the door, Maria Grazia, please . . .’
‘Go away, for God’s sake. If you love your children, go away.’ Mama sank down onto the floor in tears. He staggered back to the car, got in and sat there, slumped forward, head against the windscreen, mouth open.
Anna climbed up onto the back of the sofa and looked at him through the window. Mama drew the curtains, picked her up and took her and Astor into bed with her. Anna thought she was going to say something, but they all just lay there in silence.
The next day, Papa died. Mama made a phone call and the authorities came to take him away.
Anna could have said goodbye to him, gone up to him, but at that time her mother didn’t know that children couldn’t catch the disease.
Not long afterwards Mama caught it.
Anna’s memories of that time were confused. Mama writing all day, half naked, her elbow on the table. Mama filling the exercise book with Important Things. Her long blonde hair falling in greasy tufts over her face. Her thin ankles. Her long calves. Her toes pressed down against the floor. The hollow curve of her stomach, revealed by her unfastened dressing gown. The red blotches on her neck and legs. The scabs on her hands and lips. Her constant coughing.
All so long ago, yet when she thought about it, she missed her so much she felt as though she’d fallen down a hole she’d never get out of.
*
The day released a flock of small white clouds into the blue sky.
Astor’s temperature seemed to have dropped, but he was still far from well. He gazed at Anna with big, bewildered eyes. When she tried to get him to drink, he brought up yellow bile.
Exhausted, he rubbed his stomach. ‘It hurts here.’
‘Look, I’m going out to find some medicine. I won’t be long.’
‘Okay, I’ll come with you.’
‘You know that’s not possible. Do you want to get caught by the smoke monsters?’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t you go either, then.’
‘I’ll bring you a present.’
‘Don’t want a present.’
She sighed. ‘I don’t believe this.’
He turned away, pouting sulkily.
‘What if we have Christmas first?’
He turned back to face her, excited. ‘Christmas? Can we? Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Have you already got my present?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I hide, then?’
‘Yes, go on.’
Astor hid under the blanket. Anna went into Mama’s room, took the CD-player from one of the drawers in the desk, then put on a Father Christmas hat and some red Moon Boots. Reluctantly, she pulled down a hedgehog soft toy which lay on top of a cupboard, out of Astor’s reach. A birthday present to her from Grandma Mena. Astor had always coveted it, but she’d never given in. She wrapped it in a sheet of newspaper.
‘Are you coming? I’m ready,’ Astor shouted.
Anna pressed ‘Play’ and a song started up at full volume.
Her choice for Christmas was always George Benson’s ‘The Ghetto’. She didn’t know why. Maybe because of its driving rhythm, maybe because she’d found the CD under a Christmas tree in a service area on the autostrada.
She instantly started dancing. A dance that consisted of swaying her bottom, hands on hips, and jutting her chin out, like a pigeon pecking at birdseed. Her brother was a round hillock quivering with excitement under the blanket. She passed by him, singing all the time, jumped up onto a chair and counted, pointing her finger: ‘One . . . Two . . . And three. Go, Ghetto! Your turn.’
The blanket flew off and Astor started jiving about, rotating his wrists and occasionally slapping himself on the head. That was his Christmas dance.
Anna was relieved. If he was dancing, he couldn’t be too ill. Maybe it was all an act to keep her at home. But he had thrown up.
‘The present! Give me the present.’
Anna took out the parcel and handed it to her brother. ‘Merry Christmas.’
Astor tore off the wrapping and gazed at the toy. ‘Is it mine? Really?’
‘Yes, it’s yours.’
Brother and sister started dancing again, just as George Benson struck up anew with ‘Yes, this is the ghetto’.
*
Anna packed the rucksack: a bottle of water, a can of peas, a kitchen knife, some batteries that still worked, and a double CD of Massimo Ranieri.
Ready.
She said goodbye to Astor, who’d gone back to bed with his new cuddly toy, and set off.
3
The first few times Anna had left Astor alone at home, she’d gone no further than the Manninos’ farm – Mama’s supplies seemed inexhaustible. But after a year all that remained were a few tins of sweetcorn, which gave Astor indigestion.
The farm was at the edge of the wood. A long low building, with a red-tiled roof. Opposite, cattle sheds and paddocks with metal fences. To one side a barn, full of bales of hay.
The parents had been carried off by the Red Fever and their children, too small to fend for themselves, had died in their bunk beds. The Manninos were small-scale farmers, far-sighted people, and the big larder behind the kitchen was full of jars of marinated aubergines and artichokes, preserves, jam, bottles of wine, legs of ham. Anna went there regularly to stock up, but one day she found it stripped clean. Someone had come by and carried off everything they could. The rest was strewn across the floor.
She was forced to search further afield. In the first group of buildings she came across, among corpses, flies and mice, she raided the kitchen cabinets. At first she went through the apartments with her hands over her face, singing and peering between her fingers at the bodies, but before long she grew used to them and saw them as constant, intriguing presences. They were all different, each with its own pose and expression, and later, depending on the degree of humidity, exposure to light, ventilation, insects and other necrophagous creatures, they turned into fillets of baccalà or revolting masses of pulp.
To prevent Astor from following her or hurting himself, in these early days, before going out, she would lock him up with his soft toys and a bottle of water in the cupboard under the stairs. The first few times he cried, screamed and banged on the door, but after a while, being intelligent, he understood that this imprisonment had its advantages: every time his sister reopened the door she brought food and presents.
Astor
