The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (14 page)

“Right, now you've got a couple of options …”

He played on, trying to put one lot of plans out of his mind while he looked at the possibilities for the other. Nothing spoke in his mind to tell him what Giovanni wanted. He hadn't expected it to. Checkers wasn't like feelings or imaginings. It was something you did with the logical bit of your mind, and madness wasn't logical. Well, maybe it had its own kind of logic, but it wasn't the sort that would work on a checkerboard. The only difference that Giovanni made was that if he'd simply been playing himself, left hand against right, sometimes he'd have taken moves back to try something else. That didn't seem right with Giovanni. The game ended in a draw.

Next he forced himself to do some exercises, press-ups and full knee bends and toe touching and stuff, setting himself targets and not giving up till he'd reached them.

“Got to tell you, this is not my scene,” he muttered. “Kids at school would have hysterics if they saw me. But look at it this way. It's going to be pretty good hell stuck in here week after week—no offense, Giovanni—but at least if I keep in reasonable shape it won't be quite such hell as if I'm feeling grotty, not having any exercise day after day. Right? Anyway, that'll do. Let's not get fanatical about it. Like another game of checkers?”

They played again, and then Dave talked for a bit, about Mum and Chris and the kids, and after that they had another game, and so the day wore on. Around what he guessed was the middle of the afternoon Dave said, “Let's try speed checkers for a change. Real lightning. Five seconds a move. Toss? OK, I start.”

He dashed through the opening moves and scrambled on. With almost no time to think, Dave found himself making the moves pretty well on impulse, his hand hovering over the pieces and snatching the one beneath it as his lips reached the count of five. It was close until near the end, when he was reaching for one of Giovanni's pieces, changed his mind and moved another and then, after his next move, found he'd left Giovanni with the chance to take three pieces in a turn. Absurdly that put him on his mettle, just as if he'd been playing a real opponent. Still keeping to the count, he fought back, thinking about his own moves and barely glancing at the board from Giovanni's point of view before he moved for him, but it was no use. He was creamed. What was more, he minded.

Minded, that is, for the moment or two it took him to realize how absurd it was. He laughed aloud.

“Watch it,” he said. “I take after my dad some ways, and he's not a good loser. Anytime he loses it's a plot against him. With the FBI in it too.… You know, I should have got back. I was doing your moves any old how … wasn't I? Wasn't I, Giovanni?”

He tidied the board up, set the pieces out, and tried again, but this time the random moves he made for Giovanni really were random and Dave won without effort.

“OK,” he said. “So I was trying too hard not to try. It's going to be some trick, this, Giovanni, making nonsense moves without thinking about the nonsense. Let's give it a rest now, shall we, and try again tomorrow? I don't want the goons finding this stuff when they come.”

He picked up the pieces, folded them into a couple of the sheets of torn newspaper, and hid them under the straw. It struck him that the men might at some point search him, so he took the nail out of his pocket and inserted it between two of the flagstones until the bent head was level with the floor. He smoothed out the board and drew a couple of tic-tac-toe games in, because it was obvious he'd been up to something there. Doing these things to deceive them made him feel good. Whether he played checkers or not didn't matter a bit to them, probably, but it mattered to him not just because it was a way of getting through the endless days, but because it was one little bit of his life they weren't in control of, because they didn't know about it.

Eleven days followed, all on much the same pattern, apart from Dave's not being taken out again to be photographed. He began to long for a change of clothes. At home Mum was always getting at him to change more often, but he couldn't be bothered. Now a clean shirt would have been paradise. On the evening of the fourth day the man who took the bucket away and brought the food wasn't the one with the voice. “
Domani domenica,
” he told Dave. Apparently he didn't speak any English at all, and Dave had no idea what he'd been talking about until the next day's food didn't come for what must have been several hours later than usual. It was a double ration, and the man who brought it changed the buckets at that point. It took Dave quite a while to realize that this must be Sunday. That's what the man had been telling him the night before. Yes, the picnic had been on a Saturday. So kidnappers went to Mass on Sundays, like almost everyone else on the island. Perhaps that was why they had left him his gold cross.

Slowly over these days the way they played checkers changed, as Dave learnt to attend to what Giovanni wanted, not pushing him for an answer or rushing in with his own ideas, but waiting, listening, the way the silence which was Giovanni listened. At first he could only do it with speed games, and then not all the time, but after a while he developed a system of reaching for each piece in turn, keeping arm and hand relaxed, not expecting anything, and he'd find he was picking up a piece and moving it almost without noticing what he was doing. It didn't always work, because his Dave-mind couldn't help interfering sometimes—or if not actually interfering at least watching what was happening and thinking about it—and that spoilt things. But when it did work they had some interesting games, because Giovanni seemed to think of moves which Dave mightn't have. They were well matched and often had close finishes, winning, losing, or drawing about equally.

When they weren't playing Dave thought about it quite a bit, and talked to Giovanni about it sometimes.

“It's really interesting,” he said. “Most of the time, as far as I'm concerned, you're pretty well as real as I am, and you're different from me—somebody else. But if I had to bet my life on it—if the goons came in and pointed a gun at me and said, ‘We're going to shoot you unless you tell us whether Giovanni's real or not, and you've got to get it right'—then I'd have to say I've made you up. I'm hallucinating you. You're a trick of my mind. Those lines on the stone, for instance—I don't think I'm hallucinating them. They're there all right, but somebody else made them, and I just worked them into my Giovanni hallucination.

“But if you're a trick of my mind, you're some trick. You realize I can play a game of checkers against myself with part of my mind thinking for me, and knowing all about it, and another part of my mind thinking just as hard for you and I just don't know that's happening? Weird.”

On the fourteenth morning of his captivity Dave woke with violent diarrhea. It was before dawn but he just got to the bucket in time, groping across the cell in the dark. Almost before he had finished he was on his knees vomiting into the reeking mess. He cleaned himself up as best he could and crawled back to the bed, where he lay sweating and shivering. He needed to get up twice more before he heard the voice call from the door. The hood was ready with the clothes by his bed. He groped for it, dragged it on, and turned his face to the wall.

The man must have realized what was up from the stench. Dave heard him pause inside the door. He came and crouched by the bed.

“
Senti male
?” said the voice. “Sick?”

Dave groaned. A hand slid under the hood and felt his forehead, then tried his pulse.

“OK. No food. Drink plenty water,” said the voice.

The man left, taking the bucket. When he brought it back some while later he placed it by the bed and left again without a word.

By evening Dave was delirious. From then on it was sometimes night and sometimes day but mostly dreams. There were people in the room sometimes. Somebody, a woman, he thought, washed him carefully in tepid water. Another time somebody took his temperature and pulse and laid him on his back, and hands that knew what they were doing felt inquiringly over his stomach. In his dream the hands belonged to someone who was deadly afraid. Later there was medicine, bitter and shriveling in the mouth but causing a comfortable glow once swallowed. After that, sleep. And through the nights and days and wakings and sleepings, in dreams, in the times when he was aware of the shrill of the cicadas and almost knew where he was and why, a feathery cool touch on his forehead, a something in his hand too vague to be another hand, but patiently holding his, hour after endless, restless hour.

On the morning after they had given him the medicine he woke and saw Giovanni standing by his bed.

Dave knew at once it was him. He was a dark-haired boy with a rather square face and a deep dimple in his chin. He had eyebrows with an upward tuft at the outer ends, soft brown eyes, and a large mouth with smile marks at the corners. He looked very sure of himself, almost grown up, though Dave guessed he was probably about fifteen. He was wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, a brown cardigan, slacks—not jeans—and absurd pale brown suede shoes with laces and pointy toes. It was as if he'd been dressed for a play set about forty years back, Dave reckoned. Something like that.

In spite of his being so obviously there, so obviously himself, Dave could see he wasn't solid. Not that he was transparent or misty or anything like that. He was more like a really good 3-D TV image might be—you could tell that if you put your hand out it would go right through it. Even if he'd been feeling less feeble Dave wouldn't have wanted to try that. It wouldn't have felt right—it would have been an intrusion.

None of this surprised him. He hadn't expected it, but somehow he was ready for it to happen.

“Hi,” he said. “Good to see you.”

Giovanni smiled and said something but Dave heard nothing, or if he did it was only the faintest whisper of a whisper. When Giovanni sat down the straw beneath him did not stir, but when he patted the back of Dave's hand Dave felt the faint touch and recognized it from his delirium. He didn't feel like talking. He felt emptied, wasted away, barely real—just like Giovanni, in fact. He wondered how many days he'd been ill—three or four, he thought, but there was no way of telling.

After a while Giovanni cocked his head, said something, and rose. He smiled down at Dave, raised a hand, and walked away into the niche in the corner, out of sight. A couple of minutes later Dave heard the man's shoes on the stairs. He felt too feeble to rise and he couldn't see what they'd done with the hood, so he rolled over to face the wall and covered his face with his hands. The man didn't call out, but simply unlocked the door and came in. The footsteps came to the bed. After a pause Dave felt the rough hand on his forehead.

“You hearing me?” said the voice.

“Yes. I think I'm a bit better …”

“OK. No talk. Shut eyes.”

Dave heard slight movements and the chink of metal on glass.

“OK. Now sit.
Medicina,
” said the voice.

An arm slid under his shoulders and helped him to raise himself onto his elbows. A spoon nudged at his lips. He sucked carefully at the bitter stuff, and barely prevented himself from coughing it out, but as it trickled down toward his stomach the glow of warmth began to spread through him. He sighed and lay back. That's good stuff, he thought, whatever it is. He wondered if it had opium in it, or something. He wasn't into drugs, though he'd tried pot a couple of times. This wasn't the same, but the effect was sort of like. Perhaps that was why he could see Giovanni now. Opium was supposed to make you see funny things.

“OK,” said the voice. “I bring little food. Drink plenty water.”

He left. Dave lay where he was, feeling weak and stupid but strangely happy. Things weren't really any better. He was still being held for ransom by these ruthless bastards, and he was still certain that Dad wasn't going to play ball and he'd be stuck in this hole for months and probably never get out alive, but it didn't matter. He realized that even when the man had been in the room with him he hadn't been afraid. It would have been too much effort. He was wondering vaguely about this when he fell asleep.

He was woken by the feet on the stair, but he still didn't have the energy to be afraid. The man didn't come in at once. Instead there were noises of metal on metal, followed by a low, vague roaring which it took Dave a couple of minutes to recognize as the sound of a camping stove. It stopped, the lock rattled, and the voice called, “Shut eyes.”

Dave did so. The man came in, told him to sit, and tied a blindfold round his head. Dave could already smell the meaty steam of some kind of broth. The man supported his shoulders and with no apparent impatience held a mug to his lips while he slowly sipped. The soup was pretty good, with herbs and garlic in it. It was probably what the man was having for his own lunch. Dave finished and lay back.

“Thank you,” he said without thinking. The man didn't answer.

He slept again, and when he woke Giovanni was there, sitting patiently by the bed.

“Hi,” said Dave. “How does it feel to be an opium dream?”

Giovanni smiled but said nothing.

“I'm pretty feeble,” said Dave. “Not up to checkers, anyway. Sorry about that.”

Giovanni shook his head and made a forget-it gesture with his hands.

“I hope there's more of that soup,” said Dave. “One thing about these goons—they're not slobs. They do the job right. I wonder if I couldn't persuade them to give up kidnapping and open a restaurant, and we'd get Dad to put up the capital. He wouldn't mind … Hey! You mean you can hear me?”

Giovanni nodded.

“And you understand English?”

Giovanni gave a little shrug, tilted his head, and fluttered his right hand, palm down.
A little bit
. He could talk with his hands better than some English people can talk with their mouths.