Day of the Dead by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar Read Free Book Online Page B

to interpret reality according to his own subterranean streams, currents invisible to everyone else. There are people who go through life taking the burden of everything onto their own shoulders, even though they lack the necessary strength.
    He focused on the little boy. He’d completed the external examination. He’d gone over the clothing: a shirt made of coarse linen, several sizes too big, threadbare and filthy, and a pair of oversized short britches, fastened at the waist with a length of twine on the verge of breaking. No underwear, no cuts, no recent rips or tears. No violence, at least not enacted on the clothing.
    Then he’d examined the epidermis, every square inch of skin. As he’d announced after his initial survey, there were no signs of recent wounds. Marks aplenty, no doubt about that: on the neck, belly, and legs. Contusions, bruises, hematomas. Life wasn’t easy for
scugnizzi
like this one. But there was nothing that could have caused his death, nothing very recent.
    War, thought Modo. War and death. There was something absurdly exciting about war, he had to admit: the uniforms, the rifles, the bullets, and the bombs. Sure, there were hunger, filth, and infections: but there was also the knowledge that you were fighting for your country, for your homeland. Ridiculous concepts, he saw that now: a distant border, people who had never stopped speaking other languages no matter what flag was flying over city hall; but when you fight, you think of your own home far away, your traditions, the things that belong to you.
    But the war that you fought, he mused, looking down at the body on the table, was one of neither glory nor grandeur. It was a war for survival, a war to live long enough to see the sun come up the next day, or to wake up to the feeling of rain on your skin. A war for bread, a war against the cold, a war for a dry place to sleep. A war that has no borders to defend, no bridges to destroy: the war of life.
    He took his scalpel and made a Y-shaped incision, starting from the collarbone and running down to below the sternum, and continuing to the pubic bone with a detour around the navel. Beneath the skin, the layer of fatty tissue was virtually nonexistent, and Modo was not a bit surprised.
    He decided first of all to perform a thorough examination of the abdomen, convinced as he was that the child’s death had been caused by a straightforward cardiac arrest, possibly triggered by a congenital malformation combined with the generally poor state of health: the little boy was light as a baby bird. If he discovered the cause of death, he hoped to spare the victim the next step: the opening of the cranium for an examination of the encephalon.
    Now, once again, the talk was of war: in the speeches of the head of state, in the newspapers, in idle conversations in the bars and cafés. Nothing explicit, of course; no one ever spoke about war openly. But if you observe carefully, thought the doctor as he applied the retractor, you realize that war is in the air, and how. All this talk about greatness, empire, history, ineluctable destiny. About mastery, dominion, and colonies. If that’s not war, then I’ve never seen one before.
    But I have seen war, you know that, child? I’ve seen war. And trust me, that’s not easy either.
    Now the Man of Destiny himself is actually coming here, to Naples. He’s coming, and all the people like you will crowd the piazzas and clap and cheer on command. They might even put on their best clothes, as if it were a holiday, as if it were a special occasion. There might be a few petty thieves who’ll take advantage of the excitement to slip their hands into a few pockets, I don’t deny it, but there won’t be many. For the most part, everyone will feel better for it, stronger, less hungry. The destiny of greatness. The empire: sky, sea, and land. And this time, just like before, no one will have the courage to say that the