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Aldo left them quietly, in his sleep. As quietly as he walked through the Vatican, as he condemned it from the pages of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which often came out irregularly, delayed by a week or two from the beginning of the new month, as he ignored any events in Venice so as not to run into Tedesco again somewhere between the alleys and canals. Just as quietly as he had told him about his illness. Without shouting and unnecessary emotions, with an incomprehensible calmness and acceptance in the look of those always slightly sad eyes.
But if Aldo was an iceberg in the ocean, drifting peacefully through the icy waters into the infinity of days he would never live, Goffredo was an eternal explosion that created all the planets and stars, constellations and nebulae, land and water, pain and tenderness, grief and joy, loss and love. Tedesco exploded, and this explosion ripped apart the earth, creating fissures in all layers of its lithosphere, just as Aldo's words created fissures in every cell of his worn-out heart, right along the lines that the coronary arteries wrap around it from the outside. The shockwave of the explosion demolished everything in its path, but it failed to tear from Aldo's face that mask of unyielding restraint and devastating coldness that only happens in places where there will never be life again. Tedesco was screaming, but Aldo was silent. He was silent when he left the garden, leaving Goffredo alone with his anger and hopelessness, he was silent when he decided to fall asleep one autumn night and never wake up again.
His room in Casa Santa Marta became quiet, his desk, where no one else would sit until late at night, his bed, where no one else would lie awake, his chair, his carpet, his bookshelf, his large coffee cup, his unread morning newspaper, his untaken pills, his uncompleted sermon. The whole Vatican became quiet when the heart of Cardinal Aldo Maria Bellini stopped beating. Goffredo Tedesco also became quiet.
There was no longer anyone to shout at, no one to argue with over dogmas and teachings, no one whose views to condemn and deliberately refute in texts, words, and actions. The person for whom all this was intended, for whose sake it all began, was gone, so there were no articles, no disputes, no anger, no shouting. All that remained was silence, into which Tedesco plunged, as if decades of noise and fear had not been behind him.
He carried his silence as if it were a cross strapped to his back, while Aldo had worn it like a mantle all his life. Goffredo was no longer an eternal explosion that exploded every time Aldo was near, while meteors, comets, and bolides continued to pass over their heads, and God was always looking down on them. Goffredo, too, became an iceberg, travelling through icy waters somewhere in the infinity of days and years, lost and alone, with the hope of meeting Him one day.