Chapter 8
The last strip of sun dies on the horizon, leaving a sky striped of red and orange and a suggestion that slowly extinguishes.
There is an intense swarming of people, like in the fullest of the summer season. Foreigners of the most different origins fill the road of their polite joy, and already many of them are pouring in the several restaurants and fast-foods of Torre shore. The relative coolness of the evening is the good condition to indulge in a walk. Marco put on his wrinkled shirt again, as well as is usual silent attitude. He holds in his hand his new book, pretending to listen to the chatters of Giuliana.
I propose Teresa to dine at Terrasini. It’s a tourist town a few kilometres from Torre. Her family used to spend the summer there.
In the car we make plans for the following days.
The vacation has just begun, yet the time already seems insufficient. The children would like to spend mornings at the sea and afternoons around the town.
Giuliana mostly wants to tan, go shopping and write e-mails to her friends.
«My schoolmates will die from envy for my tan.»
Her Mediterranean origins reveal themselves, on her skin, in the easiness with which she becomes darker after a few exposures to the sun. In this she is very different from the diaphanous Parisians she associates with.
Teresa wants to find her old friends again, skim through the pages of that Sicilian parenthesis of her nomadic life, spent in the many moves that life partly offered, partly imposed her.
Marco wants to breathe whatever air that is not that of Paris, hoping that it can be enough to chase bad thoughts away, to make him forget the plans set aside, to delete what is making him feel bad. I believe he’s sadistically happy to think that, as long as we are here, I cannot escape staying with him, forced, in his opinion, to share my precious time with his nothingness.
On the other hand, I feel at once happy and embarrassed of this situation with him. I watch him from a distance, I try some approach, partly to expiate the guilt for my flaws, partly because I see in him a fragility that unbalances me, a fragility for which I feel incredibly responsible. My father was a fundamental figure to me. His principles drove my life, made me confident and determined to walk winding roads without being afraid. Apparently I haven’t been able to do the same with my son, and this makes a very poor father of me. His fragility is my defeat. What I expects from this vacation is an occasion to start and remedy. And then I want to go hunting in the history – the one with a lowercase ‘h’ – of a life split into a before and an after that never found conciliation inside me. As if these two pieces belonged to a double Paolo Manfredi. Life, however, is not made of separate fragments, but of a long chain in which every link is just the point in which past and future touch. I hope that by finding the junctions I will also know how to genuinely approach my son.
I will let these days go by freely, without either impositions or predefined paths on a map. At the end, what happens in every trip will happen; we will say that we will be back, because there wasn’t enough time, and in that moment we will really believe it. Then, kilometres away from here, back to our lives, when the answers we were looking for from this experience will be clear inside us, we will realize that, even if we never return, it still was an exhaustive experience, and we will be ready to make room for the thousand others that still await.
«But did you know the whole Sicily, Dad?» Giuliana questions me while she is skimming through the guide, attracted by pictures of the sea and of some monuments.
«Actually I know very little of it. When I lived here I suffered from the typical passion for foreign things of youth, that strikes particularly islanders, because they feel distant from everything. Then I dreamt of London and Paris as well as other lands overseas, I had no interest at all for the territory around me. So now I am fifty and I don’t yet know the natural reserve of Vendicari, in Syracuse, where rare species of birds go to lay their eggs, and I haven’t have seen, if not in a photo, the villa of the Hamlet of Piazza Armerina, known for the mosaics of the Roman age. Neither I ever witnessed an eruption of the Etna, our famous volcano.»
Giuliana finds the places in my story in the pages of the guide.
«It all seems very beautiful. I would like to go there, one day.»
Here is her intention to come back.
Yet these are not the lacks for which I seek compensation in this trip. The world is totally different and totally the same. What changes is our way of looking at it and attributing it a meaning, a value. As boys we quiver to know wider and wider portions of it, as if the reality surrounding us were only a small quota and the mystery of life was hidden elsewhere. It takes so many years, and they aren’t always enough, to understand that that mystery has always accompanied us, residing close to us like the most faithful companion of life. So, even if I won’t be able to see any of all the possible destinations in this renewed Sicily, I still feel that I am on the track of a deeper knowledge, like a pilgrim rather than a tourist.
Giuliana accompanies the last musical meme of the season with the same croaky voice that fills the car from the loudspeakers. Marco shakes his head, resigned, and looks at an indefinable point beyond the car window.
The evening lights project shadows on the blacktop and beam in an artificial atmosphere. The sea is an arcane darkness stain that flanks us at our right.
Giuliana stops singing, although she keeps following the music with her fingers and a see-saw movement of her shoulders.
«Dad, the guys I met at the beach told me extraordinary things about Palermo.»
«Palermo is a city with an enormous artistic patrimony, made interesting by the alternation of very different styles in time. There is Arab-Norman architecture, Baroque and even the oriental style of the Chinese Building», I tell her.
«Yes, certainly, but they told me about other things, Dad. It’s not to see these things that guys gather here, or at least that is not their main interest.»
«I imagine», I answer laconically.
We let the highway behind and take a suburban road, preceded by an orderly queue of cars moving toward the heart of a seafaring suburb larger than Torre. Here too the welcome sign is bilingual, while advertising posters mostly bear sentences in Italian.
It was always a tourist destination, known for its beautiful cliff of reddish rock and its deep and clear water.
Giuliana keeps on giving me information about a Palermo I don't know, in line with the excesses we have started to discover.
«There is the reproduction in scale of the Buri al Arab.»
My interrogative look induces her to complete the explanation.
«It is a deluxe hotel in Dubai. The first one in the world to boast seven stars. It has the shape of an enormous sail, light and dynamic, but imposing at the same time. The one of Palermo is a kind of reproduction in a more modest size, but still effective.»
Teresa looks at me and bursts laughing.
«What is there to laugh about, Mom?»
«Well, once hotels were functional to the vacation. Now it seems they became a destination themselves. We used to visit churches, ancient buildings, gardens...»
«But this is modern architecture, Mom. This is an expression of culture too.» Marco breaks this way his meditative silence.
«But how long have you lived in Palermo, Mom?»
«About four years. I was fifteen when I came to Sicily...»
«... and you went to high school where you met Dad», Giuliana intervenes.
«My father had been appointed sanitary manager in a hospital in Palermo. We would have stayed longer if it hadn’t been for the political distortions you know of. When Sicily was sold, the sanitary personnel working here was called back to the rest of the national territory. My father had the fortune to be able to return to Padua, our city.»
«Wasn’t it terrible for you to have to renounce to the life you had made here, to your friends, to Dad?» Giuliana pursues, as if she hadn’t already listened to thi
s story so many times and again.
«Your father had already moved to Turin with his parents when we left. As for me, I had gotten used to my father’s transfers. There are people who live their whole life in the same place and others who continually change. You get used to it, even if there is always a share of sorrow in every goodbye.»
«Yes, but with Dad it was just a see-you.»
«Yes, but back then we had no idea that life was an unpredictable crucible of deviations and convergences.»
I drive and listen to her. Actually life is really that way. At times it seems there are appointments already set for us, to which, without having the slightest idea, we will be punctual. Others we’ll miss, this too according to an identical plan. But it is also likely that it is just chance.
When Teresa went back to Padua, I had been studying as a foreigner in Turin for one year already. She was a rightful Italian citizen, since she had been born this way of Messina channel. She graduated in journalism, started to write for a daily paper. A tangle of roads waited for her passage, roads that lead her closer and farther from the point in which, sooner or later, she would cross me for the second time. As for me, after the degree I moved to Boston, in Massachusetts, to specialize at the Children's Hospital. An ocean and several cities separated me from the pre-arranged point of our second meeting. But both, at the correct moment, didn't miss the appointment.
«How come you chose Boston?» Giuliana asks me. Her head emerges between Teresa’s and mine.
«It was the most advanced research pole in the paediatric field at world level. It is there that innovative treatments and therapies are experimented. It is the temple of knowledge for paediatric heart surgery.»
«Look, Dad, what’s that?» Giuliana asks me, her arm outstretched forward to point at a tall bright column that strongly comes into our field of vision, dominating the landscape.
«I don't know. I think it’s one of the many things that once weren’t there.»
Teresa pulls out the tourist guide from her bag, she skims its pages then stops on the illustration of a tower very similar to the one before us.
«It is a lighthouse», she tells us, «a modern one, obviously. There are many in the whole island. They were born as indications for ships, but in reality, like everything else, they are an example of modern architecture. It is a monument itself. You can climb to the top to watch the landscape.»
«When do we go up there?»
«Even after supper», I hazard while parking.
«Why not now, Dad? What do you say, Mom?»
Giuliana looks at Teresa with a supplicant expression and Marco follows in her wake. Naturally my wife surrenders immediately.
«Well yes, we go up there now and then we have dinner. What do you say?» and she looks at me winking.
The path leading to the lighthouse discloses the semblances of a town in which modernity melts to the night-time atmospheres of "One Thousand and One Night."
«The suggestions of the Arabic world are strong in the shades of the rust red, that paints the façades of many buildings, evoking the clay walls of Marrakech. Red is the flooring motive of a large part of the pedestrian tourist walk, red sunsets prevail in the paintings of the street painters, as well as in the carpets and the tapestries in the windows of many shops.»
Teresa passionately reads from the guide and comments. The children listen to her, following her finger that moves from the illustrated maps on the book to the surrounding space. I, a few steps behind, stop to observe the Arabic characters engraved on a dark marble plate recessed in the side of a building. I prefer to discover by looking. Arabesque with geometric or floral motives decorate the walls of the buildings with a variety of intense colours that harmonize in the whole. The roads are clean and there is a pleasant sensation of order. Tourists are here too. A modest queue of visitors waits for their turn to climb the tower. We join them. Behind us, thickening and closing the queue, there is a conspicuous group of French. The total number of their children abundantly surpasses that of parents. Two of them, two young girls dressed in tight white leggings and short shirts that let their navel emerge, right behind us, make appreciations on Marco counting on the fact that he, lost in his iPod, won't realize it. They don’t take their eyes off him an instant, they exchange remarks and giggles, until the bravest of them knocks on his shoulder and tries a contact in an unlikely Italian to ask him until what time the lighthouse can be visited. Marco pulls out his earphones while the girl is speaking, her long blonde ponytail waving to the rhythm of her body, pushed by a crescendo of euphoria and embarrassment. He answers in a nonchalant French that the last visit is at a quarter to midnight. They listen to him in surprise, since they had heard him talk to his sister in an impeccable Italian, and exchange embarrassed smiles, hoping that he hasn’t listened to their comments about him.
«You are from Paris too?»
«Yes, certainly.»
«I would like to have an equally certain answer to this question», I say, turning to Teresa, «instead I know where I was born and where I live, but I can't say where I am from. It’s absurd, isn’t it?»
She smiles, but she doesn't answer.
«Since when they rewrote the geographical map of Italy, I have stopped feeling that I have any roots. I am one who lives in the world, but who doesn't belong to any place. I feel like a passer-by wherever I go.»
«Isn’t it so for everyone?» she says, midway between a question for me and a spoken thought.
«Our son has no doubts however, he has a precise answer to give.»
«Marco is French not only because he was born in Paris, but because he feels so. He has grown with this certainty, and speaking Italian never made him doubt about his belonging», she tells me, «I too have been passing in so many places but I don't have doubts about who I am or what world I belong to».
«Which one?» I ask, curious to know where a person that moved much more than me feels her roots to be.
«All of the places I touched in my life. Or rather they belong to me, they are part of my history. Whether you live your whole life in a place or in a thousand, this doesn't deprive you of continuity. You are the constant, Paolo, the rest is background and changes. Continuously.»
It is our turn, eventually. We enter one of the two elevators that climb the tower. Each of them can contain up to fifteen people. The glass cabin allows us to see the landscape during the climb. It is like travelling on a rocket, although very comfortable and silent; we barely feel the speed. The landscape, increasingly wider and more distant, involves us all in an amazed expression. The attractive blonde with the fluttering ponytail is still glued to my son. They chat, commenting the landscape. A child in the arms of her mother has his hands and mouth pressed on the glass, leaving a minuscule halo of vapour and saliva.
Teresa, who is reading the leaflet, says that this is one of the so-called smaller towers.
«Its height, in fact, can be considered modest in comparison to the ones that can be found in the Emirates.»
The doors of the elevator open on the first of the two panoramic terraces. We go out, making room for the visitors going down. At this height the air is cooler because of the wind. We scatter, each of us looking for a privileged point of view; each behind their own emotions. While I am watching the extension of the panorama, from the bright sparkling of the town to the darkness of the open sea, my study in the hospital comes to my mind. A great room with sanitary-white walls, mostly occupied by file cabinets and bookstores, a thick desk where clinical briefcases are methodically stacked, waiting for a happy ending. The space is saturated, as well as the air, made heavy by the odour of disinfectant and illness. In that closed and overcrowded place I spend a large part of my life. I visit, study, write, meet parents, confront with colleagues, phone. At times I have a fast meal, all in a sort of apnoea. I bathe in that abyss in the morning, I resurface when I can. The journey back home is my mouthful of oxygen. A mouthful of Parisian air, cold in the continental winter, impregnat
ed of cars and fast-food frying.
On this terrace, suspended above true life, the air stuns for its purity. I greedily inhale it, as if to stock it for my daily apnoeas. Teresa, behind me, touches my shoulder.
«All fine?»
She tightens her foulard around her in the hope to find shelter from the wind.
«I was thinking about my job.»
She shelters under my right arm, making herself minuscule to save as much of her skin as possible from the cold.
«No, please, not here too.»
«I was reflecting about how much time I spend at the hospital; there’s a whole world, cut out to the point that I forget its existence. In this moment I feel like I am moving in a too narrow space, too confined. We never think enough, when we are young, that the road that we choose to take will mark what comes later, influencing a whole lifestyle.»
«You never wondered about this before. What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?»
«It’s not a matter of happiness. My job is my life. It’s just...»
«It’s just fear, Dad, it’s the dizziness for the height that stuns and confuses ideas», Giuliana tells me, passing next to us and continuing her tour.
«Yes, it is the dizziness», I repeat, leaving my thoughts suspended.
In the higher terrace the wind and the dizziness effect are doubled. We are higher in comparison to the top of our Parisian steel tower. Marco is absorbed in the sight of the landscape from a telescope. Juliette, the resourceful girl, is still close to him, she too absorbed by the music of the iPod of which they are sharing the earphones. Giuliana, one telescope farther, winks at us.
«Come on, it’s time to go down.»
Teresa precedes us to the elevator and there she decompresses, returning to her usual volume. She skims through the guide and reads up. Always like that, in every trip.
The centre of the town seems quiet. Summer evenings are still distant. Then, roads swarm of teenagers until late at night. The general aspect hasn’t changed much; back then it was already more tourist-oriented than Torre and other neighbouring settlement.
The clear-wood shape of a big arrow, aimed at an alley to our left, bears the name of a restaurant, engraved in Arabic letters. The writing is illegible for us, but Teresa is stricken by the floral motive framing it, making it attractive. We enter the alley and follow a second smaller arrow, that leads us in front of a baglio. The few tables in the open are already all taken. A woman tells us to follow her inside. The feeble light of a few floor lamps and many candles skims her face, revealing coal eyes sparkling in the frame of black pencil and mascara. She wears a long yellow dress going down to her feet, with a wide gilded hem, the same kind that runs around the wrists. We quickly glance at the menu suspended to one of the two shutters of the door, it too written in Arab but with an English translation. In single file, passing in the narrow space between a table and the other, we leave the small baglio and enter an intimate and relaxing dimension. The atmosphere is captivating, made of suffused lights, burning incenses, melodies in the style of One Thousand and One Nights in the background. On the walls, the intense shade of the sea and floral-motives tapestries. A few small tables are in the innermost area of the room. Aside from those there are only low small tables surrounded by large turquoise pillows with gilded embroideries, that fill the place without overstuffing it, leaving enough room for intimacy and privacy. Karima, the woman who led us here, asks what type of setup we prefer. We settle down on the large pillows, each of us on a different side of the table. In the middle of it, a lit candle spreads vanilla essence. In the meantime, Karima distributes menus, then asks my wife the usual question, the one that triggers a crisis in me.
«Where do you come from?»
«My husband and I are Italian, he is from Torre, I am from Padua, but we have been living for years in Paris. Our children were born and grown in Paris. And you?»
She smiles at us again and hands us the wine chart and the menu, then gives her explanation in turn.
«We are Moroccan; we have moved here about fifteen years ago. Our children were born here, they are Arabic.»
"Thirty years ago they would have been non-European", is my solitary thought.
Teresa asks her to recommend us the typical dishes of their cuisine.
«The tourist menu is rich in known dishes of our tradition. I’ll bring you sauces and creams to be smeared on our Arabic bread, and dishes based on meat and vegetables. They are traditional recipes and all of them are good.»
Actually the scents coming from the kitchen are inviting, and driven by them and by our hunger we immediately let us be directed on this choice. Giuliana is enthusiastic for the setup.
«It’s romantic! We never dined this way.»
In truth my fifty years would ask for a more comfortable posture, but I prefer to let my daughter believe that I am still the vigorous father who carried her on his shoulders when she was a little girl.
«Women seek romanticism in everything!» is the disdainful comment of Marco, who would rather sit on a chair. But I think that his athlete back will hold better than mine.
Due to the late hour, the place is emptying by now. Only two young couples are sitting like us on the pillows. The other patrons are comfortably sitting on soft cloth pillows placed on wrought-iron chairs. Four men discuss excitedly, sometimes alternating words with toasts and noisy laughter. Further on, a very silent family. The woman lowly chews some words every now and then, without expecting an answer from the others; the man watches attentively a film on TV. There is no sound, but he seems captured by the images nevertheless. Two of the four children, the youngest, sleep on the large turquoise pillows, put close to one another so to form a kind of mattress. The two females wait in silence for their father to declare that it’s time to go back home, exchanging fleeting annoyed looks every now and then.
Karima returns with a tray on which small bowls of yellow terracotta are placed. She tells us that in this place they cook dishes of the Moroccan cuisine, but not only those. There are dishes from various parts of the Arabic world.
«It is a cuisine of strong tastes», she says, «rich of spicy spices; I hope that the children can appreciate it as well.»
Knelt between Teresa and Marco, Karima lays the bowls on the table with her thin hands, one after the other, accompanying them with an explanation.
«Garlic and chilli pepper are essential ingredients for a lot of recipes, especially sauces, excellent as gravies for meat, or to be smeared on the Khubzmarcook, the Arabic bread.»
With curiosity I approach my first Arabic supper.
«I know this one», says Teresa, «I already tasted it, but I don't remember its name.»
«It’s Harissa», Karima explains, «it was born in Tunisia but it’s prepared all over the Arab world. It is a mixture of fresh chilli pepper, garlic, coriander, mint and olive oil. The children maybe will appreciate more Hummus, that is a cream of chickpeas without chilli pepper».
«Luckily tonight I don't have to kiss anybody!» Giuliana remarks, «with all this garlic we’ll even keep mosquitoes at bay! Marco should be careful, thought, maybe he might meet little Juliette.»
Marco looks at her with a hostile expression, his eyes pointed straight to those of his sister.
Karima meanwhile is listing by heart the spices mixed in the hulba.
The evening goes on pleasantly slowly. Several specialties follow one another, always accompanied by a smile and an explanation. We develop a passion for the tagine, a dish owing its name to the particular pot with a conic lid in which it is cooked. There are small tastes of three different versions; tagine of chicken with dried fruit, of meat with plums and of lamb shoulder with raisins. We decline the invitation to taste the fish version. This too will be part of the things we haven’t done and for which we will propose ourselves to come back.
Karima serves us an Alì, a coconut pudding that immediately receives Teresa’s approval. But it is me to surprise everyone when I ask for the baklawa.
br /> «Since when you are also an expert of Arabic sweets?» Teresa asks me.
I tell her about the afternoon stop at the cafe with Vito. Karima comments that, being natives of Sicily, we probably don't have much to discover concerning sweets.
«Your confectionery is very rich.»
«Yes, but since we left it became just a memory.»
In the place now there’s only us and the two young couples who chose our same setup. Two attendants are busying themselves tidying the place up.
«Maybe we should go», Teresa says.
But Karima, a few meters from us, tells us that there is no hurry. The family atmosphere of the place induces us to stay. It seems that we reached the after-dinner in the house of friends, when you still chat some more on the couch before leaving.
For tonight Karima has finished serving at the tables, so now she stays with us, now with the four young Germans, as if she had known us all for a long time. She alternates conversations in French and in Italian with us, in English with them, at ease with every language. She talks to us about the music we are listening to, and about how, in her house, it is traditional to dance it at parties. One of the two girls at the other table, who are listening intently, asks her to show us some dance steps. Karima makes a serious, focused expression. She moves away, leaving the girls and us perplexed about the meaning of that expression. In English, the young Germans ask us whether we think she was offended. The volume of the music now is slightly higher and the woman comes back, inviting the girls to stand next to her. Then, when both are near her, she starts moving gracefully, while they try to imitate her movements. With a gesture of her hand, Karima also calls Teresa and Giuliana to join them. At the beginning, Teresa tries to decline, but Giuliana, who is already standing up, takes her hand and tells her, «Come on, Mom, let's have some fun».
Us men stay sitting and watch the show from our places, nibbling the last crumbs of dessert still on the trays. I look at my women as if seeing them for the first time. I watch Giuliana blossoming in a woman. Her hair is the synthesis between those of her mother and mine, curly and a little tussled like Teresa’s, jet-black like mine was when I was younger. The many years of swimming granted her a well-defined and proportionate body. She swings in her skirt and makes strange faces in the attempt to imitate the expression of Karima, who seems to be lost in her dance. Sometimes she looks at her mother, and in their glances words of agreement and silent complicity pass. I see them equal in their sunnyness, in their ability to laugh with their whole face and to charm others in their good humour. Maybe there is more complicity between them than there has ever been between Teresa and me, between me and any other person in the world.
When the music ends, the five women hug in an all-female fellowship, then another melody starts, and with it another dance. The fact of being women of different nationality, and different age, belief and culture, is only a detail at this time. They are simply women who are dancing.
Leaving the place we greet Karima. She has the tired face of who worked for hours without resting an instant. Tonight she will crash with swollen legs on her bed, but I imagine that she will do it with the same pleasant smile with which she served us for the whole evening. She stays on the door and keep waving her hand mechanically, the gilded hem of her dress fluttering around her thin wrist, her silhouette becoming increasingly smaller and more distant under the sign, now switched off, of the restaurant.
We look like the portrait of a happy family tonight, wrapped in our laughter, in the music we have listened and danced to. We smell of incense and food, we breathe wine and we feel light. Teresa walks in front of me, arm in arm with both our children; Marco to her left, Giuliana to her right. They laugh because she sways, she can’t walk straight. And the more she laughs, the more she sways. She’s not drunk, she’s just euphoric. She keeps swaying between the two, who never saw her like this, and who seem happy to know this light side of their mother. It is almost one a.m., the road is empty. But the bright lighthouse is still there, with its grandiose light that I follow like a boat toward the harbour, on the tracks of our car. Even Marco is unusually relaxed. He seems light, without that backpack of dark thoughts burdening his head. He hums one of the many music we listened to, while Teresa and Giuliana start dancing again the steps of Karima. Giuliana says, «Mom, are you sure you are not too dizzy?»
Teresa dances and gestures that she is, and keeps laughing.
«Luckily there is no one in the street», Marco says, a little embarrassed by the boldness of the two, he who is always very reserved.
«Come on, dance with us.»
Giuliana pulls him from an arm to her left side. I, a step behind, look at that wild trio and breathe deeply. I want to store inside of me all of the air of this special evening.
Our car is at the opposite side of the road. We cross dancing, I too let their frenzy take me. In the street there is no one except for a moped in the distance, proceeding slowly.
What happens immediately after is an instant, one of the worst kind. At the crossroad a SUV, that wasn’t there an instant before, emerges out of the blue, launched at an insane speed. Unaware punctuality; the impact is inevitable. The moped skids toward the sidewalks like a crazy splinter and slides for several meters, then stops against a lowered shutter. The driver, who immediately separated from the vehicle, whirls round and round, then stops on his back, arms wide, with his head reclined on a side, several meters away from the point of impact. The car keeps running in the crossroad. It didn’t stop, it didn’t even slow down. I ear Teresa and the children shouting, while I am instinctively racing toward the wounded. No helmet. His face is a mask of blood. He’s a very young boy, more or less the same age as Marco. His clothes are torn in several parts, his knees are grazed, as well as the palms of his hands. I turn toward my family, who is looking at me in amazement. Giuliana cries with her face pressed against the shoulder of her brother, who seems astonished. Teresa, with a hand on her mouth, looks now at me, now at him. I tell her to call for help.
«The guide!» she says immediately.
In the pages that tremble in her hands, Teresa finds the emergency number for road accidents and convulsively dials it on the keyboard of her phone, striving to keep control. Meanwhile I administer first aid to the wounded. I grab his head with both hands and overextend him with prudence. I look at Teresa, looking for something to coarsely clean his mouth; she understands and, rummaging in her bag, she grabs a pack of Kleenex and compulsively hands them to me, one after the other. The boy is not conscious; his chest is motionless, he isn’t breathing. I proceed with artificial respiration. After some attempts, his chest starts moving again; he’s breathing. With my fingers I look for his carotid to assess his blood circulation. The rhythm is irregular, I feel a weak pulse. He is going in cardiac arrest. I begin then the cardiac massage; after ten compressions I ventilate twice, then again for three more cycles. I assess the signs of resumption; his pulse is weak, but it’s there. He’s alive.
From the balconies I hear the voices of meddlers. Someone comes down in the street to lend a hand. A man recognizes the boy.
«It’s Hussuf, a schoolmate of my daughter. I will phone his parents.»
I tell the small crowd around me not to come too close, because the boy needs air. Now that I know his name I call him.
«Hussuf, can you understand me? Do you speak Italian?»
He makes a weak gesture with his eyes; he is disorientated. I hold his head in my hands. Marco approached and now he is kneeling behind me, looking at the boy over my shoulder. I feel the hold of his hand on my right arm.
«How is he?»
«He will get by, don’t worry.»
Then, turned to Hussuf, I add, «Everything will be all right, son.»
The ambulance arrives a few minutes later. The crowd parts to let the stretcher bearers pass, and they load the boy on the stretcher. They immobilize him, give him oxygen. I say that I am a physician and inform them about the apparent conditions of
the boy. There are probable multiple fractures and a CAT will be needed to determine possible cerebral damages. Hussuf looks at me while the stretcher moves away. It seems that he wants to tell me something, but he can’t speak. Two tears roll down his cheeks. He imperceptibly moves his eyes, maybe looking for a familiar face before losing consciousness again. The man who knows him shouts, «Hussuf, boy, I informed your father, he is coming straight to the hospital.»
But the boy cannot hear him. Hussuf disappears behind the doors of the ambulance that departs at full speed. While meddlers keep commenting about what happened, I describe to a police officer the little that I know. I haven’t seen the car well; I only noticed that it was black and high-powered. But a lady from a first-floor balcony saw the scene better and also jolted down part of the plate number.
We get in the car. Giuliana points at a spot of blood on the blacktop, unusually at a loss for words.
«Let’s hope it ends well for him», Teresa sighs.
«Dad, is it serious?» my daughter asks me.
«He wasn't wearing the helmet.»
It is late night. Nobody speaks in the car, but they are all awake. The dark stain of the night-time sea is a threatening presence that escorts us to the hotel. It is frightful like the stain of Hussuf on the pavement. It drained our joy, our light thoughts. Marco is a statue of salt again. The ghost of Pierre is sitting again on his shoulder, compressing him.
With the eyes of Hussuf stuck in my mind, I slowly drive toward the hotel.