Authors: Alessandro Baricco
Without Blood
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A L E S S A N D R O B A R I C C O
W i t h o u t B l o o d
Alessandro Baricco was born in Turin in 1958 and still makes his home there. The author of four previous novels, he has won the Prix Médicis Étranger in France and the Selezione Campiello, Viareggio, and Palazzo al Bosco prizes in Italy.
A L S O B Y A L E S S A N D R O B A R I C C O
An Iliad
City
Silk
Ocean Sea
W i t h o u t B l o o d
W i t h o u t B l o o d
A L E S S A N D R O B A R I C C O
Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
V I N T A G E I N T E R N A T I O N A L
Vintage Books
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MARCH 2008
Translation copyright © 2004
by Alessandro Baricco
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Italy as
Senza sangue
by Rizzoli, Milan, in 2002. Copyright © 2002
RCS Libri S.p.A., Milano. This translation originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2004.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and Colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Baricco, Alessandro [date]
[Senza sangue. English]
Without blood / Alessandro Baricco ; translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein—1st American ed.
p. cm.
I. Goldstein, Ann, 1949– . II. Title.
PQ4862.A6745S4513 2004 853'.914—dc22 2003058917
eISBN: 978-0-307-38936-7
v1.0
The events and persons mentioned in this story are imagi-nary. The frequent choice of Spanish names is due purely to their music and is not intended to suggest a historic or geographical location of the action.
O n e
The old farmhouse of Mato Rujo stood
blankly in the countryside, carved
in black against the evening light, the only stain in
the empty outline of the plain.
The four men arrived
in an old Mercedes. The road was
pitted and
dry—a poor country road. From the farmhouse,
Manuel
Roca saw them.
He went to the window. First he saw the column of dust
rising against the corn. Then he heard the sound of the engine.
No one had a car anymore, around
here. Manuel
Roca knew it.
He saw the Mercedes emerge in the distance and
disappear
behind a line of oaks. Then he stopped
looking.
He returned to the table and
placed a hand on his daughter’s
3
head. Get up, he told
her. He took a key from his pocket, put it
on the table, and nodded at his son. Yes, the son said. They were
children, just two children.
At the crossroads where the stream ran the old Mercedes did not
turn off to the farmhouse but continued toward Álvarez instead.
The four men traveled
in silence. The one driving had on a sort
of uniform. The other sitting in front wore a cream-colored
suit. Pressed. He was smoking a French cigarette. Slow down,
he said.
Manuel
Roca heard the sound fade into the distance toward
Álvarez. Who do they think they’re fooling? he thought. He saw
his son come back
into the room with a gun in his hand and
another under his arm. Put them there, he said. Then he turned
to his daughter. Come, Nina. Don’t be afraid. Come here.
The well-dressed man put out his cigarette on the dashboard of
the Mercedes, then told the one who was driving to stop. This is
good, here, he said. And shut off that infernal engine. He heard
the slide of the hand
brake, like a chain falling into a well. Then
4
nothing. It was as if the countryside had
been swallowed up
in
an unalterable silence.
It would
have been better to go straight there, said one of the
two sitting in back. Now he’ll
have time to run, he said. He had
a gun in his hand. He was only a boy. They called
him Tito.
He won’t run, said the well-dressed man. He’s had
it with
running. Let’s go.
Manuel
Roca moved aside some baskets of fruit, bent over,
raised a hidden trapdoor, and
looked
inside. It was little more
than a big hole dug into the earth, like the den of an animal.
“Listen to me, Nina. Now, some people are coming, and
I
don’t want them to see you. You have to hide in here, the best
thing is for you to hide in here and wait until they go away. Do
you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You just have to stay here and
be quiet.”
“ . . . ”
“Whatever happens, you mustn’t come out, you mustn’t
move, just stay here, be quiet, and wait.”
“ . . . ”
5
“Everything will
be all right.”
“Yes.”
“Listen to me. It’s possible I may have to go away with these
men. Don’t come out until your brother comes to get you, do
you understand? Or until you can tell that no one is there and
it’s all over.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to wait until there’s no one there.”
“ . . . ”
“Don’t be afraid, Nina, nothing’s going to happen to you. All
right?”
“Yes.”
“Give me a kiss.”
The girl
pressed
her lips against her father’s forehead. He
caressed
her hair.
“Everything will
be all right, Nina.”
He remained standing there, as if there were still something
he had to say, or do.
“This isn’t what I
intended,” he said. “Remember, always,
that this is not what I
intended.”
6
The child searched
instinctively in her father’s eyes for
something that might help
her understand. She saw nothing. Her
father leaned over and
kissed
her lips.
“Now go, Nina. Go on.”
The child
let herself fall
into the hole. The earth was hard and
dry. She lay down.
“Wait, take this.”
The father handed
her a blanket. She spread
it over the dirt
and
lay down again.
She heard
her father say something to her, then she saw the
trapdoor lowered. She closed
her eyes and opened them. Blades
of light filtered through the floorboards. She heard the voice of
her father as he went on speaking to her. She heard the sound of
the baskets dragged across the floor. It grew darker under there.
Her father asked
her something. She answered. She was lying on
one side. She had
bent her legs, and there she was, curled up, as
if in her bed, with nothing to do but go to sleep, and
dream. She
heard
her father say something else, gently, leaning down toward
the floor. Then she heard a shot, and the sound of a window
breaking into a thousand
pieces.
7
“ROCA! . . . COME OUT, ROCA
. . . DON’T
DO ANYTHING
STUPID, JUST
COME OUT.”
Manuel
Roca looked at his son. He crept toward the boy,
careful not to move into the open. He reached for the gun on the
table.
“Get away from there! Go and
hide in the woodshed. Don’t
come out, don’t make a sound, don’t do anything. Take the gun
and
keep
it loaded.”
The child stared at him without moving.
“Go on. Do what I tell you.”
But the child took a step toward
him.
Nina heard a hail of shots sweep the house, above her. Dust
and
bits of glass slid along the cracks in the floor. She didn’t
move. She heard a voice calling from outside.
“WELL, ROCA? DO WE HAVE TO COME AND GET YOU?
I’M TALKING
TO YOU, ROCA. DO I HAVE TO COME AND
GET YOU?”
The child was standing there, in the open. He had taken his
gun, but was holding it in one hand, pointing it down and
swinging it back and forth.
“Go,” said the father. “Did you hear me? Get out of here.”
8
The child went toward
him. What he was thinking was that
he would
kneel on the floor, and
be embraced
by his father. He
imagined something like that.
The father pointed the other gun at him. He spoke in a low,
fierce voice.
“Go, or I’ll
kill you myself.”
Nina heard that voice again.
“LAST
CHANCE, ROCA.”
Gunfire fanned the house, back and forth
like a pendulum, as
if it would never end, back and forth
like the beam of a
lighthouse over a coal-black sea, patiently.
Nina closed
her eyes. She flattened
herself against the blanket
and curled up even tighter, pulling her knees to her chest. She
liked
being in that position. She felt the earth, cool, under her
side, protecting her—it would not betray her. And she felt her
own curled-up
body, folded around
itself like a shell—she liked
this—she was shell and animal, her own shelter, she was
everything, she was everything for herself, nothing could
hurt her
as long as she remained
in this position. She reopened
her eyes,
and thought, Don’t move, you’re happy.
Manuel
Roca saw his son disappear behind the door. Then he
9
raised
himself just enough to glance out the window. All right, he
thought. He moved to another window, rose, quickly took aim,
and fired.
The man in the cream-colored suit cursed and threw himself
to the ground. Look at this bastard, he said. He shook
his head.
How about this son of a bitch? He heard two more shots from
the farmhouse. Then he heard the voice of Manuel
Roca.
“FUCK OFF, SALINAS.”
The man in the cream-colored suit spit. Go fuck yourself,
you bastard. He glanced to his right and saw that El
Gurre was
sneering, flattened
behind a stack of wood. He was holding a
machine gun in his right hand, and with
his left he searched
his
pocket for a cigarette. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He was
small and thin, he wore a dirty hat on his head and on his feet
enormous mountain clogs. He looked at Salinas. He found
the cigarette. He put it between his lips. Everyone called
him
El
Gurre. He got up and
began shooting.