Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone (27 page)

You're cold and you'd like to stop, you'd like everything to stop in this moment of the dream, when the three of you are together, when the rest of the world isn't there because this is your last vacation; you know that in the dream, but you can't say it.

You can hear them fight, at night, from your little room. You hear the accusations you don't understand but that you'll remember, word for word, explaining to yourself one reason at a time, year after year, why it ended.

You trudge along with your throat on fire, your sweaty fingers clutching the action figure to take from it the courage that you don't possess yourself. In your dream, they're chasing after you—you, your mamma, and your giant. The ones chasing you are Stromboli, roaring words you can't understand; Manuel, his eyes red with fury; Sister Angela, with her voice like broken glass; Carmela, gray as death; even your grandfather, who's installed a motor on his wheelchair. They're chasing you and they're going to catch up with you at the top of the incline, unless all three of you run.

Too bad about the throat and the climb. Too bad you can't run any faster.

Too bad about all this darkness.

 

Darkness.

The moment in the night when all hopes vanish, chased away by the sorrow of what is to come.

The moment in the night when rest is shattered into a thousand fragments of nostalgia, which reassemble themselves into a shroud in the fragile expectation of dawn.

The darkness.

 

A little agitated sleep, and then right away the dream. The town square in Krivi Vir, two policemen behind you. Panting, weary. A large bundle in your hands: It weighs so much you can barely carry it.

You turn the corner, and instead of low houses and a shop here and there, you see the forest right away. You're happy, you know the forest, the forest is your friend.

You hear steps behind you; then they stop. They lack the courage to venture in among the trees. Perhaps you're safe.

Only suddenly it's night. The middle of the night. And the bundle in your hands is heavy, and it's hot. Hotter and hotter.

Darkness.

You can't see a thing, damn it. You trip over a root and you almost drop what you took, but you hold onto it and find your footing. The leaves brush against your face, cold as a witch's fingers. Your feet sink into the peat, you can feel the dampness soaking into you, you're wet with dew and sweat.

The sound of your name reaches you, the hoarse voice of the law. And your panting breath, broken by fear and running.

Darkness. You can't see a thing, fuck. And the bundle is heavy, and it's hot, hotter and hotter in your hands, and it's even moving. What is it? You can't remember what you stole, because they're after you.

You emerge into a clearing and you still can't see anything, but that's the way it is in dreams. Perhaps it's the clearing where the cave is. You know the cave. You went there when you were a boy with your friends. Maybe it's the cave. Maybe you're going to make it.

You go in and you find yourself standing in line at the construction site, begging for work. But everyone is dead, gray, standing in tattered clothing, eyes white, gnashing their black teeth like in one of those zombie movies that make you turn off the television set, big and strong though you are.

Now the bundle is too hot, you can't hold it any longer, you let it fall among the dead, no one turns around.

Behind you, far behind you but coming up fast, are the two policemen of Krivi Vir. They've followed you all this way, in the darkness, in the middle of the night.

Now the bundle falls open and it's the child's head, scalding hot from his fever, worms wiggling out of his ears and nose, just like years and years ago when you hid a hog's head and could only come back for it three days later. But the child is looking at you, worms and all, and he calls your name, and the policemen hear him and they've seen you and here they come, and you no longer have the strength to run away.

You sit down, bathed in sweat and terror, screaming in the night.

And in the darkness.

 

Darkness.

It's a good thing it doesn't last long, the darkness. Because if it lasted any longer you'd lose your mind, so deep is the well it can throw you down.

It's lucky it only lasts a couple of seconds, the darkness. Because it has so many of those ghosts in it that each of them could drag you away for good, leave you to stroll in the mad land where hanged men dance from tree limbs and talons reach out of the earth and grab at your ankles.

It's lucky it only lasts a moment, the darkness. Because that's the moment that comes back every night, the moment that doesn't preserve sweet memories and doesn't encourage hopes, motionless as it is in a desert populated by regret for what you've done and the certainty of punishment.

Too bad for you if in that subtle instant of darkness you aren't asleep. Because then it will carry you off into its cursed fog, and never let you come back.

The darkness.

 

No sleep.

You wonder if you'll ever sleep again, even once it's over. Maybe you'll lie awake all night long for the rest of your life, eyes wide open in the shadows, chasing after the glimmer of a future.

You don't understand what's happening. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this.

It was supposed to be easy, fast, something you could forget in a hurry like a bump in the road, an unpleasant moment.

Unpleasant moments happen. They come along in everyone's life. And then they're over, and your memory discards them because your memory instinctually tries to preserve the heart, and so it erases everything that isn't right and opportune to remember. That was an unpleasant moment. There have been others, right? And you got through them; maybe it wasn't easy, but you got through.

As you hear your heart pounding—one-two, one-two, one-two; thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump—you tell yourself to cling to your hope for the future, you tell yourself that the night will end. Sooner or later.

You don't know what to do now. You can't call anymore. They said that the phones are tapped, that there's no way for you to talk to him, to them, without your voice being recorded; and an instant later they'd be at your front door, and that unpleasant moment would stretch on and on, until it swallowed up the rest of your life. No, you can't call anymore. And you gave them clear, precise, inviolable instructions, along with that phone and the phone card: to answer calls from your number, and only your number, to minimize the risk.

And you don't know where they are, you don't know where they're holding him. You don't know where they could have taken him, because you thought it was better not to know, to keep from giving yourself away.

You thought it wouldn't last long, that soon everything would be taken care of. The old man has so much money that he'd never even notice it was gone, the damn old man who ruined your life, who at first was the solution but soon turned into the problem.

That damn old man.

While the night surrounds you, wrapping dark fingers around your heart, clutching so hard it practically stops, you wonder what you'll do now that you can't call anymore. You hope they understand and that they wait, patiently; that they don't get anxious.

After all, the anxiety is all for you tonight.

Tonight, as you're lying here wide-eyed in the darkness, waiting for a dawn that may never come.

In the darkness.

M
arco Aragona had slept really well.

Truthfully, it was only rarely that he didn't. Ever since he'd been a child, he was out like a light as soon as he laid his head on the pillow; and he slept beautifully until the alarm clock brought him back from the bliss of slumber.

Getting up was no burden. Why should it be?

He was doing the job he'd always dreamed of, he was working hard, he was fitting in well with a team of superheroes who were kicking the mistrust that had originally surrounded the restaffed precinct to the curb. He was one of the Bastards of Pizzofalcone: Doff your caps when you see us going by, you idiots. He'd worked alongside Lojacono, the guy who'd caught the Crocodile, that terrible serial killer; and at the end of the investigation they'd teamed up on, the Chinaman had told the commissario that much of the credit for cracking the case belonged to him, Corporal Marco Aragona. And now he was working a kidnapping with Francesco Romano, aka the Hulk, a human pressure cooker who was always a second from blowing his lid, a ticking time bomb. Who was better than him? Who was better than Marco Aragona?

After taking one quick last look at himself in the mirror, he left his room on the eleventh floor of the hotel. A well-groomed appearance was very important. Movies, TV shows, and novels were all very clear on this point: A policeman has to leave no doubt that he's a tough guy, otherwise the criminals will eat him for breakfast. A sporty blazer; an unbuttoned shirt so that everyone could see he liked the outdoors and physical exercise; the blue-tinted aviators that always obscured his actual expression—one's true feelings were an advantage one should never give away; his hair combed back in a pompadour, carefully arranged both to signal male vigor and to cover that fucking bald spot right at the top of his head—where his father, who had gone bald at forty, damn him, had started losing his hair; elevator shoes to give him that extra inch and a half that could prove decisive in a confrontation with a suspect, when you're eye to eye and the one who looks away first knows he's been beat.

As he walked down the hallway he passed the housekeeper who cleaned the rooms and flashed her his sunniest smile. He'd spent a lot of time practicing: a slight arching of the eyebrow to make it clear that this was no formal greeting and that the recipient enjoyed his special attention, if only for that fraction of a second; the upper lip lifted to reveal his bright white teeth; a tilt to the right to accentuate the cleft in his chin. Irresistible, he thought to himself.

Just look at that asshole, the young woman thought to herself, disgusted at the prospect of having to tidy up the mess in his room.

He headed for the stairs, which he'd climb with his stellar, athletic gait until he reached the roof garden, where he'd have breakfast. This was his moment, the brief interval that gave meaning to the rest of the day: He'd see Irina, the woman he was secretly in love with.

Well? You got a problem with that? he would have asked his audience, if he'd had one. Maybe a tough, pitiless policeman, a hero who fights crime from dawn till dusk, an investigator who, only because he's trying to keep a low profile, refrains from putting his colleagues to shame by showing off his investigative brilliance, maybe a guy like that, in other words, maybe a guy like him, can't have feelings, too? Have you forgotten, my faithful viewers, that in every novel and in every movie the merciless cop always has a weakness, a woman whose presence reveals that under that steely chest there beats a human heart?

Aragona had a crush. Was her name really Irina? He knew that that was the name written on the cunning little pin fastened just above her marvelous breasts because that angel had been sent down from heaven to serve breakfast to the guests on the roof terrace of the hotel that, by pure luck, he had chosen as his new home.

Today, Aragona said to himself, the gods had even heard his prayers and given him the gift of a beautiful day.

Of course even if it rained that was no tragedy; in that case, breakfast was served indoors and the guests still enjoyed a magnificent view: sky, sea, and volcano tempest-tossed by the fury of the elements. But nothing could be finer than the sparkling May air, light and sweet-smelling, and the still-gentle sunshine that showered warmth and light on the romantic expanse of rooftops stretching out below.

Unfortunately, though it was just a minor detail, Aragona hadn't yet been able to speak to Irina. His mouth dried up every time, and when he'd tried to ask her for a second cup of coffee, all that had come out of his lips was a horrible rasping stammer that he'd covered up with a fake cough.

As for smiling, though, he did smile at her. More importantly, she smiled at him, splitting open the clouds and brightening his morning with her spectacular blue eyes, with her hair, and with the fine, impalpable blonde fuzz that he could make out on the delicate, fair skin of her forearms.

Living at the Hotel Mediterraneo wasn't cheap, that was true. And the many advantages had to be weighed against the loss of certain freedoms, as well as the worried phone calls from his mother, who scolded him for living out of a suitcase. But to see Irina, who knew what he wanted before he asked for it, who whipped up a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, his standard morning fare, was more than a good enough reason for him to stay. His investigator's intuition had wisely led him to observe that the young lady wore no wedding ring, and that her lithe body—which was none too tall, luckily for Aragona—showed no signs of the lumps and bumps of cellulite. He therefore hoped that she had no boyfriend, though he felt sure she must have suitors, and in great numbers.

Seated at his small table, chosen specially because it was kissed by the rays of his friend the sun, Marco watched the girl dance among pitchers of soy milk and tureens of natural yogurt, as she kept the bounteous buffet properly stocked. It was early and, aside from him, the only guests were a couple of ruddy Germans busy shoveling down food in an indecent manner, and a large northern Italian woman with two horrible boys who were trying to kill each other with their forks.