33

 33

“LET’S HAVE A KICKAROUND,” Stefano suggested to Martino, and that’s how they spent the morning.

Stefano was a tennis instructor at the Press Club in Santa Rita and had been a promising skier. Slow to the point of being lazy, he wasn’t focused on finishing first but on doing things right. His bread and butter had been the slalom, the most technical of descents, and he excelled at it thanks to perfect tracking; he enjoyed the work of his muscles and tendons, the pull of skis that wanted to swerve, the plumes of powder behind him.

“You’ve got what it takes,” his instructor told him, smoothing sunscreen as thick as white lead over his nose. “What you lack is the competitive mentality.” And during training he’d yell, “Move that behind, Acquadro, shift it! Push! Push!”

When he was about fifteen Stefano had stopped racing entirely. He wasn’t interested in competing, a trait that would turn out to be useful in his relationship with Lea. On the weekend he preferred being with girls to being on the slopes.

Having an asthmatic child didn’t make him nostalgic for trekking, long swims, or athletic feats. He never badgered Martino like his father had him.

His father was fanatical about mountaineering and their house had been plastered with photographs of him on rope climbs, at the summit, embarking on a via ferrata, resembling a tiny black insect in a line on a glassy glacier, secured to walls of gneiss or granite, wearing knee-length socks and a cabled woolen jumper, ice-axe and cable hooked to his backpack, lips white with cocoa butter. He’d made Stefano follow him through the same scenery and they, too, had taken a few photos, but for Stefano they had always been inhospitable spaces where he was engaged in a pointless struggle: demonstrating to his father that he was man enough. At eighteen, Stefano had switched from skiing—still a mountain sport—to tennis, which his family considered a hobby for the pretentious, for spoiled brats.

Asthma wasn’t actually incompatible with physical effort. You just had to go slowly. That morning, Stefano realized that Martino had more stamina than usual. He kicked freely and didn’t hold his side or pant when he stopped. Stefano ruffled his hair. “This air is good for you, Mouse. Look how well you’re playing!”

Martino cracked a faint smile, but soon found a way to make matters clear. “I want to go home.”

“Let’s do this: next Wednesday, you and Mamma come to me—take the train.”

He both wanted to and didn’t want to. Going back to Turin for the weekend would mean he got to spend two days in his room but as a guest, with empty spaces for the things he’d taken with him. Seeing his friends, who might have gotten used to being without him—and finally sitting through the journey in reverse, from city to forest, his heart shriveling as it had when they came to Bioglio for the first time and it felt as though it was wilting inside his chest, kilometer after kilometer. He’d thought of the mummies in the Egyptian Museum, their skin turned to leather, and also of the prunes wrapped in Speck that his mother baked in the oven.

“I want to go home and stay there,” he clarified.

“Ratìn . . .”

Martino kicked the ball against the wall of the house so forcefully that the rebound threatened to come straight for him and he made a very undignified leap to dodge it.

Stefano looked at him to see if there was scope for downplaying the situation. There wasn’t.

In that black mood, Martino remembered the teacher who was keeping him there worrying—shuttling back and forth with things to eat and drink—and he poured his discontent out on her. He was this close to telling his father about her.

“Let’s do something nice this afternoon. Come on, there’s that monastery between farms that we wanted to visit. Your mother says the church is Romanesque.”

The secret made his tongue tingle.

“Would you like that?”

I’d like to off-load the teacher, and make myself look good for having discovered her. I’d like to get out of here and go to Piero’s house until I can convince you to let me stay in Turin.

“On the way back we’ll get some hot chocolate.”

Martino made up his mind. Blabbing about it, no: that wouldn’t be honorable. He’d go up there to the teacher one more time and tell her he didn’t feel like continuing to . . . what? Cover for her. Bring her food and water. She’d have to make do.

“Hey! What’s the matter with you?”

“That’s okay, that thing—the monastery.”

“Come on then, let’s get washed up.”

Martino continued to mull things over. What if the teacher had vanished in retaliation? He would look like a moron. A traitor. Double traitor. Like someone who’d betrayed the teacher and everyone else. Even if something awful had happened, it would be his fault. Why didn’t you say something right away, Martino? He didn’t know why. Because he was so surprised. Unsettled. What had his mother said? “Moral dilemma.” But also for a bit of adventure. Because he was bored, because he was sad, because he was angry with his parents and wanted to keep something from them. Now, though, he felt impatient, fed up, and he knew the time had come to put a stop to it.