A Possible Life (16 page)

‘Skinny little thing, isn’t she?’

‘Well, she eats enough for two,’ said Fulvia. ‘I promise you she—’

‘I understand. You have a family history of heart problems, it says on her notes.’

‘Yes,’ said Elena’s mother. ‘My mother died when she was forty-nine and her mother at the same age.’

The doctor put down the scans. ‘Well, despite all that Elena’s heart is normal,’ he said. ‘Physically, she’s perfectly well.’

‘She has no friends.’

For the first time, the doctor smiled. ‘A few years ago we might have sent her to a counsellor for that.’

‘And now?’ said Fulvia.

‘For people like us, ordinary people, that profession has disappeared. Take your little girl home, Signora, and stop worrying. She’s a funny little monkey, but if I were you I’d just enjoy her company when you can.’

Later, on the bus going home, Elena said, ‘Why did he call me a monkey, Mama?’

‘It’s just a friendly word. It doesn’t mean anything.’

Elena could see that her mother was disappointed that the doctor had found no cure for her. Fulvia’s face looked strained and old as she rested it against the bus window. Will my mother also die at forty-nine? thought Elena. Will I?

‘Shall I tell you why I’m not a monkey?’

‘If you must,’ said Fulvia.

‘It’s because a monkey doesn’t know it’s a monkey. A human being knows it’s human. That’s what sets us apart from every other animal on earth.’

‘If you say so, Elenissima,’ sighed her mother. ‘What would you like for dinner?’

It was not at first the idea of the monkey’s brain that interested Elena, but its looks. She inspected herself in the mirror and came to admit that she was, in the word of a book she had studied, simian in appearance. She had furry arms, large eyes and a flat chest. She didn’t have the golden skin of Cinzia, or Laura’s long and slender legs. So be it, she thought. The project of my life is to make the most of what I have.

Although she read electronically at home, the library at school had printed books they let her take away; Elena carried them up to her hut in her new saddlebag. The teachers at her school were startled by the range of what she knew and allowed her to attend some of the senior classes, sitting at the back, taking notes in her small, exact handwriting. But before she settled down each
afternoon
to read in the old car seat she had lugged up to her hideaway, there were sporting activities.

She divided Italy into its regions and represented each in turn over a cross-country course of her own devising. The gearing on the bicycle was primitive and some of the ground was boggy, so there were parts of the course where she had to dismount and push, at the run. The Tuscans were accident-prone, she discovered. Her local district of Veneto tended to place well, though it was always hard to beat Campania, especially if the dashing Emilio Rizzo was in the saddle. She tried hard not to have favourites, but it was surprising how certain riders came to dominate the timings.

She waited till it was almost dark before she closed the padlock on her hut, jumped on to the bicycle once more and sped back out of the woods, down the hill, bumping over the paths and then along the main road back to her parents’ farmhouse, where the lights were coming on for dinner and Pedro, the sheepdog, was waiting anxiously for her to feed him.

One rainy evening she hurried home particularly fast because they were expecting Roberto back from a business trip to Trieste. When she had fed the dog, she helped Fulvia prepare a sauce for the pasta, then settled down to wait. The electric car made no sound, and the first thing they knew of its return was when the door swung open to reveal not just her father, with rain dripping from the brim of his hat, but a second person: a boy in a ragged cape with hair more tangled even than Roberto’s. Elena could not make out in the dim light of the kitchen whether he was brown-skinned or just dirty.

‘I’ve brought someone for you to play with, Elena,’ said Roberto.

‘Why, Papa?’ said Elena, appalled.

The boy took a step into the room.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Seven. I took him from an orphanage near Trieste.’

‘But what’s his real name?’

‘He won’t say. Maybe we’ll call him … Trieste. Where I found him.’

‘He’s not a dog.’

‘What do you suggest, then?’

‘We should ask him. Does he speak Italian?’

‘Yes,’ said Elena’s father. ‘But he’s quiet.’

The boy took a step back towards the door.

Elena stared at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘Perhaps Bruno. Because he’s brown with dirt all over.’

The boy took a step forward again, and became Bruno.

‘Let me show you where the bathroom is, Bruno,’ said Elena’s mother.

‘How long is he staying?’ said Elena.

‘For ever,’ said Roberto. ‘We’re adopting him.’

Elena fumed. For a week she refused to speak to her mother or father, let alone the intruder. She ate dinner in silence, then cleared her plate, went upstairs to her room and locked the door. Bruno gazed at her with dark, puzzled eyes. He could speak Italian fluently, it turned out, though with an accent, and in a harsh, high voice. Scrubbed, dressed in clean clothes and shorn by the barber, he looked clean, but still, to Elena’s eyes, barbaric.

When the registration paperwork was finally done, they put Bruno on the school bus with Elena. She sat at the back with Jacopo and Cinzia, leaving him to find a seat for himself; her fear was that since they were the same age they might put him in her class. At school, he was sent for assessment and, to Elena’s relief, was placed in the B stream, which was taught in a different building; she could continue to pretend that he did not exist. By day, she redoubled her concentration on the work at school and
in
the evening she leapt on to her bicycle and disappeared to her hideout in the woods.

‘It’s not natural,’ said Fulvia. ‘Poor little boy.’

For want of other company, Bruno allied himself to Pedro, and spent the early evenings throwing stones over the field with the dog at his side. He tried to teach him to fetch sticks, but Pedro seemed to have no retrieving instinct. He regarded Elena’s father, meanwhile, with a steady reverence and worried for his well-being; when a contract for a boat went to a different company, Bruno took some convincing that it was not the end of their livelihood. Like Elena before him, he watched Roberto at work with drills and planes, though, unlike her, he didn’t want to copy him or take part. He liked to stand nearby at all times, slightly closer than was comfortable, as though he feared his protector might vanish as inexplicably as he had appeared.

Roberto occasionally looked down at the solemn boy and smiled. He seemed to enjoy Bruno’s company almost as much as Elena’s.

‘My God, you look alike,’ said Fulvia one day when she brought in some drinks and saw them standing side by side. Both of them looked pleased.

There was a commotion one day at school. A boy called Alfredo ran squealing from the B-stream building with blood pouring from his nose. Elena was watching from her side of the school and, with a mixture of amusement and horror, saw Bruno being marched out by the teacher. It seemed that a group of boys had been taunting him about being an orphan, and had called him, among other things, a pirate and a ‘Slovene peasant’; they had suggested an improper relationship with his ‘sister’, Elena. It was this last idea, so comically far from reality, that had proved too much for him.

As the bus approached the school that winter afternoon, its
headlights
bending down the industrial landscape, Elena saw the misery in Bruno’s eyes and feared what might happen if he gave way again to anger. She pushed into the crowd.

‘Come here,’ she said, grabbing his arm. They were the first words she had spoken to him. She shoved him ahead of her on to the bus, into a seat against the window, and placed herself next to him on the aisle, a thin barricade.

It was dark as they left the commercial warehouse zone and found the country roads. When they were nearly back at their village, Bruno said, ‘Can I come with you one day to the woods?’

Elena did not answer, looking at him with distaste; but one Sunday, in a rare moment of feeling sated by her own company, she said, ‘You can come for half an hour. Now.’

‘Do you have a cave?’ he said, running to keep up in case she changed her mind. ‘A hideout?’

It was the first time she had seen him smile, and she noticed that he had a twisted tooth on the left side of his mouth.

‘Maybe,’ she said.

She let him ride her bicycle. He was almost as fast as Emilio Rizzo, and, with a pang, Elena knew the long era of her secret games was over.

‘It’s unusual to find one of these in a wood,’ Bruno said, picking up what looked to Elena like a common daffodil.

‘How do you know about flowers?’

Bruno shook his head, unwilling to talk about his past. ‘Do you believe in God?’ he said.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Elena.

‘I do,’ said Bruno. ‘I believe in several gods.’

‘Like an ancient Roman? Like a pagan?’

‘It’s better than believing in just one.’

‘And what do your little gods do?’

‘There’s one who’s in charge of the dead. There’s a god of
luck
, the most important one. There are lots of others. Maybe there’s a god of love.’

Elena stifled a laugh.

‘Let me ride the bike again,’ said Bruno. ‘Time me round the course.’

‘I have to get the stop-watch.’

‘From your secret place? I won’t look.’

Bruno broke the course record, though Elena didn’t tell him so. He offered to time her in return, but she was reluctant to come second. She suggested they go into the forest where the wild boar were still hunted.

‘If one of them charges you,’ she said, ‘you have to wait till the last second, then jump to one side like this. The boar run fast but they can’t change direction.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ said Bruno.

After a few minutes and no sign of a boar, he said, ‘Did your parents want another child?’

‘I’ve never asked. I was happy with things as they were.’

‘Now I’ve spoiled your life.’

Elena stopped walking and looked back into Bruno’s expressionless eyes. ‘It can’t be helped,’ she said.

Bruno did not flinch. He said, ‘When I used to lie down to sleep at night in the orphanage I felt as though I was the only living thing in the world. I felt I could howl in the darkness and no one would hear. Do you feel like that when you lie down and close your eyes? As though you’re dying?’

‘No,’ said Elena. ‘I have my thoughts. I have company in my head. Sometimes I can order my dreams.’

‘You’re a very strange girl.’

No one had ever spoken to Elena in this way before. ‘Let’s go back,’ she said.

‘No. Don’t be frightened. We can stay out here. Talk to me. Talk to me, Elena.’

He hadn’t used her name before and she thought it sounded outlandish on his foreign tongue.

Elena’s decision was based on little more than curiosity, though even then she knew it might have long consequences.

‘Go on, then,’ she said.

Talking to Bruno confirmed Elena’s belief that there had been no one worth talking to before. Her life changed. At school, she remained aloof from her classmates and worked hard. Jacopo, Bella and the rest of them stopped making any effort to include her in their circle; at break time, since she couldn’t join Bruno in his playground, she stayed in the classroom and did that night’s homework in advance while he stood at the wire fence staring out towards her building like a starved prisoner. When the bell rang at four, the first one of them on to the bus reserved a seat for the other. After a time the other children didn’t bother to ask if it was free; eventually they stopped chanting ‘incest’ and ‘pervert’.

Bruno was the first person of her own age whose company had not annoyed Elena; but she was cautious about sharing her privacy, and at first gave out her secrets meanly, one at a time. When she did so, Bruno didn’t laugh or mock her; he seemed to think her universe quite logical. There was joy, she found eventually, in sharing her intimate thoughts; her fantasies were not diminished but enhanced by having someone else who could participate in them, and the breaching of her wall of solitude was less painful than she had imagined.

‘It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?’ said Fulvia to Roberto. ‘I thought she’d never speak to the poor lad and now she can’t bear to let him out of her sight.’

‘It’s as though the rest of us don’t exist.’ Roberto sighed. ‘I miss my little girl.’

As a child, Bruno had somewhere learned to ride a horse and
he
persuaded Roberto to ask a neighbour if they could have the use of two ponies. Within a few days, Elena could ride well enough to canter beside him. They left her hut behind, and rode out beyond the boar forest, to a ridge where no tyre track or hoofprint had broken the ground. They made a base beside the ruined stump of an oak tree. It didn’t seem necessary to construct a shelter or bring up their belongings; it was enough to be on this hill with its white stones, with the call of the crows above. They sat in silence, looking back over the woods towards Mantua, which was just visible across the plain.

They imagined all the people in their factories, at their work, in shops and streets and flats with laundry hanging out and food cooking for the evening, willing the office clock to run down and release them. They thought how strange it was that they would never know these people and wondered if their lives were as real or as urgent as their own.

On the ridge, they were detached from the anonymity of the world – embodied for them by the chimneys, towers and smoking outlines of the view. Elena’s heart might be pounding from the ride and her mind might be beating with thoughts, but the solid earth and purple wildflowers were part of a harder reality, and their indifference to her puffing lungs was a consolation.

Back at the farm Elena allowed Bruno entrance to her room, a privilege denied even to her mother. Here they talked about people they knew, or had seen in films. Bruno seemed able to invent stories and people at will. He gave Elena accounts of the imagined home lives of the teachers that made her ache from laughing. He constructed a life for the driver who delivered food in one of the huge electric wagons despatched from the industrial zone outside Mantua; it included a spell in the French Foreign Legion and five years in prison. Bruno gave him a violent wife and beautiful twin daughters with ideas above their station.