Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

‘My sister, Arianna, was the stronger one. She understood it all and she left – she fled our father’s madness. Or maybe she just wasn’t interested enough to lock herself in the same prison. I couldn’t escape.’

‘Because of your son?’

Helena hid her head in her hands. Her voice was muffled by her fingers, covering her face in a tiny prison of grief.

‘He’s not my son.’

‘He’s not your son?’

‘No, he’s my brother.’

‘Your brother? But you said-’

‘I told you that Stuart was my son,’ Helena said, looking up. Nobody could bear all that pain without dying, without having died long ago. ‘He is. But he’s also my brother.’

As Frank held his breath and tried to understand, Helena burst into tears. Her voice was a whisper, but in the tiny space of the car it sounded like a scream of liberation held in for far too long.

‘Damn you. Damn you to hell, Nathan Parker. May you burn for a million years!’

Frank pulled in to a parking spot beside the road. He turned off the engine, leaving the lights on.

He turned to Helena. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the woman slid into his embrace to find protection: the fabric of his jacket for her tear-streaked face, his hand to stroke the hair that had hidden a face full of shame for so long. They stayed that way for what seemed an eternity.

A thousand images flew through his mind. A thousand stories of a thousand lives, mixing real with imaginary, the present with the past, the true with the plausible, light with dark, the sweet scent of flowers with the stench of rotting earth.

He saw himself in his parents’ home. He saw Nathan Parker’s hand as it stretched out to his daughter. Harriet’s tears with a dagger raised over a man tied to a chair. The flash of a blade in his nostril and the blue-eyed gaze of an innocent ten-year-old boy living among depraved beasts.

The blinding light of hate in Frank’s mind slowly became a silent scream that smashed to pieces all the mirrors where human evil could be reflected, all the walls that could hide it, all the closed doors where the fists of those seeking desperately to escape their torture pounded in vain.

Helena wanted only to forget. And that was exactly what Frank needed. Right there in that car parked next to the empty road. In that embrace. In the meaning of that encounter, which he had needed for so long and which had come, finally.

Frank couldn’t tell who withdrew first. When their eyes met again, they both knew with the same incredulity that something important had happened. They kissed, and in that first kiss their lips joined in trepidation, not love. The fear that it was only desperation disguised as love, that loneliness had led to these words, that nothing was as it seemed.

They had to kiss again and keep kissing before they could believe it. And the suspicion became a tiny hope, for neither of them could yet afford the luxury of certainty.

Afterwards, they looked at each other, breathless. Helena recovered first, caressing his face.

‘Say something silly. Something silly and alive.’

‘I think we lost our table reservation.’

Helena embraced him again and Frank listened as her giggles of relief were lost in tiny tremors against his neck.

‘I’m ashamed of myself, Frank Ottobre, but I can only think well of you. Turn this car around and go back to my house. There’s food and wine in the fridge. I can’t share you with the rest of the world. Not tonight.’

Frank started the car and drove back along the same road. When had this happened? Maybe an hour or maybe a lifetime ago. He had lost his sense of time. But there was one thing he was sure of. If he had seen General Nathan Parker at that moment, he would have killed him.

Hidden in his secret place, the man is lying on the bed. He has drifted off to sleep with the gratifying sensation of a boat going back out to sea. His breath is calm and peaceful, barely audible, the sheet rising only enough to show that he is alive, that the white fabric thrown over him is a blanket and not a shroud.

Beside him, equally motionless, the wizened corpse lies in its glass coffin. He is wearing Gregor Yatzimin’s face with what seems like pride. This time the removal was a masterpiece. Instead of a mask, it looks like the mummified skull’s real face.

The man lying on the bed is asleep and dreaming. Indecipherable images agitate his sleep, although the figures that his mind attempts to disentangle never manage to disturb the perfect immobility of his body.

First, there is darkness. Now a dirt road with a construction site at its end appears in the soft light of a full moon. It is a hot summer night. Step by step, the man approaches the outline of a large house barely visible in the shadows, calling to him with the familiar scent of lavender. The man feels the crunch of gravel beneath his bare feet. He wants to move forward but at the same time he is afraid.

The man notices the muffled sound of heavy breathing; his anxiety eases and evaporates when he realizes that the breathing is his own. Now he is quiet. He is in the courtyard of the house, where a stone chimney rises up from the roof like a finger pointing at the moon. The house is wrapped in a silence that feels like an invitation.

Suddenly the house dissolves and he is inside, climbing a flight of stairs. He raises his head towards the dim light from above. A light shines from the landing at the top of the stairs, casting shadows into the stairwell. A human figure is outlined clearly against the light.

The man feels his fear return like a collar that is too tight, but he continues his slow ascent in spite of it. As he climbs reluctantly, he wonders who is waiting at the top, and realizes that he is terrified to find out.

A step. Another. The creaking of wood beneath his feet can be heard, along with his breathing, heavy again. His hand on the wooden banister is slowly illuminated by the light from above.

As he is about to climb the last flight, the figure turns and goes out the door where the light is coming from, leaving him alone on the stairs.

The man climbs the last steps. There is an open door before him, with bright, flickering light pouring out. He slowly comes to the threshold and crosses it, bathed in the light, which is also noise.

There is a man standing in the centre of the room. His body is naked, graceful and athletic, but his face is deformed. It is as though an octopus had wrapped itself around his head, erasing his features. Two pale eyes bulge from the monstrous tangle of fleshy growth and observe him pleadingly, begging for his pity. The unhappy creature is crying.

‘Whoareyou? ’

He doesn’t recognize the voice as his own. But it cannot be that of the deformed man before him, because he has no mouth.

‘Who are you?’ repeats the voice, and it sounds as if it is coming from every corner of the room, from the blinding light that surrounds them.

Now the man knows, but is loath to know. He sees, but is unwilling to see.

The figure extends its arms to him. He transmits real terror, although his eyes continue to seek the pity of the man facing him, just as they sought the pity of the world, in vain. And suddenly the light turns to fire. High roaring flames devouring everything in their path, fire straight from hell that has come to purify the earth.

He wakes without a start, merely opening his eyes and substituting darkness for the glare of the flames. His hand reaches for the lamp on the bedside table. He turns it on and a dim light spreads through the bare room.

The voice comes at once. Since they are forever at rest, the dead never sleep.

What’s wrong, Vibo, can’t you sleep?