Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
BIANCAMURA, 1 OCTOBER 1985
VANNI
I remember the accident in all its details, and in vivid colours.
No merciful amnesia for me. I remember the car accelerating when it should have braked, the screams and the world turning upside down over and over and over again. When it stopped, there was silence.
I was awake; every breath was agony. My father was slumped in his seat, Maurizio with his face on the dashboard, both immobile. There was blood on them. I turned to my left to see my mother seemingly asleep: there was no blood on her.
I was completely alone in the world; there was nobody left on this planet but me: this was how it seemed at that moment, when everyone was unconscious or dead, I didn’t know which.
Then I turned to my right, and I met my brother’s open eyes. It was like a castaway seeing a boat. ‘Vanni. I’m going to go get help, do you hear me? I won’t let you down, I promise.’
I couldn’t speak, but I nodded.
In all that terror and pain, my brother was there for me – this was imprinted in my brain that day, and the certainty never went away. It was he who scrambled out of the car, climbed onto the road and flagged down someone. It was he who held my hand when they lifted me onto a stretcher, and I realised that I couldn’t feel my legs.
‘I’ll look after you. I’m here,’ he told me. His face was the last thing I saw before closing my eyes and falling somewhere between sleep and death.
I was in that limbo for days, and I dreamed. Images of the accident kept coming back to me: I saw his face again and again, and heard his words.
I’ll look after you. I’m here. I won’t let you down.
I’ll look after you.
His was also the first face I saw when I awoke – I was in a panic, believing I was still in the car, and I only calmed down with his voice, with him holding my hands.
‘You’re good. We’re all good, Dad is injured but he’ll be fine, Mum is fine, look, she’s here… Maurizio only had a few bruises… We’re all good, Vanni, I promise.’
He kept saying I promise , as if he had the duty and the power to keep everything under control, to make sure every member of the family would be looked after and safe. The moment they finished settling me, I saw the difference in my brother’s face. His eyes had taken on a certain hardness that hadn’t been there before – and beyond it, there was a permanent glint of anxiety.
I was the one who couldn’t walk any more, but I soon realised that he was the one who’d been hurt the most.
During the months in the hospital, and then at home, being cared for day and night, Lorenzo was always with me. He made sure I took all my medicines, gave me blankets even when I wasn’t cold, read me books even if I had no problems holding a book and reading, and watching endless action films with me. He announced to our parents – he didn’t ask – that he’d study at home, so he could spend more time with me. He was close to Dad too, of course, who seemed to be affected by a mysterious ailment related to the accident, but that the doctors couldn’t give a name to. Our parents’ marriage was dissolving, but at that time, with me and my insensible legs and Dad’s mysterious decline, it seemed the least of our worries.
Mum left for our second home, and this brought me and Lorenzo even closer. I began recovering some feeling in my lower half, I was fitted with a wheelchair, life still felt arduous and empty, but I was regaining hope, little by little. Lorenzo, though, didn’t leave my side.
It took me a while to realise that he’d taken his role of protector so seriously, so desperately, that he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. That he wouldn’t let me get tired or hot or cold or hungry, not even for a second.
‘You’re ill, Vanni. Don’t forget that.’
‘You can’t get too tired; you have physio tomorrow. You’ll stay home.’
‘Are you sure you want to sit your diploma? It’ll wear you out. What do you need a piece of paper for?’
And then, after I did get my hard-earned piece of paper: ‘Why would you want to work? I’ll look after you. You focus on staying as healthy as you can. Don’t worry about anything. Leave it with me.’
Leave it with me has been our refrain, growing up. First, it was my only lifeline, then it was easy, comforting; later, it turned suffocating. When the time came for me to work in the family firm, Lorenzo couldn’t let go.
Month after month, year after year, he did all he could to keep me under his watchful eye, even if that meant I had no freedom. He was paranoid about me travelling in the car, even just to see my friends, even to go to physiotherapy for the many visits my condition required. My friends had to come to our house. Physiotherapists and doctors had to do home visits.
But I wasn’t a child any more; I was a teenager who needed his space, and I was angry.
I suppose I surprised everyone because, having been a quiet, sweet-natured child, I became withdrawn and resentful. I rebelled with everything I had – against my father, who was still very ill, much worse than he is now; against my mother, who had detached herself from me and Lorenzo and treated us like friends – dear friends maybe, but not her sons – but most of all, against my brother and his control of me.
For months we argued constantly – and Lorenzo was forced to change. A little. Although I was young, he let me into our business’s inner circle. I insisted I wanted to move out, even if it was going to be difficult to find somewhere adapted to the wheelchair. I began to go out more, even if Lorenzo waited for me, watch in hand, like an anxious mother.
And then I met Cristina.
It was a herculean effort for me, a swim against the tide, to open up to a relationship, letting a woman see the way I was now. But slowly, I came to trust her.
For a while, I thought that I’d managed to rip my life out of the hands of destiny: the accident had broken me in two, but I worked, I was engaged, neither the physical limitations nor the trauma had taken everything from me. I was just like some of the other paraplegic men and women I’d met during the years of doctors’ appointments and therapies: they had jobs and families. They’d overcome. For years I hadn’t thought I could do it, but I did.
Not long before the wedding, Cristina said we should talk. She burst into the worst, most heart-wrenching cry I’d ever heard – it was like her heart was breaking. She said she loved me, but she’d come to the conclusion that she couldn’t spend her life with someone in a wheelchair.
Apparently, she’d only realised this now , when she was already wearing my engagement ring on her finger. She said she wanted a normal life. And children. And that it all seemed so real now, she just couldn’t do it.
My answer to her was a straightforward, mild, I understand . I even comforted her. I reassured her that she had to do what was best for her, and that I didn’t want someone to stay with me just because they felt sorry for me.
When I was finally alone in my room, I destroyed everything in sight with a rage I didn’t even know I had in me.
My brother found me on the floor, in a corner, my useless legs dead in front of me – he cradled me in his arms, with a tenderness nobody would think Lorenzo Orafi could muster.
Since that moment, he has protected me more than ever. I slipped into the role of the vulnerable brother with a sense of inevitability. Looking back, it wasn’t about what Cristina felt or told me – it wasn’t about my feelings for her. That moment destroyed me because, down deep, I agreed with her. And so, it seemed, did my brother, who looked at me with the pity and sympathy reserved for a bird with a broken wing.
I had my apartment built on the property, all on one level, with the pool in front because only in the water do I feel truly free.
This is how I live today. My participation in the business is just formal, something my brother entertains to keep me busy, like giving colouring pages to a child. I’ve closed the door to relationships – never again will I put myself at the mercy of anyone.
I’m used to people looking at me with pity.
Only my father doesn’t: only my father fights for me to rise from this endless swamp. A comfortable swamp, but a swamp nonetheless.
I know people think my brother is power-hungry. I know many, even in our inside circle, believe he’s somehow triumphant, with our father so weak and me cut out from business.
But only we – Lorenzo, our father and I – know the truth.
It’s us who hear him screaming in his sleep, when the accident returns in his nightmares.
We know that when he boasts, Why settle down, there’s many more fish in the sea – he’s really saying, I can’t have my own family; I’m responsible for this one, and I must live for them.
My brother is still the little boy in the wrecked car, trying to save everyone in there, and forgetting about himself.