The trip to the graveyard brought the reality of the situation home to Michael Morrison and forced him to confront the issues he had moved to Padria to face. This is a segment from chapter 16, where everything changes.
HE had been to Catholic burial grounds where some of the tombs were pure statements of wealth, but discovered the Cimitero Monumentale to be sizeable yet modest, and, having no idea where the Bianchi plot was, concluded it was within his reach to walk and search until he found it.
Many of the graves were simple affairs, some little more than wooden crosses, a name and a small bunch of flowers, some had Christmas messages or wreaths, while others were rather grander family vaults.
In some places graves were stacked like bricks in walls, step ladders placed nearby to enable visitors to reach their loved ones.
The cemetery, just beyond the main part of town, back inland and up a small hill, was well kept with wide Tarmac-covered pathways, the grass mowed short, benches at regular intervals.
Relatives and friends of the dead had placed Christmas wreaths and flowers on many of the graves. Candles flickered. He had found it easily but knew locating the Bianchi plot would be much harder. So it proved as he walked up and down each row, approaching some of the showpiece vaults and looking through the railings that prevented entry to the inside.
Some contained benches for relatives to sit on and many were filled with trinkets, cuddly toys, ballet shoes, floral tributes. Others had doors, a few of which he tried, but thankfully all were locked. He could think of no reason why he should wish to enter a vault, other than out of sheer curiosity, the fear of what he might find inside enough to deter him after a couple of failed attempts.
He walked tentatively up and down paths to graves and tombs for around an hour, his legs feeling weaker than normal, possibly due to the cold or more probably through the apprehension he was feeling. There was an over-bearing stench of rotting flowers, stagnant water perhaps.
He saw a large vault facing him to the left of the entrance at the far end of the cemetery. It was a plain-looking concrete affair, a large stone cross above its iron gate, which stood under a slab on which the words “Fam Bianchi” were inscribed.
Stones, gravestones, he presumed, were laid against the interior walls with one on the ground. Breathing heavily, he felt his heart racing, his chest heaving and a sickness in the pit of his stomach — he really must visit a doctor — as he concentrated his stare hard at the words, but try as he might he could not make out the names of all of them.
Two he was able to read stated simply “Sofia Bianchi 28 luglio 1951 – 9 febbraio 1993” and “Marianna Bianchi 24 ottobre 1979 – 17 luglio 2021”. There were other words he could not understand, but that did not matter. She was in there and he was almost with her, just a locked gate, a stone and a few feet of earth separating them.
Was he ever really with her or always only almost? He thought about their bodies, close to each other, at peace. What a ridiculously, ludicrously sad world it is when death is the easiest route to peace.