demanding money—for the fur coats made from the skins of Arcadians that haven’t been paid for yet…sounds kind of crazy. Like something out of a soap opera.”
“Okay.”
“Because of that phone call, my father leaves his family and flies to Europe to track down this Apollonio in person. Soon after that, his wife and his two dear little daughters hear that he’s died of a heart attack. None of them fly out to his funeral. Big mistake. Because it turns out, later, that his tomb is empty.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sound like a credible story?”
“With reservations.”
“Since it all seems so run-of-the-mill in these parts, let’s introduce a little complication. TV viewers are used to that kind of thing.”
To please her, he went along with the game. “Plenty of people have seen Lost.”
“One of the daughters is raped. Of course she gets pregnant.” Cynicism made it easier to talk about it, almost as if it had happened to someone else. “Eighteen months later a video of the rape turns up, and in it there’s a man who everyone calls Apollonio. That’s weird enough, but there’s more: Apollonio is her father! End of season one. Now the scriptwriters have a year to think how to get themselves out of this crazy scenario.”
He looked at her hard, as if to make sure that she had not lost her mind and wasn’t heading for a nervous breakdown. “What was Apollonio’s motive?”
“What does the viewer know about him so far?” asked Rosa. “Not a lot. He probably belongs to a mysterious, super-secret, and of course worldwide organization called TABULA.”
“Which has a weakness for fur coats.”
“Through which Apollonio earns a nice bit on the side by selling them to an evil-minded woman who is head of a Mafia clan. He could be doing that on behalf of TABULA, or maybe he’s working for himself.”
“More likely for TABULA, I’d say.”
She nodded. “Apollonio sells the furs to the old Mafia witch on orders from TABULA, then. Maybe to sow discord among the Arcadian dynasties if the deal ever comes to light. He’s a faithful supporter of the organization and would never do anything to thwart its aims. Unfortunately for him, soon after that the old woman’s son tracks him down and kills him.”
Alessandro raised an eyebrow. “How do we know that?”
“We don’t. But obviously the son slipped into the role of Apollonio thirteen years later. Now he is Apollonio. Same character, new face.”
“Objection.”
“What?”
“The son can’t simply take on a new role. That’s not logical. Davide is still Davide—except that now he acts as if he were Apollonio. Undercover. Maybe he’s some kind of secret agent trying to destroy TABULA from inside.”
“But he wouldn’t stand by and watch his own daughter being raped by one of the Panthera, just to maintain his own cover. He couldn’t do that, unless he really didn’t care what happened to her.”
Alessandro chewed his lower lip.
“So now Davide is Apollonio,” she said. “He’s turned into a true believer in the aims of TABULA.”
“Brainwashing?”
“I’d think it’s more likely that they convinced him, won him over. Like the first Apollonio. And now Davide thinks they’re right—so much so that he doesn’t care about anything else, even his own daughter.”
“But is it certain that there were two Apollonios? The one with the furs and the one on the video?”
“Good point. If Apollonio and Davide had been the same man from the start, then he wouldn’t have sold the furs to Costanza—his own mother—would he? What’s more, Trevini would probably have recognized him later.”
Alessandro was still skeptical. “You’re assuming that Trevini has really told you everything, and has given you the truth.”
“That’s what I’m going to find out—in step two. For now, however, we’re still looking at Apollonio’s motives—the motives of TABULA. They made sure that one of the Panthera raped a Lamia. Why?”
“So that she’d get pregnant by him?” suggested Alessandro hesitantly. “You think the whole thing was some kind of experiment?”
“The problem is that we don’t know what TABULA is really after. Why are they experimenting on Arcadians? What do they hope to achieve?”
He followed this up with another idea. “You remember the statues of Panthera and Lamias on the seabed? Was it TABULA that salvaged them and removed them from the site?”
“We’ll clear up the question of whether Thanassis and the Stabat Mater are all part of TABULA at the next script conference.”
“But all the same, one thing is important,” he said. “We’ve been connecting the statues to ourselves all this time, right? At least