Read Property of Blood for Free Online Page A

that were stored there. I had to learn not to cry. I had to learn to eat out of duty and without hunger. I had to learn not to admit hearing those few things I could hear and not to react to deliberate torment. I had to learn to accept pain and immobility quietly so that I wouldn’t go mad. I had to learn to be passive when I had always been active. I had always thought of myself as a fighter but now I had to lay down my arms. If I wanted to live, I had to stay quietly inside my body and just be.
    ‘That afternoon I thought for a long time about what would be happening at home. Would they have called the police or the carabinieri? Had they received any message about me? Did the newspapers know? I thought of the anxiety and excitement we’d all been feeling because of the show coming up in New York. Now that had been replaced by this new anxiety. Now perhaps my children would have to face a future of being poor again. We had no choice but to pay whatever we could. How could I have let this happen? In a few seconds, all our lives compromised. What should I have done to prevent these total strangers’ overturning our world that I had constructed so carefully and thought I could control?
    ‘The minutes dripped steadily away until the afternoon was over and I felt my foot shaken again. I knew exactly what to do and the ritual was soon completed—the same tray, the same roll, already cut, the cheese, the sour wine.
    ‘Back in the tent, I began to arrange myself for the night. There was a sort of comfort in concentrating on the completion of small acts, rendered newly difficult by the absence of sight and hearing and the presence of the chain. I drew in the slack of the chain to allow my entry into the sleeping bag. I closed the zip of the bag. I arranged my coat over my legs and, still sitting up, managed to dab my hands and face clean with paper napkins and mineral water. Each thing accomplished was a small victory. I drank some water from the bottle and was careful not to spill any, which was easier now it was more than half empty. This small, familiar act, a drink of water before sleep, was comforting. I pulled my coat up further, pushed myself deeper into the sleeping bag, and turned on my side.
    ‘I managed to smother the scream down to a choking groan and turned on my back, gasping. I hadn’t yet dared touch the area round my ears for fear of hurting myself and I had no idea that those stone-hard constructions were so big. The pain caused by putting my weight on one of them when I turned over was indescribable and seemed to penetrate right through my brain to the other ear. How could I ever sleep if I had to lie on my back, afraid to move even by accident? A great surge of pure rage against these people grew inside me, hard as stone in my chest, hard as the stones in my ears. God damn them for doing this cruel, senseless thing to me who had never harmed them. If I ever got free I would find a way to kill them. If I, had the strength of a man I’d kill every one of them with my bare hands.
    ‘The zip whispered! I lay still, hating whoever it was who now crawled into the tent alongside me. A face close to mine, a hand whacking the packages behind my head. A shouting voice.
    “‘That’ll teach you to keep your noise down!” Then a whisper that touched me and came through my undersea world: “What’s going on? You musn’t make a noise or they’ll plaster your mouth up!”
    “‘My ear … I turned over.”
    “‘Well don’t. I told you, lie on your back.” Another whack at the packages. “That’s enough!” They were out there. He was pretending to hit me for their benefit.
    “‘I won’t be able to go to sleep on my back and I’m afraid of turning over in the night by mistake.”
    “‘You won’t. I know you won’t. Just lie still and you’ll fall asleep. Do you understand?”
    “‘Yes.”
    “‘I’ve got to go.” I felt a hand brush my head and he whispered,