Limbo

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It’s snowing in Turin. When the Alitalia ATR lands at Turin-Caselle Airport, the windows are streaked with ice. Manuela deftly maneuvers her crutches down the aisle and the sloping exit ramp, carrying her bag herself and refusing the help of the steward assigned to the disabled. She’s wearing her uniform for the first time in several days, and her Norwegian cap with the eagle in the center. People turn to look at her as she crosses the arrivals hall. Tall, thin, a perfectly pressed uniform, polished boots, gold epaulets—and crutches. But no one recognizes her. When people see an injured soldier, they think: athlete with a torn meniscus. The four thousand soldiers eating dust and TNT in central Asia exist only for their families.

For forty-five minutes, as the taxi fords the traffic, dodging trucks stuck in the snow on the bypass, she chats with Mattia on her cell, giving him an up-to-the-minute report of her journey. It’s always a treat to take a comfortable civilian airplane after those C-130s and Chinook helicopters. She spent nearly three months in the Turin hospital, but it seems as if she’s seeing the city for the first time. The river is wide, the trams deafening and cumbersome, the avenues sketched with snow, the balconyless buildings sealed up like battlements. “Why didn’t you come with me?” she asks all of a sudden. “You didn’t ask me.” Turin is white, geometric, cold. The symmetry of the streets and the repetitiveness of the intersections suggest an immutable order and make her feel safe. “Would you have come?” Manuela asks in astonishment as she rummages in her pocket for her wallet. “Even if you had to sit and wait for me in the lobby all day?” “Listen, Manuela,” Mattia starts to say, “there are a lot of things I should have told you. But it was all so new, you can’t start something on the end of something else, it wasn’t because I lacked courage, but because I trusted you so much.” “Forty euros, do you need a receipt?” the taxi driver says, pulling up in front of the military hospital gate. “Yes, please,” Manuela says, even though she doubts they will reimburse travel expenses, and then to Mattia, “What are you trying to tell me? I don’t understand.” “Good luck,” he says. “Just relax, it will all be fine.”

The hospital again. The ticking of her crutches on the opaque marble floor again. The high windows. The perpetual glare of the livid neon lights. The dark uniforms against the white walls. The guard’s glass booth at the entranceway. The Dardo and Mangusta helicopter posters. The Armed Forces calendar on the glass door of the ward. The smell of disinfectant. The sadness of injured bodies moving up and down hallways. Legs, clavicles, vertebrae imprisoned in plaster casts, braces, collars. Bones compromised by accident or disease. Disharmony, imperfection, pain. It feels like months have gone by, but it’s only been twenty days. “Welcome back, Sergeant,” Nurse Scilito greets her merrily. “What did Santa Claus bring you?” “Love, I think,” she says laughingly.

“Lucky you,” Scilito sighs, gesturing to the door. They’ve gotten her old room ready for her, but she hopes she won’t need it. The last flight for Rome isn’t until after nine. The medical evaluation board is waiting for her. She wants to get it over with as soon as possible. She goes in.

They test her knee and ankle function, then send her underground to the radiology department. She hangs her uniform on a hook and stiffens in front of the X-ray machine in just her underwear. She holds her breath. She’s had so many X-rays! And every time the doctor holds those black sheets up against the light, revealing the crumbled imprint of her bones. The white part—which should show her kneecap, fibula, tibia, malleolus—breaks off, as if whoever drew it had lifted his pencil from the page, and fades to black: a sign that her fractures had not healed. But a myriad of dark stars dot the X-ray. Metal fragments, the shrapnel still inside her. “You can get dressed now, thank you,” says the voice of the radiologist, barricaded behind a protective wall. “Can’t you tell me anything?” she asks without much hope. The radiologist has already seen. He already knows.

She goes from one building to the next, from one wing to the next. She subjects herself patiently, as docile as a lamb, to every kind of test, including an encephalon-rachis-cervical-lumbosacral MRI. She emerges from the radioactive shadows of the basement into the brightness of the surgical orthopedics ward. She goes from one specialist to another, finally ends up in the secluded neurologist’s room. When she enters, he’s talking on the phone with his daughter, he’s in no hurry to deal with her and lets her wait, on the edge of her seat, nervous, angry with that girl, or woman, who demands her father’s attention and delays the truth. They stick probes in her knee, apply electrodes to her skull and clamps to her heart. She explains to the physical therapist that she has been scrupulous about doing her rehab, and it’s worked: her crutches are a habit now more than anything else, they reassure her, but she doesn’t really need them, in fact she’s thinking of buying herself a cane. Her foot is responding well, she can walk, though still only for short distances. Her knee is stiff, that’s true. But the movement is fluid and harmonious. Her back isn’t bothering her, neither are her vertebrae. She’s about to tell him she made love curled up on her epistropheus, contorting herself like a snake, without breaking in two, but refrains: military ethics.

She answers the same questions over and over. She tells the truth, but not all of it. She downplays the pain—which, every time she walks on the beach, stabs at her heels so sharply it paralyzes her, forcing her to rest. She mitigates but doesn’t hide certain unpleasant symptoms: muscular tone weakness, dizziness, loss of balance. Lying on the table inside the MRI capsule, she tells herself that science is a utopia and machines are of no use. They’re X-raying her brain, and will be able to see the tiniest abnormalities. But they can’t see the only thing that’s really in there, a strange man who says his name is Mattia Rubino.

At two, Colonel Rocca, the president of the medical evaluation board, invites her to the officers’ mess. A withered man with huge ears and curly lobes, piggy eyes. He has a reputation as an old-school officer who’s still not used to the idea of women in the armed forces, so the invitation surprises her. There’s no one in the mess because the hospital is still practically empty after the holidays. She eats a bland risotto and some overly salted braised beef that makes her thirsty all afternoon. The colonel informs her that General Ercoli will be coming up from Rome tomorrow. He’s expecting her at the Pinerolo barracks at eleven. “Tomorrow?” she asks, disappointed. The last plane for Fiumicino will take off without her. And she won’t sleep with Mattia tonight. “Perhaps there’s been some mistake,” she tells him, “I don’t think I know General Ercoli, and I’m not in the Taurinense Alpini Brigade. I’m in Julia, Tenth Regiment, from Belluno, I’m being treated here instead of Belluno on Colonel Minotto’s advice.” “General Astorre assured me that you have a very high IQ,” Rocca says bitterly. “He’s clearly mistaken.” Manuela nervously jabs her braised beef with her knife. Who is this Ercoli? She’s never heard of him before. And what does he want from her?

At four she meets with the psychologist. She’s nervous and her heart is beating too quickly—she fears this exam even more than the X-rays, the MRI, or CAT scan. She wants and needs to seem cured, capable, of sound mind. If the psychologist decides she’s still suffering from PTSD, that it has become chronic, she can forget going back to active duty. No more in-country tours. Offices, orderly rooms, dying of boredom in some provincial barracks. A desk jockey, more or less. And not even twenty-eight years old. The best, the perfect age for a soldier. Not too young and not too old. The summer of one’s life. She forces a smile. She looks for affirmation in the gray eyes of the mustached man sitting behind the desk, but finds only an inexpressive, impenetrable wall. The psychologist asks her how her insomnia is, if there have been any incidents of vomiting during the night. “I’m sleeping better,” she replies, “and the vomiting has decreased, only three or four times in twenty days.” (Honesty, she thinks, you’re not being honest, Sergeant Paris. Nine times, you have vomited nine times.) “Medication?” “I’m taking the drops,” she explains, “but really more out of habit, out of fear, than necessity.” “Flashbacks? Numbing? Nightmares? Hyperarousal? Emotional anesthesia?”

“Pretty good,” she says, “numbing only once.” Some intrusive flashbacks, but she considers their effect positive because they have helped her overcome her amnesia and restored her memory. Stress is more or less under control, and she is no longer emotionally detached. She can’t tell him about Mattia, or that perhaps—probably—she has fallen in love. In a certain sense for the first time. She has never experienced such powerful emotions. She feels an irresistible urge to say his name. To touch him. She blushes when Mattia looks at her. And she feels herself blossom like a rose when she looks at him. But a soldier keeps her emotions to herself, so she simply assures him that the resumption of old habits, going home, being in a familiar place, but one that is extraneous to her professional life, has been very good for her, just as he had predicted.

“And your aggression?” the psychologist asks without looking at her. “Colonel Minotto informed us about the unfortunate incident you were involved in.” “I’m pretty good at keeping it under control; unfortunately, that day I lost it. I made a mistake. I don’t know why it happened. But I didn’t try to hide it, I notified my superiors immediately, I called Captain Paggiarin that same evening. The captain, I mean the major, tried to reassure me. He helped a lot.” The psychologist jots down something on the piece of paper in front of him. The Torvaianica goalie’s father appears before her eyes, cowering in the mud, all curled up in an attempt to escape the pain. She would curl up like that, too, in her hospital bed, when the painkillers wore off and her shattered bones seemed to want to pierce her skin and climb outside of her. “Nurse!” she would cry. “Nurse!” The nurse explained that she was trying to get into what is called an analgesic position, but that it was bad for her. She had to remain in traction. Finally they hung her leg from the ceiling with a pulley, and anchored her neck to the bed. They crucified her. “The victims still haven’t filed against me,” she notes. “So it seems less serious to you if the people you attacked don’t turn you in?” the psychologist insinuates. “No, it’s very serious,” she whispers. “But it won’t ever happen again, I know it, I’m absolutely certain, you have to allow me one mistake, just one.”

“And have you done your homework?” he interrupts her. “Did you bring me your self-monitoring diary?” “I haven’t had much time to write,” she confesses. “But I’ve thought a lot about the things you told me, I’ve done the cognitive reconstruction exercises in my head. I’ve recognized my automatic thoughts, have focused on goals, I’ve practiced what you called exposure. You remember how I really didn’t want to go to the baptism of Diego Jodice’s baby? You told me I had to address my avoidant behavior and take advantage of an event like that to relive the trauma, that it could help me. Well, I went to the baptism, I saw the guys from my platoon, and it happened. I relived everything. It was incredibly painful, but it did me a lot of good. I’m definitely better now.” She repeats it several times, and it’s true. He has to believe her.

The psychologist takes notes. Manuela cranes her neck but can’t decipher the words he covers the paper with. His handwriting is tiny, cryptographic practically. “I feel freer now,” she explains, “it’s been a while since I’ve had a crisis.” “How long is a while?” the psychologist asks. “Well, since I’ve been home,” she says with conviction, because the fainting spell in the Parco Leonardo dressing room seems so remote to her now. “I can talk about what happened to me. I’ve remembered a lot of things, even the sequence of the attack, I can handle the memory, I can live with it, accept it. It’s a part of me now. I realize that I’ll never be able to erase it, I’ll carry it inside of me my whole life, but that doesn’t scare me. I feel I’m a stronger person now.”

The psychologist asks her if she considers herself capable of handling a new situation. “New in what sense?” she asks suspiciously. “A radical change,” the psychologist explains. Manuela thinks about Mattia. But the psychologist probably means something completely different. “Yes,” she says, “I think so.”

* * *

“When are you coming back?” Mattia asks her when she’s finally able to call him. It’s 8:53 p.m. Her meeting with the psychologist lasted nearly five hours. “Tomorrow afternoon, I hope,” she says to him, “I still have one more appointment, and then I have to get my leave stamped. It expires tomorrow, you know, but they’ll give me an extension. I still can’t return to active duty.” Her voice echoes too loudly in the silence of the hospital. Darkness sticks to the buildings. In the pavilion across the street only one light is on, and the solitary window looks like a lantern in the night. “I’ll pick you up at the airport,” Mattia says. “Let me know which plane you’re on.” “So you found your driver’s license?” she asks. Jokingly, because it seemed funny to her that a forty-year-old man would go out without any form of ID. “I don’t have a license,” Mattia says. “I mean, I have one, but they have to issue me a new one, it’s a bit complicated to explain, but what’s the worst that could happen? At most they’ll give me a ticket, and I’d have to be really unlucky to run into the cops, it’s only a few miles to Fiumicino from here. I want to come get you, it means a lot to me.”

“Who is Marco?” she asks, gesturing to Nurse Scilito to leave her dinner tray on the table. “Why?” he asks after a second’s pause. “The other night while you were sleeping, you called out to him.” “I don’t remember,” he glosses over her question. “I’ve told you everything and you haven’t told me anything about yourself,” Manuela says. “Sometimes I feel like I’m with no one and it scares me.”

No reaction. Silence. For a few seconds all she hears are the nurses laughing in the hallway, and Thom Yorke’s voice in the distance, singing I’m lost at sea, don’t bother me, I’ve lost my way, I’ve lost my way. She really hit home. “Who are you?” she asks. “You know how to transform fear into energy, Manuela,” Mattia tells her. “So you’re also capable of facing a man without a shadow. Because that’s what happened to me, more or less. I don’t cast a shadow, I lack substance, I’m empty, there’s nothing inside me.”

“So you’ve been bit by the camel spider,” Manuela says. “Did I tell you I killed dozens of them in Bala Bayak? They would hide in our helmets and shower shoes. They’re real scary-looking, a cross between a spider and a scorpion. They’re afraid of the light and are always looking for dark spots. They follow you, to hide in your shadow. An Afghani I knew—the only Afghani I knew, the interpreter, his name was Ghaznavi—said that according to legend, if a camel spider bites you, it steals your shadow, in other words your soul.” “That must be what happened,” Mattia allows. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Manuela says, changing her tone, “it’s too important to talk about over the phone, when we’re three hundred miles apart.” Mattia says that in truth there’s really not much else to talk about. When she hangs up, she’s sorry she didn’t say something a little more intimate. I miss you, too, I think about you all the time, I think I love you, something along those lines. But she has never been able to talk like that.

* * *

General Ercoli doesn’t waste any time on formalities. Sitting in a swivel chair, stiff in his ribbon-covered uniform, he tells her that someone spoke to him about her—but he’s careful not to say who. Manuela Paris’s human qualities and professional competence have not passed unobserved. In the highly likely event that she is declared permanently unfit for military service and discharged, she will still have an opportunity to serve her country. “But I don’t want to be in the reserves!” she says impulsively, then immediately falls silent, turning red in the face at the incredible lack of discipline she has just shown in interrupting a general. It’s just that she is shocked. Is this mellifluous dinosaur telling her they’ve already thrown her out? Without even awaiting her test results and the board’s recommendation? Or does he already know what they are thinking? Have they already made up their minds? “In the highly likely event that you are discharged,” General Ercoli continues, pretending not to have noticed her outburst, “you still have the opportunity to serve your country. Might you be interested?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Manuela says, making an effort to stay calm. To control herself. She used to be able to do it. Interested in joining national intelligence? A position of great responsibility and much sought after. “We receive hundreds of letters every day, from aspiring volunteers. But you have to be recruited. Naturally the job demands total commitment. But you’ve always said you feel you were born for operational life and want to dedicate yourself to serving your country.” “Wow, I really haven’t thought about this,” Manuela says. She doesn’t know how to react. She certainly can’t blow him off right away, on the spot, without knowing who sent him and why. Without knowing if they have already thrown her out of her life, without any hope, or if she’s still a sergeant. She would like to explain that a soldier is the opposite of a spy. There was an intelligence guy in Sollum, the same rank as her, who for six months did nothing but spy on the officers and enlisted men, meet with shady characters, and act as if he owned the place. He didn’t deign to speak to us and no one ever found out his name.

“You don’t have to decide right away,” the general says. “Think it over. Sleep on it. We’ll be in touch.” Manuela gets up. She wants to run away, but she forces herself to express her gratitude for the opportunity she has been offered. She handles it well, the general will never know what is going through her head. This is the way a soldier behaves. “Yes, sir,” she finally says, clicking her heels and bringing her hand to her hat in salute. I don’t need to sleep on it, she should have said. I’ve already decided. The answer is never. I’m an Alpino, and always will be, even if I never go out on patrol with my men again, even if I never end up in some distant outpost that looks out over nothing. Alpini are in trenches and under fire. Alpini build roads and dig through rubble and even pick up trash. We don’t serve politicians, we serve Italy. We don’t have secrets and we do our duty in the light of day. We wear our past on our uniforms, and not merely in our ribbons and badges: and anyone can read it. Our names are sewn onto our uniforms, right over our hearts.

* * *

When she tries calling Mattia, a little after eight, there’s no answer. She lets it ring for almost two minutes. Maybe he’s still running on the beach, and he can’t hear it over the sound of the waves. Or maybe he’s in the shower. She tries again at nine, but at that point the voice mail picks up. “Hi, it’s me,” she says, a bit uncertain, “where did you go? Good thing you were going to sit by your phone waiting to hear how things are going here … When the cat’s away the mice will play, right? And to think that I’m all alone here, in a hospital room … It’s freezing cold, dead silent, I’m the only one on the whole floor. Anyway, I wanted to say that we’ve spent so much time together that it feels strange not having you here. Okay, call me if you get this message, I’ll leave my phone on, have a good night.” When she turns out the light two hours later, the display on her cell still emits an azure glow, like a little altar. But no calls.

That night, in her room on the second floor of the military hospital in Turin, she dreams of Mattia for the first time. He’s sitting on her bed, naked, in a completely empty space. It’s not room 302 of the Bellavista, or the mattress at Passo Oscuro, or any other place they’ve been together. The walls are gray and there’s only one window, high up, a dull light coming through it. Mattia is looking in her direction, but he doesn’t seem to be expecting her. “Mattia?” she calls. “Sorry I’m late, I got held up.” He stares without seeing her, as if she were talking to someone else. She calls him again but he doesn’t answer. She starts to run, but the room seems to expand, it becomes a hallway with no way out, and the bed on which Mattia is sitting retreats into the distance, so that no matter how far she runs—light-footed, pushing with both legs, like before June 8, a feeling that fills her with an irrepressible joy—she can’t seem to reach him. And then the gray walls disappear, she’s on the beach in Ladispoli, the raging sea is pounding the shore, the tower is crumbling and she tries to hold it up with her shoulder. She hears a roar, and bricks and bones come crashing down all together.

* * *

At ten the doctor summons her. She’s eager to know her test results and at the same time she never wants to know. There are moments that break a life in two, and this could be one of them. Her file is on his desk. The medical evaluation board has expressed a provisory opinion. Three noes, two maybes, and one yes. “No what?” Manuela asks. “Three of the specialists think there is no possibility that you will fully recover, either at the physical or psychological level. They’ve suggested another year of leave—the maximum allowable by law—after which you’ll be declared permanently unfit for service. Two of them, thanks to your youth and force of character, think you have recovered surprisingly well, and they have suggested you be discharged, placed in the reserves, that is, as provided for by law, and assigned to office duties in the barracks of a nonoperational regiment.” “Is this a joke?” she asks. The blood drains from her face. In the reserves at twenty-eight? It’s worse than death. “One thinks you need to continue your rehab and psychotherapy, because you might be able to recover, medicine’s not an exact science, and you’re very young, so, if no complications arise, he thinks you could be reassigned to your regiment, on regular duty, maintaining your rank and duties.”

One. One in six thinks she can still be Sergeant Paris. God bless him! Who is it? The orthopedist? The neurologist? The colonel? “In short,” the doctor concludes, “they didn’t reach a consensus and are taking more time. They have judged you temporarily unfit for military service, and granted you leave for another six months.”

“But I can’t stay in limbo for another six months!” she blurts out. Lost time. Wasted time. So much can be done in six months. Six months is a tour of duty. An eternity. “Hey, Paris, calm down,” the lieutenant says. “Look, it turned out pretty well. Six months ago you were in pieces. A wreck. Your head was a mess. No one would have bet a cent on you. They’ve given you another chance. Take it easy. Look after your leg, look after your mind. Take a vacation. Go to the beach, enjoy life. Do whatever you want. You’re scheduled to meet with the medical evaluation board again on July 12, here. If you’re really better, you’ll be reassigned to your regiment. Rest assured, they won’t let you go so easily.”

“So I can go home?” she asks. The lieutenant hands her her stamped leave. Home, she’d said. Home is the Belluno barracks. But for the first time in years, she meant Ladispoli when she said home. The waterfront, the black sand, the tower, Mattia. She stuffs her toothbrush and pajamas into her bag. At the elevator she runs into Nurse Scilito. “Farewell, Sergeant Stan,” he says. “Why farewell?” she laughs. “Because you won’t be back,” he says. “They always do this. They extend your convalescence hoping that you’ll be the one to ask to be discharged. You’re a woman, you’re young. They’re counting on the fact that you will decide to focus on your family, that you’ll get pregnant, that you’ll make yourself unfit on your own.” “What a strange way to see things, a conspiracy theory,” Manuela says, unperturbed by the nurse’s insinuations. She feels optimistic. Positive. “I accept their verdict. I’m taking six months’ vacation. I’ll be back in July. You can count on it. See you.”

She turns on her cell in the taxi. Three messages. At 12:45 a call from an unknown number. At 1:00 and 1:05 Vanessa called. It must not have been urgent, because then she gave up. Mattia’s cell is off. She sends him a text to let him know she’s on her way to the airport, she’ll catch the first flight home. The snow is melting. There are dirty piles along the street and on the roofs of the industrial warehouses. Why not? she says to herself as Turin slips past the window, already swallowed up by a gray fog—neighborhoods with signs in Arabic, halal butchers, kebabs rotating on spits, twelve-story buildings, straight streets, crowded tram stops, and bearded men and veiled women, whose presence alienates her. A six-month vacation. She’s never taken a real vacation in her life. Never gone on a trip. Never been to Paris. Or London or Berlin or anywhere else. Just one town in Kosovo. And Afghanistan. The most inconvenient and dangerous country in the world. Six months all to myself. To get to know Mattia, the man with no shadow. To live, finally. There’s a line at the ticket counter. Unhappy passengers eager to file who knows what kind of complaint make her lose time. The first seat she can get is on the 6:45 p.m. flight. When she places her cell in the tray at security, she sees that she still hasn’t gotten any messages. Mattia’s phone is still off.

The red light goes on, a beeper sounds, something’s not right. A policewoman comes up to her and rudely orders her to raise her hands. She obeys. The policewoman pats her down with professional immodesty, her gloves going from her armpits to her ankles and buttocks, but doesn’t find anything unusual. She orders Manuela to turn around and go through the metal detector again. But the red light goes on again, again the alarm sounds. Manuela turns out her pockets—empty—and she’s not wearing a watch or earrings or a pendant. Then she gets it. “I have four titanium plates in my leg and I don’t know how many screws,” she says. “Maybe that’s what’s setting off the alarm.” The policewoman can’t take her word for it, she has to see her medical records, her X-rays. “They’re at the military hospital,” Manuela says, “I can’t take them with me.” The policewoman doesn’t know what to do. The people in line behind her are growing impatient. Some are in danger of missing their flights. So—even though she’s standing under neon lights with hundreds of annoyed, intolerant eyes glaring at her—Manuela pulls up her pant leg, rolls down her sock, and shows the policewoman her scar. The woman looks away and gestures for her to go through.

Manuela whiles away the hours watching the departures board. Compared with the one in Dubai, the Turin airport, recently renovated for the Olympics, is small, provincial, modest. But reading the list of flight destinations makes her happy. Istanbul. Katowice. Barcelona. Casablanca. The world is at once big and close at hand. She daydreams about going somewhere with Mattia. About traveling for two or three months, getting to know Europe. She’d like to go to Spain, to Vilnius, to the Baltic Sea. The Spanish and Lithuanians were under the Italians at Regional Command West, they’d come through Sollum on the way to their bases, they all got along well. She’d talked about Beethoven in English with a female sergeant who had the strange and beautiful name of Fuensanta. She was Catalan and played the violin. What is Mattia really like? Does he know how to adapt, can he handle the unexpected, the inconveniences, the differences? A trip is like a particle accelerator. A chemical detector. There’s nothing like travel for getting to know someone. But they understand each other, it will work out. They’ve hardly said anything to each other, but life is stronger than words and it bursts forth everywhere. They’ve said even more than they needed to. In some way they’ve chosen each other. She feels oddly free.

* * *

She gets to the arrivals terminal at Fiumicino at 8:12 p.m. A bunch of guys are crowded near the sliding doors, leaning against the barriers, waving signs for passengers on her flight. A pharmaceutical company is waiting for Mr. Takeshita. A travel agency for Mr. and Mrs. Robertson. A Rome hotel shuttle for Mr. Di Donato. Then there’s a father waiting for his son, and a kid with a ponytail waiting for his girlfriend, who, as soon as she sees him, all but flies to meet him, leaping into his arms. Young love is a feast for the eyes. But she doesn’t see Mattia anywhere. Maybe he’s late. Now that the holidays are over, there’s traffic in Fiumicino at this hour, with all the commuters heading out of Rome. But he still hasn’t sent her a message and his cell is still off.

She waits patiently, trustingly, without letting herself be assailed by anxiety. She sits on a stool at the bar near the bookstore, orders an orange juice, then a sandwich, then a coffee. She doesn’t take her eyes off the glass doors that lead to the street for even a second, as if Mattia’s massive frame might appear out of the darkness at any moment. Disheveled, smiling, maybe with a new pair of glasses. He was really upset about losing those glasses at the Real Ladis soccer field. When she asked him why he wore sunglasses even on a rainy day and in the evening, he said that he suffered from photophobia, that light really bothered him. She hadn’t believed him. But she didn’t press the issue, because she didn’t want to force him to lie. She thinks again, this time with a chill, about the camel spider. Can you really lose your shadow? And if you do, how can you find it again, your shadow—or your soul? There’s nothing in the legend about that, it’s gone for good.

The glass doors open constantly. Gypsy cabdrivers, chauffeurs, passengers with suitcases who have taken the wrong exit or are desperately looking for the escalators to the train tunnel, friends, relatives, suspicious characters, maybe even thieves: the whole world seems to be at the Fiumicino arrivals terminal. Everyone but Mattia. She tries calling him at the hotel. And she chastizes herself for not having thought of it earlier. No one answers. The phone at the Bellavista just rings and rings. At 9:50 Manuela pays for her orange juice and coffee, gets in a cab, and has the driver take her home. The signs at the Bellavista are dark, the door locked. The hotel is closed.

Her mother is working the night shift at the roadside diner and Vanessa is spending the night somewhere. Alessia is at Uncle Vincenzo’s. Grandma Leda can’t tell her what happened, she didn’t notice anything. Manuela stays out on the balcony until midnight, anxious, staring stubbornly at the lowered shutters of the room across the way. In the end, she puts out her cigarette in the potting soil, dilutes her sleeping drops in water, and resigns herself to going to bed. Mattia isn’t there.

* * *

Vanessa wakes her up at noon, shaking her by the shoulder. She slept for twelve hours. A deep sleep, without nightmares but also without dreams. “I made you some coffee, honey,” she says and—without giving her time to ask any questions—disappears into the kitchen. Manuela takes her time. She has the feeling she needs to delay her encounter with her sister. Something bad has happened. And she’s afraid she doesn’t have the strength to face it. She wallows under the shower, puts on her sweats, and when she finally sits down at the kitchen table, her coffee is like cold dishwater. “They took him away, hon,” Vanessa says. “I don’t know exactly when it happened, I wasn’t here. Yesterday I realized that the Bellavista was closed.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” Manuela asks. All of her serenity of these past days has disappeared. She snaps a cracker in two. She has to keep herself from screaming. “Listen, I don’t know what happened,” Vanessa says as she loads the cups and glasses from her mother’s and grandmother’s breakfast into the dishwasher. “The police were here, they asked me questions, they wanted to know who he spent time with, where he went. I told the truth, that I know him, that we even went out with Mamma and Alessia, that he spent time with our family, that you had been seeing a lot of him these past few weeks, I didn’t say that you two were an item, but I think they already knew.”

“But who? Why?” Manuela blurts out. “I don’t know, they were really rude, they probably want to question you, too.” “Where is he, Vanè? Where is he?” Manuela practically shouts. Vanessa collapses into her chair. “I don’t know where he is. Yesterday, it must have been around one o’clock, because Alessia was on her way home from school and I was here making her lunch, he called. He said your cell was off so he was calling me.” “I was talking to the doctor, fuck!” Manuela exclaims. “He had to tell me what the medical evaluation board decided. I never turn off my phone, but I had to then, out of respect, it was important.… So that call from an unknown number at 12:45 was him.”

“He was calling from a phone booth,” Vanessa said. “He was really nervous. He was in a rush, super-abrupt. He said he couldn’t tell me where he was and that I had to say two things to you. The first is that you have to talk to Gianni, the waiter at the Bellavista. He has something for you.”

“And the second?” Manuela asks. Vanessa bites her nails. The blue speckled nail polish from New Year’s is chipping off. She avoids Manuela’s gaze. “I don’t know how to say this, honey, it’s really hard.” Hard? thinks Manuela. “It can’t be harder than what I’ve been through.” “But it is. He said not to look for him.”

* * *

Gianni Tribolato lives in the middle of the artichoke fields, on an out-of-the way farm on reclaimed land, patrolled by a dozen snarling dogs that surround Vanessa’s Yaris, pissing on the tires and rubbing their teeth on the body. Without his white uniform and bow tie, in gardener’s gloves and rubber boots, the Bellavista waiter looks like what he probably would have been had he not attended hotel school: a hearty farmworker. With a surprisingly small voice unsuited for his rough, stocky frame, he silences the dogs and guides Vanessa and Manuela to the house, apologizing for the mess. He’s a good waiter, but a lousy housekeeper. Then again, no one ever comes here.

Empty bottles everywhere, flasks of wine, and ashtrays full of cigarette butts, bags of fertilizer, spades, rakes, pruning shears, and two fat cats splayed on the only couch in the living room. There’s also an old man in a wheelchair, apparently not devoid of his senses, who wags his head and opens his mouth when he sees the Paris sisters come in. “My father,” Gianni says. “He had a stroke, unfortunately, and lost the ability to speak.” So this is why Gianni was so chatty at the hotel; at home he went for hours without hearing a human voice. He doesn’t have a wife, his animals are his family. So this is why he bonded right away with Mr. Rubino. Loners understand each other.

He doesn’t really know how to explain what happened. The hotel usually closes in the winter, because in January, once the holidays are over, it’s really dead. But this year the company informed them that they would stay open. The owner was pretty pleased with the arrangement because high season had been abysmal—the recession meant a sixty percent drop in reservations this year—and with this unexpected change at least operational costs would be covered. But then on Thursday evening, it must have been around eight, the police showed up. He saw them arrive because he was in the kitchen, whiling away the time till dinner with Adel, the Egyptian cook. Not that they had “police” written on their foreheads. Plainclothes policemen, completely normal-looking, no uniforms or squad car. But they flashed their cards at the concierge. Two of them stayed in the lobby while one went up to room 302. Ten minutes later Mr. Rubino came down with his suitcase and computer bag. He said he wanted to talk with Gianni, but they said there was no time. Mr. Rubino started shouting, he was completely beside himself. This surprised Gianni because Mattia was always so polite, a real gentleman. He’d been working at the restaurant for thirty years, he had a lot of experience, and Mr. Rubino was a rare sort of guest. It was clear that he was upper class, but he knew how to act with everyone, and he even enjoyed talking with Gianni, a simple soul, a waiter. Gianni knew his conversational skills were limited, so he told him anecdotes about Ladispoli and his cats. Mr. Rubino really loved cats. The concierge called him and Gianni came out of the kitchen and Mr. Rubino said he wanted to have a word with him alone so they stepped into the restaurant. It was closed—there weren’t any customers—they talked in there, among the tables in the gloom.

Mr. Rubino said he had to go away. He thanked him for having taken such good care of him and then he gave him a big tip. Unfortunately he didn’t have time to say goodbye to his friends who lived across the way, Miss Vanessa Paris and her daughter, Alessia, and he was very sorry. He begged him to say goodbye to the little girl and to tell her that the Cat had to go on one of his voyages for the Marquis of Carabas, but that he would help her find her teeth soon. She had to touch her gums with her finger every evening, and every time she felt the bump grow a bit, she should think of the Cat, because the Cat was thinking of her. “That’s exactly what he said,” Gianni swears on his father’s head. It was an odd conversation, but Mr. Rubino was really shaken up. Then he begged Gianni to keep something that belonged to Sergeant Paris. And not to tell anyone—not a soul—that he had given it to him. And to give it to her as soon as he saw her. He had to give it directly to her, not to anyone else, ever. The “something” is an iPhone box. Manuela shakes it, but there’s no phone inside.

“He didn’t tell you anything else, for me?” Manuela asks. Her mouth is dry, her heart topsy-turvy. She feels she’s in a bizarre, evil dream. The cats brush against her legs, their yellow eyes glisten in the dark living room. “No, I’m sorry,” Gianni says. “Mr. Rubino was really upset. That’s for sure. I think he didn’t want to go, but that it wasn’t up to him. Then he got in a dark car, and the two who had stayed in the lobby showed us their cards and questioned us, first the concierge, then me, then Adel. They asked us all the same questions, we talked about it afterward. They wanted to know who Mr. Rubino had seen in Ladispoli, who knew he was at the Bellavista, who had called him. Oh, and if we had noticed anything unusual. Suspicious characters, people not from around here. I’m just a waiter, I explained, other than our regular clients, everyone is from somewhere else, this is a beach town. They wanted to see the reservations, and wrote down the names. They criticized us because we don’t ask for a phone number when someone reserves a table, but I explained that this is a simple place, and besides, we’re never full in the off season, if someone who reserved doesn’t show up, no harm done. The concierge recalled that last Monday two men came asking if we had a room. He couldn’t take reservations—the company had informed him that the hotel was reserved—and so he told them no. The men took a good look around. According to the concierge, they weren’t tourists and they weren’t interested in a room, but there are lots of strange people around, and he assumed they were our competition, come to spy on the new décor.”

Vanessa and Manuela decline his offer of coffee or an aperitif. Unfortunately they’re in a hurry to get back, they say. Gianni apologizes if he chattered on too long, he’s a gossip, everybody always tells him, even Mr. Rubino. The Paris sisters thank him and wish him a pleasant vacation. “This is my vacation,” he sighs, gesturing to his father, the dogs, and the cats. He is a sad, kind man, and it occurs to Manuela that he was Mattia’s only interlocutor for all those days, and then they stole Mattia away from him. Mattia talked with Gianni Tribolato every morning and every evening—about inconsequential yet necessary things. About spaghetti, clams, mascarpone cake, cats, nothing at all. Mattia said something to the Bellavista waiter, something just for him, but for her not a word.

As soon as Vanessa starts up the car and pulls into the bumpy track that cuts through the artichoke fields and connects with the main road, Manuela opens the box. Inside is a packet of letters, all in envelopes from the Bellavista Hotel. And on each one is written—by hand—MANUELA PARIS, nothing more. No stamp, no address.