Like Family by Paolo Giordano Page A

new spot that it is unlikely to be assigned. One morning when I went down to clean it and apply a product to protect it from termites, I noticed some fine wood particles piled up in the corners. Opening the upper doors, I saw that the interior walls were papered with various newspaper articles, each with a date written on it in ballpoint: 1975 or 1976. Those were years when Renato was still alive but already gravely incapacitated. As far as I know, the credenza had come to Mrs. A. from an aunt of his, perhaps on the occasion of their wedding.
    I scanned the headlines of the clippings, trying to find a selection criterion that seemed to make sense to me:
    DEATH PLOT, POLICE OFFI CER ARRESTED
    PENTAGO N AND CIA CAUSED DRO UGHT IN CUBA?
    ITT CON FIRMS IT FINANCED AN TI-ALLENDE COUP
    PUBL IC HOUSING TO BE HEA TED BY SOLAR ENERGY
    BILLION-DOLLAR SALAR Y FOR COSMETICS PRES IDENT
    SAN GIORIO: FOU L-SMELLING LANDFILL
    SHE, 50, HE, 67: “IT WAS LOVE A T FIRST SIGHT”
    At first glance the articles, about forty in all, did not show any logical connection. The only obvious feature was that they were not chosen by Mrs. A. (I doubt she had a clear idea of where Cuba is or that she knew the Pentagon as anything other than a five-sided geometrical figure.) Nevertheless, looking from side to side, from one clipping to the next, I began to see that the articles conveyed several basic themes. I counted, grouping them by subject. Surprisingly, in the final count the majority involved the CIA, the FBI and the troubled relations between the United States and Fidel Castro. Mrs. A. had never mentioned any particular interest Renato might have had in the intrigues of power, not even during our last conversations. Theinside of the credenza, however, introduced me to a man fascinated by conspiracy, who by pasting those clippings side by side was perhaps trying to extrapolate an overall picture that might reveal the ruse into which society had drawn him. Maybe it was even more than that: perhaps Renato collaborated with the secret services—Mrs. A. never failed to describe him as an unpredictable man, someone with many lives and therefore extremely interesting—though it is unlikely that an intelligence agent would have pasted articles about the CIA in the kitchen credenza.
    A box circled with a marking pen recorded a list of the ten most powerful companies in the world, according to ’73 data. Chrysler was in fifth place. If Renato only knew what’s happened in the meantime—how Chrysler went up in smoke and is now under the leadership of one of his fellow countrymen—he’d think the planet had reversed its rotation around its axis.
    If Nora’s and my furniture were to end up at auction one day, or if it were to be found under the ashes of a volcanic eruption, it would hold almost no sign of us, just some furtive scribblings by Emanuele, like cave paintings, dating from the period when everycorner of the house was threatened by his markers. The archaeologists of the future would not find any photographs; the few we have reside on the computer’s hard disk, which will have already been useless for many years. We have a strange iconoclastic mania, Nora and me: we don’t save anything, we don’t exchange letters or notes (with the exception of grocery lists), we don’t buy souvenirs when traveling because for the most part they are tacky and the same items can now be found throughout the world; also, since thieves visited the apartment, we don’t keep gold or jewelry—we simply don’t own any. The testimony of our lives together is dependent upon a good memory, ours and that of a silicon motherboard. No, Nora, the two of us don’t consider the future either. We don’t have a wedding album, can you imagine? Yet one day we’ll find ourselves far enough away from that day that we’ll want to relive it, at least in pictures.
    The archaeologists who will come and blow away the