Free Cabaret by Lily Prior Page A

thought I would leave them behind as I threw myself onward, faster, down the hill, my arms flailing. I stumbled. I ran on, and on, hardly aware that the screaming I could hear was coming from me. Finally I reached the bottom, and told my legs to stop, but the momentum carried me on for a dozen more paces. I bent over at the waist, letting my torso flop down and the blood fill my head. I was panting so hard I felt sick, and thought I would bring up my lungs and possibly even my heart. I stayed like that for a while, and then stood up, and walked around slowly.
    I found the spot where the car had stopped, and where the old man had lain down and died, but there was nothing to mark the place. Just a gaping, screaming emptiness, and somehow this made it all seem even more pointless.Why had it happened? Why?
    The nearby house seemed even more ramshackle now than it had then, although at the time I had paid it no attention. Some windows were boarded up, some broken; one of the shutters had bent its hinge and hung down. I pushed my way through the gate grown stiff without use. The garden, then so beautiful, had given way to ivy and thickets of weeds.
    Thorns snagged at me as I waded through the growth to reach the palm tree. Startled lizards scattered in streams of shifting light. Propped up against the trunk was a wreath of tacky plastic pansies—Aunt Ninfa’s handiwork, no doubt.
    Halfway up I found what I was looking for. Mamma’s teeth. Embedded. Six of them. Tracing the line of a crescent moon. I pulled from my pocket the pair of pliers I had brought with me, and removed the teeth one by one. When I had them all, I wrapped them carefully in a handkerchief and returned to the city.
    Later that day I buried them in Mamma’s grave, and the following year there sprouted a fine crop of turnips. Why turnips, I don’t know, but I was glad.

Chapter 13
    O n Thursday morning, Pierino, with Signora Dorotea, Signor Porzio, Uncle Birillo, Aunt Ninfa, Polibio Naso—Fiamma’s husband (Fiamma was in a meeting with the president and was unable to attend)—and an old woman with a motor-controlled hand whom I had never set eyes on before, formed a farewell party on the quayside.
    The photographer from
Mortician’s Monthly
was there again, snapping away through an enormous telephoto lens, and I felt just like a celebrity.There were balloons and stream-ers, and the ship’s band had assembled on the deck, playing jaunty seafaring numbers to welcome me aboard. I didn’t realize until I stepped on the gangplank in my new white platform shoes that I had never been anywhere in my life before, and already I felt horribly homesick. How I wanted to turn round and run away. But it was too late. A handsome man in a smart uniform blew a whistle, troops of sailors began heav-ing at ropes, the great funnel emitted clouds of dirty black smoke, and a throbbing horn, seemingly located deep in the bowels of the ship, gave out a series of blasts that made me quiver.
    Before I knew it the ropes were cast loose, the waters foamed and bubbled up between the side of the ship and the dockside, and we were away. The other cruisers cheered and whooped, and a few halfhearted fireworks were set off by an old sea dog whose burn-scarred face and hands showed he had done this sort of thing before, and not with an unqualified degree of success.
    I looked down at the huddle of figures waving at me and picked out the woman with the mechanical hand, which waved urgently, never tiring, and I fancied that above the roar of the engines I could detect the squawking voice of Pierino wishing me bon voyage.
    I watched my loved ones retreat into the haze, feeling a huge wave of nostalgia, praying fervently that nothing horrible would happen to me while I was away in the wider world.
    As usual in my life, I was destined to be disappointed.

Chapter 14
    I spent the first half hour of the voyage exploring the ship. Despite the extravagant claims of the competition organizers, my