Me And You , livre ebook

Canongate Books - Niccolo Ammaniti

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

57 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY, SOMETIMES . . . Lorenzo Cuni is a fourteen-year-old loner. His wealthy parents think he is away on a school skiing trip, but, in fact, he has stowed away in a forgotten cellar. He plans to live in perfect isolation for a week, keeping the adult world at bay. Then a visit from his estranged half-sister, Olivia, changes everything.

Informations

Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	02 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780857861993
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Also by Niccolò Ammaniti

Steal You Away
I’m Not Scared
The Crossroads Let the Games Begin Anna
Niccolò Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He is the author of six novels translated into English and two short story collections. Several of his novels have been adapted for film, including Steal You Away , which was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, The Crossroads , winner of the Premio Strega Prize 2007, and the international bestseller I'm Not Scared , which won the prestigious Italian Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction and has been translated into thirty-five languages. Kyle Doust studied Italian literature and linguistics at La Trobe University, Melbourne. She has lived in Italy since 1998.

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2012
Copyright © Niccolò Ammaniti, 2010 Copyright © Kylee Doust
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in Italy in 2010 as Io e te by Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino
canongate.co.uk
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright materials. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of the book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85786 198 6 eISBN 978 0 85786 199 3
Typeset in Van Dijck by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
And this one’s for my mother and father
In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Crack-Up’

But can you save me?
Come on and save me
If you could save me
From the ranks of the freaks
Who suspect they could never love anyone.
Aimee Mann, ‘Save Me’
Contents
Introduction
Cividale del Friuli: 12 January 2010
Rome: Ten years earlier
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Cividale del Friuli: 12 June 2010
Author biography
Batesian mimicry occurs when a harmless animal species takes advantage of its similarity to a toxic or poisonous species that inhabits the same territory, imitating its colouring and behaviour. In this way, the imitating species is associated in the predators’ minds with the dangerous one, increasing its chances of survival.
Cividale del Friuli
12 January 2010
‘Coffee?’
A waitress is studying me over the top of her glasses. She’s holding a silver coffee pot.
I put out my cup. ‘Thank you.’
She fills it up to the brim. ‘Are you here for the fair?’
I shake my head. ‘What fair?’
‘The horse fair.’ She looks at me. She’s waiting for me to tell her why I happen to be in Cividale del Friuli. In the end she pulls out a notebook. ‘What’s your room number?’
I show her the key. ‘One hundred and nineteen.’
She writes down the number. ‘If you’d like any more coffee you can serve yourself from the buffet.’
‘Thanks.’
‘My pleasure.’
As soon as she moves away I pull a piece of paper folded into four out of my wallet. I flatten it on the table.
My sister Olivia wrote it ten years ago, the twenty-fourth of February 2000.
I was fourteen years old and she was twenty-three.
Rome
Ten years earlier
1
On the evening of the eighteenth of February 2000 I went to bed early and dropped off straight away, but during the night I woke up and wasn’t able to get back to sleep.
At ten minutes past six, with the feather quilt pulled up underneath my chin, I was breathing with my mouth open.
The house was quiet. The only sounds I could hear were the rain tapping against the window, my mother walking backwards and forwards between the bedroom and the bathroom upstairs, and the air going in and out of my throat. Soon she would come and wake me up to take me to the meeting with the others. I turned on the cricket-shaped lamp that sat on the bedside table.
The green light painted the slice of the room where my backpack sat, swollen with clothes, beside the waterproof jacket and the bag with my ski boots and skis.
Between my thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays I’d had a growth spurt, as if they’d put fertiliser on me, and I was taller than my peers. My mother said that two carthorses had stretched me. I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror studying my white skin stained with freckles, the hairs on my legs. On the top of my head grew a hazel bush that had ears sticking out of it. The shape of my face had been remodelled by puberty, and a substantial nose separated two green eyes.
I got up and I slid my hand into the pocket of the backpack.
‘The pocket knife’s there. So is the torch. I’ve got everything,’ I whispered.
My mother’s footsteps moved down the hallway. She must be wearing the blue high heels, I thought.
I dived back into bed, turned off the light and pretended to be asleep.
‘Lorenzo, wake up. It’s late.’
I lifted my head off the pillow and rubbed my eyes.
My mother pulled up the shutters. ‘It’s a foul day . . . Let’s hope the weather’s better in Cortina.’
The gloomy light of the dawn reflected her thin silhouette. She was wearing the grey skirt and jacket that she used when she did important stuff. Her round-necked cardigan. Her pearls. And her blue high heels.
‘Good morning,’ I yawned, as if I’d just woken up.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Did you sleep well, darling?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to make you breakfast . . . You go have a shower in the meantime.’
‘What about Nihal?’
She combed my hair with her fingers. ‘He’s still asleep. Did he give you your ironed T-shirts?’
I nodded.
‘Get up, come on.’
I wanted to, but a weight on my chest was suffocating me.
‘What’s the matter?’
I took her hand. ‘Do you love me?’
She smiled. ‘Of course I love you.’ She stood up, looked at her reflection in the mirror beside the door and smoothed out her skirt.
‘Get up, come on. On a day like today do I have to beg you to get out of bed?’
‘Kiss.’
She bent over me. ‘Look, you’re not joining the army, you’re going skiing for a week.’
I hugged her and slid my head under her blonde hair, which hung over her face, and I put my nose against her neck.
She had a nice smell. It made me think of Morocco. Of its narrow alleyways full of stalls with coloured powders. But I had never been to Morocco.
‘What perfume is that?’
‘It’s sandalwood soap. The usual.’
‘Can you lend it to me?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘So I can wash myself with it and carry you with me.’
She pulled the covers off me. ‘That would be a first, you washing yourself. Come on, don’t be silly, you won’t have time to think about me.’
Through the car window I studied the wall of the zoo covered in wet election posters. Higher up, inside the aviary where they kept the birds of prey, a vulture was sitting on a dry branch. It looked like an old woman dressed in mourning, asleep in the rain.
The heating inside the car made it hard to breathe and the biscuits I’d had for breakfast were stuck at the back of my throat.
The rain was easing up. A couple – he was fat, she was skinny – were doing exercises on the leaf-covered steps of the Modern Art Museum.
I looked at my mother.
‘What is it?’ she said, without taking her eyes off the road.
I puffed up my chest, trying to imitate my father’s low voice: ‘Arianna, you should wash this car. It’s a pigsty on wheels.’
She didn’t laugh. ‘Did you say goodbye to your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Not to be silly and not to ski like a maniac.’ I paused. ‘And not to call you every five minutes.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Yes.’
She changed gear and turned down Flaminia. The city was beginning to fill up with cars.
‘Call me whenever you want. Have you got everything? Your music? Your mobile?’
‘Yes.’
The grey sky hung heavily above the roofs and between the antennas.
‘Did you pack the bag with the medicines? Did you put the thermometer in there?’
‘Yes.’
A guy on a Vespa laughed into the mobile stuck under his helmet.
‘Money?’
‘Yes.’
We crossed the bridge over the Tiber.
‘We checked the rest together yesterday evening. You’ve got everything.’
‘Yes, I’ve got everything.’
We were waiting at the stoplight. A woman in a Fiat 500 was staring in front of her. An old man was dragging two Labradors along the footpath. A seagull was crouching on the skeleton of a tree covered in plastic bags that stuck out of the mud-coloured water.
If God had come and asked me if I wanted to be that seagull, I would have answered yes.
I undid my seat belt. ‘Drop me off here.’
She looked at me as if she hadn’t understood. ‘What do you mean, here?’
‘I mean, here.’
The light turned green.
‘Pull over, please.’
But she kept on driving. Luckily there was a rubbish truck that slowed us down.
‘Mum! Pull over.’
‘Put your seatbelt back on.’
‘Please stop.’
‘But why?’
‘I want to get there on my own.’
‘I don’t understand . . .’
I raised my voice. ‘Stop, please.’
My mother pulled over, turned off the engine and pulled her hair back with her hand. ‘What’s going on? Lorenzo, please, let’s not start . . . You know I’m no good at this time of the morning.’
‘It’s just that . . .’ I squeezed my hands into a fist. ‘Everyone else is going there on their own. I can’t turn up with you. I’ll look like a loser.’
‘What are you saying?’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I’m supposed to just leave you here?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I don’t even thank Alessia’s parents?’
I shrugged. ‘There’s no need. I’ll thank them for you.’
‘Not on your life.’ And she turned the key in the ignition.
I flung myself on her. ‘No . . . No . . . Please.’
She pushed me back. ‘Please, what?’
‘Let me go by myself. I can’t turn up with my mummy. They’ll make fun of me.’
‘That’s just silly . . . I want to make sure that everything is all right, if I have to do anything. It’s the least I can do. I’m not rude like you.’
‘I’m not rude. I’m just like all the