The Past is a Foreign Country by Gianrico Carofiglio

Again I pointed to the card on the left. He told me to turn it over and again it was a ten.
    He repeated the trick six or seven times and I didn’t pick out the queen once. Not even when I just guessed, to escape the illusion of those hands moving so hypnotically and elusively.
    It’s hard to explain, to anyone who hasn’t experienced it, the sense of frustration produced by such an apparently simple trick. There are only three cards. The queen is definitely there, and it’s all happening right in front of your eyes, at a distance of a few centimetres. And yet there’s no way you can find the queen.
    ‘The odds for the person betting are very close to zero. Learning  this trick is a good way to start. All the basic principles can be grasped immediately.’
    He explained how the trick worked, and then he repeated it two or three times, even more slowly. To demonstrate the technique. Even now, now that I knew the trick and knew where the queen was, I still pointed to the wrong card.
    Then he gave me the three cards and told me to try.
    I tried. I tried again and again and again, and he corrected me, explaining how I had to hold the cards, how I had to let go of them, how I had to direct the other person’s eyes away from the queen, and so on.
    He was a good teacher, and I was a good pupil.
    By the time we stopped, maybe three hours after we’d come into the room, my hands hurt, but I was already able to perform the trick to an acceptable standard.
    I felt quite exhilarated, and was dying to show it to someone – maybe my parents when I got home.
    Francesco read my mind. ‘I shouldn’t have to say this, but you should never show a trick to anyone until you’ve completely mastered it. Doing a trick and getting found out is frustrating but commonplace . Doing a trick at the card table and getting found out can be a lot riskier.’
    I made a smug gesture with my hand, as if to say that he was telling me something obvious.
    No, he didn’t have to say it.

8
    HE HAD BEEN having these dreams since he was a child. They were set in a vague past that may never have existed. In strange but comfortable places, filled with friendly presences. Warmth, anticipation , order, wishes, excitement, cozy and brightly-lit rooms, children playing, familiar voices in the distance, serenity, smells of food and cleanliness.
    A sense of nostalgia, melancholy but sweet.
    They were recurring dreams. There was nothing in them that had actually happened, no recognisable people, no places he knew. And yet – and this was the strange thing – he felt at home in these dreams.
    Whenever he had them, it was always a terrible wrench waking up from them.
    Very much like the time his mother died.
    He wasn’t yet nine. One morning, he had woken up and found the house full of people. His mother wasn’t there. The wife of one of his father’s – the general’s – officers had come for him and taken him to her house.
    ‘Where’s Mummy?’
    The woman had not replied immediately. First, she had looked at him for a long time with a mixture of embarrassment and sorrow. She was a big woman, good-natured and awkward.
    ‘Your mother isn’t well, sweetheart. She’s in hospital.’
    ‘Why? What’s happened?’ And as he said the words he felt the tears erupting, together with a sense of despair he’d never known until that moment.
    ‘She’s had an accident. She’s … not well at all.’ Then, not knowing what else to say, she hugged him. She felt soft and smelled just like their maid. A smell little Giorgio would never forget.
    His mother had not had an accident.
    The previous evening his father had gone out, as he often did. Official dinners, work, other things. His mother almost never went with him. She had put him to bed at the usual time – exactly half past nine – and had given him the usual kiss on the forehead.
    Then she had gone to the remotest point in that vast apartment – the lodgings of the commanding general, the biggest of all