By the time he reached his house, he was beginning to rethink the experience. It could never have been her. It was too dark and too far for him to have seen her face at the window as he was passing on the road. His imagination was playing tricks on him, because it was 4:15 in the morning, and his brain had decided to go back to dreaming without telling him. And now, finally doing as his mother had asked him, he lifted two suitcases from their car and took them back into the house, expecting her to be there waiting fearfully and angry at his delay, but there was no sign of her. He put them down quietly in the hall so as not to waken her, and went back outside to collect the other things from the car.
It was on his fourth trip in that he heard his mother’s voice, speaking softly as if from far away. He moved quickly and quietly to the kitchen door, then walked in suddenly, catching her unawares. She swung her body sideways away from him, and clasped the phone closer to her ear. She seemed to express a few words of gratitude and clicked the phone shut and slipped it with mock casualness into a kitchen drawer. It was 4:35 in the morning and she was making or receiving secret calls. He felt he had a right to know.
‘Who was that?’ demanded Ruggiero.
‘None of your business.’
‘Of course it’s my business.’ He went over to the kitchen drawer. His mother shrank away for a moment as he approached her, which gave him a hard, righteous feeling of gratification for a second or two, before it was submerged by a sudden wave of panic, followed by sadness as he realized that she had just ceased to be the all-knowing source of total love on whom he could always depend. She should not be shrinking from him, she should be reaching out to him, pulling him into her embrace, and telling him everything would be fine. But as he looked at her, he realized that was what she was hoping for from him, which angered him all over again.
He opened the drawer, pulled out the phone. ‘I’ve never seen this before,’ he said.
‘No?’ She was still trying to sound casual.
‘Who did you call, Papa?’
‘Nothing to do with you.’
‘It’s everything to do with me.’
‘You are not the only child in this house.’ She sat down at the table, brushed the back of her hand over its grainy surface, then rubbed it against her own cheek. ‘You didn’t wipe the table like I asked you, Ruggiero. You never do as I ask.’
‘Who?’ Ruggiero demanded again. ‘Was it a local call?’
‘No. Not local. Is that Robertino crying?’
‘No, not yet. But if you don’t answer, then I’m going to bed,’ said Ruggiero and went upstairs.
His mother was still downstairs. Maybe she was making more phone calls, appealing for help, for he knew that was what she had been doing. He was ashamed of her, but he wanted her to succeed, too. He wished his father were there to tell him what to do next.
Over five days in March, in the middle of which they celebrated his fifteenth birthday, his father had begun by telling him things he already knew, calmly and so slowly that he began to feel impatient. He was a giovane d’onore, the son of a man of honour. Ruggiero almost rolled his eyes at this. He knew whose son he was. He had an idea of where he fitted into the hierarchy, but he lacked the absolute precision of others like Pepe and even Enrico. They knew who should respect them more, who less, and who they need not even consider as entitled to an opinion, which included more than half the class and all the teachers, except for the coach. But in six visits over two years, his father had slowly started unpacking small and mostly unwelcome surprises, things Ruggiero thought he knew, but hadn’t. First, a giovane d’onore did not automatically become inducted into the honoured Society at the age of sixteen.
‘I know that,’ said Ruggiero, aggressive because he had failed to hide his surprise. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘We may postpone the date, because study is also important.’
‘I’ll be the only one.’
‘Once in, you’ll move up quickly. There is no rush. I want to make sure that you are suited to it.’
This made Ruggiero angry, but his father had been unmoved. ‘First I shall test your mettle. When we are certain about what you can do, then we can let others conduct the initiation rites. Think of it like knowing the answers to an exam beforehand.’
‘How will you test my mettle?’
‘Good question. I hope the occasion does not present itself too soon. But it will eventually.’
Another day, his father told him, ‘Don’t always look for explanations. Sometimes there aren’t any.’
‘Explanations of what?’
‘Anything. A disappearance, an accident, an earthquake, a sudden violent death, the tragic killing of an innocent man. Don’t look for explanations.’
On his second to last day before leaving, his father had told him that the important thing was to persuade people. ‘When you are persuading people, you must not distinguish between friends and enemies. Everyone must be persuaded. You yourself must be persuaded.’
‘What if it’s not true?’
‘Your belief makes it true. If you believe something to be true, then it becomes true.’
He didn’t really get that bit. Nor did he quite understand his father’s claim, on the morning before he left for Germany, that things that were equal could also be different.
‘Like what?’
‘If I gave you two fifties,’ and here he handed him two 50-euro notes, ‘is that the same as my giving you five twenties?’ and here he handed him five 20s. ‘Or ten tens?’ This time he handed him nothing.
‘Sure. Five times twenty is the same as two times fifty.’
‘Well, you’re wrong. They are different acts.’
‘OK,’ said Ruggiero, resolving to think about it later.
‘That money is for buying treats, not for clothes, shoes or any necessities,’ his father had said. ‘If you need new clothes, your mother will pay.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I want you to spend three-quarters of what I gave you on buying things for your friends. If I’m not back by June, your mother will give you another € 200. Three-quarters of the total on your friends, right?’
‘OK.’
‘And take good note of who always lets you buy and who never lets you buy for them. Beware of both extremes. The ones in the middle, who let you buy sometimes and then treat you sometimes, are more trustworthy.’
‘Right.’
‘But don’t rely on just that. There is never just one trick, never just one answer.’
‘Supposing something bad happens?’ He had not meant to sound so childish and helpless. The words just tumbled out.
‘If something happens, your mother will let me know, and I’ll get here.’
Or had he imagined that response?
He unbuttoned his shirt, and stood there bare-chested, thinking of the car in the ditch, the opened gate. He often practised trying to overcome the feeling of vulnerability that being bare-chested gave him. Logically, it made no sense, since a knife or bullet wound inflicted through a shirt was exactly the same as one inflicted on bare skin, and yet he could not help feeling that it would be worse.
His mother had stopped moving around downstairs. In the next room, Roberto sighed in his sleep. The effect was always comical when he did that, the sigh sounding so world-weary.
A foot scraped on the gravel outside the house. It was an unmistakable sound, the same that his own feet made day after day. Ruggiero froze. Downstairs he heard a click, then a thud. It was the back door being opened. Walking on his toes, paying attention to his arms to make sure they did not bang into anything, he made his way over to his bedroom door, and listened. There would be at least three of them. He had heard no car. He thought he heard a gasp and a muffled thud. They must be using knives. His mother could be lying in a pool of her blood. He ran to his bed, and in one movement swept his hand underneath, spun around, and faced his bedroom door. In his hand he held a small black throwing knife that he hadn’t learned to throw yet.