Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015
First published in the United States by Harper in 2015
Originally published in Italian as Pista nera in Italy by Sellerio Editore in 2013
Copyright © Antonio Manzini 2015
Antonio Manzini asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work.
Translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar
Translation copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015
Cover images © Anselm Schwietzke/EyeEm/Getty Images (trees);
Shutterstock.com (blizzard, figure, clouds)
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008119003
Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008119027
Version: 2016-01-04
To my sister, Laura
The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.
—FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
In this life
it’s not hard to die.
But to make life
is trickier by far.
—VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY
CONTENTS
The skiers had all gone home, and the sun, which had just winked out behind the craggy blue-gray peaks that were shredding a few scudding clouds, was still tinting the snow pink. The moon was waiting for darkness so it could light the whole valley until the next morning dawned.
The ski lifts were no longer running, and the lights were out in the chalets at higher elevations. The only sound was the low muttering engines of the snowcats running up and downhill, grooming the pistes that twisted around boulders and stands of trees down the mountain slopes.
The next day marked the beginning of the long weekend, when the ski resort of Champoluc would rapidly fill with out-of-towners eager to dig their skis into the snow. The runs had to be in perfect condition.
Amedeo Gunelli had been assigned the longest run. The Ostafa. Stretching almost a mile in length, and about sixty yards wide, this was Champoluc’s main piste, and it was used by ski instructors with their beginner students as well as expert skiers to experience freeriding. This was the slope that took the most work, and it had often lost its snow cover by lunchtime. In fact, there were plenty of bare patches, unsightly stretches of rocks and dirt, especially at center piste.
Amedeo had started from the top. He’d only been doing this job for three months now. It wasn’t hard. All you had to do was remember how to work the controls on this treaded monster and keep calm. That was the most important thing. Keep calm and take your time.
He had his earbuds in, with Ligabue’s greatest hits blasting on his iPod, and he’d fired up the joint that Luigi Bionaz, the head snowcat operator and his best friend, had given him. It was thanks to Luigi that he had this job and a thousand-euro paycheck every month. Perched next to him on the passenger seat were a flask of grappa and his walkie-talkie. Everything he needed for the hours of hard work ahead.
Amedeo pushed snow in from the sides, spreading it and smoothing it over the barest spots, chopping it with the tiller while the rakes flattened it till the surface was smooth as a pool table. Amedeo was good at his job, but he didn’t much like working alone like that. Folks seem to think that mountain people prefer the solitary life of a hermit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Or nothing could be further from the truth as Amedeo conceived it. He liked bright lights, loud noises, and lots of people talking all night long.
“Una vita da medianoooo,” he sang at the top of his lungs, to keep himself company. His voice reverberated off the Plexiglas windows as he focused on the snow, which was turning a pale blue in the moonlight. If he’d stopped to look up, he’d have glimpsed a breathtaking spectacle. High above, the sky was dark blue, like the ocean depths. By contrast, all along the mountain ridges it was orange. The last slanting rays of sunlight tinged the perennial glaciers purple and the underbellies of the clouds a metallic gray. Towering over everything were the dark flanks of the Alps. Amedeo took a slurp of grappa and glanced downhill. A nativity scene