Adam Foulds - In the Wolf's Mouth

Ray reached her. Her face, gold-coloured in the candlelight, was in front of his, separating into its details: the light swimming in her eyes, her starry eyelashes, her lips and teeth and nostrils. She closed her eyes, composed herself for the event. Ray leaned forwards and pressed his mouth against hers. He felt the warm blasting exhalation from her nose against his cheek. He felt her teeth beyond the soft barrier of her lips. He felt nothing, emptiness, the collision of two bodies. He felt very alone.

Mattia didn’t wake his little brothers. Two of them lay side by side, one with his arm around the other’s shoulder like old men consoling each other.

Downstairs, Mattia found Albanese filling a bag in the darkness. He looked up sharply and the glimpse Mattia had of a man alone, absorbed in a task, vanished. Albanese had looked very different in that instant. He had looked relaxed and it made Mattia realise how vigilant the man was the rest of the time.

‘What do you want?’ Albanese asked.

‘I heard a noise.’

‘Huh.’

To Albanese, the boy looked soft and childish in his fatigue, his long feet inturned.

‘Do you want something?’

‘I just heard a noise.’

‘Do you want to do something?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. There’s some coffee there. Drink it then put on some clothes. We’re going out.’

Outside the stars were bright and rigid over the houses. The night wind, cold and direct, blew into Mattia’s eyes. From the direction they turned, Mattia immediately knew where they were going. He thought perhaps he was wrong when Albanese turned another corner and headed towards the town hall. He stopped at a building beside it, opened it with a key and disappeared. When he returned, he had a jerrycan in his hand. ‘Carry this,’ he said.

Mattia took it. The fuel sloshing inside made it awkward to handle. It banged against his knees as they walked out of Sant’Attilio.

They stopped fifty yards from Angilù Cassini’s house. Mattia set the can down and shook feeling back into his arms. ‘We’re not …’ he whispered. ‘While they’re all asleep.’

‘No, we’re not. Be quiet.’ Cirò put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Mattia couldn’t really see his face. Cirò said, ‘This is just a warning. People don’t give you justice in this life, you know that? You have to go out and take it. Those are my trees. That oil, I had its taste in my mouth for twenty years knowing that someone else was stealing it. Now he won’t have it. First thing, though: the dog.’ Albanese produced a knife from the bag. It was a knife Mattia recognised from his mother’s kitchen. It was a knife he’d fantasised about taking out into the street and using, a boy’s violent fantasies, and now here it was outside in the night, the blade naked under the stars. Albanese handed it to him. Mattia gripped the handle. The weapon felt clever and agile in his hand. Albanese reached into his bag again and pulled out something white. Mattia could see its glow. Again Albanese handed it to him. ‘It’s meat, in the handkerchief. You remember where the dog is? On the left side of the garden. First thing is go in and cut its throat. It should be asleep. If it is awake, give it the meat and then cut its throat. Then put it on their doorstep. After that, we burn the trees. Will you be quieter with your sandals on or off?’

‘On.’

‘Okay. Go on then.’

‘Okay.’

‘Now. Go on. Be quick.’

‘Okay.’

Mattia walked down the hill with the knife and the meat in his hands. As he reached the gate, he lifted his feet carefully, trying not to make the loose stones squeak beneath him. The house was in front of him, set back behind the trees, dark and sleeping. He went in. For long moments as he crept about, Mattia worried that he wouldn’t even be able to see the dog in the darkness but then he perceived its round shape, curled on the ground. His sweat was cold in the wind. He stepped towards it, closer and closer, until he was near enough to drop onto it. He had his knees on its ribcage, one hand grabbing the muzzle that came awake, wet and sharp with teeth. He got his hand around it and crushed it shut. He reached under with the knife and pulled it up with a short tugging action, the way he’d seen men despatch sheep, and sure enough loose blood started pumping onto the ground while the animal whimpered and hissed, the air going out of it. Its body jerked in a seizure and lay still. He’d done it. He wiped his brow and caught the tang of the dog’s blood on his hands. He cut the rope it was tethered with. That was hard work. It took minutes to saw through. The dog was heavy as earth when he picked it up, its spine pouring over his hands, hard to gather and control. To get it to the doorstep he had to adopt a bandy-legged, shuffling run. He laid it down. Here you go, you thief. You see what happens? When you live in my house .

When he got back to Albanese, the man was delighted. He put both his hands on Mattia’s shoulders and shook him. ‘Good boy. Good boy. Okay, now the next thing.’

Albanese led the way this time. Mattia followed him as he dashed kerosene around and up into the olive trees, starting with those nearest to the gate. When he reached the end, he flipped open a cigarette lighter and lit two sticks. He gave one to Mattia and side by side they walked down the avenue touching flames to the trees, watching fire appear in patches of beautiful liquid blue. It raced up into the oily leaves which started to crackle and burn with flames as sumptuously golden as church decoration. At the gate they dropped the sticks and walked quickly back up the hill.

Albanese was ecstatic. He put his arm around the boy and kissed his head. Mattia felt the man’s strong lips push against his temple and the corner of his eye. Behind them, voices of panic could be heard.

Back at the house, Mattia washed the blood from his arms. Cirò gave him a glass of grappa which felt to Mattia like swallowing the same fire.

Upstairs, the drink, the smell of fire on his skin, the golden burning they’d made in the darkness, for some reason all filled Mattia with intense lust. In bed, he lay amorously on his front, his head full of images of women’s stocking tops and the neat plump shape of cloth where their underwear fitted tight around their figs. He fell asleep pressing a fierce erection down into the bed.

There were footprints of blood in the hallway. Angilù had stumbled over the dog’s soft body, kicked it away and then run back and forth through the puddle that shone black in the firelight.

He’d given up soon anyway. The trees hadn’t properly caught from the hasty splashes of fuel so in the grey dawn light he saw only ugly and stupid damage, scabs of burned twists of shrivelled leaves. Olive trees were tough, used to fierce heat, and there would still be a harvest but that wasn’t the point. This was bad. The dog was very bad. He remembered what it meant like something from his childhood, like a snatch of a song he hadn’t heard for years. Angilù might have only days to live. Every step now was along a precipice.

Angilù dug a hole. It took effort. He felt up his arms every pang of his spade hitting a stone. He took Cesare, whose fur was matted and dull, whose lips were retracted in a snarl, whose tongue hung out, and dropped him in and shovelled over. Earth covering the fur, covering the face. He had to decide what to do. With the Allies here, even if Albanese was whispering into their ignorant ears, there was just a chance of justice. After they’d gone, there was no telling.

At breakfast, Albanese sat silent and ignorant. When Mattia tried to smile at him, he registered nothing. His face was heavy and soft, his eyes vague, his grey hair crinkled from the pillow. He fumbled with his coffee and cigarette.