One
LEO
Rome, Italy
A FUNNY THING HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO live for. Your existence loses all its sharp edges. There are no more steep drops, no hills to climb. Colors blur and muddle together until your surroundings are a bunch of meaningless shapes and figures painted in the same shade of gray. There’s nothing that could possibly surprise you or resurrect those old sensations of joy or fear. No human could be as unfeeling, as numb, as you are. And then, just when you’re getting lulled into the monotonous routine, something snaps. No more.
I hope I won’t be judged harshly for what I’m about to do. The truth is, I’m not sure I ever had a choice. This day has been beckoning me for a year—ever since the water rose up and swallowed our city. I’m supposed to be one of the “lucky ones” because I survived, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s nothing lucky about hearing the screams of the dead every time you close your eyes, or waking up each morning alone, forced to remember all over again. The horror never loosens its grip. It follows everywhere you move, breathing down your neck, whispering in your ear.
I glance up at the clock, the numbers blinking 4:35 a.m. It’s time to make my exit, before the neighbors wake up and spot me. But first, I let myself take one last look at home—or what remains of it.
The fourth floor of our pensione, once known as the Michelangelo Suite, is all that survived the flood. The high tide and storm swells pulled the first three floors under that day, sentencing everyone in those rooms to the worst kind of death. I should have gone down with them—I would have, if it hadn’t been for the couple in the Michelangelo Suite requesting room service, sending me to the top floor with a breakfast tray at the moment the waves crashed through the windows below. You could say those hungry guests and this room saved me, but why? Why should I have survived with a couple of strangers when my family was drowning?
My eyes linger on the remnants of them that I salvaged from the sea floor. Papà’s threadbare slippers sit on the ottoman beside Mamma’s Elena Ferrante novel, the corner of page 152 turned down to mark her place. The ink is smeared, the words running together like tears, yet I can still see that the page ends in an incomplete sentence. One more thing Mamma never got to finish.
Angelica beams at me from her last school photo, and I pick up the cracked silver frame from its shelf. I study my little sister’s bright eyes and dimpled smile one last time, memorizing her features. And then I take a breath and pull back the heavy sheet metal that covers the door, protecting against the tide.
This room once opened into a bright hallway lined with paintings, surrounding a stone staircase—but that was before La Grande Inondazione, the greatest flood Rome has ever known. Now the Tyrrhenian Sea laps at my doorstep, and when I venture outside, only a small wooden ledge separates me from the water.
In this new Rome, the only place to go is up. Each surviving structure has a ledge or makeshift dock like mine that connects to the passerelle: raised walkways far above the ground that lead us like a map to the places we need most. The upper stories of the basilica, hospital, and city hall; the Wi-Fi café; and even the public school’s remaining classrooms are all accessible from here. Of course, most of us stopped going to school after the flood. The Wi-Fi café is the most common gathering place for the survivors and where I’d ordinarily be heading myself in a few hours, to watch the news with my neighbors and listen to accounts of similar catastrophes wreaking havoc in other parts of the world. It’s our daily reminder that the Earth doesn’t hate us alone.
We’ve all seen the jarring photos of New York’s Times Square, its bright thoroughfares transformed into a deep river marked by the roofs of sagging Broadway theaters. We’ve followed the never-ending media reports about the curious case of our disappearing beaches, from America to Australia and beyond. The sea change is coming for everyone, rich and poor alike.
For those of us who want to travel across the Tyrrhenian, each of our docks houses a small wooden motorboat. It sounds like an easy out, right? Just hop in your boat and steer north toward Tuscany, leaving this sinking city behind. . . . Only it’s not so simple. The rising tides and rough waves make the hours-long trip a risky one, and those who do arrive in the Tuscany region find it an overcrowded mess. It’s not exactly an easy glide from there to the train station or airport, either. There’s a months-long waiting list to escape, and only those flush with euros can afford it. Even if you do manage to get out, who’s to say your new city or country of refuge won’t be the next one hit by the climate’s destructive sweep?
I wasn’t always a quitter. In the first months following the flood, I was like any other survivor, scrambling to stay alive. Some of my neighbors had a safety net—relatives from dry regions who could take them in, or bank accounts filled with savings to help them rebuild. Not me. There was nothing to do but wait for the EU Disaster Relief funds to trickle their way toward me, if they came at all. So I found my own way.
I knew there were treasures at the bottom of the sea, mementos my neighbors would pay a mint for, but none of them would venture into the water where so many of us drowned. Only I was hungry enough, desperate enough—and could survive the deep dives. I’d done it before without any breathing equipment, back in my competitive swimming days, only then I was just showing off for my teammates. Now, my skill could actually keep me alive. So I became a scavenger.
My first week, I unearthed Raphael’s Madonna of Foligno from the wreckage of the Vatican. It was so water-damaged that you could barely make out the Virgin Mary and child in the foreground, but I knew someone would see its value. I was right. The painting paid for a month of my meals. And in my second week I found a purse of commemorative coins from 2004, their emblem featuring the centenary of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. They were worth only five euros each, but being collector’s items, I was able to fetch double. I kept going, scavenging and selling as each day bled into the next—until I found the true riches, curled up together in a bed of algae.
Papà’s slippers, Mamma’s book, and Angelica’s photograph were all right there, waiting for me. It had to be more than a coincidence that these three small relics managed to stay entwined. It was a sign. And in that moment, with my sister’s face staring up at me, I realized just what I’d been doing: ransacking and profiting from the dead. The guilt replaced the hunger in my stomach, and I promised myself I would never do it again.
Since then, all I’ve wanted to do is join them.
I strap my heavy backpack over my shoulders and open the door, stepping out onto the ledge of the pensione. The cold water rushes at my feet, the dark sky closing in around me. And then I jump.
The murky water rises to my neck. I could just let myself go, right here . . . but I can’t do it in front of my home. Instead I begin to swim, persisting against the weight of my backpack as I head for the deeper center, where the half-sunken Colosseum rests in the middle of the waves. The words of a Lord Byron poem I learned in school echo in my mind as I swim, making my way closer and closer to the ruins.
While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls—the World.
I grasp one of the arches of the Colosseum and rest my forehead against the stone in a silent good-bye. And then I let go—slipping my head underwater, relaxing my body like a limp rag. I let myself fall.