Broken Hearts On Boulevard Unirii novel Chapter 61

"Gert," I began. "Fabrizio is dead, he hung himse...."

"I know," he said, cutting me off in mid-sentence."Angelo called me a few minutes ago and told me. What do we do?"

"I will talk to Rosanna, as she is the only one who will agree to talk to me, and I will let you know what she has decided. We cannot make decisions for the family," I said.

"Okay, a dopo[ Italian: See you ]," he answered, and then hung up.

My entire youth passed before my eyes. I remembered the first day I met Fabrizio, his trip to India, his music, his marriage and the birth of his daughter. For thirty years we were good friends. I cried more than I had since I was a child.

For an hour I sat, unmoving. It was necessary to organize the funeral quickly, so I gathered my forces and called my travel agent who arranged tickets for me and Claudio in minutes. She informed me that they were booked and would be waiting for us at the airport. Our flight was at noon, so we had to hurry and get to Florence. Tiziana accompanied Claudio and me to the airport. We arrived just as they were closing the doors of the plane.

Gert met us in Otopeni airport, his plane had landed from Lucerne nearly at the same time as ours; We took a taxi to Angelo's place. This time we were not in the mood for joking with the driver.

We sat and waited until evening, when it was time to go to the airport to pick up Elia and Rosanna, who were arriving from Italy for the funeral. Giulia had decided not to come.

Angelo told us that they had found a sealed envelope on the table on which was written, "Please give this to Luciana."

We were devastated. Nobody paid attention to Angelo's comment.

At seven in the evening we drove to the airport. We waited for about fifteen minutes until they came out. Elia was pale as a ghost and Rosanna's eyes were red from crying.

Elia whispered into my ear, "It is hard to digest. It just doesn't make any sense."

We sat up until late that night in Angelo's apartment trying to make sense of what had happened and trying figure out what had led Fabrizio to commit suicide.

When the letter was in our hands, Rosanna asked and begged in every possible way, for us to open it. However, we refused, because we wanted to fulfill Fabrizio's last wish, which was to give it to Luciana.

The problem was we couldn't find her. Maybe she was afraid that the police were after her for stealing the money from the bar. As a result, it looked like she went into hiding and disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed her.

The next morning while we were sitting in the bar waiting for the arrival of the body, suddenly, out of nowhere, Giulia appeared. Rosanna ran over to her and hugged her tightly and they both cried. Giulia had covered her eyes with dark sunglasses and wore a scarf on her head.

We approached her with great trepidation as we didn't know whether she would blame us for his death, but she only said that she had not told Fabrizio's parents yet, due to the poor health of his mother.

The hearse arrived with the coffin, which was covered with flowers, and stopped at the entrance to the bar. Passersby stopped, removed their hats, crossed themselves and uttered a silent prayer.

From the bar the convoy went to the church, where the coffin was brought inside and placed next to the altar. The priest delivered a short service and everyone passed by the open coffin. I stopped in front of Fabrizio, who was dressed in a black suit, and stared at him. He had such a relaxed and peaceful look on his face. He was holding a rosary necklace with a simple wooden Franciscan cross hanging from it. Next to the coffin lay his violin that he loved so much.