Читать книгу Anna - Niccolo Ammaniti - Страница 11
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Anna Salemi had been born in Palermo on 12 March 2007, the daughter of Maria Grazia Zanchetta and Franco Salemi.
The couple had met in the summer of 2005. He was twenty-one and worked as a driver for Elite Cars, his father’s private taxi firm. She was twenty-three and studying Italian literature at the University of Palermo.
They noticed each other on the ferry to the Aeolian Islands, exchanging glances among the crowd of tourists crammed on the deck. They disembarked on Lipari, with their separate groups.
The next day they met again on Papisca beach.
Maria Grazia’s friends rolled joints, read books and discussed politics.
Franco’s friends, all male, played football, challenged each other to games of beach tennis and showed off the muscles they’d built up in the gym during the winter.
Franco’s approach was pretty clumsy. He kept pretending to miskick the ball, moving it closer and closer to the beautiful girl sunbathing naked.
Finally Maria Grazia said: ‘Stop kicking that ball around me. You want to talk to me? Come over here and introduce yourself, then.’
He asked her out for a pizza. She got drunk and pushed him into the pizzeria toilets, where they made love.
‘I know we’re very different. But it’s through their differences that people complete each other,’ Maria Grazia confessed to a friend who was amazed she liked such a vulgar lout.
Back in Palermo they continued to see each other and the next year she got pregnant.
Franco was still living with his parents. Maria Grazia shared a room in a student flat and had an evening job at a wine bar in Piazza Sant’Oliva.
The Zanchetta family lived in Bassano del Grappa, in northern Italy. Her father had a small business that manufactured hi-fi equipment and her mother taught in a primary school. Their daughter loved warm weather, the seaside, Sicily and the character of its inhabitants. After finishing school she decided to move to the island, against her parents’ wishes.
Maria Grazia didn’t even consider abortion. She explained to Franco that he was free to choose: either he could recognise the child, or she’d become a single mother, and that would be fine with her.
Franco asked her to marry him, feeling that it was his duty.
Six months later the wedding took place in the village hall of Castellammare, the Salemi family’s place of origin. The Zanchettas thought their daughter deserved better than this southern taxi driver and didn’t attend the ceremony.
There was no honeymoon. The couple moved to the centre of Palermo, where they lived in a flat on the third floor of an old palazzo near the Politeama Theatre.
Signor Salemi discovered that he had heart problems and retired, leaving the running of Elite Cars to his son.
Two months later, in an inflatable birthing pool full of warm water, Anna was born, dark-skinned like her father, with her mother’s features.
‘I brought Anna into the world by accepting pain. Because women can give birth in the peace of their own homes.’ So Maria Grazia would say to anyone who asked her about her unusual choice.
The Salemi family couldn’t stand their daughter-in-law. They called her ‘the madwoman’. What other word was there for a woman who gave birth like a monkey and smoked pot?
Over the next two years Maria Grazia, as well as looking after the baby, graduated and got a temporary job teaching Italian and Latin at a high school. Franco, meanwhile, had expanded Elite Cars, buying more taxis and hiring new drivers.
They didn’t see much of each other. He would come home exhausted in the evening, bringing boxes of food from the takeaway, and collapse on the bed. She taught during the day, and in the evening, in her book-filled study, cuddled the baby and read about psychology, the environment and women’s liberation. And she started writing stories, which she hoped to publish.
Sometimes they quarrelled, but on the whole they respected each other’s interests, even if they didn’t understand them.
And gradually the same differences that had brought them together became a source of division which drove them further and further apart. Without ever saying as much, they allowed the gap to widen, in the awareness that neither of them would be able to close it.
When Franco’s old grandmother died, she left him a cottage in the countryside near Castellammare. He wanted to sell it, but Maria Grazia was tired of living in the city, with all the pollution and noise. Anna would have a healthier upbringing in the countryside. Franco, however, couldn’t move; his work was in Palermo.
‘What’s the problem? You can come over at weekends, and I promise you I’ll learn to cook better than your mother,’ she said.
They took out a bank loan and renovated the cottage, putting in double glazing, a new central heating system and an attractive new roof. Maria Grazia sowed a large organic vegetable garden, declaring that her daughter needed to eat vegetables free of any chemical pollutants. She started teaching at a high school in Castellamare.
After a year of shuttling back and forth between the city and the country, Franco fell in love with the woman who owned the tobacconist’s shop opposite Elite Cars’ garage. One evening, finding courage in wine, he confessed everything to his wife.
Maria Grazia gave him a big hug. ‘I’m happy for you. The important thing is that you continue to be a good father and come to see your daughter every weekend as you’ve always done in the past.’
From that moment on, their relationship bloomed like the zucchini in the vegetable garden. She persuaded him to read Women Who Run With the Wolves and he took her to see an air display by the Italian Air Force aerobatic team in Marsala.
After an isolated drunken fit of passion, Maria Grazia became pregnant again. A baby boy was born. They called him Astor, after the great Argentinian tango musician, Astor Piazzolla. Franco continued to go back and forth from Palermo and to see the tobacconist.
Who knows? Maybe with time they’d have got back together. But the virus arrived from Belgium, and this family, like millions of others, was swept away.
When Franco and Maria Grazia died, Anna was nine years old and Astor was five.
*
The roof of the farmhouse was covered with dry leaves and branches. The porch, supported by white pillars, concealed the front door. On the upper floor two windows with faded shutters each opened onto a small balcony. In the middle of the façade, in a whitewashed niche, was a small statue of the Madonna overgrown by a caper bush. The pink plaster had flaked away and what little remained of the gutter had leaked onto the walls, streaking them with green. The Virginia creeper, in only four years, had taken over one side of the house, and the big gnarled mulberry tree had spread its branches over the roof as if to protect it.
Anna opened the gate, closed it behind her and went down the path, which ended in a clearing of bare earth. To the left was the former vegetable garden, now a field of nettles. On the other side a long wooden bench stood among weeds in front of the wreck of an old black Mercedes and a row of rusty barrels where Anna collected rainwater. A dirty, naked little boy was crouching beside the car, hacking at the hard earth with a rake. Tufts of black hair emerged from under the cycling helmet on his head.
As soon as she saw her brother, the weight lifted from her heart. ‘Astor!’
The little boy turned round and smiled, displaying a row of irregular teeth, then went on digging.
Anna sat down beside him, exhausted.
He stared at her torn knees and scratched legs. ‘Did a smoke monster do that?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Nasty.’
‘Did you beat him?’
‘Yes.’
Astor spread his arms. ‘Was he big?’
‘As big as a mountain.’
He pointed at the hole he’d dug. ‘It’s a trap. To catch rhinoceroses and rats.’
‘That’s great. Are you hungry?’
Her brother stretched his back. He was thin, with long legs and a prominent belly. The nipples on his flat chest looked like lentils and his pointed face was dominated by huge blue eyes which homed in on things as quickly as bees on nectar. ‘Not very.’ He took hold of his penis and pulled it like an elastic band.
His sister gave him a shove. ‘Stop that!’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
Astor was obsessed with his penis. Once he’d covered it with sticky tape, and it had been a terrible business getting it off.
Anna took off her rucksack. ‘How come you’re not hungry?’
‘Did you find anything good?’
Anna nodded, putting her hand on his back, as they walked towards the house.
*
The fine barrel-vaulted sitting room, fitted with rustic furniture and Persian carpets by Maria Grazia Zanchetta, was awash with rubbish. The windows were stopped up with cardboard, and the half-light revealed mountains of bottles, jars, books, toys, printers, newspapers, bicycles, mobile phones, envelopes, clothes, radios, pieces of wood, teddy bears and mattresses.
In the kitchen, light filtered in from the windows, painting bright strips on swarms of flies feasting on remnants left in tins of tuna and meat. Cockroaches and ants scuttled across greasy floor tiles. The marble table was covered with countless bottles of water, Coca-Cola and Fanta.
Anna took a long drink. ‘I was dying for that.’
Astor peered into the rucksack. ‘Any batteries?’
‘No.’
Batteries were precious and hard to find; they were almost always flat nowadays. She had a secret stock of them for the torch. If Astor got his hands on them he’d use them all up listening to music.
Anna produced a jar of beans. ‘Like some?’
A sideways wag of his forefinger said no.
She raised a suspicious eyebrow. ‘What have you been eating?’
‘Nothing. I’ve got the shakes.’
She put her hand on his forehead. ‘You’re boiling hot.’ It couldn’t be Red Fever – he was too young – but she was still worried. ‘Put some clothes on.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Go and get dressed.’ She took a big white tube out of the rucksack. ‘Otherwise, no present.’
‘What is it?’
‘Off you go.’
He kept jumping up, trying to grab the tube.
‘Off you go!’ Anna went outside, sat down on the bench and opened the jar of beans with a knife.
Two minutes later Astor turned up in a dirty jacket that reached down to his knees. ‘Where’s my present?’
She handed it over. ‘I think you’ll like it.’
He eyed her curiously, unscrewed the top and started sucking.
Anna snatched it out of his hand and pushed him down onto the ground. ‘What have I told you a thousand times?’ He tried to get up, but she put her foot on his chest, pinning him down. ‘What have I told you?’
‘Always read and smell before putting things in your mouth.’
‘So?’
Astor grabbed hold of her foot, trying to free himself. ‘You said I’d like it. So it must be all right.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You must always read.’ She gave him the tube again. ‘Come on.’
He puffed out his cheeks in exasperation and rubbed his eye. ‘Ne . . . Nes . . . Nest—’ He broke off and pointed to a letter: ‘What’s this?’
‘An accent.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘Nestle. Co . . . con . . . den . . . condensed mil . . . milk.’
He went on sucking in silence, holding his ear with his hand.
*
Anna spent the afternoon sleeping on the bench in the yard. The knocks she’d taken in the fight with the dog were beginning to hurt. A bruise had formed on the hip she’d hit against the car and her knuckles were swollen.
Astor lay beside her, under a blanket. She touched his forehead; it was very warm.
She went back into the house, fetched the torch, climbed the stairs and walked along the corridor until she came to a closed door. Taking her shoes off and switching on the torch, she took a key out of her trouser pocket and turned it in the lock.
The beam of the torch lit up a carpet with a coloured check pattern and a dusty writing desk with a laptop in the middle. The walls were covered with childish drawings – of houses, animals, flowers, mountains, rivers and a huge red sun. The beam fell on a bedside table made of dark wood, a pile of books, a radio alarm and a bedside lamp, then on a double bed with a brass headboard. On the red and blue bedspread there was a skeleton with its arms crossed. All the two hundred and six bones that made it up, from the phalanges of the feet to the skull, were decorated with intricate geometrical patterns traced by a black felt-tip pen. The forehead and cheekbones were adorned with rings and earrings, the eye sockets covered by birds’ nests full of speckled eggs. The vertebrae of the neck and the ribs were twined around with strings of pearls, thin golden chains, amethyst necklaces and coloured stones. Curled up beside the feet lay the skeleton of a cat.
Anna sat down at the desk, rested the torch on it and opened a well-worn exercise book. The hard brown cover bore the words: THE IMPORTANT THINGS.
Silently moving her lips, she read the rounded, careful handwriting that filled the first page.
My dearest children, I love you so much. Soon your mama won’t be here any more and you’ll have to fend for yourselves. Be good and intelligent and I’m sure you’ll manage.
I’m leaving you in this exercise book some instructions that will help you to cope with life and avoid danger. Look after it carefully and whenever you have a doubt open it and read. Anna, you must teach Astor to read, so that he can consult it too. You’ll find that some of the advice won’t be useful in the world you’re living in. The rules will change and I can only imagine them. You’ll have to correct them and learn from your mistakes. The important thing is that you always use your heads.
Mama is going away because of a virus that has spread all over the world.
These are the things I know about the virus. I’ll tell you them as they are, without any lies. Because it wouldn’t be fair to deceive you.
THE VIRUS
1) Everybody has the virus. Males and females. Little children and grown-ups. But in children it sleeps and has no effect.
2) The virus will wake up only when you reach maturity. Anna, you’ll reach maturity when dark blood comes out of your vagina. Astor, you’ll reach maturity when your willy goes hard, and sperm, a white liquid, comes out of it.
3) If a person has the virus, they can’t have children.
4) When you reach maturity, red blotches start to appear on your skin. Sometimes they appear straight away, sometimes it takes longer. When the virus grows in your body you start to cough, you find it hard to breathe, all your muscles ache, and scabs form in your nostrils and on your hands. Then you die.
5) This point is very important and you must never forget it. Somewhere in the world there are grown-ups who have survived and they’re preparing a medicine that will save all children. They’ll reach you soon and cure you. You must be certain of that, you must believe it.
Mama will always love you, even though she isn’t with you. Wherever she is, she’ll love you. So will Papa. You must love each other too, and never part. You’re brother and sister.
She knew this part off by heart, but always re-read it. She turned to another page in the middle of the book.
HAVING A TEMPERATURE
The normal temperature of the human body is 36.5. If it’s higher than that, you have a fever. If it’s 37 or 38 it’s not serious. If it’s higher than that you must take medicine. To measure your temperature, use a thermometer. There’s one in the second drawer in the kitchen. It’s made of glass, so mind you don’t drop it or it’ll break. (There’s a plastic one too, but that one has a battery and I don’t know how long it will go on working.) You have to put it under your arm and wait for five minutes. If you don’t have a clock, count very slowly up to 500 and see where the silver strip stops. If it’s more than 38 you must take medicines called antibiotics. You must take them for at least a week, twice a day. There are lots of antibiotics. Augmentin, Aziclav, Cefepime. I’ve put them with the other medicines in the green cupboard. When you run out of them, you’ll have to go and look for them in chemists’ shops or houses. If you can’t find these ones, look at the leaflet inside the box; it will tell you the active ingredient; if it’s a word that ends in ‘ina’ it’s all right. Amoxicillina, cefazolina, things like that. And you must drink a lot.
Anna tucked her hair behind her ears and closed the book.
The glass thermometer had been broken. The plastic one had stopped working. The antibiotics Mama had left in the cupboard had been eaten by mice. Minerva, the chemist’s shop in Castellammare, had burnt down along with the rest of the village.
A thermometer wasn’t essential in this case. Astor was boiling hot; there was no doubt his temperature was over 38 degrees. But it was too late to go looking for medicines; that would have to wait till the next day.
She put the exercise book back in its place and went out of the room, locking the door behind her.
*
Outside, the sun had gone down behind the wood and the air was still.
‘Come on, Astor, bedtime.’
He followed her sleepily upstairs.
Their bedroom wasn’t much tidier than the rest of the house. No remnants of food, but heaps of clothes, toys, bottles of all shapes and sizes. Two chests of drawers were covered by streams of melted wax from hundreds of candles. The wall behind had been blackened by their smoke.
Anna covered her brother up and gave him a drink of water, but he was promptly sick.
She went back downstairs. In the green cupboard, she remembered, there was nothing left but mouse droppings. She imagined rows of mice with temperatures, gnawing pills and feeling better.
In the sitting room she found a box of Crescina. The name ended in ‘-ina’, but she wasn’t sure it was an antibiotic. The leaflet said it was a food supplement suitable for men and women of all ages and recommended for hair loss. Her brother wasn’t losing hair, but it wouldn’t do him any harm. She also found some Dafalgan suppositories. Good for high temperatures and headaches.
She made Astor swallow the Crescina and took out a suppository. ‘This goes up your bum.’
He eyed her dubiously. ‘I put a felt-tip pen up my bum once, and I didn’t like it. Can I eat it instead?’
Anna shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose it won’t make much difference.’
He chewed the suppository with a grimace, then turned on his side, shivering.
His sister lit a candle, lay down beside her brother and put her arms round him, trying to warm him up. ‘Would you like me to tell you a story?’
‘Okay.’
‘Which one?’
‘Any one, as long as it’s good.’
Anna remembered the book of fairy tales her mother had given her. Her favourite was the one about poor Cola the Fish. ‘This story’s about the time when there was a king and the Outside didn’t exist and there were still Grown-ups. In those days there was a boy in Sicily called Cola who could swim underwater, just like a fish.’
Astor squeezed her hand. ‘Is the sea made of nothing but water?’
‘Yes, salt water – you can’t drink it. Cola the Fish was such a good swimmer he could go right down to the sea bed, where it’s dark and you can’t see a thing. And while he was down there, he would take treasure out of sunken ships and bring it up to the surface. He had become so famous that the king decided to set him a challenge.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what kings do: decide things. He threw a gold cup into the water and Cola the Fish brought it straight back up again. Then the king ordered his men to sail further out to sea, then he took off his crown and threw it into the water. “Let’s see if you can do it out here,” he said. Cola dived in and stayed underwater a very long time. Just when everyone on board had started drinking a toast . . .’
‘What does that mean, drinking a toast?’ mumbled Astor, with his thumb in his mouth.
‘Clinking bottles together. While the people on the ship were drinking a toast, the boy came back up with the crown. But still the king wasn’t satisfied. He took off the precious ring he wore on his finger and threw it into the sea where it was so deep anchors ran out of rope before they could touch the bottom. “Have you got the courage, Nicola?” the king asked, with a sneer. “Certainly, Your Majesty,” said Cola the Fish. He took a deep breath and jumped in. Everyone on the ship stared at the dark blue sea. They didn’t know their ship was floating like a cork over a ditch so deep that if you threw a stone in it wouldn’t reach the bottom till the next day. There were creatures living in that eternal darkness that no human being had ever seen or imagined. Long transparent snakes, luminous soles as wide as pumpkin fields, octopuses so huge they could crush a house with their tentacles. They stayed there two days waiting for him. Then the king yawned and ordered his sailors: “Back to the palace. He’s dead.” Just at that moment Cola the Fish emerged from the sea, looking very pale and holding the king’s ring. “Your Majesty, I have something important to tell you. I went right down to the bottom and saw that Sicily is supported by three columns. But one of them is badly damaged and on the point of collapsing . . . ”’
Anna glanced at her brother, who was breathing deeply, still sucking his thumb. ‘“Sicily will sink into the sea.” The king thought for a moment. “In that case, do you know what my orders for you are, Nicola? Go back down there at once and hold up our island.” The boy looked at the sun, the sky, the coast of the land that he would never see again and said: “Yes, Your Majesty.” He took a breath so deep it sucked in the air, the clouds and the dry seaweed on the beach, and dived down. Since that day he has never come up again. There. That’s the end of the story.’
Astor was sleeping with his head bent over on one side.
Anna thought of that poor boy standing there all alone at the bottom of the sea, holding up the island. She imagined swimming down to him like a deep-sea diver and telling him that his king and all his court were dead, and that Sicily was entirely inhabited by children.
She ate some beans, then picked up the bottle of Amaro she’d found in the garden centre and held it close to the candle’s flame. The label showed an angry peasant woman standing with one hand on her waist and the other holding a basket full of herbs.
Looks just like Signorina Rigoni. She used to stand like that when the class was being too noisy.
Anna took a swig of Amaro. It was so sweet it made her curl up her toes.
There were some things about Grown-ups she just couldn’t understand. Why did they call it ‘Amaro’ – bitter – if it was sweet?
After a few more swigs, her eyelids grew heavy. Outside the window millions of stars dotted the sky like a sprinkling of white paint, and cicadas were singing. When the cold weather came they would disappear. She’d never seen any cicadas, but they must be really big creatures to make all that noise.
*
When Anna woke up, her arms were wrapped round her brother, and the mattress was soaked in sweat. Turning on the torch, she played it over Astor. His face was buried in the pillow, and he was grinding his teeth.
She picked up the bottle of water from the floor and drank her fill. Outside, everything was quiet, the silence broken only by the hoots of an owl and Astor’s heavy breathing.
Getting out of bed, she went out onto the balcony and sat down to enjoy the cool air. Beyond the rusty railing and the black shapes of the trees lay the burnt, noiseless expanse of the plain.
The bird was hooting from the fig tree behind the tool shed. The tree had always been small, but in the last two years it had grown so much its branches reached down to the ground.
She remembered Mama once tying the ropes of the swing to it, and Papa objecting that the fig was a treacherous tree, likely to break.
But thinking about it again, she wasn’t so sure. Perhaps she’d read about the treacherous fig tree in some book, or dreamed of it. Memories often mingled with written stories and dreams, and in time even the clearest ones faded, like watercolours in a glass of water.
She remembered Palermo. Their flat, from where you could see an office full of people sitting in front of monitors. She recalled trivial things. The black and white chessboard of the floor tiles in the sitting room. The kitchen table with a slot for a roller that was used for making pasta. The clothes drying rack with its rusty corners. But she could no longer summon up the faces of Grandpa Vito and Grandma Mena. In fact, all the Grown-ups’ faces were disappearing, suppressed by the passing days. The old people had white hair, some men grew beards, the women dyed their hair, painted their skin and put on perfume. In the evenings they sat in bars and drank wine in glasses. There were lots of waiters. In the restaurants of Palermo they brought you parmigiana di melanzane and spaghetti.
Mama had come to hate Palermo, because the people wouldn’t stay in quarantine. Anna remembered that even before the Red Fever reached Castellammare she’d stopped sending her to school. They’d barricaded themselves in the house with stocks of food piled up in the kitchen and the sitting room.
One evening Papa had come over in his Mercedes. The car had skidded in the drive and crashed into the benches, the horn blaring. Papa had climbed out, more dead than alive. He was barely recognisable, his face drained by the virus, his eyeballs bulging, his skin covered in blotches. He dragged himself to the door, but Mama wouldn’t let him in. ‘Go away! You’re infected!’ she shouted.
He hammered on the door with both fists. ‘I want to see the children. Just for a moment. Let me see them, just for a moment.’
‘Go away. Are you trying to kill us?’
‘Open 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.
