The music is over
"What wouldn’t I give to hold you, what wouldn’t I do for this love to become stronger than ever, here, the music is over, the friends are leaving."
("La musica è finita", Franco Califano)
The call reached Mario Giardini at 12.25. He was sitting on the train which would take him back from Milan to Rome and was absently reading the latest issue of Espresso. He was nervous and unsatisfied. He had spent a weekend with a colleague, planning a job they probably would not get, and he would have given anything for a cigarette, but there was still half an hour before reaching his destination. When the phone rang, he absently looked at the display, saw that the call came from a private number and answered with the tone of who is expecting a nuisance.
"Hello?" he said absent-mindedly.
"Dr. Giardini? I’m calling about your daughter Silvia. There was an accident at school."
"An accident? Silvia... how is Silvia?"
The architect was vomiting questions, one after another, with a worried expression, while his thoughts ran as fast as the worst fantasies. He was afraid that his daughter might have slipped on the stairs or fainted, or that a glass might have broken and hit her eyes. He imagined a fall from a chair or an accidental injury.
"Dr. Giardini, I can’t give you more information on the phone. You should come to the Santo Spirito hospital as soon as possible."
"I am in a train. I should be in Termini at about one o'clock."
"Maybe your wife could come?"
"I am divorced. My ex wife is abroad."
"I understand."
No comments from his interlocutor. An official of the school? A nurse? A teacher? Mario didn’t know
"Listen, don’t leave me this way. Tell me at least how serious it is."
"Come to the hospital Dr. Giardini."
"But is she alive?"
"Yes, she's alive."
Mario Giardini looked at his watch and started counting the minutes. He kept suspecting he had been told a merciful lie on the phone. Of course his daughter had never been a model student, but that didn’t mean anything. Fallen from a window? But how could that have happened? What then? Had she tried to commit suicide? Girls are weird when they grow up. And Silvia had never accepted that her mother had abandoned her. Might she have felt sick because she was hungry? He picked up the phone to call the school directly, but nobody answered at the other side. Eventually he resigned to wait, anxiety devouring him, and reached the Santo Spirito hospital like a man possessed. By taxi.
He was detained at the information desk by a nurse who, rather than bringing him to see the girl, escorted him directly to the police station.
"I must immediately see my daughter. I am the father of Silvia Giardini. Why am I here? What happened?"
He was standing with his briefcase in hand and kept pulling the neck of his shirt as he watched the inspector with a mixture of bewilderment, anxiety and anger.
"What happened to my daughter?"
Inspector Renato Pascucci could not stand that look. He was a father, he had lived the same concern a few years ago, in another hospital. He knew the pain of Mario Giardini. He looked down and stared at the tips of his shoes. What he had to say wasn’t easy. He cursed his task.
"Dr. Giardini, calm down and sit down. Something happened today at your daughter’s school."
"What?"
"Please, sit down."
Mario Giardini fell on the chair like a sack.
"There was a shooting."
"A shooting? At school? Like in American campuses?"
"Yeah."
Giardini straightened on his chair, running his hand through his hair. He did not care anything about sociology.
"Is Silvia dead? How is she?"
"I told you she’s not dead. She is in a coma."
"Will she make it?"
"I hope so. But..."
"But..."
Inspector Pascucci decided to take action. He would have rather been miles away. He moved his body closer to his interlocutor, bending forward on his desk to make his words more human and confidential. Words that were impossible to listen to for a father, and he knew it.
"Dr. Giardini. It was your daughter to shoot... your daughter and her friend, Deborah Volpini. The girls, for reasons still unclear, went to school with weapons, guns, and shot their classmates."
"Shot? It can’t be. Silvia and Deborah with guns?"
The Inspector looked up at his interlocutor. And his look was deliberately blank. He was trying to remember what had been said to him that day, the day that Stefano died. Who had told him that his son, his only son, was gone forever? It didn’t come to his mind. He only found emptiness.
"What happened? Has someone... has someone died?"
Renato Pascucci closed his eyes for a second, as if searching for a picture in his memory. Actually he was only looking for words.
"Six... six dead. Five students and a teacher. Witnesses say your daughter was the first to shoot. Did she ever mention Eleonora Cremaschi?"
"Never. Why?"
"It's one of the girls they killed. Maybe the real target of the slaughter."
The inspector ran his hand through his hair. He was sweating.
"I only know Deborah. She is always at our house. They lock themselves in Silvia’s room for hours, listening to the music. But from here to kill five, six people... they are just two little girls."
"I understand you. I had a sixteen-years-old son. I understand Dr. Giardini. Children are not predictable."
Mario Giardini ran his hand over his face and looked at the inspector as if he were seeing a Martian. He thought and didn’t think.
"My daughter. A killer... will she make it?"
"You have to talk to the doctor about that. I think that she will undergo surgery. I only know that she is in a coma."
"Someone shot her?"
"A policeman, to stop her. Silvia was... she had just shot Deborah."
"It’s impossible that she shot Deborah. She’s her best friend."
"From what I understand, in the end they had a fight."
The inspector looked down again.
"What does it mean? I don’t understand."
"Deborah had shot a professor who was not in their list."
"List?"
"Yes. It seems that the two girls had a clear plan."
"They had a list of people to kill? Science Fiction."
"Are you aware that your daughter was using drugs?"
"Excuse me. I need a cigarette. I don’t believe that my daughter uses drugs. At worst she could have smoked some joint. Who hasn’t at her age?"
"You really did not realize that your daughter was addicted to drugs?"
"No, I said no. I knew she wasn’t eating, wasn’t studying. But after the mess with her mother, I turned a blind eye. What could I ask my daughter after her mother left? I was not able to support her, to help her grow and digest the solitude of our home. I just let it go. I wasn’t myself. What could I do? I thought it would pass with time. I really didn’t check too thoroughly. Drugs? What kind of drugs?"
The inspector was fiddling with a pen, turning it over and over between his fingers.
"Hashish surely, and cocaine. It is very fashionable among young people. A single dose costs as much as an allowance. Teachers never called you from school? She never got a report?"
"They called me once from school a few years ago. Then I stopped going and they stopped looking for me."
"I understand."
"Excuse me, inspector, but, is it easy to shoot? I mean, to a girl who has never fired a gun...?"
"Shooting at close range is not difficult, believe me. Even a child could do it."
"Really?"
"Do you have any weapon at home Dr. Giardini? Even collectibles, old family memoires?"
"I hate guns. I never had guns at home. I wouldn’t even know how to touch them."
"I thought so. But you know, I must investigate. Do you have any id
ea where Silvia took the gun?"
"Are you kidding?"
"No particular friend? A company a little, let’s say, alternative? Criminals, drug dealers, delinquents?"
"Not at all."
"Someone must has given her weed. You know who supplied her?"
"I'm not even sure that Silvia smoked joints."
"Dr. Giardini. Search your memory and give me a hand! I must find out who gave the weapons to the girls."
"I understand. I wish I knew too. I will do what I can to help you with investigations. If needed. She will tell you the truth when she comes out of the coma, if she will..."
"Well. I’ll give you my phone number, call me at any time if something comes to your mind. Now go to Silvia, maybe they will let you see her. Have professor Spezziani accompany you. He’s the one who’s treating your daughter. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
The inspector stood still, watching him go away. He didn’t even stand up to shake hands with him, he didn’t even escort him to the door. He felt sad, invaded by the melancholy of defeated fathers, and found himself humming an old song by Califano, "The music is over, the friends are leaving, what a useless night my love..." His work was still in deep water and there was another man who, like him, would no longer find peace of mind. He snorted before answering the phone. Mario Giardini left incredulously the police station, bearing a load of coffins and pain on his shoulders. He was stunned, shocked, scared. His daughter was dying, his daughter, a killer who had just made a slaughter at school. He walked like a whipped dog, he felt stunned by the events. He couldn’t understand well. Indeed, he didn’t understand anything. He just wanted to see Silvia and watch her breathe. Outside the room a short queue had formed. He saw against the light other faces and other pains, but he didn’t have the courage to look at them. What could he say to the parents of children his daughter had killed? He hoped not to be identified. Life, at that moment, was delivering him a devastating bill he still could not rationalize. He kept thinking there must be some mistake, surely they were wrong, because his little Silvia – so young and so frail – could not really have taken a gun and fired. Why? And on whom? On Deborah, the inseparable friend with whom she had shared years of school and talk? Only the hope that there was a mistake acted for him as an anchor to get upstairs and reach, dragging himself, the ICU.
"We can only wait. We are doing everything possible. You have to wait, Dr. Giardini. For now she is in a coma. I cannot tell you more than this", a young, intimidated-looking doctor explained him.
The man put his coat and mask on, and tiptoed with a lost expression in the suspended word of sick people fighting against death. Silvia was there, with an IV drip attached to her arm, so helpless in a bed too big. His daughter, his child, the one he looked at with pride despite her bad marks at school and her habit of not eating. Who was this stranger with the gun? Where was his little, beloved Silvia, who was moved by cartoons? Where had she gone? What was left of her? How can you give birth to a child, keep her in your arms, feed her, buy her sweatshirts, jeans and an iPod, cuddle her after arguments with her boyfriend, and one day find out that she uses drugs, that she has a gun and shoots? Whose body was the one before him, still and silent? A stranger, just a stranger. Mario Giardini wiped his sweat. Then he stopped thinking. He stood staring at her the way one watches his child struggling against death, and he did something he hadn’t been able to do for so many years. He took her hand, gently, like when she was little and she had a fever, and started wetting it with his tears.