His father set down the glass and stroked his beard stubble.
“The explosion did not just knock him unconscious, he also lost his memory,” he said. “And as fate would have it he was picked up by some fishermen from Tunisia. They took him back to their village at Sfax, more than a day’s journey away, where he was cared for. While Italy was in shock and sorrow at the loss of the young men who were serving the fatherland, and speculations about sabotage were running high, Luigi was living isolated and with amnesia in a village in Tunisia. With compound fractures in his hip and legs and internal bleeding, it took many months before he came to his senses. And even longer before his memory completely returned. But then it was too late,” his father said.
“Too late? What do you mean?”
His father sighed and looked up at the portrait of Milo’s mother on the wall. Maria looked lovingly down on them both.
“Luigi was Maria’s fiancé,” said his father.
The information struck Milo with force.
“Fiancé?”
His father nodded.
“But…”
Milo’s brain was working under pressure. He scanned his memories. The scenes. The talks. The gatherings. The trips to Rome. The visits in Uncle Luigi’s apartment. His mother’s good-night kiss in bed. The door ajar out to the hallway. The strip of light that kept the darkness away. Sounds from the living room. The voices of his mother and Luigi. The giggles. The laughter. The sobbing. The subdued weeping.
And Milo suddenly knew that his father spoke the truth.
Maria Cavalli and Luigi Benvolesenza had loved each other.
“When did you find this out?” he asked his father.
“As soon as Luigi came back.”
Endre Thorkildsen had just brought Maria back with him to Norway, where everyday life was filled with furnishing a new apartment, a new job, and waiting for the firstborn. The phone call from Rome turned everything upside down. After months as a convalescent, one day Luigi got his memory back. He made his way to the capital city of Tunis and called his father. And when he arrived in Rome a few days later, he was met by hundreds of journalists and relatives of his dead military comrades. He was taken straight to the military hospital for observation and debriefing, and from there he called his fiancée, whom he had been told had gotten married to a Norwegian.
“It wasn’t easy for any of us,” said his father.
“What happened?”
“We jumped on the first flight, and drove straight to the hospital.”
He swallowed heavily and breathed jaggedly before he continued.
“And there I was standing and watching Maria be reunited with the one she loved, who she thought she had lost forever.”
“But didn’t she love you?”
“Well, yes. In a way she did. She liked me. She liked me a lot. There’s no doubt about that. It was love. But she truly loved Luigi, and perhaps even stronger after he had virtually risen from the dead.”
The same evening she started talking about divorce, but before they had even discussed it, Milo’s grandfather put his foot down.
Antonio Cavalli was strong in his Catholic faith.
“A Cavalli does not get a divorce! Not even for love,” he’d said in a raised voice.
Milo thought about his grandfather and Brenda in the U.S. What was it his grandfather had written to her? “We made a choice.”
“Did she really want to divorce you?” he asked his father, who shrugged his shoulders.
“She wanted to be with Luigi.”
“What about me? Did she ever talk about having an abortion?”
His heart rate suddenly doubled.
His father looked him in the eyes.
“Never! There was never a word about that. The fact is that you made it possible for her to stay.”
“I held her back,” said Milo.
“She wanted to be with you. And she loved you more than anyone else on this earth. You know that.”
Milo nodded.
“But how—”
“Antonio, your grandfather, was a pragmatic SOB. I’ve realized that even more after what you said about New York,” Endre Thorkildsen interrupted his son.
Because even if divorce was ruled out, infidelity was not forbidden. And so Maria’s life had become like that. Loved by two men. Married to Endre in Oslo. With a relationship with Luigi in Rome.
“She saw him as often as it could be arranged. We found a kind of balance in that. In vacations. Scattered weekends. You were along on most of the trips. Didn’t you notice anything, Emil?”
He shook his head.
“Good. I always wondered about that. If you knew, and … if you lost respect for me because of it,” his father said quietly.
Milo shook his head again as he said, “Of course not, Dad. I was more closely connected to Mama because we were always together. You worked, and—”
“I had to live my life, Emil. In order to manage it at all. I couldn’t let my life revolve only around her. Them. Wonder when they were going to meet. Or what she felt,” he said with a frankness Milo had never heard from him before.
“But how did you manage to accept that she had another?”
His father smiled and looked up at her portrait.
“Because she was incredible. And because I loved her. She was … What was it she always told you to be?”
“Pieno di amore.”
“Exactly. Full of love. She was full of love, and it was as if the whole situation multiplied her love. And I got to be part of that. If I had denied her that, I would have lost her,” his father said.
For that reason he stopped interrogating her about Luigi and simply accepted that he had to share her with him. Which made her even more grateful and fond of him.
“I accepted, and she made it clear that I was also free to meet others.”
“So you got yourself a mistress.”
His father shook his head.
“No, I worked. Long days. Thought about other things. Tried to control my feelings. The jealousy.”
He paused while he scratched the root of his nose.
“And then I thought that finally she would get tired of him. That she would get it out of her system, so to speak.”
“But that didn’t happen?”
“She never stopped loving him. And then I met Hanne.”
“Hanne?”
“The mother of Sunniva.”
And Maria Cavalli reacted with relief. As if it reestablished a balance in the relationship between her and her husband. And when she found out about the pregnancy, she had been crystal clear that he should take care of them financially. And after the birth Maria often bought little presents he could give to Sunniva.
Milo emptied the rest of his drink and shook his head in disbelief.
“This is completely unbelievable, damn it. What a bunch of actors you’ve been! What a fucking chaos. This is—”
“Not completely ordinary, no. I understand your reaction, but we aren’t the first who’ve been unfaithful. And we had good times too. We loved each other. Respected each other.”
Milo again thought about his grandfather and the apartment in New York that no one had known about. He thought about Theresa in Italy. And about Kathrin in London.
His father tried to put on a smile before he continued his story.
“We were doing fine for a long time, but then Luigi got sick. Of course you remember that.”
“It was terrible. The way he withered up.”
Luigi had gone from being a straight-backed, worldly man of about ninety kilograms to shrink down to half of that, barely a shadow of himself.
“Cancer is a terrible thing,” his father said.
There was silence between them. Milo knew that his father was making an effort to get out the next words.
“Seeing Luigi die that way … seeing the one you love … it crushed her. Took away every spark of life. She was never the same again.”
Tears began to run
quietly down his cheeks, and he made no attempt to wipe them away.
“I tried everything. The psychologist she was already going to. Other psychologists. Medication. Hospitalization. Nothing helped. It was as if she had decided, and I was unable to stop it … I couldn’t stop it … damn it, I couldn’t stop it!”
He put his head in his hands while the tears ran freely. Milo’s stomach knotted up. Sorrow, which had been as if in hibernation somewhere in his abdominal region, began to be felt. It was the bad tickling he had talked about with Sunniva. The itching.
“It wasn’t your fault, Dad. You couldn’t have done anything else. She was sick. She had an illness,” he said, noticing that for the first time he believed that completely.
And suddenly he also felt relief.
There were a couple of sobs from his father.
“What was my love weighed against the other one’s death?” he said quietly, pausing to breathe. “The one she loved from beginning to end.”
They sat in silence for several minutes. At last his father stood up, wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand and took out a small box.
“If you want, you can have this.”
“What is it?” asked Milo.
“It’s some letters that Luigi wrote to Maria. And a report from the psychologist.”
“What is it about our family and boxes full of letters and postcards?” Milo muttered.
He had regained control now, even if his eyes were red.
His father stood up and cleared his throat.
“Sunniva is coming later. We thought about having dinner together. Will you stay, Emil?”
“Gladly, Dad.”
42
Rome, February 4, 1978
My dearest Maria,
I am gradually starting to return to everyday life, after a few terrible months. The thought of having lost you was too heavy for me to believe I could bear it. Now the thought that I will still get to see you is what keeps me going. You are the dearest I have ever had—and ever will have.
I have finally talked things over with Father, and he has accepted my desire to no longer pursue a military career. That means I will follow the treatment through the end of May, and continue my input to the investigation report, but as of June I’m a free man! I can’t say how relieved I am about this. Right now I am contacting various universities thinking about the fall semester. They are all extremely accommodating, and have made it clear that I am welcome as a student regardless of whether all deadlines are long since past. A person should get something in return for being Italy’s only war hero in peacetime! So the way it looks now, I will start literature and philosophy studies in the fall.
But most of the time I think about the two of us. About what we had, and what we could have had. My anger is gone now, and I am completely convinced that we should not defy God’s plan. But I am just as convinced that I can’t manage a life completely without you. If I can get a bit of you at the very least, a taste of you, I will accept that. I know that it is going to hurt me to think that you are with another, but I am increasingly grateful to have been given the gift of life once again. And we will figure things out.
The last few days I have even thought that it is safer for you in Norway. Even if it must be terribly cold there in the north! I don’t know if it’s the medication or reality, but I don’t always feel safe. It’s as if someone is following me. It may of course be that the regiment has extra protection for me that I don’t know about, but today I even heard voices on the phone for a few seconds. As if I was being wiretapped (don’t say this to anyone! If they find out that I hear voices, I will surely be locked up in a psychiatric hospital!!!).
I didn’t get to talk with Endre alone when you were here. But he seemed like a good man. The way he tackled an impossible situation testifies to a strong person. I pray to God that he is also good to you.
In a short time you will be a mother, and I weep with joy that we will have an opportunity to celebrate a new life! I am boundlessly happy to see the little one—and of course you. When you come to Italy next time, I will be a free man, and we can be together here in Rome.
I am as always filled with love for you.
Your Luigi
Rome, September 23, 1981
My dearest Maria,
You and little Milo (what a cutie!) have just left, and I finally have peace to sit down and write these lines.
After I drove you to the airport—oh, how I hate saying goodbye at airports—I just drove around aimlessly. I had a Prosecco at Bar d’Oro, but without you it had no flavor.
Here at home I go from room to room and try to inhale your aroma, which so far still remains. And I lay on the bed and reexperienced the night. I know I must be content with being able to see you at all, the way the situation is, but the more I get from you, the stronger I want you! I feel whole with you.
Once again I want to ask for forgiveness for my aggressive reaction last evening. But hearing you say that I should see others, be with others, when all I want is to be with you, hurts me so much. I will live with and accept that you are married to another, but then you must accept that I don’t go out and get married, but instead live for the times we can see each other.
Write to me soon, my love.
I am as always filled with love for you.
Your Luigi
Rome, February 20, 1994
My dearest Maria,
I’ve been watching TV from the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, and it struck me that I’ve never asked if you ski now? In that case it’s a sight I would really like to have seen. I am convinced that you would look spectacular in one of those skiing outfits!
I look forward to Easter, when you and Milo are coming here. To be sure, I’m a little worried that now he has gotten so big that we have to be very careful, because I don’t know how I will manage keeping the necessary distance to you so as not to arouse his suspicions. I could not live with disturbing his stable upbringing with you and Endre. But hopefully it will all go well, and we’ll have some nice weeks together. Besides we have the days in Sardinia, when he’ll be with nonno and nonna. I’ve already booked our room at the same hotel as last time.
Oh God, what I wouldn’t give to hear your voice now! Or even better, feel your skin, your lips, your breasts, the warmth from you.
Write soon!
I am as always filled with love for you.
Your Luigi
From: Benvolesenza, Luigi
Date: March 3, 2004
Subject:
To: Cavalli, Maria
I was almost unable to hang up when we talked a little while ago.
It was terrible to have to call you with the news, but I couldn’t do it in a letter. I had to tell you. Forgive me for having ruined your day.
I will tell you when I know anything more.
But I don’t like the darkness in your voice.
More than ever I need your love.
Yours forever,
Luigi
From: Benvolesenza, Luigi
Date: September 28, 2005
Subject:
To: Cavalli, Maria
My very dearest,
This is only getting more and more difficult with every day.
The doctors don’t give me much time, and I have started to reconcile myself with the thought.
I can’t be anything but grateful for the life I have lived. I have cheated death and experienced a great love. What more can you ask for?
It’s strange how the brain and subconscious work. The last few nights I have had a recurring nightmare about the shipwreck in 1977. I hear my comrades calling, and I dream that the waves are pulling me farther and farther away from you, and that I no longer have strength to do anything about it. I always wake up soaked with sweat—confused in my bed.
But the thing is that I never heard my comrades calling, and I don’t remember anything from my time in the water. But it’s as if my subconscious is asking me to remember.
I’v
e tried not to think too much about what happened, but find myself thinking about it now. About things I think are strange. Such as that the radio telegrapher was not at his post. That Captain Marino, who was never concerned about regulations, came to the bridge wearing the correct life vest. That dinner was postponed for 45 minutes.
But I shouldn’t bother you with my mental acrobatics. What means something, and which has always been most important, is that we got an opportunity to love each other after all. Even if it wasn’t the way we thought when I proposed to you in Bologna. But maybe then we would have taken everything for granted? For doesn’t victory taste sweeter when you have to work for it? Doesn’t food taste better when you’ve worked properly with the raw materials? So isn’t love better, if you have to struggle for it?
I look forward to your next visit, even if I fear it will be tough. You must be prepared that my body is in the process of being marked by the disease.
Full of love for you,
Your Luigi
From: Benvolesenza, Luigi
Date: April 3, 2006
Subject:
To: Cavalli, Maria
See you again my very dearest Maria.
Forgive me for my weaknesses.
Remember me as who I was.
I have always loved you.
Your Luigi
MONDAY
43
Milo landed at Newark for the second time in just over a week, and less than an hour later he was sitting in a taxi.
He had one matter to finish up before he was ready to reconcile himself with the family history.
The windshield wiper struggled to keep the rain away, and the autumn leaves stuck to the asphalt.
Benedetti was already on the scene at the police station along with a detective Giordano, whom they were told simply to call Mike. He was just as heavy-set and glib as the TV parody of an American police detective dictates.
“Mailo Caveli? Huh? Where you from?”
“Norway and Italy.”
“Cool. Ready to go get a bad guy?”
Milo smiled.
“I’m ready.”
* * *
They drove in Mike’s unmarked car, with two uniformed officers following them in a police car. The drive took less than fifteen minutes, and just before two thirty they parked in front of the Park View Retirement Home.
The Oslo Conspiracy Page 28