I'm Not Scared (13 page)

‘What is my name?'

‘Dolores.'

‘My name's not Dolores. It's Michele Amitrano.'

‘If you say so.' I had a feeling he was pulling my leg.

‘But what did you tell the lord of the worms?'

‘I told him the guardian angel would catch them.'

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, thank goodness! You told him
I was the guardian angel.' I took the cake out of my pocket. ‘Look what I've brought you. It's crumbled …' I didn't even have time to finish the sentence before he pounced on me.

He snatched what was left of the cake and stuffed it in his mouth, then, with his eyes closed, he searched for the crumbs.

He fumbled all over me. ‘More! More! Give me more!' He scratched me with his nails.

‘I haven't got any more. I swear. Hang on …' In my back pocket I had the sweets. ‘Here. Take these.'

He unwrapped them, chewed them and swallowed them at an incredible rate.

‘More! More!'

‘I've given you the lot.'

He wouldn't believe I didn't have anything else. He kept searching for the crumbs.

‘Tomorrow I'll bring you some more. What do you want?'

He scratched his head. ‘I want … I want … some bread. Bread and butter. Butter and marmalade. With ham. And cheese. And chocolate. A really big sandwich.'

‘I'll see what there is at home.'

I sat down. Filippo wouldn't stop touching my feet and untying my sandals.

Suddenly I had an idea. A great idea.

He didn't have the chain. He was free. I could take him out.

I asked him: ‘Do you want to go out?'

‘Out where?'

‘Outside.'

‘Outside?'

‘Yes, outside. Outside the hole.'

He fell silent for a moment, then he asked: ‘Hole? What hole?'

‘This hole. In here. Where we are.'

He shook his head. ‘There aren't any holes.'

‘This isn't a hole?'

‘No.'

‘Yes it is a hole, you said so yourself.'

‘When did I say so?'

‘You said that the world's all full of holes with dead people in them. And that the moon's full of holes too.'

‘You're wrong. I didn't say that.'

I was beginning to lose patience. ‘Well where are we, then?'

‘In a place where you wait.'

‘And what do you wait for?'

‘To go to heaven.'

In a way he was right. If you stayed there all your life, you would die and then your soul would fly to heaven. If you got into a discussion with Filippo your thoughts got tangled.

‘Come on, I'll take you out. Come with me.' I took his hand, but he stiffened and trembled. ‘All right. All right. We won't go out. Keep calm, though. I won't hurt you.'

He stuck his head under the blanket. ‘Outside there's no air. Outside I'll suffocate. I don't want to go out there.'

‘No you won't. There's loads of air outside. I'm always outside and I don't suffocate. How do you think that's possible?'

‘You're an angel.'

I must get him to see reason. ‘Listen carefully. Yesterday I swore to you I'd come back and I have come back. Now I swear to you that if you come out nothing will happen to you. You've got to believe me.'

‘Why do I have to go outside? I'm all right in here.'

I had to tell him a lie. ‘Because heaven's outside. And I've got to take you to heaven. I'm an angel and you're dead and I've got to take you to heaven.'

He thought about this for a while. ‘Really?'

‘Truly.'

‘Let's go, then.' And he started making high-pitched squeaks.

I tried to get him to his feet, but he kept his legs bent. He couldn't support himself. If I didn't hold him up he fell down. Finally I tied the rope round his hips. Then I wrapped his head in the blanket, so that he would keep quiet. I went back up and started hoisting him. He was too heavy. He hung there, twenty centimetres off the ground, all stiff and crooked, and me on top, with the rope over my shoulder, bent right forward and without the strength to pull him up.

‘Help me, Filippo. I can't do it.'

But he was like a lead weight and the rope was slipping out of my hands. I stepped back and the rope slackened. He had touched the bottom.

I looked down. He had keeled over on his back with the blanket on his head.

‘Filippo, are you all right?'

‘Am I there?' he asked.

‘Hang on.' I ran round the house looking for a plank, a pole, something that could help me. In the cowshed I found a battered old door with the paint flaking off it. I dragged it into the yard. I wanted to lower it into the hole and get Filippo to climb up it. I stood it on the edge of the hole, but I dropped it on the ground and it split into two halves full of sharp splinters. The wood was all worm-eaten. It was no good.

‘Michele?' Filippo was calling me.

‘Wait a minute! Just a minute!' I shouted, and I picked up a piece of that damned door, lifted it over my head and threw it on top of a ladder.

A ladder?

There it was, two metres away from the hole. A beautiful green-painted wooden ladder lying on the ivy that covered a pile of masonry and earth. It had been there all the time and I hadn't seen it. That was how they got down.

‘I've found a ladder!' I said to Filippo. I fetched it and lowered it into the hole.

I dragged him into the wood, under a tree. There were birds. Cicadas. Shade. And there was a pleasant smell of damp earth and moss.

I asked him: ‘Can I take the blanket off your face?'

‘Are we in the sun?'

‘No.'

He didn't want to take it off, but eventually I persuaded him to let me blindfold him with my T-shirt. He was pleased, you could tell from the way he smiled. A light breeze caressed his skin and he was really enjoying it.

I asked him: ‘Why did they put you here?'

‘I don't know. I can't remember.'

‘Not anything?'

‘I found myself here.'

‘What
do
you remember?'

‘I was at school.' He lolled his head to and fro. ‘I remember that. We had gym. Then I went out. A white car pulled up. And I found myself here.'

‘But where do you live?'

‘In Via Modigliani 36. On the corner of Via Cavalier D'Arpino.

‘Where's that?'

‘In Pavia.'

‘In Italy?'

‘Yes.'

‘This is Italy too.'

He stopped talking. I thought he had fallen asleep, but after a while he asked me: ‘What sort of birds are these?'

I looked around. ‘Sparrows.'

‘Are you sure they're not bats?'

‘No. Bats sleep in the daytime and they make a different noise.'

‘Flying foxes fly even in the daytime and they chirp like birds. And they weigh more than a kilo. If they catch hold of the small branches they fall to the ground. I think these are flying foxes.'

After the little wash-bear business I thought I had better keep quiet, maybe in America they had flying foxes too. I asked him: ‘Have you ever been to America?'

‘Yesterday I saw my mother. She told me she can't come and get me because she's dead. She's dead with all my family. Otherwise, she said, she would come straight away.'

I stopped up my ears.

‘Filippo, it's late. I've got to take you down.'

‘Can I really go back down?'

‘Yes.'

‘All right. Let's go back.'

He had been mute for half an hour, with the T-shirt tied over his eyes. Every now and then his neck and mouth stiffened and his fingers and toes contracted as if he had a tic. He had been sitting spellbound, quite still, listening to the flying foxes.

‘Hold onto my neck.' He clung on and I dragged him to the hole. ‘Now we'll go down the ladder, hold tight. Don't let go of me.'

It was difficult. Filippo squeezed so hard that I couldn't breathe and I couldn't see the rungs of the ladder, I had to feel for them with my feet.

When we got to the bottom I was as white as a sheet and panting. I put him in a corner. I covered him up and gave him a drink and said to him: ‘It's very late. I must get going. Papa'll kill me.'

‘I'll stay here. But you must bring me the sandwiches. And a roast chicken too.'

‘We have chicken on Sundays. Today mama's making meatballs. Do you like meatballs?'

‘In tomato sauce?'

‘Yes.'

‘I like them very much.'

I was sorry to leave him. ‘I'll be off, then …' I was about to grab a rung, when the ladder was pulled away.

I looked up.

On the edge of the hole was a man with a brown hood over his head. He was dressed exactly like a soldier. ‘Cuckoo? Cuckoo? April now is through,' he sang and started pirouetting. ‘Maytime has returned to the song of the cuckoo. Guess who?'

‘Felice!'

‘Well done!' he said, and fell silent for a bit. ‘How the fuck did you guess? Hang on. Hang on a minute.'

He went off and when he reappeared he had his rifle over his shoulder.

‘It was you!' Felice clapped his hands. ‘It was you, fuck it all! I kept finding things arranged differently. At first I thought I was crazy. Then I thought it must be a ghost. And all the time it was you. Little Michele. Thank God for that, I was going out of my mind.'

I felt my ankle being squeezed. Filippo had caught hold of my feet and was whispering: ‘The lord of the worms comes and goes. The lord of the worms comes and goes. The lord of the worms comes and goes.'

So that was who the lord of the worms was!

Felice looked at me through the holes in his hood. ‘Made friends with the prince, have you? See how well I washed him?
He put up a bit of a struggle, but I won in the end. Wouldn't give me the blanket, though.'

I was trapped. I couldn't see him. The sun filtering through the foliage blinded me.

‘Cop this!'

A knife sank into the ground. Ten centimetres away from my sandal and twenty from Filippo's head.

‘How about that for accuracy? I could have sliced your big toe off just like that. And what would you have done then?'

I couldn't speak. My throat was blocked up.

‘What would you have done without a toe?' he repeated. ‘Tell me. Come on, tell me.'

‘I'd have bled to death.'

‘Good boy. And if I shoot you with this,' he showed me the rifle, ‘what happens to you?'

‘I die.'

‘You see you do know things. Come on up, move!' Felice got the ladder and lowered it down.

I didn't want to, but I had no choice. He would shoot me. I wasn't sure I would be able to climb up, my legs were shaking.

‘Hang on, hang on,' said Felice. ‘Pick up my knife.'

I bent down and Filippo whispered: ‘Won't you be coming back again?'

I pulled the knife out of the earth and, without letting Felice see, replied in a low voice: ‘I'll be back.'

‘Promise?'

Felice ordered me: ‘Close it up and put it in your pocket.'

‘Promise.'

‘Come on, come on! Up you get, you little runt. What're you waiting for?'

I started climbing. Filippo meanwhile kept whispering. ‘The
lord of the worms comes and goes. The lord of the worms comes and goes. The lord of the worms comes and goes.'

When I was almost out, Felice grabbed me by the trousers and with both hands threw me against the house like a sack. I crashed into the wall and crumpled on the ground. I tried to get up. I had banged my side. A spasm of pain stiffened my leg and arm. I turned. Felice had taken off his hood and was charging towards me pointing the rifle at me. I saw his tanklike boots growing bigger and bigger.

Now he's going to shoot me, I thought.

I started crawling, all aches and pains, towards the wood.

‘Thought you'd set him free, did you? Well you were wrong. You counted your chickens before they hatched.' He gave me a kick in the backside. ‘Get up, you little shit. What are you doing down there on the ground? Get up! Haven't hurt yourself, have you?' He lifted me up by the ear. ‘You can thank your lucky stars you're your father's son. Otherwise by this time … Now I'm going to take you home. Your father'll decide your punishment. I've done my duty. I've kept guard. And I ought to have shot you.' He dragged me into the wood. I was so scared I couldn't cry. I kept tripping over and falling on the ground and he kept pulling me up again by the ear. ‘Move, go, go, go!'

We emerged from the trees.

In front of us the yellow incandescent expanse of wheat stretched as far as the sky. If I dived in he would never find me.

With the barrel of his rifle Felice pushed me towards the 127 and said: ‘Oh yes, give me back my knife!'

I tried to give it to him but couldn't get my hand in my pocket.

‘I'll do it!' He took it. He opened the door, lifted the seat and said: ‘Get in!'

I got in and there was Salvatore.

‘Salvatore, what are you …' The rest died in my mouth.

It had been Salvatore. He had ratted to Felice.

Salvatore looked at me and turned away.

I sat down in the back without saying a word.

Felice got behind the wheel. ‘Salvatore old boy, you've done a really good job. Allow me to shake your hand.' Felice grasped it. ‘You were right, the nosey parker was there. And I didn't believe you.' He got out. ‘A promise is a promise. And when Felice Natale makes a promise, he keeps it. You drive. Take it slowly, though.'

‘Now?' Salvatore asked.

‘When else? Get into my seat.'

Felice got in at the passenger's door and Salvatore moved over to the wheel. ‘It's perfect for learning here. All you have to do is follow the slope and brake now and again.'

Salvatore Scardaccione had sold me for a driving lesson.

‘You'll smash the car up if you don't watch out!' Felice shouted and with his head up against the windscreen he watched the broken surface of the road. ‘Brake! Brake!'