But a tiny splinter of suspicion trapped in his mind made him do something that he would normally define hopeless, but that in that moment seemed to him as reasonable as going to the kitchen, heat up a cup of coffee and then go back to bed, waiting for the right moment to act.
After receiving the fax announcing the two daily deliveries (they were always about the same amount), at 8:10 A.M. he wrote his curious request through the Postman: “Considering the upcoming end of my term, is it possible to receive some information on the Keeper that preceded me?”
The beep came after nine seconds. “For what reason, Keeper Corte?”
Ah, for what reason, the ask… well, let’s see…
“If I should ever meet him one day, I would like to talk to him about the experience we have in common.”
Could it be enough? It was impossible to say. But it was worth a try.
He glanced at the well. The usual, desolate sight. It would miss it. It was incredible, totally crazy. Or maybe it was normal and inevitable. He would miss almost everything from the Tank. After a year even the darkest and most tormenting shadows, when they are about to fade forever, acquired soft, nostalgic tones. He kept looking at the amoeba made of many small phosphorescent specters, so familiar in its movements, so hypnotizing, so…
The buzzing of the fax was a sudden stab to the heart.
A sheet of paper crawled out of the fissure and Giovanni had to shake his head to get his thoughts back on track.
What…?
He saw the the console before him rotate slightly rightwards and at the same time he was under the impression that his chair for dragging him backwards. But it lasted for just one second.
From the paper rectangle he had in his hands a bearded man was staring at him. It was a low-quality, black and white picture, probably obtained by zooming a passport photo, but it was enough to superimpose it on the memory of the face he had seen in his dream and remain widemouthed.
Under the photo were written the same aseptic data one may find on an ID card. Name: Dino. Surname: Bastiani. Place and date of birth followed (he was merely two years older than him), address, hair and eye color, profession (student), marital status (unmarried). Giovanni wondered whether the stupor in the form of dizziness was because he had recognized – or believed he had recognized – in that photo the man in his dream, or the fact they had answered him in such a thorough, almost flagrant way. He was so used to the silence and discretion that receiving such an answer to a useless question like that one made him cringe.
He looked closer at that expressionless face.
“And so you are… Dino, uh?” Until that moment, that guy had always been an unidentified predecessor, the one that for one hear had roamed through those same rooms, had the same nightmares and hopes, who had supposedly written a diary full of nonsense, but it wasn’t actually true…
He stared at the picture he had received by fax, impressed on the paper by the toner, its lights and shadows, that varied spot of ink to whom he was talking and calling him Dino, and almost smiled.
How could I dream of you if it’s the first time I see you?
The answer came by itself that same night.
It took him all day to slowly climb up from the depths of his memories, but eventually he surfaced like the body of a drowned men, blotted, awful to look at. And then Giovanni understood.
It was 2:57 A.M. when he looked at the screen of his alarm clock. He couldn’t get to sleep since he went to bed a couple of hours earlier. He watched TV until late, pretending to follow an action movie full of stuntmen jumping off race cars, but he couldn’t prevent his mind from digging and digging…
And finally, from a darkness only apparently impenetrable the spark of an answer came. He sat on the edge of his bed, breathing him deep the cold darkness enveloping him like a wet blanket. It wasn’t the first time he saw that men. That’s why he had dreamt of him…
He could check, if he wanted to. He had but to sit at the Control, before the Well, turn on the playback mode and go backwards and backwards…
But it wasn’t necessary. The certainty with which he had come to that conclusion made further investigation utterly futile. He knew he was right, just like when only one card remains unturned on the table: there’s no need to turn it to know its value.
Everything finally fit. The fact that they had sent him the complete list of the casualties on the day of the assault and had given him all the information he had asked for…
They had pleasantly surprised him with that sudden openness towards him; but reading everything under a new light, that behavior hid sinister implications. They had satisfied his requests because he would have no way of divulging what he knew. He would never meet that a Dino Bastiani. He would never write a book or release interviews or tell his experience in any way.
It was incredible how his memory could remember a face registered practically one year earlier, when he had looked into the Well for the first time, upon arriving at the Tank. That man at the center of the screen, the one talking to the camera – talking to him! – who had sunk when the bodies under him had moved… was the Keeper that had preceded him. And he had been unloaded.
What did he do to deserve such fate? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, if not living in there for a whole year. Had that man done something wrong and been convicted for it, they would have no doubt told him: it would have served as a warning, a valid deterrent against improper behavior. They had thrown him in the Shutter simply because it was how things were meant to be. Nobody could leave. Unpunished. Oh, how sad was the motto looming over the headboard of the bed: Nemo me impute lacessit. As if the Tank itself was saying it to anyone who indulged for too long in its sick seduction. So… would it be his fate, too?
There, immobile, clad in darkness and the silence giving it form, sitting on the edge of the bed, his naked feet on the ice cold floor, Giovanni hid his face in his hands and let himself be devastated by loud, coarse sobs mixed with tears and laughter, until he fell on the mattress and lost himself into the void until morning.
26 – Islands
The last, grey days of the year passed slowly. Even Christmas, which usually soothed Giovanni’s soul with the sweetness of his memories, came and silently crept away, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste. No colorful lights, decorations, snows or songs. All the joys he had come to know with his family when he was a boy, a kid, nor burnt his memory like a thousand small braziers; he wanted to cool them off throwing buckets of that cold water adultness can pour remorselessly on the warmth of infancy, but he couldn’t. Like every year, he whispered prayers and wishes for his parents, then closed that window from which nothing but pain could get in.
The small dumbbells were put back in the wardrobe and the books forgotten. The calendar in the vestibule kept marking a day in September (he hadn’t touched it since the day of the assault).
During the last week the deliveries decreased even more. Giovanni kept on working with clockwork efficiency. He didn’t say useless words to the Guards, but couldn’t help noticing they often glanced at him, studying him with a hint of perverse curiosity, maybe. As if they knew…