said to Vango, “You were found by Mazzetta, the neighbor. You must have had a fall and fainted on the wild coast.”

  “I don’t fall,” replied the boy.

  “He found you by chance. He’s a brave man.”

  What none of them realized was that Mazzetta hadn’t found Vango by chance. He had searched for him day and night in every corner of the island as soon as he’d seen how worried Mademoiselle was.

  In the end, he had found him lying inert in a place he could have sworn he’d passed by at least three times. For years now, Mazzetta had felt responsible for Vango.

  “I took the boat,” said Vango. “I was on the island of men in black.”

  “Yes, you’ve been somewhere very far away,” said the doctor, flashing a big smile. “But you didn’t take the boat, Vango. You fell. You’re already much better.”

  “I don’t fall,” the boy repeated.

  “Well, have a feel of that bump just above your neck. . . . I’m going to leave you to get some rest now, and I’ll be back this evening,” said the doctor, over the moon at being able to keep Mademoiselle company outside of the regular Monday lunchtime slot.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said the nurse, shaking his hand.

  He was always begging her to call him by his first name, Basilio, but she didn’t want to raise any false hopes. He held her hand a little too long.

  She escaped to open the door.

  “And you? Won’t you tell me your first name, Mademoiselle?” asked the doctor.

  “I don’t even know it myself. I’m sorry.”

  She was wearing a short shawl over her neck and shoulders. Before closing the door again, she noticed Mazzetta watching them at a distance.

  The doctor saw him as well and let Mademoiselle know: “I’ll tell him that Vango is doing better. Mazzetta saved his life by finding him just in time.”

  “Tell him what you like.”

  “What have you got against him, Mademoiselle? That man has given you everything he has.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Did you know that he calls his donkey ‘my treasure’?” The doctor laughed.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She shut the door.

  I don’t know. I can’t remember. Always the same turns of phrase.

  Mademoiselle was fully aware that one day she would have to stop running away from what she knew perfectly well, from what she spent every minute of the day remembering.

  She went to kneel down next to Vango. His heavy eyelids had closed again.

  It was for the sake of this little one that she had chosen to forget everything. So that he could live.

  Vango, in his drowsy state, was trying to remember what had happened to him in those final hours.

  His memories were fuzzy. The sequence of events had become muddled in his mind. He could recall the boat, the journey in the mist, some men in black, but already he couldn’t remember whether there was just one or several of them, if it had taken place at night or in broad daylight. Above these hazy images floated a single voice that resonated clearly. A deep voice in the light.

  A voice that made this strange remark: I haven’t met any children for a long time now.

  But a few hours later, when he was able to get up and sit at the table with Mademoiselle, he decided to draw a line. His adventure seemed too much like a dream that was already dissolving.

  All he had left was a big bump and a strange sense of nostalgia.

  He ate heartily. The doctor turned up just as it was time for dessert. He started off by feeling the back of Vango’s head.

  “It’s almost gone now.”

  Yes, for Vango, it had almost gone.

  “Would you like some soup?” asked Mademoiselle, as if the matter were in question. “There’s a big bowl left.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t like to impose,” declared the doctor, already tying a napkin around his neck. “I really shouldn’t.”

  The doctor sat down. It was hard to tell whether it was the scent of the soup or Mademoiselle’s smile that most made his eyes shine.

  And then, at the end, after some vin d’orange, which he had gotten Vango to taste, when they had all laughed at the stories Basilio always carried in his doctor’s bag, and when Vango had almost put that bizarre experience out of his mind for once and for all, the doctor said one sentence that changed everything:

  “Something very sad has happened, which is that Pippo Troisi — you know who I mean, the man with the capers — has disappeared.”

  Vango thought he couldn’t have heard properly
.

  “What did you just say?”

  “Pippo Troisi. His wife, Pina, has been crying for three days now. He’s disappeared.”

  Vango closed his eyes.

  “I’d never have thought Giuseppina would be so upset about it,” the doctor went on. “To tell you the truth, she’s such a force to be reckoned with that when it first happened, some people even claimed she’d eaten him.”

  The doctor smiled. Vango got up suddenly and slipped outside.

  He took a few steps in the fading sunlight and stared into the distance. Behind a long and bumpy island lying like a pregnant woman in the water, he could make out another island. This island was called Alicudi. Its last inhabitants had long since abandoned it. People said it had been deserted for at least twenty years.

  “Vango?”

  Concerned, the doctor had followed the boy outside.

  “You must rest for two or three days more.”

  “All right. I’ll rest. I’m coming. . . .”

  The doctor started to go back inside the house.

  “Doctor . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s that island called?”

  “Over there, the farthest one?”

  The doctor squinted as he stared out to sea.

  “Alicudi.”

  “Just that?”

  “Yes, just that.”

  “Before, a long time ago, it had another name . . . in the time of the pirates.”

  “Yes, that’s true. It had an Arabic name.”

  “And what was it?”

  “Arkudah.”

  Arkudah, seven days later

  Vango climbed the final ten meters.

  If he approached from this side, nobody would be expecting him. He could explore on the sly.

  The swallows were practicing their final arrow formations around him, before the great migration. Like a magnet, Vango attracted the swallows and all the other birds too.

  One winter, when he was six or seven years old, he had rescued a swallow that had crashed into the windows of a deserted house. He had looked after it for six months, keeping its wing in a splint made out of a vine shoot. It had spent the winter without traveling, fed on crushed midges and butter. And then it had flown off in April, when its companions returned from exile.