FROM HERE….WHERE DID SHE GO?

The wide ( large) square is opening in front of her, with its arms welcoming her, its arms which, instead of limiting the space, seem to widen the space. As always in front of the great square this feeling that the square is just awaiting you, is welcoming you. Lucy is looking at the large square, with behind her the bastion of the castle from which she has just come down, the castle on which top the angel with the drawn sword stood.

The wide square , that is located a few hundred meters from her, seems to her as if it were not real, but rather a wonderful image on a screen, even as if it were an enchanting apparition that can disappear at any moment.  It is not yet evening, the red glows of the sunset still flicker in the sky, but the large square is illuminated by a soft, enveloping light. In the background, the great dome of the Basilica seems to bless the square with its arms outstretched to welcome visitors.

How strange, it is not yet dark, but the large ( great) square, with its open arms, here ( there) in front of her, is desert or almost ( desert). There are only three people, all of them far from each other, and each of them seems to be looking for something in the square. Now one of them is leaving the square.  He is a middle-aged man, walking with his head down, his hands in the pockets of his buttoned blue jacket. Oh, she certainly cannot see his face  but, who knows why, his gait, his accompanying steps with a nod of his head reminders her  a Senator of the Republic, a very powerful politician, both here in the Capital, as on all country.

But what day is today? She wonders. But look, it is June 23….Now, precisely June 23, thirty-one years earlier, this large square was ( had been) the last place where a very young girl,  Amy R., a citizen of the Vatican State, has been seen. The young girl has never been found, even if much has continued to be said about her disappearance during all these years. Those who had seen her that distant day said that  Amy was talking here in the square to a man older than her.  There were other people who said they had seen the girl in the center of the square, near the Egyptian obelisk, as if she were waiting for someone.

Amy R. was fifteen when she disappeared that evening, after leaving music school__ Amy played the sweet flute ___and that evening, before returning home, she probably had met someone in St. Peter’s square, an appointment about which no one knew anything. After her disappearance, the investigations started trying to identify the man ( guy) who(m) at least two people said to have seen with the girl in St. Peter’s square this evening. When a third witness had spoken of a priest whom he had seen with Amy in the square, about seven in the evening, the investigation into the unknown, hitherto ( until then) believed to be likely responsible for the girl’s disappearance, had come to a halt. That is, it had been said that probably the man with whom the girl had met that evening ( in St.Peter’s square) had nothing to do with her disappearance . Oh if then he was a priest, he could very well have been someone the young girl held as a spiritual Father to ask for advice and help.

Shortly after Amy R.’s disappearance, it was the Pope, during the Angelus, looking out the balcony on St. Peter’s square who addressed the…kidnappers of Amy, asking them to return the girl to her family. It had been since ( after) that Pope’s appeal from the balcony of St. Peter’s square that newspapers and televisions had started  to talk of THE KIDNAPPING of AMY R. Even if it was never( it had never been) known the request for a ransom   , there was who wrote and said that instead a request for a ransom had been asked just to the Vatican.

Also Ali Muhammed Cugyacchja , the man who had shot the Pope , still in St.Peter’s square, two years earlier, was involved in the affair. It was said that Amy R. had been kidnapped to get  the Pope’s attacker released. But he, Ali Muhammed Cugyacchja, sentenced to life imprisonment, was locked up in an Italian prison ( and he had been sentenced by an Italian Court) . Therefore there were difficulties, to say the least, since it would have been the minister of the Justice of the Italian Republic to decide on the release of the Pope’s attacker so that a citizen of the Vatican state would be released from her kidnappers.

But you look a bit ( a little)….that middle-aged man whom Lucy saw starting leaving the square, but, oh, he is approached by a tall, massive man who looks like, but sure, a cardinal, with a large red  band on his waist, indeed on his big belly. And that middle-aged buttoned tight in a blue jacket is really a politician who has been a minister and even prime minister of the Italian Republic  several times . Now Lucy can recognize him since she has decided to look at the great square with binoculars. Sure, it( he) is the senator Giulio Massì himself….The other, the very imponent , big cardinal, is a tall,  still young man, with a full and reddish face ___with a big belly too___, but Lucy doesn’t know who he is. Eh, the tall and very massive ( large) cardinal has a very imposing look, he overlooks the Senator more than the great dome overlooks the immense square. 

On the red band around his waist___indeed his belly ___a very big crucifix is glittering ( flashing), perhaps it’s golden .  Oh, but look, the big, imponent cardinal presses the Senator by the elbow and makes him turn. The two, the big cardinal and the Senator, start walking side by side toward the Basilic. But where are they going? Lucy asked herself, since the Basilic is closed at this time. And here that those two ( the Senator and the very BIG cardinal), they stop right in the center of the square, next to the Egyptian obelisk. Like Amy R. and that …man who remained unknown, the same day thirty-one years ago, at about the same time. And to Lucy comes to think that, who knows, that the two ….very powerful men are talking just about Amy R., that is, of the uproar that her disappearance continues to provoke , even after so many years. Who knows…those two very bigwigs aren’t arguing to find a way for Amy R.’s family, some bull-busters of journalists, and even the curious and slanderous people of the damned country which the Senator Massì is honored to represent in parliament for a lifetime ___and, of course ( but sure) to cajole and beaten as a minister and as prime minister___(  for all these) stop , once and for all, coming back to the case of the disappearance of that poor, unfortunate girl…. For God Most Holy! There will also be a way to silence them once and for all! But what the fuck do they want to know, eh? Don’t they understand ( Aren’t they able to understand) what happened to the unfortunate girl? Why do they keep asking WHY and WHO?

In the country in which the Senator is a powerful long-time politician people think that in Vatican they know what happened to Amy R.

A little over a year ago an anonymous letter to Amy R.’s family suggested ( told) that Amy  had been buried in a grave of a Rome cemetery belonging to the Vatican state, even though on the  gravestone there was the name of a Catholic Princess of the Northern Europe who died in the mid-nineteenth century. Again, as on other occasions, there was a great stir in the hope of being able to find at least the remains of the missing girl. When the grave was opened it was completely empty. Only then was it said that the remains of the Princess who had been buried there had been removed from the cemetery about half a century earlier. The anonymous letter addressed at that tomb ( grave) said of AN ANGEL, A MARBLE ANGEL  that was pointing to the grave where to look ….for Amy or, indeed, for the mortal remains of her.

It is getting dark, and the lights come on ( turn on) like a garland around the great square. (Those two), the Senator and the cardinal are still in the square, they are still talking. They take a few steps towards the Basilica and then go back, they stop next to the obelisk in the center of the square, and they keep arguing. It was almost always the big cardinal who speaks, and while he is speaking he takes in his hand, from time to time,  the big crucifix  that sends out reddish glows and golden flames. The Senator, his head bent, listens and nods almost continuously at the cardinal words.

But now, suddenly  what is happening ? Oh, here’s the angel gliding over the square, that marble angel who in the cemetery would have indicated Amy’s secret burial. The angel lands behind the Senator and the cardinal, who don’t notice his presence. The angel has a sword in his hand. Oh, but then it is the angel on the top of the castle. Is it possible that he has gone down on the square? The angel brandishes ( wields) his sword on the cardinal’s head, then on the Senator’s head. “ Am I awake or am I dreaming?” Lucy wonders. She blinks, the binoculars have fallen on the ground, she picks them up and looks into the square. Now the great square is desert. The cardinal and the Senator….they disappeared.. Not even the angel there is anymore.