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out of the house with the jug in his hand.
    We got washed, ate pasta with tomato sauce and frittata, and after kissing papa and mama we went to bed without even begging to be allowed to watch television.
    I woke up during the night. I had had a nightmare.
    Jesus was telling Lazarus to rise and walk. But Lazarus didn’t rise. Rise and walk, Jesus repeated. Lazarus just wouldn’t come back to life. Jesus, who looked like Severino, the man who drove the water tanker, lost his temper. He was being made to look a fool. When Jesus tells you to rise and walk, you have to do it, especially if you’re dead. But Lazarus just lay there, stiff as a board. So Jesus started shaking him like a doll and Lazarus finally rose up and bit him in the throat. Leave the dead alone, he said with blood-smeared lips.
    I opened my eyes wide. I was covered in sweat.
    Those nights it was so hot that if you were unfortunate enough to wake up it was hard to get back to sleep. The bedroom I shared with my sister was narrow and long. It had been converted from a corridor. The two beds were laid lengthwise, one after the other, under the window. On one side was the wall, on the other about thirty centimetres to move in. Otherwise the room was white and bare.
    In winter it was cold and in summer you couldn’t breathe.
    The heat that was accumulated by the walls and ceiling in the daytime was emitted during the night. You felt as if your pillow and woollen mattress had come straight out of an oven.
    Behind my feet I saw Maria’s dark head. She was sleeping with her glasses on, face upwards, completely relaxed with her arms and legs apart.
    She used to say that if she woke up without her glasses onshe got scared. Usually mama took them off as soon as she fell asleep because they left marks on her face.
    The insecticide coil on the window sill produced a dense toxic smoke that killed the mosquitoes and didn’t do us much good either. But in those days nobody worried about that sort of thing.
    Next to our room was our parents’ room. I could hear papa snoring. The fan blowing. My sister panting. The monotonous hoot of a little owl. The buzz of the fridge. The stench of sewage from the toilet.
    I knelt on the bed and leaned on the window sill to get some air.
    There was a full moon. It was high and bright. You could see for a long way, as if it were daytime. The fields seemed phosphorescent. The air was still. The houses dark, silent.
    Maybe I was the only person awake in Acqua Traverse. It was a good feeling.
    The boy was in the hole.
    I imagined him dead in the earth. Cockroaches, bugs and millipedes crawling on him, over his bloodless skin, and worms coming out of his blue lips. His eyes were like two hard-boiled eggs.
    I had never seen a dead body. Except my grandmother Giovanna. On her bed, with her arms crossed, in her black dress and shoes. Her face seemed to be made of rubber. Yellow like wax. Papa had told me I must kiss her. Everyone was crying. Papa was pushing me. I had put my lips on her cold cheek. It had a sickly sweet taste that mingled with the smell of the candles. Afterwards I had washed my lips with soap.
    But what if the boy was alive?
    If he wanted to get out and was scratching at the walls of the hole with his fingers and calling for help? If he had been caught by an ogre?
    I looked out and far away on the plain I saw the hill. It seemed to have appeared out of nothing and stood up, like an island risen from the sea, tall and black, with its secret that was waiting for me.
    â€˜Michele, I’m thirsty …’ Maria woke up. ‘Will you get me a glass of water?’ She was talking with her eyes closed and running her tongue over her dry lips.
    â€˜Just a minute …’ I got up.
    I didn’t want to open the door. What if grandmother Giovanna was sitting at the table with the boy? Saying, come, sit down with us, let’s eat? And there on the plate was the impaled hen?
    There was nobody