Limbo (55 page)

 

 

BELLAVISTA HOTEL, JANUARY 9

I tried moving to America. I contacted the institute that had asked me to come on board with them, but they replied that it would take time. I'd have to wait until I don't know what meeting, where the budget would be approved, and only then would they know the extent of available funds, and regardless I had to present my research project, and submit my findings to a scientific commission for evaluation. If I submitted the material before the end of the year, and they decided to fund my project, they would offer me a contract: I would be able to leave the following September. But it was hard to gather all the necessary paperwork and to write my research proposal. I couldn't concentrate, and besides, September seemed so far away. By then, I thought, the protective measures will have been lifted, we will have returned home, and we wouldn't want to leave again to go to America.

We spent nine months in a northern city similar to our own, a twin city of sorts—but it wasn't the same. It, too, had a cathedral with a bell tower, a piazza with porticos and cafés, a pedestrian center, bike paths, a hospital, hills. It even had mountains—although in that part of Italy the Mediterranean breeze melted the snow early and the peaks were under ten thousand feet. Few forests, no fir trees. Olive trees climbed up the precipices. We rented a villa that was vaguely reminiscent of our old place. But the people spoke with a different accent, I had few patients, we didn't know anyone, we didn't have any friends and didn't want to make new ones, we lived suspended, uprooted, like refugees awaiting asylum. We had to believe this was provisional in order to bear having been torn away like that, in order to imagine that we would return to our lives soon. To imagine the future, in other words.

We spent a lot of time alone in that unfamiliar house, surprised by strange noises, assaulted by unknown odors. One night, it was almost spring, I suggested again to Denise that we have another child. Marco was nearly seven by then, we had to get a move on. Maybe I already sensed that only my family would be able to protect me. Denise said that she would stop taking the pill as soon as she finished that month's supply. She wasn't stingy, but she was convinced that we Westerners have forgotten the art of frugality, and was determined not to waste anything. This was her way of showing respect for those who have nothing, even if we can't do anything for them. I often laughed at her obsession, but now it strikes me as noble. I have done away with everything that is superfluous, at times even with what is necessary.

I'll only tell you the bare minimum about the trial. Recalling those moments makes me uncontrollably angry. I think you can understand that. I testified behind opaque, bulletproof glass. As I sat in that uncomfortable chair repeating what I had already said so many times that by now it was like a monotonous lullaby and—for me—devoid of nearly all reality, I realized I no longer existed. All they could see of me on the other side of the glass was my silhouette. My face was erased. My voice distorted. I had become a shadow. It was only when my mouth went dry and I had to drink a glass of water that I understood what that voice had meant on the phone that night. I really was dead. I coughed, took a deep breath, as if preparing to dive under water. I said what I had to say, and then went outside, said hello to my man, the one taking care of me, and told him that as far as I was concerned, that was it. I didn't want to know anything more about any of it. He said he understood, but nevertheless he thanked me, this country needed people like me. I told him I didn't consider myself a role model. “I'm a terrible partner, an unscrupulous doctor, a cowardly father, you really don't know me.” He smiled. A few months later he called to tell me the verdict. That kid Marco had been sentenced to life in prison. I confess I didn't feel a thing, not even relief.

It was June. I remember because we were counting down the days until the end of the school year. We already had our tickets for Greece. We had decided to spend the entire summer in Imerovigli. Before, I never would have been able to stand being in one place for three whole months, no matter how beautiful. I never would have been able to stand being away from my work for so long, abandoning my patients, giving up my experiments and operations. A surgeon is like a pianist. He has to keep his hands in shape. He has to keep studying, learning, operating. But like I said, I was changing. I was no longer what I once was. I was like a snake after molting. I'd shed my old skin, but I hadn't yet grown a new one. I didn't know who I was anymore. I hadn't had an affair in months. I didn't go to the annual ophthalmology conference—neither the national one in Italy nor the international one in Paris. I hadn't even made a new video to add to my collection—no daring operations, no experimental research, no scientific publications.

I had become a provincial ophthalmologist. To build up a clientele in my new city, I worked on credit. My patients paid in installments, or not at all. Before, my patients had been city council members, notaries' wives, businessmen's daughters. My new patients were immigrants who had entered the country with veils on their heads, speaking not a word of Italian, who blushed when I told them to look me in the eyes; or they were chatty retirees with advanced-stage cataracts in both eyes; or they were gypsies I treated for free and who paid me back by playing the accordion under my window. I examined them because I didn't want to lose touch with my work, I wanted to stay in shape, even if it meant using decades-old instruments. By this point Imerovigli seemed like the only link to our previous life.

I hadn't earned much that year, and the money I'd been promised to cover my lost income never arrived. Denise never complained. We didn't have a babysitter anymore, so she would pick up Marco from school herself. On June 8, when she arrived at the gate, the porter told her that Marco had left with his uncle. Denise was very surprised, because my brother had never come to visit us; he was buried in red tape all the time, ever since he'd been given an important post at a local sanitation company, and had phoned us maybe three times since we'd moved. Maybe she didn't want to worry or maybe she was just lying to herself. The fact is that when Denise came back home, she wasn't all that upset. I was alone in the yard, raking leaves, and obviously neither my brother or Marco had come home. They had taken him away.

I barely remember a thing from those terrible twelve hours. Denise did nothing but cry, curled up next to the phone, pleading, practically begging it to ring. Every now and then she would glance at me with pure hatred, saying I had killed Marco. I understood how she felt: she blamed me and I deserved it. I was so devastated I couldn't even cry. We weren't alone, obviously the people who had been handling my case those past few months and the one I called my man arrived a few hours later. I can't tell you his name and I don't want to give him any old name. In a certain sense, he represented my fate, and fate is anonymous, impersonal, it simply unfolds. Besides, I don't know anything about him. In that moment, it was like he didn't exist. My sense of guilt tore at my soul. I couldn't think about anything other than my son's smile when we played soccer together in the yard or worked on a jigsaw puzzle together on the living room table. An extraordinary child. And they had stolen him from me. I couldn't imagine a more inhuman punishment.

I rambled. I remember saying to my man that I was recanting, to let them know immediately. I wanted to take it all back. It's too late, Denise screamed, it's too late. I couldn't bring myself even to look at her. I remember thinking that I'd kill myself if Marco were found dead in some ditch. A man who didn't know how to protect his own child doesn't deserve to live.

Marco called from the neighborhood café at about one in the morning. He's always been an intelligent, mature child, and he had memorized my and Denise's cell phone numbers. But he called me. It meant the world to me. Denise never forgave me for that. He was okay. They hadn't touched a single hair on his head. Later, he had to tell the police everything. He did so without hesitating, serious, precise, choosing the right words. A nice, fat man had picked him up from school, saying he was one of Papà's climbing buddies. Marco had believed him, even though it seemed a little strange because he didn't have the physique of a mountain climber. But since he would have gone anywhere with a friend of Papà's, and the fat man said he had to take him to his papà, he got in the car. There were two other men in the backseat, and they made him sit between them. They got on the highway and then got off, they took him to an empty house in the countryside, to wait for Papà, they said. The house was run-down and abandoned and there wasn't anything to do and he got really bored and then at a certain point he fell asleep. Finally they got back in the car, took the highway again, and then they left him at the café, with Mrs. Lucia.

When I saw him, that skinny little blond boy sitting on a stool at the counter, I melted like a popsicle. “Why are you crying, Papà,” he said with surprise, “everything's okay.”

But it wasn't okay at all. Our trip to Greece was canceled. We left that night. We spent two weeks in an empty extended-stay hotel in a muggy plain, a hellish, mosquito-infested landscape. All we brought with us was some underwear and a change of clothes, they'd send the rest later. We couldn't tell anyone back home, or call our families to say where we were. It was a delicate moment, or so they told us. Delicate! I made furious phone calls. I insisted I wanted to take it all back. I was tired, our life was slipping through my fingers, and I had to grab it while there was still time. And I couldn't let anything happen to Marco. No principle, no matter how noble, could compete with him. “I take it all back, I'm out,” I kept saying.

My man kindly explained that it wasn't a good idea. If I pulled out, I would lose my right to get into the special witness protection program, whereas now I could submit my request, and there was a good chance it would be accepted. And even if I pulled out now I wouldn't be safe. Those people never forget, and sooner or later they would find me. “But this way we will continue to protect you. Legal witnesses have certain rights, and they must be defended. It's a pact. You do your best to obey the rules, and we'll do our best to hold up our end. All you have to do is sign the papers and behave accordingly. If, on the other hand, you choose to turn your back on all this and something happens to you, who will take care of your son?” It wasn't a threat, of course, just the truth. But in practice nothing changed. I was forced to keep running on this crazy treadmill, like a hamster.

We were on edge in that empty hotel. We argued over the smallest things. The mosquitoes, the heat, the isolation. We couldn't do anything, we couldn't even go outside. Marco and I played soccer in the half-empty rooms. I'd signed him up for soccer in our second city, he was in the youth league and really liked it. He'd even made some new friends already; it's easier for kids. And here I was, taking everything away from him again. We're like gypsies, Denise would say every now and then. There are happy gypsies, too, I would say, reminding her of an old song. After all, I told myself, I have the two of them. What else do I need, really? The rest is superfluous.

In June I got some good news. We would be moving to Abruzzo, a city by the sea, population twenty thousand or slightly more. We would be given a new house, and once the summer was over, Marco would be enrolled in a new school, a private Catholic school with a good reputation. There was only one drawback. For the time being, it would be best if I left off my work as an ophthalmologist. Too obvious. I could work in the ER. Sure, they realized that for someone at my level it was a painful step backwards. But for the moment they couldn't offer me anything better suited. There had been budget cuts, and I still hadn't gotten into the special witness protection program. Some people at the ministry thought that the protective measures for me had become excessive. Others said that in the meantime some
pentiti
had come forward, my deposition wasn't unique or essential, and therefore I didn't have a right to the program's benefits. The pettiness, the bickering, and the stinginess: it's not even worth talking about. I think you understand what it means to find yourself on the front line and know that there's no artillery to back you up, no one's covering you, your life is worthless, and they'll weep for you only when you're dead.

But my man was surprised by my reaction. “I'm really happy,” I said. “It's a great opportunity for me. It'll be like being born again. I'll be twenty-four years old again, a recent graduate without a specialty, young and idealistic, with his young family. A chance to start everything all over.” “Well then, I'm happy for you, Doctor,” he said. “Good luck.”

 

 

BELLAVISTA HOTEL, JANUARY 10

Denise left on January 1. I was on call at the hospital, doing a crossword puzzle to kill time. Over the past few months I'd become a master at puzzles, rebuses, sudoku. Before, I'd always thought that these kinds of games were just for old ladies. Things my grandmother, my elderly aunts, my mother did. But I discovered that filling in those little boxes helped me fill in the void I felt around and inside me. I feel at peace every time I finish a crossword puzzle: it's like putting everything back in its place. Crosswords are an oasis of order, a bulwark against chaos. It's comforting to know that a number corresponds to only one letter, that only one word fits a definition, that for every question there's only one answer. Crosswords are the antithesis of the world. I didn't see a single patient that day. The phone never rang, and the hours slowly drained away, as monotonous as the rain that fell silently from the timid, leaden sky.

We lived along the waterfront, on a street that makes me think of Ladispoli. Which is why I loved your city right away, even before meeting you. The smell is the same, even the buildings are similar. Maybe I'm condemned to live in twin cities. I'm pursued by repetition. When I parked my car not far from our building, I noticed right away that the lights were out in our third-floor apartment. Strange, because it was dinnertime, we always ate at eight thirty. We had become set in our ways. So I knew. I didn't have the strength to climb those two flights of stairs and walk into an empty house. I collapsed onto a bench and stayed there, whipped by the frosty easterly wind, splattered by the rain, like an outcast, the last soul left on earth.