Multiversum (20 page)

It was at that exact moment that they heard the first siren.

It came from the direction of Piazza San Babila, and it was like a howling sound that travelled in all directions, attracting the gaze of the onlookers who spilled out of the gardens and filled the sidewalks of Corso Venezia. After three echoes of the siren, they heard a metallic voice, perhaps coming from a bullhorn or a loudspeaker:

‘
All citizens are requested to return immediately to their places of residence, in compliance with a government order. Remain calm and return to your homes. From seventeen hundred hours this afternoon, a curfew is in effect. We repeat
…'

Everyone exchanged astonished glances. A few people waited to hear the announcement another two or three times, before turning and walking briskly towards the stairs that led down to the Palestro metro station. Along the street, small knots of people formed, discussing what had just taken place.

Jenny stood motionless, observing the scene.

No one seemed to understand what possible reason there could be for such an announcement, but there was no mistaking the anxiety on the faces of those around her. In the few minutes it took to clear the street and leave it deserted, Jenny heard people mention war, terror attacks, a pandemic virus, and other catastrophic hypotheses. No one had any answers, and everyone was indulging in fanciful conjectures. Once the area had been swept clean of people, Jenny started walking towards Corso Buenos Aires, which was almost deserted. Everyone was heading home, in compliance with government orders.

Jenny had no idea what to do or where to go. All she knew was that she needed to find a place to take shelter. She kept walking through the surreal silence, which was interrupted only by the sound of the siren, followed by the reading of the government order. Near Piazza Lima, she saw a group of soldiers on the other side of the street and came to a halt.

One of the soldiers saw her and waved a submachine gun in the air.

‘Young lady, did you hear the order? Get home, immediately!'

But I don't have a home here
, thought Jenny, not knowing how to reply.

‘Did I make myself clear? Take my advice, get back to your parents now, because all hell will break loose very soon.'

Jenny nodded, but her legs were shaking.

‘All right, all right …' she said, walking in the opposite direction. ‘I'm going home now. I live close by.'

The soldiers went back to their conversation.

Where on earth am I supposed to go now?
she wondered, as she slipped into a smaller side street, at the end of which she could make out a glowing electric sign for a café.

‘Hey, buddy, are you trying to get yourself killed? Let's get the hell out of the way!'

Alex looked up and saw a young black guy, his head shaved just like him, wearing a pair of jeans and a black sweatshirt. He held out a hand to him, and Alex grabbed it, leaping to his feet and running after the guy. They raced as fast as they could through the tunnel, sprinting over piles of dead bodies as if in some chilling shoot-'em-up video game. There was blood everywhere, while behind them the mass of people who seemed to be chasing them was gaining ground. Every ten or fifteen seconds, the men intoned a doleful chorus that accompanied their march. Alex tried to figure out what they were saying, but he realised they weren't speaking Italian at all but some harsh, almost Nordic language. He was almost certain they were speaking German.

After Alex and the young black guy bounded up the stairs, three steps at a time, and emerged into the open air, the stranger waved with one hand as if to say ‘this way'. The red-and-yellow sign of a petrol station loomed overhead. It said
Kraft-Gas
. They rushed into the tiny kiosk, where the shelves lined with mobile-phone accessories and car air fresheners had been destroyed, as had the computers. The cash-register drawer was open and empty, and what remained of the store's merchandise was scattered on the floor.

‘What the hell is going on in this city?' Alex shouted, while the other guy bent over, looking for something under the counter.

‘My name is Jamil. You're one of us, right?'

‘What do you mean, one of us? I …'

Jamil pulled his head out of the cabinet he was rummaging in and gave Alex an inquisitive glance. ‘You're Italian … no?'

Alex was almost afraid to reply. ‘What kind of crazy questions are you asking? Do I look Chinese to you?'

‘What, are you kidding? Are you Italian or not? Are you trying to pretend you don't know what's going on?'

The mob of hooded people stopped near the petrol pumps. A man who seemed to be their leader broke away and turned towards the others to shout a series of instructions. After every burst of guttural German, there came a response that resembled a battle cry.

Alex made an enormous effort to delve into his memories in search of some useful nugget with which to reply to that question, but he came up with nothing. In the meantime, Jamil had plunged his head back into the cabinet and was muttering phrases like ‘But it was right here, it has to be here somewhere …'

‘Listen … I'm … I'm afraid I've lost my memory. Could you tell me where the hell I am and what's going on?'

‘This fucking crisis,' Jamil muttered under his breath. ‘I don't give a damn about your memory. All I want is to keep my arse in one piece. They're killing everyone: someone told me that the Pope has been assassinated, and now they're about to start killing all the Italians.'

‘Why on earth would they want to kill Italians?'

‘Italians! Neutrals, that's what they call people like you and me. But why am I wasting my time talking to you? Go on, go get yourself killed — after all, it's only a matter of time.' He went back to rummaging through the cabinet. ‘There it is. I found it! I knew it would be here.'

Alex was speechless, leaning against the counter as Jamil pulled out a hand grenade and set it down next to the monitor of the damaged computer.

‘Why does everyone speak German?'

‘Why, what language should they be speaking instead? We're in Milan, man, don't you know?'

‘And in Milan people speak German?'

‘German and Italian. For more than sixty years now.'

Jamil shook his head and stood up, glancing out the kiosk window as the leader of the rioters rejoined his comrades. They seemed ready to attack.

Alex looked around, but there wasn't even a toilet to hide in. There was no way out, and nothing Jamil was saying made the slightest bit of sense. Or perhaps a better way of putting it was that it made sense only if, in that parallel dimension of the Multiverse, World War II had ended very differently. Jamil sniggered and winked at him, before grabbing the hand grenade and walking out of the kiosk.

Alex watched him through the window, praying that he wasn't about to do what it looked like he was about to do.

‘Take this, you filthy sons of bitches!' Jamil shouted at the top of his lungs as he yanked the pin and the handle flew off. Then he hurled the grenade at the furious crowd.

Alex was petrified.

The instant the grenade exploded, and the screams of pain and fury issued from the rioters in a deafening chorus, he rushed out the kiosk door, turning right immediately, chasing after the proud figure of Jamil, who was enjoying the show. He took off at a dead run, but he hadn't gone unnoticed, despite the blanket of dense smoke that followed the explosion.

Several members of the mob saw him and came after him. Alex leaped over a row of hedges as if it were an obstacle in a track-and-field event, and then broke into a frenzied run. He turned around only when he heard a burst of machine-gun fire, and saw Jamil's body tumbling to the ground far behind him.

He ran as hard as he could. Hot on his trail were at least six of the rebels. They were bigger and older than him and perhaps not as fast. Still, they were armed. Pistol shots rang through the air as a voice shouted out: ‘
Wir werden dich toten, italiano!
' It sounded like a threatening phrase.

No more than a few seconds passed. The bullet that caught him right in the thigh yanked a piercing scream of pain out of his guts. He felt the projectile sear his flesh like an incandescent ember burrowing its way into the bundles of nerves.

The group of people who'd been chasing him were on top of him as he lay there writhing on the ground, his bloodied hands pressing down desperately on the wound.

‘Bastards! Leave me alone, I didn't do anything to you!' he screamed through his tears in pure terror.

Six hooded men stared at him in an interminable moment of silence. Then one of them leaned over and muttered to the man next to him, bending his hood to the left and whispering something incomprehensible.

Then he extracted a long knife from a hilt tied to his waist.

The blade that sank into Alex's chest did so slowly. It plunged into his flesh, stretched out on the floor, as he felt his eyes bulging and his breath strangling in his throat, while the world turned flat and grey. The pain in his leg vanished entirely. In a few seconds all his senses were wrapped in a dark, chilly embrace.

Jenny's face hovered before him like a vision that covered the sky. The blood gushed from his chest and spread out into a puddle on the asphalt as his six attackers moved away. The sound of a bomb going off, muffled and dull, was the last thing that Alex was able to hear. The glint of sunlight reflecting off the ocean waves was the last image that accompanied him into darkness.

Then nothing.

A door behind Jenny flew open, making her jump.

‘Hey you, didn't you hear the warning?' asked a man who looked about sixty, still wearing an apron. He had to be the owner of the bar.

‘Yes … sir. I'm going home.'

‘Then get out of my front window. I have to close up. We all need to get home.'

Jenny walked away without another word. She started to run, with no idea where to go or how to get back in contact with Alex.

She tried to concentrate, but she could no longer sense her own thoughts.

She cut through a couple of deserted alleys that wound through the heart of the quarter. The major roads would no doubt be more heavily patrolled by the soldiers, and she was likely to get into serious trouble if they found her wandering around with no place to go. She looked around as she walked. From time to time she saw people running up to the entrance of an apartment block and vanishing inside. Here and there, owners were shuttering their shops. On the façades of the apartment buildings, the windows were all closed, the wooden blinds all lowered.

As she passed by the window of a shop filled with electrical appliances, she caught a glimpse of a flat-screen television with a sign on it:
Full HD — Super Discount
. It was turned on and a news show was broadcasting. The sound was off, but the banner reading
Special Edition
and the footage of a tank grinding over rubble were enough to tell Jenny that something very serious was happening.

She started running, still wondering what had happened to Alex. Why hadn't he recognised her? Why had he treated her like that?

Now she was alone.

25

The sand, glowing gold in the slanting rays of the setting sun, slowly took form. The crash of the surf breaking under the pier and the cool rush of the wind whistling in his ears accompanied his reawakening. His eyelids flickered for a few seconds before opening with great effort. The sun was just dropping below the horizon, its orange disc swallowed up by the water as, all around, the purple, red, and yellow brushstrokes of light blended in the evocative palette of an Australian sunset. A dog scampered past right in front of him, kicking up sand, as Alex slowly got to his feet.

‘I'm alive …' he whispered as he looked around him. ‘I'm alive.'

Marco had imagined the scenario of alternative universes where things had slipped out of society's control, but Alex never could have imagined his own city reduced to that state. He tried to remember what he'd felt as the blade slid into his flesh. It was difficult — he was almost afraid to focus too clearly on an image that it was wiser to burn for good, burying the ashes somewhere in the deepest recesses of his memory.

He had died: there could be no doubt about that. The rioters had left him on the ground, breathing his last, with a bullet in his thigh and a knife planted in his chest. He had died, but he'd survived. And that made no sense.

His first thought, after confirming that he really was still alive, was of Jenny. He imagined her all alone, in a city she didn't know, though it was still in her own dimension. How would she get back to Melbourne? And how would the two of them ever see each other again? He needed to talk to Marco.

He looked around for his backpack. It was still there, next to him. He pulled his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket.

‘Still dead. Damn it!'

He climbed the steps leading up to the first part of the pier and walked along the Esplanade. At a traffic light, he waited a few minutes on the footpath, leaning against a palm tree. Then he spotted a taxi at the end of the street and waved his arms to attract its attention.