Steal You Away (42 page)

‘But … if my parents don’t come, won’t the deputy head …?’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll talk to her.’

‘Will you really?’

‘Yes, I will.’ Flora kissed her forefingers. ‘I swear.’

‘And the … thingummies won’t come?’

‘The thingummies?’

‘The social thingummies.’

‘The social assistants?’ Flora shook her head. ‘No, don’t worry, they won’t come.’

‘Thank you,’ breathed Pietro, freed of an intolerable burden.

‘Come here.’

He drew closer and Flora gave him a big hug. Pietro put his arms round her neck and her heart filled with a tenderness and pity that made her head spin for a moment.
This little boy should
have been my son
. Her throat was stifled.
My God
…

She must stand up or she would burst into tears. She rose to her feet and then took an ice cream from the freezer. ‘Would you like one, Pietro?’

Pietro shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I must go home, it’s late.’

‘So must I. You’re right, it’s very late. See you at school on Monday, then.’

‘Okay.’ Pietro turned.

But before he could leave, Flora asked him: ‘Tell me something, who made you such a nice boy?’

‘My parents,’ replied Pietro and vanished behind the pasta section.

Gloria was trying to pull him to his feet. But Pietro wasn’t collaborating.

He was on his knees, in the middle of the entrance hall of the school, with his hands over his face. ‘They’ve failed me,’ he kept saying. ‘They’ve failed me. She swore to me. She swore to me. Why? Why?’

‘Come on, Pietro, get up. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Leave me alone.’ He shook her off brusquely, but then he stood up and dried away the tears with his hands.

All his schoolmates were looking at him in silence. In those lowered eyes and tight-lipped smiles Pietro saw a moderate dose of sympathy and a larger dose of embarrassment.

One boy, bolder than the others, came over and patted him on the back. This was the cue for the rest of the flock to start touching him and bleating. ‘Don’t let it get you down. What does it matter … ?’ ‘Typical of those bastards.’ ‘I’m really sorry.’ ‘It’s not fair.’

Pietro kept nodding and wiping his nose.

Then he had a vision. A man who, judging from the way he was dressed, might have been his father, entered the chicken run and instead of choosing the plumpest bird (who deserved it more), grabbed one at random, from among the cluster, and said contentedly, ‘We’ll have this one for dinner.’ And all of them, roosters and hens, were sad about their companion’s fate, but only because they knew that sooner or later they were going to get it too.

The bomb that had dropped from the sky had landed on Pietro Moroni, blowing him to smithereens.

I bought it today. But sooner or later you all will. You can bet
your lives on that
.

‘Are you coming?’ Gloria implored him.

Pietro headed for the door. ‘Yes, I want to get out. It’s too hot in here.’

Standing by the door was Italo. He was wearing a light-blue shirt that was too short and tight for him. His belly tugged at the buttons, stretching the buttonholes. Two round patches darkened his armpits. He was shaking that round head of his, shiny with sweat. ‘She told you wrong. If they failed you they should have failed Pierini, Ronca and Bacci too. It’s a damn shame.’ His tone was that of a funeral commemoration.

Pietro ignored him and went out followed by Gloria, who repelled the inquisitive crowd with the zeal of a bodyguard. She was the only one who was going to tend to his plight.

Meanwhile the sun, millions of kilometres away from these childish tragedies, roasted the schoolyard, the road, the tables outside the bar and everything else.

Pietro walked down the steps, went out through the gate and, without looking at anyone, mounted his bike and rode off.

‘Where on earth has he got to?’ Gloria had gone to fetch her backpack and when she had returned Pietro wasn’t there anymore. She took her bike and set off in pursuit, but couldn’t see him anywhere on the road ahead.

She cycled to Fig-Tree Cottage but he wasn’t there either. Mimmo, bare-chested under the shed roof, was tinkering with the cylinder head of his motorbike. Gloria asked him if he’d seen his brother, but Mimmo said no and carried on loosening bolts.

Where can he have gone?

Gloria went to the villa, hoping he was there. He wasn’t. So she returned to the village.

The air was still and the heat stifling. There was nobody around.
If it hadn’t been for the merry twittering of the sparrows and the chirping of the cicadas, Ischiano would have been like a ghost town in the Texan desert. The scooters and motorbikes were leaned against the walls. Their stands would have sunk into the asphalt, which was as soft as butter. The shops’ shutters were half down. The Persian blinds of the houses were closed. And inside the cars long white strips of cardboard had been put against the windscreens. Everyone was indoors. Those who had air conditioning were all right, but those who didn’t were not.

Gloria stopped outside the Station Bar. Pietro’s bike wasn’t among those in the rack.

This would be the last place he’d come
.

She was exhausted, hot and terribly thirsty. She entered the bar. The air conditioning, turned up to maximum, froze the sweat on her body. She bought a can of Coca-Cola and went to drink it under the parasol outside the door.

She was very worried. It was the first time Pietro hadn’t waited for her. He must be feeling really bad to behave like that. And in that state he might do something drastic.

Like hanging himself
.

Why not?

She had read about such things in the paper. A boy in Milan who had failed his end-of-year assessment had jumped out of a fifth-floor window in despair and, when that had failed to kill him, had crawled to the lift leaving a trail of blood behind him, gone up to the sixth and jumped out again and this time, fortunately, had killed himself.

Was Pietro capable of committing suicide?

Yes
.

But why was it so damned important for him to pass? If she had failed, she would have been upset, certainly, but she wouldn’t have made a big thing out of it. For Pietro, though, school had always been so important. He believed in it too much. And a disappointment like this might drive him crazy.

Where could he be? Of course … Why didn’t I think of it
before?

She downed the rest of her Coca-Cola and got back into the saddle.

Pietro’s bike was hidden among the bushes, against the wire netting that separated the lagoon from the coast road.

‘Found you!’ Gloria exulted, and she hid her bike next to Pietro’s, slipped behind a large oak and lifted the lower edge of the fence, creating an opening which, though small, was big enough for her to wriggle through on her stomach. Once she was on the other side she put it back into place. It was strictly forbidden to enter there.

And if the WWF wardens catch you you’re in trouble
.

One last check and she vanished into the dense vegetation.

The first two hundred metres of the narrow path that threaded between reeds and rushes more than two metres high were passable, but the further it went into the marsh, the more difficult progress became and your shoes sank into that thick green slime till the muddy water prevailed and submerged the path completely.

There was a smell in the still air, bitter and sickly-sweet at the same time, which stunned the senses. It was the water plants decaying in that warm, stagnant swill.

Clouds of mosquitoes, midges and sandflies swarmed around Gloria, feeding on her sweet blood. And there were a lot of eerie noises. The monotonous croaking of frogs on heat. The incessant buzzing of hornets and wasps. And those rustles, those swishes, those quick, suspicious whirrings among the reeds. Those plops in the water. The mournful calls of the herons.

A hellish place.

Why did Pietro love it so much?

Because he’s crazy
.

Now the water was over her knees. And she was finding it difficult to move forward. The plants twined round her ankles like long slimy tagliatelle. The branches and leathery leaves scratched her bare arms. And hosts of little transparent fish escorted her as she waded on like a US marine in South-East Asia.

And that wasn’t all. To reach the hiding place she would have
to swim across a stretch of lagoon, because the boat (boat … pieces of sodden wood held together by a few rusty nails) probably wouldn’t be there, Pietro would certainly have taken it.

And so it proved. When she reached the edge of the marsh, covered in scratches, insect-bites and flecks of mud, she found only the thick pole sticking out of the water with no boat attached.

You bastard! You bastard! Don’t ever tell me I’m not your best
friend
.

She steeled herself and slowly, like a lady-in-waiting reluctant to get her robes wet, she sank into the the warm water. From there the lagoon widened out into a lake where metallised dragonflies skimmed across the surface and divers and geese swam about in formation.

Swimming a slow breaststroke, so as not to disturb anything, and keeping her head well up because if one drop of that water came into contact with her mouth she would die, Gloria set off for the other shore. Her gym shoes weighed her down like ballast. She musn’t at all costs think about the sunken world that lived down below. Salamanders. Fish. Disgusting creatures. Larvae. Insects. Water-rats. Snakes. Crabs. Crocodiles … no. Not crocodiles.

Only a hundred metres to go. On the other shore, among the reeds, she could make out the low prow of the boat.

Come on, you’re almost there
.

Now she only had a few dozen metres to go and was already beginning to see the longed-for dry land above her when she felt, or thought she felt, a creature, something animate, brush against her legs. She screamed and thrashed wildly towards the bank like a thing possessed. Her head went under the water and she drank that revolting liquid, re-emerged, spluttered and in four strokes reached the boat and leaped up onto it like a performing seal. She sat there gasping, picking seaweed and leaves off her body and repeating: ‘Ugh! How revolting! Ugh, how disgusting! Ugh!’ She waited till she got her breath back, then jumped onto a strip of land that emerged from the lagoon. She looked around.

She found herself on a tiny little island skirted partly by reeds and partly by the brown waters of the lagoon. There was nothing on the island, except a big gnarled tree whose branches shaded most of the ground and a small hut where, before this area had become a nature reserve, hunters used to come to shoot the birds.

This was ‘the place’. That’s what Pietro called it.

Pietro’s place.

As soon as the weather turned fine in spring, and sometimes even in winter, he would spend more time here than he did at home. He had organised everything. A hammock swung from a low-hanging branch. In the hut he had left a cooling bag, in which he would put sandwiches and a bottle of water. There were also some comics, an old pair of binoculars, a gas lamp and a small radio (which you had to keep turned down very low).

Only now Pietro wasn’t there.

Gloria went right round the island without finding a trace of him but then, inside the hut, she saw his T-shirt hanging on a nail. The same one that Pietro had been wearing that morning.

And as she came out again, she saw him emerge from the water in bathing trunks. He had a mask over his face and looked like the monster of the silent lagoon, covered in all that seaweed and holding …

‘Ugh! Throw away that viper!’ Gloria shrieked like a frightened child.

‘Don’t worry. It’s not a viper. It’s a grass snake. I’ve never caught such a long one before,’ said Pietro seriously. The snake had coiled round his arm, trying desperately to escape, but Pietro’s grip was firm.

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Nothing. I’ll study it for a while, then I’ll let it go.’ He ran into the hut, picked up a fishing net and put it inside. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her, then pointed at her T-shirt, smiling.

Gloria looked at herself. The wet T-shirt was clinging to her breasts and she was practically naked. She pulled it forward. ‘Pietro Moroni, you’re a filthy pig … Give me yours at once.’

Pietro handed her his T-shirt and Gloria changed behind the tree and hung hers up to dry.

He was kneeling down by his grass snake and looking at it impassively.

‘Well?’ Gloria asked him, sitting on the hammock.

‘Well what?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why didn’t you wait for me at school?’

‘I didn’t feel like it. I wanted to be alone.’

‘Would you rather I left? Am I bothering you?’ asked Gloria sarcastically.

Pietro was silent for a moment, still contemplating the reptile, but then said in an earnest tone: ‘No. You can stay …’

‘Thank you so much. We are kind today.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘Don’t you mind about failing any more?’

Pietro shook his head. ‘No. I couldn’t care less. It’s all the same to me.’ He picked up a twig and prodded the snake.

‘How come, when only a couple of hours ago you were crying your eyes out?’

‘Because it had to be. I knew it. It had to be and that’s that. And if I feel bad it won’t change anything, I’ll just feel bad.’

‘Why did it have to be?’

He glanced at her just for a second. ‘Because now everyone’s happy. My father, because, as he puts it, I’ll do something useful and start working. My mother – no, not my mother, she doesn’t even remember what class I’m in. Mimmo, because now we’ve both failed and he’s not the only dunce in the family. The deputy headmistress. The headmaster. Pierini. Miss …’ he broke off for a moment and then added: ‘Miss Palmieri. The whole world. And me too.’

Gloria swung gently to and fro and the rope tied to the branch began to creak. ‘But there’s one thing I don’t understand, didn’t Miss Palmieri promise you they wouldn’t fail you?’

‘Yes.’ Pietro’s voice cracked, breaking the fragile indifference.

‘Why did they fail you, then?’

Pietro snorted. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Just drop it, will you?’

‘It’s not fair. Miss Palmieri’s a bitch. A real bitch. She didn’t keep her promise.’

‘No, she didn’t. She’s just like all the others. She’s a bitch, she tricked me.’ Pietro said this with an effort and then put his hand to his face to stop himself crying.

‘She probably didn’t even go to the teachers’ meeting.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.’

During the last month and a half Miss Palmieri hadn’t come to school. A supply teacher had appeared, saying that their Italian teacher was ill and that they would finish the year with her.

‘No, I bet she didn’t go. She didn’t care. And it isn’t true what the supply teacher said. She’s not ill. She’s fine. I’ve seen her lots of times around the village. The last time was only a few days ago.’ Gloria was getting really worked up. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘Only once.’

‘And …?’

Why was Gloria torturing her? It was all over and done with. ‘And I went up to her. I wanted to ask her how she was, if she was coming back to school. She barely said hallo to me. I assumed she had something on her mind.’