Limbo (43 page)

The Torvaianica goalie's father doesn't come out. His wife stands on the doorstep and gestures for Manuela to leave, then closes the door. When she realizes that Manuela is still there, in the camera's eye, she opens the door again. She's a tall woman, hair pulled back in a chignon, nice clothes and jewelry, as if she were going out, but slippers on her feet. “You cracked his rib and broke a bone in his hand,” she shouts, “he can't work for thirty days, isn't that enough for you?” Manuela approaches the gate, and a dog growls. “I would like to apologize,” Manuela says, “if I could crack my own rib and break a bone in my own hand to make it up to Mr. Rota, I would; tell me what I can do.” “We're not in the Middle Ages,” the woman says, “it's not a question of retaliation, an eye for an eye; there's the law, the judge will decide how much it should cost you.” “I know, but I'd still like to speak to him,” Manuela says. The dog growls. “You did what you did, you set a fine example for those kids. I know who you are, they told us. I'm sorry. But it doesn't give you the right to beat someone up. You could have really hurt him.”

On the third floor, the person behind the curtain stays and watches until she gets back in the car. Manuela is pale, serious, expressionless. Mattia keeps quiet, doesn't comment on her defeat. He understood almost nothing of what Vanessa said. Manuela never talks to him about what happened. What words could she use? Only the flesh speaks the truth. “Where is it the other guy lives?” Vanessa asks, because she doesn't feel like sitting there stewing in front of this rich, merciless man's home and have him see that an Italian army sergeant lets herself be driven around in a banged-up car. Manuela had written the madman's address on a piece of paper torn from a notebook. She wads it up in her hands, and as Vanessa grinds the gears and heads back toward the intersection, she drops it out the window.

18

LIVE

Palo Castle juts out into the sea. Compact, graceful, with round towers, orderly crenellations, windows neatly spaced along the façade, and a grand marble doorway: it looks like a child's happy dream. The freshly cut grass at the entrance is still damp with frost. Manuela doesn't ask Mattia what he did to get them to open the gate or what story he'd told the custodian. They're here, on a clear January morning, and in the end, that's all that matters. She's never been here before, she never even thought about being able to come, except on her wedding day. Yet now she's walking on the gravel drive, one step behind Mattia, who is telling Alessia a story—clearly a funny story, because Alessia is laughing. Manuela feels vaguely guilty that Alessia is here today, on Epiphany, and not in Piazza Navona, choosing a figurine for the nativity scene and awaiting the arrival of the Befana, as Manuela had promised. But Alessia has forgotten about that. Manuela is surprised to find herself thinking that this could become the new family tradition someday, Epiphany at Palo Castle. She regrets it immediately. The future does not exist.

The door is wide open, and movers are unloading crates from a white truck parked along the drive. The company name is stamped on all the crates. The castle has been rented. “They're holding a convention here after the holiday, but I don't know what it's about,” Mattia says.

Manuela follows him through a series of rooms furnished with immense stone fireplaces topped with deer heads. Their footsteps are silent, muffled by the carpets. It's odd to be strolling through Palo Castle with Mattia. She'd come here only in her dreams. In her wedding dress, carrying a bouquet of roses, wearing white shoes, and a veil. A traditional, conventional wedding, because at the time she believed that, in spite of everything, she wanted to be a traditional, conventional girl. She and Giovanni had sent an e-mail to the owners, requesting information. It seemed phenomenally expensive. But after studying the estimate line by line and doing the math, Giovanni decided they could swing it after all: when she got back from Afghanistan they wouldn't have to scrimp and save, she'd be making a heck of a lot of money. She'd gotten insulted. They'd argued.

“You don't deploy in country for the money, only an idiot could think that a person would risk her life for a few thousand dollars, life isn't bought and sold,” she had said bitterly. “Are you calling me an idiot?” Giovanni objected, incredulous. “Yes.” “That's it. You can't talk to me like that, take it back.” “Take it back? You're the one who should apologize,” she shouted. “I don't even know what I'm supposed to apologize for, but okay, I apologize,” Giovanni tried meekly to calm her down. But his servile submissiveness irritated her even more. “Let's have the reception at the Miraggio in Fregene,” Giovanni suggested, “it's really fancy, there's even a pool.” But it was too late. Something had broken between them. Manuela suddenly felt she was seeing her boyfriend for the first time. A weak, indecisive creature, a spineless slug who made a show of giving in so he could fling her choices and mistakes back in her face, that way he could feel sorry for himself and be absolved. Sharing her life with someone like him would be a kind of suicide. Giovanni had never understood her, and with time he'd understand her less and less. But it's not like she could blame him. Everyone has their strengths. You can't make a car out of paper, a pot out of wood, or a parachute out of lead. She left him two days later, without even bothering to tell him. She simply changed her Facebook profile. She wrote “Single,” and he knew it was over.

Alessia admires the glass lanterns hung from slanted poles on either side of the door, but she likes the wooden model of a sailing ship on top of a cabinet best. Manuela steps aside to let a couch pass. “Are you the owner?” a man of about thirty addresses Mattia. “We're having a problem with the electrical system, could you please tell us where the meters are?” “I'm sorry,” Mattia smiles, “but none of this belongs to me. I'm only here on behalf of the owner, the Marquis.” The electrician looks at him doubtfully. “The Marquis of Carabas?” Alessia whispers excitedly. “Of course,” Mattia replies with a wink. Manuela is astonished that he takes that stupid game so seriously. He never takes anything seriously; it always seems like he's passing lightly over things, not wanting to leave a trace.

They head outside. Away from the castle, the vegetation becomes thicker, the tangle of shrubbery denser. This whole area must have been covered with woods like this once. Marshes, impenetrable branches, solitude. Fragments of ancient walls emerge from the grass. Manuela remembers confusedly that the ruins of a Roman villa are around here somewhere, but she wouldn't know how to find them. When she was in her second year of tourism school, she had been tested on the castle's history. The twenty-eight girls, ignorant about everything else, were well prepared when it came to local attractions: they assumed these were the only things they would need to know. Manuela wanted to write an essay on the castle's owners, whom she found immensely fascinating: Felice Della Rovere Orsini and Leo X, the Medici pope. The noblewoman had purchased it at the beginning of the sixteenth century for nine thousand ducati, and the young pope would lodge here, along with his entourage, while hunting in the woods of Palo. He was a pope, but also a keen hunter, and his unusual, almost transgressive skills with a lance and musket had sparked her admiration for that man of the cloth, who was not supposed to hunt or kill. At fifteen, Manuela imagined that she, too, was skilled in a field theoretically prohibited to her—she already saw herself as a soldier—and the self-assurance with which the pope gratified his passions for hunting and fighting encouraged her to cultivate her own. But her professor had pointed out that both were too eccentric to be the subject of a thesis for a professional school aimed at producing tour guides and secretaries for travel agencies. The first was the daughter of a pope, and the second a homosexual who, with his scandalous behavior, had helped undermine the Church's authority and contributed to the success of the Lutheran Reformation. Manuela was disappointed, offended almost, by the revelation. She promptly forgot about them, cobbling together a scant two pages on the garrison installed in the castle to protect the borders of the Papal States in the eighteenth century. Zouaves. Mercenaries. Warriors without a history. She got a lousy grade. Warriors without a history. Like her.

“No, no, no,” Mattia is saying, “you can't take a picture of the Cat, absolutely not, he's on a secret mission, you don't want to betray him, do you? Nobody can know he's here.” He tries to grab Alessia, but she wriggles free and runs and hides behind a scaly oak tree. She's having fun pointing her cell at him and snaps another photo. But by now he's crouched down, so all she gets is bark and bushes. “Be a good girl and erase it,” Mattia says, dropping his playful tone. Alessia laughs, waving the hand that holds the cell phone, but keeps her distance. She pulls up the image on the display. Mattia came out good, she thinks he's handsome, with his rock star hair and blue eyes, she doesn't want to erase it. She sticks out her tongue at him. She doesn't buy his cat story. Who does he think she is? She's a big girl, she'll be eight in October. There's no one else amid the ancient trees. The silence is broken only by the screech of seagulls, the obstinate call of a blackbird, and Alessia's wicked laughter. Mattia's anxiety does not escape Manuela. Why doesn't he want his picture taken? She would like to have a photo of them together. Photographs preserve memories when nothing else is left.

“This forest is just like the one in Limbo,” Alessia says. “Let's play?” “I don't know what that game is,” Mattia responds, “I'm old, I'm still stuck on hide-and-seek. And besides, I'm not going to play with you anymore if you don't give me that phone.” Alessia explains that it's a new video game, her friend Ginevra's brother has it: there's a boy looking for his little sister, she disappeared in the woods, got lost. The player who controls the console is the boy. He meets men and monsters in the forest, and they all try to kill him. “I don't understand what the point of the game is,” Manuela says. “To find the little girl,” Alessia explains, “but I've never gotten to the end, they always kill me first, but it's still fun. It's better with PlayStation, but it works with real players, too, too bad there's only three of us. I'll be the boy, Manuela, you're the men, and Mattia, you're the monsters. You have to knock me down so I'm flat on the grass.” “It sounds pretty violent, I don't like it,” Manuela objects. “But I don't really die,” Alessia says. “In this game, you don't die just once, you die all the time. You go to Limbo and then you come back to life. So you get back up and start over again, right from where you left off.”

“Interesting,” Mattia says, forcing himself to cover up his bad mood. “I'm in. What monster am I?” “First you're a spider, then you're a worm.” Alessia is getting more and more excited. “When you're the worm you have to slither on the ground. Manuela throws pinecones at me. If you hit me I die. But let's say I escape and you chase me, you have to kill me before I make it to that tree over there, you have to trick me, jump on me from behind, lay traps, if you catch me you win and I'll let you erase the photo.” Mattia pleads silently with Manuela, begs her collaboration. Alessia laughs. The man from the Bellavista is in her power. Now he'll do whatever she tells him to. He'll play the monster, get dirty crawling on the ground. “I'll count to ten,” she says, “and then I'll start to run.”

When Alessia gets to seven, Manuela drags Mattia behind a hedge and kisses him. “Come on, don't be mad at her, it's just a photo.” Alessia's footsteps fade in the opposite direction. They chase her, showering her with pinecones, which they deliberately aim at a bush. “You go after her,” Manuela says, “I can't run, but I don't feel like telling her that.” For a few seconds, all she can hear is the rustle of the wind in the trees. A spider arpeggios on the silk threads of his web: perfect and empty, it sparkles in the light. Everything is suspended, simple, neat. Every religion represents Paradise as a garden. “Do you realize you've brought me to Paradise on Earth?” she whispers with a laugh. Mattia says he'd gladly bring her there again right now, but they have to wait till they get back to the hotel. Even though it would be wonderful to make love here, among the spiders and pine needles. But he wants to erase that photograph. It's really important. He straightens his hair and runs after the little girl, grumbling. Manuela hears Alessia's little scream that confirms she's been killed, she's in Limbo now. Mattia returns to the hedge. They hear Alessia get up and start running again. Mattia assumed she was just joking about the Earthly Paradise. But it's true. Her grandfather once told her that in the 1960s some American movie people came to Palo Castle. Hundreds of them, it was like an encampment. At the time, Vittorio's moving company had put him on disability because the war was still raging in his head and every once in a while his brain went all topsy-turvy. So when he heard that the producers were looking for manual laborers, he showed up, and they took him. He worked as a chauffeur for about ten days. But he wasn't driving around American actors or the director or the fabulous diva whose sexual exploits he fantasized about, just some dreadful Roman from Cinecittà. He'd drive him there every morning and then he'd roam about on set, poking around among the props and cameras, while no one paid him any mind. The guy was a snake trainer. Which meant that every morning Vittorio had a green, ten-foot-long snake as thick as a ship's cable in his van. In the floodlit park, an actor and an actress would move about half-naked. Chilled, they would put on overcoats whenever they could and drink hard liquor. The actor was always drunk. The director—a bearded American who looked a little like Noah—wasn't afraid of the snake. He claimed to secrete an odor that charmed the animals. The snake, however, was not of the same opinion; once, it wrapped its coils around him, and the snake trainer had to step in to save the director's skin. After the Americans left, Vittorio found out that the film was
The Bible
, the actors Adam and Eve, and the Palo Castle grounds the Garden of Eden. Manuela had never seen that old film, not even on TV, but people from Ladispoli still talk about it.