My mother just got a call from Trieste. It was Carmen, her sister Nada’s daughter. Carmen’s father and my mother’s brother-in-law, Ettore, died two days ago. They found my mother’s recent letter among his personal effects, as the expression goes. He was a few months her senior. Nada, who was four years younger than my mother to the day, died more than seven years ago, a few days before Dorian’s first birthday. Carmen is married to Aldo, the son of my mother’s brother Radovan. Yes, this is possible in Italy, but only with the Pope’s permission, which they dutifully petitioned for and obtained. The last time Radovan’s wife and Aldo’s mother, Silvia, heard from him was just after the war. He was passing through Trieste with his second wife, a Russian woman he had met someplace in Germany. They were on their way to Venezuela, where they later had two sons. No-one in the family has any idea what has become of them. Carmen and Aldo have a son, Roberto, who teaches philosophy in a small town close to Udine in Friuli. And all these names, all these facts about people I have never met, and will in all likelihood never meet, burst in unannounced this quiet evening among evenings just because one among them had died a couple of days ago in Trieste!