The pain was infinite, and then it was gone, because he was gone. His broken body lay curled and bloody on the ground, one leg bent under him, his fingers curled over his palms, his shirt shredded, but within him there was nothing. One of the assistants told my mother over and over about his watch, miraculously intact and ticking on his wrist, orologio non rotto non rotto, as if this were a sign of life, of hope, but in fact he died that day. His spirit left his broken body. It went away on its own. His body, trussed and swaddled and intubated, lay in the hospital bed in Rome, waiting for his spirit to return; the only part of him that could be said to exist was that waiting. He was a space of waiting. Rome—our Rome—whirled around the empty point of his small, slender form in that bed. He looked like an Etruscan statue, a white form without a name. We were not a religious family. We knew he was all but dead—that, in a way, he was dead. When he woke up, he asked for water. Lila held the glass with both hands, guiding the straw to his lips.
