21/03/2020
Maybe it was because of the dreary procession of military trucks carrying coffins, or maybe because of the sheer numbers. Regardless, over the last few days I have received many affectionate calls and text messages from people all around Italy, even from simple acquaintances. They all kindly ask the same question: How is it going there in Bergamo? How is it going - I'm not Manzoni, who managed to represent the 1630 plague in Milan so wonderfully. But Manzoni had two centuries of hindsight to work with, and he was able to study and think about it deeply and with cold rationality, with the sensibility of a scholar and a historian. We're in the thick of it; we're living it in real time, with all the emotions and concerns that come with that. Ultimately, this whole story started just over a month ago. One evening, while we were watching a news report from China, my wife said something at the dinner table, something like holy Christ, poor people, imagine how they must be living, imagine the dreadfulness. Imagine if that happened to us. On February 20th, there was the first case in Codogno. For many here, it still felt far away. I immediately felt like it was already in my home: 50 km are nothing for a virus. In fact, shortly afterwards, there were cases in Alzano and in Nembro. And then in the rest of the province as well. In those early days, the situation was framed in a way that we're now all too familiar with: on one side those (like me) who worried about this, and who were called paranoid, compulsive, anxious, accused of being prophets of misfortune. On the other side the boisterous choir of the optimists, guided by our most authoritative leaders. The mayor of Alzano did not want to lock down the town as they did in Codogno, because Alzano is an economic hub, how could we possibly bring production to a halt? Alongside him there were also much greater authorities, like the regional governor Fontana, for whom this ultimately was little more than a bad flu, or the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, banging the drum and saying that we cannot turn Milan into a ghost town, hashtag Milanwillnotstop. In Bergamo our own Gori didn't want to be left out, and along with local entrepreneurs he proudly launched his own hashtag Bergamowillnotstop. There's no point beating around the bush: we were played by our own best quality, our entrepreneurialism and our industriousness. That fire that we have inside us since generations, which is always pushing us to do more, do more, do more, so that we can produce, produce, produce in order to gain, gain, gain. It may a bit strong to put it in these terms, but we shouldn't fear the strength of words: our culture, which we simplistically call palancaia ("scaffolding"), and that has a lot do with a generations-old sense of initiative - not to mention greed - has stopped us from stopping. It stopped us from pulling the brakes before it was too late. And so we crashed. How can we stop the Italian locomotive? How can we stop everything? This is how we do it: given that the mayors didn't understand, it took a silly virus to show us how it's done. For the sake of not shutting down a few towns, we've had to shut down the world. I live just below the walls of the upper city in Bergamo. Now, when I open the window, where I used to see many people strolling with a view over the plains I can only see desert and desolation. Even out here, in the lower city, all we can hear are the ambulance sirens and the motors of the disinfectant-spraying trucks. Some are walking their dogs, some are going to the shops, and some overexcited runners still don't get it. Generally however, there is a lot of discipline. And a big, great, huge sense of duty, which some in the media have called heroism but which here is called simply doing what needs to be done: the doctors, the nurses, the volunteers, a wonderful crew of people that won't give up, even under the strain of necessity, exhaustion, and desperation. For sure, nobody can say that Bergamo is the capital city of the "flash mobs" that were seen elsewhere in Italy. Here there is one single, collective and deafening flash mob of silence. Everyone is taking part spontaneously. And it's been going on for days and days here. The only exception are the children's drawings on the terraces, "everything will be alright", which is exactly the right thing we should be telling children to write in these dark and anxious times. Then again, it's not so easy to go up on the balconies to sing jolly songs when grief has entered your home. There is no family, so we could say, that hasn't been affected. Just as an example: I've had to say farewell to three people in the space of a week. They weren't close relatives, but they were still close to me. Like everyone else, they died in the worst possible way - assuming that there might be such a thing as a good way to die - taken urgently to the hospital, away from their families, only with solitude to keep them company. And from there until the end, without a loved one's hand for a final caress, without a voice for the last words. Their relatives will only see an urn, eventually. I said farewell to the paediatrician who took care of my children, the brilliant Dr. Zavaritt, a doctor among many other things, including Councillor for the Environment back when the environment was something we still knew very little about. Above all, he was a man of true intelligence. Then there was Dr. Lussana, who spent his whole life here serving the community, with humility and discretion, a pastor of a single religion, medicine. And then Mr. Marino, a family friend, a banker with a passion for the countryside who would occasionally bring us gifts of salami that were far beyond even the best organic ones. Yes, they were all in their eighties, but if anyone tells me that in the end it could be worse, only the eighty year-olds die, I swear I'll explode. Maybe it's because I don't measure the worth of a life in terms of years. The truth is that an outsider has barged into these lands, without asking anyone for permission. A hateful outsider called fear. Fear is the first citizen, above any mayor. Nobody elected him, he has taken over with Stalinist force, and he doesn't heed any objections. He dominates in every home, he's become omnipresent, he's come in through every crack in the wall. I'm going to come clean: my son has always had hay fever in this season, and a few days ago he started sneezing, a nuisance, like every year. But the distant idea that's there at the back of my mind makes me shiver nonetheless. And yet. And yet Bergamo is not giving up. It's on its knees, the ambulance sirens ringing in its ears, but it's not giving up. Sooner or later tomorrow will come, even here. Waiting for tomorrow to come, we can't help but sending out these letters from here in Bergamo. We hope they serve as example and warning to the rest of Italy. I want many many people to read it, I want everyone to read it: help me to spread the word, despite the fact that this letter is so long and breaks the golden rule of online writing, where brevity and superficiality trumps all else. I don't care. Now is not the time for such nonsense. What I want to say is this: look at us. Weigh up our suffering. And understand that you have a tiny stroke of luck that is still decisive. You have a couple weeks' advantage over us. We had Codogno, but we carelessly ignored it. Use this advantage for your own gain. Run for shelter. Don't make the same mistakes we did, don't take this easy, don't think to yourself "how can we stop everything?". Best to stop now and keep ourselves safe than stop later by necessity, with the dead strewn around us. Unfortunately, we all have a vaguely suicidal tendency that has been passed on to us for centuries: we're always convinced that it cannot happen to us. We even go to funerals with the same misplaced certainty, that this only happens to other people, not to us. From Bergamo, I can only send this heartfelt message; there's nothing new about it, it's as old as the world, even though humankind makes a point to routinely forget it: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that is worth as much as life. And now is the time to remember that.