I'm Not Scared (4 page)

I looked at Maria, who was following me on her Graziella with its tyres worn by the stones, Skull, out in front, with his squire Remo beside him, Salvatore zigzagging along, Barbara on her oversize Bianchi, and I thought about the boy in the hole.

I wasn't going to say anything to anyone.

‘Finders keepers,' Skull had decided.

If that was so, the boy at the bottom of the hole was mine.

If I told them, Skull, as always, would take all the credit
for the discovery. He would tell everyone he had found him because it had been his decision to climb the hill.

Not this time. I had done the forfeit, I had fallen out of the tree and I had found him.

He wasn't Skull's. He wasn't Barbara's either. He wasn't Salvatore's. He was mine. He was my secret discovery.

I didn't know if I had discovered a dead person or a living one. Maybe the arm hadn't moved. I had imagined it. Or maybe they were the contractions of a corpse. Like those of wasps, which keep on walking even if you cut them in two with scissors, or like chickens, which flap their wings even when they've lost their heads. But what was he doing in there?

‘What are we going to tell mama?'

I hadn't noticed my sister was riding beside me. ‘What?'

‘What are we going to tell mama?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Will you tell her about the glasses?'

‘Okay, but you mustn't tell her anything about where we went. If she finds out she'll say you broke them because we went up there.'

‘All right.'

‘Swear.'

‘I swear.' She kissed her forefingers.

Nowadays Acqua Traverse is a district of Lucignano. In the mid-Eighties a local building surveyor put up two long rows of houses made of reinforced concrete. Cubes with round windows, light blue railings and iron rods sticking out of the roofs. Then a Co-op arrived and a bar-cum-tobacconist's. And an asphalted two-way road that runs straight as an airport runway to Lucignano.

In 1978 Acqua Traverse was so small it was practically
non-existent. A country hamlet, they would call it nowadays in a travel magazine.

No one knew why it was called Acqua Traverse, not even old Tronca. There certainly wasn't any water there, except what they brought in a tanker once a fortnight.

There was Salvatore's villa, which we called the Palazzo. A big house built in the nineteenth century, long and grey with a big stone porch and an inner courtyard with a palm tree. And there were four other houses. Just four. Four drab little houses made of stone and mortar with tiled roofs and small windows. Ours. The one belonging to Skull's family. The one belonging to Remo's family, who shared it with old Tronca. Tronca was deaf and his wife had died, and he lived in two rooms overlooking the vegetable garden. And then there was the house of Pietro Mura, Barbara's father. Angela, his wife, had a shop on the ground floor where you could buy bread, pasta and soap. And you could make phone calls.

Two houses on one side, two on the other. And a road, rough and full of holes, in the middle. There was no piazza. There were no lanes. But there were two benches under a pergola of strawberry vines and a drinking fountain which had a tap so that water wouldn't be wasted. All around, the wheatfields.

The only thing of note in that place forgotten by God and man was a nice blue road sign which displayed in capital letters the words ACQUA TRAVERSE.

‘Papa's home!' my sister shouted. She threw down her bike and ran up the steps.

Parked in front of our house was his truck, a Fiat Lupetto with a green tarpaulin.

At that time papa was working as a truck driver and would be away for weeks at a time. He collected the goods and carried them to the North.

He had promised he would take me with him to the North one day. I couldn't imagine this North very clearly. I knew the North was rich and the South was poor. And we were poor. Mama said that if papa kept working so hard, soon we wouldn't be poor any longer, we would be well off. So we mustn't complain if papa wasn't there. He was doing it for us.

I went into the house still out of breath.

Papa was sitting at the table in his vest and pants. He had a bottle of red wine in front of him and a cigarette in its holder between his lips and my sister perched on one thigh.

Mama, with her back to us, was cooking. There was a smell of onions and tomato sauce. The television, a big boxlike black-and-white Grundig, which papa had brought home a few months earlier, was on. The ventilator fan was humming.

‘Michele, where've you been all day? Your mother was at her wits' end. Haven't you got any consideration for the poor woman? She's always having to wait for her husband, she shouldn't have to wait for you too. And what happened to your sister's glasses?'

He wasn't really angry. When he was really angry his eyes bulged like a toad's. He was happy to be home.

My sister looked at me.

‘We built a hut by the stream.' I took the glasses out of my pocket. ‘And they got broken.'

He spat out a cloud of smoke. ‘Come over here. Let's see.'

Papa was a small man, thin and restless. When he sat in the driving seat of his truck he almost vanished behind the wheel. He had black hair, smoothed down with brilliantine. A rough white beard on his chin. He smelt of Nazionali and eau de cologne.

I gave him the glasses.

‘They're a write-off.' He put them on the table and said: ‘That's it. No more glasses.'

My sister and I looked at each other.

‘What am I going to do?' she asked anxiously.

‘Go without. That'll teach you.'

My sister was speechless.

‘She can't. She can't see,' I interposed.

‘Who cares?'

‘But …'

‘No buts.' And he said to mama: ‘Teresa, give me that parcel on the kitchen cabinet.'

Mama brought it over. Papa unwrapped it and took out a hard velvety blue case. ‘Here you are.'

Maria opened it and inside was a pair of glasses with brown plastic frames.

‘Try them on.'

Maria put them on, but kept stroking the case.

Mama asked her: ‘Do you like them?'

‘Yes. They're lovely. The box is beautiful.' And she went to look at herself in the mirror.

Papa poured himself another glass of wine.

‘If you break these, next time you'll go without, do you understand?' Then he took me by the arm. ‘Let me feel that muscle.'

I bent my arm and stiffened it.

He squeezed my biceps. ‘I don't think you've improved. Are you doing your press-ups?

‘Yes.'

I hated doing press-ups. Papa wanted me to do them because he said I was puny.

‘It's not true,' said Maria. ‘He's not doing them.'

‘I do them now and again. Almost always.'

‘Come here.' I sat on his knee too and tried to kiss him. ‘Don't you kiss me, you're all dirty. If you want to kiss your father, you've got to wash first. Teresa, what shall we do, send them to bed without supper?'

Papa had a nice smile, perfect white teeth. Neither my sister nor I has inherited them.

Mama replied without even turning round.

‘It'd be no more than they deserve! I can't stand any more of these two.'
She
really was angry.

‘Let's say this. If they want to have supper and get the present I've brought them, Michele's got to beat me at arm-wrestling. Otherwise, bed with no supper.'

He'd brought us a present!

‘You and your jokes …' Mama was too happy that papa was home again. When papa went away her stomach hurt, and the more time passed the less she talked. After a month she went completely mute.

‘Michele can't beat you. It's not fair,' said my sister.

‘Michele, show your sister what you can do. And keep those legs apart. If you sit crooked you'll lose straight away and there'll be no present.'

I got into position. I clenched my teeth and gripped papa's hand and started to push. Nothing. He didn't budge.

‘Go on! Have you got ricotta instead of muscles? You're weaker than a gnat! Put your back into it, for God's sake!'

I murmured: ‘I can't do it.'

It was like bending an iron bar.

‘You're a sissy, Michele. Maria, help him, come on!'

My sister climbed on the table and together, gritting our teeth and breathing through our noses, we managed to get him to lower that arm.

‘The present! Give us the present!' Maria jumped down from the table.

Papa picked up a cardboard box full of crumpled-up newspaper. Inside was the present.

‘A boat!' I said.

‘It's not a boat, it's a gondola,' papa explained.

‘What's a gondola?'

‘Gondolas are Venetian boats. And they only use one oar.'

‘What's an oar?' my sister asked.

‘A stick to move a boat with.'

It was really beautiful. Made of black plastic. With little silvery pieces and at the end a little figure in a red-and-white striped shirt and a straw hat.

But we discovered that we weren't allowed to handle it. It was made to be put on the television. And between the television and the gondola there would have to be a white lace doily. Like a little lake. It wasn't a toy. It was something precious. An ornament.

‘Whose turn is it to fetch the water? It'll be suppertime soon,' mama asked us.

Papa was in front of the television watching the news.

I was laying the table. I said: ‘It's Maria's turn. I went yesterday.'

Maria was sitting in the armchair with her dolls. ‘I don't feel like it, you go.'

Neither of us liked going to the drinking fountain so we took turns, one day each. But papa had come home and to my sister this meant the rules no longer applied.

I gestured no with my finger. ‘It's your turn.'

Maria folded her arms. ‘I'm not going.'

‘Why not?'

‘I've got a headache.'

Whenever she didn't want to do something she said she had a headache. It was her favourite excuse.

‘It's not true, you haven't got a headache, liar.'

‘Yes I have!' And she started massaging her forehead with a pained expression on her face.

I felt like throttling her. ‘It's her turn! She's got to go!'

Mama, exasperated, put the jug in my hands. ‘You go, Michele, you're the eldest. Don't make such a fuss.' She said it as if it was a trivial matter, something quite unimportant.

A smile of triumph spread on my sister's lips. ‘See?'

‘It's not fair. I went yesterday. I'm not going.'

Mama said to me with that harsh tone that came into her voice a moment before she lost her temper: ‘Do as you're told, Michele.'

‘No.' I went over to papa to complain. ‘Papa, it's not my turn. I went yesterday.'

He took his eyes off the television and looked at me as if it was the first time he had ever seen me, stroked his mouth and said: ‘Do you know the soldier's draw?'

‘No. What is it?'

‘Do you know what the soldiers did during the war to decide who went on the dangerous missions?' He took a box of matches out of his pocket and showed it to me.

‘No, I don't know.'

‘You take three matches,' – he took them out of the box – ‘one for you, one for me and one for Maria. You remove the head from one of them.' He took one and broke it, then he gripped them all in his fist and made the ends stick out. ‘Whoever draws the headless match goes to get the water. Pick one, come on.'

I pulled out a whole one. I jumped for joy.

‘Maria, it's your turn. Come on.'

My sister took a whole one too and clapped her hands.

‘Looks like it's me.' Papa drew out the broken one.

Maria and I started laughing and shouting: ‘You go! You go! You've lost! You've lost! Go and get the water!'

Papa got up, rather crestfallen. ‘When I get back you must be washed. Do you hear me?'

‘Would you like me to go? You're tired,' said mama.

‘You can't. It's a dangerous mission. Besides, I've got to get my cigarettes from the truck.' And he went out of the house with the jug in his hand.

We got washed, ate pasta with tomato sauce and frittata, and after kissing papa and mama we went to bed without even begging to be allowed to watch television.

I woke up during the night. I had had a nightmare.

Jesus was telling Lazarus to rise and walk. But Lazarus didn't rise. Rise and walk, Jesus repeated. Lazarus just wouldn't come back to life. Jesus, who looked like Severino, the man who drove the water tanker, lost his temper. He was being made to look a fool. When Jesus tells you to rise and walk, you have to do it, especially if you're dead. But Lazarus just lay there, stiff as a board. So Jesus started shaking him like a doll and Lazarus finally rose up and bit him in the throat. Leave the dead alone, he said with blood-smeared lips.

I opened my eyes wide. I was covered in sweat.

Those nights it was so hot that if you were unfortunate enough to wake up it was hard to get back to sleep. The bedroom I shared with my sister was narrow and long. It had been converted from a corridor. The two beds were laid lengthwise, one after the other, under the window. On one side was the wall, on the other about thirty centimetres to move in. Otherwise the room was white and bare.

In winter it was cold and in summer you couldn't breathe.

The heat that was accumulated by the walls and ceiling in the daytime was emitted during the night. You felt as if your pillow and woollen mattress had come straight out of an oven.

Behind my feet I saw Maria's dark head. She was sleeping with her glasses on, face upwards, completely relaxed with her arms and legs apart.

She used to say that if she woke up without her glasses on
she got scared. Usually mama took them off as soon as she fell asleep because they left marks on her face.