Anna by Niccolo Ammaniti

Author:Niccolo Ammaniti
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2017-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

7

‘Stop. Wait a minute.’

Anna was walking, with her fists clenched, up the slope from the quarry to the hotel, followed by Pietro.

‘Where are you going? Stop.’

She speeded up.

Pietro tried to keep up with her. ‘Wait …’ He grabbed her by the shoulder. ‘Anna!’

She twisted out of his grasp and started climbing up a bank of loose earth from a landslide which covered a hairpin bend. Her feet sank into the earth. After two more steps she kneeled down, out of breath.

‘Anna, will you let me speak?’

‘What do you want?’

He swallowed. ‘Angelica was there … I couldn’t let her see me. We’ll get him during the night. I know where they sleep.’

A bitter smile curled her lips. ‘Him? Who are you talking about?’

‘Your brother. We’ll wait until nightfall, then we’ll get him. Me and you. I promise you.’

Anna cocked her head on one side, as if Pietro was speaking a foreign language. ‘You’re a bullshitter. In fact, you’re a coward. And what’s all this talk about me and you? Who do you think you are? And what do you want from me?’ Her voice grew louder, and was breaking. ‘Do I know you? Are we friends? Brother and sister?’ She pushed him, and he fell down on his backside. ‘You’d better keep away from me. I’m tougher than Angelica. Go away and look for your shoes.’ Scrambling up on all fours, she got over the rubble and started walking again.

Pietro didn’t follow. He shouted: ‘I took you to your brother. You just dashed out … I tried to stop you, but you …’

Anna put her hands over her ears.

He hadn’t helped her, the coward. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was a coward.

*

She walked past the hotel and started along a path which ran down a hillside shrouded in mist.

She must banish Astor and Pietro from her mind and go away. She imagined her heart covered with mud, like a giant wasps’ nest.

You can do what you want now. You’re free.

A gust of wind cleared the scene. On a slope covered with burnt rubbish there were three large concrete pools, arranged stepwise one above the other, surrounded by palm trees wrapped in blue plastic and by big yellowish-brown rocks. The lowest pool, covered with a pall of steam, was full of water that smelled of bad eggs. A smoking yellow stream gushed out of a concrete pipe into the pool, encrusting the sides with limescale. Heads bobbed up and down among the clouds of steam, like buoys in a foggy harbour.

Anna went down the steps, passing a group of children asleep around the ashes of a bonfire. She picked up a bottle half-full of black liquid, like the stuff she’d seen being handed out in the amphitheatre.

She stripped naked, bundled up her clothes and hid them behind a row of barrels. Then she sat down on the edge of the pool and, with a push of her arms, dropped in. The warmth pressed on her chest and spread through her aching muscles, making her sigh with pleasure.

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