Three police vehicles were parked outside the front gates. In front of the security station, armed agents checked anyone entering the building. Adriano arrived at 6:13 a.m. He flashed his badge.
“We were expecting you, Dottore Karaianni.”
There were other men lined up at the entrance. An agent walked towards him, and opened the door. Just as he was about to enter the hospital, Adriano turned around and gazed up at the tops of the linden trees. Hundreds of starlings were screeching in the branches. When he left the house Maria was still asleep. Maybe she was pretending to sleep because she didn’t want to deal with him. He looked at the dawn sky beyond the leaves, white and streaked with pink, and he remembered his dream. He was lying on the roof of a house on an island, stargazing. Next to him was his mother, also named Maria. Stars formed geometric shapes on the obscure space that both Adriano and his mother called “the constellations.” His mother pointed up at a rhombus in the sky.
“Look, that’s Cancer. And that one’s Aldebaran, the eye of the Bull, that gigantic orange one. And can you see that clump way up there? Those are the Pleiads. That trembling red light is Mars. All the stars in the sky will shine tonight.”
Somewhere at their feet, the sea was moving. A black and immense sea, bearing the infinite force of water and salt of all the world’s oceans on its back, weighing it down, beaching its waves. In the sky, the constellations were the same as always, only this time they were more defined and complete; triangles, parallelepipeds and spirals complete with lines, ringlets and angles. The shapes were constantly changing because of the way the stars lit up one after another, by the thousands, with no order they broke through the darkness. Adriano and his mother, also named Maria, watched as the black sky emptied itself out and night grew into day. The infinity of stars gradually took over the remaining void of darkness. Just before the dream was over, the sky became one single expanse of light sprinkled with tiny stains of darkness. His mother put her hand over his.
“Don’t be afraid, Adriano, the night sky brightened by stars is gray like a cloudy day.”
He looked at the Milky Way with a newfound serenity and understood that what happens, simply because it happens, exists forever and therefore can’t be frightening for human beings.
The elevator came. The girl in the advertisement on the wall smiled, undeterred. He read the slogan again: “Life is a wonderful journey.” The hallways were almost deserted, but several rooms, including that of the old man, were being patrolled. As soon as he stepped into the ward, the head nurse scurried over to him and grabbed his arm.
“Congratulations, Dottore. Here are the test results of the two new patients.”
She placed two folders in his hand and got onto her tiptoes to whisper something in his ear.
“Dottore, there’s also a young boy downstairs. When are you going to tell us what’s going on?”
Adriano didn’t answer. He wanted to wait before opening the envelopes. He had to do things in a certain order. He needed to keep calm. That was the message his mother gave him in the dream. “The night sky brightened by stars is gray like a cloudy day.” He walked into his new office. It was more spacious, the desk was wider, the chairs more comfortable. He set his bag down and put on his lab coat. The shutters were still closed. He opened them to let some light in. He arranged the blood tests of the old man and of the two new patients on the desk, side by side. The similarities were obvious. Serafino Currò, Calogero Amiatello and Rosaria Isimbardi all had the same symptoms. They were three infants with superpowers. That was it, in essence, but he forced himself to look more closely.
Glycemia, hemoglobins, leukocytes. All perfect counts. Transaminitis, creatinine, uric acid. Everything seemed in the norm. Calcium, potassium, phosphate. Perfect health.
He walked out of his office and went to meet them. The boy, the last of the patients, hadn’t been escorted to his room yet. Amatiello, the factory worker, was in the first room. Adriano entered, but the man didn’t make any effort to get up. He just lay on his bed, bad-mouthing a police woman.
“Why did that wicked police woman say that, Dottore, why?”
“What did she say?”
“That Rita is dead.”
“Who is Rita?”
“My wife. I came back too late.”
“Came back from where?”
“I don’t know. The place in front of the factory.”
“Pardon me, what factory?”
“We were all factory workers. Now there’s no one.”
When Adriano waved goodbye, the man didn’t lift a finger. Despite the news, it seemed like a normal day at the ward. The night sky brightened by stars is gray like a cloudy day. He needn’t be scared. He had to be cautious. He had to work. Make things happen. Fix things that were wrong. The report for the Prime Minister would be ready soon.
He ran into the woman in the hallway. She was joking with a policeman under the surveillance of Don Lucio, the priest who found her. She looked happy, almost euphoric. She had big eyes. Dark. And she kept touching her hair. It was tiring to watch her act so alive. They went back into her room and she sat on the bed, tucking her legs under her. Don Lucio sat across the room.
“Would you like to know, Dottore, what my real problem is now? I have never felt this free in my life! Even if they cut my hair off.”
The priest butted in.
“We must pray, Rosaria, for this is certainly a miracle! I don’t want to hear any of that nonsense about freedom.”
“I’m sorry Don Lucio, but, have you seen what my husband looks like? You married us, I know! But I just can’t go through with it this time.”
“What about the children? Think of them, Rosaria.”
“It’s not that I don’t love my kids, Don Lucio, but when I wasn’t around they survived without me. No one needed me.”
“But what is a woman without children?”
“A woman, Don Lucio.”
Children.
A sudden spark of intuition. Adriano bid farewell in a hurry, left the two bickering, and rushed out the room.
Like Serafino, all Rosaria wanted was to live her life, even if it meant giving up her children.
He placed the medical folders on the first windowsill in the hallway. He examined the numbers. Yes. It was clear. How could he have not seen this earlier? There was a devastating hormonal imbalance: all three individuals lacked FSH, the hormone responsible for the production of sperm and ovules. It could be a coincidence, surely, but the probability that they were sterile was very high.
He rushed to his office. He turned on his computer, opened a blank document and picked up the telephone. He wanted to know more about the boy. They told him that the first exam results would be ready in a couple of hours. That was too late. He logged into the database to look at the patient’s information: he was checked in as Michelangelo Lopez, age seventeen. They picked him up on the street somewhere in the city, naked, crying outside of the window of a famous law firm.
He started writing the report. It took him only an hour. They summoned him from downstairs, saying that the boy had been escorted into the ward and was now situated in the last available single room. When he arrived, the patient was resting his head in his arms on the table. Upon hearing him enter he straightened up. Adriano looked at him. He was a living statue made of skin, flesh, and blood, his eyes were almost yellow and a wavy stream of auburn hair framed his face, chin and cheeks. The boy scrutinized him too. He inspected Adriano’s shoes, pants, and shirt that peeped out from under his coat. He looked scared. Then he opened his mouth, revealing his pink gums. He had the scratchy voice of a pubescent teenager. He spoke in a way Adriano had never heard before.
“My teeth, Sarge, where are they? My gums burn.”
Adriano was speechless. Where had he come from? Why was he confusing him for a police officer?
“Are these the new prisons, Sarge? If you locked me up in here because of the money they say I owe, I’ll tell you, I’m innocent. They beat me up.”
“Where?”
“In Prato Carbone.”
“No, I mean, where did they hit you?”
“All over, Sarge. They left me more dead than alive. The big field isn’t there no more. Only those tall, ugly buildings.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went home, I was naked. I called my ma, but the officers came right then and there. Are these the new prisons, Sarge?”
“No, these aren’t new prisons. This is a hospital.”
“Does my ma know where I am, Sarge? Am I right? Are you the Sarge?”
“No, I’m a doctor, a physician. What’s your name?”
The boy stared at him, bewildered.
“Lopez, Michelangelo, born on the second of February, 1833. I work at the market.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m seventeen. Sarge, what happened to me?”
“I’ll have the nurse bring you something for your gums.”
His cellphone started vibrating in his coat pocket. It was Aloni. He left the room to answer the call, motioning that he would be right back.
“Karaianni, we’ve searched the database, registers, everything.”
“Searched for what, I beg your pardon?”
“What do you mean, “for what?” This Lopez kid! You see, it looks like he’s telling the truth. We’ve found record of a Michelangelo Lopez born on February 2, 1833 who died in 1850. He was killed. He was seventeen.”
“How did you find out?”
“Have you ever heard of Oration and Death?”
“No. What is it?”
“It was a brotherhood. Good Christians who used to pick up unclaimed bodies and bring them to the holy field. They annotated everything. From 1538 to 1896. Almost four hundred years. They buried over ten thousand bodies. Just think of the chaos if all of them come back to life.”
“And Michelangelo?”
“Listen. I’ll read it: ‘On June 21, Michelangelo Lopez, of via Anicia, seventeen years of age, fruit seller, killed by stab wounds in a field of the property of Prato Carbone, beyond the farm houses of Martigliana, 2 kilometers beyond the gates of San Luca. He was tied to a plank and carried to the Cemetery of Santa Maria del Rosario, known as la Parrocchietta.”
“That’s right, that’s what he just told me.”
“This is madness, Karaianni. They’re coming back to life from the 1800s.”