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collar out of wood and leather that was so heavy the beast had to hang his head.
    From that day on, until his death, Mazzetta never once set foot again in his former home. From that day on, miserable Mazzetta managed to support his two wards by placing a silver coin on the threshold of their door every new moon. From that day on, violent Mazzetta became more gentle than his donkey, whom he renamed Tesoro, and several people were surprised to find him weeping as he looked out to the sea.
    In all the years that followed, he never once got a word or a glance out of Mademoiselle.
    An incomprehensible pact linked these two beings. But it was a pact that no word had sealed. A pact of silence.
    Vango grew up on the slopes of the extinct volcano. There he found all he needed.
    He was raised by three nurses: freedom, solitude, and Mademoiselle. Together, the three of them provided him with an education. From them, he learned everything he believed it was possible to learn.
    At the age of five, he understood five languages, but he didn’t speak to anybody. At seven, he could scale the cliffs without needing to use his feet. At nine, he could feed the falcons that swooped down to eat out of his hand. He slept bare-chested on the rocks with a lizard lying on his heart. He called to the swallows by whistling to them. He read the French novels that his nurse bought him in Lipari. He climbed to the top of the volcano to wet his hair in the clouds. He sang Russian lullabies to the beetles. He watched Mademoiselle chopping vegetables until they were perfect diamonds. And then he hungrily devoured all her fairy-tale cooking.
    For seven years, Vango didn’t think he needed anything other than Mademoiselle’s tenderness, the wilderness of the island, the sun and shadow of his volcano.
    But what happened when he was ten would transform his life forever. Because of this discovery, his fragment of an island suddenly seemed tiny in his eyes. What was taking place in him was like a fire beneath the sea.
    The world changed color before his eyes.
    And when he set foot on his little paradise again, he couldn’t help looking beyond the cliffs and the last rock, toward the horizon and the sky.

Aeolian Islands, September 1925
    The adventure began at night.
    He heard the cries before he heard the sea.
    And yet the sea was strongest of all. Violent as thunder, it was hurling itself against the foot of the cliff. Then tucking in again, turning on itself, attacking from different angles to explode all over again. Vango opened his eyes and realized that he had fallen asleep in a hole. He was just ten years old. He couldn’t even remember why he’d gone up to the top of the cliff that evening.
    It was the middle of the night.
    He strained his ears and heard another cry. You had to be very familiar with the sea to detect that feeble call in the middle of the storm.
    Vango got up and leaned over the edge of his shelter. There was still a glimmer in the sky despite the darkness. Perhaps the evening wasn’t so long past or else the dawn wasn’t so far off. The crests of the waves were like an army of bayonets attacking the island. In the crashing of the storm, Vango sometimes thought he could make out the sound of bells. And there was the wind too, above it all, making the spray fly up.
    Vango remembered now that he had come to see the falcons hovering at dusk. And, as he often did, he had fallen asleep there. There was no pressure to go home. Mademoiselle wouldn’t be fretting. They had an arrangement that she shouldn’t worry unless he was away for a second night.
    For someone barely ten years old, this was an unimaginable freedom, irresponsible even, but for Vango his island was like a child’s bedroom. He felt as safe and at home there as another little boy would have been playing between his bed, the chest of drawers, and the toy box.
    The shouting had stopped now. Vango hesitated for a moment, then decided to go and investigate. He slid out of his