Baccano! - Volume 15 - Chapter Pr

Long ago, the girl committed a crime.

The entire world conspired to hide it, heedless of her wishes.

And so she lived on.

She lived in peace, without a care.

She never aspired to be happy.

She never desired to atone.

She simply didn’t know what she should do. That’s all.

That was why—I extended a hand to her.

I never thought about what the results might be. I never even noticed the precipice just ahead.

EPILOGUE A

2003 The city of Lotto Valentino, Italy

The young man found the box completely by accident.

He didn’t have a steady job, though he was in his twenties. He was a wanderer traveling around the world, burning through the inheritance his parents had left him after their accidental deaths a few years earlier.

He’d come to his hometown of Lotto Valentino because the money had nearly run dry, and now he was scrounging around for something to sell.

Lotto Valentino was a small town to the northwest of Naples. It apparently had a decent amount of history; some of its buildings were several centuries old, and the port, which was said to have existed since the town’s founding, was still used for commerce and sightseeing.

The town had many sloping roads, and a labyrinth of alleys ran among them. Looking up at the slices of vivid-blue sky from between the white, stone walls was practically a tourist attraction all by itself.

Lotto Valentino had one of the largest numbers of libraries in all of Italy. The artistic merits of these many libraries as well as their value as historic sites had been recognized, and from time to time, TV crews came from overseas to film features about them. But other than that, it was just a peaceful port town with little to distinguish it from other, similar places. That was the young man’s impression of his hometown anyway.

His family home was on the outskirts.

In the attic, he found a jewel casket of unknown origin.

To be more precise, it was a bit too big for a jewel casket. If the decorations were a bit gaudier, it might have been appropriate to call this particular box a treasure chest.

It was about the size of a small bathtub, hidden deep behind piles of other items being kept in storage. The young man had never seen it before.

Realizing there was a hidden space behind a crumbling wall, the youth finally got inside by completely destroying the partition and had discovered the casket.

The young man’s hopes soared; perhaps it had been intentionally sealed away.

He’d heard an ancestor of his had been a rather famous poet here in town and had written plays as well—several of his works were no doubt in the town’s libraries. The young man wondered if this might be a work of art, a treasure of some sort, left here for future generations.

Although the ultimate goal for his exploring was cash, the young man traveled for travel’s sake, and hope grew inside him that he might get to see something he’d never seen before.

Then when the lock was pried open and the lid raised—the hope in his expression faded into disappointment.

Inside the box were several dozen, or possibly several hundred, pieces of parchment.

None of it seemed valuable by any estimation.

Still, they might be poems or prose pieces his poet ancestor had written. If he took them to a museum, they could bring in a little money.

And if the poems themselves are good, his name could sell them even now.

The youth wondered whether he might be able to profit from his own ancestor’s fame and add to his future travel fund that way. First, though, he began to read the words on the vast quantity of parchment.

The writings were in an old dialect, the language of three centuries ago, but he’d studied the classics as a hobby while he was still in school, so he could parse the meaning.

While there were some difficult passages, he could go to one of the town’s libraries for any necessary research. It helped too that the chief librarian of one establishment happened to be well versed in that field.

Thanks to these convenient coincidences, the young man successfully read his way through the long, long work that was written on the parchment.

For better—or for worse.

That sheaf of timeworn parchment.

In an era when paper was probably already in circulation, it had still been written on parchment: It was a tale of the town of Lotto Valentino, spanning several years.

The Memoirs of Jean-Pierre Accardo

I hereby set down a monologue that I must—yet cannot—relate.

How should I begin?

Whenever I wish to convey my heart to an anonymous audience, my custom is to do so in verse. However, I place here only a lengthy account of my humble memories to paper, and I know not how to broach the subject to my reader.

Would that this great sheaf of parchment (for such it shall become, I’m sure) were never found at all.

But in your hands, it rests, and that is that. After all, if my words are being read, you must have been the one to discover this parchment.

…Or perhaps, unable to understand it on your own, you have availed yourself of the services of one skilled in decipherment.

It is all the same to me.

No doubt it will not be mine to know who will read the memoirs I record here.

While I do not write in anticipation of death by my own hand, once I have written the whole of this letter, I intend to hide it in the house, in as obscure a location as I can manage. If I am successful, it should not be found for some fifty or a hundred years hence.

Allow me to reiterate that I do not mean to destroy myself. I have no intention of defying the will of God for such a foolish act.

I wish to impress this point upon you, dear reader.

My name is Jean-Pierre Accardo.

I earn modest sums by publishing poems and essays in the local newssheet, but I am unaccustomed to writing at length. While my tale may be difficult to follow in places, please persist to the end of

No, never mind.

If reading further causes you distress, I would like you to return this sheaf immediately to wherever you found it and think no more upon it. Tell no one and behave as though these pages do not exist. You may even burn it, if you wish.

I only write these words to set my own mind at ease.

If you elect to read on in full knowledge of this, then I have many things I wish you to hear.

The unbelievable beings I have seen—alchemists who have attained immortality.

Perhaps you read those words and laugh, dear reader, calling my story a fabrication. Perhaps in your world, immortality is commonplace.

However, in the age in which I live, it is a fantasy both impossible and highly sought after.

Yes. It is a fantasy.

Even so—I saw them with my own eyes.

Immortal humans.

My tale takes place in Lotto Valentino, and I witnessed these events myself.

I did not see everything directly. Some parts of my account were relayed to me later.

But no doubt I should begin with an account of the immortal I did see.

I witnessed that miraculous regeneration in the year 1707.

And so I ought to begin with the soiree held by the Avaros—a local family of influential aristocrats—at which my presence had been requested.