Chapter 23 #2
between cities became lines not to be crossed, and places of learning and leisure closed their doors. Aida, Yumi, and Felix
now found themselves isolated in their own pockets of the city.
Luciano, across the border in France, felt like a voice from another world.
They changed my assignment. Now they’re sending me to the Promenade Plantée, an old railway line they’ve converted into an
elevated park. Have you been to the High Line in NYC? This place was the inspiration.
An emoji of some trees and flowers accompanied his Signal text.
I’m relieved you’ll be outside, Aida told him. Maybe it will keep you from catching the virus.
Usually, the promenade is very busy, but I think people are already starting to stay home, he wrote. Macron closed schools and universities today. I think it will affect how many people I end up talking to for my interviews.
I’m done here in three days and will upload everything then.
Aida replied with a fingers-crossed emoji. She hated the idea that he was mixing with people. You got out just in time. They announced a travel ban in and out of Italy with only a few exceptions, and those people have to quarantine themselves for two weeks! This is so awful.
Don’t despair. We’ll figure this out.
But the next day, they closed the park, and since Luciano had gathered so little data, there was no reason to do an upload.
They were at the mercy of the pandemic. Luciano was furious that he had decided not to remain in Rome. I’m stuck here in this big chateau with only Dolores and a staff who has been mostly invisible to me. To which god should
I pray to end this quickly?
The gods won’t help you. We’re supposed to be the ones that end it, remember? Aida responded.
Sono tutte stronzate. Why are we the ones to do this?
Aida sighed. I know. You’re right. It is all bullshit. But what choice do we have?
There was a long pause. I can pretend I don’t know about any of this. Go about my job like nothing has happened.
I can’t, Aida said. Her heart pricked with despair at the thought of Luciano abandoning her to handle the gods alone.
In my mind, the Colosseum falls over and over.
Sophie said that the big things aren’t as easily forgotten.
I hate that. I wish it would disappear from my mind like other things have.
I can’t bear knowing that I had some hand in its downfall.
And now this virus, he said. How will we get through this?
Aida didn’t have an answer for that question.
The next week saw Rome transform into a ghost of its former self. Parks, once brimming with life, were abandoned, their gates
closed as if to hold back the spring that refused to be ignored. The streets were lined with shuttered shops. And yet, amid
the stillness, a storm raged—a storm of numbers that climbed each day, numbers that represented lives lost. Italy’s daily
death toll had reached a number too grim to comprehend, casting a shadow over the nation that no sun seemed strong enough
to dispel. As Aida watched the city from her window, the world outside was both achingly familiar and irrevocably altered.
At first, Aida tried to convince Yumi to come and stay with her at the palazzo, but she refused, not wanting to be under MODA’s
watchful eyes. And when Aida suggested she should stay with Yumi for a while, her friend shot the idea down. “Absolutely not!
If you’re here, they’ll have their eyes and ears watching everything I do.”
Aida knew she was right, but she worried about Yumi there alone, locked away from other people. So, although her needs were
easily met at the palazzo, Aida downloaded the self-declaration form from the official government website and meticulously
filled it out a few times a week, marking the box for “necessities,” as grocery shopping was one of the few permissible reasons
to venture outside. Yumi did the same, and they met in the line at the grocery store, faces masked, six feet apart, and talked
about nothing of import. Aida ached to hug her friend, or more specifically, for her friend to hug her. She hadn’t realized
how much she needed that type of human connection.
Felix couldn’t join them—he had recently moved and now lived farther away, in a tiny studio near the Appian Way, and going to a grocery store in the city center could lead to a hefty fine.
The polizia were very serious about the fines.
If you weren’t going to the grocery store or a specific critical job or to take care of
elderly parents, it was expected that you were at home, locked up, not in physical contact with anyone but the people you
lived with. Yumi had already received one warning for taking a long walk beyond the area around Piazza Navona. As an Asian
woman, she stood out and was repeatedly asked to see her self-declaration form.
These people, they are so stupid. The virus doesn’t give a rat’s ass about our race, she would rail in their group Signal.
The frustration in Yumi’s messages was palpable. Aida could only imagine how her friend felt facing the same unwarranted scrutiny
every time she dared to step outside. It was a reminder that the virus had brought physical isolation and deepened unseen
divides, casting shadows of suspicion where there should have been solidarity. Aida had a surge of protectiveness for her
friend. The lockdown had become more than just a measure of safety; it had morphed into a mirror, reflecting the fragmented
lines of a society under strain.
Aida decided to take the downtime as an opportunity to work hard on her second novel. And when she wasn’t writing, she gathered
with the others still at the palazzo—Dante, Pippa, Ilario, and a housekeeper who Aida rarely saw as she preferred to keep
to herself. Dante had somehow acquired a 25,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the Sistine Chapel, which he spread across the massive
table in the big dining hall. They spent days trying to piece it all together. Trista rebuffed Aida’s numerous attempts to
get her to join them.
“Why do you bother?” Pippa asked one afternoon. “She’d only drag us down, wouldn’t she? And we ain’t in need of any more of
that, not with this bleedin’ pandemic on.”
“Maybe she would loosen up if she spent time with us.”
That brought a chuckle from the ordinarily stoic Dante. “Quando i maiali voleranno.”
When pigs fly. Aida had to laugh. It was the first time she had ever heard Dante say anything negative.
“I just don’t understand her at all,” she responded.
“Let go of what you can’t change,” Ilario advised. “And that woman—” he nodded toward the empty door “—is not one you can
change.”
The days turned into weeks.
“I feel like we’re frogs boiling in the water. We’re at the point where they are turning up the heat more and more rapidly,
and we’re going to be cooked.” Felix looked haggard. They were on their daily Zoom call, in which they were attempting to
keep up pretenses and couldn’t talk about anything related to MODA or what they all felt underneath it all—the deep despair
that the world was spiraling out of control, and only they knew why. And there wasn’t a damn thing any of them could do about
it.
“Have you learned the anthem yet?” Aida asked Yumi.
“Not by heart. But my neighbors forgive me for having to look at my phone for the lyrics.”
Every day at 5:30 p.m. all of Rome went out on their rooftops and balconies, or opened their windows, and sang the national
anthem, “Il Canto degli Italiani.” It was often followed by songs like “Volare” or “Bella Ciao.” This moment of solidarity
was uplifting in a way that Aida found difficult to describe. It was not a moment of happiness, but something different, something
inspiring and comforting. It gave Aida a strange hope—that despite everything MODA was doing to destroy the spirit of the
people, they couldn’t take it all away. Deep inside, she began to think that maybe there was still time to fix the miserable
mess that all the Happiness Collectors had gotten them into.
But as the weeks compounded, the oppression of lockdown began to take a toll on them all.
Aida couldn’t count all her crying jags into her pillow or with Yumi on Zoom.
Yumi had planned on applying for a visa, but by the time it had arrived, she had already nailed down a new job working for an American software company that had an office in Italy and was happy to let her live anywhere within the country.
She wanted to look for a more permanent apartment, but the pandemic made that impossible.
Felix eventually confided that he was starting to panic about money. While he had shifted to doing online Zoom tours using
photos and video, the money wasn’t the same, especially without tips being slid into his hand at the end of the day. Aida
offered him help, but he turned it down. Without telling him, she sought out the landlord of his apartment and paid the year’s
rent in full. Then, she arranged for grocery deliveries of some of his favorite foods every week. When they Zoomed, he always
told her to stop, but she knew him well enough to know he didn’t mean it, that he was grateful for the reprieve on his wallet.
One afternoon in May, she wandered down to the grand salon to work on the third puzzle that Dante had laid out for them, this
one of the Venetian Grand Canal. A heavy calm overtook her as she neared the door. She took a deep breath. The god likely
knew she was there, so she didn’t hesitate long. She entered the room, wondering who she would find there. It was Mo, alone,
fiddling with the pieces.
“How did you get here?” she asked, although she already knew the answer. She wondered how that worked—could he arrive in a
blink? Was there some puff of smoke like in the cartoons?
“MODA has its ways,” he said without looking up. When she neared, he slid a huge chunk of sky into one of the puzzle’s edges.
It was a section that they had been working on for the better part of the week.
“What ways would those be?”