THE GHOST OF BOSTON

When you speak about the last two years of your life, you’re not simply retracing a beginning and an end — you’re describing a breaking point from which there’s no return, only destiny, much like my own. Whenever someone wondered who you were, the answer came naturally: to be nothing more than someone nobody expects to exist, and yet there you are. And we share the same name.

The first true witness to that existence was my daughter Giorgia, twenty-three, living with partial paralysis in her lower limbs from a delayed delivery. Her anger became my challenge — the same anger I’d once left on my mother’s grave and later found again in her. She’d been raised by her mother, a simple, educated woman perfectly integrated into society’s accepted framework — precisely what I’d always excluded from my own life. There was no point arguing with the two women of my family. I would never win. Not because they were right, but because of character. I had always loved losing. They never knew that.

It was a suffocating August night when a sharp noise woke me. I thought it was the dog. I was wrong. In the dining room, sitting in the red armchair with his half-smile, was the Ghost of Boston. He complained about having to travel to Saudi Calabria — forty-five degrees was excessive even for him — and reminded me of the fantasy stories I’d published, which had amused his colleagues.

I asked what had brought him to my house. The meeting wasn’t spiritual, esoteric, or financial, he said — he had no agreements with anyone at P&G. He simply wanted to tell me my own story, the part I didn’t know. ‘Your ancestor was Georgian,’ he said. ‘Serious, precise people. Not warmongers. Simply lovers of life.’ ‘You are welcome,’ I replied. ‘Now the story is becoming interesting.’ ‘You truly are a magnificent son of a bitch, Bladefrega,’ said the ghost. ‘Sit down. There is no fortune teller here. We are alone. Let us look at each other properly and understand one another a little better.’