menacing clouds in the sky, she turned on her heels and retraced her steps to Doctor Sciaccaluga’s office. Darkness was already enveloping the downtown streets. When she walked into the office, she noticed light filtering beneath the door of Doctor Sciaccaluga’s room. That surprised her: even on the busiest days the doctor never stayed past seven PM. She thought an intruder may be there, so she tiptoed to the door, kneeled, and set an eye against the keyhole. She saw Doctor Sciaccaluga seated at his desk, absorbed in writing. Relieved, she was about to stand up and knock when she noticed something that kept her on her knees: the doctor was tying a string around a cardboard box and was doing it with extreme care, as if he were handling gold. Perplexed, she continued to watch as her employer placed the box on the bookshelf and pushed it behind a large volume, which, the nurse knew, was a medicine manual. At that, Palmira stood up, took the umbrella, and left the office without a sound.
The following morning she was at work at eight, as usual. When Doctor Sciaccaluga left at noon for his lunch break, she went to his room, pushed the medicine manual aside, found the box, opened it, and began to read. She saw names, dates, financial statements. It took her a while to figure out what those papers described. When she understood, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing: child sales. Three sheets showed Damiano Sciaccaluga as the doctor involved, the remaining ones had to do with his father. She examined the papers carefully, but most names meant nothing to her. At a certain point, however, she saw something that sent her heart racing. One sale, carried out by Federico Sciaccaluga and dated 1841, described the sale of a baby born to Mercalia Parenti. The adoptive parents were Filiberto and Giulia Berilli. Palmira knew exactly who they were: the dead parents of Eugenia and Giuseppe Berilli. That was some news, that Eugenia and Giuseppe weren’t truly brother and sister. She laughed between her teeth, for she was well aware of how stuck-up and proud of their family traditions the Berillis were. She skimmed through the rest of the documents in a hurry, hoping her employer wouldn’t return to work earlier than usual. She glanced once more at the three most recent transactions, those carried out by Damiano. She saw nothing particularly interesting in them, other than for the fact that they confirmed that Doctor Sciaccaluga was still actively conducting child sales and, contrary to his father, earning large amounts of money from them. Finished browsing, Palmira replaced the documents in the box, and the box behind the medicine manual.
The rest of the day went by slowly, with Palmira’s bewilderment growing stronger as evening approached. She was a passionate, dedicated nurse, and what Doctor Sciaccaluga and his father had done was a disgrace to the medical profession. Should she confront her employer? Would he fire her for meddling into his affairs? A bad word from a doctor, she knew, could easily compromise a nurse’s chances of getting jobs in that town. She wondered how long the box had been there and whether Doctor Sciaccaluga intended to keep it there much longer. Should he decide to take it elsewhere, she’d have no proof of his dishonest activities, no way to stop him. She should copy those documents, she told herself, and then perhaps have a talk with her employer. One hour of copying a day, she estimated, would allow her to reproduce the contents of the box in one week. “And God help me,” she said out loud, “should I ever get caught.”
She followed her plan meticulously, devoting herself to transcribing data daily, during Doctor Sciaccaluga’s lunch break. By the end of the week she had created an exact copy, which she stored in her apartment, in one of the kitchen drawers.
Later that month Palmira asked Doctor Sciaccaluga for a private meeting. With a shaky voice but looking straight into his eyes, she told him she knew all about the box and the sale of the babies.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone about what you and your father did,” she said, “and I have no intention of doing that in the future. And, rest assured, I’m not a blackmailer. All I want is for you to stop selling children and making money from the sales because it’s against the code of ethics of our profession.”
Damiano felt the earth quake beneath