Sometimes they quarrelled, but on the whole they respected each other’s interests, even if they didn’t understand them.
And gradually the same differences that had brought them together became a source of division which drove them further and further apart. Without ever saying as much, they allowed the gap to widen, in the awareness that neither of them would be able to close it.
When Franco’s old grandmother died, she left him a cottage in the countryside near Castellammare. He wanted to sell it, but Maria Grazia was tired of living in the city, with all the pollution and noise. Anna would have a healthier upbringing in the countryside. Franco, however, couldn’t move; his work was in Palermo.
‘What’s the problem? You can come over at weekends, and I promise you I’ll learn to cook better than your mother,’ she said.
They took out a bank loan and renovated the cottage, putting in double glazing, a new central heating system and an attractive new roof. Maria Grazia sowed a large organic vegetable garden, declaring that her daughter needed to eat vegetables free of any chemical pollutants. She started teaching at a high school in Castellamare.
After a year of shuttling back and forth between the city and the country, Franco fell in love with the woman who owned the tobacconist’s shop opposite Elite Cars’ garage. One evening, finding courage in wine, he confessed everything to his wife.
Maria Grazia gave him a big hug. ‘I’m happy for you. The important thing is that you continue to be a good father and come to see your daughter every weekend as you’ve always done in the past.’
From that moment on, their relationship bloomed like the zucchini in the vegetable garden. She persuaded him to read Women Who Run With the Wolves and he took her to see an air display by the Italian Air Force aerobatic team in Marsala.
After an isolated drunken fit of passion, Maria Grazia became pregnant again. A baby boy was born. They called him Astor, after the great Argentinian tango musician, Astor Piazzolla. Franco continued to go back and forth from Palermo and to see the tobacconist.
Who knows? Maybe with time they’d have got back together. But the virus arrived from Belgium, and this family, like millions of others, was swept away.
When Franco and Maria Grazia died, Anna was nine years old and Astor was five.
*
The roof of the farmhouse was covered with dry leaves and branches. The porch, supported by white pillars, concealed the front door. On the upper floor two windows with faded shutters each opened onto a small balcony. In the middle of the façade, in a whitewashed niche, was a small statue of the Madonna overgrown by a caper bush. The pink plaster had flaked away and what little remained of the gutter had leaked onto the walls, streaking them with green. The Virginia creeper, in only four years, had taken over one side of the house, and the big gnarled mulberry tree had spread its branches over the roof as if to protect it.
Anna opened the gate, closed it behind her and went down the path, which ended in a clearing of bare earth. To the left was the former vegetable garden, now a field of nettles. On the other side a long wooden bench stood among weeds in front of the wreck of an old black Mercedes and a row of rusty barrels where Anna collected rainwater. A dirty, naked little boy was crouching beside the car, hacking at the hard earth with a rake. Tufts of black hair emerged from under the cycling helmet on his head.
As soon as she saw her brother, the weight lifted from her heart. ‘Astor!’
The little boy turned round and smiled, displaying a row of irregular teeth, then went on digging.
Anna sat down beside him, exhausted.
He stared at her torn knees and scratched legs. ‘Did a smoke monster do that?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Nasty.’
‘Did you beat him?’
‘Yes.’
Astor spread his arms. ‘Was he big?’
‘As big as a mountain.’
He pointed at the hole he’d dug. ‘It’s a trap. To catch rhinoceroses and rats.’
‘That’s great. Are you hungry?’
Her brother stretched his back. He was thin, with long legs and a prominent belly. The nipples on his flat chest looked like lentils and his pointed face was dominated by huge blue eyes which homed in on things as quickly as bees on nectar. ‘Not very.’ He took hold of his penis and pulled it like an elastic band.
His sister gave him a shove. ‘Stop that!’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
Astor was obsessed with his penis. Once he’d covered it with sticky tape, and it had been a terrible business getting it off.
Anna took off her rucksack. ‘How come you’re not hungry?’
‘Did you find anything good?’
Anna nodded, putting her hand on his back, as they walked towards the house.
*
The fine barrel-vaulted sitting room, fitted with rustic furniture and Persian carpets by Maria Grazia Zanchetta, was awash with rubbish. The windows were stopped up with cardboard, and the half-light revealed mountains of bottles, jars, books, toys, printers, newspapers, bicycles, mobile phones, envelopes, clothes, radios, pieces of wood, teddy bears and mattresses.
In the kitchen, light filtered in from the windows, painting bright strips on swarms of flies feasting on remnants left in tins of tuna and meat. Cockroaches and ants scuttled across greasy floor tiles. The marble table was covered with countless bottles of water, Coca-Cola and Fanta.
Anna took a long drink. ‘I was dying for that.’
Astor peered into the rucksack. ‘Any batteries?’
‘No.’
Batteries were precious and hard to find; they were almost always flat nowadays. She had a secret stock of them for the torch. If Astor got his hands on them he’d use them all up listening to music.
Anna produced a jar of beans. ‘Like some?’
A sideways wag of his forefinger said no.
She raised a suspicious eyebrow. ‘What have you been eating?’
‘Nothing. I’ve got the shakes.’
She put her hand on his forehead. ‘You’re boiling hot.’ It couldn’t be Red Fever – he was too young – but she was still worried. ‘Put some clothes on.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Go and get dressed.’ She took a big white tube out of the rucksack. ‘Otherwise, no present.’
‘What is it?’
‘Off you go.’
He kept jumping up, trying to grab the tube.
‘Off you go!’ Anna went outside, sat down on the bench and opened the jar of beans with a knife.
Two minutes later Astor turned up in a dirty jacket that reached down to his knees. ‘Where’s my present?’
She handed it over. ‘I think you’ll like it.’
He eyed her curiously, unscrewed the top and started sucking.
Anna snatched it out of his hand and pushed him down onto the ground. ‘What have I told you a thousand times?’ He tried to get up, but she put her foot on his chest, pinning him down. ‘What have I told you?’
‘Always read and smell before putting things in your mouth.’
‘So?’
Astor grabbed hold of her foot, trying to free himself. ‘You said I’d like it. So it must be all right.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You must always read.’ She gave him the tube again. ‘Come on.’
He puffed out his cheeks in exasperation and rubbed his eye. ‘Ne … Nes … Nest—’ He broke off and pointed to a letter: ‘What’s this?’
‘An accent.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘Nestle. Co … con … den … condensed mil … milk.’
He went on sucking in silence, holding his ear with his hand.
*
Anna spent the afternoon sleeping on the bench in the yard. The knocks she’d taken in the fight with the dog were beginning to hurt. A bruise had formed on the hip she’d hit against the car and her knuckles
were swollen.
Astor lay beside her, under a blanket. She touched his forehead; it was very warm.
She went back into the house, fetched the torch, climbed the stairs and walked along the corridor until she came to a closed door. Taking her shoes off and switching on the torch, she took a key out of her trouser pocket and turned it in the lock.
The beam of the torch lit up a carpet with a coloured check pattern and a dusty writing desk with a laptop in the middle. The walls were covered with childish drawings – of houses, animals, flowers, mountains, rivers and a huge red sun. The beam fell on a bedside table made of dark wood, a pile of books, a radio alarm and a bedside lamp, then on a double bed with a brass headboard. On the red and blue bedspread there was a skeleton with its arms crossed. All the two hundred and six bones that made it up, from the phalanges of the feet to the skull, were decorated with intricate geometrical patterns traced by a black felt-tip pen. The forehead and cheekbones were adorned with rings and earrings, the eye sockets covered by birds’ nests full of speckled eggs. The vertebrae of the neck and the ribs were twined around with strings of pearls, thin golden chains, amethyst necklaces and coloured stones. Curled up beside the feet lay the skeleton of a cat.
Anna sat down at the desk, rested the torch on it and opened a well-worn exercise book. The hard brown cover bore the words: THE IMPORTANT THINGS.
Silently moving her lips, she read the rounded, careful handwriting that filled the first page.
My dearest children, I love you so much. Soon your mama won’t be here any more and you’ll have to fend for yourselves. Be good and intelligent and I’m sure you’ll manage.
I’m leaving you in this exercise book some instructions that will help you to cope with life and avoid danger. Look after it carefully and whenever you have a doubt open it and read. Anna, you must teach Astor to read, so that he can consult it too. You’ll find that some of the advice won’t be useful in the world you’re living in. The rules will change and I can only imagine them. You’ll have to correct them and learn from your mistakes. The important thing is that you always use your heads.
Mama is going away because of a virus that has spread all over the world.
These are the things I know about the virus. I’ll tell you them as they are, without any lies. Because it wouldn’t be fair to deceive you.
THE VIRUS
1) Everybody has the virus. Males and females. Little children and grown-ups. But in children it sleeps and has no effect.
2) The virus will wake up only when you reach maturity. Anna, you’ll reach maturity when dark blood comes out of your vagina. Astor, you’ll reach maturity when your willy goes hard, and sperm, a white liquid, comes out of it.
3) If a person has the virus, they can’t have children.
4) When you reach maturity, red blotches start to appear on your skin. Sometimes they appear straight away, sometimes it takes longer. When the virus grows in your body you start to cough, you find it hard to breathe, all your muscles ache, and scabs form in your nostrils and on your hands. Then you die.
5) This point is very important and you must never forget it. Somewhere in the world there are grown-ups who have survived and they’re preparing a medicine that will save all children. They’ll reach you soon and cure you. You must be certain of that, you must believe it.
Mama will always love you, even though she isn’t with you. Wherever she is, she’ll love you. So will Papa. You must love each other too, and never part. You’re brother and sister.
She knew this part off by heart, but always re-read it. She turned to another page in the middle of the book.
HAVING A TEMPERATURE
The normal temperature of the human body is 36.5. If it’s higher than that, you have a fever. If it’s 37 or 38 it’s not serious. If it’s higher than that you must take medicine. To measure your temperature, use a thermometer. There’s one in the second drawer in the kitchen. It’s made of glass, so mind you don’t drop it or it’ll break. (There’s a plastic one too, but that one has a battery and I don’t know how long it will go on working.) You have to put it under your arm and wait for five minutes. If you don’t have a clock, count very slowly up to 500 and see where the silver strip stops. If it’s more than 38 you must take medicines called antibiotics. You must take them for at least a week, twice a day. There are lots of antibiotics. Augmentin, Aziclav, Cefepime. I’ve put them with the other medicines in the green cupboard. When you run out of them, you’ll have to go and look for them in chemists’ shops or houses. If you can’t find these ones, look at the leaflet inside the box; it will tell you the active ingredient; if it’s a word that ends in ‘ina’ it’s all right. Amoxicillina, cefazolina, things like that. And you must drink a lot.
Anna tucked her hair behind her ears and closed the book.
The glass thermometer had been broken. The plastic one had stopped working. The antibiotics Mama had left in the cupboard had been eaten by mice. Minerva, the chemist’s shop in Castellammare, had burnt down along with the rest of the village.
A thermometer wasn’t essential in this case. Astor was boiling hot; there was no doubt his temperature was over 38 degrees. But it was too late to go looking for medicines; that would have to wait till the next day.
She put the exercise book back in its place and went out of the room, locking the door behind her.
*
Outside, the sun had gone down behind the wood and the air was still.
‘Come on, Astor, bedtime.’
He followed her sleepily upstairs.
Their bedroom wasn’t much tidier than the rest of the house. No remnants of food, but heaps of clothes, toys, bottles of all shapes and sizes. Two chests of drawers were covered by streams of melted wax from hundreds of candles. The wall behind had been blackened by their smoke.
Anna covered her brother up and gave him a drink of water, but he was promptly sick.
She went back downstairs. In the green cupboard, she remembered, there was nothing left but mouse droppings. She imagined rows of mice with temperatures, gnawing pills and feeling better.
In the sitting room she found a box of Crescina. The name ended in ‘-ina’, but she wasn’t sure it was an antibiotic. The leaflet said it was a food supplement suitable for men and women of all ages and recommended for hair loss. Her brother wasn’t losing hair, but it wouldn’t do him any harm. She also found some Dafalgan suppositories. Good for high temperatures and headaches.
She made Astor swallow the Crescina and took out a suppository. ‘This goes up your bum.’
He eyed her dubiously. ‘I put a felt-tip pen up my bum once, and I didn’t like it. Can I eat it instead?’
Anna shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose it won’t make much difference.’
He chewed the suppository with a grimace, then turned on his side, shivering.
His sister lit a candle, lay down beside her brother and put her arms round him, trying to warm him up. ‘Would you like me to tell you a story?’
‘Okay.’
‘Which one?’
‘Any one, as long as it’s good.’
Anna remembered the book of fairy tales her mother had given her. Her favourite was the one about poor Cola the Fish. ‘This story’s about the time when there was a king and the Outside didn’t exist and there were still Grown-ups. In those days there was a boy in Sicily called Cola who could swim underwater, just like a fish.’
Astor squeezed her hand. ‘Is the sea made of nothing but water?’
‘Yes, salt water – you can’t drink it. Cola the Fish was such a good swimmer he could go right down to the sea bed, where it’s dark and you can’t see a thing. And while he was down there, he would take treasure out of sunken ships and bring it up to the surface. He had become so famous that the king decided to set him a challenge.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what kings do: decide things. He threw a gold cup into the water and Cola the Fish brought it straight back up again. Then the king orde
red his men to sail further out to sea, then he took off his crown and threw it into the water. “Let’s see if you can do it out here,” he said. Cola dived in and stayed underwater a very long time. Just when everyone on board had started drinking a toast …’
‘What does that mean, drinking a toast?’ mumbled Astor, with his thumb in his mouth.
‘Clinking bottles together. While the people on the ship were drinking a toast, the boy came back up with the crown. But still the king wasn’t satisfied. He took off the precious ring he wore on his finger and threw it into the sea where it was so deep anchors ran out of rope before they could touch the bottom. “Have you got the courage, Nicola?” the king asked, with a sneer. “Certainly, Your Majesty,” said Cola the Fish. He took a deep breath and jumped in. Everyone on the ship stared at the dark blue sea. They didn’t know their ship was floating like a cork over a ditch so deep that if you threw a stone in it wouldn’t reach the bottom till the next day. There were creatures living in that eternal darkness that no human being had ever seen or imagined. Long transparent snakes, luminous soles as wide as pumpkin fields, octopuses so huge they could crush a house with their tentacles. They stayed there two days waiting for him. Then the king yawned and ordered his sailors: “Back to the palace. He’s dead.” Just at that moment Cola the Fish emerged from the sea, looking very pale and holding the king’s ring. “Your Majesty, I have something important to tell you. I went right down to the bottom and saw that Sicily is supported by three columns. But one of them is badly damaged and on the point of collapsing …”’
Anna glanced at her brother, who was breathing deeply, still sucking his thumb. ‘“Sicily will sink into the sea.” The king thought for a moment. “In that case, do you know what my orders for you are, Nicola? Go back down there at once and hold up our island.” The boy looked at the sun, the sky, the coast of the land that he would never see again and said: “Yes, Your Majesty.” He took a breath so deep it sucked in the air, the clouds and the dry seaweed on the beach, and dived down. Since that day he has never come up again. There. That’s the end of the story.’