45

 45

MARTINO HURRIED toward the village, disturbed by the teacher’s story.

Her mother had vanished from one day to the next, but how did she know she hadn’t gone away on purpose? That she’d ceased to exist and was to be found nowhere on earth? He imagined Silvia looking for her mother and the arms of her grandmother replacing those of her mother, and then himself not hugging his mother, whose red hair always ended up in his eyes or even in his mouth, but his maternal grandmother.

Maybe her grandparents had taken little Silvia to the cemetery, in which case she must have seen the coffin lowered into the ground, or at least the tombstone with her mother’s photo in an oval frame. Once awakened, he couldn’t get that morbid daydream out of his head, and he kept on walking without paying attention. He passed the dogwood and found himself about a dozen meters from someone facing the other way.

The boys from the café were there. He hid behind a bush, seized by suffocating anxiety. They’d catch up with him and tear him apart, the idiots. Where did they think they were going? Did they know about Silvia’s hut? He forced himself to stare at something small and close to calm down, but all that red in his eyes wasn’t helping—it was an exciting color, a warning color. Those three, though, weren’t moving, or rather they weren’t walking in any particular direction and, oddly, they weren’t speaking either.

Martino saw their elbows shaking vigorously, as when Lea was whisking egg whites and it made her whole back quiver. Now and again one of them would let out a grunt or gulp some air and hold it in his chest. They’d stuck a page torn out of a newspaper to a tree trunk, showing a shape, a woman in a bikini posing as a mermaid on a rock.

Martino finally noticed that the three boys were looking from the photo back to their loosened trousers where their willies were hanging free. He’d have done better to take that chance to scurry off, but he was riveted by the spectacle of their joint masturbation. He was still too young for erections, nocturnal emissions, and a broken voice, but he knew something about it all anyway. He guessed, for example, that the kisses between Corto Maltese and Sandokan weren’t the end of their amorous adventures and that sleeping wasn’t the only thing adults did in bed.

One of the boys yelped as he stopped squeezing himself and bent forward to avoid spunking on his shoes. He wiped his fingers on the moss, on his socks. Get away without being seen or heard, Martino decided. But the boy, the one with the horse’s face and a tuft of flattened hair on one side, began recovering from his trance and looking around to be sure no one was about to surprise them. Martino made the leaves crackle, jumped and stumbled, and the other boy reassembled the fragments behind the dogwood until they came into focus.

“Hey you, what are you doing here? Are you here to spy on us?” He looked as scandalized as a priest.

“What’s going on?” another one echoed.

“Turin followed us.”

“I did not,” he defended himself.

“Turin!” thundered the one who seemed to be the leader. He stood in front of Martino, legs spread, black curls stuck to his forehead with sweat.

“Torino likes salami, guys. He likes bechamel sauce. You wanna try it, right?”

The other two laughed coarsely.

“His mother taught him. Even though she’s married she always invites someone else to supper. Does everyone do that in Turin?”

“Gianni is our relative,” Martino explained, but they ignored him.

“It’s disgusting! With that cleft he looks like he’s got an arse on his chin,” the third one butted in.

The Leader contradicted him. “Leave it—I’d do her.”

“Fuck off,” Martino burst out.

The Leader opened his eyes theatrically and turned to Tufty. “Bring him over here.”

“I have asthma! I have asthma! You can’t. I’ll die!” Martino panted, and while they dithered the memory of Silvia twirling the blanket to confuse the wild boar flashed before him. Instantly he remembered the dead creature under the dogwood. He turned and it was still there, a scrap of fur lying on clover, tiny fangs, yellow chinstrap, pink gums, and now a few flies too. Overcoming his repulsion, he grabbed its tail and felt the tiny bones under its fur. He whirled it once to gain momentum and then threw it toward the Leader, shouting, “Watch out, it bites!”

The Leader staggered backward and ended up with his bottom flat on the ground. The carcass landed on his legs only a whisker away from his open fly. The other two stared speechless with disgust, but Martino was already flying down the slope, nearly twisting his ankle with every step, scattering twigs and leaves on all sides. Wisely, he stifled a victorious smile.