Lost Words Read Free Page B

Petillo’s apartment and stood there for a while, filled with a strange and wonderful sense of expectation.
    *.
    A beam of light penetrated my closed eyelids—it forced them open and I could see an arm moving just above my head, wriggling its way through a hole in the glass. (Now that everyone had stopped worrying about them . . .) I got up, careful not to make any noise, and ran to the bedroom. My father and mother were still sleeping. The glowing clock-face said that it was one o’clock in the morning. I shook my parents. They both immediately noticed the stream of light bouncing between the floor and the ceiling. My father leapt to his feet and ran into the other room. My mother held me. “Quiet, hush,” she whispered in my ear.
    Without wasting a second, my father grabbed a ceramic vase and slammed it against the arm. A shout rang out and the flashlight fell to the ground. My mother rushed to the kitchen. He kept squeezing the vase, which hadn’t even cracked, as if he wanted to strangle it. We heard someone running down the driveway. My mother rolled up the blinds and saw two men rushing through the gate, but she couldn’t recognize them in the nighttime mist. A moment later you could hear the sound of a car taking the road through the fields.
    For once, my father was not so sure of himself.
    â€œWhat if they have a gun?”
    My mother tried to calm him down, but she, too, was upset, and she, too, was afraid that the thieves would come back soon for their revenge. She pushed the armchair against the door, but it was only as tall as the doorknob, leaving the hole in the glass uncovered. She leaned the table-top against the window, leaving two legs sticking out. Then she put the coffee pot on the fire.
    â€œWhat are you doing? Call Cavallo’s husband on the intercom,” Dad ordered her. “He’s big. Call everyone before the burglars come back. Wake everyone up, for Christ’s sake! Those guys will be back with reinforcements and all hell will break loose!”
    â€œYou’re crazy! I’m not calling anyone. You want a revolution? Let’s call the police, instead.”
    Dad didn’t want to have anything to do with the police—the only thing they were good for, as far as he was concerned, was killing innocent bystanders.
    â€œYou’ll see, first they’ll beat me up then they’ll throw you in jail.”
    After a long wait, during which the criminals had all the time in the world to take their revenge on us, a squad car finally arrived. First, the cops requisitioned the burglar’s flashlight, which had rolled under the table and was stuck between the foot of a chair and the stove. One cop stayed outside to inspect the lock on the gate and reconstruct the movements of the thieves. The other, an older man, sat comfortably on my bed, and told my dad, in a mocking tone: “You’re a brave man.”
    My Dad, standing by the window, shrugged his shoulders.
    â€œWhat was I supposed to do? Welcome them in? Hand my son over to them?”
    â€œYou’re lucky they ran away. One time there was a burglar who started shooting at a tenant who caught him in the act . . . Play the hero and you’ll end up with a bullet in the head!”
    â€œMaybe they learned from you . . .”
    The policeman didn’t take the bait—he gulped down his coffee.
    Although my dad couldn’t provide any information that would help identify the criminals—the dialect they spoke, the accent they used, or the clothes they wore—it was determined that they must have been gypsies.
    â€œWell, what did they want from us?” Mom asked. “What were they looking for in a doorman’s loge? We’ve got nothing worth stealing.”
    But she was thinking about the checkbook and the pocket change—my pocket change!—that she kept hidden in the toolbox.
    â€œThe usual things you find in any loge,” the