The rock, aimed at Silvio, had hit him in the face and torn open his skin.
“My eye!” Silvio cried as he fell to the ground. Domenica knelt next to him. The gang chanted “Il bastardo!” as they surrounded them.
Domenica felt claustrophobic; the pungent scent of the breath and sweat of the mob mixed with seaweed sickened her.
“Enough!” Domenica shouted.
Guido Mironi, the tallest boy with the thickest neck, grabbed the map from Domenica.
“Step aside, boys!” Signore Aniballi panted, pushing the boys out of his way. Mironi handed the librarian the map.
“Grazie, Guido, grazie,” Aniballi gushed. “Good boy.”
Domenica was on the ground next to Silvio, shielding him with her body. The boy was in agony. He had curled up tightly in the shape of a snail’s shell, his hand covering his eye, protecting it as blood streamed through his fingers.
Domenica stood up. She grabbed the rock that had done the damage. “Move away so I can see what you did!”
“We’re not done with him,” the Pullo boy hissed from behind the librarian. He was the smallest boy in Domenica’s class, who found his courage only when backed by a mob.
“That’s enough, boys.” Aniballi raised his voice. “On your way. I will handle this.”
The mob dispersed slowly.
Domenica heard their slurs and laughter, which meant Silvio could hear them too.
Domenica looked up at Aniballi. “He needs to see Dottore Pretucci.”
“I can’t carry him.” He brushed the sand off his trousers.
Domenica spoke softly to Silvio. “Let me see.”
Silvio shook his head. If it were even possible, he had contracted even more tightly into a coil, like an animal whose instinct was to camouflage when in danger.
“I won’t touch it. I just need to see where the rock hit you,” she whispered.
Domenica took Silvio’s bloody hand and gently lifted it away from his face. The skin was torn away on his forehead, revealing the wound, a ruby-red gash over his left eyebrow. Silvio squeezed his eye shut, protecting it, but blood poured out of the wound and down his face. Domenica wiped the blood off the lid of his eye with her thumb.
Aniballi shuddered at the sight of the blood on Domenica’s hand.
“Open your eye.” Domenica used her hands to shade Silvio’s face from the sun. “You can do it.”
Silvio’s eyelid fluttered open, but the sun was too bright even in the shade she had created, so he squeezed it shut.
“They missed your eye.” Domenica slipped off her apron and stuffed the contents of the pockets into the bodice of her dress, leaving the pink shells on the sand. She folded the apron into a square. “Here. Hold this over the wound and press down hard on it. We have to stop the bleeding.” She helped Silvio stand. “We have to get the cut sewn up.”
“No!” Silvio cried.
“It’s deep. You have to. I’ll take you.”
Signore Aniballi observed Domenica as she helped Silvio climb the steps and disappear behind the crest of the dune. Aniballi removed a monocle from the breast pocket of his jacket, placing the glass over his right eye. He unscrolled the map, which appeared to be in no worse condition than it had been when the boy took it from the levered glass case in the library. Princess Pauline Bonaparte Borghese commissioned the map when her brother Napoleon crowned their sister Elisa the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. The librarian would lock all the cases from now on.
As Aniballi rolled the map into a cylinder, he spied one flaw. There was a maroon dot, no larger than the period at the end of a sentence, on the parchment. Il bastardo had left his mark on the official map of Viareggio after all.
CHAPTER 5
The young doctor rolled the blotter over the wet ink, sealing 15 July 1920 in his ledger. The physician was around thirty, but his receding hairline and thick eyeglasses made him appear middle-aged. Luckily, Dottore Armando Pretucci was in his office on Via Sant’Andrea and not at the hospital in Pietrasanta when Domenica Cabrelli pushed his office door open with her elbow and helped Silvio Birtolini inside. The boy had begun to shake at the sight of his own blood, which had saturated his shirt and Domenica’s apron.
“Don’t look at it. The head bleeds the most. It doesn’t mean anything,” Domenica assured the boy. “Dottore, my friend is bleeding badly. He needs to be sewn up.”
Pretucci sprinted into action. He helped Silvio to the examining table to lie down. He applied pressure to the wound with a thick, clean square of gauze and placed a pad of flannel over the boy’s eyes before pulling the overhead work lamp close to Silvio’s face to examine the injury. Domenica climbed on the stool next to the doctor to observe.
Pretucci concurred with the little girl. “You’re right about the head.”
“That it bleeds the most? I know.” Domenica peered at Silvio’s wound.
“What happened?” Pretucci asked as he gently dabbed the blood to get a better look at the depth of the wound.
“He was hit by a rock,” Domenica explained.
“Did you throw it?”
“No. He’s my friend.”
“So, the rock was thrown by an enemy?”
“We don’t know which one.”
The doctor addressed Silvio: “You have more than one enemy?”
“Many,” Silvio whispered.
“The patient speaks at last. What’s your name?”
“Silvio Birtolini, Dottore.” The boy trembled.
“Where does your father work?”
Domenica answered before Silvio could: “His father is dead. His mother works at the church.”
Pretucci could tell from the boy’s clothing that his mother did the kind of work that paid a pittance. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“No.”
“He’s alone. Except for me, of course. I have been his friend since we were five,” Domenica explained.
“That’s a lifelong friendship,” Pretucci said.