For a long time, I called myself Filippo Scalfaro. Today I am taking my name back and saying it in full: Filippo Scalfaro De Nittis. When the sun came up this morning, I became older than my father. I stand at the kitchen window, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. I have a stomach ache. No surprise – I have a long, hard day ahead of me. I’ve made myself an especially bitter coffee to keep me going – I’ll be needing it. Just as the coffee pot starts to whistle on the stove, a plane takes off from Capodichino airport and the air begins to hum. I watch the plane’s flat metal stomach rising up over the rooftops and I wonder what would happen if it dropped out of the sky onto the thousands of people below it – but it keeps soaring upwards, pulling free of its own weight. I turn off the heat on the stove and splash my face with water. My father. I’m thinking of him. This is his day. My father – whose face I can barely picture. The sound of his voice has gone completely. Sometimes I think I remember things he used to say – but whether he really said them or I’ve just made them up after all these years to fill the gap he left, I don’t know. The only way I can really get close to him is by looking at myself in the mirror. There must be something of him there, in the shape of my eyes or the line of my cheekbones. From this day, when I look in the mirror I’ll see the face he would have had if he’d had the chance to grow old. I carry my father within me. This morning, at the first light of dawn, I felt him climb onto my shoulders like a child. He’s counting on me now. Today’s the day it will all happen. I’ve been working towards this for so long.
I sip my coffee slowly as the steam rises off it. I’m not afraid. I’ve already been to hell – what could possibly be scarier than that? All I have to ward off are my own nightmares. At night, the blood-curdling cries and groans of pain come flooding back. I smell the nauseating stench of sulphur. The forest of souls surrounds me. At night, I beco
