Persecution (9781609458744) (47 page)

Then Telma felt truly desperate. She felt abandoned. She went back to the garden, deciding to call someone, but there was no one. Weeping to herself, she went back down the stairs that led to the cellar. The situation, if possible, had worsened, which led Telma to try again: she had knocked, knocked, knocked, louder and louder. At a certain point she had the sensation that something moved on the other side of the door, but maybe it was only a gust of wind.

Finally, disobeying the ban, pierced by anguish, continuing to call on Jesus as if only he could give her the strength and at the same time forgive her for this violation, she tried to open the door, certain that she would find it locked.

It was open.

The room was a real swamp. The smell must have been that damp, rotting odor that Telma had come to know in the rice fields of her distant country. The body of the professor was there, on the floor, prone, face and chest sunk in the swamp from which emerged only a skinny spine, similar to that of an alligator in ambush.

Though I'm afraid that last simile should be attributed to me. Not to Telma, who, given the circumstances, found nothing better to do than emit the standard horrified scream that mystery books the whole world over have in abundance.

And while Telma can't stop screaming, I wonder if, now that Leo is no more, the world has not suddenly become a better place. Now that the error has been eliminated. And with it the vice, the corruption, the narcissism, the crime. Not to mention the carelessness, the foolishness, the irresponsible optimism, the irrefutable trust in the benevolence of fate. Well, surely now things will go better.

Yes, I know, I'm being sarcastic. And also tacky and cheap. I'm doing it so that those who should understand will understand. Because it's with you that I'm angry.
Toc, toc,
you hear me? With you: the three stainless and intransigent inhabitants of the floor above. The incorruptible guardians of public morality, who left him down here to rot. It's true, it's true, I agree, Leo took a little too long to die. But now that he has finally done it, well, it's up to you to clean up and pay the bill.

 

To be continued.

 

I would like to thank, above all, Marilena Rossi, for her extraordinary skill and her devotion to the cause.

Thanks to Professor Luca Cordero for the interview he granted me on the subject of pediatric oncology.

Thanks to Giovanna Ichino and Antonello Patanè for their advice on the judicial procedures in effect at the time of the novel's events.

And, finally, thanks to Simone, who provided the logistics for this novel and the next, and Saverio, who followed me step by step.

 

Alessandro Piperno was born in Rome in 1972. His 2005 novel,
The Worst Intentions
, won the Campiello Prize for First Novel and became an instant best-seller in Italy, where
Corriere della Sera
described its author as “a new Marcel Proust.”
The New Yorker
wrote that
The Worst Intentions
was a “wickedly scathing début, a coruscating mixture of satire, family epic, Proustian meditation, and erotomaniacal farce.” Piperno is the author of two works of nonfiction.
Persecution
, the first installment of a diptych entitled
The Friendly Fire of Memories
, is his long-awaited second novel.