The Collector of Names (18 page)

"What if"

"Questions kill actions," said Aco. "If we die, he’ll probably die too. But then there will be so many others dead too Let’s leave that now and go."

*

Ana turned round. The shining roofs seemed so beautiful and above all inhabited, as opposed to the pine-trees around her. Only five lights were on and she remembered that when she had left Aco’s house she had not even looked at the light switch. Maybe so that she would see her way back. Didn’t they use to leave a lit candle in the window for travellers and sailors returning home? She trembled and looked around. Crickets were singing and every now and again she could hear a strange noise which she ascribed to birds. Was it much further and above all: was it going to get even
more
isolated?

Looking at the village, she thought about going back. Luka was probably still pottering around and she could go back and wait under the light. Nobody would even notice her escape and humiliating return.

They would send her to bed because she was a woman.

She knew that was her last chance to go back but she chose to go on.

*

His father had deserted him. No, not for ever, fathers always came back.

Max remembered previous occasions on which his father had left him, particularly one of them, when he had tied his hands behind his back – just like now! – and shut him in a wardrobe. Max did not dare even sob, let alone try to loosen the belt around his wrists. When his father finally returned, he pulled Max out and when he saw the belt, he kicked him and gave him a few blows on the head and then threw him back into the wardrobe. He told him never ever to forget the following lesson: he had to learn to save himself and not wait for anyone else’s help!

Aha, his father was testing him again! This time he’d be ready for him! His father would be pleased with him! He would wait for his almighty father to come surrounded by light whilst his nameless son sits in the darkness. Father, big and mighty like a mountain, so that the ground rumbled under his feet!

Max would be ready for him. He would not disappoint him again.

He started jerking wildly to release his bonds as quickly as possible.

*

They did not talk on their way through the woods. They walked very fast, from time to time almost running. Raf started off at full speed, then stopped himself, thinking that the old man would not be able to keep up with him. But after a while, it was Raf who was out of breath and looking at the old man’s back. Aco kept up the same rhythm and proved to be very fit.

Finally, they stopped at the top of a hill, out of breath. Below them shone the lights of the campsite.

"Everything is quiet," said Raf.

"Yes, we got here in time!"

They saw the receptionist dozing at his desk, scratching his ear from time to time.

"We may have another five, ten minutes. Listen! Can you see that cliff? On the right, a short distance from the campsite?"

Raf nodded. The cliff looked like a slide pointing the wrong way. It slowly ascended from the flat part of the island towards the sea and then stopped suddenly.

"He can’t go past there along the sea. It’s all sharp rocks sticking out of the sea around there. He’ll have to turn towards the island and cross the cliff on its middle part. That’s where we’ll wait for him."

"The plan" said Raf.

"Don’t expect too much. I’ll go and stand at the top of the cliff and I’ll whistle old tunes quietly. When the thing crosses the cliff it’ll see me and come to me to ask my name. I’ll try to distract him while you run from behind that last tree there before the clearing and stick this in his back."

He pulled out the knife and let the blade catch the moonlight.

Raf swallowed thickly. The plan! The plan! How proud and redeeming that word sounded! As if to save them it would be enough just having a plan, without actually carrying it out.

"I"

" shall do that, is what you say to yourself. Repeat that while you’re waiting, repeat and repeat! And then
do it!"

"But"

"DO IT! If you don’t, I’ll die first, then you, then the whole of the campsite, the village in the morning, everybody on the ferry at midday, the mainland in the afternoon and in the end, the whole world. Who the hell would shoot at a polite child, who walks the streets asking people their names and then thanks them. And leaves death behind. It isn’t a child, it isn’t alive, it is a walking virus! Just think that and you’ll do it!"

Raf pictured the girl from the ferry instead of a crowd of people. He was talking to her uncle while she was waiting in the village. Maybe she was even asleep? He imagined her in bed, a sheet pulled up to her neck, her right hand lying on top of it. Next to her stood the child looking at her. She opened her eyes and he asked her her name.

Raf trembled.

"I’ll do it," he said.

"Good. My only worry is this. The thing has special abilities for sensing things. And when you come near him he may catch your thoughts. Look at his back, concentrate on something banal, run towards him and stab him with all your strength. Wait, I’ve got an even better idea!"

He got up and started looking at the trees. He cut off the longest and straightest branch he could find, hewed it roughly, cut off most of the top and made a five inch incision in the middle. He pushed the knife handle into the gap, took off his shoes, pulled out the shoe laces and wrapped them around the wood above the knife handle.

"Here, a spear. It’ll give you a distance of two metres between you and it. Maybe those two metres mean nothing, maybe everything!"

He gave Raf the spear and Raf grasped it with both hands. The bark scratched his palms and the sap on the cuts to the wood felt cold.

He looked at Aco’s bare feet. Aco smiled:

"Don’t worry. If you do your job properly I’ll gladly walk to the village barefoot. If not, I won’t need them anymore. I may be running around with an axe in my hands or I’ll go and kiss the one in the woods. Or whatever else the loss of my name would make me do. I certainly won’t be worrying about my shoes."

He looked at Raf and put his hand out:

"It was a pleasure," he said, "whatever the outcome."

Raf felt a big lump in his throat.

They shook hands.

"What about"

Aco looked up. The child couldn’t be seen anywhere.

"What about?"

"If I go and stand on the cliff? You’ve got more experience, more training, you"

"Yes, I’ve killed more people then you can imagine. But it’s more dangerous up there. Just look at the distance you’d have to run and judging by your figure you’re no sprinter. I may have to tell him my name. Whereas you just run and run. When the spear stops, you’re done."

"What if he really does ask your name?"

"Are you worried you’ll have another madman to cope with?" He looked towards the sea, "don’t worry. Have you ever seen a cook around here prepare a fish before cooking it? She cuts it open and puts it on a rock for the waves to rinse out all the entrails and blood. If needs be, the sea down there can wash my sins away."

"But"

"No buts. This is a private thing I’ve been putting off for fifty years. I’m going up there and that’s it. In addition"

He smiled cheekily. How inappropriate such a smile seemed to Raf on the wrinkled face, at least forty years too late. Is it possible that the brain sometimes forgets what sort of body it’s in?

" if we swapped roles and we failed and I was on my own, I’d die of fear."

"And I"

"And you’ll do everything to the best of your abilities and how it should be done!"

"You think so?"

"Yes, I believe in you."

Aco turned and stepped out of the trees. He would go and leave Raf on his own. On his own, with Aco’s trust.

"You’re lying," Raf half shouted after Aco, who looked back and smiled.

"Even if that was true I wouldn’t say so now."

He nodded and walked in the direction of the cliff. Raf looked after him, knowing that the talking was over. It was time for action now.

7

The pensioners lined up in front of the monument. Luka examined the squad: Adriano had put weight on and could no longer do up his jacket (he had tried to stitch it together but a centimetre-wide strip of his white T-shirt could be seen between the stitches) and to top it all he had hung ammunition belts around his neck like those guys shown on the telly, for which he received a severe reprimand. Miro did not hold himself straight enough and Bruno was perfect as usual, apart from still being out of breath after having gone to Luka’s house to look for the girl. He could not find her and Luka got worried. Could she have done something as stupid as going ahead towards the villa on her own instead of waiting for them? Luka and Aco had been through a lot together and the last thing Luka wanted was to be accused of not having looked after Aco’s niece properly. He felt guilty about having left her waiting in front of his door for so long whilst he was gathering his clothing and weapons. When he had finally got ready and stepped out of the house she was nowhere to be seen. He had sent Bruno to look for her and they had lost another ten minutes. Now it really was time to go.

He stood in the middle of the squad, turned towards the men and shouted:

"M4A3E8?"

"Ready!" shouted Bruno.

"M2?"

"Ready!" said Miro.

Luka nodded. Good.

"M 1919A4?"

Silence. He looked towards Adriano, who stared ahead with his lips tightly shut. Miro leant towards him and whispered: "M 1919A4?"

Miro had to repeat it in a much louder voice before Adriano replied with a shout:

"READY!"

Good, Luka was pleased. Maybe he should make an up-beat speech before they started their rescue mission?

*

Alfonz was becoming sadder and sadder.

*

Raf stood under a thick branch, keeping the spear close to him and watched Aco at the top of the cliff. Aco had his right side turned towards him and did not throw even one glance at Raf’s hiding place, his attention being constantly divided between two points: the part of the beach where the thing should first appear and the distant light of a fishing boat on the horizon.

To be there! thought Raf. Somewhere else, in the middle of the sea, in the middle of a job, in the middle of everyday life.

The child would come and he would kill it. And then it would all be over. They would have survived and could go home.

That was how it was going to be.

The man at the top of the cliff was not whistling, he had probably just joked about that.

*

Aco looked at the point of light in the distance. It seemed to him as if their positions were reversed and that he was approaching the town, but this time the lights were not scattered like stars, but concentrated in one single burning point, on a spot big enough for just one person. He remembered his woman, but not just her photograph in the kitchen, as he usually did. Pre-battle nerves? Saying goodbye to his dearest? No, he felt more like he was just about to do something he had been delaying for such a long time that it had turned into a moral obligation. He tried to stop remembering her but without success. Memories of women are like mice, they can squeeze in anywhere. Even when they are women from other countries, other times and – this was how it felt at that moment – from other lives. Even when they were dead.

There, beyond that light, was Africa with its desert sands and unpronounceable place names. He had lived through all those events, met all those people and now he was where he had first started.

He looked down, towards the sea. It was a long fall. After that first experience which had got him into all this, he was no longer afraid of heights. The dark rocks below him surrounded by the golden sand looked like flowers. Where the sand ended, a path went up some terraced stairs to the grass. There was no way he could miss that thing in its dark clothes on the light background. He expected it to enter his visual field in a narrow passage between two rocks, which looked somehow lonely because of the distance between them and the other rocks lying in the sea, the surface of which was periodically raised by the waves.

He wished that moment could become eternity. The night, the silence, the sounds of the trees in the distance, the light on the ship, the splashing of the waves. Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing superfluous.

He took off his beret and rolled it between his fingers. Its material full of memories. No wonder it made his head feel so heavy. He threw it towards the sea and it flew off in a wide arch. He did not have enough strength to stop his eyes following it, but luckily the darkness soon swallowed it.

He listened. There were no sounds coming from the village. Even if the rescuers took off at that very moment they would be too late. He felt guilty and could not find anything that would absolve him of that guilt. Really, he had asked for help before he had known what the enemy would look like and if the ambush failed, they would come, find a helpless child and tell him their names. After all the battles they had fought together they would just utter their names and die. Adriano had once been captured and tortured, they had even burst his eardrum with a handle of a gun, but he had not told them a thing. This time he would be asked a polite question and he would not be able to resist answering.