by Giacomo Papi
“He’s alright, I can’t talk right now though, sorry.”
He hung up, feeling guilty, and absent-mindedly pushed a stretcher out of his way. He watched it roll away. He was growing uneasy. They had started dating just a short while ago and also recently moved to a city where they didn’t know a soul. Their foundations were fragile. And now she was pregnant.
That’s how she broke the news to him, in the dark, while he was falling asleep.
“I’m pregnant.”
“What’s that?”
“Today, I cried when I saw the plus sign. It was the second time I took the test.”
“Are you saying that you don’t want the baby?”
“No. I’m just saying that I’m not very happy these days.”
They lay in silence for a few seconds. Then he whispered in the dark.
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be frightened. We’ll manage.”
“I feel trapped, Adriano.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Maria.”
“Promise you won’t abandon me.”
When he received the offer for work, he was sure she wasn’t going to move with him. Instead, she did. The idea of starting over in a new and faraway place seemed exciting to her, even though it meant having to give up her job at the university, at least temporarily. It wasn’t much of a job, really, and maybe she would find something better. Maria had always said that she felt uncomfortable in public spaces, that they made her feel arrogant. She’d rather be watching. Once she told Adriano how happy she had been when her ex-boyfriend, an advertising agent, let her help him out on his set. She felt good about herself when she accomplished things, when she made things happen.
Now a baby was about to happen. And yet, she felt trapped.
The morning of the day they met, Maria had taught a class on the techniques of color-making in the late Renaissance period. She explained to her students how cinnabar, a pigment used often in Cinquecento Venetian painting, was obtained by mixing five parts mercury with one part sulfur in a mixture of potassium hydroxide. As an example she used the vest of Saint Jerome by Caravaggio, and right there and then she decided that she was going to wear a dress of that same exact color to the party that night, even if it meant that she had to go to all over town to look for it. It was the first time in a long time that she was going out after her break up.
When Adriano arrived, the hostess was complimenting Maria on how nice she looked. Maria noticed how that tall stranger held onto his bottle of wine. He was awkward, and she liked that. She stared at him throughout dinner, too far away to understand what he was talking about, but close enough to notice that he constantly moved his hands, even when he was not speaking. A few days later Adriano asked her out on a date and a week after that they were laying on a beach, Adriano’s head on her belly. He had never done that before with any woman. It was as if he finally reached a land where he could be himself, without any effort at all.
The stretcher banged into the wall with a metallic crash. He understood why Maria felt lost. Adriano’s parents had died years ago, and her parents might as well have been dead, somewhere on the other side of the world, living out their never-ending marital dispute. Adriano and Maria were a pair of orphans in a new city, and soon they were going to have a child.
Luckily, after the night of the announcement, Maria’s mood improved. She even learned to wait for her wave of afternoon melancholy with the same serenity she had for unpleasant inevitabilities, such as her mother’s phone calls. Three months later, during her first ultrasound, she smiled at Adriano as the doctor smeared gel on her belly.
“You’re cute, just standing there, all bashful looking. You look the same way you did at that party, with the wine bottle in your hand.”
That was only the day before yesterday.
Five
“They belong to the same person, Dottore, that’s for sure.”
“You sure there’s no mistake?”
“Actually, teeth provide better samples than blood. The tooth is full of mitochondrial DNA. Archaeologists use these kinds of samples because they are so reliable. There’s no doubt about it. Maybe he had an identical twin.”
“It can’t be. This doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I ran the test three times. There is no significant margin of error.”
Adriano froze. The tooth belonged to a child who was two years old in 1902, but who had the same genome as Serafino Currò. There was nothing complicated here, this was simply a case of identical genetic profiles.
To this kind of important news, Adriano tended to react slowly, digesting bits of information before falling into a state of panic, almost as if he were producing an overabundance of endorphins to shield himself from the implications of the facts. He kept telling himself that this had to be some kind of joke. He had no evidence to prove it wrong. The possible twin scenario did not make things better. Even if Serafino Currò had a twin, he would have to be more than 110 years old. It just didn’t make any sense. He felt he needed to do something, he didn’t care what, he needed to take some time off to clear his mind. He had to ask permission. He went to look for Fogliani, the chief physician. He found him in his office, playing an online video game. He spent entire days doing that. Medioli told him that the game was called Kreation and the main player was God.
Fogliani motioned for him to come in but didn’t take his eyes off the screen. Adriano stood still. He spoke quickly, trying to make it seem that what he was saying was unimportant. He told him about the new patient who had checked in and that he wanted to be put in charge of his case; his exams were unusual; he mentioned some test results but avoided mentioning the more bizarre ones, and he said that he showed no signs of being contagious. He failed to mention that they could not find him in the national database and skirted the DNA results. The head physician nodded without looking at him. He mumbled “yes” a few times, and then just as Adriano was about to leave the room, he told Adriano to report the information to Health Services. There might be similar cases out there.
He went back to the ward. Running. He tried to slow down but couldn’t. He went back to the old man to ask him more questions. He wanted to understand what he remembered from his previous life. He wasn’t afraid of sounding ridiculous. Unfortunately, this was not a trick.
The door to Serafino’s room was wide open. Adriano walked in. Serafino’s eyes were glued to the television screen. He looked like a child. Adriano stared at him and, for the first time, tried to find the words to describe the sensations that the man stirred in him. Early evening light filled the room. When the old man moved his arm to grab the remote control, a trail of dust motes moved through the air. His presence was greater; he existed to a degree that was more real; his contours were more defined than those of living men. Adriano felt shivers go up his spine. The old man in front of him was the sun setting behind a mountain, outlining its silhouette. He was the root that twists around a tree, unstoppable, undeniable. He existed, simply, in the way things are. Adriano stepped into the room and Serafino looked at him with a vacant stare. He spoke about television, about the shows he had watched. He was shocked that everyone cried or screamed on TV.
“It’s really different from how I remember it, Dottore.”
“Where were you before you came to the hospital?”
“I don’t know, but I know I felt a lot older than I do now.”
“You don’t remember anything else?”
“I remember lots of things: my mother, my father, my grandparents, the War, both Wars. I remember the names of my classmates from grade school and the faces of my students. I remember my wife and the day that we met and the day she left me. And then, for some reason, I think back to a girl that I fell in love with when I was twenty, how my life might have turned out had I been with her. I remember when Umberto, my son, was born, and how happy I was on that day. I am not crazy, Dottore.”
“No, what I meant was, do you have any recent memories of t
hings happening before yesterday’s event at the supermarket?”
“That’s a little bit blurrier. I see my bed. I’m lying down. I get up. I walk into the kitchen and see my son. I’m shocked because he looks so old. He looks at me, scared and speechless. The house looks different. There’s canned food everywhere. I ask him where my books are, but he doesn’t say anything. He looks distressed.”
“And right before that?”
“Fragments. I’m in bed. There’s a doctor. Behind him, I see Umberto, he’s younger, I’m having trouble breathing. What’s wrong with me? Is it something with my memory?”
“No, I don’t think so. We’re still trying to figure that out. You just need a few more days of close observation. At your age it’s best to be prudent.”
“At my age, it’s best to not do anything.”
“Hey, remember that I’m the doctor here …”
“I once had a friend who, at sixteen, smoked cigarettes with such gusto! He used to suck in the smoke, holding the cigarette between his middle and ring fingers, and cup his hand around his mouth to inhale. He started early, when he was ten, but that was normal back in my day. He lost a lung in the war because of the gas. He couldn’t breathe well any more. That gave him a real scare. He quit smoking, but he couldn’t ever quit thinking about smoking. He used to say that he’d start up again when he turned seventy. On his seventieth birthday he started up again. He hadn’t forgotten about it in those fifty years.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because, at my age, the only way out is death. It’s necessary.”
Suddenly, he opened his mouth and touched his gum with his index finger.
“Hey, Dottore, look here. Do you think my teeth are growing back?”
Six
The filter coffee dripped slowly into the glass carafe. Adriano stood at the window and looked out at the buildings. He had woken up at dawn even though his shift only started at two o’clock in the afternoon. There was something he needed to do. The sky was heavy but the sun had risen. Beneath the stretch of rooftops and behind the walls, like any other day at seven o’clock in the morning, a stream of liquids—urine, saliva, shampoo, toothpaste, detergents—flowed into the sewers, forgotten under the footsteps of men. A sea of clouds engulfed the world. A winter-swollen morning chased away the arrival of spring.
As soon as he walked out of his front door it started to pour. He was completely drenched by the time he got to his car. He turned on the engine and the heater. It was still dark when he drove out of the city. Darkness changed into daytime, the windshield wipers brushed off the rivulets of gray water from the windshield, the world was cleansed. He drove slowly, his eyes fixed on the road, and asked himself what he would find and if it made any sense even to go looking for it. He had gone home the evening before feeling distressed and worn out. He forced himself not to talk about it with Maria. He lay awake in bed for a long time, and understood that what needed to happen would happen, with or without him, he just had to steer things in the right direction. He couldn’t talk about things openly until he verified every detail: the son’s house, the tooth, the blood, the burial grave, and then sleep caught up with him. The windshield wipers screeched. The storm subsided, rain fell less intensely. He made his way around the umpteenth roundabout, wondering who was in charge of establishing the size of raindrops.
He could see Serafino Currò’s native town from below. It was built into the hills, surrounded by woods and protected by crumbling fortifications. The homes clung to one another, defying gravity. Adriano drove along the road that flanked the walls and away from the city center, following the directions to the cemetery. After several kilometers, he saw a red sign with the word “Camposanto,” and he turned sharply up a road that ended in an open space.
He parked and walked along a path scattered with fallen, rotting leaves. They were soft under his feet, and mixed with brambles, roots and branches. He looked down so that he wouldn’t slip and in so doing noticed a sudden movement on the ground. And then another movement, about a meter off. And again. He crouched down to see what it was. Frogs. Ten or twenty minuscule newborn gray-green frogs, born from the storm and camouflaged by the earth. He got up and kept walking, being careful not to step on them. The iron gate was half-open. He entered and looked around. The first row of tombs were of the recently deceased, and of those there were just a few. This told him that the town was small and in small towns the living, like the dead, don’t reproduce. He started reading the grave markers. Some dated back ten years. He heard the noise of gravel moving behind him. He turned around, tense. A man of about sixty walked towards him, his feet stepping on crushed stone. He was very thin and wore a dark raincoat and green rain boots. He had a farmers’s face: capillaries had burst on his cheeks and the skin on his forehead and around his eyes was a map of wrinkles.
“Are you looking for something, Signore?”
“Good morning, yes. I am looking for the tomb of Serafino Currò, he’s buried here I believe. He was buried on January 11, 1979.”
“Are you a relative of his?”
“Yes, I mean, no, I am an old friend.”
“You did well to come and visit. He’s back there. Follow me.”
“Did you know him? Do you remember him?”
“Of course I remember him. He’d come here every summer in July with his wife and son. This is where his mother was from. Every summer, up until his death, he took time to teach the children. I was one of his students, but I was a dunce. He taught out of the kindness of his heart, without getting paid for it. He taught us how to read and write. I dug his grave, personally.”
“Have you been working here for a long time?”
“Since the professor died. His was one of the first graves I dug. More than thirty years have passed since then—hard to believe. Even my father was a gravedigger. But it’s not like there’s much to do around here anyway, we’ve got a small town, people moved out, or they died. I keep things in order, throw out dead flowers and dig graves.”
The gravedigger left the rocky path and walked between the tombstones. Adriano followed him. The ground was swollen with rain and all the mud made it difficult to walk. They sank into the earth. The man slowed down and turned to speak to him. A frog jumped between his feet.
“This is strange weather. Mushroom weather.”
“It’s very humid.”
“It gets this way even when it’s not raining. We’re at the foot of a hill, the worst location for a cemetery because the ground is watery. My father would joke that we weren’t burying the dead, we were drowning them.”
The custodian stopped next to a group of tombs and pointed to something in front of him.
“There it is, you see. It’s a little unkempt because no one has come to visit for years.”
On the marble headstone he saw the smiling face of the old man, imprisoned in the oval color photograph. Underneath it, in brass lettering, the words “Serafino Currò 1897–1979.” The tomb was intact. The ground in front of the tomb hadn’t been stirred.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but have you noticed anything strange recently?”
“Yes. There are lots of frogs.”
There was less traffic on the drive back and the air was cleaner. Before returning to the hospital, he decided to pay Serafino’s son a visit, given that it was on the way. He wanted to be certain he hadn’t told anyone anything. The road to his house was on a slight incline. He saw the yellow façade of the building illuminated by the vivid light of a now no longer rainy sky. He parked. The storm had painted the sky a furious gray, but it looked uncertain about bursting into a rainbow or hiding its colors forever. He walked through the courtyard until he reached the doorway. He entered. Someone must have left the door of the elevator open because it was stuck between floors. He walked up the six flights. He rang. He knocked. No one answered. He noticed that the door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open. Inside, the lights were off. He tried calling
out.
“Is someone home?”
He found him sitting on the bed in his father’s bedroom, his hands clenching his knees and his eyes closed, but his mouth was open and he was panting, as if he had been running. He turned with an unnatural sluggishness, and with his eyes closed. Then, he looked at Adriano with the stare of a person who has just awoken from a nightmare. He gasped violently and couldn’t speak. His breaths were short and close together. Strangled speech rose up from his throat, transforming itself into a disconnected monologue.
“My father is dead, Dottore. My father is dead, my father is dead, my father is dead, Dottore. It’s true, Dottore, fathers die. If you are old it’s worse to go crazy, but I am an organized man, Dottore, I have always been tidy, even when I was younger, I don’t want a dead father in my house, his house, my house, because I believe in rules, and for my whole life I have respected them, rules save your life, Dottore, and I am sick and tidy, I can not take care of my father again, he’s dead, I can’t have him here again, dead at home.”
The man went on mumbling.
“When I promised mamma at I would take care of papà, I did, but now he’s here, and he’s back, and I don’t have anyone, Dottore, to help me. I have no wife, I don’t even have a helper. I’m not a bad person, am I, Dottore, if I can’t take care of him? I’m not a bad person if I do not want him?”
“Calm down, Mr. Currò. I came to tell you that your father won’t come back. We are going to keep him in the hospital.”
He contracted his muscles and nerves and breathed out. The tension that was bottled up inside of him left his body. He slumped into his chair as if his bones had turned to liquid. He was still panting, but more deeply now, and his breath became a whisper.
“Forever?”
“For a long time, Mr. Currò.”
“I am a sick man. I was getting ready to die. I wasn’t bothering anyone.”
“We won’t bother you, just make sure you don’t tell anyone. You haven’t told anyone, have you?”