“How old are you, Mia?”

“Thirteen. Almost thirteen and a half.”

Dr. Spalti revealed the hint of a smile. The young girl was sitting composed on the other side of his desk, her dark brown eyes fixed on him. The woman next to her raised the corners of her mouth slightly.

The clinic was well-lit, charged with a white electric clarity specifically designed to transmit positive vibrations. But Mia’s lips continued to tremble, although in a way barely noticeable. It was a detail that did not escape the psychologist.  

“So, Mia, your mother told me some things over the phone. But now I’d like you to speak, to explain the problem to me. Is that ok with you?”

Mia glanced over toward her mother, who, after a few seconds, nodded. Spalti took advantage of that silent exchange to turn his attention to the woman. “Mrs. Bezzi, I have to ask you to leave us alone for now. You can take a seat in the waiting room. Then I’ll call you. Thank you.”

The woman had to make a bit of an effort not to betray the disappointment in her expression. Standing up, she stroked Mia’s hair and whispered to her, “Don’t worry. I’ll be right outside. Tell the doctor everything. You’ll see, he’ll find a way.”

Mia wrinkled her brow, shaping her features into a determined look that for a moment made her seem more mature. She turned her head, following her mother until the door closed behind her, and then she began to stare back at the doctor in silence.

“So, Mia, here we are. Your mother wants me to help you, and I have every intention of doing so. For that reason, don’t be afraid, and don’t leave anything out. I know you’ve been having nightmares; in fact, a recurring nightmare, for about . . .”

“From the day of my birthday. For about five months.”

“Five months,” repeated Spalti, seemingly deep in thought as he planted his elbows down on the desk and folded his hands beneath his chin. “Not every night, though, correct?”

Mia shook her head. Her hair, the same color as her eyes and gathered into a ponytail, dangled back and forth behind her. “No, thank God. But, yeah, every three or four days.”

The psychologist nodded. “And it always comes up in the same way, this bad dream? Always identical?”

Mia did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“Ok, I’m all ears. And please be sure not to leave a single detail out, even if it seems insignificant to you, all right?”

The girl straightened her back and shoulders, assuming the posture she very likely adopted at school when faced with an oral exam. Instinctively, she brought a fingernail to her teeth but quickly lowered her hand, almost as if a reprimand from her mother were ringing in her ears. Then she cleared her throat and began.

“I’m in a very strange place, but I do know that in dreams everything is strange. I’m in an enormous palace, and I’m walking along a hallway that seems to go on forever. I’m barefoot, but I hear the echo of my steps and even my breath. I’m wearing a long gown, dark red or brown. I’m afraid of something, but I don’t know what. I know something bad is about to happen, but I continue to walk, slowly, looking around me. The ceiling is very high, like an arc. There are columns, and the floor is marble, a black-and-white checkerboard. At some point, I hear a noise. At first, it’s very far away, but it always gets closer and closer. It’s coming from behind me. It’s a pounding that echoes loudly. Footsteps of someone running. I know they are running fast, even if the pounding seems to be slowing down. Everything seems to me to be in slow motion. I’m also finding it hard to move, as if the air were . . . thick. I turn around and see the person who’s coming. I know it’s someone who has it in for me, who wants to hurt me. I’d like to get away as fast as I can, and I try to do it, always keeping my head turned around to see who it is.”

At that moment, Mia stopped, her eyes apparently arrested by something out of nowhere.

“And who do you see, Mia?” asked Spalti, breaking the silence. He would have preferred not interrupting her, but he had recognized in the girl’s eyes the glimmer of an inner turmoil that could have compromised the clarity of her account and thereby the effectiveness of their conversation. “Who’s chasing you? Do you know who it is?”

Collecting herself, Mia turned her gaze back on the doctor. “A woman.” Silence for a few seconds, and then, “A woman, tall, thin. Barefoot like me. She seems old to me. But she could also be young, although sick. I don’t know how, but I know she’s crazy. She’s wearing a loose black dress, and with her right arm, she’s carrying a girl dressed in white. She’s holding her tightly by the waist. The girl’s fainted. One of her arms hangs down, her head tilted back. As she’s running, the woman keeps her left arm outstretched, her hand open. I know she wants to take me, too, and she’ll do it, because the distance between us is getting shorter. . .”

Spalti instinctively frowned; he opened his mouth halfway but let Mia continue with her account.

“I know she’ll catch up to me, because while running away, I keep looking over my shoulder, and so . . . I don’t realize the floor has collapsed in front of me and, all of a sudden, I don’t feel the tiles under my bare feet anymore, and I start to fall. . .” She stopped, with a distinct look of distress on her face. Her breathing had become labored.

“And at that point you wake up, isn’t that so?” said the doctor, urging her on in a soft voice.

“Yes, but before I wake up, I see . . .” Another pause. Spalti, still on edge, kept quiet. “I see the girl, the girl seized by the woman, raise her head, open her eyes wide, and she stares at me, and she also reaches one arm out towards me, with a smile that makes my heart freeze. And then I scream, at least in the dream. And that’s it.”

“That’s it,” repeated Spalti. “All right, now come on and try to relax a bit. Although . . . I am still a little curious: are there only you three in this enormous palace, or, by chance, do you see anyone else?”

Mia sighed deeply. “I don’t see them directly because I’m too caught up with my escape . . . but I know people are watching us from above, looking out from long, narrow windows. I have no idea who they are, and I really don’t care to know.”

Spalti nodded, muttering to himself, “Yeah, uh-hunh, yeah . . .” Then he turned back toward Mia. “Ok, that’s enough for now. I won’t ask you anything else. You’ll see that with a few more talks together, we’ll manage to get rid of these bad dreams. All right?”

“All right,” Mia replied in a low voice.

“Great. Now I’ll let you sit for a while in the waiting room. Can you please tell your mom to come back here?”

Mia stood up and went to the door, taking her leave with a brief nod of the head.

From the waiting room came a short, confused exchange of words, and after a few moments, Mrs. Bezzi reentered the office. In the meantime, Dr. Spalti had opened his laptop and rapidly typed some words into Google.

After carefully closing the door, the woman settled quietly back into the cushioned chair, which still retained a trace of her bodily warmth.

“So, doctor, what can you tell me?”

Spalti raised a finger distractedly as if asking her for just a moment or two. “Here it is,” he finally said, and he rotated the laptop so that she could look at it.

“Have you ever seen this painting, ma’am?”

The woman leaned over. Her expression remained inscrutable for several seconds, then she curled her upper lip into her mouth, biting into it.

“It’s a work of Louis Janmot,” explained Spalti, “a French painter of the nineteenth century. It belongs to Lyon’s Museum of Fine Arts. It’s entitled Cauchemar, nightmare. Does it mean anything to you?”

The look on the woman’s face darkened, and then a bright sheen dropped over her eyes. “Yes,” she said, stammering. “I remember . . . a reproduction in my sister’s house. She kept it in the entryway. She liked it a lot.”

“Just as I thought,” commented the psychologist. “Mia’s mind must have retained it in some way. Because, as you see, it portrays her recurring nightmare almost perfectly. The girl who’s running away, the terrible woman who’s chasing her, and carrying along with her another girl, the open abyss in front of them. Even the description of the surroundings, the colors of the garments, and the people watching from above are identical. In short, it all comes from here, from this painting. No doubt about it.”

Mrs. Bezzi struggled to take her eyes off the screen and stare back at Spalti. “It goes back to about a dozen years ago. . .”

The doctor shut down the laptop and slid it next to the phone. He then opened a drawer and drew out a green folder. On top, in red, he had written MIA B.

“After your first phone call, before making the appointment, I wanted to inform myself for a moment about Mia’s past, and her mother’s—her natural one, Anna.” Several sheets of paper—for the most part photocopies of newspaper articles and pages printed off the Net—slipped out from the folder. “I remembered something about that tragic event.” He began to skim through the papers in front of him as he continued to speak, “Anna Bezzi, your sister . . . teen-aged, single mother of twins . . . severe depression. Unfortunately, such cases are frequent. That day,  a social worker was at her house. The situation becomes critical. Anna understands that they are going to take her daughters from her, at least temporarily. Then she goes into the bedroom where the two children—not yet a year old—are sleeping. She takes one of them, Lara, but she doesn’t have time to take Mia, too, because the social worker intervenes. But she does manage to reach the balcony, and…”

Spalti said nothing further. Mrs. Bezzi’s face was a mask of stone.

The doctor closed the folder, clasping his hands on the desk. “Mia knows that you are her aunt and that you adopted her?”

The woman, sniffling a bit, nodded. “Yes, we’ve told her.”

“Also about the twin who was killed?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Recently. The day of her last birthday. We thought she was now old enough and that it was only right she learned about all of it from us.”

“I understand.”

The woman sighed in exasperation. “What do you understand, doctor? Can you explain it to me, too, please?”

“With the few particulars I’ve got, I can form a hypothesis. A breach—let’s call it that—has opened in Mia’s unconscious. I’m sure she saw that picture many times in her mom’s house, even if she was not yet a year old. That image stayed inside her, a cryptonymic element, if we want to give it a name. And now the revelation of what happened has triggered a chain reaction that has taken the form of an obsessive, recurring nightmare. I suspect that beneath it all, deep down, a concealed sense of guilt is at work.”

“A sense of guilt?” The woman leaned her head forward. “And for what? Mia has never done. . .”

“For being saved,” Spalti said, interrupting her. “For having outlived her little sister, Lara. Of course, it’s an idea that does not surface to the level of consciousness, but I believe a few more sessions with Mia will bring it into the light. Based on my experience, I would say that’s the way to go to free her from her nightmare.” And since the woman could find no words in response, the doctor continued. “You see, the buried image of that woman with her insane look, running and dragging along with her an unconscious girl, is in her mind, easily superimposed over that of her true mother with her little sister in her arms. And the fact that she is pursuing her is emblematic. She was unable to take Mia, too, and now that unresolved drama is generating a conflict in her. Do you understand?”

The woman brought two of her fingers to her temples, pressing them intermittently. “And how can we deal with this?”

Spalti leaned against the back of his swivel chair. “I can try speaking about it with her. A couple of sessions could help. Otherwise, if the problem persists, a psychiatrist can be brought in. I know a few who . . .”

“Mia’s not crazy!” The woman realized in time that she had raised her voice too loudly, and she managed to stifle the final word before it could reach the waiting room. 

“I never said so, nor in the least thought that she is,” said the doctor, defensively. “It’s routine, when a buried trauma continues to work in the subterranean corners of the mind at the risk of endangering the subject’s composure and tranquility. Especially during such a delicate phase as puberty.”

The woman stood up, her manner now subdued. “Ok, then. So, what do you suggest we do?”

“That we don’t lose too much time. Arrange our next session with my secretary. Take this, too.” He handed her his business card. “In case of emergency. But don’t worry, ma’am. These are matters that can be resolved. Just be patient.”

Mrs. Bezzi returned his handshake, murmuring almost simultaneously her gratitude, an apology, and a good-bye.

As the woman opened the door of the office to leave, Spalti caught sight of Mia sitting on a bench. He smiled at her, raising his hand. Mia did not reply. The door closed.

The session was set for the following Tuesday, five days away. But by Sunday morning, Dr. Spalti had already received a phone call from Mrs. Bezzi. Mia had had a mental breakdown Saturday night. She had woken up screaming like a person possessed, then she had lost consciousness. They had called a doctor immediately, and now she was at the St. Francis Clinic for diagnostic tests. If it was all right with him, could he drop by during visiting hours to see her? Of course he would.

Spalti appeared at the ward at 11:30. Mia’s adoptive parents welcomed him gratefully, intercepting him a few feet from the room where the girl was staying.

“They’ve given her some tranquilizers,” said the woman at once, anticipating him. “She was resting, but now she’s wide awake. She’s doing fine now, you’ll see. Right, Aldo?” Her husband—a bald, stocky man—simply nodded as he let his eyes wander up and down along the ward.

“What did the doctor say?” asked Spalti.

“He took a simple blood sample from her and is waiting for the results. But he’s already spoken to me about stress, about the hormonal imbalances connected to adolescence, to her period. . .  Nothing to worry about, at least at first sight.”

“Of course, of course. I intend to speak to him as soon as possible. But for now, could I say hello to Mia?”

“Absolutely. She seems a little confused, says things that are a little. . .”

“Don’t worry. It’s quite understandable. With your permission . . .”

The Bezzis stepped immediately away from the door to the room, and Spalti entered.

The girl was lying in bed, her head and chest slightly raised. From the window, a beam of clear light cut across her. Her face was relaxed, and her full lips curled into a peaceful smile.

“Good morning, doctor. I’m really glad to meet you in person.”

Spalti did not comment. Shifting over to the side of the bed, he observed the girl for a few seconds before replying. “Good day, Mia. How do you feel?”

The girl kept silent, returning his gaze without any visible emotion. Then, in a slightly lower voice, “Mia’s with Mama now. We caught up to her, finally. It’s only fair for Mama to cuddle up with her, too, after so many years.”

Spalti felt a sting at his heart’s core. He knew very well that it only had to do with a play of light and shadow, and yet he struggled to rid himself of the impression that Mia’s hair spread out over the pillow was a little lighter than he had remembered it to be. Just like her eyes, too. Instinctively, he turned toward the door. From the corridor, the Bezzis were watching him closely, anguished expressions on their faces. He supposed they were wondering if he had noticed it, as well.

He turned back to the girl. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, Mia?”

Her giggling was barely noticeable, like a breath of air. “No, no, that’s not my name. But I believe I’ll have to get used to it.”

(END)

Translated by J. Weintraub

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