The Babàu

The story

That evening her grandmother switched off the lamp and said the usual phrase.

"Sleep now. Or the babàu (the bogeyman) will come."

She said it in the flat voice of someone who has said it a hundred times, and pulled the door to without closing it completely. A yellow strip of light from the corridor stayed on the floor, thin as a thread.

The girl stayed under the covers, with her eyes open.

They lived in Turin, on the top floor of an old house, the kind with a courtyard in the middle and iron railings. In the evening, the building made its noises. A pipe gurgling. A door far away. The wood of the ceiling creaking, as if someone up there were moving a chair.

The babàu, she thought. But what is the babàu like?

She had never known. When they talked about it at school, every child had a different one. For one boy it was as tall as the ceiling, for a girl it had hands as long as branches. Her little cousin swore it was a head with no body. But nobody had ever seen it, and that, thought the girl, was the worst thing. A monster with a face, at least, you can look in the face.

Not the babàu. The babàu had the face the darkness gave it.

Something moved under the bed.

The girl stopped breathing. The mattress was high, the blankets hung down to the floor, and down there were the dust, the toy boxes and that black place at the back, against the wall, where the light from the corridor never reached. She waited. The noise did not come again.

Maybe it was the cat, but the cat, that night, was sleeping on the chair.

Slowly, so as not to make a sound, the girl drew her legs up to her chest. She had heard that the babàu lives in dark places. Under the bed, in the wardrobe, in the cellar, in the attic. She looked at the wardrobe. One door was ajar, by a finger's width, and inside that finger there was only black. She thought of the cellar, down at the bottom of the stairs, where her grandmother went to fetch potatoes and never sent her alone. She thought of the attic.

The ceiling creaked again.

Then, from the courtyard, came a long, low sound that made her lift her head from the pillow.

Woof.

It stopped. The girl stayed still, with her hands tight on the edge of the blanket.

Woof. Woof.

It was a round, warm sound, the kind that frightens nobody. The girl knew it. It was the caretaker's dog, a grey mongrel with one crooked ear, which barked at every cat, every footstep, every shadow that crossed the courtyard.

Woof, woof.

Then, little by little, another idea made its way into her head, and slowly it grew big.

Bau bau. Babàu.

Of course, she thought. Perhaps that was it. Why hadn't she got there before? That was how the name was said, even if the grown-ups said it in a low voice, almost with respect. It was the dog's bark, repeated twice, and then stretched into a word to give a fright.

She stayed a moment thinking about it. Her heart, which had been running like a mouse in a box, slowed down a little.

Then she got out of bed, because now she wanted to know. Her bare feet touched the cold floor. She bent down, with her heart still strong, and looked under the bed.

The black place at the back was there. It was big, and deep, and never ended. Among the dust and the boxes there was nothing more, no eyes, no hands, no breathing. But there was the black place, which kept looking at her.

"Who are you?" she whispered, and it seemed a silly question, because from down there nobody answered.

But the girl felt that the darkness was listening.

For a long moment the two things looked at each other, the darkness and the girl, and neither moved. Then from the corridor came the sound of a slipper, and the door opened.

"What are you doing out of bed?"

Her grandmother was on the threshold, in her flowery dressing gown, with her hair loose. The girl did not know what to say. Then she answered, in the smallest voice she had.

"I was checking if it was there."

"Who?"

"The babàu."

Her grandmother was silent for a moment. On the threshold, with the light behind her, she had a face the girl could not see well.

"And was it?" she asked.

"I don't know. It hasn't got a face."

Her grandmother came in. She sat on the edge of the bed, which creaked, and for a while said nothing. Outside the dog barked twice more.

"Do you know what my grandmother used to tell me?" she said. "That everybody knows the babàu, and nobody has ever seen it. It has always lived where it is dark. And darkness, when someone arrives with a light, never stays long."

"Then it doesn't exist."

"I did not say that."

The girl looked at her. For the first time, in the shadow, it seemed to her that her grandmother was smiling.

"I only said that it is never where a light is on. Come on, back to bed."

The girl climbed back under the covers. Her grandmother did not close the door. She left it wide open, and the yellow strip on the floor became as wide as a rug. Then she stopped for a moment in front of the wardrobe and shut the half-open door properly, with a little knock, as you do with an animal that must not escape.

"Good night."

"Nana?"

"What is it?"

"If it comes, I will tell it too. That it has to show itself."

Her grandmother laughed softly, and went out.

The girl was left alone. The pipe gurgled, the ceiling creaked, the courtyard dog barked one last time. Under the bed the black place was still there, patient, faceless, waiting.

But now, she knew. She slept with one hand outside the covers, as if to hold the door open. And in the morning, when she looked under the bed in the sunlight, she found a box of buttons, two odd socks and a little red ball that she thought she had lost for ever.

On the other side of the courtyard, at a window still lit, a mother's voice was already saying the usual phrase.