The Night of the Moths Page 10

  “That shitty freak.” He swore out loud, to fill the suffocating silence left by the unanswered calls. “If he did it again, this time I’m gonna hurt him. Fuck it. You didn’t listen to me? Wasn’t it enough, what I told you? Son of a bitch!” A fist on the dashboard. The phone again. More ringing. “What the fuck, Ali, answer me yourself! Fucking shit!” Ringing and ringing. “He didn’t give a fuck. I told him something and he didn’t give a fuck. Can you believe it?” The phone. No answer. “I’m going to beat that guy to a pulp.” Ringing. “Fuck, Ali, answer the shitty phone, for shit’s sake!”

  More ringing.

  He was driving at breakneck speed now. He narrowly avoided another car that appeared around a curve. He heard the prolonged sound of the horn as the other car passed.

  “Fuck you too, asshole, and if you come by again later, I’ll take that fucking car and shove it up your ass!”

  Phone in his left hand, the other hand on the gearshift, the same number, ringing and ringing.

  “Ali, I swear this time I’ll make you look like a shit, you won’t forget it, goddammit. Answer the phone, bitch!”

  He reached the bend. Rolled down the window.

  “Ali!”

  The road was narrow and he couldn’t leave the car on a curve. A short distance away there was a good spot to pull off into the trees. He brought the car to a stop, turned off the ignition, and stepped out into the woods.

  “Ali!” he yelled, looking around. “Aliii!” There was no answer. Alice was no longer there. Maybe she made it home.

  “What the fuck, Ali, the hell you could have answered!” he said, calling the house number from the contacts list.

  “Hello?” His father’s voice.

  “It’s me. Is Alice home?”

  “How the hell do I know? What time is it, Sandro? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing, she’d called me, but I had the phone on mute. She was in some trouble, but she probably worked it out. Look and see if she’s home, would you?”

  And that’s the end of it, he thought. She’s there, sleeping, and doesn’t even realize the scare she gave me. She’s always doing that, she never thinks about the consequences, that maybe someone will worry. She put the phone on mute and fell asleep, my brainy sister. She must have gotten the idiotic urge to take one of her nighttime walks listening to music in her earbuds. She can’t just go and have fun like everyone else, not her. Too easy. She has to do these intellectual things. Shit, that way she can remind everyone that she has a humanities degree, she’s not some jerk like this asshole here, running around in circles with a fucking phone in his hand looking for her all night, and now I don’t even feel like going to the beach anymore to look for Fabiana, and for sure that bitch has already taken him into her mouth, that piece of shit Cedro who . . .

  “Sandro.” His father again.

  “Is she there?”

  “No.”

  What does that mean?

  “She’s not home?”

  “No, she’s not here. What the hell happened? Do you mind telling me?”

  “Could she be in the bathroom maybe?”

  “Sandro, Alice isn’t here. Tell me what the hell happened.”

  He looked around again. The woods. Maybe she went another way.

  “I don’t know, she called me but I had the phone on mute and didn’t hear it.”

  “And you don’t know what she wanted?”

  “There was . . . I don’t know, I told you, maybe . . .”

  “Sandro, are you drunk or what? Did you take something?”

  “I didn’t take anything.”

  “So then for Chrissake will you tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “The Half-Wit was there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Half-Wit was there bothering her. I told him to stop, but clearly that asshole didn’t listen to me. Now when I find him, I’ll fix him but good, you’ll see.”

  “Wait there for me.”

  Giancarlo hung up.

  Does he think I’m not capable of taking care of him by myself? I’ll show him.

  Sandro went into the woods to see if Alice had gone another way. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she was afraid and was hiding.

  A fair amount of light filtered through the trees and you could see well enough in that area where the vegetation wasn’t too dense.

  “Ali, are you here?” he called. He kept phoning. Ringing and ringing. “Okay, you bastard.” He started walking in the direction of the cabin where the Half-Wit lived. “That douchebag is going to have a bad night.” Sandro was looking around when he spotted something.

  It was on the ground. It looked like a big sack. Soiled—but not enough to prevent him from recognizing Alice’s pale-blue blouse.

  Seven

  Giancarlo closed the bedroom door behind him without even waking his wife. She was sunk in a deep sleep induced by the vodka and antidepressants with which she marked her evenings spent in front of the television. All that remained of the woman he married was a black-and-white photograph from their wedding day. In it she was smiling. Then something strange had taken hold and consumed her over the years, leaving her there, comatose.

  He hadn’t liked the sound of Sandro’s voice. He sensed trouble. He put a pod in the coffeemaker and made himself an espresso just to get his mouth ready for the first cigarette of the day. Outside it was still dark.

  He stopped by the garage to get some things. The handheld spotlight he used for catching poachers and wild boar at night. The studded bat to rearrange the features of anyone who had dared bother his daughter. The rifle with boar-hunting buckshot should that someone be quick enough to escape the club.

  He started the truck and, with a swift maneuver, turned down the provincial road to find Alice. That girl had filled her head with too many foolish ideas and showed no signs of improving. If she had spent half the time she’d wasted on books looking for a boyfriend, other than that moron who played around at being an artist with his parents’ money, she would have had something to show for it at this point and wouldn’t be lost in the middle of the night. Now he’d probably find her smoking somewhere with that music for depressed lunatics stuck in her ears. People who don’t know their place sooner or later always end up in a jam. He had worked his ass off to build the family business, and now here he was sharing a cold bed with a human wreck and two ungrateful kids who, when you asked them to do something, it was like pulling teeth. He lit another cigarette.

  The stretch of the provincial road he was on was dark. A whole bunch of assholes had decided that there should be no lights because of some kind of fucking bird that otherwise wouldn’t stop here and would go and do its fucking business somewhere else. The restaurant hadn’t been able to install a neon sign either and that pissed him off like you wouldn’t believe. But sooner or later the tide would turn. Even those hypocritical environmentalists, who never missed a chance to hassle somebody else and then at home lit up their pool parties like daylight, would sooner or later stop calling the shots and fucking with people. And then the permit for his swimming pool would be issued, along with those for the bungalows and the outdoor picnic area with the grill and wood oven. And if any environmentalists got too close at that point, the boar-hunting buckshot was there ready to welcome them. Because they had to understand that it was his land and no one else’s, and every man should be the master of his domain and be able to do what he wants.

  He switched on the spotlight with one hand and aimed it into the woods as he drove. Usually there was someone beside him who handled the light when they went hunting for wild boars.

  He felt the familiar gastric reflux in his throat. The coffee and cigarettes had stirred up his stomach. He opened the glove compartment and looked for the magnesia tablets he always carried with him.

  “Now just calm down,” he said to himself, “because with these nerves, if I catch someone, I’ll shoot him for real.”

  He chewed the pill. As the stomach acid
s receded, he decided that as soon as this problem was dealt with, he would allow himself a visit to Sun Li—the Chinese girl in Case Basse—and get a nice full-body massage with hands and mouth that would fix him up right.

  He reached the bend. A little farther on, with the spotlight, he was able to pick out Sandro’s car among the trees. He pulled up behind it and climbed out of the pickup. With the gun slung over his shoulder, the bat in one hand, and the spotlight in the other, he approached his son’s car and peered inside, examining everything closely. It was a bit of a mess, but he didn’t see anything that looked like drugs.

  “Sandro!” he called. Where the hell was that asshole?

  The spotlight’s large cone of light bobbed through the trees, illuminating branches and bushes.

  “Sandro!”

  He hooked the bat to the clip on his belt and got out his phone. He called Sandro’s number. No answer. He called Alice’s phone. Off. A fine pair of idiots. If he’d needed anything, he’d be better off calling Roman or Sun Li rather than his kids or, worse yet, what was left of his wife. If it was up to them, he could drop dead of a stroke out here and not be found for days.

  “Sandro!” he called again.

  He began walking, moving through the trees, with no clear idea of where he was going. Actually, he knew that forest as if it were his own living room. Alice and Alessandro, however, weren’t like him, and at that hour, they would surely have gotten lost. And maybe that’s just what had happened.

  The sphere of white light moved slowly through the trees, preceding the practiced steps of the hunter. The night enveloped everything and every sound seemed muffled by the darkness—until a thud ricocheted across the woods and reached Giancarlo’s ears. The white sphere jumped back and forth, like the eyes of an animal on alert.

  “Alessandro, is that you?”

  Another noise, similar to the first. Something being bashed. And then a scream.

  Giancarlo pointed the light in the direction from which the scream had come. A male voice. A cry of pain, something terrible. He started running toward it. He knew the Half-Wit’s cabin was over that way.

  “The Half-Wit was bothering her,” Sandro had said.

  Alice.

  Eight

  The white brilliance of the spotlight. A tangle of trees and bushes. And, finally, the beam reached Sandro, motionless in front of the small cabin. The wild-eyed stare of a wounded beast.

  When Giancarlo approached and shone the light on his son, he saw that he was holding a shovel, covered with something that looked like soil.

  However, when Giancarlo looked closer, he realized that it was not soil.

  “What the hell happened?” he shouted. Sandro didn’t answer. He just stared at him, still sunk in an abyss. Giancarlo went over to the cabin. It was all smashed up. It looked like a cyclone had hit it. “Either you tell me what the hell happened or . . .”

  And then he saw it.

  The Half-Wit’s body was lying on the ground outside the cabin door. Giancarlo went over to it. The Half-Wit’s head was no longer recognizable. It was shattered, like a vase dropped on the floor. The ogre’s sick brain was smeared on the ground around what remained of his skull. A mushy puddle.

  “The Half-Wit was there bothering her.”

  At first it was just a feeling. Something dark and cruel rose in him, slinking in the shadows, feeding on his ever-rising fear, as that shapeless thing crept into his mind, whispering his daughter’s name. Then that feeling became a vise, a clawed hand that gripped his chest and began squeezing his heart, as if to drain away every drop of blood inside him. He fell to his knees beside the Half-Wit’s lifeless body.

  “Why don’t you say something, Sandro?” He hardly even recognized his own voice, which for the first time seemed so frail, keening like that of a child. “What did you do?” He felt dizzy as if he might black out. Even hoped he would. But he didn’t. At the same time, he felt heavy, like he was made of stone. He couldn’t get up. There were flies buzzing around the Half-Wit’s smashed cranium.

  “Sandro . . .” He breathed in as much air as he needed for that thin little voice and ripped out the monster that was gnawing at his heart. “Where is Alice?”

  His son finally saw him. Sandro’s gaze fell on his father, an unnatural wonder in his eyes, as if he were seeing him for the first time.

  “Sandro,” Giancarlo said again, pleading. “Where is my little girl?”

  Nine

  And that’s how Giancarlo Bastiani, my father, took responsibility that night for a murder he did not commit.

  When he finally found my body, all the strength left him and he slumped to the ground. Grief twisted his face into a mute grimace. He cradled my cold head in his hands, stroking my hair as he’d done when I was small enough to fit in the crook of his arm.

  My skull was cracked open on the left side of my face. My blood was already dry, my hair moist and sticky. For a moment the anguish was so intense that my father must have thought of ending it all with a rifle shot in the mouth. His muscles were numb with tension, his hands could have crushed a rock. He dug his fingers into the earth with such force that he broke his fingernails. I think it was because of my brother that he struggled to regain what little lucidity he needed to fix what could still be fixed. And the only thing he could still do for his children was to keep Alessandro from being arrested and charged. My father had known prison as a young man. It was one of those things that he did not like to talk about, but once he had beaten a guy who had made him see red, as he put it. He had spent several months inside. Sandro, however, would end up in jail for a good part of his life for what he had done to the Half-Wit. And his son, as much as he tried to appear strong, wasn’t anything like him. I don’t know how he thought of all the rest.

  Sandro crouched beside him now. He was holding my necklace with the turtle pendant, Mr. Toby. He told my father about the Half-Wit. He told him that I had asked him to protect me and that he had failed me. He told him about the phone call that I had made, that he hadn’t heard. About the text message I’d left him when the Half-Wit started running after me. He told him that he had found the Half-Wit standing in front of the cabin with my necklace in his hand. And that when he’d asked him what he had done to his sister, the freak had started saying that he hadn’t meant to hurt her, that he hadn’t meant to scare her, that he hadn’t meant to make her run away, that he had started running after her to tell her that he wouldn’t bother her anymore, that he’d really wanted to tell her that, but that she kept running and he didn’t know what to do, and he hadn’t even been able to finish telling him before Sandro had already stunned him with the first whack of the shovel that he’d found in his hand. God only knew how hard he had brought it down on that monster.

  But now he spoke about it as if it concerned someone else, with a wide-eyed stare, still trapped in the abyss into which he had plunged.

  My father told him to go home. To take a shower and clean himself up. To wait for Marshal Torrese to come and get him, and then to tell him that something terrible had happened. To pretend he knew nothing about it. Focus, and he might manage to pull it off. My father said he knew how difficult it would be, but that by God! (that’s just what he said) he was going to make sure he didn’t lose his son as well. So Sandro, who was not yet fully aware of what was going on, his eyes still haunted, went home.

  My father gently laid my head on a cushion of leaves. He braced himself and went to get the shovel that my brother had used to slaughter the Half-Wit. He wiped the handle off on his shirt and then, holding it tightly in one hand, dealt a couple of blows to what remained of the skull that my brother had staved in. He brought it down with such force that his face and shirt were splattered with blood. Finally, he took his rifle and shot the Half-Wit in the neck. Then he stood there looking at what was left of that big hulking brute whom he had kept with him for as long as he could remember, like you do with a beat-up dog found on the street.

  He set the rifle and shovel on
the ground. He lit a cigarette and sat down next to my body. He stroked my face with a gentleness that he had never shown. And he went on like that, waiting for enough time to pass to allow Sandro to get home safely. Then he picked up the phone and punched in Torrese’s number.

  He told him that I had not returned home and that he’d been worried. He had looked for me just about everywhere and then he’d remembered that the Half-Wit had bothered me on a couple of occasions. And so he’d found my body and realized what must have happened. He’d gone to the Half-Wit’s cabin and found him there out front, with my necklace still in his hand, and he had confessed everything to him.

  The rest is not so hard to imagine.

  I had been killed with a rock. There were still shards in my skull. But the rock was not found. No one ever found the phone from which I had called my brother either. My father’s story held together, and in the course of the investigation that followed, every element seemed to confirm it. He got twenty years. The judge considered his emotional state, but also the savagery of the crime. There was no appeal. His lawyer didn’t understand why, but my father preferred to end it that way. His body, however, stopped functioning and a heart attack killed him a few years later, shortly after he’d requested house arrest in order to take care of himself. He never breathed a word about it to anyone.

  Sandro went home that night and did everything that our father had told him to do. He took a shower, clothes and all, and let the blood and soil run off him. Then he undressed, finished washing, stuffed the wet clothes in a bag, and threw them out along with the restaurant’s garbage. He checked to make sure that his mother was still asleep, then crawled into bed and lay there waiting. He was exhausted all of a sudden, as if he had one of those high fevers that knock you out and leave you half senseless, alternately shivering and sweating. An unnatural sleep came over him. He was haunted by the sole thought of that phone call. Of how things would have turned out if he had only heard it and had responded in time. He kept picturing the scene. That night, right in the middle of his own private little show, the phone rings, he answers and hears my voice, I explain it all to him, and he speeds off and comes to get me and finds me there waiting for him on the side of the road, and I smile at him when I see him coming and climb into the car, and we laugh and laugh all the way home. We’re not sleepy, so we go into the kitchen and eat ice cream like we used to do when we were little.