The Number 14 Bus

Photo by the author

He stepped off the number fourteen bus and landed on the sun-baked sidewalk. The warm seaside air was pleasant on his skin. The bus roared as it pulled away behind him, and he looked up with wonder at the three towering stone archways that stood in front of him.

He was at Staglieno, the massive and revered monumental cemetery in Genova. The sprawling grounds of the cemetery covered the entire hillside, ornate mausolea and burial crypts breaking through the lush carpet of bushes and trees. He had come to visit his father here.

He had never been to Staglieno before, but he knew from family conversations that his father, who had died decades ago, was buried there. He had been a boy away in boarding school when he had been told that his father had died. All of the necessary proceedings had been taken care of before he even knew he was gone. Only recently had his father’s death started to nudge at him. It felt like a mild curiosity, a loose end in his life that needed tying up.

He walked through the central archway and into a small piazza. He stopped and looked around, hoping to find someone who might be able to help him locate his father’s grave. All around him, he saw beautiful marble statues of grieving angels, mothers praying for their lost children, and men lying prostrate under the sheer weight of their loss. He marveled that so much grief could be hewn from stone. All of this marble had grieved more than he ever had.

He saw a small room off to the side of the piazza and walked in that direction. In the white sunlight, the doorway appeared as a black hole. He leaned his head into the room and waited for a moment for his eyes to adjust to the cool darkness. The form of a man slowly took shape. He was seated behind a marble counter. The man looked up, and in a pleasant voice, asked,

“Buon giorno. Posso aiutarla?”

He smiled at the man and took a step into the room. From the nameplate on the counter, he saw that the man’s name was Alfredo, like his father’s. He explained that he did not live in Genova, but was visiting family here and wanted to see the grave of his father. He handed the man a small piece of paper with his father’s name and the date of his birth, and the date of his death.

The man took the note, read it, and expeditiously turned to the back of the room. Behind the counter, nailed to the bare wall, was a dusty wooden crucifix, and next to it stood a shelf full of large ledgers. He went to that shelf and removed two large ledgers from it, and walked back to the counter.

The man opened one of the big books and started to leaf through the yellowed pages, repeating quietly to himself,

“Vediamo un pò. Mongardi, Mongardi...Dicembre ottantuno…”

After a minute, the man closed the first ledger and moved it to the side. He pulled the second ledger in front of him and opened it. He performed the same ritual, running his index finger down the columns of names and flipping pages. He seemed to be struggling to find what he was looking for.

Watching the man work from his side of the counter, he became engrossed in the analog simplicity of the process. Paper and ink, nothing more. Years and years of deaths, all recounted by a combination of paper and ink.

He came out of his daydream to see the man looking at him with uneasy eyes.

“Signor Mongardi, I am sorry, but your father was moved a long time ago, more than fifteen years ago. We sent out letters to all the families. We had to renovate the area where his grave was. Those that did not reply to our letters, well, their people were moved to a common grave, so there is nothing for you to visit.”

He paused, looked down, and then, with clear effort and summoning no small measure of courage, he looked up again.

“I am very sorry”, he said. The man closed the ledger softly and laid both hands on top of it.

His eyes wandered around the office for a brief moment, and then looked out through the window at the bright day. He could see a piece of the cemetery, and there he could see a row of headstones. He looked back at the man, who was now quietly replacing the ledgers. He thanked him and walked out into the white sunlight. Without any plan or reason, he started walking up the hill to a large plot filled with rows and rows of headstones. He paced up and down the rows in the sunshine, noticing the different ways that people remember their departed. Flowers were left, of course. But he also came across decks of worn playing cards, draped soccer scarves, yellowed photographs, and letters, sometimes bundles of letters. He continued to walk between the rows for a long time, until the sun lost some of its strength.

Finally, he stopped under a tall pine tree at the top of the hill. The grave markers had become fewer. He turned and looked back down the hill at the rows that he had walked. What he had felt along those rows were the love, peace, and comfort that have meant so much to so many people. In that moment, from his small island of distance and sadness, he felt those things as well.

He walked down the hill in search of the number fourteen bus to take him home.

© Marcello Mongardi 2025 | All rights reserved

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