by Giovanni Galavotti, translated into English by Ruth Stephens
Chapter 2 – Surprise!
Marianna lives in a small flat on the second floor of a large building in the suburbs of Bologna with three other girls, students like herself.
She is alone in her room, trying to study, but is finding it impossible to stop thinking about the photograph. This morning she reported the theft at the police station but was told it is difficult, almost impossible, to recover a lost purse.
The doorbell rings and Marianna answers via the intercom: “Yes, who is it?”
“Post,” a male voice replies.
“Strange”, thinks Marianna, “Post in the afternoon? It normally comes in the morning.”
She decides to go and see, anyway. Then, glancing out of the window, she sees a young man walking away.
His clothes are dirty and ragged, his hair long and untidy, and he is wearing a rucksack with some coloured sticks poking out of it……
He certainly isn’t the postman! And there is something vaguely familiar about him.
Marianna runs down the stairs but when she reaches the bottom he is already disappearing out of sight.
She opens the letterbox and stands open-mouthed in front of it. Her purse!
The small amount of money in it has gone, but everything else, including the photograph, is still there.
Marianna asks herself who can he be, this dirty, but kind young man?
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