At the Mauritian hospital

The darkness

I spent the first days at the Mauritian hospital in a state of almost total unconsciousness except for some recurring nightmares and projections of monsters on the wall of my room. Therefore, I have a faded memory of them, a vague feeling: the feeling of having been immersed in a slow and deep darkness. Perhaps the same feeling that migrants drawn from the sea tell of a moment before dying. Perhaps I too, like them, have glimpsed death. Nor do I remember falling out of bed. I was probably trying to escape and go home. Because, as my wife told me, on the second day of hospitalization, I called her at two in the morning begging her to come and get me.

The awakening

I look around and see that the doctors cheer. They saved me. The therapy worked. Dr. D.'s eyes shine; he is happy as if he too had been saved.

The fragments

I systematically search for fragments to cling to. Fragments to be recomposed into a whole. I know that, if I have to build an order, a small whole that guarantees me a point of balance, I need to be able to have certainties, fixed points.

Here then, to the right of my bed, at the top, a narrow window overlooked by the green leaves of a branch. I imagine it is the branch of a lime tree. It is the plant of my garden.

It is also the window from which the moon has looked out several times. Unfortunately it was never a full moon.

Thus the charger must always be reachable. I am constantly afraid that the nurse on duty will inadvertently move the bedside table on which it is placed and that the wire will come off. Because it is a short thread. And this must never, ever happen.

Likewise, the bell to call for help or the replacement of the diaper must always be, always at hand. So it can't be on the ground because I can't reach it there. But it can't even be in bed because it can fall if I move in my sleep. Finally I find the solution: I twist the thread to one of the bars of the bed.

The dying

Upon awakening, after days of high fever, I open my eyes and see a motionless person on the right of my bed, entirely wrapped in a plastic-like envelope, his face covered by a helmet. The shape of the body can hardly be glimpsed such is the brightness of the casing. I immediately look away and will not look at him again until dawn two days later, when two nurses will come to put his body in a large black plastic bag. It is about two in the morning and the trolley on which they are carrying the bag with the body hits my bed. It seems to tell me: you too, coward, have left me alone.

Now I can look around with less fear.

The return to life and friendship with P.

A couple of days after awakening, a new guest arrives to occupy the dead man's bed. It is P. With him the sharing of imprisonment is immediate. We talk a lot and discover a common feeling. P. will be leaving Mauritian one week before my transfer to the O.G.R. , but in time to restart my cell phone that had turned off a day and was considered irrecoverable. P. could not have given me a greater gift. Also thanks to him I came back to life.

To eat

The food consists of baby food that are distinguished from each other by the color. That is, there is no correspondence between the name written on the menu and the substance to be consumed. For two days I stay fast because I feel like throwing up, then, holding my nose, and thanks to an anti-vomiting drug, I start to swallow.

To walk

I have been in bed for almost three weeks now and when they tell me that in a couple of days I will be transferred to the O.G.R., I panic. All the more so because there is a rumor that the toilets in the workshops are very far from the beds and that assistance is poor (a figure which later turned out to be totally false). But how - I reply - do you ask me for an autonomy that I do not have? Did you know that the virus has taken over my legs? Did you know that I haven't walked for three weeks? I don't know how to resist, how to resist with the very few forces at my disposal. I can only delay my exit for a couple of days. The doctor on duty - a doctor - is categorical and treats me like an object that clutters up and therefore must be removed. So I have no choice: In a very short time I have to learn to walk again. Above all, I must be able to reach the bathroom, at least with the walker. The bathroom, however, is several meters from the bed and my autonomy, when I put my feet on the ground for the first time, is eight steps. On the second day I increase the distance. On departure for the O.G.R. I am able to take about 30-40 steps. "A decent result - I tell myself - but will it be enough in the new imprisonment?"

Le O.G.R .: room 7, bed 50

I am in my pyjamas, lying on one of the eight beds that make up the so-called room - actually one of the 24 square stations on whose sides the various therapy devices are placed. Here too I have to put together a small whole for the second time. Fortunately, albeit with difficulty, I manage to reach the services but I am lost immersed as I am in a population of inmates strictly in pyjamas and doctors disguised as astronauts.

Now, finally, the dishes reveal a fair correspondence with the name written on the menu. I'm happy. On top of that, I’am able to build a good relationship with a young food cart attendant. What unites us above all is the fact that his girlfriend is, like me, a vegetarian. Thanks to this, I have a preferential lane from which I derive significant advantages. For example, a second bag of biscuits for breakfast and two jars of jam instead of one; and, at midday and evening meals, extra portions of bread sticks and crackers. This allows me to build a small food supply that I keep hidden in the nightstand. It is a fact that gives me considerable security.

The O.G.R. consist of a gigantic hangar, a hermetically sealed structure, illuminated by day, night and day. I am therefore forced, like everyone else, to sleep with a spotlight on my face. So I start looking for natural light. At first I am content to catch a glimpse of it when the door facing the outside is opened, the door through which the new patients enter. Then I discover that an emergency exit lets a ray of light leak to the bottom. A crack that I visit every day.

I walk every day. I started with eight hundred steps, estimating the length of about forty centimeters for each step and I repeat the path twice: in the morning, after studying German (The Crypt of the Capuchins, by J. Roth, in a facilitated version) and before reading the books and magazines that L. and G. send me; in the afternoon, between four and five, also in order to reduce the waiting time for the coveted dinner. With the beginning of the second week, I change direction and double the number of steps. Now they are up to four thousand. But there is something new: the new itinerary inadvertently led me to the area reserved for staff and to the parking area for food trolleys. An area where, except for meal times, nobody ever passes. One day I see jam boxes on a trolley. I look around. There is no living soul. Do I take them or don't I take them? I decide to steal them one at a time, hiding them in the sleeve of my pyjamas. On the second lap, however, I realize that there are cameras and that I can no longer go there. In the end, overall, the loot is two boxes containing an apple mousse that I also hide in the night table. I am very satisfied, although afraid of having been filmed and of being reproached for the two thefts committed.

A. owns two houses and fifty cows

Except A., the bed neighbors change frequently either because they are discarded into two-swab negatives, or because they need a new hospitalization elsewhere. A. is eighty-eight, lives in the Asti area where he owns two houses and fifty cows. One daughter has died, the other, together with her husband, works in the company. Once he mentions another daughter (or the same one?) Whom he claims is ten years old.

A. does not have a cell phone or even glasses and spends his days mostly in bed. A. is firmly convinced that he is healthy and that therefore doctors are wrong in treating him as a sick person and in keeping him locked up. He shouldn't have been admitted to the O.G.R., but there was some sort of conspiracy against him. Proof of this is the kidnapping by nurses who took him by surprise while he was working in the fields. “I should have given him two punches, those over there,” he tells me every time he tells me his story. “But next time - he continues - I won't be found”. To all staff without distinction - because he cannot recognize doctors from paramedics - he constantly asks to be sent home. Often, when it's time for meals, he asks me if it's day or night. A. is very talkative and talks to me even when I'm on the phone or reading. Even if I get angry and I treat him badly, he keeps talking to me.

The night he struggles to fall asleep. He stands with his eyes fixed on the ceiling or looks me in the face because he lies on his side facing me.

In front of us, a young Muslim of Pakistani origin is hospitalized in this post. He is a believer. A. thinks he's a gypsy and tells me, angry, that people like him don't deserve to be treated like Italians. Indeed, they should be hunted. I get angry in turn and remind him that we too have been migrants. A. does not answer, closed in his convictions.

A.'s wife is also hospitalized in another room not far from us. I asked A. if he goes to visit her often and he replies that he only went once because - he adds - they both immediately started crying. “So - he says - it's useless”.

On May 30th they communicate to him and me that our respective tampons are, for the second time, negative and that therefore we can get out. But they don't tell us when. The answer is vague: maybe in two or three days. I'm going to talk to the management. But I am in pyjamas - a pyjamas that closely resembles the typical striped dress in the representations of the prisoner - and on my feet. My interlocutor, on the other hand, is seated and receives me with all the authority and condescension that one has towards a human in pyjamas. I am the inmate who intends to criticize the Director of the prison. Critical, on behalf of many others, is the fact that we are not given to know when we can go home. The uncertainty of waiting creates a lot of anxiety. Yet many of us are doubly negative on the test; therefore entitled to go out. I insist that they cannot keep us in the dark about the date of our remission. I point out that we are not parcels. That even the prisoners know when they will leave and that it is our right to know the date of 'release', or to be informed of the reasons why this is not possible. The protest is accepted and put into operation. Now everyone is told that it is almost never possible to indicate a precise day as the number of negatives to be discharged tends to create queues and the resources available to manage the remission list are limited.

In the meantime, A.'s bed is moved to another location. I miss him. He too is part of my little everything.

On 2 June I go out or rather: an ambulance takes me home.