The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios. Yann Martel

twice in the face, but he’s so weak it doesn’t hurt. He begins to sob.

      “It’s all right, Paul, it’s all right. I’m sorry,” I tell him softly. “It’s all right. I’m sorry. Take it easy. Listen, I’ve got something better. In 1921, they didn’t discover insulin. In 1921, Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to death. Sacco and Vanzetti, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti.”

      His tears are flooding his face and dripping onto my arms. I lift him and push him back onto the bed.

      “Sacco and Vanzetti, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti. It’s all right. I’m sorry. Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti.”

      I get a wet facecloth and wipe my arms and gently wipe his face. I comb his hair with my fingers.

      “It’s all right, Paul. Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti.”

      I improvise a grim story. Sometimes our stories are short on plot, but by means of details left unexplained, by means of fertile ambiguities, they nonetheless resonate in the way of a painting, static but rich. But here it’s not at all like that. There is little plot and little meaning. The story just stumbles along, unbelievable, unexplainable. Loretta Roccamatio drowns herself.

      1921—Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both poor Italian immigrants and anarchists, are found guilty and sentenced to death for two murders committed during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. In spite of flaws in the evidence, irregularities at their trial, accusations that the judge and jury were prejudiced against their political beliefs and social status, evidence that pointed to a known criminal gang, in spite of worldwide protests and appeals for clemency, Sacco and Vanzetti will be executed in 1927.

      Paul is put on anti-depressants—amitriptyline at first, then domipramine. It will take about two weeks before they become effective. In the meantime he is kept under close surveillance, especially at night, when he sleeps only in fits. The clinical psychologist comes by nearly every afternoon. I call Paul up to six times a day.

      1922—Benito Mussolini, at the age of thirty-nine, becomes the youngest prime minister in Italian history, and the first of Europe’s twentieth-century fascist dictators.

      “I can feel them in my blood. I can feel each virus as it flows up my arm, crosses my chest, goes into my heart and then shoots out to one of my legs. And I can’t do anything. I just lie here waiting, knowing it’s going to get worse,” he says.

      He’s so fragile. I give in to him again.

      1923—Germany is incapable of making its payments on the war reparations imposed by the Allies in the Treaty of Versailles (set at the equivalent of thirty-three billion dollars). France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr district to force compliance. The German government blocks all reparation deliveries and encourages passive resistance. The French and Belgians respond with mass arrests and an economic blockade. The German economy is devastated, and its government begins to founder. The ground is fertile for extremists.

      Paul is plainly waiting for me. He’s bored. Strange how this illness, which aims to rob him of time, leaves him with so much of it on his hands.

      1924—Vladimir Lenin, whose health has been precarious for the last eighteen months, dies of a stroke at the age of fifty-four. The secretary general of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, Joseph Stalin, whom Lenin had unsuccessfully tried to remove, starts an extravagant cult of the deceased leader, thus portraying himself as Lenin’s greatest defender.