35

Why should these people have to die? thought Alex as he sipped his tea from a chipped mug.

Agnese rummaged through the bag that her husband had brought and pulled out all sorts of things: tubes of tomato sauce, canned vegetables, sliced bread, bags of potato chips, trays of cold cuts, bottled fruit juices. Then she started setting the table as if for a banquet, to keep the little boys from understanding the gravity of the situation and to offer her guests a decent meal, even if it was made with food that had come by chance.

It’s not fair for it to end like this.

Jenny heard Alex’s thought. She shared everything he thought. She had a hard time eating, even as hungry as she was. The tension never let up. She took a couple of slices of bread and spread tuna pâté over them. Every mouthful seemed to get stuck at the bottom of her throat, refusing to travel all the way into her stomach.

After dinner, Giovanni and Agnese made coffee. As if nothing were wrong, in spite of what the old man had said about the war. Ada, the old man’s wife, stayed in her armchair the whole time, refusing to eat, a gentle, resigned smile stamped on her face.

Before serving coffee, Agnese called the two boys and accompanied them upstairs. Jenny had just come out of the bathroom and, through the half-open door of the two brothers’ bedroom, she saw the woman lean forward and tuck them in.

‘Goodnight, my little angels,’ she whispered before kissing them on the forehead. Jenny turned away and started back into her room when a drawing on their bedroom door stopped her in her tracks. It was a rudimentary sketch of every member of the family. At the bottom was written We love you. Next to that were the signatures of the two boys. As she choked back her tears, she visualised Alex’s apocalyptic drawing, a reminder of the fate that awaited the human race.

It was the last night for them all. It was the eve of the world’s end.

‘Goodnight, kids. Agnese will show you to the guest bedroom.’ Carlo flashed them a smile, and Alex and Jenny smiled back.

‘They’re going to invade us tomorrow, I can feel it …’ said the grandfather, both elbows propped on the table and his gaze lost in the distance.

Agnese led them to a bedroom, then bid them goodnight and disappeared.

Alex and Jenny shut the door behind them.

In front of them, there was a king-size bed with a rolled-up brown blanket serving as a pillow, and a white feather quilt covering the mattress. A large wardrobe on the other side of the room was so tall that it almost grazed the ceiling. All around them, on the walls, vintage fountain pens were displayed in small frames.

Jenny sat down on the edge of the bed, turned her back to Alex, and said nothing as he took off his sweater, folded it, and placed it on a chair next to the door. Beside her was a window with the blinds shut tight.

Shouts seemed to filter in from the road outside. Perhaps some people had decided to break the curfew. Perhaps someone else had decided to go out and loot stores to find food.

‘It’s cold,’ said Jenny in a small voice.

Alex placed his hands on the cold metal of one of the radiators. ‘Have you ever thought about it?’

‘About what?’ Jenny replied, without turning around.

‘About all this. A home, a family, children of your own. A normal life …’

Jenny looked up and smiled, with a sigh. ‘I don’t know … yes, maybe. Turn off the light.’

Alex flipped the switch by the door, and went over to the other side of the bed to peer through the gaps between the slats of the wooden blind.

Meanwhile, Jenny stood up and took off the woollen sweater that Agnese had given her, followed by her pants.

When he turned around, she was in a singlet and underpants. The silhouette of her body blurred into the darkness.

‘You’ll see, everything will turn out fine,’ Alex said to her, betraying some uncertainty, as he put his hands on Jenny’s waist, making her shiver. ‘We’ll find this Memoria.’

‘But what if this is our last night on Earth?’

Jenny placed her hands on Alex’s, then she guided them behind her back. They drew closer, shyly, timidly, in complete darkness.

When their bodies were only centimetres apart, Alex tilted his head to one side and his lips met Jenny’s. They kissed softly, while his hands slid up her back until his fingers were lost in her hair.

‘Do you think that this is our last night together?’ Alex asked, moving away slightly.

She said nothing, sat on the edge of the hard mattress, and lay down, sinking her head into the rolled-up blanket.

Alex placed his knees on the edge of the bed and let himself slide forward, placing his forearms just inches from Jenny’s shoulders. He brushed his lips over her forehead, her nose, and her cheeks, and then he kissed her again.

More shouts rang out from the street, followed by gunfire. From further away came the crackling voice of a loudspeaker. The chaos in the distance had already become the soundtrack to that moment.

They rolled around on the bed for a while as Jenny’s breasts, still covered by her singlet, pressed against Alex’s chest, and the triskelion, icy cold, dangled from her neck.

Jenny got on top of him and took off her singlet. Alex reached around and grabbed the blanket behind his head, unrolled it, and spread it around her shoulders, creating a small tent around them both. They hid underneath that blanket and went on kissing, separated from the rest of the world. They took off all their clothes and lay there for a brief instant without moving, their breathing merging until it was a single breath, their thoughts merging into a single thought.

An instant later, they were sitting hand in hand in the Planetarium, with the light-blue ceiling overhead.

They couldn’t have been any older than four. Jenny’s mother had come back to Italy to see her parents, in Rome. Her grandfather had arranged to take his daughter and granddaughter to spend a day in Milan, where they’d visited the Castello Sforzesco, the Navigli, and the Duomo. They’d gone to the Planetarium, too, practically stumbling across the domed building by accident, inside the public gardens of Porta Venezia. They’d stood in line. Right in front of them were Giorgio and Valeria Loria, with little Alex. When they went in, the two children found themselves sitting side by side. On the armrests, their fingers brushed against each other for the first time, and, with childish innocence, they joined hands. They sat there holding hands for the whole show.

For a few moments, the memory of that afternoon from so many years ago dragged them far away, into the past, without their being able to tell dream from reality.

When they opened their eyes again, they were locked in an embrace, wrapped in the soft, warm quilt.

They made love, just like they’d always dreamed of doing. For the first and perhaps the last time. If anyone could have seen the town from high above, they would have noticed a blinding light shining from that very house. But there was nothing in the sky overhead but an enormous asteroid hurtling towards the Earth’s surface.

They fell asleep under the blanket, arms wrapped around each other, and slept that way through the night, while outside the house, the shouts and gunshots continued to multiply.

It was the last night before the end of the world.