Ma-gios awoke to the slight beeping of the ECG machine. The snow-white walls of the Emergency Ward at the Sant’Andrea hospital frightened him. With a broken soul, he looked around the ward but saw no one. A dim, flickering fluorescent lamp above his headrest was the only source of light. He was worried by the man-size machine chirping with green numbers beside him. What could it be counting? What was it there were ninety of, and why did the other row say one hundred and thirty-two? They must know I’m from Tibet because their television draws mountaintops as well. Though those valleys don’t look familiar.
Staring into the half-light, his attention was drawn towards the window: there were no bars on it. He could clearly see the red flickering of the signal lights on a distant chimney. The stars enticed him, so he tried to sit up, but a sharp pain shot into his right shoulder. He reached to touch it, discovered the IV tube hanging beside his head, and, in surprise, touched his wrist where it was attached. Maybe I’ve died and this is the bardo[1] that dad told me about so long ago. There’ll be darkness here and nothing’s going to happen for forty-nine days.
He leaned back on his pillow and, satisfied with his own answer, was staring at the ceiling when the door opened. A square of blue-white light poured in and a nurse entered. The fluorescent light glimmered in waves on her black hair, the edges of her clothes glowed white.
‘An angel! And she’s come for me. This is good. Dad said that—’
‘Son, do you speak Italian?’ the “angel” interrupted him.
Ma-gios, awestruck, nodded.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Ldong Tsomo, but they just call me Ma-gios.’
The nurse stepped up to him and sensually combed stray locks of hair away from her face.
‘Well, Ma-gios, may I sit here, at your bedside?’
The boy said nothing but drew away in alarm when the woman sat down beside him.
‘Don’t be afraid, Ma-gios. You won’t be harmed here. We’ll help you to recover as soon as possible,’ she told him quietly, and smiled at him.
‘So this … is this not the other world?’ he stuttered.
The woman’s pupils dilated; she was touched.
‘Oh, no, not at all, Ma-gios. What are you talking about? I’m Agnese and this is the Sant’Andrea hospital. You were found in the street, bleeding profusely. Your head had been smashed and you’d lost a lot of blood from the wound on your shoulder too. You were brought into the emergency ward in time, fortunately, otherwise you could have bled to death.’
‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘After such a serious head injury, it’s only natural. You look better now than before – your wounds were scary.’
‘Ma-gios touched his head, only then realizing the gauze turban wrapped around it.
‘Wow, has my head swollen up so much?’
‘No, silly, that’s only the bandage,’ she whispered. She leaned closer. ‘Where do you come from, you little oddball? The moon?’
‘No. I do remember that much. I live in Yilhung in Tibet.’
‘In Tibet? And how have you ended up here?’
‘That I don’t remember. I think I remember having gone on a long journey with my dad to a place called Rome. Agnese, do you know where Rome is?’
‘And you, do you know where your dad could be? What’s his name?’
‘He’s called Kunga, but I have no idea where he could be.’
Lots of ideas crossed the nurse’s mind and tears welled into her eyes.
‘Ma-gios, are you hungry? I’m sure you’re thirsty, right?’
‘Well, yes I am. I feel as if I haven’t eaten anything for a hundred years. I’m not sleepy any more, but I am ravenous.’
The nurse stood up, massaged her temples and frowned.
‘I’ll try to get you something to eat. If I can’t find anything, I’ll give you my sandwich. It’s way too early for breakfast. But don’t mess with those wires and tubes, they’ll help you recover as soon as possible. I’ll be back soon.’
Agnese disappeared into the square of brilliant light in the doorway. Ma-gios closed his eyes and thought of Kunga. His mind was weighed down because he could not be with his father. Did he leave me on purpose, or was I taken away from him? What’s happened to me since then? My hands and feet have grown. I’ve become bigger. How did that happen? Hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember growing up so much. A black hole yawned in this memory.
In the meantime Agnese poured the orange juice she found in the fridge into a glass and unwrapped her single sandwich. She was disappointed because, by the time she got back to Ma-gios, he was again sleeping like a log. She sat down on the end of the bed and caressed his forehead.
‘Poor boy. Where could your parents be? What happened to you?’ she wondered. She turned off the light, cast a glance at the ECG screen and was glad to find Ma-gios’s cardiac rhythm was steady. She made a tired round of the ward, winked at her colleague, who was buried in pulp fiction, then took a hot shower. She kept thinking of the boy’s clear eyes. They were like those of her fiancé, who had left her for good at the end of a quiet summer night.
The following morning a stout police inspector with an idiotic expression on his face appeared in the ward. His dark-brown leather coat and shining shoes made him resemble a would-be Don Corleone. Ma-gios noticed the Parabellum pistol stuck in his belt with shock but, when the man removed his dark hat, he looked more like a scarecrow than a criminal. The boy’s fear was also allayed by the fact that the inspector was accompanied by Agnese and an older doctor. The doctor was enthusiastically explaining something to the nurse while the inspector walked beside them with an indifferent expression. When they all sat around his bed, he was overcome by panic.
First the inspector asked a number of questions – or rather, a sea of fastidious, hair-splitting questions – but not a single detail of the mysterious boy’s recent past emerged. The inspector, lost in thought, scratched his forehead and put his notepad back into his suitcase. Ma-gios felt ashamed to have caused disappointment.
‘He either doesn’t remember anything about the last ten years, or he doesn’t want to remember anything about them,’ he muttered to the psychiatrist sitting next to him. ‘But what I find the weirdest, doctor, is that, as you’ve also heard, his memories from before the age of seven or eight are almost completely intact.’
‘You’re right, Signor Vitali,’ the doctor in brown glasses answered while glancing at Agnese. ‘I strongly suspect Ma-gios has amnesia, and we can’t specify either its reason or its exact type beyond saying that, as a consequence of his concussion, he has developed a psychogenic retrograde amnesia.’
On hearing the doctor’s diagnosis, the inspector’s face became, if possible, even more foolish-looking. Nobody suspected this to be a mask to hide his searching mind.
‘So then, what’s your advice, doctor?’ asked Inspector Vitali.
The doctor looked at Ma-gios, scratched white tufts of hair and only replied, ‘He must go back.’
Ma-gios’s stomach contracted and he clenched his fists.
‘Go back? Where to, doctor?’
‘Well, to where you were born, of course. To Tibet. The surroundings there could bring your memory back. Ma-gios, have any memories just clicked in? I can see you’ve become agitated.’
Ma-gios shook his head.
‘You sure?’ The inspector nudged him.
‘I think my hands were in handcuffs, but nothing else.’
‘Oh! You seem to remember something, you little oddball. Now tell us! What else do you remember?’
The boy’s eyes were filled with tears and opened as wide as if he had no eyelids.
‘Let him alone, Signor Vitali, let him alone.’ The doctor waved his hand. ‘The time for remembering hasn’t come yet. When it comes, he’ll tell us everything of his own accord, you won’t have to force him then.’
‘You may be right,’ grumbled the inspector, playing with the corner of the bedspread. He was deliberately avoiding the boy’s eyes, lest he scare him more. The doctor cast a scandalized glance at the inspector.
‘Of course I’m right! This is my profession, Signor Inspector. The boy must rest before you can go on interrogating him.’
‘I’m not interrogating him. Oh, all right. Well, then, there’s nothing else to do.’ He raised his voice and rested his eyes on Agnese’s tanned neckline, ‘Well, except find this mysterious Yilhung. I doubt it’s even on the map.’
The psychiatrist stood up, Vitali put on his worn hat and they took their leave of the boy. They left for the lift chatting.
‘May I have a look at the boy’s medical history?’ the inspector asked the doctor, who nodded.
Agnese stayed behind with Ma-gios, who could now have a better look at her. He admired her hair that, not pinned up that day, fell like a raven-black cataract down her back. With her warm brown eyes and ever-moving slender figure, the boy thought she resembled a princess in disguise. Her working hours were over, but she did not want to leave the boy alone, believing that Ma-gios’s soul was crying for help. However, even as she was talking to him, the boy was looking steadily at her ample breast, he kept staring.
‘Ma-gios, that’s not polite.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘To stare at my breasts so.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know. But you see, they’re so beautiful. May I touch them?’
‘No.’ The nurse chuckled.
‘Not polite either?’
Agnese shook her head. ‘Certainly isn’t.’
‘Then I’m sorry, but I’m overcome by such interesting feelings when I look at them.’
‘That’s natural; you’re a man and I’m a woman.’
This sentence moved an unfamiliar, burning desire in the boy’s stomach. His throat was in flames but he did not understand why.
‘Agnese, if angels exist, they must be like you.’
‘Thank you, I haven’t received a more beautiful compliment from any of my patients.’
In the meantime, hidden behind the high ragged stone fence of the building Ma-gios had escaped from, things were being set in motion. Ennio was pacifying the anxious nuns with logical arguments and assured them that Ma-gios would not remember anything.
‘He was undergoing medical treatment,’ he repeated to one of the nuns the following morning. ‘He’ll have complete amnesia.’
He called aside the eldest nun, who appeared to be controlling her tumultuous feelings the best.
‘Sister Bianca, I have a personal request. It’s come to my knowledge that Ma-gios has been taken to Sant’Andrea. I’d like to ask you to …’
The facial muscles of the woman cramped like a rubber spider, and she rolled her eyes.
‘Has that brute survived?’
‘He appears to have. He must have a benefactor above.’ The archbishop broke into an involuntary smile.
‘Oh, don’t say such a thing, Signor Marino. What kind of a benefactor could such … such devil’s spawn have? Only a creature from hell would be able to wreak such destruction. May the Almighty have mercy on him!’ She went on sighing.
‘So, Sister Bianca, I’d like to ask you to go to Sant’Andrea.’
‘Do you want me to visit him, Signor Archbishop?’ she asked, her face petrified with fear.
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’d like you to do. I want to know whether he’s really there and, if so, for how much longer.’
‘Father, are you sure this is a good idea?’ Sister Bianca looked into the archbishop’s eyes beseechingly, though she suspected what the answer would be. Ennio touched the woman’s shoulder tactfully.
‘Sister, we must stick together. These are difficult times. Our community needs devoted brothers and sisters. There are not many of those, alas.’
Sister Bianca straightened up proudly. Two nuns appeared at the end of the corridor and approached them hastily. The rush of air caught their black veils up into angry cobra heads in the air above them.
Before the nuns could reach them, Ennio asked, ‘Are you going to the hospital, then? As if you were visiting, as someone having witnessed the event.’
The woman nodded.
‘But what if he still remembers me?’
‘He won’t, I guarantee. Bianca, you don’t even have to enter the room, it’s enough if you peep inside.’
‘Well, if you wish it. God forgive me.’
Ennio squeezed the woman’s shoulder encouragingly but already knew that Sister Bianca would do more than simply ‘peep inside’.
The two nuns reached them, their faces overcome with dread, but the archbishop completely ignored them.
‘Sister Bianca, your conscience is clear.’
‘Fiat cor meum immaculatum, ut non confundar!*’ the woman mumbled. She bowed to Ennio and turned towards the nuns.
‘Peace, sisters. God has bestowed great wisdom on the archbishop and we should follow his advice about what to do in this critical situation.’ She shooed them away like a brood-hen her chicks. ‘I’ll talk to you later. Be in my room in an hour. Until then, look around the garden and in the street for any remaining marks.’
‘But, Sister Bianca, the police may have questions. What shall we say to them?’ the tallest one asked. She nervously adjusted her black veil.
‘Angelica!’ Biance snapped at her. ‘Nothing has happened and you’ve seen nothing. I hope this needs no more explanation. Just make sure you obey me. If, by some chance, the police turn up, I’ll talk to them. But who’d search for the reasons here anyway? In a convent? Just think about it.’
‘Apologies. We’re off,’ Angelica stammered, glancing at the archbishop, whose eyes showed her no mercy either.
Suddenly, the door flew open and they all turned round. A piercing wind sliced along the corridor, ripping dried petals from the roses that had been glorious in the vases and throwing them in their faces. A man in a raincoat was standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, his face pinched purple-blue by the wind. He instantly recognized Ennio but, on seeing the nuns, he gave a wry snigger.
‘I’m Tito!’ he yelled at them. ‘I’ve come for the corpses. Or am I to cremate these penguins? My ovens are already glowing!’ He guffawed. One of the nuns almost fainted, while Tito choked with laughter.
‘Enough,’ Ennio bellowed, ‘or I’ll send you to hell too!’
Tito’s blood froze, and the
archbishop squashed a rose petal in his palm.
[1] Bardo (Tibetan) is the name of tha state of existence after death and before rebirth, but it could also mean the states of transition of the person’s level of existence, that is, states of consciousness.
* Let my heart remain pure; let me not be confounded
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