Deep Sea

Chapter 11 - Anodized aluminum furniture

De Manzini could consider himself satisfied. He looked at the patient wrapped in bandages. He had saved the famous director from blindness, he would have gained fame, and the clinic with him. It was not known how he had found the new corneas so urgently, but the organs had arrived just in time, before Doctor Bondi became impatient with remaining confined to his bed.Nardini entered with the usual grace represented by his height of six feet and one hundred and ten kilos.- Doctor, the director wanted to see you.-The professor snorted, grabbed the nurse by the arm and dragged him out of the room.- The patient is sleeping. Is it possible that you don't have a little of what's called? I bet the negligence regarding the organ culture was yours.-- Ah doctor, I had nothing to do with it.-- You've been living in Trieste all your life, but when will you learn to speak Italian? -He left him with that good-natured and resigned air of an indolent Roman and headed towards Laganà's office, gritting his teeth.- Duccio - the friendly tone couldn't hide the bitterness and disappointment - do you think it's possible that I'm the last one to know things in here? - - Sorry, Manfredi, but I don't understand.-The fat man behind the desk ran his hands over his eyelids and a finger down the collar of his shirt.- I really don't know what to do. I feel besieged, and I promise you it's not a good feeling. First Emidio, now you. The people on whom I placed the greatest trust.-- I really can't understand you, what have we done?-Manfredi stared at him for a long time, in silence. De Manzini remained standing, leaning against the back of the armchair at the other end of the desk.- I already asked you if you would please let me know in advance about all organ acquisitions. I found out this morning, at eleven, about the Bondi corneas...-- I had told Elisa...-- My secretary knew nothing about it. Furthermore, the delivery notes appear to have evaporated. Can you know what the hell is going on behind me in this damned place? - he stood up as if raised by the crescendo of his anger.De Manzini remained motionless, with a neutral, inaccessible gaze.- I am a surgeon, Manfredi, not a mail receptionist.-- I want to know where the document accompanying the corneas is. I want to know where they come from, who donated them. I want to know everything, understand? I don't care who made the acceptance, if there are incompetent people fire them, but you must be able to tell me who did it. In this operation you are solely responsible.-- I repeat, Manfredi, I know nothing about it...-- Enough. I don't want to hear your excuses anymore. They are lies, just lies. Out.-The surgeon was bitter but didn't feel like replying. His professionalism, his commitment to that center, everything was treated in such an unacceptable way that it deserved any response. He turned on his heel and vanished in silence.Manfredi collapsed exhausted into the chair and pressed his fingers to his temples to stop a growing migraine. Behind the door De Manzini hissed a curse. This time Laganà wouldn't get away with it.

If there was one thing that infuriated Furio it was that he put other people's needs first before his own. There are people who are still able to evaluate every situation from a different point of view, which is not necessarily that of personal gain. These are not volunteers for good, apostles or preachers, but ordinary people for whom religion often makes sense - for all its business and ideological components -, people moved by a profound moral sense who, beyond the promised reward of the presumed eternal salvation, they consider that the right path to follow is that of not doing to others what you would not want done to yourself. In the end, ethics is ethics, whether secular or religious, and is always based on the concept of good and evil, attributing objective characteristics to one and the other. Furio, no matter how strenuously he denied it, had his own personal belief, for example he could not doubt that Jesus had really existed. He was certain that a historical figure with that name had existed, but he had redesigned his characteristics in his own way, unconsciously approaching the representations of the apocryphal gospels and the non-orthodox writings of the life of Christ, texts that he had never read but if had he done so, they would have been able to mark out for him the path of a more clearly defined, less approximate intellectual path, sometimes so personalized that he would become confused when trying to explain it to others. In practice, Jesus was a revolutionary, a protester, more than a prophet, a courageous man driven by a strong internal energy, probably given by a self-awareness gained through reading and cultured acquaintances. A young man who took the masses subjugated by the Empire, forced into ignorance, by the hand and showed them the path to salvation: a resistance based on non-violence. Ever heard of the Essenes? And didn't Gandhi do the same? Obtaining an almost similar effect. The liberation of a people. Jesus had to pay for his pride, and the fact that he proclaimed himself the son of God may have been a rumor spread on purpose by his detractors to tarnish him in the presence of the Roman rulers and disqualify him also in the face of the changing, and even a little sadistic, masses - of that sadism which is humanly understandable and at the same time despicable, and which arises every time a man rises above others by fame - contributed to killing him. A death useful to many, which silenced an uncomfortable and annoying voice, uncomfortable because it spoke of peace and freedom, annoying because it flew high and traveled on its own wings. It certainly could not have been imagined then that the crucifixion corresponded to a martyrdom, that his ideas would find apostles, as daring as him, capable of repeating them and safeguarding them. Otherwise, you can bet, they would have avoided it. This was, in short, the only religion that Furio was able to represent. Far from believing himself to be a new messiah, never thinking of being even a timid revolutionary, he lived oppressed by work for fear of missing it, with many good intentions and never having the time to put them into action. The only thing he tried to apply, and he didn't always succeed in doing so, was this moral rectitude of his. In a certain sense there was also something utilitarian about his altruism: feeling good about one's conscience. It was no small feat to be able to sleep at night with a thousand thoughts on projects and formulas, with the hammering of programming syntaxes that reached his nightmares on bat wings, but with the awareness in his soul of having acted first for the good of his loved ones and then for his own. Sometimes a certain pride and rigidity arises in people obsessed with the desire to please and with a sense of righteousness that can seem like everything except what one would like. Furio did not belong to this category. His ethics were not bigoted, and he never took for granted that an action carried out in the name of his conscience was always the right thing to do. He had made some mistakes. What saved him was good faith. Nothing to do therefore with a cloistered nun focused on herself and her beliefs, if anything a Disney Mickey Mouse with that veneer of self-assurance that borders on arrogance, but such a good heart that it is sometimes even cloying. This is why when you think about it, when you reflect on the scams you suffered in order to seem like the good Samaritan of the situation, Furio in his privacy sometimes risked punching himself. Like when he made old ladies pass in front of him in the supermarket queue and then waited forever for them to pay by sipping the wrong coins from their purse. He had gotten himself into trouble. A job was due in two days and he had a crazy backlog. All to give credit to others. Of course, he couldn't deny Riccardo his help, and he had done so without any hesitation, without feeling credit; but in the last hours he had also been Alberta's accomplice, Ettore's confessor, the good son who had to participate in his father's birthday dinner. In his family, a middle class family of southern origin, anniversaries were something sacred. Seventy round years. Mr. Cristofari, a wealthy pensioner, was the exact opposite of Furio. This is why they didn't get along. If it hadn't been for his mother's insistence, perhaps the excuse of work would have been enough to escape the boring dinner that lay ahead. Duty towards the family, not displeasing the mother, making the sister happy, diligently carrying out the role of the grateful son, were all impositions dictated once again by conscience. As expected it was a tedious dinner, with the mother stuck in the role of the good wife, the sister who minded her own business by nodding and thinking of other things, the son-in-law who agreed with his father, and he who let him talk, he knew better than to oppose him it was useless and tiring. It was his anniversary, after all, he had the right to spit out sentences and speak badly of everything and everyone, including the government, the same government he had voted for with great enthusiasm. Furio ate calmly, casting a few knowing glances at his mother, who promptly rolled her eyes. The old man was now on a downward slope. Retirement had deprived him of what little youthful spirit he had ever had - it was doubtful whether even as an adolescent he had ever been courageous and carefree - and although he remained physically attractive and elegant, in his soul he was dry, petulant and conformist. The usual considerations soon gave way to more intense thoughts in the young man, to the memory of his vigil in the hospital next to his friend. She still saw him there, lonely and distressed, hunched over on the green plastic bench in the middle of the long, empty white corridor. She brought him a paper cup with hot tea in it fresh from the machine. Ricky drank it, in small sips, almost disgusted, but he had to eat. He hadn't eaten for more than twelve hours. In the cold light of the waiting room Furio had observed him well, in depth, as only sometimes can be done with a loved one. She had noticed his cheekbones, which stood out so much that his cheeks were sunken. The eyes were protruding, huge in a face that he had always considered beautiful, as a healthy boy who plays sports and eats proteins, today he found himself seeing in his friend the ghost of his youth.  The pain for his mother was only one of the causes of his deterioration. The dream of becoming a professional basketball player had clashed with the rigidity of the discipline, which clashed with his irremediable anarchy. Even at school he was like this, more dedicated to fooling around than studying, attracted more by a joint with friends than by an evening at the cinema or in a disco. The opportunity to play with a great team had dissolved because of him, because of his arguments with the coach, because the imposition weighed on him and his credits with life, which had seen him orphaned of his father at a young age and with a mother sick, they had accrued too high interest. No one could ever impose anything on him that went against his blind will. Now he found himself fighting on multiple fronts: his mother on the front line, work on the second line, and for some time his relationship with Alberta had also been a source of laceration. He worked part-time in a call centre, the factory of the new millennium, an aseptic place with identical computers and absent faces projected onto a monitor, wearing alienating headphones, human machines at the service of technology. This is how he felt, for five hours a day: an automaton without personality, debased in a role to play that caged him with no way out. He wouldn't risk a job for a nervous outburst now, but too many times his hands shook. He had gotten used to it a bit, over time, even if the sorrows for missed opportunities burn, and burn for a long time.