bed early and dropped off straight away, but during the night I woke up and wasn’t able to get back to sleep.
At ten minutes past six, with the feather quilt pulled up underneath my chin, I was breathing with my mouth open.
The house was quiet. The only sounds I could hear were the rain tapping against the window, my mother walking backwards and forwards between the bedroom and the bathroom upstairs, and the air going in and out of my throat. Soon she would come and wake me up to take me to the meeting with the others. I turned on the cricket-shaped lamp that sat on the bedside table.
The green light painted the slice of the room where my backpack sat, swollen with clothes, beside the waterproof jacket and the bag with my ski boots and skis.
Between my thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays I’d had a growth spurt, as if they’d put fertiliser on me, and I was taller than my peers. My mother said that two carthorses had stretched me. I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror studying my white skin stained with freckles, the hairs on my legs. On the top of my head grew a hazel bush that had ears sticking out of it. The shape of my face had been remodelled by puberty, and a substantial nose separated two green eyes.
I got up and I slid my hand into the pocket of the backpack.
‘The pocket knife’s there. So is the torch. I’ve got everything,’ I whispered.
My mother’s footsteps moved down the hallway. She must be wearing the blue high heels, I thought.
I dived back into bed, turned off the light and pretended to be asleep.
‘Lorenzo, wake up. It’s late.’
I lifted my head off the pillow and rubbed my eyes.
My mother pulled up the shutters. ‘It’s a foul day . . . Let’s hope the weather’s better in Cortina.’
The gloomy light of the dawn reflected her thin silhouette. She was wearing the grey skirt and jacket that she used when she did important stuff. Her round-necked cardigan. Her pearls. And her blue high heels.
‘Good morning,’ I yawned, as if I’d just woken up.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Did you sleep well, darling?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to make you breakfast . . . You go have a shower in the meantime.’
‘What about Nihal?’
She combed my hair with her fingers. ‘He’s still asleep. Did he give you your ironed T-shirts?’
I nodded.
‘Get up, come on.’
I wanted to, but a weight on my chest was suffocating me.
‘What’s the matter?’
I took her hand. ‘Do you love me?’
She smiled. ‘Of course I love you.’ She stood up, looked at her reflection in the mirror beside the door and smoothed out her skirt.
‘Get up, come on. On a day like today do I have to beg you to get out of bed?’
‘Kiss.’
She bent over me. ‘Look, you’re not joining the army, you’re going skiing for a week.’
I hugged her and slid my head under her blonde hair, which hung over her face, and I put my nose against her neck.
She had a nice smell. It made me think of Morocco. Of its narrow alleyways full of stalls with coloured powders. But I had never been to Morocco.
‘What perfume is that?’
‘It’s sandalwood soap. The usual.’
‘Can you lend it to me?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘So I can wash myself with it and carry you with me.’
She pulled the covers off me. ‘That would be a first, you washing yourself. Come on, don’t be silly, you won’t have time to think about me.’
Through the car window I studied the wall of the zoo covered in wet election posters. Higher up, inside the aviary where they kept the birds of prey, a vulture was sitting on a dry branch. It looked like an old woman dressed in mourning, asleep in the rain.
The heating inside the car made it hard to breathe and the biscuits I’d had for breakfast were stuck at the back of my throat.
The rain was easing up. A couple – he was fat, she was skinny – were doing exercises on the leaf-covered steps of the Modern Art Museum.
I looked at my mother.
‘What is it?’ she said, without taking her eyes off the road.
I puffed up my chest, trying to imitate my father’s low voice: ‘Arianna, you should wash this car. It’s a pigsty on wheels.’
She didn’t laugh. ‘Did you say goodbye to your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Not to be silly and not to ski like a maniac.’ I paused. ‘And not to call you every five minutes.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Yes.’
She changed gear and turned down Flaminia. The city was beginning to fill up with cars.
‘Call me whenever you want. Have you got everything? Your music? Your mobile?’
‘Yes.’
The grey sky hung heavily above the roofs and between the antennas.
‘Did you pack the bag with the medicines? Did you put the thermometer in there?’
‘Yes.’
A guy on a Vespa laughed into the mobile stuck under his helmet.
‘Money?’
‘Yes.’
We crossed the bridge over the Tiber.
‘We checked the rest together yesterday evening. You’ve got everything.’
‘Yes, I’ve got everything.’
We were waiting at the stoplight. A woman in a Fiat 500 was staring in front of her. An old man was dragging two Labradors along the footpath. A seagull was crouching on the skeleton of a tree covered in plastic bags that stuck out of the mud-coloured water.
If God had come and asked me if I wanted to be that seagull, I would have answered yes.
I undid my seat belt. ‘Drop me off here.’
