4

4

SHE WAS NEVER LATE, so everyone was alarmed by her absence. The news, meanwhile, had arrived at the school as well. The police inspector asked for a meeting with the headmaster and teachers as soon as lessons were finished. A couple of journalists started taking photos of the building just as the children swarmed through the gate. One second-year pupil called out a greeting: “Ciao, Uncle!”

It was a small town.

There was an empty desk in class now, and Silvia was nowhere to be seen. They figured she must have found out—someone must have called her, a journalist or a relative up early—and that she hadn’t felt like leaving the house. It was another teacher, Sister Annangela, one of her closest friends, who phoned her apartment. When she got no response she phoned Silvia’s cousin Anselmo, only two doors away. His mother-in-law answered.

“Good morning, Gemma, it’s Sister Annangela.”

“How are you? Is everything okay?”

“Can’t complain, Gemma, can’t complain. I’m looking for Silvia—is she at your place? I understand if she doesn’t feel like coming in today . . .”

“She’s not here.”

“Oh,” said Sister Annangela, before repeating, “She’s not with you.” The headmaster in front of her shook his head as if it were mounted on a spring, and another teacher, Fogli, sniffed.

“But what’s wrong, Sister Annangela?”

“Maybe she’s at home but isn’t picking up her phone. That could be it. Would you mind checking?”

“Sure. I’ve got the keys. But you’re worrying me.”

“Well, Gemma, it concerns a student, a girl in year six, Silvia’s class.” Sister Annangela’s voice broke despite her efforts. “She’s gone. She passed away last night.”

“Oh, Madonna. Oh, my God.” Gemma held the receiver away from her ear and looked at it as if it were guilty. “How could she have known?”

“Someone may have phoned her early this morning, or maybe she bought the paper, read the news, and went back home.”

“An accident?” Gemma asked.

“In the Cervo, in the river. We don’t know anything for sure.”

“Poor dear. May the Lord take her to glory,” Gemma said. She was very devout and whenever she turned to God her Friulian accent took over.

“I know, it’s dreadful. A child. Eleven years old. We’re shocked. If she’s heard about it, Silvia, too, must be upset. It was one of her students. She really looked after her. Go and check, Gemma.”

“I’ll call you back, Sister Annangela.”

Gemma put down the phone and left the house, her apron still tied and her shoes only half on.

“They’ll call back,” Annangela said to the head. “I’m going to look in on the class.”

Her heart sank, for the girl and now also for Silvia. She knew her, knew she wouldn’t be able to bear up under the sorrow. She might seem solid and opaque, like a slab of ice you could walk on without worrying about it cracking. But in fact the ice was thin, a barely thickened membrane.

She went into the year-six class, which was waiting and being looked after by a caretaker with a somber expression. The students still knew nothing.

Sister Annangela was very short and stout, with feet so small they looked round and calves like two sausages stuffed into the thick brown tights that nuns wore.

“Be patient, children. Your teacher, Canepa, may have been taken ill. We’re trying to find out.” She signaled to a girl sitting in the front row. “Excuse me, I don’t know your surname.”

“Cairoli.”

“Right, Cairoli. Please hand me your textbook.”

She put on her glasses, ran her stubby finger over the table of contents, and assigned some reading: The Elephant’s Child.

“Read the text silently and underline nouns in red, verbs in blue, and adjectives in yellow.”

She gave the caretaker a consoling look and went back to her class of second years, small children beaming with unexpected freedom. There, too, a caretaker was monitoring the chatter. One student stood in front of the perfectly clean blackboard with the air of someone who’d had a prickly chestnut burr slipped into his pants.

“What are you doing there, Martinelli?”

“I sent him there, Sister Annangela, because he said something dirty about your absence.”

Sister Annangela felt a smile breaking out and she pressed her lips together hoping to suppress it, at least partially.

“Crikey! Something dirty. Something I have to hear.”

She didn’t want to embarrass the caretaker by revoking the punishment, but neither did she want to leave the child standing there. Not that day.

“Not that dirty, Sister Annangela,” Martinelli protested.

“He said . . .” The caretaker looked for the right paraphrase. “He said you were in the loo, Sister Annangela.”

“Interesting.”

“Doing your business.”

“I get it. Thank you.”

“Sorry!” the boy blurted out, on the verge of tears.

They take everything terribly seriously, Sister Annangela thought, struck by a wave of sadness. Marina Poggio was scratching inside her ear with the rubber on her pencil. Ludovico Bindi balanced on his knees the apple he would eat during break. Sister Annangela herself tasted salty tears in her throat.

“You’re excused, Martinelli. Go back to your seat. And anyway, for your information, I wasn’t in the loo.”

She sat down, and for a moment she feared she wouldn’t be able to face the morning or the days to come. The funeral. She hung her head. The children looked at her. “Crikey,” she said again, and their eyes widened like those of a row of little owls. She’d have to move them into the other second-year classroom and go back to the girl’s class, where they were still reading The Elephant’s Child, completely oblivious. They had no idea.