LAST CALL | And yet
And yet
By Giuseppe Fantasia
In the end, it came. As always, it appeared at night, seething and malicious. It had made itself felt in the previous days, but those were mere bit parts. One afternoon, out of nowhere, it showed up while I was drinking tea with a splash of milk, but I certainly couldn’t have known its intentions. I grew a bit scared, because until that moment, it had never been quite like this. And, as you might say, ‘In a place like that, it was bound to happen.’ And yet.
That night it returned to frighten me and thousands of L’Aquila residents at an hour, 3:32 am, which later became a symbol, marking a before and an after. In certain circumstances, 22 seconds seem like an eternity; try counting them yourself. I tried as everything moved outside and inside me, but never got all the way in. I managed in the days following the quake, because in that precise moment, time stopped time, darkness came, and light was nowhere to be seen for a long time. And yet.
In reality, I wasn’t in L’Aquila on 6 April 2009, but only by chance. I was on a work trip to a town near Teramo, Italy, which was holding an exhibition for Alberto Burri. At a certain point, I noted that white smoke was coming from the front of my car. As someone who’s hopeless with engines and the like, what did I know? On the telephone, my parents advised me to stay there for the night, given the hour, and to go to a mechanic the day after. I couldn’t have even begun to imagine that their telephone call would save my life. And yet.
That night, the room which had been mine up to high school and which still welcomed me every time I returned to my hometown was the most severely damaged in the entire house. The enormous bookshelf along one wall, ten shelves high, fell with thousands of books onto my bed and the nearby desk, destroying just about everything. Chance or coincidence, who knows? Some say they don’t exist. And yet.
In Teramo, the town where I was sleeping, the quake arrived nonetheless, but not with the same vehemence. It was felt as far as Rome. I still remember the tears, the not-knowing which arose from the unexpected and, opposite to it, the unchanging images on the news, the city destroyed and its symbols which, suddenly, were famous around the world, the names of the first to die, reaching 109, the disconnected telephone lines, the terror, more tears, the first telephone calls, the voices of my parents, that of my sister who was in Spain, strangers embracing on the street. Affection, at times, can reach unimaginable places and circumstances. And yet.
I saw my parents days later, and my grandmother Mini also. I still remember that she too is a living memory, her smell, the sound of her necklaces with the charms that every so often got entangled on her jumper. ‘Are you doing well Nan? That’s what matters.’ The voices of who was there and who was no longer, our ruined houses, as ravished and scarred as our souls, the aftershocks, Zorba the cat with a cat’s name, lost then found, the tent cities and the horrible rooms of so many hotels on the Adriatic coast, the objects found over time and brought there to save them from thieves (the unframed pictures which we had in the living room, that armchair from the other country house, a mini Eiffel Tower and other nonsensical things), the G8 and Obama, and also Clooney with Murray in pole position plus others seeking visibility, the scandals and the shame, the fear and the slow rebuilding, the deafening silence, the cold, the city that reacted and which still continues to do so, like those who have lived through it and those who want to continue living there. They say we all died a little that night, and it’s partially true. And yet… from that tunnel, we sought out an exit which has been slow and cumbersome, until reaching a light which is a small hole. We opened it and, in spite of it all, through it we can finally breathe.
“At 3:32 am on 6 April 2009, a violent earthquake shook the Italian town of L’Aquila and the entire region of Abruzzo.
The earthquake came in at a magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale, a 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale, and at a depth of 8.8 km.”
In the end, it came. As always, it appeared at night, seething and malicious. It had made itself felt in the previous days, but those were mere bit parts. One afternoon, out of nowhere, it showed up while I was drinking tea with a splash of milk, but I certainly couldn’t have known its intentions. I grew a bit scared, because until that moment, it had never been quite like this. And, as you might say, ‘In a place like that, it was bound to happen.’ And yet.
That night it returned to frighten me and thousands of L’Aquila residents at an hour, 3:32 am, which later became a symbol, marking a before and an after. In certain circumstances, 22 seconds seem like an eternity; try counting them yourself. I tried as everything moved outside and inside me, but never got all the way in. I managed in the days following the quake, because in that precise moment, time stopped time, darkness came, and light was nowhere to be seen for a long time. And yet.
In reality, I wasn’t in L’Aquila on 6 April 2009, but only by chance. I was on a work trip to a town near Teramo, Italy, which was holding an exhibition for Alberto Burri. At a certain point, I noted that white smoke was coming from the front of my car. As someone who’s hopeless with engines and the like, what did I know? On the telephone, my parents advised me to stay there for the night, given the hour, and to go to a mechanic the day after. I couldn’t have even begun to imagine that their telephone call would save my life. And yet.
That night, the room which had been mine up to high school and which still welcomed me every time I returned to my hometown was the most severely damaged in the entire house. The enormous bookshelf along one wall, ten shelves high, fell with thousands of books onto my bed and the nearby desk, destroying just about everything. Chance or coincidence, who knows? Some say they don’t exist. And yet.
In Teramo, the town where I was sleeping, the quake arrived nonetheless, but not with the same vehemence. It was felt as far as Rome. I still remember the tears, the not-knowing which arose from the unexpected and, opposite to it, the unchanging images on the news, the city destroyed and its symbols which, suddenly, were famous around the world, the names of the first to die, reaching 109, the disconnected telephone lines, the terror, more tears, the first telephone calls, the voices of my parents, that of my sister who was in Spain, strangers embracing on the street. Affection, at times, can reach unimaginable places and circumstances. And yet.
I saw my parents days later, and my grandmother Mini also. I still remember that she too is a living memory, her smell, the sound of her necklaces with the charms that every so often got entangled on her jumper. ‘Are you doing well Nan? That’s what matters.’ The voices of who was there and who was no longer, our ruined houses, as ravished and scarred as our souls, the aftershocks, Zorba the cat with a cat’s name, lost then found, the tent cities and the horrible rooms of so many hotels on the Adriatic coast, the objects found over time and brought there to save them from thieves (the unframed pictures which we had in the living room, that armchair from the other country house, a mini Eiffel Tower and other nonsensical things), the G8 and Obama, and also Clooney with Murray in pole position plus others seeking visibility, the scandals and the shame, the fear and the slow rebuilding, the deafening silence, the cold, the city that reacted and which still continues to do so, like those who have lived through it and those who want to continue living there. They say we all died a little that night, and it’s partially true. And yet… from that tunnel, we sought out an exit which has been slow and cumbersome, until reaching a light which is a small hole. We opened it and, in spite of it all, through it we can finally breathe.
“At 3:32 am on 6 April 2009, a violent earthquake shook the Italian town of L’Aquila and the entire region of Abruzzo.
The earthquake came in at a magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale, a 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale, and at a depth of 8.8 km.”