Into what?
Into something else. At any rate, into something different from what she was now,
(And what are you now?)
Something abnormal.
something more like other women.
And if there was no romance, no love, well, what the hell. That was okay too.
Yes, she must climb.
She steeled herself, placed one foot on a jutting rock and pulled herself up, but a jet of warm water hit her full in the face and for a moment she lost her hold and was about to slip (and if she had slipped, what a nasty fall it would have been) when, as if by magic, Graziano grabbed her by the wrist and hoisted her up, like a doll, over the waterfall.
She found herself in a kind of boiling pond. The trees above it formed a leafy vault through which the glare of the floodlight filtered here and there.
It was deserted.
The water was quite deep and the current was strong, but at the sides there were some protruding boulders which she clung onto.
‘I knew it would be quiet here …’ said Graziano, contentedly, and taking her hand he led her into little bay where the water was calm. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s lovely.’ The cries of the bathers had vanished, drowned by the rush of the waterfall.
At last Flora could immerse herself wholly in the water and get warm. Graziano drew closer, put his arms round her waist and began to kiss her neck. Thrills of pleasure curled on the back of her head. She grasped his arms and noticed that his right biceps was encircled by a tattoo. A geometric pattern. He was muscular and strong. And with that long wet hair clinging to his head and the mud smeared over him he looked like a savage from New Guinea.
He’s so handsome …
She pulled him, tugged him, punched him, dug her fingernails into his skin and avidly sought his mouth and sank her teeth into his lips, with her tongue she found his tongue, his palate, took it out and licked him and lay back ready on the beach.
87
And Graziano?
Graziano was ready too. You bet he was.
He had looked for Roscio and the others down by the pools, but there was such confusion that he hadn’t been able to see them. Perhaps they hadn’t even come.
I don’t really care. In fact, it’s better this way. They would have spoiled it.
He could have kicked himself for giving her the Spiderman. If he hadn’t, it would all have been better, more real. Even without that pill he would have got her to Saturnia. Flora had followed him through the pools without speaking, without resisting, without protesting, like a little dog following its master.
He held her tight, put his mouth close to her ear and sang softly: ‘O minha macona, o minha torcida, o minha flamenga, o minha capoeira, o minha maloka, o minha belezza, o minha vagabunda, o …’ He slipped off her bra and took her breasts in his hands. ‘… minha galera, o minha capoeira, o minha cahueira, o minha menina.’
He began to lick them and bite her nipples, he sank his face between them, smelling the odour of sulphurous mud.
He took off his trunks and led her where the water was deeper. They lay down on some submerged boulders.
He took her hand and put it on his cock.
88
She had it in her hand.
It was hard and big and soft-skinned.
She enjoyed the sensation of touching it. It was like holding an eel in her hand. She stroked it and the skin drew back, baring the tip.
What am I doing …? But she stopped herself thinking about it.
She touched his testicles, played with them a little, then decided that this was it, the time had come, she was longing to do it, she must do it.
She slipped off her knickers and threw them onto a rock. She hugged him hard, feeling his erection press against her stomach, and whispered in his ear. ‘Graziano, please be gentle. I’ve never done it before.’
89
It was obvious.
Why hadn’t he realised?
What a fool he was! She was a virgin and he hadn’t realised. He, who’d had more women than he’d had Margherita pizzas, hadn’t realised. Those passionate yet clumsy kisses … He had put it down to the effect of the Spiderman but it was because she had never kissed anyone before.
He screwed up his face like a baboon.
He threaded his arm under her breast and pulled her onto the beach.
He lay her down.
It was a delicate operation, deflowering her. It required skill.
He looked into her eyes and saw in them an expectation and a fear that he had never seen in eyes of the old slappers he usually fucked on the Romagna riviera.
This is really fucking … ‘Don’t worry, don’t wo …’ he said in a strangled voice, tossed back his hair and kneeled down in front of her. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
He opened her legs (she was trembling), took his cock in his right hand and found her vagina with his left, opened the lips (they were wet) and with a swift, precise movement slipped it a quarter of the way in.
90
It had slipped inside her.
Flora held her breath.
She dug her hands in the mud.
But the pain, the terrible, legendary, agonising pain she had so dreaded didn’t come.
No. It didn’t hurt. Flora, expectant, open-mouthed, held her breath.
The intruder inside her continued to advance.
‘I’m going to go on … Tell me if it hurts.’
Flora gasped and her breast rose and fell like a bellows. She panted, expecting the pain that didn’t come. She felt filled, certainly, and that pole of flesh now pressed inside her but without hurting her.
She was so busy searching for the pain that pleasure had been completely set aside.
She saw it in Graziano’s eyes.
He seemed possessed by the devil and was sighing and moving backwards and forwards faster and faster and more and more forcefully and he seized her by the hips and he was on top of her and Flora was underneath with that thing inside her. She closed her eyes. She clung to his back with her legs like a baby monkey and raised them to make it easier for him to enter.
Gasping breath in her ear.
He plunged into her. Right in.
Flora felt a stab of pleasure that blocked her carotid artery and made the back of her head tingle. And then another. And yet another. And if she let herself go, if she abandoned herself, she felt that now it was continuous, like a radioactive element pulsing pleasure in her bowels and her legs and running up her spine and into her throat.
‘Do you … like it?’ Graziano asked her, running his fingers through her hair, squeezing her throat.
‘Yes … Yes …’
‘It doesn’t hurt?’
‘Noooh …’
He rolled over onto his side and with that pole inside her she was lifted up and found herself on top of him. It was her turn to move now. But she didn’t know if she could. It was too big and it was right inside her. She felt it in her belly. Graziano put his hands on her breasts, but couldn’t restrain himself and squeezed them hard.
Another stab of pain that took her breath away.
He wanted her to stay like that, on top, in that embarrassing position, but she threw herself over and embraced him and kissed him on the neck and nibbled his ear.
She heard Graziano’s gasps getting faster and faster and faster and
and he can’t. He can’t do it inside. I haven’t got anything.
She must tell him. But she didn’t want that wild madman to stop. She didn’t want him to take it out. ‘Graziano … you must be careful … I …’
He turned over again. And as he sought a new position, Flora tried to go along with him, but didn’t quite know how to move, what to do.
‘Gra …’
He had put her on her knees. Her hands in the mud. Her face in the mud. Her tits in her mouth. The rain on her back.
Like a bitch …
And him digging the fingernails of one hand into her buttock
and with the other trying to grasp one of her breasts which slipped away from him and he drove into her as if he could penetrate up to her throat. And …
He can’t take it out now.
He had taken it out and perhaps was about to come and Flora thought she would die of disappointment. She sighed. But an explosive blast of heat surrounded her neck, continued up into her jaws and spread onto her temples and nostrils and ears.
‘Oh my God!’
He was touching her there, at the top of her vagina, and she realised that everything she had felt up to then had been chickenfeed. Child’s play. Nothing. That finger, on that spot, was capable of making her lose her senses and driving her crazy.
Then he opened her legs and she opened them wider and perhaps, let’s hope, he was going to put it back in.
91
And here Graziano made a mistake.
As he’d made a mistake in asking Erica to marry him, as he’d made a mistake in telling all his friends about it, as he’d made a mistake in giving Flora the Spiderman, as he’d been making mistakes practically every day for forty-four years, and it’s not true what they say, that we learn from our mistakes, it’s not true at all, there are some people who never learn anything from their mistakes, they just keep on making them, convinced that they’re doing the right thing (or unaware of what they’re really doing), and to this kind of person life is usually cruel, but even that doesn’t mean anything, because these people survive their mistakes and live and grow and love and bring other human beings into the world and grow old and keep making mistakes.
That is their wretched destiny.
And that was the destiny of our sad stallion.
Who knows what went through his mind, who knows what he thought and how he organised it in his brain, that disastrous idea.
Graziano wanted more. He wanted to close the circle, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, he wanted to fish the moon from the well, he wanted to cut and thrust, he wanted his steer lassooed and branded, who knows what the hell he wanted, he wanted to deflower her fore and aft.
He wanted Flora Palmieri’s arse.
He parted her buttocks, spat on them and pushed his cock into that contracted star.
92
It was like a roof tile landing on your head.
Without warning.
The pain was as sudden as an electric shock and as sharp as a piece of broken glass. And it wasn’t where it should have been, it was …
Nooo! He’s….
She twisted to the right and kicked out her left leg, catching Graziano on the Adam’s apple with her heel.
93
Graziano was flying backwards. Open-armed. Open-mouthed. Face up.
For an infinite length of time.
Then he plunged into that warm liquid. Hit his head against a rock. And came back to the surface.
Paralysed.
He was enveloped in a black cloud shot through with intermittent flashes of coloured light.
Why did she kick me?
The current pulled him towards the middle of the bend. He slid over algae-covered rocks like a drifting raft. His heels brushed along the slimy river-bed.
She must have hit him on one of those special points, one of those points that reduce a man to a mannequin, one of those points that only Japanese masters of martial arts ought to know.
How strange …
He could think, but he couldn’t move. For example, he felt the cold rain on his face and realised that the warm current was carrying him towards the waterfall.
94
Flora cowered against a boulder.
Uncle Armando was floating in the middle of the river. It couldn’t be him. Uncle Armando lived in Naples. It was Graziano. But she kept seeing Uncle Armando’s belly appear like a little island among the sulphurous fumes and his nose cutting through the water like a shark’s fin.
And now the river was going to sweep Uncle Armando or whoever it was away.
Uncle Armando/Graziano struggled to raise his arm. ‘Flora … Flora … Help me …’
No, I won’t … No, I won’t …’
(Flora, that is not Uncle Armando.) There, at last, was her mother speaking to her again.
He’s a pervert. He tried to …
‘Flora, I can’t mo …’
(He’s heading for the waterfall …)
‘Help. Help.’
(Hurry up. Get moving. Stop all this nonsense. Hurry.)
Flora crawled into the water. She held on to the branches of the trees to stop herself being swept away. But a branch snapped off in her hand and she thrashed about and spluttered as she was borne along by the current. She tried to get back to the bank, but couldn’t. She turned and saw Graziano’s body drifting a couple of metres from the brink of the waterfall. He had got snagged on a boulder, but sooner or later the current would catch him again and carry him on, down into the abyss.
‘Flora? Flora? Where are you?’ Graziano spoke like a blind man who has lost his way. Mildly concerned but not terrified. ‘Flora?’
‘I’m comi …’ She swallowed two litres of that revolting water. She spluttered and struck out towards the middle again, flailing about with her arms, passed between two jutting crags and grabbed hold of a rock.
A metre away from Graziano. Three metres away from the waterfall.
Flora held out her arm, stretched and there was, oh God, there was, there were those cursed ten centimetres that prevented her from grabbing Graziano’s big toe which stuck out of the water.
I can’t lose him …
‘Graziano! Graziano, stretch your foot out. I can’t reach it,’ she screamed, trying to make herself heard above the roar of the waterfall.
He was no longer answering (He’s dead! He can’t be dead) but then: ‘Flora?’
‘Yes! I’m here! How are you?’
‘Not too bad. I must have hit my head.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kick you! I’m terribly sorry.’
‘No, it’s me who should apologise. I was wrong…’
There they were, the two of them, on the brink of a waterfall with a relentless current, apologising to each other like two old ladies who’d forgotten to send each other Christmas cards.
‘Graziano, stretch out your foot.’
‘I’ll try.’
Flora reached out her arm. And Graziano reached out his foot. ‘I’ve got you! I’ve got you! Graziano, I’ve got you!’ Flora shouted, and she felt like laughing and shrieking with joy. She had caught his big toe and she was not going to let go. She took a firmer hold on the boulder and began to pull, and drew him towards her, wresting him away from the current and, when at last she held him, she hugged him and he hugged her.
And there were kisses.
11th December
95
In the early hours of 11th December the weather improved.
The Siberian front that had settled over the Mediterranean basin, bringing cold, wind and rain to the whole peninsula, including Ischiano Scalo, was driven away by a ridge of high pressure from Africa, which left the sky clear and ready to welcome back the fugitive sun.
96
At a quarter past eight in the morning Italo Miele was released from hospital.
With that bandaged nose and those two purple medallions round his eyes he looked like an old boxer who has taken a lot of hard punches before hitting the canvas.
His son and his wife came to fetch him. They put him in the 131 and drove him home.
97
At about the same time, Alima was sitting in a large room at Fiumicino airport along with a hundred or so other Nigerians. She was sitting on a bench with her arms folded, trying to get some sleep.
She had no idea when she would leave. No one bothers to inform illegal immigrants about the details of their repatriation. But it was certain that sooner or later she would be put on a plane.
She would have liked a drink of hot milk. But there was a long queue at the drinks machine.
She was going to return to her village and see her three children again, that was the meagre consolation.
But what then?
She preferred not to think about it.
98
Lucia Palmieri was in her bed. Safe and sound.
Flora heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Mama, how are you?’
That night she’d dreamed about the silver-haired koalas again. They were carrying her mother’s body on their backs along a completely deserted Aurelia. On either side were rocks, cactuses, coyotes and rattlesnakes.
Flora had woken up certain that her mother was dead. She had jumped out of bed in a panic, dashed into the little bedroom, switched on the light but in fact …
‘Mama … I’m sorry. Yes, I know, it’s late … I expect you’re hungry, aren’t you? I’ll get you something to eat straight away …’
She had abandoned her. For one night her mother had not been at the centre of her thoughts.
She prepared the feeding bottle. Put it in her mouth. Emptied the bags. Combed her hair. And gave her a kiss.
Then she went to have a shower.
Her skin and hair were steeped in sulphur. She had to rinse herself several times to get rid of that unpleasant smell. When she had finished showering, she dried herself and looked at her reflection in the mirror.
Her face was pale. There were rings round her eyes. But the eyes themselves were shining and alive as never before. She didn’t feel tired despite only having had a couple of hours’ sleep. And her drunkenness had worn off without leaving a hangover. She spread moisturising cream over her body and discovered that she had painful scratches and bruises on her legs and back. It must have happened when the current had buffeted her about among the rocks above the waterfall. Her nipples were reddened, too. And the fleshy pads of her fingertips were numb.