Ruggiero took Enrico by the elbow and propelled him forwards. ‘Come on.’
They set off down the hill together. Almost every house they passed had added a second floor years ago, but none of them had ever completed the work. The most advanced were those that had managed to put up pillars and a roof, but no walls, giving the buildings the look of having been gutted by bombing. Some homeowners had ambitiously begun work on a third level. Twisted steel rebars protruded from every roof. Everything was still in the early stages of construction and in the final stages of decay. Enrico hesitated for a moment as they passed the intersection leading to his house where he lived with Aunt Rosa and Uncle Pietro, but Ruggiero gave him a push. ‘We were told to go directly. They took our phones. We’re not to talk to anyone. That has to be clear even to you.’
‘What have we done?’
‘I don’t know, Enrico. Probably nothing. Maybe it’s someone else who’s done something, or just a test of obedience. Or maybe it’s some sort of preparation for the festivities on September 2nd or tactics, like Coach said. We’ll find out.’
‘I’m worried something’s going to happen. Why did they take our phones?’
‘To make us disappear for a while.’
‘My aunt will be worried sick if I don’t contact her,’ said Enrico. ‘Sunday lunch. You know what she’s like.’
Ruggiero nodded. Zia Rosa, as he also called her, though she was not his aunt, lived her life in a state of fretfulness and, according to Enrico, slept no more than three hours a night, though how sleepy Enrico would know that was a mystery. Perhaps Enrico’s uncle, the strong-smelling and slow-witted Pietro, had told him, but if so, that would mean he would have had to speak, which is not something Ruggiero had often heard him do.
They entered the silent piazza and headed towards the bar. Two empty chairs and a tin table sat next to the door, which was covered in a heavy bead curtain. A faded chart showing ghostly Motta ice creams and smudged prices still quoted in lire was nailed to the wall.
‘It’s already closed for the afternoon,’ said Enrico in relief. ‘The scooters aren’t here. They must have gone home.’
Maybe Enrico was right. Mr Basile’s bar and gelateria kept irregular opening hours. On any given afternoon it could be closed while its owner sunned himself on the white sand. Closed meant unoccupied by Basile or Salvatore. They never locked the bar, because no one for any reason would ever think of taking anything from it, not even a glass of water, without permission. Basile loved the sun. It had burned him deep brown, caused melanomas to prosper on his back, and wrinkled the skin of his face, but still he went, the only sunbather on the horseshoe-shaped beach, sitting in front of the half-built villas, rusting metal cages, breeze blocks and paralysed cement mixers, soaking it all up.
He never swam in the bright blue waters of the sea in front of him, just lay there all afternoon, smiling up at the sky, his wife dead these ten years, his three sons lost in 1991, the year the war between the Cataldo and Cordi families finally ended.
Ruggiero realized Mr Basile would have told the others not to park their scooters in front of the bar, which explained the empty piazza. Just as he was about to point this out to Enrico, the bead curtain parted and Basile’s faithful ancient retainer, Salvatore, thin and sprightly, waved the two boys inside.
Walk in if invited, even if you know. His father had told him that that was the sign of true courage. He would have felt better if his father were here now. But all their fathers were abroad, in Milan, Turin, Spain, Slovenia and Germany. He was not alone in being alone.
With Enrico right behind him, Ruggiero brushed the beads aside with the back of his hand, and stepped inside the dark bar.
18
Locri
They had been inside the bar for an hour and a half now, and no one had said anything to them. The only absolute if unspoken condition was that they remained there until told they could go. Ruggiero watched as Enrico made his way through the pistachio ice cream, then quietly offered him his, saying, ‘I haven’t touched it.’
Enrico waited impatiently until Ruggiero had put the ice cream in front of him, then set to it like he was being chased. Ruggiero thought no one had noticed, but then Salvatore, who served at the bar without anyone ever thinking of him as a barman, came over.
‘You don’t like Mr Basile’s ice cream?’
Enrico raised his eyes for a moment, smiled sleepily at them both, then returned to spooning the sweet green cream from the wafer cup into his mouth.
‘I’m just not hungry,’ said Ruggiero.
‘It was a generous gesture. What sort of ingrate would turn down a gift from Mr Basile?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ repeated Ruggiero, knowing, without being able to do much about it, that he was speaking in a tone of detached contempt for Salvatore, and that this would do him no favours. He could have said more. The ice cream was bright green and over-sugared. Its sweetness made him gag. The bits of nut that Basile left in to give it a natural taste were surrounded by crystals of frost, and chewing through them felt like a chore. Ruggiero could remember when the gelateria was run by Pino Nicaso, a man who knew his trade and then was pointlessly put out of business by Salvatore and Basile, bringing to an end the only happy place in town.
Salvatore left them alone and did not, as Ruggiero had feared, return to force-feed him one of Basile’s special treats.
The other kids had started playing table football. Abandoning Ruggiero in the corner, Enrico went up to join in, but was made to watch instead, and then pushed roughly aside by Luca who blamed Enrico’s flab for getting in the way and allowing Giovanni to score.
Pepe had chosen to play the poker machine, and remained impassive as the machine dealt him hand after hand in defiance of all rules of fairness and statistical probability. He had a thunderbolt design shaved into the back of his crew cut. He kept his face turned towards the screen and away from his companions, but Ruggiero knew the screen also had a mirror effect, and he was watching them as they stole surreptitious glances at his back.
Ruggiero, as sometimes happened, seemed to have become invisible in his corner. He was hungry, but for real food. A Sunday meal prepared by his mother, not the vile ice cream or, worse still, one of the stale bar sandwiches wrapped in plastic. He was bored, too. Bored with the table football and the tough-guy curses of his companions, bored with defending Enrico from attack, bored with the ugly furniture and the sly bald Salvatore, said to have used a meat cleaver to cut the arms, legs and cock off a policeman in the 1960s. The policeman, the story went, survived and lived the rest of his days in bed, though without female company. Maybe none of it was true.
Once again, as so often happened, the joshing and casual teasing of Enrico’s lack of skill had hardened and grown colder. Enrico, sweating with effort, still lost nine-one to Luca and was told to fuck off and stop wasting everyone’s time.
He came back over to Ruggiero and sat down heavily beside him like a wet seal. His arrival put Ruggiero back inside the exclusion zone in which Enrico lived. When Enrico was near him, Ruggiero could clearly see the hostility and contempt of those who looked in their direction. All he had to do was step outside the zone, away from Enrico, and the hostile looks became almost invisible again. Yet Enrico’s father Tony was both feared and respected: more the former than the latter. His uncle Pietro was at least feared. It was the contrast with them that did Enrico no favours. As to his own family, Ruggiero knew that no one quite trusted his father, his mother or him. They were regarded as excessively reserved and insufficiently local. Most of the time he was quite comfortable with it; now he felt under pressure, and he knew, even if Enrico was too dim to recognize it, that some sort of test was being done on them, not on the other kids.
The front door of the bar, closed to the public, was opened to admit a small man with dirty skin and a white beard, whom Ruggiero recognized as a friend or relation of some sort of Salvatore. He was dressed in the dark- green working clothes of the forestry protection corps, the one state uniform that it was no dishonour to wear.