I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
—Walt Whitman
Rondello, Italy
March 11, 2017
It was near midnight, almost twenty-five years ago, when I heard the boy murmuring. The ward at the Ospedale Santa Cristina was dark and still, all the children fast asleep. There, in bed 6, lay Luca Taviano, lips moving, eyes trained on the window, as if he were talking to someone outside—the moon perhaps, or the tall oak tree whose twisted branches brushed up against the windowpane.
He comes from a faraway land and crosses mountains and valleys, seas and oceans.
My first impulse was to cover the little mischief-maker’s mouth, so he wouldn’t wake any of the other children on the ward. But I checked myself, remembering what had happened the last time I tried to subdue him. I remained in the shadows by the medicine cart and listened.
Orlando is a big man, very strong and very true. He has a long, furry beard, where he hides his precious jewels and gold. He wears a black cowboy hat and rides a big horse, the fastest horse in the world, a Maremmano.
The boy’s voice rose as he added on detail, paused for a second, added on more. Though I couldn’t see his face, I imagined him smiling beneath his mop of unruly red hair, that naughty smile punctuated by an army of freckles waging battle across his nose.
We meet after dark at the Castle outside Favola. Orlando always asks if there’s anyone in trouble. He likes to help people.
Did the boy realize how much trouble he was in at that moment, how much help he needed? The doctors believed only a miracle could save his life. Maybe that’s exactly what all the whispering was about. Luca wasn’t telling himself stories. He was, in his own way, praying for a miracle.
Now, many years later, as I look back on that night and write down these words, so, too, perhaps was I.
PART I: THE BOY
Spring 1992
Italy
1
The arrival of spring is a happy time in Italy as the rains wash away the winter frost, the land grows green and lush, and the first crop of wild strawberries makes its way to the open markets. This year was different. A line of dark clouds swept northward from Sicily, casting a pall over the country. On May 23, Giovanni Falcone, the courageous prosecutor in the war against the Mafia, was brutally assassinated. A bomb under the motorway outside the Palermo airport took out a chunk of road along with Falcone, his wife, and three police officers. It was all over the news and in the papers. Even in Favola, a tiny, out-of-the-way town in the hills of Piedmont—a town of fewer than three hundred people, whose center consisted of a sixteenth-century town hall, a small baroque church, a tobacco shop, and a bar that doubled as a restaurant—even here, everyone talked about the disgrace of a government that stood helplessly by while a gang of lawless Sicilian thugs wreaked havoc.
Everyone except nine-year-old Luca Taviano. He was far too absorbed in his own misfortune. Mario Severese had infected most of his third-grade class with a runny nose and hacking cough. While the cold typically lasted a few days, it was taking longer to pass through Luca’s system. His grandmother was worried. “I’m fine, Nonna,” he tried to assure her. She called Dr. Ruggiero anyway.
This, Luca feared most. Dr. Ruggiero was the only doctor in town, an ancient man in his nineties. Unless there was a serious emergency, everyone still knocked on his door. His age, Nonna said, was an asset; he clearly knew what he was doing, keeping himself alive and well all those years. Luca disagreed. He remembered only the doctor’s wayward hairs and speckled skin. His house was scary too—always dark no matter what time of day, cobwebs everywhere, and cats teeming over counters and furniture. Franco Morelli was convinced he saw a wild boar his last time there. Mario Severese swore there were bats, possibly even vampires.
So while all Italy mourned the loss of their brave prosecutor, Luca schemed of ways to avoid a trip to Dr. Ruggiero’s haunted house. After intense discussions with Franco and Mario during recess at school, he came up with a plan.
The following morning, Luca pretended to be asleep when his grandmother entered the room. From the corner of his eye, he saw Nonna rubbing her hands together, heard the faint crackle of her breathing. As she placed her right hand on his forehead, Luca held his breath and waited.
Normally, he’d be praying for fever since that meant a day off from school. Not today. Today, his body had to be cold, as cold as possible. The night before, when everyone was asleep, he snuck downstairs and hid a pair of socks at the bottom of the icebox. By the time he retrieved them, right after he heard Nonna’s footsteps in the bathroom at dawn, they were frozen solid. He kept them on his forehead until his skin burned so badly he couldn’t take it anymore, then stashed the socks beneath his pillow.
Warm as the rest of his body may have been, his forehead was now ice-cold. He could feel it under Nonna’s hand and was so sure of victory he couldn’t wait to share the good news with Franco and Mario. But Nonna did something unexpected that morning. She slid her hand down Luca’s cheek, then to his neck, and finally under the covers to the left side of his chest, where his heart beat so fast he was afraid it might break through the skin and explode in her hand.
“Fever” came the verdict.
“But, Nonna.” Luca bolted upright. “That’s not possible.”
She looked at him sideways. “I thought you were sleeping.”
Luca shrugged, wishing he had listened to Mario when he’d suggested sticking not only his socks but his entire body in the icebox. Then he wouldn’t be in this situation.
“Get dressed. We leave for Dr. Ruggiero’s after breakfast.”
2
Luca Taviano wasn’t the only person having a bad day as the sun cleared the horizon and began to shine down on the neighboring town of Rondello. Rondello was a larger town of some ten thousand people, with an official soccer stadium, a small museum that housed Roman antiquities, and a hospital that served most of the province. In an apartment on a narrow street that climbed the steep slope leading to the central piazza, Nina Vocelli awoke with a sharp headache. She had consumed almost two bottles of wine the night before, after receiving that despicable letter from Matteo Crespi—the bastard didn’t even have the nerve to tell her in person.
He regretted to say, read the letter as if it were written by a lawyer, that their relationship could no longer continue. His daughter had discovered the affair and told her best friend, the daughter of Santa Cristina’s chief of medicine. Once the chief found out, he made it clear the affair would not be tolerated, and threatened to fire one or both of them if it didn’t end immediately. For the sake of his only child’s well-being and his own career, Matteo had to make peace with his wife for the time being. He was terribly sorry and hoped that Nina would understand.
Understand?
For the last ten years—ten years!—Matteo had been telling her that his marriage was in shambles, that his wife had taken a lover of her own. When his daughter left for university, they would get divorced and he and his Ninetta could live together. He promised this, over and over again.
Except it was all a lie, all this time.
How could she have been so stupid? Her friend Carla had repeatedly warned her not to trust the oncologist, who had a reputation for womanizing. But she couldn’t help it. She was drawn to him—his dark height; the silver streaks in his hair; his swift, confident walk; the leather-and-lemon smell of his aftershave.