If Alessia had invited me along too they would all have seen how good a skier I was. I would have shown them the secret slopes.
I had been going to Cortina since I was born. I knew all the slopes and loads of secret slopes too. My favourite began on Mount Cristallo and went all the way into the town centre. It took you through forests, there were some amazing jumps, and once I had seen two chamois deer behind a house. Then we could have gone to the cinema and got a hot chocolate at Lovat’s.
I had so many things in common with them. The fact that Alessia had a house in Cortina couldn’t be just a coincidence. And that’s when I realised. They too were flies pretending to be wasps. It was just that they were much better than I was. If I had gone with them to Cortina they would have realised that I was just like them.
When I got home my mother was teaching Nihal the recipe for osso buco. I sat down, opened and closed the cutlery drawer and said, ‘Alessia Roncato invited me to go skiing with them in Cortina.’
My mother stared at me as if I’d told her I’d grown a tail. She looked around for a chair, took a deep breath and stuttered, ‘Darling, I’m so happy.’ And she hugged me really hard. ‘It’ll be lovely. Excuse me a second.’ She got up, smiled at me and locked herself in the bathroom.
What was the matter with her?
I put my ear up against the door. She was crying, and every now and then she sniffed. Then I heard her turn on the tap and splash her face.
I was confused.
She began talking on her mobile. ‘Francesco, I have to tell you something. Our son has been invited to go for ski week . . . Yes, in Cortina. See, we don’t have to worry . . . I’m so happy I burst into tears like an idiot. I locked myself in the bathroom so that he wouldn’t notice . . .’
For a couple of days I tried to tell Mum that it was a lie, that I’d made it up just for fun, but each time I saw how happy and excited she was, I retreated in defeat, feeling like I had committed a murder.
The problem wasn’t having to tell her that I had made everything up and that I hadn’t been invited by anyone to go anywhere. It was humiliating, but I’d have been able to handle it. What I couldn’t handle was the question that would have undoubtedly followed.
‘But Lorenzo, why did you lie to me like that?’
And that was a question there was no answer to.
In my bedroom, at night, I tried to find one.
‘Because . . .’
But it was as if I had a mental block.
‘Because I’m a dickhead.’ That was the only answer that came to mind. But I knew it wasn’t enough, that underneath there was something I didn’t want to face up to.
And so, in the end, I let myself go with the flow and I began to believe it. I even told the Silver Monkey about ski week. I was becoming more and more convincing. I embellished the story with details – we would stay in a refuge high up in the mountains and we would take a helicopter.
I threw a tantrum because I wanted my parents to buy me skis, ski boots and a new jacket. And as the days went by I began to believe that Alessia really had invited me along.
If I closed my eyes I could see her walking up to me. I was taking the chain off my scooter and she was looking at me with her blue eyes. She was running her fingers through her blonde fringe. She then put one Nike on top of the other and said to me, ‘Listen, Lorenzo, I’ve organised a ski week. Do you want to come?’
I thought about it for a bit and then answered coolly, ‘Okay, I’ll come.’
Then, one day, while I was in my bedroom with my new ski boots on my feet, my gaze wandered to the mirror on the cupboard door and I saw the reflection of a young boy in underwear, as pasty white as a worm, with legs that looked like twigs, a total of four hairs on his body, a wimpy chest and those ridiculous red things on his feet, and after half a minute of studying him with my mouth half open I said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
And the young boy in the mirror answered me in a strangely adult-like voice: ‘Nowhere.’
I threw myself on to the bed, ski boots and all, feeling like someone had dumped a ton of rubble on me, and I realised that I had no idea how to get out of the mess I had created and that if I tried again, even just once, to believe that Alessia had invited me to go with them, I would throw myself out the window, amen and ciao ciao and farewell and thanks for everything.
It was the simplest thing to do. My life sucked anyway.
‘That’s enough! I have to tell her that I can’t go because Grandma Laura is in hospital and she’s dying of cancer.’ I put on a really serious voice and looking up at the ceiling I said, ‘Mum, I’ve decided not to go skiing because Grandma’s sick and what if she dies while I’m away?’
It was a great idea . . . I took off the ski boots and danced around the room like the floor was scorching hot. I jumped on the bed and from there onto the desk. I pirouetted around the computer, the books, the tank with the turtles, and began singing the national anthem: ‘Fratelli d’Italia, l’Italia s’è desta.’ A small leap and I was hanging from the bookshelves. ‘Dell’elmo di Scipio . . .’
What was I doing?
‘S’è cinta la te . . . sta.’
Was I trying to use Grandma’s death to save myself?
Only a monster like me could even think of doing such a terrible thing.
‘Shame on you!’ I yelled and I threw myself onto the bed, face down on the pillow.
How could I get out of this? My lie was driving me insane.
And suddenly I saw the cellar.
Dark. Welcoming.
And forgotten.
3
It was nice and warm in the cellar. There was a small bathroom with damp patches on the wall. The toilet didn’t flush but by filling up the bucket from the sink I could empty it.
I spent the rest of the morning on the bed reading Salem’s Lot and sleeping. I snapped off half a bar of chocolate for lunch.
I was a survivor of an alien invasion. The human race had been exterminated and only a handful had managed to save themselves by hiding out in cellars or basements. I was the only one still alive in Rome. To get out I had to wait for the aliens to go back to their planet. And this, for a reason unknown to me, would happen in a week’s time.
I pulled my clothes and two containers of fake tan out of my backpack. I put my sunglasses and hat on and sprayed the lotion over my face and hands.
Then, greasy all over, I climbed up onto the chest of drawers and placed my mobile on the window sill, where it managed to get two bars of reception.
I opened a jar of artichokes in oil and polished off five.
Oh yes, this was a real holiday, much better than Cortina.
The sound of the phone ringing woke me up from a dreamless slumber.
The cellar was dark. I felt my way to the phone and, balancing on a big box, I tried to put on a cheerful voice. ‘Mum!’
‘So how’s it going?’
‘Great!’
‘Where are you?’
What time was it? I looked at the display on the mobile. Eight-thirty. I had slept for ages.
‘I’m at the pizzeria.’
‘Ah . . .which one?’
‘On the main street . . .’ I couldn’t remember the name of the pizzeria where we always went to eat with Grandma.
‘La Pedavena?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How was the trip?’
‘Perfect.’
‘And how’s the weather?’
‘Lovely . . .’ Maybe I was exaggerating. ‘Nice. Not too bad.’
‘Snow?’
How much snow could there be? ‘There’s a bit.’
‘Is everything all right? You sound a little weird.’
‘No. No. Everything’s fine.’
‘Put Alessia’s mum on so that I can say hello.’
‘She’s not here. It’s just us. Alessia’s mum’s at home.’
Silence. ‘Ah . . . Tomorrow I’ll call you and you put her on. Or else get her to call m
e.’
‘Okay. I have to go now though, the pizzas are here.’ And then turning to an imaginary waiter, ‘That’s mine . . . Mine’s the one with the prosciutto.’
‘All right. I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t forget to wash.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye, darling. Have fun.’
It hadn’t gone too badly – I’d pulled it off. Feeling satisfied, I turned on the PlayStation to play Soul Reaver for a bit. But I kept thinking back to the phone call. Mum wouldn’t let up. I knew her too well. If she didn’t get to speak to Alessia’s mother she was capable of driving up to Cortina. And what if I told her that Mrs Roncato had broken her leg while she was skiing and was in hospital? No, I had to find something better. Nothing came to mind at the moment though.
The smell of dampness was beginning to bother me. I opened the window. My head just fitted through the bars.
Mrs Barattieri’s garden was covered in a carpet of rotting leaves. A street-lamp cast a cold light that fell on the ivy-covered gate. I could see the courtyard beyond the lawn. My father’s Mercedes wasn’t there. He must have gone out for dinner or to play bridge.
I went back to bed.
Mum was three floors above me. She was probably lying on the settee with the Dachshunds curled up on her feet, a tray of milk and sponge cake on the coffee table. She would fall asleep there, watching a black and white film. And my father, when he got home, would wake her up and take her to bed.
I put my headphones on and Lucio Battisti began singing ‘Ancora tu’, ‘You again’. I took them back off.
I hated that song.
4
The last time I’d heard ‘Ancora tu’ I was in the car with Mum. We were stuck in traffic on Corso Vittorio. A group of demonstrators had taken over Piazza Venezia, and like heat the traffic jam had expanded, paralysing the streets throughout the whole city centre.
I had spent the morning in my mother’s art gallery helping her to hang some pictures by a French artist whose exhibition she would launch the following week. I liked the huge photographs of people eating alone in crowded restaurants.
Scooters slalomed between the cars. A homeless man was sleeping on the steps of a church, huddled up in a grimy sleeping bag. Rubbish bags were wrapped around his head. He looked like an Egyptian mummy.
‘Come on! What’s going on?’ My mum pushed hard on the car horn. ‘This city is becoming unbearable . . . Would you like to live in the country?’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know . . . Tuscany, maybe?’
‘Just us two?’
‘Dad would come up on the weekends.’
‘And what if we bought a house in Komodo?’
‘Where’s Komodo?’
‘It’s a faraway island.’
‘And why would we go and live there?’
‘They have Komodo dragons. They’re these huge lizards that can even eat a live goat. And they run really fast. We could train them. And use them to defend ourselves.’
‘From whom?’
‘From everyone.’
My mother smiled and turned up the volume of the car radio and she began singing along to Lucio Battisti: ‘Ancora tu. It’s no surprise, you know . . .’
I began singing along too and when we came to the verse: ‘Amore mio, have you already eaten? I’m hungry too and not just for you,’ I took her hand like a forlorn lover.
My mother laughed and shook her head. ‘You’re silly . . . you’re silly . . .’
I realised that I was happy. The world was outside the car windows, and Mum and I were in a traffic bubble. There was no more school, not even homework or those billions of things I should be doing to become an adult.
But suddenly my mother turned down the radio. ‘Look at that dress in the window. What do you think?’
‘Nice. Maybe a little too saucy?’
She looked at me in surprise. ‘Saucy?! Since when have you used that word?’
‘I heard it in a film. There was this woman and they said she was wearing a dress that looked saucy.’
‘Do you know what it means though?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That it’s too revealing.’
‘I don’t think it’s too revealing.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Shall I try it on?’
‘Sure.’
And just like magic, a four-wheel drive pulled out of a free parking space in front of us. With an instinctive swerve my mother pulled in.
A loud thump against the car. Mum hit the brake and let go of the clutch. I lurched forward but the seatbelt held me back against the seat. The engine hiccupped and died.
I turned my head. A yellow Smart car was glued to the back door of the BMW.
It had driven into us.
‘Noooo. What a pain!’ my mother huffed as she wound down the window to inspect the damage.
I stuck my head out too. There wasn’t a scratch on the BMW or anything on the bulldog-shaped nose of the Smart car. On the dashboard lay a white and light blue stuffed centipede with LAZIO written on it. Then I noticed that the Smart car was missing its left wing mirror. In the spot where it used to be was a hole, with multicoloured wires sticking out. ‘Look, Mum.’
The car door flew open and spat out the trunk of a man who had to be at least six feet tall and three feet wide.
I wondered how he managed to fit into that tin can. He looked like a hermit crab stretching its head and its pincers out of its shell. He had small blue eyes, a big raven-black fringe, a horsy set of teeth and a cocoa tan.
‘What happened?’ my mother asked him.
The guy got out and knelt down next to the mirror. He was looking at it with a pained yet dignified expression, as if what lay on the ground wasn’t a piece of plastic and glass, but the body of his mother. He didn’t even touch it, like it was a corpse waiting for forensics to show up.
‘What happened?’ my mother said again, calmly, sticking her head out of the window.
The guy didn’t even turn around, but answered, ‘What happened?! You want to know what happened?’ He had a deep, hoarse voice, like he was talking through a plastic pipe. ‘Then get out of that car and take a look.’
‘Stay here,’ Mum said to me, looking me in the eye. She undid her seatbelt and got out of the car.
Through the window I saw her peach-coloured suit become flecked with rain.
A couple of pedestrians, standing beneath their umbrellas, stopped to watch. Cars were honking, trying to get around the obstacle like ants faced with a pine cone. About thirty metres away a bus began sounding its horn.
From inside the car I could see everyone’s eyes settling on my mother. I started sweating and felt my breathing quicken.
‘Maybe we should move,’ my mother suggested to the guy. ‘You know, the traffic . . .’
But the guy couldn’t hear her, he kept staring at the mirror as if by the power of his mind he could join it back to the car.
So my mother moved towards him and, looking a little guilty and pretending to sympathise, she asked him again, ‘How did it happen?’
The rain mixing with his hair gel had made the man’s head shiny, highlighting a little bald patch right in the middle of his head.
Not having got an answer, my mother added softly, ‘Is it serious?’
Finally the guy turned his head and realised that the perpetrator of the horror before him was standing next to him. He studied mum from her feet up to her hair, then he took one look at our car and a little smile appeared on his face.
The same mean little smile that Varaldi and Riccardelli had when they looked at me from their scooters. The little smile of the predator that has locked on to his prey.
I had to warn her.
The Lazio supporter had picked up the mirror like it was a robin with a broken wing. ‘Maybe it’s not serious for you. For me it is. I just picked my car up from the garage. Do you know how much this mirror costs?’
My mother shook her head. ‘A lot?’
> I was running my hands through my hair. She shouldn’t play around with this guy. She had to apologise. Give him the money and end of story.
‘A quarter of a waiter’s pay. But what would you know? You don’t have that kind of problem.’
I had to get up, out of the car, take her by the hand and run away, but I was about to faint.
My mother was shaking her head in dismay. ‘Look, you were the one who drove into me . . . It’s your fault.’
I saw the Lazio supporter hesitate slightly, close and open his eyes as if he were absorbing the blow he’d just been dealt. His nostrils were flaring like a truffle hound’s. ‘My fault? Whose? Mine? I drove into you?’ Then he stood up, threw his arms wide open and grunted. ‘What the fuck are you saying, bitch?’
He had called my mother a bitch.
I tried to undo my seatbelt but my hands were tingling like they’d fallen asleep.
Mum was trying to look confident. She had got straight out of the car, in the rain, polite, prepared to accept the responsibility, if necessary. She had done nothing wrong and some guy that she had never seen before had just called her a bitch.
‘Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.’ I repeated it to myself three times, tasting the painful scorn of that word. No kindness, no politeness, no respect, nothing.
I had to kill him.
But where had my rage gone? The red blood that filled me up whenever somebody annoyed me? The fury that set me off like a raging bull? I was a flat battery. Overcome with fear, I wasn’t even able to undo my seatbelt.
‘Why? What did I do?’ my mother said as if she had been punched in the chest. She staggered and put her hand to her chest.
‘Honey? Sweetie?’ The round face of a tubby, curly-haired girl poked out of the Smart car window, wearing green sunglasses and purple lipstick. I hadn’t even noticed her. ‘Darling, you know what you are? You’re just a bitch in a BMW. You drove into us. We saw the spot before you.’
The Lazio supporter had begun to point at Mum with his hand out flat. ‘Just because you’re a skinny bitch loaded with cash you think you can do whatever the fuck you want. The world is yours for the taking, isn’t it?’