‘Where were you?’ Her voice had a squeaky sound. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I went to your place and your mother told me you were out to buy ice-cream… Jesus, Sal, is that what you tell your mother when you come to see me-that you go out for ice-cream?’ Emi laughed, flinging her head back. When she laughed, her black, round eyes had a mischievous look. But they also had a bright shimmer that simultaneously subdued Sal and amused him.
‘I say all sorts of things… today it was ice-cream, tomorrow it will be something else. Tomorrow I’ll tell her I’m going to a table-lifting séance.’
Emi stopped, laughing even harder. ‘I see your point!’
She dropped down with all her weight, then jerked him forward, running and forcing him to run behind her. Sal complained, telling her that he was tired, but the girl had rushed ahead stubbornly, pretending not to hear. Sal’s temples were twitching, and he could feel how the small insects under his skin had started to rebel against the tyrant who was bothering their sleep. But despite his somnolence, his legs were rolling forward, obeying the girl who had suddenly become his bright spot. Eventually they reached her building and Emi, panting and her face gleaming with sweat, pressed both her palms onto his chest.
‘Not before you swear that you won’t say a word!’
Sal hurried to swear: ‘I swear!’
But Emi shook her head in distress. ‘Not like that; that’s rubbish!’
Sal stood perplexed. ‘Come on, say what you want me to do!’
The girl’s round, black irises disappeared behind her eyelids. Emi kept her eyes closed for several seconds, and when she lifted her eyelids again, fluttering her long eyelashes, she had once more that exhilarated look that somewhat scared Sal.
‘Look, it’s no big deal, but you need to have guts! Can you do it?’
‘You bet I can!’ Sal rushed to answer.
‘So this is what we’ll do: we’ll snick our fingers, drip a little blood on a shard of glass left over from my father…’
‘On a glass slide…’
‘Right, and then we’ll spit and mix it well together. You’ll smudge my forehead and I’ll smudge yours, and then we’ll swear to keep the secret.’
Emi’s face was beaming with delight, but Sal just watched her with amusement.
‘So what? Do you think that will prevent us from talking? Spit and blood?’
Emi put on a long face – not because Sal was deeming risible the importance of the oath, but especially because he could never participate in her games, or in any games for that matter. He did the same with the boys. That’s where his funny lies and pretences also came from, because it was beneath his dignity to take part in their nonsense. Sometimes she had the impression that Sal would rather have stayed alone all day, lolling about or meditating on the things he thought he saw, because Sal had this gift, which many thought was just a fancy, to see things that were invisible to everyone else. But she believed him, because she could read on his face the uneasiness bestirred by the beauty or the horridness of his findings – like now, when he showed reluctance in swearing to keep her secret.
They stood by the gate looking at one another, sweaty and panting.
‘All right, Sal, we’ll do as you wish!’ Emi started to climb the stairs, two at a time, while he followed her at a slower pace. They went up all four floors, and on the last one, Emi squatted while she waited for Sal to catch up.
‘You know,’ Sal told her out of breath, ‘my word should be enough. I would never betray you!’
Emi lifted her head, gazing at him. Then she braced herself, took off and jumped to catch the hanging metal ladder that led to the roof. She lifted the hatch and put her head out, scrutinising her territory with her legs still hanging inside and half her torso outside. After a few seconds she disappeared, thumping on the hot roofing sheets. Sal heard her voice trilling from above, urging him to climb faster. Her secret was safe, he thought. When he had said that he would never betray her, the words had bound him more than an oath. While saying them, a thrill had crossed his body. He was stirred by a commitment that opened a long road ahead of them. He had butterflies in his stomach and felt a choking happiness.
Emi was holding on to a television aerial and leaning over the gutter, inspecting the space below them. Sal advanced falteringly. When he reached her, he sat down on his bottom. The roof was still hot, burning and diffusing the heat stored at noontime and in the early afternoon, but as the seconds passed the unpleasant feeling started to wear off.
‘Look!’ Emi pointed somewhere in the distance. ‘I can see the roof of your house. In the afternoon, when I can creep out of my room, I climb here and stay on watch. I imagine what you could be doing under the roof. I imagine you living in a rum baba, Sal…’
Emi turned to him and burst into laughter. Sal was delighted by the comparison of his house to a cake.
‘I remove the top and watch you sleeping on piles of cream… ‘
The sun was melting into the horizon and, although the air was still sultry, the heat had somewhat abated. Sal invited her in a subdued voice to sit beside him. He groped again for the shape in his shorts pocket, just to check: it was still there, sitting quietly. He realised he didn’t exactly know what he was looking for with that strange gift on the roof, with Emi who was already staring at him with her round eyes wide open, waiting for the secret he was offering in exchange. Because that’s what Emi was waiting for, actually: an honest exchange, so she could set her heart at ease and keep on spying on her friends perched up here.
‘I have something very important to tell you. But you have to promise, like you had me promise, that you’ll keep your mouth shut and that you’ll take my word for it. What do you say?’ Sal smiled at her, but Emi remained still. She didn’t seem to hear his jokes; she was eager for the swap.
‘Okay.’
He put his hand in his pocket and took out the metal box. There were a few beads of sweat on its lid. Sal wiped it clean with the back of his palm and handed it to Emi. His hand remained, hanging aimlessly in the air, for several long seconds. Emi was still watching him, uninterested. ‘What’s that?’
Sal held the box forth again, but Emi continued to stay in the same position, refusing to look at it. ‘Is this your secret, Sal?’
He nodded. Emi extended her fingers for the metal box and grabbed it with disappointment. She opened it hastily and a slanting light splashed her face. The hacked finger, with the black-stoned ring sitting stately upon it, smiled to her from inside. Sal was beaming with joy. His sweaty face had ecstasy written all over it, and his eyelids were closing with excitement. Emi touched the stone with the tip of her index finger, stroking it gently. Dumbstruck with amazement, she looked at Sal with tears in her eyes and exhaled in a slow sigh. ‘Oh, my, Sal, what a beautiful ring!’
Then she cautiously touched the red-lacquered fingernail. ‘How beautiful!’ she went on wondering, and then lay down on her back, satisfied.
Sal lay down beside her. He thought about the things he had done during the day, about his walks, home from school and then out to Harry’s, about the goal he had scored and about the cheering girls and about the flower vases that smiled on the windowsill of the dentist’s office.
‘Did you buy yourself an ice-cream after all?’
‘No…’
‘Maybe we’ll go down later and buy some waffles at the corner.’
They could hear a siren wailing from below. Emi sighed. ‘Do you realise, right now, at this very moment, someone is passing by–someone who is sick, maybe even dying, someone who is going to die tonight…’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Do you realise, Sal?’
At least twice a month, Emi had fits of melancholia that