The Book of Hidden Things Read online

  The longer we respected the Pact, the more important it became to us. Art said, four or five years ago, that we were caught in a well-known psychological loop: you start believing that your actions matter just because they are your actions. The longer you continue doing a thing, the more important it feels, the less you feel you can stop. It’s called cognitive dissonance, he said. Sit at a desk every day and you’ll convince yourself that your job makes a difference, and that you like it, even. Drink a priest’s wine long enough and you’ll be ready to buy that it’s a god’s blood. I asked him if that meant he didn’t believe in the Pact anymore. He answered, I do. I really do.

  Last year I broke the spell. I didn’t feel like talking about what was going on in my life, and I didn’t feel like facing Mauro and Tony’s success. I had been unsure whether to tell the others I wasn’t coming, and in the end opted not to, because I knew Tony would complain, and Mauro disapprove, and Art would twist my arm to go after all. I told myself that talking openly of the Pact meant breaking it anyway, and it was better for everybody if I just gave a no-show.

  I received a frantic call from Tony’s phone in the course of the night; surely something terrible must have happened. After I made it clear that I was alive and well, Art shouted Traitor! over the phone, laughing, and made me wish I was with them. I was thinking of that Traitor! three days ago, when I resolved, against my better judgement, to come.

  Mauro says, ‘And this time it’s Art blanking us. You started it, Fabio.’

  ‘I was busy.’

  ‘One is never too busy for the Pact,’ Tony says, in the pretend voice of a professor.

  ‘How many times will I have to say I’m sorry?’

  ‘Many. But blanking your mates is like you, it’s not like Art.’

  I pick up my phone. ‘Let’s get done with it.’

  ‘That’s a breach of the Pact.’

  ‘Tony, the Pact is a children’s game.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  I ignore him and dial Art’s number. My call goes straight to voicemail. ‘His phone’s turned off.’

  Mauro gestures the waiter to bring us the bill. ‘He’s staying at his old place, isn’t he?’

  Tony says, ‘Yep.’

  Nine years ago Art’s dad died, and two years ago his mum too, and at that point Art decided to move back to Casalfranco, from Prague, where he had happened to be at the time. It took all of us aback, considering how profoundly he hated Puglia, and Art offered no explanation to speak of. My secret fear is that it wasn’t an entirely sane choice. He was falling apart by then. When I saw him he was gaunter than ever, and spent most of the night talking of the uniquely fascinating, in his own words, nature of drystone walls.

  Mauro says, ‘We should go and check on him.’

  ‘That’s a huge breach of the Pact,’ Tony says. He’s only half fooling.

  ‘You said it yourself, this is not like Art.’ Mauro stands up. ‘I’ve got my car parked outside.’

  I’m about to object: We’ve been drinking all night, we can’t drive. Then I remember where I am. Not in London, but in Salento, the heel of Italy, where nobody thinks twice about drinking and driving.

  We pay our bill – ridiculously cheap – and leave, to find ourselves in a small, circular piazza paved in stone. White houses with flat roofs surround it, and two palm trees sit comfortably in a flower bed at the centre. A rusty drinking fountain stands in one corner. Someone has broken the tap, so the water is gushing out uninterrupted. It is the loudest noise I can hear in the soft southern night. We take a dimly lit alleyway, scaring away a lonely cat. I come here rarely enough not to be used to the architecture anymore, the narrow paths and the ramshackle doors, an odd mash-up of Arabia, Greece, France, and entirely local shabbiness. Casalfranco feels smaller than it is; at a population size of around thirty-five thousand people, it still pretends it is a village. When I was growing up there were no bookshops, no cinemas or theatres. I had to take a one-hour bus trip to get my book fix. A local historian found that all the townsfolk are related to one another. Inbreeding explains a few things about this place.

  Mauro’s car is a five-door Ford; nothing flashy, but in mint condition. Tony runs to the right-hand door, crying, ‘Shotgun!’

  I find a spot on the back seat between a child’s car seat and a squeaky dragon. ‘Are you here with Anna?’ I ask, as Mauro starts the engine.

  ‘Children and wife, the whole crew. We decided to make a holiday of it, before the bulk of the tourists arrive.’

  Not my problem, thank goodness. I’m flying out of here at five-thirty a.m. The last thing I need is to get stuck in conversation with Anna.

  Tony takes out a packet of cigarettes and offers one to me and one to Mauro. We share a silent smoke as Mauro drives out of town and into the countryside. Art’s place lies around six miles south of Casalfranco proper. Each of us could do the journey with our eyes closed, after all the times we travelled it when we were kids.

  Art will be fine. When you worry about something (your lover being late, your medical check-up) it almost invariably turns out fine. But the night is spoilt anyway. The Pact is spoilt, and it is all my fault. I know it had to happen, sooner or later, but that doesn’t make it better. The part of me that indulges in self-pity says, You ruined another good thing, Fabio, that’s my boy. A pocket-sized double of myself claps his hands sarcastically in my mind.

  The town fades into open countryside, until we find ourselves driving on a narrow, dark road, and I mean dark – with no lampposts, no roadside bars, no hint of electric light whatsoever. The land surrounding us comes into existence only for the fleeting time our headlights touch it, and it is flat as the sea on one of those tramontana days. Vineyards first, the plants all bent, and then thick olive trees, bent too, and twisted. Things that grow here must make do with very little water and too much sun, as well as wind, hailstones and storms. Only the strong survive, and even those come up wizened and scarred. It is a timeless landscape, not in a way I like. It makes me feel very frail.

  Mauro turns into a lane, cutting through a new area of vineyards. The grapes, still young, shine under the headlights. They are sided at intervals by the oval shapes of prickly pears, with their colourful fruits already ripening among the thorns. Art comes from a peasant family who have been living for three generations in a house Art’s grandfather built with his own hands. It is a sturdy square building at the end of the lane, a white cube in the middle of nowhere. Back then there was no plumbing or electrics. Art’s dad installed them, but they are not in use right now. The house is pitch black.

  ‘He’s not home,’ I say.

  Mauro pulls up next to a battered old Fiat Panda, which I suppose belongs to Art, and we get out. With the engine killed, the ceaseless song of crickets fills the air.

  ‘Art!’ Tony shouts. ‘It’s us.’

  The crickets make the quiet more striking. A dog barks somewhere far off, but that is all.

  ‘Fabio’s right. He’s not home,’ Mauro says.

  ‘What about his car then?’ Tony asks. ‘Art!’ he calls again. He tries the buzzer. Nobody replies.

  Mauro says, ‘That’s odd.’

  ‘It’s possible that he forgot it was today,’ I try.

  ‘Is it?’ Tony asks.

  I shake my head. Art doesn’t believe in forgetting.

  Tony says, ‘We should take a look inside. He could be hurt. Or…’

  He stops before saying what we all think: high as a kite. We don’t know for sure if Art is using hard drugs, but we have talked about it in the past, and we agree it would make sense. It wouldn’t be all that surprising, considering what he went through – but that, we never talk about.

  I lift a ceramic pot (it contained geraniums once, before Art let them wither) sitting just beside the door. Art, and Art’s dad before him, used to hide a spare set of keys beneath it. ‘No joy.’

  ‘Remember, pal?’ Tony says. ‘I don’t need a key for a crappy lock like this. I have
n’t forgotten my old tricks.’ He puts a hand on the flimsy door handle. ‘Oh,’ he says.

  The door is open.

  4

  We formed the Pact in American Pizza seventeen years ago, on the night Art threw his life down the drain. School was over, and we would soon sit our finals. We were all leaving for university: Tony to Rome, Mauro to Milan, and I had set my mind on London, that reservoir of exotic dreams. Art was going to Stanford, California, thanks to an unconditional full scholarship which had been the talk of the town. A scholarship was Art’s only chance to go to a decent university, and when he was pondering where to apply he had thought that he might as well aim high.

  He was aware that Stanford wouldn’t give a second look at an application coming from a below-average Italian school, so he embarked on one of his projects: in eight months of ultra-intensive work he wrote and illustrated a two-hundred-page graphic novel based on his own translation from Latin of Lucius Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, a trippy story of magic, shapeshifting, and mystery cults which had been his latest obsession. Art translated the story into English, wrote a script, and made the illustrations, in a style drawing on influences as different as Steve Ditko and Francis Bacon. He packaged and sent the originals to Stanford – he couldn’t pay for full-colour copies. It was an unqualified success; the letter he received back was almost pornographic in its praise. Art’s parents were beyond themselves with pride, and we were too. We were never jealous, I think, of the things Art could do. We knew he existed on a level of his own.

  None of us planned to ever come back to Casalfranco. Art and I shared a white-hot hatred for our hometown, Mauro had plans with his by-then-girlfriend Anna (all of them came to pass), and Tony had discovered things about himself that would have made life in Casalfranco highly unpleasant, though it would be some time before he confessed that to us.

  Against all odds, my father didn’t flinch at the idea of me leaving town. He was confident it wouldn’t last. ‘You’ll come back,’ he said. That’s what everybody else said too. It was normal for young people to want to go and spend some time away, but invariably, they returned. Ti Casalfrancu sinti, the wise folk would remind you in dialect. You’re from Casalfranco: your birthplace was your destiny, so you better not put on any airs. And it was true that growing up between thirsty soil, King’s cocks and the Corona didn’t equip you very well for the big blue world out there. Casalfranco was like a rubber band: you could stretch it, but sooner or later it would snap you back in place. Of all those in our year at school, only Mauro, Tony and I did get away and stay away. Even Art ended up moving back. It is sad. Unfair too; without his influence, I am not sure the rest of us would have resisted Casalfranco’s gravitational pull.

  American Pizza was grim in that distant age before holidaymakers and retirees: a few shabby tables with red-and-white checkered cloths, a faded picture of a local football team, and in the corner a yellowish, sick plant we called Audrey, after The Little Shop of Horrors. It was a dump with an embarrassing provincial name, but their pizza was good. More to the point, it was cheap, the only pizza in town Art could afford.

  It began with him saying, ‘I’m not going to Stanford.’

  ‘You decided to go into fishing instead?’ Tony joked.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  Tony and I exchanged a look. Mauro cleaned his lips of melted mozzarella and said, ‘Are you?’

  ‘Entirely. Something happened.’

  Tony asked, ‘Are your parents okay?’

  ‘Something good happened.’ Art made a theatrical pause, looked at each of us in turn, then announced, ‘I have a book deal for the graphic novel. Someone in Stanford’s admissions committee has a brother who is an editor. One thing leads to another, he wants to buy it.’

  ‘Art, this is great!’

  ‘I know, right?’

  Mauro asked, ‘And why is this a reason not to go to Stanford?’

  ‘They’re paying me an advance. It’s enough to take a year off, with the odd job here and there.’

  ‘Which is better than a full scholarship at one of the coolest universities in the world because…?’

  ‘It leaves me more time to pursue my interests.’

  A silence followed. We knew Art too well to think he was joking. ‘I hope you thought this through,’ Mauro said.

  Art dismissed his words with a gesture. ‘I got the scholarship this time, I can get it again whenever I want. It’s only a gap year, boys. It’s normal in other countries.’

  I asked, ‘And where are you going instead?’

  ‘Turin. There’s two or three libraries I want to check out. And then Volterra. Fascinating town, that one.’

  Tony said, ‘Let’s talk again after the finals.’

  ‘I already wrote to Stanford,’ Art said.

  There was another silence, heavier than the first one. Something had happened to Art when we were fourteen, which had left him more damaged than anybody thought, but that was the first time I truly questioned his sanity.

  ‘I’m leaving. That’s what I wanted,’ he went on. He bit into a slice of pizza and said, with his mouth full, ‘And this is all I’m going to miss about this shitty town.’

  ‘Casalfranco is not the worst place in the world,’ Mauro said.

  ‘Don’t be so sure about that,’ I said. ‘This place is a monster sucking the marrow out of your bones.’ We were all grateful for the change of subject.

  ‘It has good pizza though,’ Tony said.

  ‘Sure,’ Art conceded. ‘But, honestly? In a year’s time, we’ll see this pizza’s not even that good. We like it because of all the memories we attach to it.’

  ‘Meaning, we have good memories. Meaning, it’s not all doom and gloom down here in the sticks,’ Tony said.

  Art made a brief nod. ‘Not all. I’ll miss the pizza and I’ll miss you guys.’

  It wasn’t a thousand years ago, but it was before Facebook, before Skype and before mobile phones became ubiquitous – down south anyway. Distance still mattered.

  ‘It’s not like we’re never going to meet again,’ Tony said.

  ‘Actually, yeah, it kind of is,’ Art said. ‘We’re not planning to visit a lot, right? Christmas and summer, if that.’

  ‘So this is, what, the Last Supper?’

  I held in front of me a slice of pizza with anchovies and capers, and said, in a deep voice, ‘“I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.”’

  Art said, ‘We’ll all betray each other. We’ll make new friends.’

  ‘Girlfriends too, lots and lots of them,’ Tony said. ‘Don’t take it personally, guys, but I’d sell your skin in a heartbeat for the right pair of boobs.’ He cupped his hands on his chest, to make the point clearer. Then he took off a hand. ‘For one boob, too, provided it’s nice enough.’ Tony went to great lengths to hide he was gay, and he succeeded, mostly because it was impossible then for us to think that gay people could walk in our midst. Mauro and I would find out two years later, when Tony came out to us and Elena, his sister, to muster courage before coming out to his parents. Art had known all along, though he never told us.

  ‘Girlfriends, jobs, don’t get me wrong, it’s all going to be great. But this?’ Art touched the table. ‘This is over. The end of our life as we know it.’

  We let his words linger. Art had this way of talking, combining the insight of a wise hermit with the bedside manner of an eight-year-old. There wasn’t a doubt in any of our minds that he was destined for great things.

  ‘That sucks,’ Mauro said.

  I shrugged. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘Says who?’ Art asked.

  He got on my nerves sometimes. ‘Says the real world…?’

  ‘Let’s stick our middle finger up to the real world! Let’s keep the dream going.’

  I used my chin to point at the owner of American Pizza, who was sitting behind the till, immersed in a black-and-white porn comic book with a vampire on the cover. Jacula, an Italian classic. Wit
h his round belly and his overgrown chest and back hair, sprouting from the grimy vests that were his uniform, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was a gorilla (he was known in town as Kong). ‘That dream?’ I said.

  Art raised an eyebrow in mock seriousness. ‘I am a man of varied taste. Listen: we’ll make a Pact. Every year on this day, we’re going to meet.’

  ‘Mate…’ I tried.

  ‘Ssst!’ Tony said. ‘Let the wise one talk.’

  ‘Thank you, my friend,’ Art said. ‘As I was saying: we’ll meet once a year, every year. Whatever happens, wherever life will lead us, we’ll meet in this place, on this day, at this time. It doesn’t matter if we never see each other for the rest of the year, or we’re in touch regularly. We’ll never mention the appointment. We’ll never try to cancel it or reschedule it. On the tenth of June, we’ll just come to Casalfranco from whatever corner of the world we happen to be, stroll into American Pizza and take our table, and pretend time never passed. Fuck the real world.’

  I could see the idea working, but I could see its problems too. ‘It’ll bind us to Casalfranco.’

  ‘It’ll bind us to each other,’ Art said. ‘I’m willing to do that. Aren’t you, mate?’

  ‘What if we’re busy?’

  ‘Then we un-busy ourselves. It’s a Pact with a capital P – hardcore shit.’

  ‘It’s awesome,’ Tony said. ‘Deal for me.’

  ‘Fuck the real world, now and for ever,’ Mauro agreed.

  It meant I would have to come back to Casalfranco at least once a year, which I didn’t want to do. But keeping my friends would require effort, and I wanted that, very much. The price was steep but it was worth paying. I, too, agreed to the Pact.