I’ve been driving for over an hour now. I’ve left Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples behind me. The motorway’s practically empty. I’m speeding towards Bari, heading up into the mountains around Avellino, and the air pouring in through the two open windows is cooler than on the coast. Heading due east over the high craggy ground, I’ll soon reach the modern buildings of Avellino. The town is the same age as me, born with the 1980 earthquake. This is where the tremors that devastated Naples and the whole of the Mezzogiorno started, where everything fell dead in a matter of seconds. I pass the exact epicentre of the blast that flattened every house for miles around. The whole place has been rebuilt in the same bland, characterless style, designed with only speed and functionality in mind. Nothing here is beautiful any more – it has lost its sheen. History was buried under the rubble. In the end, the charmless modernity of the place was the ugliest scar left by the disaster.
I cross the green hills of Avellino. I feel ashamed. I have always felt responsible for this tragedy. I can’t tell anyone – they’d think I was mad – but is it really so impossible? Garibaldo’s always repeating the story of Frederick II, as he heard it from the professor. If it’s true, is it not possible that death was provoked by our affront? That day, it shook the earth with all its rage. It swallowed thousands of men, women and children, whole families caught without warning by a collapsing roof or wall. I know it was down to me. Death sought to punish us for our disobedience, to knock down the little men who had dared to defy it. It roared in outrage. A great cloud of dust spread from Naples to Avellino. From Caserta to Matera, the roads were crisscrossed with cracks, and they were the clefts left by death’s anger.
I was born that night, going through my second birth while so many others were meeting their deaths. I screamed like a newborn. The air burnt my lungs a second time. A great roar responded to my cry. I was born, bringing tears and terror to the town.
A single quake was not enough for death. That night in Naples there were fifty-six aftershocks spreading through every part of the city, leaving cracks in the walls and uprooting the lamp posts. The Neapolitans spent the whole night making the sign of the cross, convinced they were all going to be consumed by the earth.
I’ve always had the feeling it was me who killed all those people. I carry the guilt with me. How could a life have come out of that? I can’t sleep at night. It drives me mad. I’m jolted awake. At night, I hear the earthquake victims calling me, their big eyes and twisted features demanding to know why my life was worth more than theirs, what I’ve done to be saved while they were sacrificed.
I’ve never talked to anyone about the things I see. I wake with a start and lie there under the sheets, my skin pale and teeth chattering, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the ghostly shadows are back and that the day is only a brief reprieve between nights. I must be mad. There’s no way I could have gone through all this and not be. I grew up without a mother but it made no difference – I learnt to live without her. I’m going to find my father. I’m the only one who can. I’m young and strong. I know the way. I have the dust of the dead inside me. They’ll recognise me and let me through. Maybe they’ll even take me to my father – he won’t have the strength to walk. I can’t wait for him to cry on my shoulder and smile to see his son return.