by Giacomo Papi
Adriano thought about what Interminelli would have said had he been in his place. He would have said that they had already had the chance to live their life, so hell no. Carlo Medioli shook his head slightly and looked over at the head nurse.
The factory worker stood up.
“When can we go home?”
The name claiming authorship of the article belonged to a famous journalist who had died ten years earlier. It was entitled: My Resurrection. Her attack: “I have come back to the living from the dead. The great migration has begun. The eternal return is taking place. I have completed Dante’s journey backwards, I am not a living being among the dead, we are the dead who have been reborn alive. Those in power are hiding this from you; they are hiding this from us.”
The editor and the publisher looked at each other, incredulous. Several hours later, trucks picked up stacks of papers, delivered their packages, and newspaper distributors started their rounds, bringing papers to the stands, covering up every inch of free space. In the wee hours of the morning, humanity fell into a new era, one in which the line between life and death was blurred, where God had overturned his own rule. People stormed the newsstands, read the papers standing up, sitting on the curb, leaning against trees and walls, everywhere, taking in as much information as quickly as they could, everyone remembering friends and family who had died. It was a mass funeral in reverse.
Adriano and Maria were on the street when the news hit. They were walking out of the restaurant where they had just eaten dinner. He told her what Serafino had said and mentioned the question the factory worker asked him. Her response was that they had the right to act that way. But as they walked home, they talked about other things. They didn’t feel like discussing dead people. That day, for the first time, Maria felt something move inside her. A small tickle.
“Can you imagine a giant blinking his eyes?”
“Sure.”
“Well that’s what it feel like: a giant eye inside you opening and closing.”
“You’re absolutely crazy.”
“I’m not the least bit crazy.”
“A giant eye in your stomach is a scary thought.”
“A little, yes. But it also tickles. You feel something growing in your stomach. Something living there, moving around. It’s disquieting. But he’s not an unfriendly giant. He’s just big, and very sleepy. Or maybe he’s near-sighted, and he’s blinking because everything is blurry. He needs his glasses.”
“Or a contact lens. When am I going to get to feel this giant?”
“What do you want to feel? What do you have to do with anything?”
People were running towards the newsstand. Maria and Adriano asked an old man with a newspaper what was going on. He showed them the headlines and said that it was the return of the dead. Several dazed individuals rejoiced on the street, but then stopped because no one joined in. People went home. It was May. The number of people who were reborn was still small. It was a time of truce, a time of emptiness, time to get ready for the return. Blue glares from television screens filtered out through shut windows.
When they were in bed, Adriano revealed the last of his secrets.
“They asked me to kill a man.”
She turned to face him in the dark.
“And you said no.”
“Yes, I said no. I won’t do it. Don’t worry. But they asked me. I think it was someone from the secret service.”
“Even God could ask you, for fuck’s sake, Adriano. Don’t piss me off. Who do they want to kill?”
“The boy from the 1800s.”
“The only one with no surviving family. Who the fuck cares about him, right? I bet they want to see if they’re mortal. When did they ask you to do it?”
“A few days ago.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“It wasn’t an official order.”
“How could it be? But they won’t stop at that, Adriano.”
“What should I do?”
“There’s only one thing to do.”
“Which is?”
“Jesus, you’re slow, my love. You need to make him famous.”
Fifteen
The sun looked tired, as if it had been carrying too heavy a weight. Adriano had just woken up and was feeling strong again. He looked outside and searched for the right word to describe the blue of the sky. It was dull. Dawn spilt, scrawny and milky, across the rooftops. The swallows hadn’t come back yet. A few more minutes and then, like every Wednesday, the silence would be broken by the sound of breaking glass being emptied from the recycling bins into the garbage trucks. He was waking up at night more often now, watching as the day took shape, protected by the walls of his home. Crucial hours were approaching.
He poured the water from the kettle into the teapot. A fragrant burst of heat filled his nostrils. He prepared the tray, making sure that he hadn’t forgotten anything—sugar, butter, honey, two slices of toast and the pot of tea—and went to wake Maria. They had spoken late into the night. She wanted to be there. She didn’t care what he thought. She was still asleep when he walked into the bedroom; she looked like she was laughing in her dreams. Adriano knelt to kiss her and she captured his kiss. He climbed on top of her. She was waiting for him.
It stunned him when she needed sex. He would watch her like an observer, savor her entirely. She was so beautiful, the way her knees bent, how her toes spread out on the bed, her shoulders, arms, hands. He smelled her scent, listened to her breath and chased after her hair and skin with his palms, waiting for her to reach the highest peak, watching as it rose from her body, getting himself ready, following her movements, watching her, her hips and swollen belly, her protruding bellybutton, its pink curl like a breast, sprouting between the other two. He touched her with his hands as her movements and breath quickened, her eyes closed. He listened to her as she called his name, and he smiled, trembling when the moment erupted from the common source their two bodies shared.
In the car Maria turned on the radio. The weather forecast was for a sweltering hot and humid day. They talked about the return of the dead. The Church released its first public statement, expressing “hope and sincere concern.” In a televised news interview the night before, a cardinal had said, speaking for himself and not for the Church, that it was still too early to call it a miracle.
They found twice the number of officers at the gates. A small crowd had gathered during the night. People wanted to know if their loved ones had come back from the dead. They held out photographs in their hands. Black and white shots of elderly couples, children sitting under a Christmas tree, children at a recital, children at their first day of school, men, women, happy boys and girls on a school trip, all captured in moments when life seems eternal. They surrounded the vehicle, touched it, looked inside, and waited until the last possible minute to move out of the way. A woman pressed a photograph up to the windshield. It was of four smiling teenagers at a beach. Maria shut her eyes.
Finally, they managed to get through. The boulevard of linden trees was littered with scraps of paper carried there by people and by wind. The perfume had vanished. When they got to the ward the night shift nurses were still there. Adriano took a bunch of keys from the nurses’ station and handed them to Maria. Together they walked towards his office, but then she kept on going.
Adriano went in, set his things down and dialed an internal number.
“Listen to me carefully, now, Michelangelo. This is Dottore Karaianni speaking. It is very important that you do exactly as I say.”
Five minutes later, Adriano went to the service staircase and heard the boy’s footsteps behind him, slinking across the linoleum floor. He knew that the Genetics ward would be empty. He walked up a floor, pushed open the emergency door and walked down the hall until he reached the second to last room. The door was open. Maria was fixing the camcorder onto the tripod. She looked up. The boy was breathtakingly beautiful. His skin was as smooth as a baby’s but he was as strong as an adult: his shoul
ders were broad, his arms muscular, his cheeks rosy. He slumped into the chair and Adriano crouched down close to him, telling him what he needed to do. Michelangelo wasn’t listening. He seemed uninterested. He seemed incredibly sad.
“Let them kill me, Dottore, what do I care. Everyone I know is buried. What am I doing here, Dottore, without my brothers, without my mother and father?”
He burst into tears. Maria spoke to him in a whisper, caressing his knee and face, but he had the hiccups and his face was wet with tears. Then Maria joined her thumb and index finger in a small circle, brought it to her lips, and whistled. The boy looked at her, amazed. Adriano smiled. So did Maria. She went close to the boy.
“If you were born again, Michelangelo, maybe they will be born again too. Imagine how disappointed they’d be if they didn’t find you.”
The hiccups subsided and the boy stopped weeping.
“Perhaps you’re right, Signora.”
Maria fixed the light and the framing. When everything was just right, she asked him to stand up. She asked him to take off his shirt but to leave his undershirt on. This was a movie set for her, and her movements were natural and fluid. Michelangelo looked into the viewfinder and laughed, perplexed. Several minutes later the camera was rolling. With green eyes still wet with tears, sniffling a little and biting his lower lip, Michelangelo Lopez began to tell his story.
The news of the boy who had come back to life from two centuries ago flooded the networks and was the leading story on newscasts throughout the world. Over the next several hours his face was reproduced over a million times, and the next day, hordes of love-struck teenage girls showed up at the hospital gates.
Michelangelo Lopez had become a star.
Sixteen
The situation stabilized over the course of the next few days. Maria had predicted it, habits are ferocious. The unthinkable had happened, but it was irrelevant. Nothing had changed. It was as if the rebirths had interrupted something bigger. There had been the report of a several hundred cases in the entire world and less than ten in their country. Daily life pressed on. Adriano finally had some time to focus and study the situation. Based on his four patients and news from outside, he verified that their previous memories had been inevitably interrupted in the moments just before their death and that they came back to life unaware of anything, and not far from the place where they died. They described feeling confused at first, but also full of energy and determination. They never slept. They didn’t need to sleep. They were always hungry. They craved sweets and high-calorie foods, but could go for days without eating. They displayed an unbridled sexual appetite but they were sterile. None of the 507 registered reborn individuals showed any signs of being able to produce eggs or sperm. Adriano was the first to realize this and felt strongly that it was the key to unlocking the secret of their being. And for this reason, he decided to contact his old college friend, Ari Gastel, an extremely likable Israeli physician, who was researching the relationship between hormones and wakefulness.
The State did nothing about the situation. It waited for its citizens to quiet down. People hoped that daily life would cast a shadow over the resurrection scandal. Religious authorities only mumbled, they didn’t make any bold statements. They had professed resurrection for so long that they had forgotten to actually wait for it. Furthermore, the rebirths contradicted dogma. Like in the Last Judgement, man returned to flesh, but God was nowhere to be seen. A few local priests stood fast by their beliefs and essential values: men are brothers, they said. When we are born and when we die is meaningless. Nonetheless, religious hierarchies drowned in an infinite and futile dispute. The bishop accepted an invitation to appear on television, and advised the audience to act with caution, for even the devil, the great deceiver, can make miracles. The reactions among the faithful were much stronger.
Ari told him that Catholics from all around the world were flocking to Jerusalem to witness the Second Coming of Christ. Everywhere, throngs gathered in front of mausoleums or near rock stars’ mansions, they flocked to see the relics of saints and the embalmed bodies of dictators. The first sects sprang up. Even a congregation that had extinguished over seven hundred years earlier reappeared. Small groups of flagellants paraded the streets, naked, brutally whipping their chests, backs and legs, inciting each other to “beat out his own poison.” They handed out flyers that read, “Remember that everything is everlasting.” Every action carried out here and now, on this earth, was destined to thrum into eternity, forming concentric circles, like a stone thrown into water. People wrote that the reborn were the leaders of the Advent, the messengers of the Apocalypse who symbolized the return of the sacred or some other new cost to taxpayers. No matter how they were seen, the ones who had returned were so few and in such bad condition they did not pose a real threat. They proved nothing. Life had to go on. Some people protested. Sporadic groups of demonstrators took to the streets to manifest against the detention of innocent human beings in hospitals.
The papers went back to reporting other stories. Sports and business news reclaimed the headlines because readers needed to relax and focus on what was of real importance; the culture and obituary pages came back, because people kept on going to the movies and people kept on dying. Many people said they thought a visit from a deceased family member was unlikely. Others reacted differently and grew anxious. Eighty-year-olds were terrorized at the thought of having to deal with their own parents again, so they spent their inheritance money immediately. Other people tidied up the bedroom of a deceased family member, or got into the habit of setting the table for one more person at dinnertime, of leaving the front door ajar. Death was unfair, but life made no sense. Things had to end, even when they come back. It felt like being surrounded by a thick, muddy river that had spat forth a few people with a gurgling, primitive, and violent laugh that no one could understand. No one knew if death was making fun of life, or if life was just a prank being played by death.
Adriano had an electronic board installed at the entrance of the hospital which displayed the names of the few patients admitted. It was an efficient move. The crowd thinned out. Now there were just a handful of people waiting and they were mostly parents of children who had died, parents who felt emptiness with every breath.
Representatives of major institutions visited the hospital on guided tours. They called in advance and made reservations. They wanted to see the living dead. They included politicians, high priests, entrepreneurs and stars. They were welcomed and escorted into the various rooms so that they could have a few words with Calogero, Rosaria, Michelangelo and Serafino, who in turn were growing frustrated at being treated like circus animals. Adriano rarely made himself available. Luckily Medioli was always eager to step in. The State asked for nothing and gave nothing. It was waiting for habit—or inertia—to kick in, to nullify any exception.
The only man who often got in touch was Ettore Aloni. Ten days after Michelangelo Lopez’s video broadcast, he called Adriano to tell him that the World Health Organization, in agreement with international governments, had decided to summon a conference on the case of the rebirths. It would be held at the beginning of September and would last three or four days, with the location still to be defined. There was no rush, for nothing suggested the threat of future invasions. Decisions would be made, and Adriano would be one of the representatives. He would be asked to write a report on sterility.
Interminelli had all but disappeared. He showed up just once, while a General was visiting. He stared at Adriano coldly but spoke warmly to Medioli. He seemed to stiffen before Michelangelo. Maria was right, now that the boy was famous, no one could harm him.
“They won’t stop, Adriano, this is too important for them. They won’t wait long now.”
In fact, they didn’t. One evening, a news broadcast announced that the government had decided to release the first reborn individual back into society. Adriano, who was cooking, dropped everything and ran towards the television. Executive measures
would be taken the following day. The necessary registration of reborn individuals would take place and then, upon medical examination, they would be released. Serafino, Michelangelo, Rosaria and Calogero. They were going to leave. Adriano thought of the ward and how it was going to end. The news reporter moved onto the next story. At dawn that day, investigators had discovered a body of a homeless man by the river. Someone had shot him through the neck. Several witnesses saw him fighting with another homeless man, whom authorities were searching for. The victim was identified as Salvatore Nucini, who had died in December 1963 when temperatures were below freezing. It took Adriano a few seconds to get his thoughts together. Another reborn. Salvatore Nucini was a reborn.
Images of the river flashed on screen. Standing among the police officers that surrounded the sheet-covered body, he recognized a skinny, bald figure in a yellow raincoat. Adriano gasped and waited for the cameras to focus on the figure again. There was no doubt about it. It was Massimo Interminelli. There, next to the dead body of an assassinated, reborn, homeless man, he saw the face of the man who had wanted to kill Michelangelo.
Maria was right. They had taken action.
And the reborn were mortal.
Frightened, he walked away from the TV and went to the window. In the already dark sky, an airplane flew so low over the rooftops that he could see the passenger windows. He wondered where the passengers were from and why they were leaving.
Seventeen
They left the hospital one by one, blinking to adjust to the light. They said nothing to the journalists and walked on, heads bowed, speechless and disoriented. Not one of them knew where they were going. Their future opened wide before them like an agonizing yawn. They had been told that about a hundred people waited for them at the front gates but there were many more than that. Beyond the police tape, behind the barricade of reporters, photographers and cameramen, next to rejoicing activists and teenage fans of Michelangelo, curious people gathered. There were elderly people, gawkers, students, families—everyone came to see if the reborn looked like normal people.