Piazzetta Paoli 2

By Pierpaolo Maiorano

A parent on the run. A juridical error. A man who has lost his memory, but who doesn't give up. His journey to find the truth. A truth that would have been better not to uncover.
Sentenced to life in prison for a double homicide, he never confessed. He can't, he doesn't remember anything. Not only about that night, but about his past.
After ten years, they let him go once the real killers are found.
He finds out he is alone.
Once back in his city, seeing again the places where he grew up, memories begin to resurface. Of his first thirteen years of life, when he was happy, he had a beautiful family and a father who adored him. After that, darkness. He doesn't understand why, but he tries to start over. From scratch.
The encounter with an old friend of his father, makes him find out part of the truth. The father on the run. Him hiding in the car to follow him. A terrible accident that leaves him in an irreversible coma, according to doctors. But the thing he can't accept is that his father left him in the hospital, to his fate. He doesn't believe it, not for how much he remembers he loved him. He wants to find him, he has to! He needs to find out why he abandoned him. He thinks, hopes, that in those eighteen years of total darkness there is the answer.
The search leads him to Germany, China, Africa. In the end... he realizes that not knowing the truth would have been better!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pierpaolo Maiorano
• Release date: Sep 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9791222005164

Book preview

Prologue

I imagined myself free for years. A common thought, I believe, for anyone who has to serve a sentence, although in my case it’s harder to imagine a future outside those walls.

The fundamental difference between what I expect and what the others dream of lies in the fact that I have no idea of how the outside world is.

I don’t remember anything about my past!

There is a television in prison of course, they describe it, but what will I find out there in the end?

Therefore, the desire to get out is due to that hope, which with time turned into conviction, that I will be able to remember my past.

Conviction that became fear once they informed me of the upcoming release. Panic. Of what I would do out there, because while the other prisoners could go back to their loved ones and their friends once they served their time... I had no one.

No one came to visit me besides the lawyer, my world was all there, locked up within those walls.

My friends, my family, were the other prisoners, the prison guards.

The morning of zero hour, or rather zero day, when they returned my things, they also gave me a letter that I put in the inside pocket of my bag without reading it.

When the gates opened I started crying, I begged the prison guards to make me stay, I felt totally lost. I was safe there after all, I ate, I had a place to sleep, relate. Now?

They had to literally throw me out by force.

And when the gates closed, everything around me started spinning, I was paralyzed. Instead of legs it felt like I had two concrete blocks.

I don’t know after how long I was able to take the first steps.

I struggled to start walking and only when I went past the cemetery did my muscles begin to loosen and I increased the pace. Following the road I reached the city. The feeling of emptiness, the tears I couldn’t control, reminded me of a TV report about a child that got lost, he cried, and despite all the people that were trying to comfort him, he kept calling his mother.

I tried stopping a person, then another and another. Everyone ran away as soon as I headed in their direction, until an old man, noticing me crying against the wall, approached me and revealed the mystery: the news of my release had been broken by the local newspapers the day before. They ran away because they recognized me!

And even if my innocence had been proven, for them I was and would forever be, the monster who had slaughtered his parents, well-known and respectable people, in their sleep.

There, that was the only thing I knew about my past, why I was in prison. But who were my parents? I collected all the articles regarding my case, and apart from the first few days when I screamed my innocence – yes, I remembered nothing, but I knew I had not committed what they accused me of – I gave up and for a while I considered myself a monster too. Slowly I managed to change everyone’s mind, prisoners, prison guards, director, until they appreciated and cared for me.

I began wandering the streets, sleeping where I could, I didn’t eat for days because nobody wanted me to go into their shop or restaurant.

Only the pastor treated me as a human being welcoming me for a few nights and giving me food. He advised me to leave that place and took care of buying me some provisions.

Although I wished to show those people that they were wrong, I decided to follow his advice.

After days of walking, I reached Novara, where I stayed for three weeks. At least almost no one recognized me there. I also found a place to sleep, and the money I earned in prison allowed me to survive for two weeks. I spent the third on the streets.

Only when I was exhausted, rummaging in the bag searching for some change to buy food, did I find that famous envelope.

When I opened it and saw that it contained money, I smiled for the first time in weeks. I read the letter after buying something to eat.

The sender, the notary office of a certain Mr Arciboldi, included besides the money, a train ticket and a letter in which he explained that I was the recipient of the inheritance of an aunt of mine, as well as the directions to his office.

It took me a month to decide to go meet him.

Chapter 1

It’s 9:43 of November 12th 1996 when I get off at Battipaglia station, after an endless train journey. I know... as the notary wrote in the letter, that my aunt lived there for a few years.

I arrive at his office in ten minutes.

I am nervous, I will finally find out who I am and be able to rebuild my life.

He receives me immediately and begins a long monologue explaining how it took him three years to find me, going into great depth and detail about the various stages of the search. I finally interrupt him begging him to get to the point.

I find out that my mother died six years ago; my aunt, her sister, just over three.

He hands me three envelopes and a set of keys. I hope the answers I am looking for are in those letters. One letter is from my mother, one from my aunt, the last one contains a title deed of an apartment and the details of a postal account. Lastly, the notary hands me two million.

He wants me to at least know that before dying my mom left the task of finding me to her sister, who likewise in her will entrusted the notary to find me and convince me to come back.

Come back. From where? And why did I leave?

I leave the office after two hours.

I’m torn. A part of me wants to open those envelops immediately, to see if I recognize my mother’s handwriting or my aunt’s. I decide to take my time opening them, once I get home.

Home. Perhaps I’ll find the answers there.

But I need to get to Salerno. I decide to go there by train, I saw that it’s two stops before Battipaglia.

I try to find my way through the countless and intertwined roads and streets, and amazingly I manage to find my bearings almost immediately. Going past a restaurant, the aroma makes my stomach rumble. I’m hungry. 

I keep on going, I want to reach the destination as soon as possible, I can’t wait to get to what I assume was my home. Safe withing four walls, not only I could read the letters calmly and cry without shame if needed, but I would also definitely find things that belonged to my family, to my mom, to me. And remember!

My mother... suddenly her face appears before my eyes. But then I think: and my father? What happened to him? I’m sure she was married, but the notary didn’t mention him.

While I cross the street lost in a thousand thoughts, I almost end up being run over by a trolleybus. The black eight.  I apologize to the driver and see that it stops in Salerno.

Driven by the belief that seeing streets that might be familiar can help me remember, I decide to get on.

The vehicle is full, it’s rush hour and we are packed like sardines. Between the incredible stench – not even in the prison showers – kids yelling, singing, pushing each other, I arrive at the city center. I get off at the station square.

Yet another rumble to my stomach guides me to a rotisserie. I buy a small pizza, a fried calzone, some Sicilian rice balls and a bottle of water. My instinct, even if I don’t recognize anything I see and could practically be in Paris o in any other city, takes me to the promenade. When I cross it I have a flashback.

(…) I see myself a tiny rugrat, dressed like Zorro complete with a drawn mustache, running around waving the sword, intent on imaginary duels between the flowerbeds of the strip of green that divides the road from the sea.

I bought a map and a street guide to try to find my way. I consult it while I eat. I’m sitting facing the sea, to my right you go north, to my left to the south, to go home I have to go inland, behind me that is.

I feel a sudden incredible drowsiness – I didn’t sleep a wink on the train, too excited about wanting to admire the landscapes that followed one another and the fear of not being able to get off at the right stop – and without realizing it I fall asleep right there, on the bench. I am awoken by the rain that starts falling, combined with the sunset’s humidity, it’s late afternoon. Not to get wet, collected the leftovers, I look for a trash can and cross the street seeking shelter under the building’s porch. When I see a bus, the red eleven, something urges me to chase after it and get on, I know it will take me to my destination.

The journey is short, my heart starts beating fast, those places are starting to look familiar. I get off at the stop in Piazza Casalbore, where the soccer stadium is. A thrill turns into tears.

(…) On Sunday afternoon, when the Salernitana team played, I must have been seven or eight years old, I remember going in front of the gates every time. I liked watching all those people gathering, the fans who sang, and without fail there was an adult that, noticing me there alone, invited me to follow him; he would let me in with him for free. I never accepted, partly out of fear, partly because I was not allowed to trust strangers. When everyone had gone in, I would go back to my grandmother’s place, or play with my friends, or wander around as usual.

There, yes. I’m headed to my grandmother’s apartment, not mine. I stay for a few minutes and stare at the massive perimeter walls of the stadium, fascinated. More raindrops make me come back to the present. Without hesitation I cross the street and walk those few meters uphill that lead to the small side street that ends up in Piazzetta Paoli... Via Fuso!

Yet another thrill. Other childhood memories resurface, and looking around it’s as if time has stopped, nothing has changed since then.

Coming out from the side street I stand with my back to the building that forms the base of the square, which is uphill and has a strange shape, it looks like an alembic, and has at the top another small widening. The buildings, clearly built in different periods, give life to this odd shape.

The front door is right in the narrowing. Six steps and here is the entrance hall... landing... I am not sure how to call it, the bathroom we had in the cell was larger. To the right you go towards the floors, to the left you go to the basement.

My grandmother’s apartment is on the second floor. A public housing unit, without balconies, but with a double facing. The kitchen, bathroom and bedroom overlook the courtyard; the living room and second bedroom face the street that leads to Piazza S. Francesco.

When I open the door another tear and my heart is pounding.

Without thinking I extend my left hand to the right, where the light switch and electricity meter are. I am sure they canceled the contract, but if I remember correctly, in the meter’s compartment my grandmother always stored a few candle stubs, and I thought better than thinking of buying them.

It’s dark already and the dim light of the stairs illuminates, so to speak, very little. The first thing I feel under my fingers is the electricity meter’s little door. Click... and unexpectedly the light goes on!

I start crying. Time has really stopped.

It’s incredible how everything stayed exactly the same just like when I was a child: the little cabinet for storing keys and small objects surmounted by the mirror on the right, right behind the door on the left, the little bench, and the coat rack on top of it. Everything matching, and obviously going back to who knows how many years ago. As I close the door, Pinuccia walks out on the landing, Anna’s daughter, the next door neighbor.

«Adriano? Is it possible? Is it really you?»

It’s a pleasure and a nuisance at the same time. I have no desire for pleasantries, so I cut it short.

«Hi Pina, yes it is me. Do you mind if we talk another time? I need to use the bathroom and I am really tired.»

I leave the keys on the cabinet, the backpack on the bench and hang up the coat.

I quickly look into each room, it seems incredible, everything is just as it was then.

Covered with sheets, but each piece of furniture, ornament, chandelier, is exactly the same as when I was little. 

To my amazement, I discover that the water and gas supplies are still active in the kitchen.

There is as stuffy smell, so I open all the windows, it creates an incredible whirlwind and I have to put my coat back on.

(…) The window in the living room and the one in the kitchen face each other, they are practically one in front of the other. One afternoon, I must have been nine maybe, I was sitting at