This is an original English translation of the short story “Rabbia” first published in Italian in Rivista Cattedrale magazine in 2025.

April 3

The last heron left the island yesterday. The Mandarin ducks and Canada geese have migrated. I haven’t seen a swan in weeks and the white peeking out of the rushes is that of the coots with their pointed beak and the frontal shields.

The lake’s water has pulled back by five or six meters more, revealing a depth of stones and trash, rusted bottle caps, hooks, some shred of nets. The dense light that wriggles on the unveiled ground, between the muddy cells and the cracks, brings back to my mind the carp my dad fished when I was a child. I got frightened by their enormous mouths opened by a silent prayer, and by their inexpressive eyes, the large round sclera, the pupil the size of a dot.

«Do they feel pain?» I asked my dad, always with the same low voice, my eyes flinching from the snapping fins, from the noise made by the bodies banging against the bucket’s walls.

Not knowing how to lie, he answered: «Yes, but it doesn’t last long».

April 5

«How much time do we have?» asked Luisa this morning, while in bed.

Until a few years ago, she used to sleep on her back, a pillow under her swollen feet and two under her head; now I always find her curled up, her knees pressed against her chest, her body lying on its side. From the bed sheets only her white hair emerges: I need to lift them to see her and let her see me.

«Maybe a couple of months, three at the latest», I replied, making an approximate calculation of the speed at which water had evaporated in the past few weeks.

«Then, we must finish the book as soon as possible».

I stared at the papers piled up on the desk, documents stained with watery coffee and slow hours, before going back to my mental calculations, in the hope of having lost some numbers, some precious days.

«We promised her», Luisa added.

She doesn’t say it out loud, but she fears I’ll stop, that I will give up. And there are times I believe I should, that everything would be easier.

The rest of the day we spent in silence to fight hunger, exhaustion and countless blank pages.

April 10

«Can you hear them? The dogs… are they gone?»

Luisa woke me up at four in the morning, shaking me. I don’t remember what I was dreaming, but it was a nice dream, one of those that leave you feeling pleasantly light. I turned on the lamp on the night table and I listened.

The wind beat the mulberry’s branches, making their ends beat against the glass of the window. A squeaking sound added itself to its voice. It changed its intensity depending on where I turned my ear. Perhaps it was the gate which opens out, the weathercock whirling. It took a few seconds to hear beyond the noise.

«Yes, it seems they’re gone».

From the dry land to the old village a ghostly noise rose. It was as if the wind blew only over our small island; around us the world was silent, empty, and still. In the houses, dark chasms abandoned where not a moonbeam could enter, the half-open doors no longer banged and creaked.

«What if…»

I didn’t let her continue with the sentence.

«Let’s sleep a little longer, shall we?»

We hugged under the bed sheet.

April 17

The dogs came back tonight and they woke us up with the most high-pitched howl. They guard the border, the land from which the lake separates us. Ten watch the East shore, twenty are gathered on the wester one, only two keep an eye on the woods, up north, while a small group of five or six keep control over the South area, where once was the harbour.

The binoculars I used to watch the birds allow me to see them now. This is how I recognise and follow them.

They all drool and move their bodies spasmodically, whipping the air with their tails, scratching the soil with heavy paws, restless like they burn inside an invisible flame. Even when still, their bodies are torn by sudden convulsions.

A few minutes ago I saw two of them on the East shore fighting, while one of those around the woods moved closer to the water, as if he could not distinguish the waves from the furrows in the soil. As soon as he realised, he jumped back.

«Rabies?»

Luisa pronounced that word first. I had turned it around inside my mouth several times, before swallowing it and finding my throat scratched by the horror.

«Rabies», she affirmed later. «They’re afraid of the water».

This is what saved us, so far. But the water is retreating fast and they know it.

April 23

Luisa opened the last jar of the apple gelatine she prepared last year. We allowed ourselves to eat a couple of spoons. The gelatine was so sweet it made my nose wrinkle.

«Don’t you like it?»

«Yes, it is delicious».

I didn’t lie. We smiled to each other, the lips sticky as if we were children. I then went back to my drafts, and Luisa to her drawings.

«We promised her», she kept repeating. «We can’t stop now».

Our daughter, Cecilia, was seven years old when we went on holiday to the lake for the first time, she was twelve when we bought this house, and fifteen when Luisa began to illustrate children’s books.

«Why don’t you write a story for mum?»

I still remember her sparkling eyes the morning she came to me with that question. Her pale adolescent cheeks were bloated by the songs she whistled for hours, after she had heard them on the radio.

«What kind of story?»

«One that talks of birds, the lake birds».

«Which one is your favourite?»

«The coot».

«A name?»

«Oscar».

And here it is, beside me, Oscar. He scurries on the edge of the page.

Luisa was working on him today. She worked on his feathers, on the shadows and the lights that notched them, on the expressions he makes when closing his eyes, on those accompanying his words.

Cecilia would have loved his curiosity and melancholy, the way he walks, a bit off balance, and the habit of putting one foot on top of the other when he moves his beak towards the one of Aurora, his companion.

His bird friends are Corrado (the grebe) and Libero (the kingfisher). Together with Corrado, Oscar swims towards the end of the lake. The coot believes in the spirits that fall off the willow’s branches when the wind blows, in those that open the eyes on the flowers and laugh on the water’s foam. Libero has faith in the gods hidden among the stars.

«Turn to them», is the kingfisher’s encouragement.

Oscar has a wish that the spirits have not granted yet: he wants to be a dad and for Aurora to become a mum. They have lost twenty-six of the laid eggs.

«So, have you written the prayer?» Luisa asked when we sat at the table.

The scene where Oscar decides to pray to the gods is one of the most important in the book.

«Yes, but I don’t really like it».

«Will you read it to me?»

Dear gods and goddesses, I know I have never prayed to you, and I know that others, those who pray every night, come before me, still I want to ask for your help: can you allow me and Aurora to become parents? We have this love inside that keeps growing and growing and makes us heavy, it hurts us. Aurora fears she could die of it. And I fear I could not survive her.

Luisa nodded. Instead of giving me her advice, she spooned the rest of the polenta from her dish into mine.

April 25

«More dogs?»

«Yes», I answered.

They walked towards the harbour, shapes swaying in the dusty white streets.

«Dogs only?»

I saw some crawling out from the houses like ghosts.

For a moment, I thought to see our friends in those shadows. We had many dear ones on the land: Luigi, the architect who restored our house, Father Patrizio, the church’s priest, Felicia, the nurse who helped with Cecilia’s injections, they all lived there, a few meters from the harbour.

«Dogs».

April 29

Luisa had a fever.

I have never held her hand for so long, never counted the heartbeats with fear of hearing them stop.

I spent every night at her bedside, counting. The dogs barked and I counted. I started from one and I went up to two thousand, three thousand, before stumbling into sleep. I was terrified by the idea of closing my eyes, of leaving just the island and the water, or the little which is left, to protect her. I had to be awake so that she could stay alive.

Three days went on like this, with me forcing her to drink and eat, then, yesterday morning, Luisa opened her eyes.

«I had a long dream», she said. «Oscar became father of five chicks».

She saw the eggs opening in front of the mother and father coot. It seemed as I was far away. I arrived just in time to look at the little ones, not little anymore, taking flight.

May 1

There are things a prisoner should never do, among them one is discussing about food, moving the tongue towards every corner of the mouth in search of its flavour, telling, on paper or verbally, the situation and the moment in which they enjoyed it. Detail after detail, they will start feeling an uncontrollable craving, a craving that turns into agony the bigger is the space allowed to it.

I experienced it yesterday, when Luisa showed me the drawings for the banquet scene, one of the sweetest of the book. It is there, after the set table of old Ms Irma, that Oscar and Aurora meet each other for the first time. I have written the chapter without mentioning anything about food. Luisa did the opposite: Oscar and Aurora are in the background and in the foreground stand out a beignet pyramid, a basket full of fruits, apple biscuits and olive focaccia.

I felt then, stronger than ever, the hunger, the pain. Craving for chocolate puddings, for figs, dried under the sun and filled with crunchy almonds. Craving for those flavours trapped in the child, in the man, in the father I was. There are food I have stopped eating since Cecilia stopped eating them, others since the dogs took mankind’s place.

May 3

I don’t know how he died, maybe due to a wound (I heard dogs fighting yesterday night). He must have moved closer to the water out of desperation or because dazed.

It was Luisa who saw him first.

«I’ll go to the well, you stay inside», I told her, but she wished I’d continue writing.

Blinded by the sun, she mistook it for one of the dark spots that floated across her vision. Then the spot took the shape of a carcass.

I heard the noise of the bucket falling on the ground, and I ran out.

Luisa shivered, sweaty, stiffened by the anxiety, while I kept repeating: «He is dead!»

I had just seen him. He was at the centre of the lake. There was no flow that would move his body forward or backward.

«Let’s go back inside», Luisa suggested, with the dread still in her eyes.

«He can’t do us any harm, not anymore», I reiterated, holding her face between my palms.

Once home, she stopped looking at the lake; me, on the contrary, I waited to see the dog’s snout, paws and tail sinking together with their threat.

May 6

«I am ugly, aren’t I?»

Cecilia could see our faces taut by a frightful truth: that her life would have stopped before ours. She was losing weight, getting paler, and we smiled at her too often, with an excessive tenderness.

«You are not», I answered to her. And I caressed her hands.

The mulberry was heavy with fruits, the air was warm and the wind light. Cecilia was strolling on the shore, Luisa slept on a deck chair, and I looked at both while I was digging a hole. I had promised myself to plant an apricot tree and an almond tree so that, together with the mulberry, one day they could enclose the house within a wall of green.

I didn’t notice that Cecilia had a pocket mirror in her hand. She opened it slowly, peeking at its inside, then she framed herself in it. From the forehead her eyes went down to the hollowed cheeks, to the nose, to the mole set at the top of cupid’s bow, and in the end on her neck and its scar.

«What is it?» I asked, moving closer to her.

No answer.

The pocket mirror had fallen into the water.

It re-emerged today from the newly exposed bottom of the lake. In grasping it, I decided not to look inside it.

May 8

The eggs have been laid, with the blessing from the gods among the stars. Five eggs rest at the heart of a beautiful nest. Luisa drew branch after branch, leaf after leaf, hunched over under the light of the lamp. I saw her fall asleep on the desk yesterday, her hand leaning on the papers and her forehead on her arm.

«You must help me», I said, waking her up.

Her swollen eyelids shook a bit before lifting.

«To do what?»

«To choose the chicks’ names».

«Have you tried with kings’ names?» she suggested.

I had, but I could not find five that satisfied me.

«Poets’ names? Artists’ names?»

We rattled off a few, but none worked.

«Menecuccio, Tittillo, Renzone, Luccio, Iacovo», proposed my wife.

«I never heard of them».

Luisa still remembers all the fairytales she told Cecilia. She quotes them often, she leafs through the books, she draws the landscapes they describe.

«No, what is the story about?»

«It tells the adventure of five boys, an ogre and a princess».

Although I did not like its ending, I said yes to the names.

May 11

The last birds left days ago, the water keeps pulling back and the dogs — there must be fifty, now, sixty? — draw closer. They sniff the ground, they dig, and fight for what is left of an old oar, for a rubber ring and a can.

A little while ago I saw one swallowing something, then his body started writhing under violent spasms.

«Die!» I shouted.

A moment later, seeing him walking with his head down and his mouth open, I asked forgiveness, not sure whether from him or myself.

May 23

Menecuccio, Tittillo, Renzone, Luccio, Iacovo are born.

In the sunset light that stretches out among the branches, Oscar sees a feather moving, then a foot, an eye that quivers, a wing. He stares at the future that opens its beak with hunger.

«Thanks», he says to the gods, to the stars, to Corrado and to Libero, to Aurora, to that boy who looks at the chicks in the nest from the shore and smiles. He is a nice kid, Oscar thinks, not one who would hurt his little ones. He approaches him, in fact, and thanks him too. Then he flies away, in search of food. This is his duty: feeding the babies, while Aurora hugs them on her warm breast.

June 12

It seems like God came down from the sky to drink from the lake bed.

In only one day, all the water evaporated entirely. The lake, exposed to the air, is a mass grave for fish. Like the pocket mirror, we have saved from the mud other things belonging to Cecilia: a hair clip, one old toy, the jade cat we bought at the stalls in the village.

Luisa goes out. She runs barefoot on the scorching rocks, on the sharp clods, to collect it.

«It is intact», she says, surprised as if she witnessed a miracle, and does not see the blood gushing from her feet.

June 13, morning

They come forward slowly without barking nor looking at each other, almost unaware of each other. Maybe they also wonder what happened to the water, maybe they can smell its trace, the stench that grips the air in a fist, that has stung our nostrils for weeks.

«No drool in their mouths», Luisa points.

I have written and said this word maybe too many times, and I fear repeating myself: hope is a very sharp weapon.

Maybe it is not rabies.

Maybe they are not the same dogs.

Maybe they don’t even see us.

June 13, evening

I saw them raging on the fish bodies, some growling at a shadow, at the glitter of a stone. Four have stopped, and one is turning in circles. The remaining have surrounded the island.

To our past and to our future, to our Cecilia and to all the children that will read this story.

I read the dedication I have written for the book, then Luisa and I sign the last page.

“It is all right”, Luisa’s eyes seem to tell me.

It is all right also for those things we left half done or never started, for those we finished but not how we wanted, for the missed hugs, for the phone calls never made when someone could have answered still, for the jelly which went mouldy before we could dip the spoon in it one last time.

Now that she joins me at the window, Luisa traces the outline of the mulberry with her index finger, for later copying it on the empty corners of the garden, next to the shed, beyond the well and the gazebo and the swing.

«It would have been beautiful like this», she whispers.

A large green wall…

The remaining light of the day is crouched on the horizon. Soon it will slip to the other side of the sky, the one we cannot see. And we will leave with the night.

apocalypse birds climate fiction drought ecological collapse grief island literary fiction survival translation