It is six o’clock in the afternoon and the light is exactly the light of six o’clock in the afternoon at the end of summer—hot and yellow, a veil of red where the field meets the sky.
There is only one car in the parking lot in front of the apartment building, a blue Ford covered with dust and dirt. The sun hits the glass of the rearview mirror and slices back, a blade, onto the blond bob of the little girl standing in the middle of the courtyard.
She faces the field of tall corn. She wears a short, light-blue dress with a frayed hem and enormous pockets. Her legs are parted slightly, her feet planted firmly in a pair of red combat boots with blue laces. Her hands are in her pockets and she is singing. She sings one of those songs that children sing occasionally. Songs that when you hear them remind you of something, you don’t know what exactly—maybe of when you used to sing them yourself.
She sings in tune and her voice is pretty. She sings as if she is singing to someone, with precision and patience, neither speeding up nor slowing down. It’s the way children sing when they’re sad. They sing carefully, as if it were an assignment, a mantra that if you repeat and repeat and repeat it, perfectly and clearly, all the bad and ugly thoughts will go away.
The building is orange. It’s the kind of building found on the edge of every Italian town. It has a big parking lot and a courtyard in front; the stretch of cement is sectioned off by a green, tubular iron fence with two automatic gates that open to let cars through. The benches are green, too; the trash cans are yellow and round. Lampposts are positioned symmetrically around the yard and there is a big one in the center with three heads. Control panels open the gates at each end of the yard by the street, and their lights flash red.
Yes, it’s the kind of apartment block found on the edge of every town, exactly the same, except that in front of this one, the countryside continues right up to the foot of the building.
It was constructed right on the edge of town, facing the fields. At night, when the lights are on, it’s a strange sight. A throbbing box, alive and full of people, in the darkness of the plain.
The little girl sings and keeps her eyes fixed on the far end of the field, the horizon, her gaze skirting the top of the corn, which is taller than she is. Her hands deep in her pockets. Her blond hair lit by the sun.
No one will come today. No one comes anymore.
The other children haven’t been to the yard or parking lot for a week. They rush out the main door and take off in different directions. No one calls to her, no one waves either. They don’t even wave to each other. Eyes lowered, they head directly over to their bicycles and scooters parked in or beside the yellow bike rack at the opposite end of the courtyard. They unlock the padlocks in the silence of the early afternoon, pull the chains from out of the wheels, and climb onto the seats. Their enormous sneakers press urgently on the pedals. They leave without saying anything. Only the whirr of bicycle chains or the disappearing rumble of the scooter motors can be heard as they move away—tires scraping against the asphalt.
The little kids stick around, but they don’t come down until later in the afternoon, four o’clock, four thirty. They come with their mothers, grandmothers, or babysitters. They’re still young. They play with dolls, toy cars, with pails and shovels, stirring up the gray sand in the sandbox. They scream and shout.
The older kids hang out at the ice-cream stand around the bend, or else they go to the pool. No one stays here.
It seems as if a lot of time has passed. When she thinks of those days, Martina thinks: When I was little. But it was only two months ago, the beginning of summer. Now it’s chilly at night. And no one is in the yard in front of the building. The big kids leave quickly, driving off on their scooters without saying a word. Martina has no idea where they go, but she’s sure they don’t go to the shed. No one goes there anymore. The little ones are in the sandbox or on tricycles, with their mothers or grandmothers. They keep to the back of the yard, over by the meadow, away from the field and nearer to town.
It’s strange to be alone in the courtyard. The benches make long shadows on the cement. The lamps around the yard all turn on at the same time. The light shining in the transparent bulbs is pale and uncertain at first, almost blue; then it suddenly turns warmer, and burns orange.
It will be summer for a little while longer. The fields around the town are still yellow. The town: Granarolo dell’Emilia. Granarolo. A teacher once told her the town was named for its grain, ilgrano. Once there was grain everywhere, even where the houses are now. They had to cut it all down in order to build. It must have been so silent at night back then, more silent than it is now. Only frogs and crickets, cats and fireflies glowing on the ears of corn.
The little girl continues to sing. She stands still in this position: her hands in her pockets, her legs parted, her eyes moving across the stretch of corn in front of her, long after the last note of her song has disappeared deep into the field.
Her mouth is tight. Her right hand, tucked deep in the pocket of her dress, clutches a torn shred of paper wedged into a corner along with the crumbs and pebbles. It might be a shop receipt. Or else a note passed between desks at school.
Whatever memory it is, it will be painful.
She takes her hand out of her pocket, her fingers still clenched, then she releases them, one at a time. The scrap of paper, sticking to her sweaty palm, lingers a minute before falling. When it finally drops, the little girl begins to sing again, not once lowering her gaze. The field lies in front of her and the sun falls over it, drenching it with light, swollen and liquid, like the yolk of a cracked egg.
For days, ever since they stopped meeting in the courtyard, Luca spends his afternoons in bed, slipping from one dream to another, from one deep sleep to another. He wakes in the morning along with the herd of buffalo that tears through the house for the first hour of the day. He eats breakfast with his family, pretending to listen to their senseless chatter. After everyone has left, he goes back to bed, telling himself he’ll get up soon, just another ten minutes and he’ll get up. Another ten minutes pass. What was he going to accomplish anyway in ten fucking minutes? Midday comes and he is hungry, so he gets up, but then goes right back to bed, his head heavy from lunch and the heat of the early afternoon. The room is completely dark; the blinds don’t let in even the slightest crack of light. Darkness and silence. And sleep. To sink into sleep, to drown in it, like a puppy or a newborn baby. Every so often he opens his eyes, shifts them without moving his head. His eyes wander across the empty ceiling, tracking the shadows. Then his breath slows again and he hangs suspended like a dolphin, like a shimmering whale in the cold, dark water of a nighttime sea, serene and smooth. His mother is furious when she comes home and sees he’s still in bed, that he hasn’t done anything all day long.
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“So, what’s the matter with you, may I ask?”
“Nothing. I’m tired.”
He shifts in his bed, turns his back to his mother, his legs twisted in the sheet dampened with sweat, his face buried in the soft pillow, his eyes tightly shut.
“I’m just tired.”
His mother stands in the doorway for a while, watching him, then she leaves the room, slamming the door.
It doesn’t make any difference whether she’s in the room or not. Luca only needs a few seconds of silence to descend back into the watery depths of sleep. While he sleeps, tiny cool droplets of sweat cover his still body—a kind of second skin made of water.
Matteo runs. He runs like he has never run before and his coach watches, perplexed, from the side of the field. The coach scratches his head. This kid used to be like a dead pinecone; the wind shifted and he’d fall from the tree. Now, suddenly, he’s an athlete. For the last three days he’s been running as if he were training for the New York marathon.
He runs and runs, methodical and steady. The bottoms of his shoes beat rhythmically over the dry earth, traced with wrinkles and minuscule craters. He runs with his eyes wide open, staring straight ahead. He runs as if there is something at the other end of the field, something he wants to reach at all costs. He runs as if he has no choice.
As he runs, his sharp shoulder blades seem to cut right through the skin of his back. His elbows pump back and forth. The muscles in his legs burn, knotting up like snakes. When they uncoil again he stumbles, but he doesn’t give up. He sweats like a pig. His shirt is plastered to his chest and back. Occasionally a fly hits his face in its imperfect flight, but he doesn’t notice. Then he goes home. Without stopping by the place.
