‘Make him sit, at once.’
He pushed Fluffy’s haunches down on the ground and threw his arms round him.
‘Stroke him. These guys will kill us.’Anna raised her hands. ‘Look, he’s not aggressive.’
The group parted to allow the passage of a skinny little blonde girl, who gazed at the three of them, holding her arms out in front of her like a preacher. The others fell silent and stepped back. A pair of green-framed sunglasses covered most of her face. Her thin legs emerged from some tattered booties; above them, a tartan skirt and a dirty fur coat.
With a forced smile, Anna stroked Fluffy’s head. ‘He’s a good dog.’
‘Good?’ said the little girl, unconvinced, and pointed to the boy who’d been bitten on the arm. ‘Bad.’
‘No, no. Good. Good dog.’
The little blonde girl went over to Fluffy. Around her the hunters were ready to plunge their spears into the animal. Without hesitating, she reached out her hand towards the Maremma’s head.
Anna shut her eyes, sure he was going to bite it off, but instead he peered at her with his big clear eyes, stretched out his neck and sniffed her.
The little girl retreated a step, put her fingers to her nose and looked around, amused. ‘Good,’ she said to the others, who were looking at her, holding their breath. ‘Good.’
They all burst out laughing. Only the poor wretch who’d been bitten laughed with a little less conviction.
Anna realised that those children were too small to know that dogs had once been pets. Or perhaps they’d forgotten.
She felt old.
*
The hunters of Patti organised a barbecue in the car park. Some dragged the carcasses out, some cut the meat, while others fed the fires with clothes, furniture and pallets.
A light breeze swept plastic bags, paper and leaves across the asphalt, as the sun, an orange oval, sank behind the barren hills.
The columns of smoke attracted other children who arrived in the mall alone or in small groups. As darkness fell, the area was swarming with black figures lined up by the bonfires, waiting for a portion of meat.
Astor and Anna queued up with the others. They hadn’t eaten for two days, and the smell of roast meat made them faint. Fluffy, too, was impatient. They’d tied a rope round his neck and were keeping a tight hold on him. At first he’d tried to wriggle free, digging in his paws and shaking his head, then he’d accepted it.
Thanks to him, Anna and Astor had become the evening’s central attraction. Everyone, keeping a safe distance, admired them, commenting with guttural noises and grimaces on the size of the beast who stood so docilely beside his owners. Astor looked around, standing up straight and feigning insouciance. Anna felt like laughing. It was the first time she’d seen her brother try to look cool.
When their turn finally came, they received three enormous pieces of meat, charred and dripping with fat, but still bloody inside.
They sat down on a concrete kerb and devoured them in silence.
‘What’s it like?’ Anna asked her brother.
Astor, his mouth full, mumbled something incomprehensible, rolling his eyes.
The girl searched for the starfish under her T-shirt. She pulled it out and turned it over between her fingers. For unpleasant things she could do without Pietro – she could handle them herself – but now that it was a question of celebrating, laughing, enjoying a steak, his absence became more painful. She remembered the time they’d thrown the smelly octopus off the balcony, and felt like laughing.
Astor nudged her with his elbow. ‘I want some more.’
‘Let’s go and see …’ She was about to stand up when the little blonde girl with green glasses appeared in front of her. She had a torch in one hand, and in the other a big charred shin of meat, which she held out towards them.
‘Thank you,’ said Anna, but the little girl threw it to Fluffy, who caught it in his teeth and tore off the meat, holding it with his forepaws.
The thin girl pointed at him. ‘Good.’
‘Good.’ Anna wasn’t sure whether she meant Fluffy or the meat.
The little blonde girl pointed at the dog. ‘Mine?’
Anna knitted an eyebrow. ‘What?’
‘Mine.’
Anna tapped herself on the chest, with a forced smile. ‘No, mine.’
The little girl stared at Fluffy. ‘Dog good.’
‘Good.’
‘Dog mine.’
Anna pointed at herself. ‘No. Dog mine.’
Astor whispered anxiously in his sister’s ear. ‘She wants Fluffy.’
‘Smile.’
The little boy flashed an over-friendly smile, displaying his lopsided teeth. ‘Dog ours.’
The little blonde girl took off her glasses. Her right eye was glassy and looked to one side.
‘Dog ours?’ She walked away, scratching her head and repeating: ‘Dog ours? Dog mine?’
Anna pulled Fluffy with the lead. ‘Let’s get going,’ she said to Astor.
‘Where to?’
‘Out of here, before she makes up her mind.’
Astor looked around. ‘What about the meat?’
‘Forget about it. Get moving. Quickly. No, slowly. Calmly. As if everything was perfectly normal.’
They walked a short distance, then, as soon as the darkness swallowed them up, they started running.
*
It took them two days to get from Patti to Messina, walking from dawn to dusk. The first night they spent in a small block of flats beside the autostrada. The ground floor was occupied by a job centre, but on searching through the kitchen drawers in a first-floor flat, they found some mouldy stock cubes, which they crushed and dissolved in water. Then they pulled the curtains off the windows and used them as blankets.
On the last day of the journey a cold wind was blowing, the sky was blue and the air so clear that everything seemed nearer.
The autostrada ran over viaducts linking one wooded hill to another and through dark tunnels.
Closer to the city, an unbroken queue of traffic blocked all the lanes. The cars were still full of luggage. Searching through suitcases in an SUV, they found some heavy pullovers, clean T-shirts and windproof jackets.
Finally, at the top of a long slope, the sight they’d been waiting for all these months spread out in front of them. The Strait.
They both started jumping up and down and twirling round and round, hand in hand. ‘We’ve done it!’They climbed up onto the roof of a lorry to get a better view.
The island ended in a strip of tall buildings overlooking a big harbour and a stretch of blue sea, beyond which there arose a chain of dark mountains. The mainland. The two shores were so close to each other, the channel between them seemed no wider than a river.
Anna had imagined it as immense, impossible to cross, but now, looking at it, she thought she could swim it.
They ran the rest of the way, stopping only to get their breath back. They left the autostrada along a slip road and went on down suburban streets which progressively filled with blocks of flats, shops, filling stations and traffic lights.
Messina was a solid mass of cars, even in the narrow streets of the city centre, and yet, closer to the sea, you didn’t feel the same sensation of death and anguish that had been so strong in Palermo. Here, nature was taking over the city again. Saplings and hawthorn bushes grew in cracks in the asphalt, avenues and pavements were covered with earth and leaves, grass and wheat were putting down roots. Climbing plants spread their blooms over the façades of apartment blocks. There were animals everywhere: flocks of sheep grazing beside monuments, bearded goats climbing over rubbish bins, flocks of birds spilling out of windows, herds of horses and foals threading in and out between cars. Only the harbour, sealed off by coils of barbed wire and surrounded by army vehicles, recalled the violence of the days of quarantine, but the wind brought the briny smell of the sea, and the waves beyond the harbour walls were crested with foam.
It was lat
e, and they decided to wait until the next day before attempting the crossing. They searched shops and supermarkets for something to eat, but without success. Exhausted, they entered an old aristocratic palazzo with a marble doorway, a porter’s lodge and a lift in an iron cage. At the very top they found an open door. The brass nameplate said: ‘The Gentili Family’.
The attic was full of pictures, frames, furniture made of dark wood and armchairs with flowery patterns. The windows looked out onto the promenade. There were two skeletons in the bedroom. Black membranous clusters of bats hung from the pelmets and crystal chandeliers in the living room. The wall cabinets of the kitchen were empty, but in the dresser they found some bottles of Schweppes, peanuts, pistachios and a shrivelled pandoro cake, which they shared with the dog.
They lay down on the sofas in the living room in front of the television screen.
Astor fell asleep at once. Anna kept dropping off and waking up again, out of a tangle of dim, disturbing dreams. She lay on the velvet cushions, breathing through her mouth, listening to the waves breaking against the quay.
She knew nothing about Calabria. What would she find there? Were some Grown-ups really still alive there? Maybe they wouldn’t let them come ashore.
Go away! We don’t want you here! You’re infected.
And she thought fondly back to her home, the wood, Torre Normanna. Those four years of solitude, the make-believe Christmases, the roads she’d travelled along and the thousands of decisions she’d had to make with no help from anyone else.
One way or the other, everything was going to change, starting from tomorrow.
The air in the room was musty. Opening a window, she went out onto the balcony and let the wind blow her hair. Then she leaned on the railing in the dark starless night, shivering. Calabria was switched off.
Don’t hope for too much.
Then she saw a small red light in the distance, going on and off at regular intervals. As though someone had been listening to her thoughts.
A signal.
She stared at it, rubbing her arms. Who was capable of doing such a thing?
Only Grown-ups.
She went back indoors and sat down on the edge of the sofa by her brother. He was sleeping with his face pressed against the back of the seat, the lines of the material imprinted on his cheek. She called out to him softly.
‘Astor … Astor …’
He rubbed his eye: ‘What’s the matter?’
Anna shrugged her shoulders. ‘I love you.’
He yawned and ran his tongue over his lips.
‘Were you dreaming?’ she asked him.
‘Yes.’
‘What about?’
Astor thought for a moment. ‘Hotdogs with wurstel.’
Anna took a deep breath. ‘But do you love me?’
He nodded, scratching his nose.
‘Move over, then.’
Lying beside her brother, she finally managed to get to sleep.
13
It was the right kind of day.
The wind had dropped, the sky was clear, the sea calm, and the mainland was there.
They explored the docks, but there were no boats on the quays. Further out, at the harbour mouth, near the breakwaters, rusty hulls, propellers and funnels of sunken ferries protruded from the water. Colonies of seagulls had made their homes there, covering them with guano.
They walked along the promenade, which was divided in two by a flyover. To the left, a long row of tall modern buildings looked out onto stumps of palm trees, lamp posts and a strip of pebble beach eaten away by the sea. But there were no boats there either. What had happened to them? Had they all been used to escape from the island?
The mainland, which had seemed so near the day before, was becoming unattainable, and the city that lay like an opalescent strip below the mountains on the other side of the sea, just a mirage.
Anna sat down on a bench, disheartened.
It was impossible to swim across. And even if they found a dinghy, she didn’t know how to row. They wandered on, Astor talking to himself, Fluffy peeing on lamp posts to mark out his territory.
A series of filling stations gave way to a row of low buildings: The Sailor’s Tavern, The Squill Restaurant, Scylla Bar. Behind the salt-encrusted windows were dusty tables, piles of chairs and empty fish tanks.
Astor went down a sandy passageway between two restaurants and Anna followed him. Behind the buildings, on a tiny promontory, a funfair was rusting among the eucalyptuses. A roundabout with hanging seats. Dodgems. A hall full of wrecked video games.
They’d seen others like it on their journey, and every time Astor had got into the little cars and tried desperately to start them up, then asked Anna to tell him what they were like with their coloured lights, music and other children. But this one he walked straight through without a word.
The little wood ended in a desolate car park bordered by a row of burnt-out rubbish bins. The long space looked out onto a stony beach, covered with litter and salt-stained branches.
‘Come on … There’s nothing here,’ shouted Anna.
Astor jumped over the wall at the side of the car park and disappeared from her view.
‘Astor! I’m going …’ she said, with a snort of exasperation.
But Astor shouted: ‘Anna! Anna! Come here. Quick!’
*
Its name was Tonino II and it wasn’t exactly a boat, it was a pedalo: red and white, with a tiller, plastic seats and a slide in the middle with a ladder that ended beyond the stern. Astor had found it under a tarpaulin.
It was perfect. You didn’t have to row, only pedal. Anna knew how to do that. And her brother could help her too.
At last, a stroke of luck.
They’d have to push it into the water, but that wouldn’t be hard; they could put some branches underneath it and roll it down.
She planted a kiss on Astor’s forehead; he wiped it off in disgust, gazing at the sea. ‘How long will it take us?’
‘A long time.’
*
What did they need for the crossing?
Water-wings for Astor. No, lifebelts would be better. Life jackets would be better still. Water. Food. They’d be cold – so warmer garments. A change of clothes. And those yellow jackets for the rain. In short, a lot of things.
The shops on the sea front all had their shutters down and the ones that had been broken open were empty. In a bathing establishment they found some orange lifebelts and some towels behind a cabin. They broke a window of the Squill Restaurant and, searching in the larder, found three tins of sea urchin meat and two bottles of Chardonnay. They couldn’t find any oilskins, but they took two trolley cases full of pullovers and trousers from a car boot, and some transparent plastic macs from a lorry.
They finished kitting themselves out with the sun still high in the sky, and put the luggage in the bows.
Moving the pedalo down to the shoreline was more complicated than expected; it was heavy and the branches wouldn’t roll on the big stones. By the time they got the bow into the water they were exhausted.
The sea was calm but the wind blew cold spray in their faces.
They put on two cardigans and two pairs of trousers each, and the plastic macs on top. They looked like a pair of puppets wrapped in cellophane.
Ready?
Ready.
Astor had sat down in his seat and was blowing raspberries, imitating the sound of an engine.
‘Say goodbye to Sicily,’ said Anna.
The little boy closed his hand. ‘Ciao.’
At least he wouldn’t miss anything.
The dog was sitting at the end of the beach looking at them, his good ear pricked up.
‘Come on, Fluffy. Quick.’
Fluffy didn’t move.
‘Go and get him, Astor.’
Astor puffed out his cheeks and ran towards the dog. ‘Come on, Fluffy.’ But when he tried to approach him, Fluffy dodged away to one side. ‘Come here.’ He tried again with
out success. ‘Stop! Stay!’ Hands on hips, he turned towards his sister. ‘He won’t come.’
They tried as hard as they could to catch him, in a three-way game of tag, but the dog circled round them, tail between his legs, ready to accelerate away as soon as they came anywhere near him.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Astor, breathing hard.
Anna shrugged. ‘I just don’t know.’
She’d thought of everything, except Fluffy. She’d assumed he wouldn’t have any problems getting on the boat; wasn’t it really just a tiny piece of land? ‘I’ve got an idea.’ She took a tin of sea urchin meat out of the rucksack, opened it and showed it to the dog. ‘Mmm …’ she said, dipping her finger in the orange paste. ‘Do you want some?’ It was really revolting.
The dog took a few cautious steps towards the food and Anna, holding her breath, took one step towards him. ‘Try it. It’s delicious.’ She poured the pulp out onto a rock and stepped back. Fluffy approached warily, sniffing the air, then put out his tongue and started licking.
As one, they both jumped on him. Astor held him down while Anna put a rope round his neck. ‘Gotcha!’
They started pulling him towards the shoreline, but the dog dug his paws in and shook his head, whimpering, until with a sharp tug he broke free of the noose and ran off into the car park.
‘He’ll never get onto the boat.’ Anna threw the rope on the ground and looked at the sky. ‘I’ve had enough. It’s getting late. We’re leaving him here.’
Astor gazed at her in disbelief. ‘We’re not taking him with us?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s give him some sleeping pills.’
‘There’s no time. We’ve got to go. It’ll be dark soon.’
‘You want to leave him here?’
‘Yes.’
The little boy fell on his knees. ‘No.’
Anna went over to him and stroked his head. ‘Listen to me. He’ll never get on that boat. Even if we managed to force him, he’d jump in the water as soon as he got a chance. And if he jumped out into deep water, he’d drown.’ Anna saw that the sun had been swallowed up by clouds. ‘We must go.’
Astor dug his toes in between the rocks. ‘Please … don’t leave him.’