She followed Mimmo up the ladder, the jar in her left hand. Once on the curving tiles, they kept as low as they could. The slope of the roof would shield them from anyone who might be passing along the track.
She showed Mimmo the feather. His face lit up; he was alive to its significance. As she stirred the potion, using the feather as a spoon, they murmured the incantation he had invented, and always now insisted on: Your mother’s not your mother and your father’s never here. They repeated the words until their heads were empty — the magic needed a clear space, a kind of arena, where it could happen — then she handed the jar to Mimmo. He brought it up to his lips. Over the rim she could see his eyes, wide with excitement and anticipation.
‘Like birds,’ he whispered.
He took two or three gulps, his face twisting as he swallowed. It’s like medicine, she had told him once. The worse it tastes, the better it works. She swirled the contents of the jar and drank the rest.
It was a breathless early autumn day. The sun had lost none of its heat, and the mountains to the north-east were a dusty, faded purple. Her body twitched suddenly, as if she were on the brink of sleep.
‘I think it’s time,’ she said.
They rose to their feet.
Mimmo lifted his arms out sideways, as if to test his new powers. ‘I can’t feel anything.’
‘It’s subtle,’ she told him. ‘Light as air.’
She felt slightly sick; she tried not to think about the spiders’ legs and the priest’s greasy hair.
‘Shall I go first?’ she said.
‘No, me.’ He jumped up and down, making the loose tiles clack. ‘Me first.’
She put an upright finger to her lips.
He scrambled up to the apex of the roof. Still on all fours, he turned his back on the chimney and began to make his way down to the far end. From there, it was a sheer drop to the ground. He stood up. He was facing away from her, his arms held at right-angles to his body. He appeared to be looking out into the heat-haze that shimmered above the land.
Then he stepped off the roof.
For a moment he seemed to remain quite motionless. He hung in the air, the back of his head outlined against the flawless sky, and she thought he was about to veer sideways and soar up over the track and on towards the village.
Why hadn’t she stopped him?
Why hadn’t she gone first?
He had insisted, though, and there had been no mistaking his eagerness as he scurried over the tiles. He had believed in the potion to such an extent that she had begun to think it might actually work. Like Mimmo, she had wanted it to work. For those few seconds, his faith had converted her.
Then the air let go of him, and he vanished from sight, and there was a dull, ugly sound, like something collapsing. She rushed to the edge of the roof and peered over. Mimmo lay crumpled in the yellow grass. One of his legs had twisted back on itself; the skin had broken, and a piece of bone was showing.
She coughed twice and almost vomited, then she hurried back across the tiles. Down the ladder. Round the house. Out of the shadow, into the sun. Mimmo was still lying on the ground. His eyes were closed, and the fingers of his left hand were moving slowly, almost numbly, like insect feelers.
‘Did it work?’ His grey face made his lips look mauve. ‘Did I fly?’
‘I think so.’ She glanced over her shoulder. The roof was higher than she remembered. Above the tiled edge the blue sky seemed to lurch and tilt. ‘Yes. Just for a moment.’
His head moved sideways, and he was sick in the grass. Dark specks floated in the viscous fluid. Spiders’ legs. Rose dust. A rustle came from behind her. Looking round, she let out a cry. An old woman stood at her elbow. Her black clothes were so faded that they had gone brown, and her face was as cracked as a dropped plate. On her bald head she wore a hat made from a cabbage leaf. She began to speak, but Faustina couldn’t understand a word. The sounds were shapeless and morose. Like groans. She told Mimmo she would fetch help, then she turned and ran.
She made for Vespi’s house. He would know what to do. She talked to God the whole time she was running. Strange gabbled prayers. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Then: It’s not true. It can’t be. I must have imagined it. And then: You could have let him fly. Just once. Would that have been so difficult? And finally: He’s not going to die, is he? Please say he isn’t. She ran so fast she tasted blood.
Mimmo didn’t die, but he lost his leg. They cut it off, just above the knee.
A few days later, she called at the Righetti house. Mimmo’s father came to the door. Mimmo was still in hospital, he said, but they thought he would pull through.
She burst into tears. ‘It was all my fault.’
Mimmo’s father placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘He told me what happened. You were on the roof, and he was showing off. He went too near the edge.’
Mimmo had lied in order to protect her.
‘You’ve always been a good friend to him,’ Mimmo’s father said. ‘He looks up to you.’ He turned his eyes on her. Burst veins in the whites. Sagging lids. ‘He would never blame you.’
Her heart thumped. Did he know? Had he guessed? There was nothing worse than the feeling of being found out.
Before she left, he showed her the strap the barber-surgeon had wedged between Mimmo’s teeth before he operated. Mimmo had bitten clean through the leather.
Though Mimmo’s father told her that she was always welcome, she couldn’t bring herself to visit again. From that day on, she always turned right when she left her house, even if it meant going out of her way. If she saw Mimmo from a distance, stumping along on crutches his father must have made for him, she would duck down a side street, or else she would double back. And he, too, kept himself to himself. She could have said she was sorry, she supposed, but the longer her silence lasted the harder it became — and besides, he wasn’t the sort of person who would have expected an apology. Given that he had covered for her, it might even have offended him.
‘Actually, that’s nonsense,’ she said. ‘I was just a coward.’
Though there was still light in the sky, the shade in the garden had deepened. I stroked her arm, and all the tiny hairs stood up. She looked into my face.
‘I was a coward,’ she said again.
My hand moved to the smooth groove at the back of her neck. The colour of her eyes intensified, like embers when you blow on them, and my mouth found her mouth, my tongue was touching hers, and I thought I could taste salt, the almonds she had eaten earlier.
A sudden roar. The football match in Santa Croce.
We slid from the bench to the ground. She lay on her back, and I faced her, my cock against her hip. I reached under her skirts. Her breath caught on her teeth, and her eyelids lowered, her dark lashes resting lightly on the lavender skin beneath her eyes. I was seeing her in minute detail, as if through a magnifying glass. I ran my finger slowly from her perineum to her clitoris. I was hardly touching her at all, but the liquid inside her rose to meet my fingertip, her cunt a cup full to the brim. I could delay no longer. Her cries, though uttered next to my ear, sounded as faint and distant as birds flying high up in the air, birds not visible to the naked eye. Afterwards, we lay side by side, and stared up into a sky that seemed limitless.
‘That wasn’t the first time, was it?’ I said.
‘Yes. Well, no —’
I looked at her.
‘I was attacked once,’ she said. ‘When I was fourteen.’
There was a shifty-looking man who came through Torremagna every few months with a mule-drawn cart and a grindstone. He would always blow the same three haunting notes on his flute to let people know that he had arrived.