Pushing Past the Night by Mario Calabresi Read Free Book Online Page B

ahead and locked the door to our apartment, delivered the keys to the doorwoman, and disappearedfrom our lives forever, as much of a stranger then as the moment she had arrived.
    None of us ever went back to that house. My grandparents packed everything up. Mama would never take another step down that street, where a plaque in his memory would never be placed. She promised that she wouldn’t set foot there until the day the city finally made up its mind to remember him.
    I did go back, almost secretly, without telling my mother or brothers. I felt guilty about breaking a taboo, but I was going to the house of my favorite classmate, Alessandra. One day in junior high, she asked me if I would walk her home—I already knew where she lived—and I didn’t refuse. Thanks to her, I was able to reconcile myself with the place where my father was killed. Every time I studied its details and imagined my father’s footsteps, I tried to imagine what he had seen in the last minutes of his life.
    After a ride that seemed interminable, the Alfa came to a stop in front of my mother’s house, on Viale Caprilli. Waiting for me at the door was my sister Aurora. My mother had gone to the hospital. No one was home. My sister Mirella was in Africa, my father in Australia, one of my brothers in Biellese, the other in Germany. “Aurora, take care of the children, I’ve got to go,” I told her. I could see that she was trying to detain me, to put her arms around me. Then I said to the two policemen, “What are we waiting for?” One of them tried to buy some time by claiming that he didn’t know the directions to San Carlo very well. “Well I know them perfectly,” I replied. “The hospital is near here. Let’s get moving!” More hesitations. The police radio squawked. “We’re waiting for them to call us from the hospital,” the policeman continued. “They have to tell us which ward he was taken to. Would you mind going upstairs a minute, signora? We’ll call you when we’re ready.” The deputy police chief caught up withus. “Go on inside, signora, your mother will be here in a minute.” I let them talk me into it, but I realized they were stalling. So as soon as I went in, I gave Don Sandro a look. “Tell me the truth. Why aren’t they taking me there?” With a simple movement of his lips, almost wordlessly, he took hold of my hand and told me, “He’s gone.” Then I finally collapsed onto the sofa.
    They told me that I was on the sofa for an hour, holding Don Sandro’s hand. After an hour I came to and my first thought was Mario. Since he was older than Paolo he would figure out what had happened, with all those people around. I picked him up, sat him on my lap, and spoke to him as softly and gently as I could. “Mario, Papà has gone to heaven. You’ll never see him again, but he can see us. He’s gone to make us a beautiful little house where we are all going to be together one day. And there will be trees, meadows, flowers, wonderful toys, and all the things you like. We can speak with him and he can hear everything we’re saying, even now.” Mario listened without once interrupting me.
    The night before, my father and I had played hide-and-seek, as fate would have it. He had been given one more day with his wife and children. One more dinner, a few more pages from the book he kept on his night table,
Khrushchev Remembers
—he used to read early in the morning before having his coffee—and enough time to choose that white tie over the pink one. Fate prolonged his life by exactly twenty-four hours. Fate in the form of a parking garage. Let me explain. Since he didn’t have an assigned spot in the garage downstairs, he always had to park the Fiat on the street at night. There was just enough space on the ramp to the garage to park a small car, and whoever got there first could take