Vango (8 page)

She went to kneel down next to Vango. His heavy eyelids had closed again.

It was for the sake of this little one that she had chosen to forget everything. So that he could live.

Vango, in his drowsy state, was trying to remember what had happened to him in those final hours.

His memories were fuzzy. The sequence of events had become muddled in his mind. He could recall the boat, the journey in the mist, some men in black, but already he couldn’t remember whether there was just one or several of them, if it had taken place at night or in broad daylight. Above these hazy images floated a single voice that resonated clearly. A deep voice in the light.

A voice that made this strange remark:
I haven’t met any children for a long time now.

But a few hours later, when he was able to get up and sit at the table with Mademoiselle, he decided to draw a line. His adventure seemed too much like a dream that was already dissolving.

All he had left was a big bump and a strange sense of nostalgia.

He ate heartily. The doctor turned up just as it was time for dessert. He started off by feeling the back of Vango’s head.

“It’s almost gone now.”

Yes, for Vango, it had almost gone.

“Would you like some soup?” asked Mademoiselle, as if the matter were in question. “There’s a big bowl left.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like to impose,” declared the doctor, already tying a napkin around his neck. “I really shouldn’t.”

The doctor sat down. It was hard to tell whether it was the scent of the soup or Mademoiselle’s smile that most made his eyes shine.

And then, at the end, after some
vin d’orange
, which he had gotten Vango to taste, when they had all laughed at the stories Basilio always carried in his doctor’s bag, and when Vango had almost put that bizarre experience out of his mind for once and for all, the doctor said one sentence that changed everything:

“Something very sad has happened, which is that Pippo Troisi — you know who I mean, the man with the capers — has disappeared.”

Vango thought he couldn’t have heard properly.

“What did you just say?”

“Pippo Troisi. His wife, Pina, has been crying for three days now. He’s disappeared.”

Vango closed his eyes.

“I’d never have thought Giuseppina would be so upset about it,” the doctor went on. “To tell you the truth, she’s such a force to be reckoned with that when it first happened, some people even claimed she’d eaten him.”

The doctor smiled. Vango got up suddenly and slipped outside.

He took a few steps in the fading sunlight and stared into the distance. Behind a long and bumpy island lying like a pregnant woman in the water, he could make out another island. This island was called Alicudi. Its last inhabitants had long since abandoned it. People said it had been deserted for at least twenty years.

“Vango?”

Concerned, the doctor had followed the boy outside.

“You must rest for two or three days more.”

“All right. I’ll rest. I’m coming. . . .”

The doctor started to go back inside the house.

“Doctor . . .”

“Yes?”

“What’s that island called?”

“Over there, the farthest one?”

The doctor squinted as he stared out to sea.

“Alicudi.”

“Just that?”

“Yes, just that.”

“Before, a long time ago, it had another name . . . in the time of the pirates.”

“Yes, that’s true. It had an Arabic name.”

“And what was it?”

“Arkudah.”

Arkudah, seven days later

Vango climbed the final ten meters.

If he approached from this side, nobody would be expecting him. He could explore on the sly.

The swallows were practicing their final arrow formations around him, before the great migration. Like a magnet, Vango attracted the swallows and all the other birds too.

One winter, when he was six or seven years old, he had rescued a swallow that had crashed into the windows of a deserted house. He had looked after it for six months, keeping its wing in a splint made out of a vine shoot. It had spent the winter without traveling, fed on crushed midges and butter. And then it had flown off in April, when its companions returned from exile.

Since that time, all swallows seemed to feel a mysterious gratitude toward Vango. A dancing gratitude that brushed against him at a hundred miles an hour, whipping up breezes in his direction.

Sometimes Vango found them a bit too close for comfort. “All right, all right,” he would say to them when they flew between his legs. Swallows grow to a ripe old age — much older than the oldest horse — and their affection for the boy showed no signs of abating.

Vango turned back toward the sea. In the middle of the huge expanse, he could make out a sail in the distance. It was the big merchant ship on its way to Palermo, the same ship that had dropped him off when it passed close to the island of Arkudah.

Just as the vessel was leaving the port of Malfa, Vango had jumped aboard. The captain was a Frenchman. He had been taken aback by this boy who spoke to him in his own language, with no trace of an accent and a refined way of speaking that seemed to date back to another era. Vango explained that his uncle lived on the island they could see across the way and that he’d missed the fisherman who usually took him there every Sunday.

“But it’s not Sunday today,” the captain had pointed out, “it’s Wednesday.”

Vango had confidently stared him out.

“Wednesday is called Sunday over here,” he had explained very seriously. “You’re not in France now, remember!”

In just a few days, Vango had caught up in the game of lying. He was enjoying beginner’s luck.

He spent the few hours of the crossing explaining to the crew that his uncle lived on the island with a bear and a small monkey. Vango had never been so talkative in all his life. When a Russian sailor inquired where the monkey came from, Vango told him, in Russian, that the monkey had been found in a barrel that had washed up on the pebbles.

“You speak Russian?”

Vango hadn’t replied, as he was too busy explaining how the bear had swum to the island. It was hard for him to resist the thrill of talking complete and utter nonsense.

He had left a note for Mademoiselle, letting her know that he would be away for a few days because he was going to “court somebody.” He still believed this meant he was going to give a hand, which, for once, wasn’t far from the truth. Pippo Troisi was in danger.

Above all, his real goal was to understand if what he thought he’d seen on this island really existed.

But when he got to the top, there was nothing.

He looked around and couldn’t see any sign of human life. He’d been expecting to find a dirty encampment, a few caves: the pirates’ hideout he had imagined as he had repeated the name of Arkudah over and over again.

As far as he was concerned, the man he had talked to in the dazzling light of that morning back then was the pirate chief, and Pippo Troisi was their prisoner.

But there wasn’t a single three-cornered pirate’s or corsair’s hat on the island, no black flag with a skull and crossbones, no rude loud parrot, no human skull carved into an ashtray.

There were just stones and shrubs.

He couldn’t quite admit it to himself, but Vango felt let down.

“Of course, I knew it.”

He kept repeating those words over and over again, and for once in his life, he sounded just like any other ten-year-old boy.

He headed off down the gentle slope. A single tree had sprung up among the rocks. He decided to establish his base there and to draw up his plan to leave this island and get back home to Mademoiselle. He leaned against the trunk and stared out to sea.

The green terrace where he was sitting was in perfect contrast to the glassy mirror of the sea. Suddenly, in the distance, along the line separating the grass from the water, Vango saw a burst of color. He thought it must be a sail on the waves. Screwing up his eyes, he recognized a flower. A blue flower just like the one he had picked last time, the flower that proved he wasn’t on his island. He stood up, strode the five paces that separated him from the flower, and crouched over it.

Down on his knees, he found a lot more than he had bargained for.

It wasn’t a pirates’ hideout but a garden. An enchanted garden on a desert island.

Just below Vango, the valley looked like the palm of a hand. Mysterious stone architecture framed the lush vegetation, and this hidden paradise was surrounded by a blue haze. The heat of the sun was causing steam to rise up from the garden soil.

Vango had never seen or dreamed of such a place. He felt as if he’d been born between two stones and all he knew about was broom, dry herbs, and the thorns of prickly pear trees. Whereas here, thriving hedgerows alternated with perfectly kept squares of lawn, alongside strips of vegetable garden embroidered onto the black earth, while semi-invisible buildings were tucked away beneath the palm trees. Two low towers appeared like rocks, perched over the greenery.

And yet there was no human presence on the garden’s pathways, not a single being, not a voice. There was no trace of these green-fingered pirates who knew how to make the stone burst into bloom.

Vango decided to take advantage of there being no one around by heading down to take a closer look.

Where had they locked up Pippo Troisi?

Vango immediately recognized the smell of jasmine and the sound of the water. This was where they had led him during that gap in time. Back then, he hadn’t been able to see the place at all, but scent and noise can mark the memory forever.

Vango slid beneath the lemon trees and walked, crouching down, along a row of late tomatoes. The air in the garden’s pathways was exceptionally fresh. There was water everywhere. It circulated through a system of hollowed-out wooden pipes, came to a stop in the stone troughs, climbed by the magic of mechanics to the top of a reed wheel, and set off again in a myriad of thin babbling channels.

Vango couldn’t believe his eyes. This island of Alicudi had been deserted because it had no water source, no protected port, because nothing would grow and even the mules died of heat and boredom. And yet here he was discovering a place that was more clement, damp, and fertile than anything he could ever have imagined.

Pippo Troisi was sitting alone on a chair, tugging at the loops of a big net that completely covered him. Vango caught him unawares, out in the bright sunshine of the paved pebble terrace. Troisi was concentrating hard on the task at hand, sometimes even using his teeth.

Lying on the ground watching him, Vango felt sickened by the bad luck of this man who had dreamed of freedom in Zanzibar but who instead found himself living like a bird in a cage, trapped beneath this fishing net. The young boy started crawling between the rosemary bushes before coming out into the open, his stomach flat on the stone path.

“Signor Troisi . . .”

The farmer didn’t hear him. Vango kept edging forward. Pippo Troisi almost had his back to him.

For the second time, Vango tried to save his life. Even though there wasn’t a sound in the garden, Vango was still on his guard. He knew that the prisoner wouldn’t be left alone for long. The pirates would be back. He needed to act quickly.

Troisi felt the net slipping between his fingers. Twice, he tried to hold on, but the movement was too strong.

“Hey!”

He ended up putting his foot down in the middle of the net to jam it. A sharp tug released the hemp string and lifted the net.

“Over here! Come this way,” a voice whispered.

Pippo Troisi turned around and saw Vango at his feet.

“Don’t be afraid; we’ll escape together. . . .”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to help you.”

“No, Vango.”

“Follow me, Signor Troisi. Come on.”

Troisi was writhing on his chair as if he needed help.

“Go away, Vango!”

“Cheer up — I came just for you.”

Vango grabbed hold of Troisi’s wrist and wouldn’t let go.

“Leave me alone! Go back home!” said Pippo.

His face was twisted with fear.

“Stop, Vango!”

But the boy had decided to save Pippo Troisi at any cost. He tugged with all his might.

“Never!” shouted Pippo. “Never!”

And, with his free hand, Pippo grabbed hold of the back of his chair, hesitated a second because he felt sorry for what he was about to do, and then, closing his eyes so as not to see, he hurled the chair at Vango.

“I’m sorry, little one. I did tell you. I gave you fair warning.”

Pippo picked up the chair. Trembling, he sat back down and looked at Vango, who had blacked out on the terrace.

“Never . . .” he said again. “No one will ever tear me away from here.”

His only fear was having to leave this place one day.

Pippo folded up the net he was busy mending. He turned it into a makeshift bed to transport Vango’s body. He pulled out a cloth that was tucked into his belt, went to wet it in a fountain where papyrus reeds grew tall, and returned to lay it on the child’s forehead.

“I didn’t want to hit you.”