Astor was sleeping with his head bent over on one side.
Anna thought of that poor boy standing there all alone at the bottom of the sea, holding up the island. She imagined swimming down to him like a deep-sea diver and telling him that his king and all his court were dead, and that Sicily was entirely inhabited by children.
She ate some beans, then picked up the bottle of Amaro she’d found in the garden centre and held it close to the candle’s flame. The label showed an angry peasant woman standing with one hand on her waist and the other holding a basket full of herbs.
Looks just like Signorina Rigoni. She used to stand like that when the class was being too noisy.
Anna took a swig of Amaro. It was so sweet it made her curl up her toes.
There were some things about Grown-ups she just couldn’t understand. Why did they call it ‘Amaro’ – bitter – if it was sweet?
After a few more swigs, her eyelids grew heavy. Outside the window millions of stars dotted the sky like a sprinkling of white paint, and cicadas were singing. When the cold weather came they would disappear. She’d never seen any cicadas, but they must be really big creatures to make all that noise.
*
When Anna woke up, her arms were wrapped round her brother, and the mattress was soaked in sweat. Turning on the torch, she played it over Astor. His face was buried in the pillow, and he was grinding his teeth.
She picked up the bottle of water from the floor and drank her fill. Outside, everything was quiet, the silence broken only by the hoots of an owl and Astor’s heavy breathing.
Getting out of bed, she went out onto the balcony and sat down to enjoy the cool air. Beyond the rusty railing and the black shapes of the trees lay the burnt, noiseless expanse of the plain.
The bird was hooting from the fig tree behind the tool shed. The tree had always been small, but in the last two years it had grown so much its branches reached down to the ground.
She remembered Mama once tying the ropes of the swing to it, and Papa objecting that the fig was a treacherous tree, likely to break.
But thinking about it again, she wasn’t so sure. Perhaps she’d read about the treacherous fig tree in some book, or dreamed of it. Memories often mingled with written stories and dreams, and in time even the clearest ones faded, like watercolours in a glass of water.
She remembered Palermo. Their flat, from where you could see an office full of people sitting in front of monitors. She recalled trivial things. The black and white chessboard of the floor tiles in the sitting room. The kitchen table with a slot for a roller that was used for making pasta. The clothes drying rack with its rusty corners. But she could no longer summon up the faces of Grandpa Vito and Grandma Mena. In fact, all the Grown-ups’ faces were disappearing, suppressed by the passing days. The old people had white hair, some men grew beards, the women dyed their hair, painted their skin and put on perfume. In the evenings they sat in bars and drank wine in glasses. There were lots of waiters. In the restaurants of Palermo they brought you parmigiana di melanzane and spaghetti.
Mama had come to hate Palermo, because the people wouldn’t stay in quarantine. Anna remembered that even before the Red Fever reached Castellammare she’d stopped sending her to school. They’d barricaded themselves in the house with stocks of food piled up in the kitchen and the sitting room.
One evening Papa had come over in his Mercedes. The car had skidded in the drive and crashed into the benches, the horn blaring. Papa had climbed out, more dead than alive. He was barely recognisable, his face drained by the virus, his eyeballs bulging, his skin covered in blotches. He dragged himself to the door, but Mama wouldn’t let him in. ‘Go away! You’re infected!’ she shouted.
He hammered on the door with both fists. ‘I want to see the children. Just for a moment. Let me see them, just for a moment.’
‘Go away. Are you trying to kill us?’
‘Open the door, Maria Grazia, please …’
‘Go away, for God’s sake. If you love your children, go away.’ Mama sank down onto the floor in tears. He staggered back to the car, got in and sat there, slumped forward, head against the windscreen, mouth open.
Anna climbed up onto the back of the sofa and looked at him through the window. Mama drew the curtains, picked her up and took her and Astor into bed with her. Anna thought she was going to say something, but they all just lay there in silence.
The next day, Papa died. Mama made a phone call and the authorities came to take him away.
Anna could have said goodbye to him, gone up to him, but at that time her mother didn’t know that children couldn’t catch the disease.
Not long afterwards Mama caught it.
Anna’s memories of that time were confused. Mama writing all day, half naked, her elbow on the table. Mama filling the exercise book with Important Things. Her long blonde hair falling in greasy tufts over her face. Her thin ankles. Her long calves. Her toes pressed down against the floor. The hollow curve of her stomach, revealed by her unfastened dressing gown. The red blotches on her neck and legs. The scabs on her hands and lips. Her constant coughing.
All so long ago, yet when she thought about it, she missed her so much she felt as though she’d fallen down a hole she’d never get out of.
*
The day released a flock of small white clouds into the blue sky.
Astor’s temperature seemed to have dropped, but he was still far from well. He gazed at Anna with big, bewildered eyes. When she tried to get him to drink, he brought up yellow bile.
Exhausted, he rubbed his stomach. ‘It hurts here.’
‘Look, I’m going out to find some medicine. I won’t be long.’
‘Okay, I’ll come with you.’
‘You know that’s not possible. Do you want to get caught by the smoke monsters?’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t you go either, then.’
‘I’ll bring you a present.’
‘Don’t want a present.’
She sighed. ‘I don’t believe this.’
He turned away, pouting sulkily.
‘What if we have Christmas first?’
He turned back to face her, excited. ‘Christmas? Can we? Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Have you already got my present?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I hide, then?’
‘Yes, go on.’
Astor hid under the blanket. Anna went into Mama’s room, took the CD-player from one of the drawers in the desk, then put on a Father Christmas hat and some red Moon Boots. Reluctantly, she pulled down a hedgehog soft toy which lay on top of a cupboard, out of Astor’s reach. A birthday present to her from Grandma Mena. Astor had always coveted it, but she’d never given in. She wrapped it in a sheet of newspaper.
‘Are you coming? I’m ready,’ Astor shouted.
Anna pressed ‘Play’ and a song started up at full volume.
Her choice for Christmas was always George Benson’s ‘The Ghetto’. She didn’t know why. Maybe because of its driving rhythm, maybe because she’d found the CD under a Christmas tree in a service area on the autostrada.
She instantly started dancing. A dance that consisted of swaying her bottom, hands on hips, and jutting her chin out, like a pigeon pecking at birdseed. Her brother was a round hillock quivering with excitement under the blanket. She passed by him, singing all the time, jumped up onto a chair and counted, pointing her finger: ‘One … Two … And three. Go, Ghetto! Your turn.’
The blanket flew off and Astor started jiving about, rotating his wrists and occasionally slapping himself on the head. That was his Christmas dance.
Anna was relieved. If he was dancing, he couldn’t be too ill. Maybe it was all an act to keep her at home. But he had thrown up.
‘The present! Give me the present.’
Anna took out the parcel and handed it to her brother. ‘Merry Christmas.’
Astor tore off the wrapping and gazed at the toy. ‘Is it mine? Real
ly?’
‘Yes, it’s yours.’
Brother and sister started dancing again, just as George Benson struck up anew with ‘Yes, this is the ghetto’.
*
Anna packed the rucksack: a bottle of water, a can of peas, a kitchen knife, some batteries that still worked, and a double CD of Massimo Ranieri.
Ready.
She said goodbye to Astor, who’d gone back to bed with his new cuddly toy, and set off.
3
The first few times Anna had left Astor alone at home, she’d gone no further than the Manninos’ farm – Mama’s supplies seemed inexhaustible. But after a year all that remained were a few tins of sweetcorn, which gave Astor indigestion.
The farm was at the edge of the wood. A long low building, with a red-tiled roof. Opposite, cattle sheds and paddocks with metal fences. To one side a barn, full of bales of hay.
The parents had been carried off by the Red Fever and their children, too small to fend for themselves, had died in their bunk beds. The Manninos were small-scale farmers, far-sighted people, and the big larder behind the kitchen was full of jars of marinated aubergines and artichokes, preserves, jam, bottles of wine, legs of ham. Anna went there regularly to stock up, but one day she found it stripped clean. Someone had come by and carried off everything they could. The rest was strewn across the floor.
She was forced to search further afield. In the first group of buildings she came across, among corpses, flies and mice, she raided the kitchen cabinets. At first she went through the apartments with her hands over her face, singing and peering between her fingers at the bodies, but before long she grew used to them and saw them as constant, intriguing presences. They were all different, each with its own pose and expression, and later, depending on the degree of humidity, exposure to light, ventilation, insects and other necrophagous creatures, they turned into fillets of baccalà or revolting masses of pulp.
To prevent Astor from following her or hurting himself, in these early days, before going out, she would lock him up with his soft toys and a bottle of water in the cupboard under the stairs. The first few times he cried, screamed and banged on the door, but after a while, being intelligent, he understood that this imprisonment had its advantages: every time his sister reopened the door she brought food and presents.
Astor said that while he sat there in the dark, little creatures that lived underground would pop out. ‘They’re like lizards, but they have blond hair and they talk to me.’
Anna was pleased with her solution. It left her free to move around, and her brother didn’t see the destruction and the dead bodies, didn’t smell that sickly sweet odour that stuck in your nose and you couldn’t get rid of even by inhaling perfume.
After a while, however, Astor started throwing tantrums again. First he wanted light, and Anna certainly couldn’t give him a candle in the cupboard. Then he started saying the long-haired lizards didn’t want him there any more and said nasty things to him.
Then the questions started. What’s out there, beyond the wood? Why can’t I come into the Outside with you? What kind of animals live there?
To persuade her brother to let her lock him up, every evening Anna would tell him stories about the Outside. He’d listen quietly until his breathing became regular and his thumb slipped out of his mouth.
The Outside, beyond the magic wood, was a waste land. No one had survived the wrath of the god Danone (Anna had called him that in honour of the chocolate puddings of which she had fond memories): no adults, no animals, no children. The two of them had the good fortune to live in that wood, which was so hidden away and dense that the god couldn’t see into it. The few animals that had survived had taken refuge there. Beyond the trees there were only craters and haunted ruins. Food and other things grew at the bottom of ditches. Sometimes tins of tuna sprouted there, sometimes cereal bars, sometimes toys and clothes. The smoke monsters, the god Danone’s servants, roamed that world. They were giants made of black gas who killed anyone who crossed their path. Some evenings, in Anna’s stories, the smoke monsters would turn into prehistoric monsters like those in the Big Book of Dinosaurs. If Astor took one step outside the farm, they’d eat him alive.
‘Couldn’t I escape? I’m a fast runner.’
Anna was categorical. ‘Impossible. And even if the smoke monsters weren’t around, the air’s poisonous and would kill you. If you went outside the fence, you’d be dead before you’d walked a few metres.’
Astor would chew his lips, unconvinced. ‘Why don’t you die, then?’
‘Because when you were small, Mama gave me a special medicine, and the monsters can’t hurt me. You were too small to be given it.’ But at other times she replied: ‘I’m magic. I was born like that. When I die the magic will pass onto you and you’ll be able to go out and find food yourself.’
‘Wow! I can’t wait for you to die. I want to see the smoke monsters.’
Anna had to explain to her brother what death was. They were surrounded by corpses, yet she was at a loss. So she’d catch rats and lizards and kill them in front of him.
‘You see? Now it’s dead. All that’s left is the body; there’s no life in it. You can do what you like, but it’ll never move again. It’s gone. If I hit you on the head with a hammer, it’ll happen to you too: you’ll go straight into the other world.’
‘Where is the other world?’
Anna would grow impatient. ‘I don’t know. Beyond the wood. But it’s always dark and cold, though the ground is fiery and burns your feet. And you’re alone. There’s nobody there.’
‘Not even Mama?’
‘No.’
But Astor still wasn’t satisfied. ‘And how long do people stay in the other world?’
‘For ever.’
These long tortuous ontological discussions wore her out. Sometimes Astor would accept her arguments; at other times, as if sensing that his sister wasn’t telling him the truth, he’d look for contradictions. ‘What about the birds that fly overhead, in the sky? How do they do that? I see them. Why don’t they die? They haven’t taken the medicine.’
Anna would improvise. ‘Birds can fly above the poisonous air, but they can’t stop.’
‘I could do that too. Never stopping. Jumping from tree to tree.’
‘No, you’d die.’
‘Can I try?’
‘No.’
Anna had an idea. Between the wood and the fields, about a hundred metres from the boundary of Mulberry Farm, were the Manninos’ cattlesheds. The cows had died of thirst and their carcasses were crawling with worms. When you went near them, the smell of decay was overpowering.
Anna took her brother to the fence. ‘Listen to me carefully. Since you’re so set on it, I’m going to take you outside. But remember, I’m magic and I don’t notice the smell of death. You’ll have to be more careful. If a foul, sickening smell reaches you, it means you’re about to die. Run back as fast as you can, don’t stop, climb over the fence and you’ll be safe.’
The little boy was no longer so keen on the idea. ‘I’d rather not.’
Smiling to herself, Anna grabbed his wrist. ‘You’re going. I’m fed up with your questions.’
Astor burst into tears, dug in his heels and clung onto a branch. Anna had to drag him along.
‘Come on!’
‘No, please … I don’t want to go into the burning land.’
She lifted him up and dumped him over the fence, then climbed over herself and, holding him by the neck, pushed him between the ivy-covered trunks and the holly. Astor, his eyes brimming with tears, held his hand over his mouth. But still the stench of rotting flesh penetrated into his nostrils. He eyed her in despair, gesturing that he could smell it.
‘Go! Run home!’
With a cat-like leap, the little boy re-entered the farm.
From that day on, there was no need to lock Astor under the stairs.
*
The air was cool: ideal walking weather.
Leaving
the wood behind her, Anna walked round Torre Normanna and onto the provincial road.
Some crows perched on electricity cables croaked at her like pious churchgoers in mourning clothes.
She speeded up. There was still some way to go to the Michelini twins’ convenience store.
*
Paolo and Mario Michelini were identical twins. A year older than Anna, they’d been in the fourth year when she was in the third. Big, bulky, indistinguishable. Same expressionless little eyes, same carrot-coloured hair. Dotted with freckles, as if someone had left them next to a saucepan of boiling ragout at birth. They were no geniuses at school and never did their homework, but they frightened everyone, including the teachers, with their sheer size. If there was a football around, they’d take it, and if you wanted it back you had to pay.
Their mother dressed them alike: blue tracksuit, red T-shirt and trainers. Their father ran a Despar supermarket in Buseto Palizzolo.
Before the virus, Anna used to meet them on the school bus, but they ignored her. They’d sit at the back, playing Nintendo in silence; communication between them was almost telepathic. As far as they were concerned, the world was something to be looked at with four eyes, touched with twenty fingers, walked through with four feet and peed on with two dicks.
After the epidemic, Anna had gone past the Despar from time to time. The shutter was up and the chewing-gum and liquorice machines stood by the door, near a neat row of trolleys. Dirt and destruction surrounded the shop, but inside it everything was tidy. And at a particular time the shutter came down, as if the Red Fever had never existed. The only difference was that the shop sign didn’t light up.
Anna had wondered if the twins’ father had returned from the afterlife. Every time she felt an almost irresistible desire to discover the truth, but was scared. She hung around nearby, gazing at the door with its notice: a dog behind a cross, and the words ‘We stay outside’.