What should our next post be: a general reflection on our first four months or a detailed description of all the different great things Elena is doing? A stressful account of Mattia's frustrating teaching or a report on our latest fun Sunday out? A foodie article on rice and beans (oops, we meant on our varied menu...) or a social-cultural analysis of our area? Well, a young man in his 20s came suddenly out of an alley today and cut our choosing short...
I can't believe the "sight" today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away
Wednesday's afternoon, around 5.00pm, after the best-attended athletics session yet, with over 12 kids.
The last of the "athletes" Mattia duly walks back home had just said goodbye, having reached the point where he takes a shortcut through some houses and goes by himself, so Mattia turned back towards UPAVIM, back to Michele and Sam who for some reasons are home with Mummy and not at the swimming pool as would be usual on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Just a few seconds and the clear sound of three gunshots rips the air. From the roof, even Michele and Sam, playing with their friend Karen, have no doubts: those are not firecrackers. Yes, by now we've got accustomed to that sound and they can recognise it well, though in recent times it's never been too close and usually heard only in the evening or by the old ones at night.
This time, however, Mattia can hear it really well and really close. So close that when he looks in that direction, he can clearly see, about 50 metres away, a young man watching back and then starting running away, on the pavement along the opposite side of the main road. The next thing he sees is what the man's left there: a body on the ground, towards which all the eyes of the normal afternoon passer-byes are now pointed.
Our gas-delivery man is standing just next to Mattia, calling the ambulance on the phone, a mother calls her teenage child back in, some other children are heeding similar orders and run inside, the rest is waiting for the certainty that it's all over and then start moving, cautiously but without too much fuss. Mattia is soon there, squatting over the shock of that gruesome sight or better over the awful feeling that something as horrific as this is nothing really extraordinary around here, it's just the latest, just one more... How many deaths till "we" know too many people have died?
How to describe the scene? What about some cliches like "a woman in her 30s to 40s lying in a pool of blood?" No way, that's nothing as poetic as a pool of blood, it's rather a rivulet of dark red life flowing down from her face onto the pavement and down on the road, from just below the forehead, at the top of her nose, and out her mouth, a liquid stream of running-away life filled with semisolid darker matter. The body is still convulsing, just now and then, so technically she's not dead yet, as somebody tells the police, who arrive quite soon (or is it quite late, given that there are usually two policemen stationed just outside our building, less than 200mts away?), but there's no-one to blame if nothing is done to help her, as it's hard to imagine anything could actually be done to rescue that woman, that mother, that beautiful piece of creation senselessly removed from this world, who's lying on her back, her arms spread out, the cloth bag of shopping clasped in one hand, one leg still bent at the knee, just as if she'd frozen the very instant she hit the ground.
The ambulance's siren is coming, more people are gathering, all quiet, no crying, no screaming, no shocked watching away, kids are around too...
Mattia walks away, he meets a few women going back home from UPAVIM after work and tells them to keep on the "right" side of the road, just not to expose the very young kids they're walking with to the show, but they barely hear him, busy as they are warning him to go quickly back inside, as if to protect him... from what? From more violence, now that everything is absurdly back to normal? Or from the uneasy sight, when he was the first to get near the victim?
Back on the roof, the boys and Karen are playing away, we'll talk with M&S about it over dinner.
In the meantime, Mattia can give his first-hand report to Elena and a couple of volunteers and then keep pondering on that horrible feeling of general desensitisation and powerlessness, mixed with that nastily nagging question of why nobody did anything to stop the murderer, why nobody with two fast legs started running and screaming after him...
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
