by Giacomo Papi
He was pale. Words dribbled out of his mouth in gibberish. “I found him standing before me in the kitchen. I’m old and ill. I don’t have the mental strength for this. I’m afraid. He came back two days ago.”
“Who came back?”
“My father.”
Adriano caught his breath. He didn’t understand. He heard his own voice say, “You are his son?”
“I don’t know where he came from. But he wasn’t here before.”
The man went into his room, opened his closet and pulled out a large leather suitcase. He started to stuff it with pajamas, robes, balled up pairs of socks, undershirts and underwear from a bureau to the left of his bed. Adriano stood at the door and watched the scene unfold. On the bedside tables there were two hideous-looking orange lamps and a tin alarm clock. Family photographs hung on the floral papered walls. He stepped into the room to take a closer look. He couldn’t say why, but he sensed that there was something off about those pictures. He recognized Serafino Currò in one of the few color photographs. He seemed to be more or less the same age he was now. In the photo he was sitting on a wicker chair and wore a hideous pair of reddish bellbottom pants. Standing behind him was a man, about fifty years old. The saturated colors reminded him of his own childhood photos. He bent down to read the caption: “Umberto and Serafino, Easter 1974.” He looked back at the old man who was still packing: how could this be his son? He studied the photographs.
One image, dated 1926, showed a one year-old child. The family was at the beach, on the sand, their backs to the sea, they were smiling at the photographer. The caption read: “Umberto with Mamma and Papa, 1926.” Mamma was a woman in a one-piece bathing suit with a gentle-looking face. The little boy looked sad and was hugging the woman. Adriano looked at another photograph, this one of a young soldier weeping in a photography studio. In another photo, evidently taken in the same studio, the soldier held a pair of gloves in his left hand and was looking adoringly at someone outside of the frame of vision, his head tipped to one side. He peered in to read the handwritten captions on both photos: a few centimeters above the lower border of the frame he read in tiny handwriting, “Lieutenant Serafino Currò” but each photo had different dates. The photograph of him crying dated to 1919, while the other one was from October 1917. Adriano felt the presence of the old man behind him. He too was staring at the photographs.
“Is this soldier Mr. Serafino?”
The man looked terrified. His lips moved but he couldn’t speak.
“Yes, it’s my father.”
“He must be about twenty years old in that photograph.”
“Yes, twenty or so. I’m not sure.”
“I’m sorry but … if in 1919 he was twenty years old, today he ought to be more than 110 years old! How is that possible?”
Umberto Currò started nervously moving around the room.
“I’ve always lived on my own, I have. I never even got married. I was a math teacher. I told you already, I’m sick and I don’t have the mental strength to deal with this.”
The old man quickly snapped shut the suitcase. Adriano walked towards the dresser. It was piled high with photo albums, newspaper clippings, and objects: vintage travel postcards, a pocket knife with a mother of pearl handle that said Edelweiss, faded notepads, a Pulcinella doll made of red coral. He picked up an album labeled 1900; it was bound in leather and the pages were heavy black construction paper. He opened it. On one of the first pages, over a photograph of a boy with curly locks, were the words “Serafino, dreaming of candy” written in a female hand. Farther down, held to the page by a piece of tape, was a small envelope of waxy paper. He followed his instincts and, without being seen, tore off the envelope and stuffed it into his pocket. He heard the man begin to breath deeply again.
“How old do you think I am, Dottore?”
“Eighty, I’d say.”
“And my father? How old do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. The same age?”
“Exactly, the same age. Do you know when my father was born? 1897. You were right: he should be dead.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“In fact, he died!”
Umberto Currò opened a drawer of the bureau, and rustled around for something.
“Here, look, I’ll find it. It was here. Hold on, Dottore …”
“What do you mean, he died?”
“Here it is. See for yourself.”
Umberto handed Adriano a yellowed piece of paper which had been folded in half. Adriano opened it. It was Serafino Currò Alvise’s birth certificate. Born June 5, 1897, son of Domenico and Speranza Malinverni.
“This doesn’t prove anything. It could be a fake, or it could belong to someone with the same name.”
The old man fumbled some more in the drawer.
“I’ll find the death certificate. Do you now when my father died? He died January 11, 1979. The day before yesterday I was in the kitchen and I see him standing in front of me, thirty years after I arranged his funeral. He was standing there naked, as if nothing was strange, looking just the way he did when I buried him. Do you believe me now, Dottore? Is it normal that the dead come back to life? Is it normal that they are just like the living, like you and me?”
Three
The path leading to the entrance of the hospital was permeated with a scent that Adriano recognized but couldn’t name. It was a kind of tree, it reminded him of honey and summertime. He walked around the flowerbed in front of the entrance and noticed that someone had left a newspaper on the bench. Traccanella was on call. Traccanella was a short, balding orderly who always knew too much. He said hello.
“Have you already checked Serafino Currò in?”
“Yes, Dottore. He’s down in radiology, waiting for his CAT scan. I couldn’t find his name in the system though. He’s not in the database.”
Adriano interrupted him with a wave of his hand, as if that were a minor detail, and instead focused on the tests Mr. Currò would need. He wanted to be certain he covered everything.
“Did you get a DNA sample?”
“No, but I’ll do it right away.”
Inside the wax paper envelope he had swiped from the photo album he found a milk tooth. He had peered inside as soon as he left Umberto’s house. He considered handing the tooth in as evidence but something held him back. He preferred to deliver it himself to the technician the next morning.
“Traccanella, remind me, the trees that line the road to the hospital, what are they?”
“Linden trees, Dottore. Don’t they smell good? Usually they blossom in June, but I guess they’re impatient this year.”
“I think we’re all impatient this year. I would like the DNA results in by tomorrow evening. And, if you would be so kind, I forgot Currò’s suitcase in the car. Could you please take care of that for me?”
He walked through the sliding glass doors toward the elevators. A poster hung near the call button that showed a smiling girl with the caption, “Life is a marvelous journey. Don’t take the wrong turn.” He pressed the button.
This had to be a mistake. The old man was surely senile with a few loose screws and his son was a raging lunatic. In a few hours everything would be cleared up, he was certain. So why was he afraid? Maybe someone was playing a prank on him. He felt uneasy. He would take care of this himself, he wouldn’t say a word, not even to the chief physician, not even to Maria. He imagined an investigation, police officers, reporters. What on earth was he thinking? How could he believe a story about resurrection? Was he, like Currò’s son, going mad? The elevator doors opened and he walked into radiology.
The exam room door was closed and the red light was on, indicating the exam was in progress. He walked in. The doctor waved. Serafino Currò stood behind the glass, next to the table. He was naked, except for a pair of dark socks that were rolled down to his ankles. He looked at the doctors and covered his genitals with his hands. His eyes were distant but at the same time curious as if
he was witnessing a scene that was entirely new. It felt bizarre, but Serafino wasn’t frightening to look at. He was amusing.
The orderly left the booth and went to assist the patient. Adriano watched as he walked by—his green scrubs, clogs, his large rear end. He treated the old man with the condescending manner that people who work in hospitals learn early on. In a daze, Currò obeyed his orders, but mockingly. The door opened again. In walked Carlo Medioli, the doctor on night shift.
“Karaianni! What brings you here?”
“I didn’t know you were on duty, Medioli. I would have called you directly.”
“Now who the fuck is that?”
Medioli found himself very amusing.
“He’s an acquaintance of mine, he asked me to come with him.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know yet, but I want to rule out some possibilities.”
On the other side of the glass screen, Currò hoisted himself onto the bed with the agility of a teenager and lay down on his back. The doctor urged him to keep as still as possible and slid him into the CAT scan machine. Medioli turned to Adriano with a look of astonishment.
“That’s one hell of an active old man! He’s in better shape than both you and me put together!”
Medioli knew how to be both obsequious and arrogant at the same time. “That one’s going to bury you, Karaianni, trust me.”
Adriano didn’t say a word, nor did he smile. Medioli was the last man on the planet with whom he wanted to share the news of his newfound patient. Word had it that at age fifty, Medioli was still living with his mother.
“Okay then, so if you don’t need me here, I’ll be going now, Dottore.”
They exam began. Images of the brain, lungs, liver and heart flashed by on the display screen. They were staggering. The body was intact, untouched by time, air, water, food, or viruses. Doctor and technician stared spellbound, saying nothing. Neither could find the words to describe what they were seeing. The exam ended. Adriano went to join his patient who recognized him as soon as he opened his eyes.
“How long was I under that thing, Dottore?”
“Fifteen minutes, Signor Currò.”
“How long have these machines been around?”
“About twenty years, I’d say.”
“What do they do?”
“They’re like X-Ray machines, only more thorough.”
“A thorough X-Ray … I’ve never seen such a thing.”
He was smiling. Maybe he was teasing.
“Everything seems so odd … but the strangest thing of all is that you bring me to the hospital because I took off my clothes, and then you ask me to undress!”
The technician in the booth was fidgeting. His shift was over and he was impatient to leave.
“Will you pick up the report, Dottore?
Medical cases unfold in emergency rooms corridors late at night. At first a case seems absurd, with no immediate explanation. Astonishment flitters across the faces of patients. They fear infection. Sometimes, patients are admitted at night for kidney stones, sometimes they come in at night from car accidents, and sometimes everything is silent, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong in the world. But for the most part, nights go down according to the book, forever unchanging. Serafino Currò wandered through the limbo that was the emergency room. He felt invisible. He was both attracted to and intrigued by the spectacle of pained humanity. He wanted to know all the details of every case. He asked thousands of questions. Why did people leave the cast room without casts on their bodies? Why didn’t they put blood into only one test-tube? Why was the needle connected to a tube and not to a syringe?
He looked no different from the other old men when he shuffled through the wards or sat, rheumy-eyed, on a chair in the hallway. But when he hurried to catch an elevator, he showed the same energy from the supermarket.
He let himself be examined without any resistance. He was the ideal patient. He followed the male nurse’s orders and joked with the female nurses. He was a gallant old gentleman who could pee on command and under thirty minutes, centering the cup with a mighty precision, careful not to let even one drop of urine fall to the floor. He rolled up his shirtsleeves for blood samples, revealing a grid of blue veins, swollen like rivers in winter. At ten minutes to midnight all his results were ready: they were completely astounding. All the exams confirmed an exceptional vital and metabolic state comparable to that of a newborn baby. His blood pressure was 70/110 and his heart rate was 140 per minute. His blood and urine belonged to a body that had not yet been contaminated by the external world. It was as if he was a youngster.
Adriano didn’t need to see any more results that night. He walked Currò to his ward, asked that his patient be placed in a single room, and made sure that the head nurse kept a close eye on him and didn’t let him wander. He might be contagious, he said.
The old man stood agog in front of the snack machines in the middle of the hall. All of a sudden he remembered why he had walked into the supermarket that night: he was famished. Why not let him eat, thought Adriano. He hadn’t eaten anything since that morning and he had finished all the exams. The doctor slid some coins into the machine, and apologized for not saving him a dinner. Serafino said that cooked apples disgusted him. He chose a chocolate bar and croissant filled with apricot jam, and gnawed on them with his toothless gums. He was amazed by how you punched in a number, the same way you could win prizes at an amusement park, and food would fall into the dispenser below. Adriano had to take him away when he asked for a third fruit juice.
Serafino’s suitcase was on the table in his room. The old man barely looked at it. He demanded, however, that someone show him how to use the remote control.
“Aren’t you tired?”
“I don’t know what to say, Dottore. I feel like a young man.”
He had a strange way of talking, he slurred his words because of his missing teeth.
“I feel like having fun. I wish I could stay out all night.”
“You don’t feel any different?”
“The only thing that hurts right now is my mouth. Look at my gums, they’re all red. I don’t know where my teeth disappeared to.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, your gums are slightly enflamed. I’ll ask the nurse to bring you something for that.”
“How long will you keep me here?”
“As long as necessary.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Think of it as an extended check-up, which is a good idea at your age.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?”
“I will come and see you as soon as I get here.”
“You should go home now, don’t keep them waiting.”
“Goodnight, Signor Serafino.”
“Goodnight, Dottore.”
He left the hospital feeling satisfied, but then the adrenaline rush wore off and he started to feel tired. He drove back down the avenue. The flowers on the trees that lined the streets looked even whiter and more abundant in the light of the streetlamps. He touched his shirt pocket to make sure that the envelope was still there. First thing next morning he would bring the tooth to the lab to compare the DNA of it with Serafino Currò’s blood sample at which point all that nonsense about being reborn would disappear. But he kept thinking about the two photographs of that soldier and Umberto’s worried expression haunted him.
He got home at two in the morning. Maria was asleep. He took his clothes off in the dark silence and slipped under the covers, looking for her. In Maria’s bed the world was silent and the day’s events retreated. Everything became muffled into the distance. She was stretched out on his side of the bed. Adriano echoed her position, and clung to the curves of her sleeping body. She breathed in and out, calmly. Maybe she heard him come in, maybe she was still asleep, maybe her breathing would fill up the emptiness that Adriano felt at the pit of his stomach. The mystery of the old man taunted him. It reminded him how we all build our li
ves around hollowness.
He slipped his right forearm under Maria’s head and let his fingertips graze her neck, shoulders and hands, as if they had a mind of their own. It seemed like her heart was beating to a tempo, and the rhythm of blood and breathing weaved into one another, calming him down. Even the universe began with a beat. Her skin was smooth under his fingers and felt so alive. It had to have been the hormones, that’s what happens to pregnant women. Someone was turning up the volume slowly, regulating her luminosity and color. He caressed her thighs and stomach with his hands. Her breathing shifted, it slipped from sleep to sex. The most intimate act manifests itself through elemental rhythms. He entered her, she didn’t even move. Her mouth tasted like sleep.
First thing tomorrow he would go to the lab and by the afternoon this whole thing would be cleared up.
Four
Patients in hospitals have breakfast at sunrise and at sunrise the hospital nurses found the old man awake and fully dressed. He was watching a cooking show on television. Adriano arrived at about eight o’clock. The genetics lab was still closed. The geneticist arrived a few minutes later, keys in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Adriano made sure Currò’s blood samples were delivered. He handed him the envelope with the tooth in it, and told him he wanted the information by that afternoon. The wait was going to be excruciating.
He chose not to say anything to anyone.
Not even Maria. He didn’t want to alarm her.
His cell phone rang as he was leaving the lab. It was Maria. Still sleepy, she tried to sound calm but he knew that she was holding something back. He could tell she was dancing around a question she didn’t want to ask. Was something going on? Why had he come back so late and left the house so early?
“How is that man from the supermarket?”