the ground. But apart from the screaming above them, there was no noise. The boy suddenly stopped and then there was a complete silence.
They waited and did not dare to move.
Adriano slowly raised his head and looked up. Bruno followed. The boy was still staring ahead with his eyes wide open. He looked enormous from the ground as if his head was right up in the clouds.
Bruno mumbled to himself.
“There’s something very strange, something….”
“What?” hissed Adriano. “What?”
“I don’t know!”
“Adriano, look, look! LOOK!”
Bruno grabbed his shoulders, digging his fingers so deep it hurt. Adriano was looking around, his eyes scanning the walls, meadow and the wood, but he could not see anything which would justify Bruno’s horror.
“LOOK! LOOK!”
Bruno turned onto his side, looked up and screamed.
“WHAT? WHAT?” started shouting Adriano. “What?”
How their voices carried across the open spaces! They filled the night.
“LOOK! THERE! LOOK!”
Bruno’s finger was drawing big lines in the air finding it impossible to point in the right direction. Adriano finally managed to wriggle out of his hands.
“CAN’T YOU SEE? CAN’T YOU SEE?” Bruno carried on shrieking and his horror slowly started giving way to despair and panic at his friend’s stupidity and unresponsiveness.
Adriano looked towards the motionless boy. He strained his eyes to pierce the darkness and find the cause of Bruno’s terror. He could not see anything. Nothing even remotely suspicious. Just the whiteness of the rescued boy’s T-shirt and head.
The whiteness of his T-shirt and…
…and…
his head?
HEAD?
Adriano grabbed Bruno with all his strength and pulled him up. They stood a foot behind the boy, who did not even flinch. His hair was completely white.
“I’m scared…, I’m scared…” Bruno kept repeating.
Adriano shook him.
“Me too! ME TOO! CALM DOWN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND! CALM DOWN!”
“Yeah, yeah… I’m calm… I’m… I’m… I’m…”
“What are we going to do? What?”
Bruno tore his eyes away from the white head for the first time.
“One of us should…, one of us should turn him round…, this way…”
“Yeah…”
They were pressed against each other and they both thought how much the other one trembled.
“Adriano, I daren’t! I daren’t. Will you?”
“Why me? Why?”
O, hell, why him? But at the same time he knew very well that they could not go on like that. Would all the binds holding his body and soul together break and would his innards just spill out like fish out of a fishing net?
He would do it.
Slowly he started reaching for the boy.
A few centimetres from his shoulder he stopped.
Suddenly he could not hear Bruno’s breathing anymore.
But he had already touched the boy! Earlier, by the ankle. Had he been icy cold? He could not remember.
He grabbed him and turned him.
Bruno screamed.
Fear gripped his heart and for a moment he thought it would burst. But his fear was unfounded.
“It’s alright Bruno. It’s nothing. He’s just unconscious!”
“His eyes! Adriano, his eyes?”
“It’s nothing, Bruno, it’s nothing! His eyes have turned! That’s all. That’s all!”
Their shouting and shoving must have brought the boy round. They noticed his mouth opening and his lips moving. They watched him expectantly. As if one word from his mouth could wash away all the fear, return his hair to its normal colour and restore the night peace.
He moved his lips. In bursts and twitches.
Bruno and Adriano leant forward without realising and nearly touched his face.
“A… AAA… AA… A… A AAAA. AAA…..” he stammered for an unbearably long time and then suddenly collapsed, making his startled rescuers jump back.
She replaced the wooden lid and checked whether it was on properly. Then she knelt down, put her hand on it and whispered:
“Goodbye. They interrupted us, before you became complete.”
The contents of the wooden box still had not cooled down completely and she could feel them glowing through the lid. She stroked the wood and got a few splinters in her hand. She got up without moving her eyes away from the box.
In there. Her son.
“Goodbye. Sleep! Wait!”
As she put her foot on the bottom step she looked back once more. The morning sun fought its way through the window and its first conquest was the large tablecloth in the corner, covering the boxes, containing mainly souvenirs from her husband’s diplomatic life.
That window and the nosy village boys. Who knows what they had seen and what they would tell in the village. Would they believe them? Would they come in the night and set fire to the house? Would they try to kill her child?
She added the last bit of protection that was in her limited power: she knelt on the fourth step, bent her head, touched the wood with her forehead, sensed him and then reached deep inside between her legs with her hand, dampened her fingers and used them to write that name on the step. With letters which were immediately absorbed by the wood. Maybe it would help, but only against the weaker ones.
She looked at the wooden box — one of many — and sighed.
“I have carried out my duty, now it’s not up to me anymore,” she told herself. “I just have to make sure it’s dark in here but the rest is out of my hands.”
She closed the cellar door carefully and locked it. She checked that it was really locked. She put the key inside her clothes and the coolness of it refreshed her. It seemed so real — and most importantly — unplanned and unanticipated. Everything else had gone exactly according to plan and — was it really possible? — could she really be craving sensations which would slow her down, break her concentration and convince her that she was still alive?
She picked up the wooden planks and tools prepared in advance and boarded up the outside of the cellar windows so that the sun could not reach the resting place. Should she have done it before the ritual? Was that her mistake, had she relied too much on the remoteness and isolation of the place?
She returned to the kitchen and put on Greta’s apron, deliberately the wrong way round. She did not tie the ribbons, she sewed them together with a shoemakers thread. Then she opened the cupboard containing weights and carefully divided them among the various apron pockets.
She locked the front door and hung the key on the hook by the doorframe.
Whoever came, they would not have to break in.
The sky was completely clear and she turned her face towards the pale sun, which was pretending to be weak when in a few hours it would burn mercilessly. In a few hours, she thought, a few hours after her.
