Alex made an enormous effort to delve into his memories in search of some useful nugget with which to reply to that question, but he came up with nothing. In the meantime, Jamil had plunged his head back into the cabinet and was muttering phrases like ‘But it was right here, it has to be here somewhere …’
‘Listen … I’m … I’m afraid I’ve lost my memory. Could you tell me where the hell I am and what’s going on?’
‘This fucking crisis,’ Jamil muttered under his breath. ‘I don’t give a damn about your memory. All I want is to keep my arse in one piece. They’re killing everyone: someone told me that the Pope has been assassinated, and now they’re about to start killing all the Italians.’
‘Why on earth would they want to kill Italians?’
‘Italians! Neutrals, that’s what they call people like you and me. But why am I wasting my time talking to you? Go on, go get yourself killed — after all, it’s only a matter of time.’ He went back to rummaging through the cabinet. ‘There it is. I found it! I knew it would be here.’
Alex was speechless, leaning against the counter as Jamil pulled out a hand grenade and set it down next to the monitor of the damaged computer.
‘Why does everyone speak German?’
‘Why, what language should they be speaking instead? We’re in Milan, man, don’t you know?’
‘And in Milan people speak German?’
‘German and Italian. For more than sixty years now.’
Jamil shook his head and stood up, glancing out the kiosk window as the leader of the rioters rejoined his comrades. They seemed ready to attack.
Alex looked around, but there wasn’t even a toilet to hide in. There was no way out, and nothing Jamil was saying made the slightest bit of sense. Or perhaps a better way of putting it was that it made sense only if, in that parallel dimension of the Multiverse, World War II had ended very differently. Jamil sniggered and winked at him, before grabbing the hand grenade and walking out of the kiosk.
Alex watched him through the window, praying that he wasn’t about to do what it looked like he was about to do.
‘Take this, you filthy sons of bitches!’ Jamil shouted at the top of his lungs as he yanked the pin and the handle flew off. Then he hurled the grenade at the furious crowd.
Alex was petrified.
The instant the grenade exploded, and the screams of pain and fury issued from the rioters in a deafening chorus, he rushed out the kiosk door, turning right immediately, chasing after the proud figure of Jamil, who was enjoying the show. He took off at a dead run, but he hadn’t gone unnoticed, despite the blanket of dense smoke that followed the explosion.
Several members of the mob saw him and came after him. Alex leaped over a row of hedges as if it were an obstacle in a track-and-field event, and then broke into a frenzied run. He turned around only when he heard a burst of machine-gun fire, and saw Jamil’s body tumbling to the ground far behind him.
He ran as hard as he could. Hot on his trail were at least six of the rebels. They were bigger and older than him and perhaps not as fast. Still, they were armed. Pistol shots rang through the air as a voice shouted out: ‘Wir werden dich toten, italiano!’ It sounded like a threatening phrase.
No more than a few seconds passed. The bullet that caught him right in the thigh yanked a piercing scream of pain out of his guts. He felt the projectile sear his flesh like an incandescent ember burrowing its way into the bundles of nerves.
The group of people who’d been chasing him were on top of him as he lay there writhing on the ground, his bloodied hands pressing down desperately on the wound.
‘Bastards! Leave me alone, I didn’t do anything to you!’ he screamed through his tears in pure terror.
Six hooded men stared at him in an interminable moment of silence. Then one of them leaned over and muttered to the man next to him, bending his hood to the left and whispering something incomprehensible.
Then he extracted a long knife from a hilt tied to his waist.
The blade that sank into Alex’s chest did so slowly. It plunged into his flesh, stretched out on the floor, as he felt his eyes bulging and his breath strangling in his throat, while the world turned flat and grey. The pain in his leg vanished entirely. In a few seconds all his senses were wrapped in a dark, chilly embrace.
Jenny’s face hovered before him like a vision that covered the sky. The blood gushed from his chest and spread out into a puddle on the asphalt as his six attackers moved away. The sound of a bomb going off, muffled and dull, was the last thing that Alex was able to hear. The glint of sunlight reflecting off the ocean waves was the last image that accompanied him into darkness.
Then nothing.
A door behind Jenny flew open, making her jump.
‘Hey you, didn’t you hear the warning?’ asked a man who looked about sixty, still wearing an apron. He had to be the owner of the bar.
‘Yes … sir. I’m going home.’
‘Then get out of my front window. I have to close up. We all need to get home.’
Jenny walked away without another word. She started to run, with no idea where to go or how to get back in contact with Alex.
She tried to concentrate, but she could no longer sense her own thoughts.
She cut through a couple of deserted alleys that wound through the heart of the quarter. The major roads would no doubt be more heavily patrolled by the soldiers, and she was likely to get into serious trouble if they found her wandering around with no place to go. She looked around as she walked. From time to time she saw people running up to the entrance of an apartment block and vanishing inside. Here and there, owners were shuttering their shops. On the façades of the apartment buildings, the windows were all closed, the wooden blinds all lowered.
As she passed by the window of a shop filled with electrical appliances, she caught a glimpse of a flat-screen television with a sign on it: Full HD — Super Discount. It was turned on and a news show was broadcasting. The sound was off, but the banner reading Special Edition and the footage of a tank grinding over rubble were enough to tell Jenny that something very serious was happening.
She started running, still wondering what had happened to Alex. Why hadn’t he recognised her? Why had he treated her like that?
Now she was alone.
25
The sand, glowing gold in the slanting rays of the setting sun, slowly took form. The crash of the surf breaking under the pier and the cool rush of the wind whistling in his ears accompanied his reawakening. His eyelids flickered for a few seconds before opening with great effort. The sun was just dropping below the horizon, its orange disc swallowed up by the water as, all around, the purple, red, and yellow brushstrokes of light blended in the evocative palette of an Australian sunset. A dog scampered past right in front of him, kicking up sand, as Alex slowly got to his feet.
‘I’m alive …’ he whispered as he looked around him. ‘I’m alive.’
Marco had imagined the scenario of alternative universes where things had slipped out of society’s control, but Alex never could have imagined his own city reduced to that state. He tried to remember what he’d felt as the blade slid into his flesh. It was difficult — he was almost afraid to focus too clearly on an image that it was wiser to burn for good, burying the ashes somewhere in the deepest recesses of his memory.
He had died: there could be no doubt about that. The rioters had left him on the ground, breathing his last, with a bullet in his thigh and a knife planted in his chest. He had died, but he’d survived. And that made no sense.
His first thought, after confirming that he really was still alive, was of Jenny. He imagined her all alone, in a city she didn’t know, though it was still in her own dimension. How would she get back to Melbourne? And how would the two of them ever see each other again? He needed to talk to Marco.
He looked around for his backpack. It was still there, next to him. He pulled his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket.
‘Still dead. Damn it!’
He climbed the steps leading up to the first part of the pier and walked along the Esplanade. At a traffic light, he waited a few minutes on the footpath, leaning against a palm tree. Then he spotted a taxi at the end of the street and waved his arms to attract its attention.
The driver pulled over and Alex got in.
‘To the airport,’ he said decisively.
The plane for Abu Dhabi took off at 11.15 p.m. from Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport and landed the following morning at 6.25 a.m. For Alex, that flight was seven hours of practically unbroken sleep. After landing at the airport in the United Arab Emirates, he caught a shuttle to the main terminal, where he would catch the connecting flight to Heathrow. It would only be an hour and fifty minutes until he embarked on the second stage of his journey.
Alex killed time by eating a slice of pizza near the check-in area, and at 8.15 a.m. the plane took off right on time, heading for Great Britain.
During the flight, he almost always had his iPod headphones in his ears, and he managed to get some sleep. He only woke up when the Etihad Airways flight attendant served him lunch: a rubbery chicken breast with a side dish of cold peas, a watery cup of coffee, and a piece of chocolate cake that turned out to be the only edible part of the entire meal.
At 12.20 p.m., the aeroplane set down on English soil.
The connecting flight for Milan was scheduled for 5.50 p.m. Alex walked along a row of airport shops, his backpack still over his shoulders and his face weary. He needed to lie down and stretch his legs out, exhausted as he was from the long journey.
I wonder if Marco has found out anything else, he thought as he sat down on a bench in a wi-fi area. He propped his feet on a low table in front of him, and a man in uniform shot him a glare. He had to be an airport employee, and he didn’t seem to think much of the way Alex was sitting. But Alex didn’t move an inch. He was exhausted. In the distance, he saw the glowing sign of a travel agency. A photo of a smiling family hung under a huge slogan: Go to Europe! Now!
It seemed as if the message were meant for him.
Finally outside the entrance to his apartment building, Alex heaved a deep sigh.
He didn’t know how his parents would react when he walked in as if he’d come home from an ordinary day at school.
It was dinnertime, so Valeria and Giorgio would certainly be home. A girl walked out the door and left it open for him. Alex thanked her and climbed the stairs.
Praying that his parents wouldn’t be too upset with him, he rang the doorbell.
He was waiting for someone to open the door when he saw an elderly man get out of the elevator on the landing. The old man pulled a bunch of keys from the pocket of his raincoat and opened the door to his apartment, after shooting Alex a suspicious glance.
At that moment, as the man entered his apartment, leaving Alex alone on the landing, the door in front of him swung open.
‘Are you one of Paolo’s friends?’ asked a dark-haired woman wearing an apron.
Alex gave her a baffled look, then shifted his gaze over to the name by the doorbell.
‘Mancini …’ he said, before turning back to the woman. ‘I’m sorry, I must have gotten the wrong floor.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘On the third floor.’
‘This is the third floor. Are you at the wrong address, by any chance?’
Alex looked down, trying not to get too flustered. ‘I’m sorry, signora. I must have mixed up the addresses.’
He turned and hastily went down the stairs to the ground floor.
Once he was outside the building, Alex checked the street number again: number 22, Viale Lombardia. His home. For the past sixteen years.
No, not again …
Alex looked around.
Everything seemed exactly as he had left it. The same city, the same street that he’d walked down thousands of times. But another family lived in his home.
I returned to my body, back on that beach … I got up, I caught three planes, and now I’m here. Here, right where I started out. What the hell does all this mean?
He started to run towards Piazza Piola, his panic rising.
Marco’s place was only a few hundred metres away, at the start of Viale Gran Sasso. In a couple of minutes he was in front of the intercom.
‘Yes?’ came the voice.
‘Marco, it’s me!’
‘Alex, hey! What a surprise … Come on up.’
The main entrance buzzed open and Alex walked into the lobby, but his mind was not completely at ease. It seemed that his friend hadn’t been expecting his return. On the second floor, the door of Marco’s apartment was ajar. Alex pushed it open and walked in. As soon as he was in the front hall, he felt a dizzying sense of disorientation. In the spot where he would normally have seen Marco’s desk with the three computers, he saw an L-shaped sofa.
The grid of blue neon lights on the wall was gone, replaced by a mantelpiece crowded with framed photographs. His friend emerged from the hallway behind him.
‘Alex!’
The sight that greeted Alex the minute he turned around was one that made him take a step back.
With a smile on his face, holding his arms out for a hug, Marco was standing on his own two legs.
‘So you finally found the time to come by!’ he said, as he hugged his friend tight. Alex hugged him back, but awkwardly. ‘We never see you nowadays.’
Alex said nothing, his eyes fixed on his friend’s legs.
‘What the hell’s wrong with you? Are you okay?’
‘Yes, I …’
‘You look like you’ve just seen a ghost!’
‘Then … you can walk … In other words …’
‘What else would I do, go around on my knees? Okay, I’ll admit that I’m happy to see you, but let’s not overdo it!’ Marco burst into a loud laugh and hurried away to the kitchen. He returned a few moments later with two cans of Coke in his hand. ‘You want something to drink?’
‘Marco, I’m in trouble.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘I don’t know exactly how to explain it to you,’ said Alex in some confusion as he looked around. His eyes fell on one of the framed pictures on the mantelpiece.
‘Sorry, but … is that your mother?’
‘Of course it is — what kind of questions are you asking? You were there yourself when we took that picture, last year. The house in Tuscany, don’t you remember? You should see what it looks like now, they’re finally done furnishing it.’
Alex closed his eyes and felt as if he was fainting. The guy in front of him seemed to be living the life that his friend Marco had been denied.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘No, nothing. Listen, let me ask you something … are my parents okay? Don’t they live in Viale Lombardia anymore?’
Marco frowned and peered into Alex’s face. ‘You’re starting to worry me, man … Have you lost your memory?’
‘That’s a good question. I don’t really know how to answer it.’
‘Alex, are you serious?’
‘Deadly serious.’
‘Your parents have been living in Switzerland for the past five years. How could you possibly think of asking such a question? Are you trying to tell me you can’t remember?’ Marco set the can down on the table. ‘Did you have an accident? Did you hit your head?’
‘Nothing like that. It’s too complicated to explain. I think I’d better go.’
‘No, I think you need help. Something must have happened to you …’
‘Forget about it. And forget about the stu
pid questions I just asked you.’ Alex got up and started towards the door.
‘What the …’ Marco stood there motionless, with the can in his hand.
‘Sorry, there’s just one last thing,’ Alex went on, turning to look at his friend. ‘Do you know a Jenny?’
Marco looked at him quizzically. ‘Who?’
Alex said nothing. He hurried out of the living room of the Draghi family home, slammed the door behind him, and fled.
Once he was out on the street, he looked around. He started walking through the crowds, as it slowly dawned on him that he might be travelling down the infinite array of streets, the myriad possibilities of the Multiverse. In the midst of all these normal human beings, he felt like an alien: he could travel, he could set foot anywhere, investigate every scenario and destiny.
But right now what he needed was to find his way home.
26
I can’t seem to control this damn power!
In his mind, Alex went through everything he’d done since he’d been alone on the beach, from when he’d crossed the vortex and woken up in the locker room, in Jenny’s reality.
He revisited every moment of his incredible journey. The images of the corpses in the tunnel in the other Milan were stamped into his mind, clashing with his memories of his first kiss with Jenny. They overlapped, too, with the experience he’d had at the Planetarium when he remembered that, in his own past, he’d met her right there, when they’d been children, who could say on what occasion.
Alex thought back to when he’d caught the taxi to Tullamarine Airport, the flight to the United Arab Emirates, and, after that, the flight to England.
Milan is the same, but the lives of my family and Marco’s are completely different. I don’t even know where I live now. A different family lives in my apartment, my parents live in Switzerland, and Marco can walk! I have to get back … but how?
He got up off the ground. A clock on a pole said it was 10.00 p.m. A few metres further along, a few foreigners were talking loudly outside a kebab stand.
Multiversum Page 15