The Geese That Lay The Golden Eggs. Nicola Maria Vitola

departure for the Ivory Coast comes around.

      He calls her as soon as he gets to Abidjan and tells her he’s had a good journey. They’ll talk again online the following day.

      Instead three long days go by with no sign of Michael. Mary starts to worry, she doesn’t know what to put this silence down to. She’s anxious. Then she finally receives a call from Ivory Coast. The person contacting her is a doctor in a clinic who tells her that Michael is seriously ill. He was taken to hospital after being attacked by three criminals. He’s having an operation on his spleen. It was Michael himself who begged the doctor to contact her, because before going under the knife (he’s very seriously injured the poor man) he thought about Mary knowing she’d be worried and asked them (we imagine in a faint whisper) to contact his woman.

      The doctor talks at length to Mary (almost as though he hasn’t got much else to do) and ends the telephone call by informing her that the following day Michael himself will probably be able to call her.

      Worried out of her mind Mary sends him messages, without any result. Then the following day she sees a photo of him, sent to her smartphone. His face is swollen, it looks painful. The operation has gone well he explains, speaking softly and painfully. They’ve removed his spleen. He must rest until he recovers.

      He tells her that his attackers stole 90 thousand dollars off him. He has nothing now until he’s paid his severance money. He hasn’t even got the money to pay the clinic. What’s more he’s signed the contract with the manager of the mines and he must cover the cheque he paid as a guarantee. He wouldn’t want to ask her for help for anything in the world, but he’s desperate!

      Mary can’t really understand why he went around with so much cash on him and she asks him. Michael explains that he was going to deposit it at the bank in Abidjan, to cover the cheque for 50 thousand dollars he paid as an advance on the diamond shipment agreement. Upset, he explains his position to her, tormenting himself because he knows it isn’t normal to turn to her to ask for help. He’d rather die, but he’s deeply distressed! He’s got to find a solution because if he doesn’t cover the cheque the deal will fall through, and he’ll also have to pay a fine.

      The rest of the story unfortunately, as you can imagine, is an impoverishment of poor Mary in favour of the crook, who is not called Michael, but is a young African and part of a gang specialised in romance scams.

      The story told by Lucien

      Â«My mother had sent several remittances to Michael, in Ivory Coast, for various reasons. It began with 50 thousand dollars through Western Union‎ and Money Gram, because she was upset by the attack on the man she had fallen in love with and his serious condition. She used up all her savings to help him, because anyway he told her he would pay the loan back as soon as he was better again.

      Once the shipments for the sale of the diamonds began he would personally come to Rome to bring her a cheque and start their future together. But the man had a great deal of financial obligations at that sad moment in time. We all know the cost of a clinic, rehabilitation, the expense of hotel accommodation, and the second tranche for the import-export business.

      My mother even sold her apartment - says Lucien - to keep up with the constant demands of that man, who convinced her with false, urgent and unavoidable reasons. When she realised she’d been scammed, she became depressed. Sad and without any financial resources left, she tormented herself every day for having been so stupid when she should have realised it was a scam and sought advice. But she didn’t.

      I sent my mother to be treated, to help her overcome her moral disorientation. But wounds like that are difficult to heal at her age…».

      The providential money transfer receipts

      Luckily Mary had kept all the Western Union‎ and Money Gram receipts. She also maintained contact with her scammer, while her son Lucien sought information amongst his journalist friends and went so far as to consult an Interpol branch, where an agent got to work investigating and had the members of the gang arrested.

      Subsequently, after it had received proof of the sums sent, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ivory Coast took steps to return the money to her.

      But Mary’s pain at having been hit like that in her feelings will last a long time yet. Every so often she suddenly awakes in the night because she dreams that someone is taking a bag full of diamonds away from her. She cries out for help and sees a man in the uniform of a Marine laughing mockingly.

      Mary grieves every time she awakes and thinks about Michael again. She imagines him as he was in the photos which she gazed at so many times. She can hardly believe that Michael doesn’t exist; that his words of love were phrases copied here and there, from romantic texts or invented on the spur of the moment to lure her into a romance scam.

      Her computer at home is always turned off now, a piece of equipment that she can’t even bear to dust without feeling distressed. The internet is a place of death and suffering. She wouldn’t want to go on a social networking site for anything in the world.

      Silvia

      The protagonist of this story does not want to give her real name. She’s a young woman of 32 who in the spring of 2016 received a friend request from a forty-year-old Frenchman, a handsome guy who said his name was Henry Dupont. We’ll call her Silvia:

      Â«He messaged me immediately on Messenger - says Silvia - telling me I was his type and he’d fallen in love with me. He put lots of little hearts and kisses, he wrote sweet things to me. I felt a little uncomfortable, because his zeal seemed excessive, considering that I barely knew him. In fact, I didn’t know him, I’d only seen a picture of him, which although nice, was not very meaningful for me as to who this person was.

      So, I ignored him for a couple of days. I didn’t want to be invaded like that in my private life by unsolicited affection.

      Henry contacted me again, I answered out of politeness. I read his loving words and meanwhile I thought that perhaps I was acting unfairly towards Gianni, my companion who I hadn’t been getting along with very well lately. We were arguing for every silly little thing and going out together less often than before».

      Henry turns up online again every evening, he talks to Silvia and tells her about his life. He tells her he’s a widower with two children, a boy and a girl. Then he touches on the very sad topic of his wife’s death which happened several years earlier. He speaks to her of his loneliness, with two small children to bring up without their mother. He sends her touching photos of the children with their daddy (a sad and disconsolate man!). Silvia very correctly informs him that she already has a companion and is not interested in other affairs, especially with people she doesn’t know directly. But Henry doesn’t desist, he sends her more pictures with flowers, beating hearts, endearing little teddies and phrases full of tenderness.

      Silvia is cautious, and this can be deduced from her words. She’s not a woman who is used to making light-hearted decisions. If she did, she would feel guilty towards her companion because, although their relationship is a little difficult, she’s aware that he doesn’t deserve to be cast aside.

      The woman’s resistance to Henry is effective, however her slightly veiled initial interest increases day by day. After all it’s unusual to be the object of so much attention and affection. There is reason enough to be flattered.

      One evening Henry writes to her that the following day he will fly to Ivory Coast, where his family has a real estate business. Silvia wishes him a pleasant journey.

      For two days she hears nothing from him. Then he starts writing to her again spending time chatting online to her. He tells her that those moments are the only peaceful ones of his day. He isn’t happy in the environment around him. In fact,