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We fondly believe that bygones are bygones. The past has become so hazy that we hope to have forgotten our mistakes. Tenaciously we refuse to keep our minds clear so as not to have second thoughts. We prefer to believe that our early years are no longer ours, that the past is over and done with. But it takes little to bring back, one after the other, the ghosts deemed to have vanished or even denied by our conscience.

Giuseppe was a decidedly insignificant man, belonging to that species of humanity unable to look ahead without glimpsing the final day of doom, imagined to be even more miserable and squalid than all those leading up to it. He now lived holed up within the walls of his home, convinced that it was the only way to shield himself from everything outside.

He waited, motionless and hopeful, for the day just beginning to be the same in every way as the days gone by.

That morning in the fall of 1984 there was nothing to foreshadow the upheaval of his habits: the walls, the newspaper and even the solitude were the same as always. The leaden atmosphere of Brooklyn, which heralded an especially harsh winter, beat insistently on his window. But Giuseppe seemed not to notice, in focusing on building the model of the Santa Maria, the caravel used by Christopher Columbus to discover the New World. That was the only event of the day to remind him of being Italian.

He had disembarked from the ship at Ellis Island, fleeing the rubble of Europe, as one of many desperate people, just after the Second World War: finally he had landed in a place still able to welcome people in need of help and protection. Fleeing the horrors and destruction which had razed all Europe and torn his country apart in a civil war, he sought, in the promised land, the light needed to crush the darkness he bore within. He looked proudly at the Santa Maria, which he was building with dedication and painstaking patience, while his eyes moistened. Was this great welcoming country not born thanks to an Italian? Yes, an Italian like him.

The radio, as always, continued to broadcast old and new songs; every hour a speaker with a warm and serious voice reeled off news, more or less good, creating an atmosphere weird and rather suspenseful.

“It’s 9:30 a.m.... Daily news... The meeting between the unions and General Motors has ended. Such intervention, requested by both parties, may guarantee the renewal of the contract of workers in the car industry... Foreign policy. The American Secretary of State, on his tour of consultations with leaders of Mediterranean countries, met the Israeli Prime Minister today; the talks, likely to focus on the situation in the Middle East, are still ongoing... News... A news agency flash informs us that a few minutes ago, a lone man tried to rob a bank in Brooklyn. On the timely intervention of a plainclothes policeman, who happened to be present, the robber did not hesitate to open fire, wounding