She scrubbed even harder at the floorboards on the porch. The blood had seeped into the wood, and not even the rain and the roar of the storm had managed to wash it away.

-31-

-31-

Massimo had begun to find it strangely alienating to return to the city every night after spending his days immersed in the wild, solemn landscapes of Travenì. The evening traffic was disorienting, and the cars’ headlights made him feel like an animal caught in the middle of a busy road.

At first, he tried to blame it on tiredness, on endless shifts merging into one another, leaving only a few hours for rest.

But he wasn’t convinced. It was as if his body had found a new equilibrium on those mountains and was having trouble readjusting to day-to-day life at a lower altitude. He had become accustomed to vertiginous heights and open spaces, to gales that tore the skin off your face, and the sudden warmth of crackling bonfires. There was a savage beauty in that world that awakened the senses from the hibernation of domesticated life.

Massimo entered the apartment he struggled to call home for a quick shower and a sandwich made out of the few provisions he had left in the fridge. He changed into something more comfortable, put his sneakers on, and went out. The public library wouldn’t close until later in the evening, so there was still time to go for a walk and explore the town center. That small provincial town had all the features—both good and bad—of a proper city. But everything was on a smaller scale, shrunken down to a more bearable size, small doses that couldn’t kill you.

Massimo felt lonely, but also somewhat liberated. The landscape of that wintry evening, with the skeletal silhouettes of trees outlined against the sky, resembled his life in that moment, stripped of all that was superfluous, like a bare tree trunk, a vessel for the vital sap that would nourish fresh shoots when the time was right. Massimo had turned into the skeleton of his former self. He had left everything behind, abandoning his comfort zone of routines, control, and certainties.

And Teresa Battaglia had figured it out. She had seen through him like nobody else had ever done before. He’d found it unpleasant, and slightly depressing, to realize that he wasn’t so complicated after all.

He didn’t know why he kept thinking about her, but she had recently become the focus of his every thought and action. She was an affliction, but also a formidable motivation. He had seen how her entire squad gravitated toward her, and now he understood what caused it: her vital energy. People could feel it in her, and they were attracted to it. Teresa Battaglia had the rare gift of making those who stood by her feel stronger. Except that in his case, she also made him feel terribly inadequate.