Now, benediction is more than a simple good wish made for others; it is also more than a magical impress of personal thought and will upon others. It is the putting into action of divine power, transcending the individual thought and will of the one who is blessed as well as the one who is pronouncing the blessing. In other words it is an essentially sacerdotal act.
When you don’t know where to go, you always go home. If the house isn’t there, you go anyway. Even on the mangled, twisted streets of a snarling night, Nicola, fleeing the port, would have found the way from the Marina to Piazza San Filippo with his eyes closed; he climbed over ruins that had once been buildings, inventing new shortcuts; he went faster when he had to escape and hid at every perceived danger. The darkness was sweet, dense with insects and rustling sounds, and the child soon learned to distinguish them. If you trusted it, night in the city without borders might resemble a bed.
Reaching the square, he stopped. The last contours of the house could barely be distinguished. The cellar, however, was still in its place.
Nicola raised the trapdoor. He could sleep outside, on the grass, or go inside, as instinct suggested. And if a stranger surprised him, an undesired guest? In Reggio the houses belonged to everyone, each person chose for himself where to sleep, where to live. But who would dare to appropriate a cellar crowded with presences?
If another human being had tried to usurp his bed, the demons would give him no peace. He alone could speak to them, he who had known them forever. And if the sailor looked for him there, the monsters and cats of the night would protect him. Yes, he was sure of it: the ghosts were his family, no earthquake had murdered them.
Without hesitating any longer he went down the stairs and, reaching the bottom, looked for the bier so he could curl up on it. He was no longer alone as before: now Maria and Vincenzo were sleeping not above his head but dug in near him, somewhere in the shelter of the walls. Father, mother, who are now in my cellar: rest, I forgive you, he prayed in his mind, falling into a sleep without nightmares.
The next morning, a series of dull, similar days began. With the light, Nicola went out and got food and water. Food was within reach: you had only to enter the most sumptuous houses, and he was well aware of which they were; he knew the surnames of the wealthy, their addresses, knew their windows and doors. Inside, it was easy to guess the kitchens and fill his pockets. He never went twice to the same place, he left no traces and stole only food, no lamps, no silverware or objects of value. The first house he stole from was Dalila’s, his mother’s friend who had almost had him killed; from her closet he took a bag and put in it cans that then he didn’t touch: the provisions of that poisonous woman might also be poison, so better to pack them under the bier for an emergency.
With the darkness, Nicola returned to the cellar. The second night he pulled a chest up the stairs and from then on, before going to sleep, he blocked the entrance to lock himself in. They slept soundly, he and the ghosts. Maria and Vincenzo, wherever they might be, were finally silent.
Only two people appeared to him at night: the girl and the sailor. Of her Nicola saw again the slender legs under his body, the glassy gaze when she passed by him, as if the soldier, mounting her, had consumed her soul. Of him he heard his contemptuous, sarcastic voice, what he had said to him: Look, learn how it’s done. Then he woke up and swore that one day, when he was grown, he would track down that man and kill him, so he would no longer be able to harm anyone. That thought devoured him, sleep fled, and a heavy exhaustion enveloped him. He picked up his magazines to read over and over again the adventures of his beloved Cadetti di Guascogna.
Gradually the streets of Reggio Calabria grew crowded with children begging for care and charity. One afternoon, carrying Dalila’s bag overflowing with stolen provisions, he heard himself called loudly by name. In two of the beggars he recognized some schoolmates, sisters, one younger than him and one older. He lowered his cap and ran away. The next morning he was more careful not to be recognized by anyone: he pulled up his jacket collar and settled the hat almost over his eyes. In reality he had plenty of food, but leaving the cellar for several hours was his only contact with the air, a way to reassure himself that the city was still in its place, devastated but real. There was a gloomy yellow rain, the muddy air became hard to breathe, and Nicola decided to go home. Returning to the ruins of his old house he found a surprise.
The younger of the sisters who had called to him the day before was sitting near the trapdoor, under a plane tree. She was wearing a gray dress held up with some pins, certainly not a child’s dress.
“Nicola, don’t you remember? I’m Emma Battista.”
Nicola didn’t answer.
“Don Franco told us to look for children who’ve been left without their mamma and papa. Yours are dead, right?”
Nicola signaled no and looked around in search of a way to flee. What did they want from him?
“Don Franco gives us food and we sleep in the church all together. A priest is arriving soon, sent by the Pope, and he’ll take us to a shelter. You mustn’t be afraid.”
Nicola didn’t want to go anywhere, he wanted to stay in the cellar.
“They’ll arrest the children who don’t come.”
While his schoolmate was talking, Nicola saw her face disintegrate, to be replaced by the face of before. The emaciated, livid Emma, with dirty hair, who was gesturing inside the clothes of a grandmother, gave way to a girl the same age as him, properly dressed, plump, with clear skin and a serene expression.
“You mustn’t be ashamed. My parents are dead, too, and also my brother. Camilla and I are left.”
Nicola was surprised, he didn’t remember a boy coming out of school with them.
“He had the same name as you. He was two months old.” Emma lowered her head, holding back her tears.
It hadn’t stopped raining. The embroidery on her dress had stuck to her small chest, where the material bunched up. An owl, a dove, or a bat wheeled above their heads. Nicola couldn’t tell what sort of creature it was because, although he tried to concentrate on the beating wings, he couldn’t raise his eyes from the ground. He wanted to cry, too, he wanted to hug Emma, to shout that none of what had happened was right, but his strength abandoned him, his legs gave way. He squatted on the grass hugging his knees, and curled up hoping that the earth would swallow them both.
“Why don’t you speak?” Emma asked, pulling on his sleeve.
At that moment Nicola realized that he hadn’t talked to anyone since the girl left the torpedo boat. And even before, while the man attacked her, he had said nothing. He tried to answer Emma. His voice wouldn’t emerge.
He huddled into himself even more vigorously.
“Let’s go,” she urged him sweetly again and again, while Nicola kicked and the rain lessened.
Was he really sure he wanted to remain alone, shut in the cellar, forever? He felt something in his heart yield and give way. Emma was so little, so full of trust even in the future. He couldn’t leave her alone, or something terrible would happen to her, as it had to the girl on the Morgana.
“Let’s go,” she repeated, and in the end he followed her.
Nicola spent only a few nights in Don Franco’s parish church. Emma brought three other children besides him, Camilla seven; others had just arrived or had been camping there for several weeks. In all they were twenty-two. Twenty-two orphans of the earthquake, whose fate the Pope was deciding, so said the priest. Pius X is always thinking of you, he repeated, and don’t listen to those who tell you the contrary! The Pope prays unceasingly: you are not without a father, he is your father on Earth, as God is in Heaven, pray, pray.
The canned meat was hard and salty, but in midafternoon there were always hot donuts made by a woman who lived nearby, and there was never any shortage of water. In the days before, Nicola had learned to drink from puddles and functioning fountains, but only now did he really satisfy his thirst; his throat became cool and even his sight cleared, as if it had been clouded by dryness. The first night in the church he couldn’t sleep: he had never slept with others. The second night, Emma settled beside him and under the covers entwined her legs around his. The child stank of sweat and her breath was sour, but her body was warm and reassuring.
“I love you,” she said, and Nicola believed her, because, even if they had never spoken before the earthquake, it was what he, too, had felt, ever since they met face to face in front of the trapdoor.
Unfortunately he couldn’t say it. He hadn’t opened his mouth since he disembarked from the torpedo boat.
“Don’t worry, Nicolino. Another mamma and another papa will do for us: ours have become angels.”
Two devils, he thought, couldn’t become angels.
“Reggio no longer exists,” Emma said again, repeating the words of the adults. Nicola didn’t want to hear it. Reggio existed, damaged but alive, destroyed but still the same. Where there were houses there would be caverns, where there were streets they could make paths: it would be simple to survive. Twenty-two children together were an entire people, if they had all wanted it, if they had been left to do it. And yet, apart from Nicola, it seemed that no one could wait to have a new papa and a new mamma.