Power to Burn (10 page)

Now Angelica lifted her head and I felt she was really looking into the heart of me.

‘That is something we've got to talk about, Roberto,' she said. ‘And you know much more than you think. It will be like the beginning of a long journey for you, going back, back the rest of the way until you remember our first years.'

We sat down on small wooden chairs in the cloister outside the church. A man stood nearby, playing a violin. He wore a blue velvet beret on his head and a patchwork velvet coat. At his feet the wooden case of the violin lay open, sprinkled with coins.

He was playing medieval music, I think, but I'd never heard anything like it. The notes trickled out in long ribbons of sound, coiling like smoke around the walls. It was mournful and beautiful, stroking you with sadness, flicking you into joy, making you feel alive.

I sat back and let the music drift over me. It was speaking a language that seemed familiar, even though its notes were so foreign.

I felt tears in the back of my throat, and I had no words for them. I thought of Nonna saying ‘grief' and ‘pain' and ‘separation' and for a lightning moment I saw a steamy room, a bathroom perhaps, and a damp soft cheek was brushing against mine.

At that moment Angelica reached over and took my hand. I saw with amazement that she had tears in her eyes, too, and as I held her hand, smaller than mine and so soft, I remembered; it was too strong to be a new thought, I
remembered
a little hand in mine, swirling under the water. There was a yellow duck and the chrome of the taps and I was too little to turn them.

When the man finished his song and was packing up his music, Angelica went over and threw some coins in his case. She came back to our chairs and I said, ‘Do you remember our baths? Did we have baths together when we were young?'

I suddenly realised that she was very much more grown up now and I went hot with embarrassment.

But she smiled and took my arm. ‘Oh yes, Roberto, every night. And I used to squirt you with the yellow duck. It had a hole right where its beak was and if you filled it up with water then squeezed its tummy a jet of water would shoot out – right in your mouth. You used to drink it!'

‘How can you remember stuff like that, I mean so clearly?'

Angelica looked down at the fish-boned paving at our feet. ‘I've thought about it a lot. I practise with the power. I haven't wanted to think about much else, especially when I knew you were coming.'

She looked up then and said in that intense way that was starting to be familiar, ‘It's important to remember, Roberto.'

Her face seemed different somehow, more naked, as if she'd peeled away a mask and there was an eagerness underneath.

‘What else do you remember?' I pestered her. ‘What was I like as a baby?'

Angelica laughed, throwing back her head. ‘Absolutely – how do you call it? – fiendish! Mamma could never leave you alone for an instant. The minute her back was turned, you would be tipping the sugar and flour onto the floor, or examining ink by pouring it all over Papà's maps, or throwing the morning newspaper onto the fire to watch it burn. You were never very interested in your food and Mamma used to try everything to make you eat.'

‘She was probably giving me the same menu way back then!'

‘And at your high chair,' Angelica went on (she seemed to be enjoying this), ‘your tray was littered with books. Mamma cleverly discovered that you'd only take a mouthful while you're mind was on something else, so she flooded you with books –'

‘
Mum?
With
books
? What kind, fairy tales?'

‘Oh yes.
The Three Pigs
, everything. They were piled high in the kitchen, next to the coffee machine and the toaster and the cutlery drawers.'

‘You remember all that?'

‘Sure,' said Angelica. ‘I have to remember everything to know who I am.'

I suddenly had a terrific urge to tell her about myself, the things that mattered to me, and as we walked back through the streets I began to tell her about Pig and the Indian lady – and my fire. As I was telling her I felt again the tingle and surprise of the power – like the adrenalin rush you get when the plane takes off from the ground – and the words were flowing out of me, painting exactly the pictures in my head.

‘Holy Moly!' she said at last, and we laughed so loud that a woman passing by almost dropped her loaf of bread.

It was so good to be sharing this with Angelica, with someone who understood, and I felt special and
interesting
for once, as if I had so much to say, and I was saying it well. I was almost bouncing along the street by now and in a crazy, glad-as-mad moment I put my arms around her and said, ‘You're more than a twin sister, Angelica, you're a twin spirit!'

‘I know,' she said, ‘and together we can do something great in the world.'

I looked at her and she'd grown all serious again, but I just wanted to keep skipping like a crazy man along the cobblestones.

‘And that's the reason they separated us,' she said quietly. Then she pointed to a small archway ahead with a sign flapping over it, ‘
La Vernaccia
'. ‘Here's a lovely restaurant.
Si mangia bene
. They serve the best spaghetti. Let's have lunch.'

We walked into a room yellow with light and there were starched white tablecloths on the tables and polished silver that gleamed like jewellery.

‘Let's sit here by the window,' I said, as if I had lunch every day in a medieval town in a posh restaurant with my long-lost sister.

We sat down and the waiter came over and flapped our napkins in the air before spreading them over our laps. They were so starched and clean they cracked like whips, and the waiter smiled with satisfaction.

‘
Allora
,' he said, rubbing his hands together, ‘freezing outside, eh? What will you two
ragazzi
have to warm you up?'

I let Angelica order for me, and I poured our mineral water from the fat carafe on the table.

Our spaghetti came almost immediately and it was delicious. The rich red sauce was thick and spicy, and I realised how hungry I was. After a few mouthfuls I said, ‘You know, there's nowhere I'd rather be in the world than right here,' and then I thought how rarely I'd felt that. I was always wishing I was somewhere else, that I
was
someone else, that tomorrow would come now, and be different. But I wouldn't have changed anything that moment, not even my skinny legs (or hers).

I wanted to do something to celebrate and as I looked into my plate, I imagined each strand of spaghetti waking up and curling around my fork. I concentrated, lifting each buttery bit with my mind, back and forth and back and forth, and the more I did it the easier it became. It was like finding a rhythm that I'd always heard tapping away in the back of my head, and I hauled it up to full blast and my fork was loaded with live spaghetti curling like little worms around the prongs.

‘Go on, let's see if you can eat them!' laughed Angelica, and she sat back and clapped her hands. ‘That's pretty good for a beginner. Now watch this.'

She stared at the carafe of water and I saw her eyes growing big and luminous until the bubbles of water seemed to be reflecting in her pupils. And then, in the belly of the carafe, a golden shadow was hardening in the centre. It grew fins and a tail and then a tiny goldfish like a drop of sunlight was swimming in the water.

‘That's
wonderful
,' I cried. ‘How did you do it?' Angelica shrugged and smiled and I said, ‘Oh there's so much to learn! How will I learn it all? I don't know what I can do yet, everyone's been so busy trying to stop me before I even begin. There ought to be a school for witches!'

Angelica pushed back her plate and said, ‘Oh no, I think it's much more personal than that. The power comes from deep inside us, it's connected to our earliest memories. No school could teach you who you really are – there are techniques, tricks, but that's just surface magicking, and it's blind. Blind as Nonno.'

She grinned and tapped the glass of the carafe. The fish began to fade, slowly, like the sun disappearing behind a cloud, and then it was gone. Angelica poured some water into her glass, and drank.

‘When you know yourself,' she said, ‘when you
remember
who you really are, you can see the outside world more sharply. And your imagination grows. Take that fish, for instance. You know what it's like to be immersed in water, way back in your mother's womb. You feel the wetness gliding over your skin, breathing water in and out through your gills. You imagine yourself as the fish, at home in the water, your skin wet and smooth, your eyes knowing the dark.' Angelica's eyes were shining.

‘You can do that, remember back that far, imagine things so clearly?'

‘Some things, yes. I've had to.' She looked down at her napkin, folding it and refolding it over the edge of the table. ‘I've had to use my imagination, really use it, to understand how my mother let her baby daughter go.'

I didn't need to look at Angelica's face to know how she felt. The sadness seeped out of her, like the cold in the church, invisible but heavy, and it bled into my own skin until I didn't know which was my sadness and which was hers.

We sat for a while in silence and drank our coffee when the waiter brought it. There was nothing I wanted to say, nothing that seemed worthy, really. So we both just sat on, connected like fish in the same pond, with our feelings moving like water in and out of our bodies. I thought about the science lesson we'd had this term, where we'd learnt about fluids, how they can diffuse through a membrane until there is equal concentration on either side. Osmosis. There seemed nothing more than a membrane separating us now.

‘Do you think, Angelica, that your memories could sort of diffuse into me?'

‘No,' said Angelica. ‘That is your job. Only you can do it.'

‘You know, for the first time I've really felt that I'm waking up, ever since the Indian lady, and the fire.' I was trying to explain, but it wasn't easy. ‘I don't know, it's as if all my childhood was a dream that I've forgotten. Why can't I remember?'

Angelica nodded and laced her fingers for a moment in mine. But she didn't say anything, she just looked at me as if I already knew the answer.

‘It's as if I've got this tremendous block, as if a part of my brain is knocked out cold, and still sleeping while the rest of me is jumping around.'

‘We've been separated a long time,' Angelica said softly. ‘It's going to take a while. The only thing is, I don't know how much time we've got.'

She hesitated, drawing in her breath, and then she said in a rush, ‘We
are
connected, Roberto, and together our power is greater than the power either of us has, alone. That's the way it works with twins. We need each other to grow, and you have to remember for me as well as for you.' More slowly, then, she said, ‘You have to remember for Lucrezia, too, and for all of us. Because we're going to need our power, if I'm right about the way things are heading.'

The waiter came over then and put our bill on the table. Nonna once said it's a maddening fact that no matter where you are in the world, waiters always come at the wrong time. I saw it was growing dark outside. Angelica took her coat from the back of the chair and began putting it on.

‘We'd better be going,' she said, ‘if we're to be in time for dinner.'

I began to protest and she said, ‘We'll talk on the bus. Come on.'

If I'd had an inkling that afternoon of what I know now, I might never have asked another question of Angelica. It's hard to know how much courage you have before you really need it.

I
n the end it was me who had to bury the old lady. Minna died the same day. I think she had only been waiting for her mistress. The old lady had told me a long time ago about a sister she'd had, but I couldn't find her address and it didn't seem as if there were any other living relatives. She never had any children.

I hope her heart didn't fail because of that snake she found in the bread box. She'd fainted, and I'd put her to bed before I went to work. Still, she'd seemed all right when I got home that night and she'd sniped at me in her usual way when I overcooked the pasta.

It was such an effort going to the funeral parlour and talking to people and meeting undertakers. I hardly see anybody these days.

I found her one morning lying all neat like a very old doll under the bedclothes. Her mouth was open but her eyes were shut. She was so pale, I can't forget how pale she was. You could really see how life had just left her, just blown away like the end of a day, leaving the dry old shell.

It was terrible, the silence of her death. No one crying, or talking or reminiscing. I suppose that was partly my fault – after the funeral I couldn't face anyone in the village of Limone. Not just yet.

When I found her will, I felt sad for the first time. She had left the house to me, and all her savings. She'd never asked me any questions, but she'd known me, I realise now, known that we were both alike. Two cats in the gutter.

I buried Minna near the chestnut tree. On the other side from the little box, with the ring. I saw the roots of the trees spreading out deep in the earth, touching Minna, touching the ring. The roots would wind around them both with time, hugging them, and next spring the chestnuts would bud again. Holding life and death in their small brown faces.

The night she died I started a portrait of her. I paint quite often now. It's strange, but the more I learn about my power, the better my painting is. I paint my dreams, and as I paint the shapes and colours move again as if I'm still asleep. But like the magic, the paintings stay buried here with me in this cold stone house.