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  Andría’s silence was heavier than an oath, and it was with this weight between them that they finished clearing the hedge and made a huge pile of the brambles so they could dry out in the sun before being burnt a few days later.

  Andría spent the whole afternoon turning over Nicola’s words in his mind, unsure whether to believe him really capable of doing what he had threatened. Too discreet to tell his mother, he was, despite his brother’s opinion, sufficiently wide awake to understand that it would not be a good idea to discuss the matter with his father or with his friends at the bar. He realized not for the first time that Maria was the only person he could speak to openly, as he watched her sitting on the raffia seat of a chair specially made for her, as by the grudging light of an overcast sky she sewed on a pocket with the expertise of a professional seamstress.

  “What do you think he might do?”

  “Andrí, he’s not that stupid, your brother. He talks like that because he’s angry, but he has nothing positive to get his teeth into.”

  “You haven’t seen him, he can’t sleep . . .”

  The tawny shape of Mosè was curled up by the empty grate, a survivor of witchcraft sleeping placidly to the sound of the voices of the two young people, exploiting the absence of Bonaria to enjoy the few furtive hours allowed by Maria indoors. The animal’s uncritical love seemed to Maria the only thing in the world she had never needed to earn. To calm his nerves Andría went over to bend down and bury his face, with its first traces of a beard, in the dog’s soft fur.

  “I don’t believe he’d ever inflict damage to get even for an injury done to him,” Maria said, “but if you think he would, you should mention it to your father.”

  Had Andría been certain he would have acted at once, even at the cost of a couple of kicks up the bum from his brother, who notwithstanding his seventeen years would have been only too happy to administer them; but as he was by no means certain, he decided that even with all that smoke there was not enough evidence of a fire, and so without realizing it, for the last time in his life, he made a mockery of his own better instinct.

  A man who values the respect of others may perform good acts gratuitously, but bad acts must be performed out of necessity. If Nicola Bastíu had been asked to account for himself at that moment, he would have had no hesitation in attributing what he was about to do to the necessity that would justify it. Even so he decided to act at night, darkness being already in its way a form of mitigation. He had little time for carrying out what he had planned, since his family thought he had gone to see his friends at the bar, while his friends thought he was still at home. The weather was very much on his side that evening: the air was dry, and a warm wind had got up from the south and was lifting the grass with rough gusts and caressing Porresu’s ripe grain with the deceitful hand of a shepherd in a slaughterhouse. There was enough moonlight to see by, but knowing this was not necessarily to his advantage, Nicola moved fast, trying to make the most of the darkest shadows cast by the wall and the trees, and with instinctive respect for the nocturnal silences of the countryside. He needed to drag some of the dry brambles he had recently piled up with Andría over the stone wall, relocating them to the southernmost point of Porresu’s farm; it was the only way to be sure that once they burst into flames, the wind would carry the fire in the direction that would cause the greatest possible damage. Everything had to be done quickly and with great care, because Nicola wanted no trace of the brambles dragged across the soft earth to make it easy to detect the perpetrator of the act. Porresu must suspect that he had been had, but not be so certain of it as to be able to bring in the law, exactly as in the case of his own action against the Bastíus four years before. With a wind like that, the fire could easily have been started by flames from the field of a neighbour, perhaps one of those whose recently burnt stubble had been smouldering angrily on the blackened earth. It was always possible that the stubble had not burnt out properly. It was possible that the wind had got stronger. It was also possible that someone you had dismissed as a fool was showing you up as a fool in return. Not the likeliest story, but Nicola counted on it as he lit the tinder to set fire to the piled-up brambles.

  By the time the flames were rising into the sky like a curse, the eldest son of Salvatore Bastíu was already on the way to his car; now let the wind do its work, he had already finished his own work for the day. The rifle shot that whistled through the night hit him just before he reached the road, leaving him stretched out on the beaten earth, with no explanation or shout of any kind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE COMMANDER OF THE CARABINIERI, A CALABRIAN of Sicilian descent, knew immediately that the story was untrue, but he also knew that with eight witnesses ready to swear that there had been a hunting accident, there was no point in being pedantic. There are places where truth and the opinion of the majority can overlap, and in that mysterious world where people agree to agree, Soreni was a minor capital of morality. The statement was written down, signed and filed, and Nicola was brought home with a severe wound in his leg, but more ashamed of having failed in his intended revenge than of having compelled his father to ask friends to lie to cover this failure.

  Fully aware of the cover-up used to explain the incident at Pran’e boe farm to the law, Manuele Porresu went to church on Sunday on his wife’s arm walking tall, proud of having created justice out of his own unjust act, and conscious of having won the silent respect even of those who had previously believed him to be in the wrong. On the other hand, what most worried Salvatore Bastíu was that his son should have appeared stupid, so that he himself would have to judge him stupid. No one at Soreni was ever more mocked and marginalized than a stupid person, because if shrewdness, force and intelligence were powerful weapons, stupidity had no greater enemy than itself, its fundamental unpredictability making it even more dangerous in friends than in enemies. The trouble was that in neither case could a reputation for stupidity ever be accompanied by respect, something of enormous importance in a place that, when all was said and done, offered few other advantages.

  Giannina Bastíu went shopping with her head held high in spite of everything, but the malicious spark in the eyes of those who asked in sugary tones after Nicola encouraged her to lie and claim that he would soon be fully recovered. In fact his leg deteriorated daily, and despite careful medication, the wound became infected, causing a persistent fever and twice forcing Dr Mastinu to reopen the suture to release pus. Maria and Bonaria had to wait before they could pay a courtesy call, because Nicola refused to see anyone, partly from shame and partly because he did not want his friends to know of his condition. But after two weeks immobile and confined to bed, he had turned into a caged lion who could scarcely even tolerate attention from the doctor and his own family. As the days passed his leg gave no sign of healing, until even Dr Mastinu realized no further improvement could be expected.

  Once word spread through the local bars that Nicola’s leg would probably have to be amputated, the so-called hunting accident began to seem less amusing.

  * * *

  It was the first time Bonaria had seen Nicola since the incident at Pran’e boe. Even when the young man began to receive visitors, the elderly seamstress had insisted on taking her time, and had not even sent Maria to ask after him. It was as if she had distanced herself from the event and from the person responsible for it, as if the incident in which Nicola nearly lost his life had in fact killed him and then brought him back to life in some distant foreign country that could not be reached without a very long journey.

  The bed where they had put him was the double bed in the guestroom reserved for visiting aunts and uncles staying over for festivals, and otherwise used as a store for valued objects. Nicola sat in the middle of the bed supported by a mass of cushions, wearing a simple light-coloured shirt and with his injured leg outside the covers to facilitate medical attention. The coloured chenille bedspread featured an indiscreet fantasy of little putti carrying abundant cornucopias, b
ut thanks to an irreverent play of superimpositions they also looked as if they were holding up his gangrenous limb, passing it from one to another on their chubby little arms. Above this baroque fresco Nicola lay like an obstinate stain, grim of eye and word.

  “They say I can’t get better. Even Dr Schintu has been here from Gavoi, and he says nothing can be done. They’re going to have to take off my leg.”

  He looked accusingly at Bonaria, as if the blame for this judgement was flitting round the room in the air and could not wait to find someone to settle on. In case the gravity of the disaster was not entirely clear, Nicola added:

  “I shall die.”

  Bonaria Urrai looked at the pale figure lying on the bed and clenched her hands in her lap. Until that moment she had deliberately avoided his censorious gaze, because it is never a good idea to apportion blame on a sickbed. When she spoke, it was in a light clear voice, as if chatting about trivial matters.

  “You aren’t going to die, they’re only going to remove one leg.”

  “That’s the same thing. Isn’t a horse dead when it goes lame? Or do they feed it on cripple fodder?”

  “You’re not a horse, Nicola.”

  “Of course I’m not a horse. That’s why I deserve something better than to spend the rest of my life mourning for myself.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first or the last.”

  “I’d rather kill myself.”

  Bonaria heard him with steely eyes. Despite her fondness for Nicola, her bony ringless hands showed him no pity, locked together like a ball of wool ready for use. Her voice had become as cold as the surrounding air, as if the old woman had turned herself into a bracing draught to freshen the unhealthy atmosphere in the room.

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. We can’t always have what we want.”

  Nicola laughed, a dry laugh, full of the rage of a man who has never before felt powerless.

  “Have they turned you into a priest, Tzia Bonaria? We have a woman priest at Soreni and no-one knew it! Who’s going to tell Don Frantziscu that the daughter of the Urrai family has become his curate?”

  “Poking fun at me won’t help you.” Bonaria was not bothered even by what others would have considered an insufferable lack of respect.

  Nicola decided to make the most of it, and put all his cards on the table.

  “But I can change the circumstances of my death. Or you can . . .”

  Bonaria Urrai grew wary, fixing him with eyes like thorns.

  “I don’t understand,” she said tonelessly.

  “Yes you do.” Nicola lowered his voice to a murmur, ruthless in his desperation. “Santino Littorra has told me what you did when his father died. I’m not asking for anything different.”

  Bonaria suddenly sprang out of her chair as if she had been scalded, took several steps towards the window so as to have her back to Nicola, and when she turned round again the expression in her eyes was one he had never seen before.

  “You’re talking about things that have nothing to do with you, and Santino is wrong to do the same. And whatever he said, the two cases have nothing in common. Giacomo Littorra was dying.”

  “And I’m already dead but they can’t bury me.”

  Bonaria made an angry gesture with her hand, more expressive than any word.

  “Do you really think my job is to kill people who haven’t the courage to face their problems?”

  “No, I believe it’s to help those who can’t bear to suffer any more.”

  “That’s Our Lord’s job, not mine. Doing what is right has never mattered to you, so are you now trying to get me to do what is wrong?”

  Nicola, not much inclined to respect divine roles in the comedy in which he himself played the principal part, was suddenly impatient with Bonaria’s evasiveness. He called for his mother in a loud voice. She immediately hurried into the room, drying her hands on her apron.

  “What is it, Nicò?”

  “Tzia Bonaria’s turning into a priest, Ma. She’s already quoting the scriptures like someone who has to live on alms. Just listen to her!”

  Giannina turned to Bonaria in confusion, but the elderly woman had not moved, and held Nicola’s feverish gaze with a neutral expression.

  “But what are you saying, Nicola? Is that the way to talk to people who come to pay you a visit?”

  “Your son’s not well and is saying silly things, Giannina. Don’t listen, I’m not listening to him either.”

  “I’m not saying silly things. But you are, coming here on two legs to tell me I can walk on one leg alone. That’s the way of priests, and stupid people.”

  “Nicola, you know why I’m telling you things. There’s no point in wasting your anger on me.”

  “Then why are you talking like a woman who knows nothing about real life?”

  “Only one person in this room knows nothing about real life. If you had any sense you’d thank your guardian angel for the miracle that you’re still alive. After what happened you could easily have been dead and buried, with the rest of us in mourning round your grave.”

  “Spending my whole life in bed, you call that a miracle? Being carried on a chair when I need to shit, you call that a miracle? Certainly I was a miracle once, a man with only one equal in Soreni, and maybe not even that. Now I’m a cripple, not even worth the air I breathe. I’d have been a hundred times better dead!”

  Bonaria made no response, turning towards the window from where the light of what was still full day was painting the room an unreal warm rose colour. The little putti on the coverlet glistened rudely in this luminous embrace, creating among the folds of chenille the optical illusion of a hysterical infantile dance. Bonaria snatched her shawl from the chair as a prelude to departure. Going out she said:

  “If this is what you really believe, Nicola, I think you’re wrong. If all it needs to make a man is a leg, then every table is more of a man than you are.”

  Giannina Bastíu irritably reproved her silenced son, then ran out after Bonaria. The two women faced each other in silence in the narrow corridor, while the sound of angry little movements, as abrupt as Nicola’s condition permitted, came from the bed inside the room. After waiting nervously for a minute or two, Giannina whispered:

  “He won’t accept it. What can we do?”

  “Try getting the priest to come and see him.”

  “Don Frantziscu? And what can he do for my son who doesn’t even believe in God?”

  Bonaria pursed her lips and she looked at her friend.

  “I don’t know, Giannina, but in a time of weakness some would rather be believers than tough guys. Maybe the priest could convince him in the name of God to accept himself as he is.”

  Giannina Bastíu nodded, but with a hint of resignation. Deep down, the idea of her son becoming a believer was no easier to believe than the fact that her son was a cripple.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE BICYCLE WAS UPSIDE DOWN, PROPPED ON ITS SADDLE and handlebars. Andría Bastíu was turning the back wheel slowly with his hand, while his eyes searched for the thorn that was probably what had punctured the inner tube. Maria came out of the back door with a basin half-full of water, which she set down beside the bicycle.

  “Don’t worry, if you were on your way to Turrixeddu it’s bound to be only a little one. You should dip the tube in the water then you’ll be able to see exactly where the air’s coming out.”

  Andría did not share this view. Showing no sign of having heard her, he ran the tyre through his fingers in search of the tell-tale object, patient and silent as a miner.

  “Andría, I can’t stand here all afternoon just for a punctured tyre.”

  Maria’s voice disturbed his concentration, and he lifted his eyes from the suspended wheel with an interrogative air.

  “If you’ve got things you have to do, go and get on with them. I have to finish this. But I couldn’t have done it at home, Nicola is only just back from the hospital. I can’t start working on a bike in the yard
right under his window.”

  Maria nodded, going to sit on the kerb in front of Bonaria Urrai’s house, oblivious of the fact that she was wearing new jeans.

  “How is he?”

  “He makes me sick. Growling like an animal, attacking everybody and saying all the time he wants to die.”

  “I can understand him up to a point, but it must be difficult for the rest of you.”

  “He was never an easy person, but this is the worst thing that could have happened to him. Mamma cries in secret, but dad pretends everything’s fine and that enrages Nicola even more. It seems that everything I do gets on his nerves.”

  Meanwhile Andría had taken off the tyre and extracted the inner tube, and begun to pump it up with his little white pump.

  “I’d like to go and see him, but I don’t want to intrude.”

  “It might not be a good idea, but maybe with you he would control himself.”

  Andría turned the tube slowly in the basinful of water, until from an invisible point a tell-tale column of little bubbles rose.

  “Got you, you little horror! Now let’s have the patch, and we’ll seal it up,” Andría said with satisfaction. “The less there is to see, the worse it really is, that’s always the way.”

  Ever since they had cut off his right leg at the hospital at Mont’e Sali, Nicola slept four hours a night, and then only after sedation. Dr Mastinu said this was normal, that it needed a little time. But Giannina Bastíu had her doubts, because Nicola had never been in the habit of making a fuss about pain. He had broken bones no less than seven times. As a small boy he had never been afraid either of heights or depths, with nests up in trees and snakes down in ditches always an irresistible challenge to him, and taking risks had been his favourite game, to the perpetual despair of his mother and a certain ill-concealed satisfaction on the part of his father. Once at foot-ball he had even broken a bone in his hand, a tiny little bone that no-one had ever heard of before, and his friends had teased him by saying he was so anxious to break something that he had managed to invent a bone that did not even exist. He had never been one to make a fuss about pain, Nicola Bastíu. Giannina would have been much happier if he had, because seeing him silent and hostile in bed with his stump sewn up and covered by a sheet, burned inside her like a ball of hot fat that refused to dissolve, and rolled up and down while she remade his bed, brought him something to eat or simply looked in to see if there was anything he wanted. They had moved the television into his room to distract him when there was no-one to keep him company, but Nicola hardly ever turned it on and preferred to look out of the window, inhabiting a world of silent rage in which he was the only citizen with an official right of residence. This was how the priest found him when Giannina, overcoming her reluctance, plucked up the courage to follow Bonaria’s advice and asked him to come and pay her son a visit.