Summers were endless then. The few days spent by the seaside with my parents were followed by weeks of boredom. I have no brothers or sisters, and none of my friends lived nearby. For some strange reason, in my childhood neighborhood there were only childless couples. You could never hear the screams of children playing, the sound of a ball thumping against the wall, the crying of someone falling off a bicycle. I had no bicycle because my mother didn’t trust me in the street, and I was prohibited from playing with a ball against the wall, and screaming while playing by myself would have made me look simply mad.
In the summer my mother would set my alarm clock for a quarter to eight and leave for work. I was, according to everyone, a good boy, and she knew I would wake up at that time. Looking back, I don’t know why cheating never crossed my mind. Perhaps I was too bored even for that.
Our house, like all the others on the street, was on two floors, plus an attic on top. There was a garden in front, where my parents parked their cars, and one at the back, where in the summer we would put a large umbrella, and a plastic table with four chairs — every year we’d buy new ones. There was also a barbecue and a shed where my mother kept her gardening tools. Around the garden, the hedge was so thick you couldn’t see the neighbors, but most of all they couldn’t see you. You could only smell the meat on the embers when they were having a barbecue, or the detergent when they were hanging the laundry. And you could hear their voices: when they spoke at a normal pitch, about grocery shopping or their holiday destination; when they raised their voices because they were discussing politics or football; and when they whispered but their words were fast and aggressive, and a hiss arrived through the hedge, because they were fighting for real reasons. Then perhaps they’d go back inside, slamming the door of the veranda, and then you’d hear them raise their voices, but you could only wonder what they were quarreling about.
My parents’ bedroom looked onto the road. My room, instead, looked out on the back garden. There was a small balcony and my mother had put a special lock on the door so I wouldn’t go outside by myself. For some reason she was sure I would jump, which is funny because even though I was a solitary child, the first time I thought of suicide was only much later. In fact, I had immediately understood how to open that lock and I would often sit on the balcony, on the floor, and imagine my stories, or play with my Lego bricks.
The most beautiful thing about my room was the bunk bed: it had the bed on top, and a desk below. My bedroom was my fantasy kingdom. Inside the wardrobes there were all sorts of toys. My favorite ones were Lego bricks and Meccano; the ones I hated were board games I received at Christmas. You really need a family of sadistic uncles and grandparents to buy only board games for a child with no siblings and no friends.
I had built an entire town with Lego bricks. All through the summer when my parents were at home, I placed it on my desk — I would do my summer homework in the kitchen, while mum was cooking. But when they were at work, I carefully placed the entire town on the balcony. My mother never noticed I had drawn the streets on the floor with a piece of chalk.
Every day after breakfast I moved everything outside, and put every building in its place. There were times when I brought an aluminium baking tin full of water — it was the swimming pool where the Lego people swam when it was too hot. I liked building houses but most of all I liked making up stories with the Lego people. Every day something different happened even though fires occurred quite frequently, especially the summer my parents bought me the fire station, and sometimes there were aliens invading the town, with robots I’d received from someone else.
That day instead a few Lego people whose faces had faded so I always used them as the bad guys decided to rob the hamburger kiosk. I knew from the news on TV that robberies usually happen in banks or supermarkets but in my town there were neither banks nor supermarkets. The robbery had to take place at the hamburger kiosk. I was about to make the hit — one of the Lego men with a faded face had even stolen a bike from a policeman — when below, through the railing, I caught a glimpse of someone moving in the garden at number 8. I turned and immediately saw my neighbor, a woman with a very pale complexion even in the summer who always wore light, flowery dresses. Her brown hair looked so soft that every time I saw her I had this fantasy of touching it. Besides, it was long and when I asked my mum why she didn’t let her hair grow (she’s always had a bob), she replied that a mother with a job has no time for long hair. The neighbor, whom I called Laura because she reminded me of Laura Ingalls from the Little House on the Prairie, rushed towards the tool shed they had in their garden, which was like ours only painted in white. She hid behind it but, being sideways and above, I could still see her.
Then there was silence. Even the cicadas that lived in the pine trees stopped. Birds fell quiet, like when it’s drizzling and the drops of rain are too small to be heard. I stood there, looking at the neighbors’ garden, holding the bike and the Lego man with the faded face tight in my hand in mid-air. From the balcony, I could see she was motionless, crouched on the floor, her back leaning against the shed’s wall.
From time to time it seemed she wanted to turn towards the house, give a check, but she only moved a little, so that her hair wouldn’t appear from her hiding place. Her chest moved fast. Up down, up down. I almost felt like I could hear her breathing but not mine, as if I had stopped breathing instead. Then I heard the door of their veranda swishing and slamming, and the vibration was so strong my house trembled. That’s when her husband appeared. He had a small head out of proportion compared to the large, muscly shoulders. He was as tall as a door. From my balcony I could only imagine his face, faded like the faded faces of the Lego men who did robberies.
I could no longer see Laura breathing, instead: her chest was still.
A few steps and he got to the shed and was four times as big as her, crouching on the ground. He said nothing. She lifted her arms to protect her face, perhaps she was expecting a slap, but he didn’t slap her. He didn’t hit her. He took her by the hair, that hair that I liked so much, and she didn’t even scream. He pulled her like that, without giving her the time to get up.
She scrambled on all fours, trying to keep up with him. The cicadas and birds continued to be silent and I thought that her hair looked soft even when it was pulled. Soft and strong. He kept on looking at the ground, in front of him, and I could see now the low hairline on his forehead, and something that looked like downy hair but was just dirt. He didn’t see me but just when Laura finally managed to get up — by now they had almost reached the house — she looked up, for a second, and she saw me looking. She smiled at me, it was just a moment, just like she did every time I bumped into her on the street coming back from school. Then they disappeared and again I heard the swish and the slam, the door closing behind them.
Only then did the birds and cicadas return to make their noises as if they had never stopped. As if nothing had ever happened.
I looked at my hand, holding tight the Lego man with the faded face on the bike. It was still in mid-air. I loosened my grip and parked the bike in one of the streets drawn in chalk.
The next day, a late August storm arrived. It flooded several basements in my neighborhood, washed away the chalk streets on the balcony, and announced the end of the last summer I played with my Lego bricks outside.
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