The race I was just about to overtake Salvatore when I heard my sister shout.

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Chapter 1

The race

I was just about to overtake Salvatore when I heard my sister shout. I turned round and saw her swallowed by the grain that covered the hill.

I shouldn't have taken her with me, mother would have made me pay.

I stopped. I was sweating. I caught my breath and called her. "Maria? Maria?"

A little suffering voice replied. "Michele!"

"Are you hurt?"

"Yes, come."

"Where did you hurt yourself?"

"My leg."

She was pretending, she was tired. I'll go ahead, I said to myself. But what if she'd really hurt herself?

Where were the others?

I saw their tracks in the grain. They ran up slowly, in parallel lines, like fingers of a hand, up to the peak of the hill, leaving behind them a trail of trodden grass.

The corn was high that year. At the end of spring it had rained a lot, and halfway through June the plants were more blooming that ever. They grew densely, brimming with lavender, ready to be picked.

Every thing was covered with grain. The hills, low, followed one another like waves of a golden ocean. Until the edge of the horizon there was nothing but grain, sky, crickets, sun, and heat.

I didn't have a clue about how hot it was, at nine years old one doesn't understand much about degrees and centigrade, but I knew this wasn't normal.
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That damn summer of 1978 was notorious for being the hottest of the century. The heat entered through the stones, cracking the earth, burning the plants and killing the beasts, setting houses on fire. When you picked the tomatoes from the orchard, they were without juice, and the aubergines small and hard. The sun took away your breath, your strength, the will to play, everything. And at night you would still be bursting.

At Acqua Traverse adults didn't leave their houses before six in the evening. They trapped themselves inside, blinds shut. Only we dared to venture ...

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