Valerio Manfredi - The Ancient Curse

‘Who’s there?’ he said nervously, as his eye moved to the rifle glittering on the rack.

There was no answer. He got up and moved to the door. There was no one there.

‘Who is it?’ he repeated tensely.

And then he looked down. There was a little boy who looked like the kid he’d seen at Le Macine. Skinny, slight, with huge, expressive eyes.

‘So who are you?’ he asked in an amused tone.

‘My name’s Angelo,’ he answered. ‘May I come in?’

Fabrizio stepped aside and let him in. The child went straight to the table, sat down and put his elbows up as if he were waiting for something.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Fabrizio. ‘There’s milk and biscuits.’

The boy nodded yes.

‘How did you get here?’

‘Emilio brought me. He delivers mineral water to the tavern. I like driving around with him.’

‘How did you know I lived here?’

‘Once I saw you going in the gate while I was riding around in Emilio’s truck.’

‘Do your parents know you’re here? They’ll be worried. How about if we give them a call?’

Fabrizio put his hand on the phone. The boy shook his head hard.

‘You must have parents…’

‘I live with my stepmother and she beats me for no reason. I hate her.’

‘Maybe you don’t do as she asks and she has to punish you.’

The little boy shook his head again but said no more.

‘Why did you come all this way? You know I saw you at Le Macine.’

‘Because I want to dig like you do. I want to be an archaeologist.’

‘How do you know what I do?’

No answer from the child.

‘Was she the one who told you? Your… stepmother? Or did you hear her talking to someone about me?’

The boy said nothing. He seemed intent on dipping biscuits into his milk. Then Fabrizio noticed that he was looking out of the corner of his eye at the blown-up photograph of the lad of Volterra.

‘Do you like him?’ asked Fabrizio.

The boy shook his head once again and then, a few moments later, said, ‘So, can I stay?’

Fabrizio took a seat opposite him.

‘I’m afraid not. A child has to be with his family. I’d like you to stay here, but then your mother would come looking for you. She’d talk to the carabinieri, you know? They’d call it “abduction of a minor” and you go to prison for that.’

‘Better to be in jail than with her,’ said the boy.

‘Not you. Me. I’m the one they’d put in jail for kidnapping a minor, and that’s you. You see?’

The boy shook his head again and Fabrizio sighed. How could he refuse to help this sweet child who seemed to have no one caring for him?

‘Angelo, listen… you have to try and understand,’ he began again.

The boy got up. ‘I’m not going back to her,’ he said. ‘I’ll run away.’

He started towards the door. He acted like a little man; no crying or betraying any sign of weakness. Fabrizio’s heart swelled.

‘Wait!’ said Fabrizio. ‘Where do you think you’re going? Hold on a minute. Listen, for reasons I can’t explain right now, the carabinieri come by here really often. If they see you here with me, they’ll start to say, “Who is this kid and where is he from and who are his parents?” and so on and so on.’

He suddenly thought of Francesca and was pleased to have an excuse for phoning her.

‘OK, wait. I have an idea. I have a lady friend who could maybe take care of you for a little while and then well decide what we should do, all right? You stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.’

He went out into the corridor, where there was another phone, so Angelo wouldn’t hear him. Francesca answered on the first ring, at her office in the museum. ‘I figured if you weren’t dead, you’d turn up sooner or later. I thought you were dead.’

‘I’ll tell you everything as soon as I see you. In the meantime, I have an emergency to deal with that might even help us out in the long run. A little boy has just shown up here. He lives with that woman at Le Macine, who he says is his stepmother. He’s run away because she mistreats him. I think he may know something…’ No answer. ‘Francesca, I’ve succeeded in translating that thing, but I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. I have to see you, as soon as possible.’ Dead silence on the other end of the line. ‘Francesca, please,’ he added.

‘All right. But you could have called me. Even just to say hello.’

‘You’ll understand when we see each other. Please, Francesca, come right away.’

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

Fabrizio hung up and went back into the kitchen, but the child had gone. Nothing more than an empty glass on the table and a few crumbs.

Fabrizio dashed outside and searched all around the house, calling loudly, but Angelo was nowhere to be found. Fabrizio couldn’t believe he’d got so far away in such a short time. Feeling defeated, he sat on the stone bench by the front door and waited for Francesca.

‘Sergeant Massaro is right out there in his grey Uno,’ said the girl as soon as she arrived.

‘I thought so. Come on in, please.’

Francesca continued to act a little peeved at first, but after she’d taken a good look at Fabrizio’s face, she realized there was no point in staying offended. He was pale and his eyes were shiny as if he had a fever. She watched his hands shake as he passed her a cup of tea.

‘I translated the inscription,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working on it since the moment I left you. That’s why I guess I don’t look so good. Actually, I’m exhausted… but unfortunately, without that missing segment, I don’t know what’s likely to happen next.’

Francesca shook her head, regarding him with an air of affectionate condescension. He was still seeing ancient curses everywhere.

Fabrizio told her about his fruitless trip with Reggiani to the tavern at Le Macine and then about the sudden appearance and disappearance of the little boy.

‘If I try to leave in my car, Massaro will set off on my heels. You could hide me in the back of yours and we could drive down the regional road and see if we can find him somewhere. You didn’t see a little boy walking all alone as you were driving here?’

‘No. I would have noticed.’

‘Then he didn’t head back home. He must have gone in the opposite direction. I’m afraid he’ll get lost. That he might meet up-’

‘Yeah, I get it,’ Francesca said, cutting him short to banish an ugly premonition. ‘OK, let’s get moving.’

Fabrizio left the light on in the kitchen, then slipped out and crouched down on the floor of the Jeep, hiding until he was out of sight of his guardian angel. They drove several kilometres before he had to admit that if the child had set off in that direction, it would have been impossible for him to have wandered so far.

‘Let’s try down the country roads,’ proposed Francesca, resolutely pulling off on to a track heading east towards the hills.

‘I have the translation with me,’ said Fabrizio, who in the meantime had come out of hiding and was sitting comfortably on the back seat. ‘Want to hear?’

‘Of course I want to hear. I can’t wait.’

Fabrizio began to read, and as the words came out of his mouth, his voice changed, distorted by the violent, unexpected emotion unleashed in his head by saying those words aloud. He had to stop more than once and take a deep breath, trying to recover lucidity and the strength to continue. When he had finished, his head dropped to his chest and he fell silent.

‘My God,’ said Francesca, without taking her eyes off the road, which was now running along the edge of an escarpment.

‘I think that there are too many coincidences for this to be a product of chance. But even if there is no connection at all, even if we are dealing with a series of coincidences with no rhyme or reason behind them, I still think – actually I’m firmly convinced – that we have to find the seventh fragment and analyse what it says.’