61

 61

GIULIA HAD FOUND a stick and she was tapping it against the stones “because there are vipers, though they’re probably already hibernating.” She was agile and the tendons of her calves darted, tight cords under her skin. Martino had a hard time keeping up with her. Side by side at the little chapel, they met the fixed, vaguely bewildered look of the Madonna and Child.

“So why are they black?”

“Well, it’s the Madonna of Oropa, who is actually a wooden statue. Have you ever been to the sanctuary?”

“No.”

“It’s up the mountain. Inside the church is the Black Madonna. I don’t really know why they made her black, though. There’s also an erratic boulder.”

“Those rocks dragged by glaciers?”

“Yes, exactly! The Celts adored them. Until the nineteenth century, women who wanted children went to the church to bump their bums against the rock because they thought it would bring good luck. That’s what my mother told me.”

The conversation made Giulia turn red with embarrassment. “Come on! Let’s keep going,” she said hurriedly.

“Well no, no, really.” Martino stopped her. “Why don’t we go and see Maria’s goats instead?”

“I don’t like her. She kills everyone’s animals.”

“But you eat chicken and rabbit.” Anxiety was making him unpleasant.

“They’re already dead. I’d never kill with my own hands, that’s for sure. Look, I want to go to the top. You don’t have to come.”

“No! Well, no, I’m not coming. Because of my asthma.”

“Oh.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.” He was filled with shame. To safeguard his secret he had to pretend to be useless, someone who not only let himself get beaten up but couldn’t even climb a hill.

“Okay, we’ll see each other later,” she decided.

“Giulia.”

“What is it?”

“Do you want to see my room?”

“Sure. Wait for me there. I’ll have someone show me where your house is. Actually up there is a place where deer sleep and I want to find it. I think you’d like it. Too bad about your asthma.”

“Okay then. Bye,” he said darkly, and he started going down, dragging his feet. If Giulia unearthed Silvia she would hate him forever. But maybe his things would escape her notice, at least at first. Well, surely not The History of the West. Damn it.

He heard the grass moving behind him and turned to see Giulia hurrying to reach him, her hair flying around her face. “I changed my mind.”

They gave each other lopsided smiles out of shyness.

As they headed toward the village, Martino managed it so that his hand brushed Giulia’s as if by chance, knuckle to knuckle. He felt like whistling.

Soon afterward, though, his bedroom with her in it seemed bare and full of the wrong things, at the mercy of who knows what: it was as if he himself were standing there in his underwear. He showed her his comic books and Giulia made a show of appreciating them, despite the fact that pistols, killers, and stormy seas were boy-things.

“He’s good, this Hugo Pratt, but what an odd name,” she commented.

“It is a pen name, and also I think his father was English.”

It seemed she was only interested in the drawings. With her index finger she traced the figures as if learning how to redraw them. “Two lines, bam, bam,” she whispered. “But why does he make their foreheads stick out so much and their eyes so sunken, sort of like monkeys . . . When I draw, I like making rounded foreheads.”

Martino felt hurt and he picked up on a little spitefulness. To him it was truly presumptuous to criticize Hugo Pratt’s foreheads.

“Cherubs have rounded foreheads,” he sneered.

“So what?”

He improvised, saying whatever came to mind. “So these are war stories! About pirates!”

“You’re right,” she admitted, catching him off guard. “It’s clear that you have to adapt your style.”

They didn’t know what else to say to each other. Something stood between them and they didn’t know how to get rid of it for good. So Martino alluded to the teacher once more, like someone who almost wants to be found out. The tongue finds the tooth that hurts: Lea was always saying that.

Seated on his bed feeling contrite, Giulia confessed something important: by now she had no more illusions. Silvia was dead. She didn’t expect her to come home and was trying to accept it.

Martino didn’t understand. He wanted her to go on hoping and tried to convince her to do so. The teacher was still alive, she must be for sure, and he continued in that vein, mulishly, until Giulia became angry.

“Stop it!”

“But I really believe it.”

“You’re just saying that for the sake of it, to be nice.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“So you think someone can walk around for days and days without being found? Alone, with no money, no handbag? Didn’t you hear that they found her bag with everything in it, even her wallet? What’s she eating, according to you? Fried air?”

“Maybe someone . . .”

“Stop it!”

Her eyes looked so upset that he shut up in a hurry. She left without even saying goodbye.