Deep Sea

Chapter 4 - Daughter's suspicions

Alberta picked up a handful of earth and threw it into the pit. When he heard the noise on the wood he collapsed onto his knees and his face, until then neutral like a pierrot's mask, contorted into a heartbreaking expression. The mouth opened without making a sound, the eyes became two slits and tears flooded the cheeks. Convulsive sobs made her chest heave.

Paola crouched next to her and held her in a strong hug. They cried together, for long minutes.

The bystanders could not contain their emotion. Mother and daughter were held in a grip of pain and hundreds of veiled eyes remained still wondering the reason for that premature end. A red rose fell on the coffin. Riccardo remained looking at the flower that had landed right under the cross set in the sarcophagus, took a handful of earth and threw it too, angrily, then gave the gravediggers a sign to continue. Two workers with the logo of the municipal funeral home on their shoulders began to shovel in the hole. Alberta's sobs became louder and her hands reached towards the grave. Riccardo took her by the shoulders and kissed her hair.

It was a cloudy and sultry day, walking along the avenues was heavy, doubly heavy. The anguish over Valerio's death had prostrated those who knew him. They were all there that day, including his historic antagonist, the editor-in-chief, that lanky Edoardo Cresci, with his handkerchief in his hand and his mouth distorted in a grimace of pain that revealed his gray teeth.

At Alberta's side, Riccardo was crying, holding back his sobs. He wanted to give his girlfriend the image of a person who can tolerate pain and who could be her support at that moment. In reality Valerio had been for him that father he had never had, a figure of a vigorous and intransigent man, self-confident, accustomed to the difficulties of life, who without sentimentality had helped him grow, or at least had tried.

Furio stood next to Paola, in his dark linen suit, his almost always smiling face this time was closed in a hard expression, his cheeks sunken and his jaws clenched. He had a deep respect for Valerio, almost an adoration, for the lack of compromises with which he had spent his short existence. He admired his lucid and frank thinking, without contradictions, that slightly gruff air that hid a sensitive soul and great human compassion. He was certain that if Valerio had found himself in front of the one who until a few minutes before was his bitterest enemy, seeing him in difficulty he would have helped him by personally risking himself. It wasn't a contradiction, it was a rule of life.

Ettore was flanked by Lidia who couldn't stop crying. The thing that moved her most was seeing Alberta torn apart. He considered her a true friend and couldn't get the thought out of his mind of what his existence would have been like without his beloved dad. Ettore knew Valerio little, he had seen him at some party and had spoken to him, addressing only banal topics that kept him away from any political controversy. She knew, from having read some of his articles and seen him a few times on TV, that their ideas were discordant, which didn't mean she had a bad opinion of him, but she preferred to have him at a distance and if she suffered now it was because she read in the pale faces of the widow and daughter that that death meant much more than the loss of a loved one, it was the loss of an entire world, of a lighthouse around which women had based their security. He was certain that Alberta would never forget, and although the misfortune appeared to everyone as an accident, he felt that the girl would not give up until the real dynamics of the facts were clarified and someone was found to do it on. fall the blame for what she now considered, rightly or wrongly, a murder.

Paola opened the pantry to take out the saucepan and prepare some chamomile tea. She noticed that the pan was still on the drainer and remembered the evening three days before, when Valerio had told her that he would take care of Alberta, that he would advise her to forget about her civil battles and dedicate herself more to studying. - Tomorrow - he had told her, or rather he had promised her, but the following evening Valerio was in intensive care, mute, intubated, with scars all over his body and his lungs punctured by the breaking of five ribs. At the end of the night Valerio had ceased to live. The promise to speak to her daughter had remained suspended in time and only in front of the pot of chamomile did Paola realize that that conversation would never take place again. He leaned over the sink and closed his eyes in a whirlwind of desperate thoughts.