In a village church 448 kilometers to the south, a woman prayed and shouted with all her might.
“And the Lord set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry …”
She knelt on the hard wood of the confessional. Her black hair covered her face when she looked down but when she looked up at the ceiling, her face would reappear. Her voice rang out through the deserted naves.
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: ‘I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone …”
A rustling sound could be heard among the naves. Out from behind the altar stepped the priest. He walked quickly, despite his old age.
“What’s going on? Who’s there?”
When he reached the confessional, the woman stood up and continued reciting her psalm. Don Lucio almost fainted. He recognized her immediately. It was Rosaria. Dirty, in disarray, naked but alive, covered with the tangle of her own hair. Her eyes were ablaze with light and she stared at him with a sadness that didn’t belong to this world. She flung herself at him and the arms of the priest wrapped around her like branches. He had stayed by her side, six months earlier, during her agonizing death at forty years of age; she left behind a husband and two children. He had pronounced the funeral oration and had blessed her coffin just before her husband flung a fistful of dirt and crushed stone on top of it. And just as mourning was beginning to turn into memory, Rosaria had come back to life and was standing there in front of him, in his church.
Don Lucio was a shrewd man. All his life he had been waiting for a signal from God, but he didn’t trust appearances. He took his cell phone out from under his robe and dialed the number of the village doctor. He decided he would call her family later, if at all.
Sitting on a bench, Calogero Amatiello devoured a protein bar. It was his third. Ever since he arrived at the police station, he had done nothing but chew, swallow, and weep. He asked to have them phone his wife, but they were unable to find her number or her address. He insisted. A police officer told him that Rita Amatiello did not exist.
As soon as they left Serafino’s room, Maria stopped talking. She was silent the whole way home. Adriano knew this silence. He knew she had two types of silence: one that calmed him, and one that agitated him. Either way, all he could do was wait it out. They got into the car. The days were getting longer and the large white buildings that surrounded the hospital were now bathed in dusk’s pinkish glow.