Ring of Fire

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  This book is for my grandmother,

  who sees the stars from very close up.

  CONTENTS

  THE BEGINNING

  1. The Trap

  2. The Dust

  3. The Four

  4. The Coincidence

  5. The Call

  6. The Darkness

  7. The Bridge

  FIRST STASIMON

  8. The Paper

  9. The Briefcase

  10. The Café

  11. The Library

  12. The Journal

  13. The News

  SECOND STASIMON

  14. The Apartment

  15. The Telephone

  16. The Floor

  17. The Bed

  18. The Messenger

  19. The Map

  20. The District

  THIRD STASIMON

  21. The Streets

  22. The Basement

  23. The River

  24. The Letters

  FOURTH STASIMON

  25. The Sanctuary

  26. The Water

  27. The Stone

  28. The Ring

  29. The Betrayal

  30. The Fireworks

  31. The New Year

  32. The Stars

  I know that I am mortal.

  But when I explore the winding circles of the stars,

  my feet no longer rest on earth, but, standing beside Zeus,

  I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods.

  —Ptolemy, astronomer

  Nature loves to hide.

  —Heraclitus, philosopher called the Dark One

  THE BEGINNING

  THE STARS OF URSA MAJOR ARE PERFECTLY STILL IN THE SKY.

  The time has come for them as well.

  Inside the shelter surrounded by ice is the sound of fingers drumming nervously on the table. Then a question, which hangs at length in the smoke-filled air.

  “Do you think she’ll come?”

  There’s no reply. The aluminum windows are bitter cold. It’s snowing outside. The glacier gleams with a bluish glow.

  “I think I hear wolves …,” one of the two men murmurs, scratching his beard. “Don’t you?”

  “Let’s start,” the other man suggests. He’s gray and gaunt, like a tree that’s been through a fire. “We don’t have much time.”

  The woman stops drumming her fingers on the table, checks her watch and nods. “He’s right. Let’s start.”

  The two men open their notepads and start to leaf through them.

  “How are the children?” asks the man with the beard.

  “They’re still growing,” she answers. “And soon we’ll have to choose.”

  She has around twenty photographs with her. She shows them to her companions. The pictures are passed along swiftly from hand to hand.

  “How old are they?” the gaunt man asks.

  “Eight.”

  The bearded man is clearly nervous. He anxiously springs up from the table, draws his face up to the window and looks outside, as if he could make out anything through the massive blizzard. “I heard them again. The wolves, I mean.”

  The gaunt man croaks out a laugh. “We’re surrounded by thirty kilometers of ice. How could you be hearing wolves?”

  The bearded man stands there at the window until the pane has completely fogged over. Then he goes back to his chair and checks his watch for the millionth time. “Maybe we should’ve met in a place that’s easier to reach. A park, like last time.”

  “She wouldn’t have come anyway. You know what she’s like. In any case …” The gaunt man points at the photograph of a young girl. “Not her, we said.”

  The woman runs her finger along the rim of her teacup, then raises an eyebrow without revealing any other sign of what she’s thinking.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she says, sipping her tea.

  “I don’t think you can change your mind just like that.”

  “This is my task.”

  “But this girl …” A short, bony finger points at the face framed in dark, curly hair. “She’s still your niece.”

  “She speaks two languages better than you do. What’s it going to take to convince you?”

  “You know the risks.”

  “And you know the reasons.”

  “Last time we said no.”

  “Last time she’d just been born.”

  There’s a long moment of silence during which the only sounds are the kettle on the fire and the wind whooshing through the fireplace. The men stare grimly at the pictures on the table: Western faces, slanted eyes, blond hair, red hair, light skin, dark skin. Boys and girls all very different from each other, except for one fundamental detail. They’ll soon learn what it is.

  The shelter’s walls groan under the weight of the snow. Overhead, the stars slowly follow along their course in the gelid nighttime sky.

  “I wouldn’t want you to be making a mistake,” the gaunt man resumes.

  “You’ve never made any before?”

  “I try not to. Especially because I don’t deal with nice people … You know that.”

  The man with the beard clears his throat to make the others stop arguing. Then he says, “Let’s not be overconcerned right now. It’s still too early to decide. I just need to know where I’ll have to take the map.”

  “Where did you hide it?”

  The bearded man shows the others an old briefcase. “This should pass unnoticed. …”

  “I hope so. Also because if anyone realized—”

  The gaunt man suddenly stops talking.

  He hears something outside the shelter. Footsteps in the snow. Boots. The yelping of dogs. Furious howling.

  Wolves.

  The three spring to their feet.

  “Now do you believe me?” shouts the bearded man, rushing back toward the window.

  A moment before he manages to reach it, the door to the shelter is flung open. The newcomer walks into the room, wearing boots complete with crampons. A thermal mask and a pair of gloves are thrown to the floor.

  “Sorry I’m late …,” the person says with a disarming smile. Long, thick black hair tumbles out of her hood. “But I had to find out where it’s going to begin.”

  She removes the crampons from her boots with a snap.

  She closes the door, shutting out the sled drawn by wolves.

  And she says, “It’s going to begin in Rome.”

  1

  THE TRAP

  PERFECTLY STILL IN THE DARKNESS, TWELVE-YEAR-OLD ELETTRA waits.

  Her legs crossed, her hands holding the string that will set off the trap, she’s sitting stock-still. As motionless as the old wardrobes lined up around her in a series of shadows, one darker than the next.

  Elettra breathes slowly, silently. She ignores the dust, letting it settle on her.

  Come out, come out …, she thinks, only moving her lips.

  Shrouded in the darkness, her fingers clutching the string, she listens. The boilers hum in the distance, pumping hot water through the pipes in the hotel rooms. The meters tick away softly, each one at its own pace. A dusty silence reigns over the basement.

  The hotel, the city, the whole world seems incredibly far away.

  It isn’t cold.

  It’s the twenty-ninth of December.

  It’s the beginning. But Elettra doesn’t know that yet.

  * * *

  A little noise tells her the mouse is approaching. Tick-tack.

  The sound of tiny paws on the floor, coming from somewhere in the darkness.

  Elettra slowly raises the string with a satisfied smile, thinking, The irresistible appeal of pecorino Romano cheese.

  “No one can resist pecorino Romano,” her aunt Linda always says
when she’s cooking.

  Tick-tack. And then silence. Tick-tack. Then silence once again.

  The mouse sniffs the air, warily following the aroma’s path.

  He’s almost in my trap, thinks Elettra, rubbing her thumb against the string. Then, in her mind, she asks, How long is this going to take you, stupid mouse?

  She’s built a simple trap: a piece of pecorino placed under a shoe box, which she’s suspended from an old umbrella shaft. A single tug will make it drop down on the mouse. The only difficult thing is figuring out, in the dark, when the mouse has reached the cheese.

  She needs to follow her instinct. And instinct tells her it’s not time yet.

  Elettra waits.

  A little bit longer.

  Tick-tack goes the mouse. And then silence.

  Elettra loves moments like this. The very last moments of a perfect plan, when everything is about to end in triumph.

  She can already imagine her father’s look of admiration when he gets back from his trip in the minibus. And her aunt Linda’s shrieks when Elettra shows her the mouse, stone-cold dead, held up by the tail, as is fitting for a stone-cold dead mouse.

  Her other aunt, Irene, would simply say, “You shouldn’t go down to play in the basement. It’s a very dangerous maze down there.” And then she’d add, with a flash of cunning, “No one knows where that maze leads.”

  Elettra hasn’t come down here to play. She’s on a mission to catch the mouse.

  That’s not playing.

  Tick-tack goes the mouse.

  And then …

  Then the basement ceiling suddenly starts quaking, rattled by a series of booms that make the bottles shake in their wooden racks.

  It can’t be! thinks Elettra, looking up. No, not now!

  But the quaking doesn’t stop. The dust starts to stir restlessly. The pounding on the floor grows stronger, turning into a series of furious footsteps accompanied by a voice that grows louder. In the end, it sounds like a siren.

  “EEELEEEEEETTRAAAAAA!” the siren howls, throwing open the door to the basement.

  A flood of light drenches the stairs, the stacked-up furniture, the bottles of wine, the wardrobes and the statues. Elettra’s eyes dart straight out in front of her. The little gray mouse is standing there, on its hind legs, barely a centimeter inside the shoe box.

  “You’re not getting away from me!” she says, tugging the string.

  The box falls, but not on the mouse.

  “No!” she cries.

  At the top of the stairs, Aunt Linda’s hand gropes around for the light switches and flicks them all on. A dozen bulbs blink on, their blinding light driving away all traces of darkness. They’re hanging from the ceiling inside round lampshades made out of old bottles.

  “Elettra! Were you in the dark?”

  “Darn it!” she shouts, jumping to her feet. “He got away again!”

  “Who got away?” her aunt asks, baffled.

  Elettra glares at her threateningly, the umbrella shaft in her hand. “What do you want now?”

  At the top of the stairs, her aunt looks around at the basement as if she were seeing it for the first time. “Oh, what a mess!” she grumbles. “One of these days your father and I will just have to come tidy it all up. It’s just not possible, I tell you, to have a basement in this condition!”

  It’s as though she has completely forgotten the reason she came down in the first place.

  Looking at her, Elettra feels anger blazing up inside. Her aunt gracefully runs her hand over her thick gray hair, without understanding the damage she’s done. The shoe box is lying on the floor, useless, and the vast stone basement is hiding a mouse who’s still in perfectly good health. The whole maze of hallways and rooms packed with things now looks dingy in the harsh light of the bulbs.

  “What do you want, Aunt Linda?” Elettra shouts a second time. And then, as the woman makes no sign of replying, she adds, “Aunt Linda!”

  Her aunt stares at her with her big, clear eyes. “Elettra, dear,” she says, perfectly calm. “Your father called from the airport. He says there’s a problem with the rooms. A serious problem.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He didn’t want to tell me.”

  “So where is he now?”

  Aunt Linda smiles. “At the airport, naturally.”

  * * *

  Fernando Melodia snaps his cell phone shut. The recorded voice of an operator has just informed him that he’s out of credit.

  “Oh, no,” he groans beneath his perfectly trimmed mustache. “Now what do I do?”

  Beside him are the Millers, an American couple with an angry-looking boy. They’re standing tranquilly beside the sign for terminal A, watching over a pile of giant suitcases.

  They’re shorter than their son, a lean, tall beanpole with messy hair who’s looking around as if he were expecting to be taken away and hanged. Maybe he’s embarrassed about how his parents are dressed: an otter-gray checked jacket and polka-dot bow tie for him, a khaki-colored suit for her.

  There they are, the Millers. They’ve arrived. They’re pleased.

  They’ve reserved the hotel’s last available room to spend New Year’s in Rome. The professor’s also here to attend an important convention on the climate. His wife is clearly the type who loves shopping sprees. Their son, on the other hand, seems to have been dragged here against his will.

  Fernando sighs.

  So that he can be recognized as the owner of the hotel, tucked under his arm is a sign on which he’s written:

  HOTEL

  DOMUS QUINTILIA

  WELCOME!

  That was Elettra’s idea. An excellent idea, although for a few long moments, Fernando had regretted bringing it. He’d simply held it up and the Millers had walked right over to him, smiling. The two adults, at least.

  Handshake.

  “It was so kind of you to come get us,” Mr. Miller had thanked him, leaving behind his pile of luggage carts for a moment.

  Fernando returned a sheepish smile and from that point on, that smile hasn’t left his face for a moment.

  A smile in which he’d gladly bury himself.

  The reason for his embarrassment is that he’s at Fiumicino Airport to pick up two people. Not three. Two French ladies by the name of Blanchard and not three Americans by the name of Miller. He’s expecting a mother and daughter flying in from Paris Charles de Gaulle, flight 808, arriving at terminal B. The young perfume designer Cecile Blanchard and her daughter, Mistral. He planned to greet them, have them get into the hotel’s minibus, and give them the keys to room number four, the one painted lavender, complete with bathroom, shower and a delightful terrace overlooking the side lane.

  The last free room in the hotel.

  The hotel doesn’t have another free room for the three Americans. Looking at them, they’re happy and calm, which shows they’re convinced of the opposite. And that Fernando’s made some kind of mistake with the reservations.

  A tough situation, with very few ways out of it.

  He clutches his creditless cell phone in his pants pocket and hopes Elettra will call him.

  “Is there a problem?” the American professor asks him. He adjusts his bow tie, something he does incessantly.

  “No, no problem at all,” Fernando says reassuringly as he tries to come up with a quick solution and forces himself not to think about the fact that it’s the holiday season and Rome’s swarming with tourists. “We just need to wait for two other guests to arrive.” He points up at the arrivals board listing the flight from Paris. “They’ll be here any minute now.”

  Delving into the confused jumble of people and luggage carts, Fernando tries to calm down. This can be solved, he thinks. It isn’t the first time he’s gotten a reservation wrong since his wife passed away. But this is the first time the entire hotel has been full. And he’s got the feeling that the rest of the city’s booked solid, too.

  Then he thinks about the Internet. Ever since he started
allowing people to make online reservations, things have become incredibly complicated. Before, all you had to do was answer the phone. Now you need to start up the computer, download the e-mail, record the reservation, copy the name down into the register and make a note of a sixteen-digit credit card number.

  It’s turned into a job for bookkeepers.

  A wave of people push their way out of the international arrivals exit, which means that the flight from Paris has landed. Fernando raises the sign over his head with a certain sense of doom.

  Maybe the two Parisians missed their flight. Maybe they changed their minds. Or maybe there’s a free room he’s forgotten about. But that’s highly unlikely in a hotel that only has four guest rooms.

  He glances over at the American boy, who looks like the only person in the world gloomier than he is.

  The phone continues to stubbornly refuse to ring. How long is it going to take Elettra to call back?

  “Are you from the Domus Quintilia?” a man’s voice asks him just then.

  Fernando looks down and sees two small Chinese people: a man wearing a shiny silk suit and a cheerful boy with blue eyes and a pageboy haircut.

  “I beg your pardon?” Fernando replies mechanically. And as he does, he feels the characteristic shiver of the unexpected crawl up his spine.

  The man wearing the silk suit waves a paper printout at the height of his belly button.

  “I am Mr. See-Young Wan Ho,” he says, introducing himself, “and this is my son, Sheng Young Wan Ho. You were very kind to come pick us up.”

  “I’m … I’m sorry?” Fernando stammers. And while he’s stammering, out of the corner of his eye he spots a French woman walking up to him, accompanied by a girl who clearly appears to be her daughter.

  Mr. See-Young Wan Whatever waves his piece of paper for the second time at belly-button height. His son, Sheng, smiles happily. “We booked room number four at your hotel. It was very kind of you to come pick us up.”

  Fernando Melodia’s sheepish smile completely freezes on his face.

  Meanwhile, the French woman, the perfume designer, the only party he’d been expecting that evening, is telling her daughter, “Look, Mistral. That’s the man from our hotel.”