59

 59

A PENSIONER OUT MUSHROOMING found her handbag at around six in the morning buried under a layer of chestnuts on the left bank of the Cervo. In it there were soaked notebooks, a pencil case, a wallet containing all her ID, keys, and throat lozenges. No newspaper—who knows where that ended up, blown away by the wind, disintegrated in the rain. Relative to the teacher’s house, it was more or less on the way to the village.

Anselmo rushed to the spot together with the fire brigade, but there were no further traces of her. Days must have passed, and one couldn’t be sure if the teacher had kept going that way or in another direction—to take the train, perhaps. Not even the dogs, put to work, could smell anything. Nevertheless, they expanded the search and spent the entire morning on it, after which Anselmo decided that it was worth trying in Bioglio as planned. So they only arrived—he, Gemma, Giulia, and Corrado—at lunchtime. They parked in a relative’s courtyard and an exhausted Anselmo, heels blistered, hurried out to meet the team.

A few meters below the road two boys were fighting on the shady bank of the river. Anselmo called out to them but it was no good. One of them was smaller, a cockerel’s thin neck sticking out of his jacket as it was being tugged; the other, strong and curly-headed, had him on the ground and was kneeing him in the stomach. Anselmo got to them in four leaps, put his large hands on the older boy, and shoved him over.

The Leader was ranting, “Hey, hey!” but when he recognized Anselmo he shut up. He knew the man, and more than that, the man knew his mother and father. He was helping Turin, coughing and gasping, to sit down. When all was said and done it didn’t seem like anything that bad had happened to him apart from a punch that had smashed his lips against his teeth. Turin stared up at him, eyes glittering with hate, fists clenched, mouth swollen and flecked with blood. The Leader thought he was about to cry, but he took his inhaler from his pocket and greedily breathed in a stream of his medication. So it was true that the little pip-squeak was handicapped, the Leader noted.

Anselmo pulled the boy to his feet, put a hand on his shoulder, and started interrogating them. The two rivals retorted, heads down, voices low, replies blunt and in their view dignified.

“You really are a big coward, Walter. I’m eager to see what your father thinks about this. You can be sure I’ll call him,” Anselmo threatened. He then turned to Martino. “You go on home. Tell your mother to put some ice on you.”

“My mother’s gone out.”

“Oh, damn! You two are wasting a lot of my time. I’ll take you to my wife. Buzz off, Walter,” he ordered, and he left dragging Martino behind him, not stopping until he was knocking at a door. After a few seconds he knocked again. A woman hurried to open it. Martino had seen her around, with her sharp face and glasses as round as the lights on a locomotive.

Anselmo pushed him in. “He’s been beaten up. He needs ice and probably something sweet to drink. He’s also short of breath. Will you see to him?”

“You’re Lea’s son, from Turin, right? My goodness.” The woman lifted his chin and studied the bruise on his lip from behind her enormous lenses. Martino thought she was the big man’s wife but then she said, “Look, Luisa. Look what Anselmo’s brought us,” and led him into the kitchen. There, seated at the table, was Giulia, eyes bulging, mouth open as in a comic strip. Meanwhile Martino connected the dots: the big man, Anselmo, was Giulia’s father, the formidable lady with the brown hair must be her mother, and the baby dunking his bread in water and dribbling it all over the tablecloth might be her brother.

“Martino?” Giulia said, and from then on the explanations came together. Giulia and Martino were in the same class; the older lady—thin and as straight as an arrow—was Giulia’s grandmother; someone had found Silvia’s handbag; Anselmo and the others were getting ready to beat the shores of the River Quargnasca; Martino had been tussling with an older boy, Walter, who was identified as the son of a well-known person (“A bully from day one,” Gemma remarked). Martino’s mother had gone to town in Gianni’s car to do something he couldn’t explain, some errand, no doubt.

What Martino took care not to reveal was that he’d been walking up and down the main road for hours to make sure he didn’t miss Giulia, and that’s how he ran into the Leader. He’d tried to get away, but this time the other boy wasn’t about to be surprised. He’d come up to him and grabbed him by the jacket collar, almost choking him, dragged him down the bank, stones hammering against Martino’s sacrum, his lungs unable to keep pace with the galloping of his heart. At that moment, though, it all seemed worth it because his embarrassment could pass for the demeanor of a boxer, one who’d been honorably beaten. A few glances of silent admiration came from Giulia: rays of sun filtering through a closed shutter.

Luisa gave him a cup of Ovaltine to drink and treated his lip with ice and antiseptic cream.

Giulia went out to the kitchen garden and Martino, hesitant, lingered at the French doors, the external stairs, and then by the gate, finally reaching her where she stood amid the last yellow blooms of the Jerusalem artichoke.

“Let’s go to the chapel,” she suggested.