The Island of the Day Before Read Online Free PDF Page A

boy brood over, isolated as he was among bat-infested turrets, vineyards, lizards and horses, awkward in dealing with the big peasant boys his age, his unequal peers, a boy who when he was not listening to the fairy tales of his grandmother listened to those of the Carmelite?), convinced that somewhere an unrecognized brother was at large, who must have been of an evil nature, as their father had repudiated him. Roberto was at first too little and then too modest to wonder if this brother was his on his father's side or on his mother's (in either case one of his parents would have been living under the cloud of an ancient, unpardonable sin): a brother in some way (perhaps supernaturally) guilty of the rejection he had suffered, and because of it he surely hated him, Roberto, the favorite.
    The shadow of this enemy brother (whom he would have liked to know, all the same, in order to love him and be loved) had troubled his nights as a boy; later, in adolescence, he leafed through old volumes in the library, hoping to find hidden there—what?—a portrait, a certificate from the curate, a revelatory confession. He wandered through the garrets, opening old chests full of great-grandparents' clothes, rusted medals, a Moorish dagger; and he lingered to question, with puzzled fingers, embroidered dresses that had certainly clad an infant, but whether that was years or centuries ago, there was no knowing.
    Gradually he had also come to give this lost brother a name, Ferrante, and had begun attributing to him the little crimes of which he himself was wrongfully accused, like the theft of a cake or the improper liberation of a dog from his chain. Ferrante, privileged by his banishment, acted behind Roberto's back, and Roberto in turn hid behind Ferrante. Indeed, little by little the habit of blaming the nonexistent brother for what he, Roberto, could not have done, became transformed into the habit of inculpating him with what Roberto had done, and of which he repented.
    It was not that Roberto told others a lie: rather, with a lump in his throat, silently assuming the punishment for his own misdeeds, he managed to convince himself of his innocence and to feel the victim of an injustice.
    Once, for example, to try out a new axe that the smith had just delivered to him, also partly out of spite for some abuse or other that he felt he had endured, Roberto chopped down a little fruit tree that his father had only recently planted with great hopes for future seasons. When Roberto realized the gravity of his foolishness, he imagined atrocious consequences: being sold to the Turks, at the very least, so they could set him rowing for life in their galleys. He was preparing to attempt flight, ready to end his life as an outlaw in the hills. Seeking a justification, he quickly persuaded himself that the person who had cut down the tree was Ferrante.
    But, discovering the crime, his father assembled all the boys of the estate and said that, to avert his indiscriminate wrath, the guilty party would be wise to confess. Roberto felt mercifully generous: if he blamed Ferrante, the poor boy would suffer another repudiation; and after all the unhappy child misbehaved as if to confirm his orphaned abandonment, offended as he was by the sight of his parents smothering another in caresses.... Roberto took a step forward and, trembling with fear and pride, declared that he wanted no one else to be blamed in his stead. This statement, though it was not a confession, was taken for one. Twisting his moustache and looking at the boy's mother, the father said, harshly clearing his throat several times, that to be sure the crime was very serious, and punishment was inevitable, but he could not help but appreciate that the young "master of La Griva" had honored the family tradition and this was how a gentleman should always act, even if he was only eight years old. Then he announced that Roberto would not be allowed to participate in the mid-August visit