Me and You (8 page)

She tried to free herself but suddenly, as though she had no strength left for fighting, she went limp, and I fell on top of her.

I pulled myself up and moved away. I was shaking all over, afraid of what I could have done to her. I could have killed her. I began kicking boxes to calm myself down. A shard of glass got stuck
in my foot. I pulled it out and hissed in pain.

Olivia was sobbing, her face pushed up against the back of the settee and her legs held tightly by her arms.

‘That’s enough!’ I limped over to my backpack, took the money out of the envelope and screamed, ‘Here you go. Use this. Take it. As long as you get out of here.’
And I threw the banknotes at her.

Olivia raised herself off the settee and picked them up off the floor. ‘You little bastard . . . I knew you had some.’ She grabbed her trousers, squeezed the money in her fist and
closed her eyes. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. Her shoulders shook. ‘No. I can’t . . .’ She let the money fall and put a hand over her face. ‘I swore I would
stop. And this time . . . I’m stopping . . . otherwise it’s all over.’

I couldn’t understand a thing. Her words mixed with her sobs.

‘I’m a worthless piece of shit . . . I did . . . it . . . I did it . . . How could I?’ She looked at me and took my hand. ‘I fucking had sex with a disgusting pervert
just to buy a hit. He fucked me in a car park. Go on, say it, say I’m worthless . . . Say it, say it . . . Please . . .’ She collapsed on the floor and she began groaning like
she’d been punched in the stomach.

She’s not breathing, I thought, covering my ears, but her groans pierced my eardrums.

Someone has to help her. Someone has to come here. Otherwise she’ll die.

‘Please . . . please . . . help me,’ I begged the walls of the room.

Then I saw her.

Lying on the floor surrounded by the money, alone and desperate.

Something inside me snapped. The giant that had been holding me up against his stone chest had let me go.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m sorry . . .’ I grabbed my sister by the arms and pulled her up from the floor.

She was out of breath, like she was choking. I didn’t know what to do, so I shook her and patted her on the back. ‘Don’t die. Please. Don’t die. I’m going to help
you now. I’ll take care of everything . . .’ And little by little I heard a breath of air slide into her mouth and down her throat into her chest. Very little to begin with, then her
breathing gradually grew deeper until she eventually said in a whisper, ‘I’m not going to die. It takes more than that to kill me.’

I hugged her and leaned my forehead against her neck, my nose on her collarbone, and I burst into tears.

I couldn’t stop. The sobs came in gusts. I would settle for a few moments and then it welled up and I cried even louder than before.

Olivia was shaking and her teeth were chattering. I wrapped her up in a blanket but she barely noticed. It looked like she was sleeping, but she wasn’t asleep. She was squeezing her lips
together from the pain.

I felt useless. I didn’t know what to do. ‘Do you feel like a sip of Coke? A sandwich?’

She didn’t answer me.

And in the end I asked, ‘Do you want me to call Dad?’

She opened her eyes and murmured, ‘No. Please don’t.’

‘What can I do then?’

‘Do you really want to help me?’

I nodded.

‘You have to find me some sleeping pills then. I need to sleep. I can’t take any more of this.’

‘I’ve only got some aspirin, paracetamol . . .’

‘No, they’re not strong enough.’

I sat down on the bed. I felt embarrassed to just sit and watch her like an idiot without knowing how to help her.

I felt the same way about Grandma Laura.

A tumour had been eating her stomach for two years and she had had loads of operations and each time we had to go and visit her. She lay there, in that little hospital room with the fake leather
armchairs, the
People
and
l’Espresso
magazines that only we read, the laminate on the furniture, the pale green walls, the dry croissants in the cafeteria, the grumpy nurses and
their hideous white clogs, the disgusting tiles on the plantless little terrace. And her in that metal bed, pumped with medicines, her mouth open without her false teeth, and my parents watching
her in silence, smiling with tight lips while they secretly hoped that she would die as quickly as possible.

I didn’t get why we had to go and visit her. Grandma barely understood who we were.

‘We’re keeping her company. You’d like that too’, my mum would say to me.

No, it’s not true. It’s embarrassing getting visits when you’re not well. And when you’re dying I bet you want to be left alone. I really didn’t get this thing
about paying visits.

I looked at my sister. She was trembling all over.

Then, suddenly, I remembered.

What an idiot. I knew exactly where I could find the medicine.

‘I’ll take care of everything. You stay here, I’ll be back soon.’

8

Beneath a light rain, I caught the number 30 bus.

I’d been lucky. When I’d left the building, the Silver Monkey had been taking his afternoon nap.

I sat at the back of the bus with my hoodie pulled down over my face. I was a secret agent on a mission to save my sister and nothing would stop me.

The last time we had gone with Grandma to the hospital, shortly before leaving home, she had whispered in my ear, ‘Darling, go and get all the medicine from my bedside cabinet and hide it
in my bag. Those bloody doctors never give me enough to ease the pain. Don’t let anyone see you though.’

I had managed to get them into her bag without anyone noticing.

I got off a short walk from Villa Ornella.

But when I stood in front of the clinic all my courage disappeared. I had promised Grandma that I would go and visit her on my own, but I’d never gone. I just wasn’t able to talk to
her like we were still at her house. Those times I’d gone with Mum and Dad had been torture.

‘Come on, Lorenzo, you can do it,’ I said to myself, and I looked over at the car park. No sign of my parents’ cars. I bounded up the steps to the entrance of the clinic and
cut across the hallway. The nun behind the reception looked up from the computer screen but she only glimpsed a shadow disappearing up the stairs. I ran down the long corridor. It took 3,225 steps.
I had counted them on the day they had operated on Grandma. I had spent the whole afternoon in hospital with Dad as Grandma had been in theatre for ages.

I went past the nurses’ station. They were laughing. I turned right, and a walking dead man came shuffling towards me in his slippers. He was wearing light blue pyjamas with dark blue
hems. White curls poked out of the V-neck of his cardigan. A fresh scar cut across his cheekbone and ended near his mouth. A woman lying on a stretcher was looking at a framed picture of a stormy
sea hanging on the wall above her. A little girl came out of a doorway but was immediately pulled back in by her mother’s hand.

Room 103.

I waited for my heart to slow and then I turned the door handle.

The urine drainage bag was almost full. Her dentures were soaking in a glass on the bedside table. The drip hung from the IV trolley. Grandma Laura was sleeping in the bed with the bars. Her
lips had fallen into her gaping mouth. She was so small and shrunken I could probably have picked her up and taken her away with me.

I moved closer and studied her, biting the inside of my cheek.

She was so old. A pile of bones covered by a scaly wrinkled skin. One leg stuck out from underneath the sheet. She was black and blue and as thin as a rake; her foot was crooked and her big toe
was folded inwards like the bone was made of metal wire. She smelled of powder and antiseptic. Her hair, which she always kept held back neatly in a hairnet when she was well, was loose and lay
across the pillow, white and long, like a witch’s.

She could have been dead. But her face didn’t show the peacefulness of a corpse, it bore a stiff expression of sufferance, like her flesh was shot through with a current of pain.

I went over to the foot of the bed and covered her leg with the sheet. The suede toiletry bag was in the wardrobe. I opened it and took out all the bottles and boxes of medicine and stuffed them
in my pockets. As I was zipping it back up I heard a whisper behind me, ‘Lo-re-nzo . . . Is that you?’

I whirled around. ‘Yes, Grandma. It’s me.’

‘Lorenzo, did you come to visit me?’ A spasm made her face tighten. She kept her eyes half closed. The clouded eyeballs were surrounded by wrinkled folds.

‘Yes.’

‘Good boy. Sit down next to me . . .’

I sat next to the bed on a metal stool.

‘Grandma, I should be . . .’

‘Give me your hand.’

I squeezed her hand. It was warm.

‘What time is it?’

I looked at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s ten past two.’

‘In the morning . . .’ She moved and squeezed my hand softly. ‘Or . . .?’

‘In the afternoon, Grandma.’

I had to get out of there. It was too dangerous. If the nurses saw me they would definitely tell my parents.

Grandma didn’t speak, just breathed through her nose like she’d fallen asleep, then she rolled over in search of a more comfortable position.

‘Are you in pain?’

She touched her stomach. ‘Here . . . It never stops. I’m sorry you have to see me suffer. It’s so unpleasant dying like this.’ She was pulling her words out one by one,
like she was looking for them in an empty box.

‘No, don’t die,’ I murmured, with my eyes fixed on her yellow drainage bag.

She smiled. ‘No, not yet. This body of mine does not want to leave yet. It hasn’t quite understood that it’s all over.’

I wanted to tell her that I had to run, but I didn’t have the courage. I stared at the garments hanging from the wooden clothes horse: the blue skirt, the white blouse, the dark red
cardigan.

She’ll never wear them again, I thought. In fact, they’ll put them on her when they lock her in the coffin.

I looked at the opaque glass lampshade hanging from a brass rod on the ceiling. Why was the room so ugly? When someone dies they should have a beautiful room. I would die in my bedroom.

‘Grandma, I have to go . . .’ I wanted to hug her. Maybe it would be the last time I could. I asked her, ‘Can I hug you?’

Grandma opened her eyes and nodded slightly.

I squeezed her gently, squashing my face into her pillow and smelling the pungent odour of medicine, the soap on the pillowcase and the sour smell from her skin.

‘I should . . . I have to go and study.’ I pulled myself upright.

She took my wrist and sighed. ‘Tell me a story . . . Lorenzo. So I won’t think about it.’

‘Which story, Grandma?’

‘I don’t know. Whichever you want. A nice story.’

‘Right now?’ Olivia was waiting for me.

‘If you feel like it. It doesn’t matter . . .’

‘Does it have to be real or imaginary?’

‘Imaginary. Carry me off to another place.’

Actually, I did have a story to tell. I had made it up one morning at school. I kept my stories to myself, because if I told them they wilted like cut wild flowers and I didn’t like them
any more.

But this time was different.

I got more comfortable on the stool. ‘So here’s the story . . . Grandma, do you remember the little robot you have in your pool in Orvieto? The yellow and purple one you use for
cleaning the pool? That little robot has a sort of electronic brain inside him, which learns about the bottom of the pool, so that it can clean it properly, without having to go back over the same
spots. Do you remember it, Grandma?’ I couldn’t work out if she was sleeping or if she was awake.

‘This is the story of a little pool-cleaning robot. Its name is K19, like the Russian submarines. So . . . One day, in America, all the generals and the President of the United States meet
to decide how to kill Saddam Hussein. They’ve tried everything they can think of to get rid of him. His house is a fortress in the desert, he’s got ground-to-air missiles which are
launched as soon as the American rockets come near, and he makes them explode in mid-air. The President of America is in despair – if he doesn’t kill Saddam right away, they’ll
sack him. If his generals don’t find a way to get rid of the dictator within ten minutes, he’ll send them all to Alaska. Then one general stands up, a little one, who’s an expert
in computers, and he says he’s got an idea. They all shake their heads, but the President tells him to speak up. Shortie begins explaining that Saddam doesn’t buy anything at all
because he’s afraid that bombs will be hidden inside. Once he ordered a pineapple and inside it there was a bomb, which killed his cook. So everything he has inside his house he has had built
in his underground laboratories. Televisions, video-recorders, fridges, computers – everything. There is just one thing he is forced to buy elsewhere. His pool-cleaning robots. Saddam’s
swimming pool is so big that his little robot can’t find its way around, while the winds from the desert blow continuously, filling the pool with sand. The best ones, the ones that can clean
a pool as huge as his, are made exclusively in America.’

I stopped talking. ‘Do you get it, Grandma?’

She didn’t answer. Slowly I tried to slip my hand out of hers.

‘Go on . . .’ she murmured.

‘Saddam would go for a swim with his twelve wives and always found the bottom of the pool dirty. So, in the end, even though it’s dangerous, he decides to order one from America. He
gets one of his aides to buy it, so nobody suspects it’s for him. Except that the CIA has intercepted the phone call. The factory has to send it to him next week. General Shortie says
he’s had a brilliant idea. He’ll take the little robot and modify it. He’ll put in a super-intelligent computer, which he has just invented, and he’ll programme it to kill
Saddam. He’ll put mini nuclear torpedoes inside the robot, and some batteries that produce two thousand volts of electricity and which can also shoot poison darts.

‘The President of the United States is happy. It’s a wonderful idea. He tells Shortie to get straight to work. Shortie goes to the little robot factory, he gets one and he works on
it for the whole night. He puts a computer inside and he programmes it to kill Saddam, and, just to be sure, anyone else who’s swimming with him in the pool. When he has finished he’s
exhausted, but the little robot is perfect, it looks just like any of the others. Its code name is K19. Except that the next morning the guy who has to send it off comes into work and makes a
mistake. He believes that it’s one that’s been repaired for a family that live near Los Angeles. He packs it up and sends it off. When it gets there the family takes it and puts it in
the pool. K19 begins cleaning the bottom – it knows how to do that really well too. But when the dad and the kids get in for a swim they are all killed instantly by an electrical charge that
fries them all.’