26
“Max,” I said, looking up from the scanned text. “Change of plan. I think we should go to Gorizia in Italy first. I’ve just found something useful.”
“To Italy? What’s in Italy?” he asked, tucking in his T-shirt. He had washed his hair, and his disheveled waves looked honey-colored while still damp.
“Gorizia is in Italy?”
“It”s a city between two countries, located just over the border. Half of it belongs to Italy and the other half to Slovenia. Which half do you want to go to?”
“I don”t know,” I answered, throwing my things in my bag and putting on my jacket. “But we need to find a man named Enzo Rossi. Carmen mentions him in her diary. He may have met my grandparents during World War II, and he might know what became of them.”
“Rossi!” He dried his hair, rubbing it with a towel, and then shook his blond head, reminding me of a wet Cocker Spaniel. “What a lousy clue that is. There must be half a million Italians with that surname. Don”t you have anything else?”
“He must be my grandmother”s age if he”s still alive. He worked as a government officer in the 1940s.”
“Great, not only does he have a ridiculously common name, but he”s probably been dead for decades. It’s not much to go on!” He shook his head. “But you know what’s the funniest thing about all this?”
I held up my hands in a mute question, waiting for him to continue.
“Well, while I was in the bathroom, Drago Krivec called me, saying that he had found a trace with his pendulum. And guess where he”s sending us.”
“Don”t tell me…”
“Yes, to Nova Gorica, the Slovenian half of Gorizia. He said we must check the graves in the cemetery because your grandfather could be buried there. If not him, some other Br?ljan. Isn”t that an incredible coincidence?”
“Every day, I believe less and less in coincidences,” I said and followed him down the stairs to the car.
***
I was surprised at how far away Nova Gorica was, especially for a country the size of Slovenia. After almost two hours on the highway, we spotted the first Gorica buildings. A gas station, a McDonald”s, and a stripbar, surrounded by endless billboards advertising casinos and gambling establishments.
“What a delightful place,” I commented dryly, unimpressed by the view.
I glanced at the gray tower blocks, a throwback to the communist past that was always present in Slovenian cities. They were fifteen or more stories high, and the roofs had a sharp, triangular shape, imitating the contour of the mountains that served as a backdrop.
“But the surroundings are beautiful,” Max added as if it were his responsibility to apologize for the architectural atrocities of my ancestors. “Look, can you see that mountain over there? It’s called Sveta gora, The Holy Mountain.”
Following the indications of my phone”s GPS, we continued in the direction of the cemetery along a small secondary road lined with single-family dwellings. The buildings in Nova Gorica had a rather more Mediterranean look than in Ljubljana, with white facades and gently sloping roofs covered with cheerful coral-red tiles. Moreover, there were lots of pine and olive trees and even the occasional palm tree. Seeing them made me feel a little more at home.
When I saw the cemetery wall, I felt a strong and sudden pain in my stomach. I wondered if it was because of my breakfast. Had Max”s mother tried to poison me? Perhaps she had so that I wouldn’t bother her son again. According to Max’s comments, it wasn’t entirely implausible.
“Are you alright?” Max asked, noticing my discomfort.
“Yes, it”s nothing,” I lied and took my hands off my abdomen so as not to worry him. “It must have been the orange juice.”
Max parked next to the cemetery wall, a simple concrete and brick construction adjacent to the small chapel that housed the entrance.
The graveyard was tiny, with disparate but well-kept headstones, most adorned with flowers and candles. I read the names one by one, trying to ignore the twinges in my stomach, which were only getting worse. I calculated that it would take us an hour to inspect all of the headstones, a little less if we hurried.
“Let”s divide up the work. I”m hungry,” Max suggested. “You check this half, and I”ll check the other half. If you see anything interesting, whistle.”
He left before I had time to tell him that I had never learned to whistle because I had grown up without a father.
I got down to work. Mavri?, Bla?i?, Pajek, Humar... dozens of names and surnames followed each other. But I didn’t find any Br?ljans, nor did I find Enzo Rossi’s tomb. After half an hour, I returned to the starting point, where Max was already waiting for me with folded arms and an impatient face.
“I”m going to call Drago Krivec,” he protested. “That man must be losing his faculties because there isn’t a single Br?ljan here.”
Drago Krivec didn’t respond to Max”s calls, so he gave up, and we got into the car.
“Let”s get out of here, please,” I said, “I don”t like cemeteries at all.”
* * *
We drove back to Nova Gorica and left the Yugo parked on a wide avenue. Not far from there, we found a large pedestrianized area with several cafes and some stores.
We sat in a restaurant with a terrace and ordered a pizza to share.
“You”ll see,” he said. “Pizzas are huge here. By the way, do you want any extra toppings? Parmesan, prosciutto, sage?”
“Whatever you want,” I grunted, trying to sound as normal as possible.
I was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the conversation. The pain in my stomach was becoming unbearable, to the point where I could no longer sit still in my seat.
A voice whispered something in my ear, and I turned around, thinking it was Max joking around or the waiter. There wasn’t anyone behind me, but the whispering continued and began to get louder. Then, other voices joined in, all repeating a mantra made up of a single word.
Max kept talking, oblivious to my distress. I felt hundreds of arms tugging at me as if trying to pull me out of the chair.
The voices stopped being whispers and became howls, repeating the same incomprehensible word, followed by my name.
Tui-ka. Tui-ka. Vesna, tui-ka!
The voices knew who I was.
“Finally!” Max exclaimed when the pizza was placed on the table in front of us. “I’m faint with hunger.”
The pizza was indeed the size of a dining room rug. Max cut it into two exactly equal halves and offered me a slice. I declined, gritting my teeth to hold back a scream.
“What does “tui-ka” mean?” I gasped, my head on the verge of exploding.
“Tui-ka?” he repeated with his mouth full. “You probably mean tujka. It means foreigner.” He sighed with pleasure as a bit of melted cheese dripped between his fingers. “Why do you ask?”
“We need to get out of here,” I said with a sob, desperate to get away from those voices from beyond the grave echoing in my brain.
“What are you talking about? They’ve only just brought our food!”
I closed my eyes and pressed my palms against them. It”s just your imagination, I told myself. There’s no voice. Look at the people around you. Everyone looks completely normal apart from you.
A wave of heat swept through my body, and I smelled the breath of hundreds of fetid mouths just inches away from me. The stench became so unbearable that I thought I was about to faint.
I stood up awkwardly from the chair, and it tipped over under the weight of my bag. With trembling legs, I gathered my things and got out of there as fast as I could.
“Vesna, wait!” Max shouted after me.
He stood up to follow me but then stopped. He couldn’t leave the restaurant without paying the bill first.
I ran along the sidewalk on the wide avenue. The howling was deafening, and the stench unbearable.
In the distance, I made out the figure of my mother. She was waving at me with one hand from an empty shop window while tapping on the glass with the other.
“Follow me!” she shouted, bursting through the window and floating away full speed ahead of me.
She crossed the street, and I sprinted after her, stopping traffic in my path. Drivers yelled at me, braking hard to avoid running me over, and a cyclist nearly fell off his bike because of me.
“This way!” said my mother, and disappeared down a side street.
I followed her, panting, until I couldn”t take it anymore and collapsed in an alley, feeling like my heart was about to burst out of my chest.
I grabbed hold of the stone blocks on the fa?ade of a building and hoisted myself up. It was then that I looked up and noticed a beautiful door with embossed moldings and, next to it, a metal plate with an inscription that made me gasp with surprise:
Dr. Enzo Rossi
Sodni prevajalec / Traduttore giurato[10]