Ferocity

by Nicola Lagioia

  “Alberto!”

  Alberto raised his eyes; his face lit up. He smiled, puffy with sadness. His features hadn’t changed over the course of the years. Now he looked like an aged child. Someone who, instead of facing his sorrows head on, had tucked them under his skin like so much Botox.

  Michele came down the stairs, went toward him. He seemed to sense Vittorio’s disappointment, which told him he was doing the right thing.

  Alberto held out one hand, placed the other on his shoulder: “How are you?” Then he pulled him toward him.

  Recognizing embraces. Michele had been practicing it for a lifetime. He was an expert in the discipline. In the clutch with Alberto he recognized a sincere enthusiasm. Immediately after, though, he sensed an excessively emphatic note, the hint of misdirection. The background noise was trying to distract him from his sister’s voice. I dreamed of a doe. Alberto was looking at him. The last time they’d met, Clara had been twenty-four. Alberto and his sister had just recently gotten married.

  Even then she was cheating on him with anyone she could, thought Michele.

  Alberto took his arms off Michele’s body.

  “It’s so good to see you again.” His voice rose half a note, rediscovered a fluent cordiality. “How long will you be staying in Bari?”

  Just then Annamaria joined them. Michele felt the expectation that Alberto would get out from underfoot suddenly double. That’s when he made his move.

  “Why don’t you stay for a cup of tea?”

  He sunk his gaze into Annamaria’s own, so that the woman, forced to return his smile, had no time to improvise an excuse. His father seemed too caught off guard to react. Michele saw him look down in irritation.

  They had tea on the veranda. The atmosphere was strange. Even though no one spoke about Clara, Alberto’s presence ensured that his sister’s death pressed against the background in a way that was different from the previous days. Two opposing falsehoods give a true reading. Things take shape. In the intricate forest of grief, a path emerges.

  “What are you up to in Rome?” asked Alberto. The effect was ridiculous.

  Michele glimpsed the opportunity and seized it. There was at least half an hour to be earned. “I’m working with newspapers,” he said. He started talking about himself the way Annamaria would have done about Gioia if his sister had just started working. As he was citing La Repubblica and Il Messaggero—attributing to himself an importance that was absolutely nonexistent, but without the exaggerations that would have justified a request to show his cards—he sensed that the trick was working. For minutes on end he held them in his grasp with a succession of commonplaces.

  Then Gioia arrived.

  “Oh, ciao.”

  She was dressed in a short skirt and a tight-fitting little T-shirt. Surprised to find them all there together, she took a half a step back.

  Michele was quick: “Come, sit down with us.”

  Gioia ventured closer, circumspectly. In the end she gave in, overcome by the force of gravity. She set her handbag and her cell phone down on the table. Michele went back to talking with Alberto. Annamaria seemed uneasy. Vittorio was tapping his foot nervously on the floor. Michele’s sister gave a start. She reached out a hand, dragged the iPhone toward her. She started typing a phrase into it. Or perhaps deleting one. Michele noticed something. That’s when he stretched out his hand. He reached under the table and grabbed Gioia’s free hand, started squeezing it. His sister smiled nervously. He squeezed tighter, more intensely. Gioia responded by pushing her sweaty palm obtusely against his. After ten minutes or so, they heard a car engine coming closer and closer.

  That was when his father leapt to his feet and headed toward the interior of the villa. Freed of the invisible ties with which Michele was binding them, he went to welcome the guests at the front door. But instead they went around to the back. Before Vittorio returned, the new arrivals appeared on the veranda. His brother Ruggero. Behind him, an old man. A long gray face. Black jacket, sky-blue shirt. He raised one hand slowly. Michele saw, on Alberto’s face, the chasm open and then close back up. Clearly, the two of them ought never to have met.

  The old man said: “Good evening.”

  Michele and Annamaria replied with a nod. Ruggero led the way indoors. As the guest was walking past the table where they were all seated, Michele saw for the second time the agony, obvious and then hidden, on Alberto’s face. He couldn’t know that the two men had met at the funeral. But he did know the truth behind that contraction. The same that—so many years before—had deformed Alberto’s face when he saw Clara returning from the gym with her bag in hand.

  Later Michele learned that the guest was Valentino Buffante. Former Undersecretary of Justice. He’d gotten in trouble for something related to rigged civil service competitions. Acquitted. Now the chairman of a foundation for economic development in southern Italy. The business of the preemptive seizure of his father’s tourist complex. This sort of disaster foretold to which Vittorio was devoting all his efforts. Over the past few days, Michele had heard doors opening and voices talking, men’s voices, strangers’ voices. This Buffante wasn’t the only one who’d showed up in person.

  After dinner, Michele went in the garden for a smoke. He walked past the fountain. Now he could relax. He thought of Gioia. He couldn’t believe he’d seen that of all things on her phone’s screen. He walked through the tall grass, noticed a slight drop in temperature. He felt then that he could sense the city. The traffic lights. The buildings in the center of town. The electric curve of the lights along the waterfront. The places where he still hadn’t set foot since his return. There, another image of Clara awaited him. A more fluid shape, he thought, different from the adulterated memories from in here. The glowing lights on a sign that changes continuously.

  After the incident with the child buried under the rubble, Michele starts taking long walks in the fallow fields that lie not far from the villa. He gets home from school, eats quickly, and hurries outside. He takes the dirt lane. He jumps over the drystone wall and ventures out into the fields.

  He walks among the daisies. Then the red of the poppies. He lowers himself down among the leaves, makes his way over the ground using his elbows to push himself forward. Line dot, line dot, line dot line. In the beginning were the ants.

  He follows the broken line. The tiny creatures travel over rocks, dead leaves. Each individual insect rhythmically taps its antennae against those of its fellow creature, passing each other information then scooting away in opposite directions. Further on, the line becomes a large clustering black fist. They’re swarming over a swallow’s corpse. That which in heaven now here on earth. Michele leaps to his feet. He starts running, trips. Another day. He lifts his head among the mallows, sees the moon striped with silver. Shift in focus. The moon loses distinctness, the silver thread is here under his nose. A spiderweb. The transparent veil tosses in the wind. At the outskirts of the orbicular structure he notices the silk cocoons. He looks around. He carefully places a finger on the ground. He waits until an ant climbs onto his fingernail. He lifts the finger, raises it to the height of the spiderweb. With his forefinger, from below, he flicks sharply at the base of his middle finger. After describing a small parabola in the void, the ant lands on the spiderweb. The threads undulate. That’s when the spider comes out. It descends and very quickly climbs up from one end to the other. It lunges at its prey. It’s all a convulsive agitation of bodies. The predator tries to immobilize the ant before the ant has a chance to wound it with a swipe of its mandible. And yet there is no passion in this battle. As if the breath of a single god were channeled into two different shells, transforming itself into opposing thrusts. Before Michele has a chance to recover from his fright, the ant is all wrapped up.

  At nightfall, Michele returns home. He comes up the drive, passes the rose bushes. He doesn’t have time to take more steps. He feels a dark red imprint on h
is head. She’s watching him. Maybe her eyes are following him from the second-story window. Or else she’s hidden among the trees. Silence and a few clouds in the sky. Soon this summer will be over.

  Another time. Michele ventures out among the spikes of the Bermuda grass. Out of the smell of gasoline and mosquito coils, the impalpable scent of fruit popsicles that lingered in the air until just a few days ago, has already started to fade. It’s colder than it was yesterday. Beyond the last trees there’s the line of traffic. Glowing lights. Michele brushes off his trousers. He continues in the opposite direction. After a few yards, the vegetation starts to grow again. A dragonfly. The moon bigger than on other days. On the right, the stripe of a stand of cane. Michele stops. He’s never been here. He looks around. He crouches down in this sort of peat bog. Protected by the tufts of rush, he immerses himself in the basin of late summer. A sensation of well being, of calm. He feels the pressure on his hand. He might have slept. He focuses and he sees it.

  A tree frog has landed on his wrist. Emerald green, with a black stripe running from the eyes all the way to the rear limbs.

  Michele is careful to breathe. The little animal seems as if it’s about to leap away. Instead, without his feeling a thing, the tree frog gets more comfortable on its platform. It makes a half turn, steps forward a few centimeters.

  Still sitting in the grass, as if checking his watch, Michele slowly bends the angle of his elbow. He brings the frog beneath his eyes. He observes it. The frog observes him. Never seen such a brilliant green. Inside the throat of the tiny amphibian, something pulsates continuously. The frog goes on staring at him, imperturbably. So beautiful. One evening, in my presence, a tiger will reveal itself.

  Something explodes on his hand.

  Michele feels the burning sensation. He sees the frog leap away. A violent gray-green spurt shoots in the opposite direction.

  “Got him!”

  Michele leaps to his feet. For a few seconds he doesn’t understand. Then he notices the two boys among the ferns. They’re probably his age. He lowers his eyes. He sees the frog struggling to move across the ground, pushing with a single leg. No. Damn it, no.

  “Don’t you even try it,” says one of the boys.

  The other one aims an oversized rubber band in his direction.

  Without giving it a second thought, Michele puts his head down and takes off. With one absolutely precise movement, he snags the frog from the ground and lunges forward.

  “Ah!”

  He hits the two boys. He makes an opening for himself and starts to run.

  “Come on! Come on!”

  They chase him, but their bodies preserve a memory of the impact. This child is strange. Michele runs like a lunatic. Branches. Lashes against his ankles. Everything’s green. He can hear them talking amongst themselves. A sign that they’re slowing down. I can’t stop. His fingers delicately clenched in fists. Please. I’m begging you. If I run fast, if I’m in danger of making my heart explode, then the frog won’t die.

  The façade of the villa appears amidst the tops of the pine trees. Michele has no idea how he even managed to find the way back. He goes through the gate. He starts up the drive. A terrible burning in his spleen. Only then does he begin to slow down. The frog, far too relaxed in his fist. He passes the oleanders. The sound of leaves underfoot. Close to the vases with the ferns, a female shape. Michele feels the anguish grow. Annamaria. A part of him has already understood, tries to find a way to persuade the other half. He stumbles over his own footsteps. The frog slips from his fingers. He watches as it falls into the grass. A leg extends and folds back in on itself. Involuntary reflex. But I ran. I really did try to make my heart explode. Evening will fall. It will be day again. The ants will arrive. The gardener will gather one thing among the others. Michele passes Annamaria. He goes through the front door. From the contrasting shadows of the living room he sees the interior stairs emerge and, further on, the sofa. Inside the armoire’s mirror, his dead figure.

  So it happens. He senses the shift. The clamp around his throat. As if a wild animal, patiently lying in ambush in the dark, had lunged at him. For an instant he believes that the boys with rubber bands have followed him right into the house. Then the scent of fruit mixed with something heavier, rougher. His sister. She’s thrown her arms around his neck. And she squeezes, squeezes tight. The brownish warmth of her body. Michele feels like sobbing. The first shaft of light. Things at the bottom of the well start to take on a shape.

  In bed, the cat still on his belly. Michele woke up once again in the middle of the night. He went downstairs to the living room. He stopped for a few minutes at the exact spot where it happened. But not as if in prayer. He sensed her. She was still there. Michele went back to his room. As if it was only from that moment on that I had the tools to understand, he remembered. He patted the nightstand in search of the cigarettes. You have to receive some good before you can separate it from that which is not. If no one loves you, you’ll never know where to begin. That’s where everything begins, even hatred. He put the cigarette into his mouth, but he didn’t light it. He stroked the cat’s head.

  Beginning that night, he and Clara start to see each other, so to speak. Absurd, considering that they’ve lived in the same house since she was three. And yet that is what happens. At five in the evening, before Engineer Ranieri comes to get her, Clara worms her way into her brother’s room. Every time, she brings a little gift with her. Michele is bent over his games. He hears the door swing open. The artificial light is stripped bare and then destroyed by the glare from the outside world. Clara sets her sports bag on the floor. Amatori Volley. Still not satisfied, she crosses the room and throws open the window.

  “What were you doing in the dark like that.”

  She impresses the question with a faint timber of parody, as if she knew perfectly well the uses of darkness, approved them, and just wanted to let him know.

  “You’ve just killed them,” he says, making the two robots, who are now less convincing than ever, fall theatrically onto the floor.

  “Look what I brought you.”

  Clara climbs up onto the bed, drawing a semicircle. She rapidly crosses her legs on the mattress. She shifts the bound volumes from her right hand to her left, hiding them behind her back.

  Michele draws closer. He comes over and sits on the bed. Right across from her. Clara smiles in amusement.

  “What’s that behind your back?”

  “The Hidden Vall . . . Oh, what do you care about it.”

  “Let me see.”

  She’s hopeless when it comes to comic books. The Hidden Valley. When Clara saw the cover with the cowboy on horseback, it seemed like a good idea. Now she realizes it that it’s a mediocre editorial product. She hands him the Little Ranger comic. What an idiot I’ve been. Her brother has a mind out of the ordinary. As quick as a thousand hands simultaneously searching for a needle in a dark room. Only an idiot could fail to see that she had something precious right in front of her. How could I have gotten him this stupid thing?

  “Oh, thank you,” he says, seriously.

  A shadow passes over him, changes the shape of his lips. It’s unclear whether he’s making fun of her. Clara wishes she could drop through the floor. Luckily the difference in age comes to her rescue. There are secrets that fourteen-year-olds possess that are unknown to the experiences of eleven-year-olds.

  Clara smiles again, her face slightly pointy: “And that’s not all . . . ”

  Still facing him, motionless, legs crossed, he sees her rummage around her back. She hands him the slim volume.

  Songs of Experience.

  “I’ll read it all,” he says.

  “There’s a really nice one about a tiger.”

  “A tiger hunt.”

  “Tyger tyger . . . ” she recites. “More than anything else, the poet wonders whether he who made the tiger also
created the lamb.”

  Michele looks at her in silence, looks at her big toes, which are sticking out of her terry cloth socks. Then he says: “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “One creates the other.”

  A small vertical crease between Clara’s eyes.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The lamb created the tiger by letting herself be eaten by him.”

  The mark on her forehead vanished. Clara opens her mouth and bares her teeth: “Like this? Like this?” She lunges at him.

  “Ahhh!”

  Michele shouts amid his laughter. Clara sinks a knee into his stomach, with the other knee pressed against the base of his neck. She lifts her arms, spreads her fingers as if they were claws. Matching make-believe for make-believe, Michele slows the movement that might have staved off the attack. Clara is on top of him. Her fingers in his ribs. She tickles him. Michele delivers a slap to the back of the head that comes dangerously close to being a real and proper smack. Clara opens her eyes wide in astonishment. Now, he thinks. He grabs her by the hair, yanks just enough to cause her pain. Clara launches herself forward, stretching. For an instant, they’re belly to belly. Michele lets one leg slide between hers, he pushes, he grabs her by the arms. He kicks hard enough to fling her away.

  They laugh. They’re about to hurl themselves at one another again. Then he looks down at the bag on the floor. Soon Engineer Ranieri will come to pick her up. Clara is panting. Michele, too, is catching his breath. They snicker nervously. For a few moments they remain there, as if they had suddenly become aware of what surrounds them. An evil aura. Clara tucks her hair over her ear. Michele stays motionless in his place. She gets cautiously out of the bed, first one foot then the other.