He wasn’t in the Mercedes, nor behind the rubbish bins.
Maybe he’s in the wood.
A brown falcon hung motionless in mid-air, intent on something hidden among the trees.
She plunged into the undergrowth, tripping on stones and dry branches. Holly scratched her legs, but she hardly noticed.
A purple patch stood out in the greenery. She went towards it. It was a piece of cloth; she snatched it free of the thorns.
Mama’s dress. The nice one.
What was it doing there? Anna knew Astor had a hidden key and went into the room when she was out. But why had he thrown the dress into the brambles?
She staggered, and had to lean against a tree trunk. Breathing in, she screwed up her eyelids and called Astor’s name louder, at the top of her voice, but the only answer came from the birds in the trees.
She reached the edge of the grounds, passing under a great oak tree which her brother loved to climb. She walked on round the fence, but couldn’t focus on anything. She kept seeing the blue children running along like mad dogs.
She came to the old pigsty overgrown by brambles. He wasn’t there either. Nor was he under the fig tree.
She checked the rubbish heap behind the house, where her brother sometimes liked to rummage.
She fell on her knees, panting. ‘Calm … you must keep calm …’
He might be anywhere, the fool – sleeping in some animal’s lair, on a branch at the top of a tree, on the roof of the house.
Maybe he managed to get out.
No, he’d never have gone outside the fence.
She sat down on a tree trunk, rubbing her face with her hands, her mind entangled in anxious thoughts. Hot sweat poured from her armpits.
The wood – her magic wood – surrounded her, but gave no answers.
‘Where are you? Come here,’ she shouted. Then she started running again: ‘Astor! Astor! Where are you? I’ll kill you when I find you!’ She went back towards the house. It was possible that she had a cap like that herself. She’d brought all kinds of things home over the years; maybe they included a Nutella cap and she’d forgotten about it.
How stupid she was – she’d panicked needlessly. Her brother was asleep somewhere. She hadn’t checked the toolshed or Mama’s bedroom; she’d rushed outside without looking carefully.
She pushed through the box hedge and came out onto the drive. She passed something white and round among the weeds. She stopped, turned back, picked it up and nearly collapsed.
She was holding her mother’s skull.
Her mind empty of thought, she walked into the house. Her eyes noted that the crockery, instead of being on the dresser, was on the floor. Astor’s pedal car was upside down, the mandolin smashed. She laid the skull on a box and went upstairs.
The door of Mama’s bedroom was open, the metal lock sticking out among jagged strips of wood.
*
Gradually Anna re-emerged from a shroud of misery, swaying backwards and forwards between wakefulness and sleep. The morning sun warmed her forehead and hurt her eyes. Her cheek lay in a pool of dry vomit, and there was an empty gin bottle next to her nose. Her tongue was so swollen it seemed too big for her mouth, and a piercing pain ran through her head from one temple to the other. She couldn’t remember how she’d ended up on the back seat of the Mercedes.
Only faint traces – fragments, moments of pain – remained of the hours that had passed since she’d found the door of Mama’s bedroom smashed open. Everything was enveloped in a shadowy haze, with occasional flashes, which lit up two Annas, one fighting desperately, the other looking on in silence. The thread that connected the images of that night had been broken; beads of memory floated in a sea of slimy black oil.
Mama’s bedroom ransacked. Bones scattered everywhere. Jewels stolen. Drawers pulled out. The bookcase toppled. Astor’s toy giraffe: she’d bitten its head off; the synthetic taste of its stuffing still lingered in her mouth. She’d punched the bathroom mirror, cutting her knuckles, and wrapped herself, bleeding, in a curtain, her open lips sucking the thin cloth. The bottle of gin. Tearless crying and desperate sobs. An earthy smell of moss. Leaves rustling in time with her breathing. Her mother’s purple dress.
And an overwhelming despair.
She sat in the driver’s seat, head against the window, staring at her wounded hand.
She had a feeling that during the night a living presence, hidden in the darkness, had been watching her from the wood.
The dog from the autostrada.
She must have dreamed it, yet this memory was more vivid than all the others. The dog beside her. Sitting there quietly, his thick tail sweeping the ground. Speaking to her: ‘Do you remember the nursery rhyme, Anna? Clap hands, little children, and come to the window: the bogeyman’s beaten and laid in his bed. All fear has been banished, new life is beginning. Rejoice little children, the bogeyman’s dead!’ He looked at her with his dark pupils. ‘Shall I turn out the light?’
Now her father was there, tucking in the bedclothes. ‘I’ll leave the door open a little, don’t worry.’
Part Two
The Grand Spa Hotel Elise
5
Anna Salemi decided to go looking for the blue children. If she found them, she’d find her brother too. The idea that he might be dead didn’t even cross her mind.
She left Mulberry Farm on 30 October 2020, never to return. In her rucksack, in addition to some clothes, a bottle of water and the antibiotics for Astor, were a torch, a cigarette lighter, the book of Important Things wrapped in a green sweatshirt, a kitchen knife and her mother’s right thighbone.
The trees quivered with twittering sparrows, foxes rustled among the bushes, crows cawed harshly. Outside the wood she found herself under a carpet of dense bluish clouds which pressed down like an inverted stormy sea. Gusts of warm air from the coast pushed her forward, ruffling her hair. At the end of the plain a thunderstorm gathered over the mountains in a glow of sandy light. A clap of thunder as loud as a cannonade gave the signal for the start of proceedings and rain poured down furiously on the thirsty fields, which absorbed it in silence, exhaling a damp aura of burnt earth.
Long before she arrived in Torre Normanna Anna was soaking wet, her feet sloshing in her walking boots, her hair plastered down on her forehead, the strip of cloth drooping from her wounded hand.
For months she’d been longing for rain, but it had chosen the worst possible moment to come, when it would only make things more difficult. But at least there was a chance it had stopped the blues. They might have taken shelter in Torre Normanna.
The village was engulfed in a cloud of water which overflowed from blocked gutters, flooding the streets. Piazzetta dei Venti had disappeared under a lake which rippled violently, lashed by the downpour.
The storm paused for a deep breath before unleashing hail.
Anna took refuge under the porch of A Taste of Aphrodite. The corrugated iron roof of the veranda shook under volleys of frozen pellets the size of cherries. She took the exercise book out of the rucksack. The sweatshirt had protected it, and only the corners of the cover had got wet.
The door of the restaurant had been broken open. Inside, in the large circular room, tables and chairs were heaped up in one corner as if they’d been pushed there by a bulldozer. On the wall there was still a blackboard with a handwritten notice: ‘Today’s speciality, tuna steak alla Messinese, 18 euros’. A brass lamp hung crookedly from the ceiling, as if someone had battered it with a stick.
Anna walked into the kitchen, sending mice scattering in all directions. Only a few tiles were left on the walls, the others strewn on the floor in heaps of white shards. The big fridge lay on its back, its doors wide open.
Anna knelt down, opened one of the salad drawers and put the thighbone and the book inside. Then she closed it and went out.
The hail had stopped and been replaced by a thin drizzle.
She was wasting time. There was nobody here. Perhaps they’d g
one towards the autostrada. Or maybe to Castellammare. She kicked a white plastic chair.
Calm down.
Gripping the straps of her rucksack, she set out along the road that led out of the village. After a few steps she stopped.
An orange bike was leaning against a cottage gate.
*
The front door was locked from the inside. A little way to the right, however, a French window was wide open, giving access to the sitting room. Here, too, everything had been wrecked. Smashed furniture, graffiti on the walls, ashes from a bonfire on which chairs had been burned.
She walked up the stairs, which were covered in debris. She entered the first room. On top of a mirrored wardrobe two little owls opened four bright golden eyes and flew away. Fast asleep on a double bed, wrapped in a dirty eiderdown, was Pietro. Tufts of ruffled hair, a section of forehead and one eyebrow stuck out at one end of the roll of rags.
Anna pushed at his backside with the sole of his foot. ‘Wake up!’
The boy opened his mouth and gave a strangled groan. He tried to get up, but, straitjacketed in the bedclothes, slid off the mattress. ‘What? What? Who is it?’ He grabbed the knife that lay next to his bag and pointed it at his attacker.
‘Have you seen some blue children?’
Pietro screwed up his eyes and recognised Anna. ‘You’re crazy.’ He dropped the knife and put a hand to his chest. ‘I nearly died of fright.’
‘Have you seen some blue children?’
Pietro crawled over to the wall and put his back against it, rubbing one eye. ‘The blue kids …’
Anna had to swallow a lump in her throat before she could speak: ‘They’ve taken my brother.’
Pietro gaped at her as she stood in front of him, dripping wet. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday morning, I think.’ She went over to the window. ‘They can’t be far away. Did you meet them?’
‘No. But I know them,’ he replied, yawning.
A glimmer of hope showed in Anna’s face. ‘Who are they?’
‘They live at the hotel. The older kids catch them in the countryside and use them as slaves.’
‘Why?’
Pietro stretched his back. He was wearing a pair of tattered yellow and green striped underpants and a vest that was too small for him. ‘To prepare for the Fire Party. They’ve got lots of them up there.’
Anna shut her eyes and opened them again. The room around her seemed to crumble to pieces and reassemble itself quickly: the mattress, the wardrobe, the boy in his underpants. Her chest rose and she breathed again. Astor was alive. She swallowed. ‘How do you get to the hotel?’
‘Just a minute.’ Pietro rubbed his cheek. ‘I’m not very good at thinking in the morning.’
Anna waited three seconds. ‘How do you get to the hotel?’
Pietro lowered his head. He squeezed the base of his nose. ‘Go under the autostrada, and when you come to the roundabout take the road to the mountains. Eventually you’ll come to a big notice that says “Grand Spa Hotel Elise”. Keep going straight on and you’ll get there. It’s a long walk, though, I’m warning you.’
Anna stepped forward, crouched down and gave him a hug.
Pietro sat there stiffly and, in embarrassment, picked up a jar of jam from the floor, dipped in his finger and put it into his mouth. ‘And watch out, it’s not a nice place.’
Anna shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’ve got to get my brother back.’
Pietro took a sip from a half-empty bottle of water. ‘Why?’
‘What kind of a question’s that? He’s my brother!’
Outside it was still raining, but the blanket of clouds had parted over a patch of blue sky.
As she was going downstairs, Pietro called out to her. ‘Wait! Put this on. It’s dry.’ He threw her a cardigan.
She caught it and said, ‘Thanks.’
*
For a while Anna kept looking back, hoping to see the boy appear on his bike. She’d have liked to have someone alongside her to share her anxiety, which increased with every step she took.
The rain had cleared the mountains of the haze that had shrouded them throughout the summer. Now they were closer. Everything was sharply defined: the green patches of the trees, the bites taken out of the land by quarries and the gullies of white rock which split the mountains like ripe tomatoes.
Somewhere up there was Astor.
*
Anna walked at a regular pace, arms alternating with legs. Thoughts slowly detached themselves from a tangled skein and drifted away. She no longer resorted to pointless exercises like adding up numbers on car numberplates or guessing how many steps it would take to walk from one point to another.
The underpass below the autostrada was flooded. She walked through it, getting her shoes soaked, arrived at the roundabout and took the road to the mountains.
In this area the fires had been particularly violent, fuelled by a succession of industrial plants and coal depots. Anything not made of stone or metal had been reduced to ashes. Carcasses of cars like roasted cockroaches filled a parking lot in front of a low building. On its roof was the skeleton of a large sign.
‘Pi … zza … rium,’ she deciphered. ‘Pizzarium’.
She was fainting with hunger and a blister had formed on her left heel.
On the other side of a long iron fence lay the remains of a factory. There was not much left of the buildings, but some huge white cisterns had survived. Twined around them was a network of rusty, moss-covered pipes. Water seeping out of the joins had flooded the asphalted yard, turning it into a swamp in which large pieces of polystyrene floated.
She found a gap between the bars and walked forward, threading her way through a tangle of marsh plants. Red dragonflies and long-legged mosquitoes swarmed around her and frogs hopped between her feet.
Lying down on the bonnet of a Cinquecento, she took off her rucksack and shoes.
Her toes were rubbery and white, as if she’d dipped them in bleach. She burst a blister with her thumbnail, then removed the bandage from her hand. The cut between the knuckles was deep, but no longer bleeding. She rubbed her calves and leaned back against the windscreen under the lukewarm sun.
One by one, the frogs started croaking again.
What a wonderful place the Pizzarium must have been. You went in with money and came out with a slice of warm pizza, wrapped in white paper, the melted mozzarella seeping out from below, the red juice of the tomatoes scorching your palate. And if you didn’t like the Margherita you could have one with mushrooms, potatoes, zucchini or anchovies.
So lost was she in the world of pizza that it was some time before she noticed that the frogs had fallen silent. Opening her eyes, she saw in front of her, a few metres away, the dog from the autostrada.
He was standing motionless, paws in the water, neck outstretched. Where Anna had wounded him the hair had formed crusty black balls from which a thick reddish liquid oozed out. The rest of his coat was white and ruffled. He seemed even bigger, if that were possible.
The girl held her breath; the Maremma panted, his tongue curling up in front of his black nose.
Anna laid one hand on the rucksack. Inside was the knife. She couldn’t detach her gaze from those hypnotic eyes as black as lapilli.
How could he be here, in front of her, alive?
The animal lowered his head and took two laps of water, watching her all the time.
Anna breathed in, waiting for something, even she didn’t know what – perhaps only for him to disappear. Then she stood up on the bonnet, raised her fist and growled at him: ‘What do you want with me? Leave me alone! Wasn’t that beating I gave you enough?’
The dog lay down in the mud and rolled over in it, arching his back and stretching out a paw as if in greeting. Then he lifted his thigh, showing his belly, pink with black patches, and gave a whine of pleasure.
Anna was taken aback.
That devil had trapped her in a car and damn near eaten her alive, and now he was beh
aving like those lapdogs that ladies took around with them on leads and which turned into floor cloths as soon as you stroked them.
She jumped off the car. ‘Go away! Shoo!’
The dog sprang to his feet and, tail between his legs, vanished into the reeds.
*
How on earth had he found her? And why had he run away, instead of attacking her?
That was what Anna was thinking about as she trudged up a steep road which snaked along between burnt strips of meadowland. Now and then she turned round, certain that he was behind her, but he wasn’t.
With the effort, another worry occupied her mind. She hadn’t reached the hotel signboard yet; had she taken the wrong road? The rucksack felt as heavy as if it were full of stones. ‘Another thousand steps, and if I don’t find it I’m turning back,’ she said to herself.
Two bends later, as though her thoughts had summoned it up, a big sign appeared at the side of the road. Under a layer of soot she could just make out the words: ‘Grand Spa Hotel Elise. Exclusive Holiday Accommodation and Golf Club’.
She clenched her fist. ‘So it’s true! Thanks, Pietro!’
The rucksack was light again and her pace fast.
The road grew narrower. There were no houses on either side now, and the blackened areas gave way to greenery. The eucalyptuses were in full leaf, oleanders extended branches laden with flowers, prickly pears formed barriers of thorns. A cow placidly crossed her path without so much as a sideways glance. The wind now carried a fresh smell of grass, instead of the pungent reek of burnt vegetation.
On one slope, rows of vines drooped under the weight of withered grapes on which bees settled. She ran over to try some; they were so sweet they sent a shiver down her spine. Putting two bunches in the rucksack, she walked on.
She was feeling better. For the first time that day she managed not to think about her brother, but just enjoy the scenery, the sun casting a silvery tinge on pine foliage stirred by the breeze.