LITMIR.BIZ

       Eleven

      Francesco hurried down the fire escape and out of the university building with some of the other candidates and the various office workers and public servants who shared the ten-storey complex with them. For most of them, the drill provided a welcome chance for an unexpected break, and the bar across the road was already filling up. As false alarms were frequent, few seemed to be giving any credence to the idea of there actually having been a major incident, but Francesco took out his mobile and called Paola anyway. He was sure she would have done the same if she had heard the news; it was the way she was and some of her attitude had clearly rubbed off on him too. But there was no answer.

      There was a temporary lockdown in place in the building but hard news was still at a premium. He ordered a coffee, and as he half listened to the gossip and looked up at the rolling news on the small TV in the corner over the fruit machine, fragmentary accounts began to emerge of an explosion with possible loss of life at or near the Israeli university in Trastevere. So they at least were safe, but they had hit somewhere else, another university. Others were watching the screen now and the jocular tone dropped an octave or two. Then he heard a rumble of talk and a few low, hissed “murdering bastards”.

      When the all-clear came, Francesco darted back into the building to dot the i’s and the t’s on some outstanding administrative procedures. He exchanged a few quick words with the other candidates, most of whom knew each other in one way or another, either through work or the periodic ritual of the concorso. One of the candidates had unsettled Francesco. On his own admission, he’d only been in the university sector for some six months, was much younger than any of the other candidates, and yet seemed to exude an air of slightly embarrassed certainty about “the job” and what it would entail. All the others had CVs stretching back to the beginning of the previous decade and they exhibited the worn exteriors to prove it. But what worried Francesco more now was Paola.

      As he stepped back out of the building he tried again and as he did so he noticed her text.

       Going to see Mom then on my way home. Had a cancellation. Will ring later. XXX P.

      The timestamp meant it must have come through late. Network problems, probably, he reasoned. Everyone calling at the same time. So maybe that was why she hadn’t rung and why she wasn’t answering either. He tried again. Still nothing. He closed the phone and looked about and thought about getting a bus, and he was just slipping the phone into his pocket when a call came in. “DadP”. it said on the ID. It was Paola’s father, and he never called but Paola had insisted they swap numbers, just for emergencies.

      Francesco felt a sudden hot surge of fear as his thumb hovered over the icon. Her dad must be checking too, like he was. He must have seen the news. He took the call.

      “Yes,” said Francesco, ready to rise to the unlikely occasion.

      “Francesco,” came the reply, firm, familiar but in a tone he had never heard before. “It’s Paola, she’s not answering her phone. Have you seen the news? She was in Trastevere. Did you know? Has she called?”

      ***

      Francesco walked on in a daze. After the initial call, there had followed a to and fro of frantic phone conversations as Paola’s father had drawn on all his available contacts to get access to the crime scene and confirmation of what had happened. They had hoped that in the initial confusion the story might prove to be the fruit of a misunderstanding, but soon the evidence relayed back to them had been crushing. The formal identification would still have to be made but it was as good as there in black and white.

      Was he going in the right direction? What direction? What was the point? She was dead. There was no doubt. Her date of birth. Her height. Her hair colour. It was all there on the card she carried. The identity card they all carried like convicts in their own country. The card that said he was a citizen of the Italian Republic with its most wonderful constitution; the best in the world, so they said. The card they carried so that they could be stopped and checked and identified at any time of the day and night to ensure that they were not enemies of that same Republic, enemies of the patria. The card that could be used to trace them to their house, to their staircase, to their apartment so the knock could come in the middle of the night. So they could always be found.

      He wandered on up the incline of Viale di Circo Massimo. Past the fruit sellers. Past the teenage tourists playing in the middle distance with joyful abandon in the old amphitheatre. They were climbing on each other’s backs, playing at being charioteers, like Ben Hur, the Jewish prince who took on the might of the Romans in this very place. Their cries carried to him as they surged across an imaginary finishing line acknowledging fictional crowds and falling then to the ground in mock scenes of death and slaughter. Then, like parents giving children piggyback rides, they got up again. A joyous resurrection.

      He came to the crest of the hill from where he could look down to the Tiber. Behind him and towering above him was the monument to Mazzini, the father of the patria. High up in his chair, on his plinth, he seemed to be dozing in old age. Venerable, noble, yet atop his verdigris bronze head, the city’s seagulls perched one after another, as if to take their bearings, only then to foul his likeness with impunity.

      He had not been able to accept it. He was sure, first, that there must have been a mistake. Any number of women could have the same name. It was a common one in Italy. Paola Mancini. But with the same date of birth? But the details they gave him were final. He and her father had discussed the formal identification briefly, but it was a father’s job to identify his own daughter no matter how close they had been. The police said she had not been caught by the full force of the blast but that she had been “unlucky”. Already, he was appropriating the lexicon of disaster as his own.

      From the Municipal Rose Garden a rich, variegated perfume battled with the acrid summer smog of urban pollution. Good and evil, past and present, youth and age were tearing each other apart now in his own mind too, but beneath the surface. He wondered why he didn’t feel tired. He had instead a feeling of bizarre elation as though he had been chosen for something, been elected. Something was telling him that life now would be lived on a new level. The old life, like a bridge collapsing into a gorge, was still visible but gone for good. He moved nearer to the railings and sat down on the narrow wall. An ambulance approached from Viale Aventino, fleeing then past the Bocca della Verità in the direction of the Tiber. Maybe she was only injured. Maybe this ambulance was for her. Flowers protruded from between the railings above his head, and as a sudden light breeze lifted from over the Palatine Hill, it stirred a shower of petals, and he watched as one by one they fell to the ground before him.