The Power of Five Oblivion (25 page)

A huge part of him was tempted to climb the ladder and push the hatch open again. But he doubted that he would have the strength on his own, and anyway, there must have been a reason for Giovanni to send him down here. The boy had already shown he could be trusted in the kitchen. The trick with the oven had worked. Pedro gripped the knife between his teeth and the torch in one hand. He couldn’t begin to imagine losing either of them. Still clutching the metal rungs as best he could, he continued down.

His foot entered the cold, thick liquid. He felt it rise over his ankle. The rungs continued down. How far was he expected to go? Another step and the sewage reached his calves, two more and it was over his knees. He had no choice but to continue. The closer it got to his nose and mouth, the sicker he felt. He was retching with every breath but he had nothing left to throw up. The acid from his stomach was burning the back of his throat. The smell was hideous, overpowering. Pieces of filth bobbed against him and he felt the liquid stir as he climbed down into it. It was between his legs now, in his groin. Above his waist. How many more rungs? Was he expected to swim? But even as he lowered his stomach into the hellish river, his foot touched something solid, concrete, and he realized that at least he would be able to stand and that if he kept his arms up, his chest and hands would form some sort of barrier beneath his face.

He flicked on the torch. A tiny, feeble beam revealed a passageway running in a straight line from the central shaft he had just descended. It also showed the surface of the brown river and the things that floated there and Pedro was forced to close his eyes, to turn his head away. At the same time, he turned the torch off. He could already see that the batteries were weak and he would need them later. He waited until his stomach had stopped heaving. Then gritting his teeth, trying not to let any of the fumes enter his mouth, he set off.

The walls of the tunnel were close together and he pressed against them, the soft slime nudging against his shoulders. The lower part of his body pushed through the liquid and he could feel it separating in front of him, then forming again behind. He was completely blind but every ten seconds he flicked on the torch to make sure that the way ahead was clear. He was terrified that the river would become deeper, that he would take one step and plunge beneath the surface. If he swallowed as much as one mouthful he would die. Half of him wanted to hurry, urging him forward. But his better sense told him to take it slowly. He couldn’t stumble or fall. He had to take it one step at a time.

He came to an opening. His shoulders had lost contact with the wall. He turned on the torch and saw that he had come to a junction shaped like a letter Y and that he now had a choice of two directions. Why hadn’t Giovanni warned him? Both the passages were identical, with black, glistening brickwork and curving ceilings a few metres above his head. For no reason at all, he went to the right and thought for a time that he had made the right choice. The further he went, the shallower it became. Soon he was only ankle-deep. But when he turned the torch on again, sacrificing his precious batteries, he groaned. There was a solid wall in front of him. He heard a noise above him, the clank of a chain and the sound of running water. Before he could move away, he was showered with filth. It clung to his hair and trickled over his shoulders. It was more disgusting than anything he could have imagined.

Angry, close to tears, he turned back the way he had come, once again lowering himself in the depths of the river. Everything was pitch-black. He didn’t dare use the torch. But then he heard another sound and felt something knock into him. He cried out. The torch came on just as a rat the size of a small cat swam past, its claws beating at the surface, its nose and beady eyes straining for air, dragging behind it a long and greasy tail.

Pedro had almost had enough. He could see himself dying here. His hand was hurting more than ever and he felt physically empty. Even his cell would have been better than this. He reached the junction where he had made the wrong turn and followed the other passage. This time the river got deeper, not more shallow. He could feel the weight of it pressing against his chest, trying to force him back. He wanted to turn round. With each step it was getting worse, the level rising. But at the same time, there was a difference. Daylight was bleeding in from somewhere ahead. He could see it reflected on the walls. It was captured in the beads of liquid that dripped down by him. The corridor twisted and he hurried round, only to come to a shuddering halt.

The boy, Giovanni, had tricked him. There was an exit straight ahead, a glimpse of the darkening world beyond. The sun was setting but he could still make out a stretch of sand and shingle with the sea beyond. But the way was barred. Metal wires ran across the mouth of the tunnel – too close together to climb through, too thick to cut. Gritting his teeth, the worst swear words he knew echoing in his mind, Pedro staggered forward. His hands found the wire grille and he clung onto it with his fingers, rocking it back and forth, trying to pull it free. It wouldn’t move. He could see the sea! There it was, just metres away from him, with the untreated sewage twisting its way across the beach. Yet he couldn’t go on. He hadn’t seen any other passages but he had to turn back and find another way.

He was about to do just that when he heard a voice.

“Pedro! Pedro!”

It was Giovanni. The Italian boy had made his way out of the building and now he dropped down and crouched on the other side. His face was filled with horror and disgust. He surely couldn’t see very much of Pedro but the smell would be shocking enough.

“Devi andare sotto!”

Almost the same words as before, only this time Giovanni was pointing down at the surface, frantically jabbing with his finger.

Pedro understood. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. But once again he had to put his entire trust in this stranger. He took a great gulp of air. Then he dived down.

The filth rose over his face, over his head. He could feel it pressing against his eyes. It was utterly and completely revolting. It was worse than death. He used his hands against the wire mesh to guide himself downwards. It seemed to be a long way and he wondered for how much longer he would be able to hold his breath. He had lost the torch. That didn’t matter. He wouldn’t need it any more. The knife too. Oh God – this was horrible. But then his fingers found the bottom of the metal barrier and he realized there was a little space underneath. An adult would never have been able to pass through. It would have been too narrow for most children. But he was half-starved. He could do it.

He went feet first. He felt the metal rim rubbing against his thighs as he pulled himself under the grille. Now he was terrified of getting stuck. To be so close and yet to be pinned down here, to be forced to open his mouth and let the sewage flow into him. He couldn’t bear it. In his haste, he tried to rise up too soon and the metal struck his throat, almost making him cry out. It hit him a second time, just above his nose – but then he was free, on the other side. There was almost nothing left in his lungs. He had to breathe. He pushed himself up, not exactly swimming … more like burrowing with all his strength. His hands came free. The cool evening air hit him. He had reached the surface! For a moment he splashed around helplessly, then somehow he made it to the side and pulled himself onto the sand, sewage still streaming out of his hair, down his face, over his eyes and lips. He hardly dared breathe, afraid that he would swallow some of it. He was covered in filth and it could still kill him.

“Ti aiuterò!”

Giovanni had grabbed hold of him, smearing himself too, and the two of them staggered down the beach, arm in arm, as if they were drunk or had been fighting together for the past couple of hours. They were making for the sea but heading away from the outlet. The further they went, the cleaner the water would be. Pedro felt it lapping at his ankles and gratefully threw himself forward, allowing it to wash over him. Giovanni did the same. The water was black and polluted but after what Pedro had been through it felt and tasted delicious. He washed himself all over, particularly his hair and his face. For a long time he didn’t move.

When he finally sat up, the sun had almost set. He could just make out the sprawl of a city, a port, a tangle of ships. In the middle of it there was a castle, a huge block with four massive towers and a scattering of tiny windows. This must have been where he had been held. It was from here that he had just escaped.

But there was something else that drew his attention. It was far behind the city and over to one side and yet still it dominated the landscape, soaring into the sky. At first Pedro thought it was a mountain, but then he saw the smoke pouring out of the top and realized that this was why the sky was always black and everything smelled as if it had burned.

Giovanni had followed his eyes. “Vesuvius,” he said simply. “
Il volcano
.”

The smoke wouldn’t stop coming.

It was forming itself into the shape of a tree.

TWENTY

Dripping wet and shivering, but no longer smelling quite as bad as he had a few minutes before, Pedro followed Giovanni through the darkening passages of the city, which he now knew to be Naples, Italy. It reminded him of Lima in some ways – particularly the cobbled streets and the palm trees, which somehow didn’t seem to belong together. A lot of the buildings were old and very grand but they stood just around the corner from modern flats and offices that were uglier and more run-down. From the harbour where they had begun, they followed a complicated network of interlocking roads and alleys, which led them ever deeper into the metropolis. And all the time Pedro felt the bulk of the castle where he had been kept prisoner looming over him, and wondered if they were still looking for him inside or if the search had been widened into the city itself. Either way, he was glad to put as much space between himself and it as he could.

Naples was crowded. In fact, that wasn’t the word for it. Pedro soon saw that there was an impossible number of people out in the open – thousands and thousands of them filling the pavements, crouching in the doorways, queuing for food, for shelter, for work, for a bed for the night or simply because they had nothing else to do. There were whole families clustered together: wizened grandmothers in black, children in rags, blank-faced mothers carrying babies. Many of the people were carrying huge bundles which surely contained everything they owned. Others had their possessions piled up on carts or wheelbarrows. And they were wearing so many clothes that they didn’t even look human; they were just round masses of cloth – old jackets and shabby coats – shuffling forward, barely able to move.

And everywhere there were policemen. They wore the same black uniforms as the guards in the castle and patrolled together in pairs, with pistols and batons hanging from their belts. At first, Pedro thought they were looking for him and crouched down, afraid to go on. But Giovanni urged him forward. The policemen were here to control the crowds, stopping people at random to question them and examine their identity papers. Even so, the two boys kept their heads down, moving as quickly as they could without drawing attention to themselves. They were friends on their way home. What did it matter that they were soaked through and filthy? Maybe they had been fighting together by the sea. What could be more innocent than that?

There were no cars at all. That puzzled Pedro. How could you have a modern city without cars, buses or taxis? And, for that matter, there were tramlines but where were the trams? A few people overtook them on bicycles, weaving their way through the crowds, but otherwise everyone was on foot. And although there was electricity – he could see the wires criss-crossing above his head and white light shining out of some of the windows higher up – the streets and most of the buildings were dark. Nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Most of the shops were closed. There were no restaurants or cafés. No music – live or recorded – played anywhere. It was as if all the most miserable people had come to live in one place and had become even more miserable once they’d arrived.

He felt Giovanni take hold of his arm and the two of them left the avenue they had been following and continued down a series of narrower streets between buildings that were so close together that they almost seemed to touch. They passed a food shop with an open door and a long line of people stretching down the pavement. Next to it was a pawnbroker with an old bearded man sitting behind a desk, examining a gold ring with an eyeglass. They turned a corner, continued under an archway and finally followed a flight of steps into a private square formed by four crumbling apartment blocks, eight storeys high, with identical windows, shutters and cast-iron balconies. Clothes hung everywhere, limp and stripped of their colour by the fading light. The same uncanny silence that had characterized the city seemed to have followed them here. Pedro would have expected to hear a television playing or at least a radio – but there was nothing. The two of them made for a doorway and entered a dank, old-fashioned hallway with a flight of concrete stairs leading upwards. There were yet more families huddled together here. As Pedro brushed past, he felt their heads turn towards them and saw the whites of their eyes peering at him out of the gloom.

There was a lift but it wasn’t working. They climbed six floors, passing twenty or thirty more people, stacked one above the other on different steps. They followed a corridor with light sockets dangling down on wires but no bulbs. Pedro could smell cooking … plain boiled rice or pasta. He heard a baby crying, a woman shouting at someone. In the distance, perhaps half a mile away, there was a single gunshot, then, a few seconds later, someone screaming. Giovanni stopped in front of a door and knocked – a special code, Pedro noticed – which he rapped out with his knuckles. There was a pause and then the door opened. The two of them went in.

They were in a flat that had just three interconnecting rooms, with high ceilings, bare wooden floors and windows looking out over the courtyard. It might once have been grand. Pedro observed some of the details; the finely carved shutters, the marble fireplace. But there were empty squares where pictures had once hung. The curtains had gone. There was barely any furniture.