2

When I opened my eyes again, I was in bed in a hospital room. A severe pain in my head prevented me from moving it. From the corner of my eye I noted the immaculate white that reigned in the room: the ceiling, the walls, the sheets and even the few pieces of furniture that filled it were white. I thought I must have spent a long time in a state of semi-un­con­sciousness, immersed in that aseptic squalor and this gave me a sense of deep uneasiness. Unexpectedly I felt a strange life force rising from the bottom of my stomach. With difficulty I turned my head towards the window and, although I could only see the half-light of night­fall, my heart opened all the same. The joy did not last long, a strong pain in my side forced me to rest my head on the pillow, returning me again to the white squalor of the room.

The annoying sound of hurried footsteps coming nearer caught my attention. A few mo­ments later, two doctors and a nurse entered the room; they proceeded quickly, distracted, with the air of people who were repeating those gestures for the umpteenth time. They stood at the foot of the bed and stared at me in silence, as if they were trying to study my appear­ance from that distance. I thought it wouldn't go fur­ther than that fleeting glance, but I had to change my mind; the older doctor moved away from the group and came and stood next to me. At that distance I saw him clearly: he was a handsome man now at the end of his career, with a beard and shiny hair, looked after very carefully. He seemed rather tall, and in fact he was several centimetres taller than the col­league who was with him. He displayed a bearing full of con­fidence, almost arrogance, typical of those who are used to managing the precarious lives of others. He took the medical record with authority and stared at it for a very long moment. Annoyed, he looked at his watch as if he had remembered an appoin­tment, grimaced with disappointment, and stared back at the report. I had the impression that, while he was making these brusque and determined gestures, he was thinking of some­thing that did not concern me. The other doctor, a bony man about fifty, with glasses and a bald and shiny skull, was looking at me distractedly. The nurse who accompanied them, a colourless girl with blond hair and eyelashes, stared at the head physician in silence, with an expression that I judged far too obsequious. Unnerved by their silence, I man­aged to let out a faint moan that was enough to attract their attention. The senior doctor looked up from the medical re­port and began to scrutinize me with interest. His eyes pierced me, searching my face for a sign that I, exhausted, was unable to give him.

"Doctor, he's woken up."

After so much silence, the nurse's voice boomed in my head like the sound of a hundred bells.

The man slowly put down the clipboard and lowered his head to within a few centimetres of my ear."Try not to tire yourself talking, it's still too soon."

He whispered the words with such kindness that they sounded sinister to me, identical to the comforting things, full of pity, that people say to a dying man with no hope. Just as kindly he took my w