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scions onto the gnarled vine-stocks. And when the tomatoes started growing, we would pick off the worms. But there were many summer days when we had nothing to do but run and play.
    “Ugo was saving up money to get a racing bicycle. He was always listening to bicycle races on the radio. Sometimes I would help him make money by searching for bottles and scrap metal along the railroad track. The track ran right next to our property. There was a crossing and even a little old man living in a house to raise and lower the gates. He liked to tell us terrible, blackly funny stories about the war.
    “I had an older sister, Maria, who became a nun. She lived in a nunnery in Verona. One summer my body began to develop. It came too early. Men stared at me, and I was frightened. Mama sent me to spend a month safe with Maria.
    “While I was gone, a train derailed onto our property. There was a tank-car full of some poison. An ingredient for a pesticide. All my family died, all our animals, all our plants. It is so poisoned there that it is still fenced off. They pushed dirt over the broken tank-car, and no one can go close.
    “Maria said I should go to the University and become a doctor. She said I should put the past behind myself. And I did study; I studied for years. I became a psychiatrist for working people in Mestre. This is an industrial town near Venice.
    “I noticed how similar the psychoses of my patients were. A whole world of madness seems possible to the layman, but the doctor sees only the same few blighted fruits: depression, paranoia, dissociation. Those whose jobs force them to work with toxic materials have much higher incidences of mental illness. Why must such products be produced? Whom do they really benefit?
    “Over the next few years I became increasingly involved in environmental activism. I marched, I collected signatures, I lobbied for legislation. But still the air hurt my lungs, and still the corroded stones of Venice sank deeper into the sea. It seemed that no one could stop the criminal polluters.
    “Finally something happened. The president of a nuclear fuel company in Mestre was machine-gunned in his mistress’s bed. The mayor’s car exploded. An arson fire destroyed a whole refinery.
    “One of the terrorists was captured: Beatrice. She pleaded insanity. The court assigned me to interview her. I found her the only sane person in Mestre. We joined forces.”

    The Story of Peter Roth
    “I grew up in a village near Essen. I was an only child. My parents ran a little food store. Wine and canned goods, and fresh things. Milk, bread, vegetables. Every morning my father would get up at 4:30 and drive to the farmers’ market. He had the best vegetables in the village.
    “My mother’s father had been a hunter, in charge of a noble family’s woods. She loved the forest and knew the names of all the plants and insects. When I was little we took many walks. But soon the forests near us were all gone. On Sundays Father would drive us on the autobahn in his Mercedes. That was his great love, driving the Mercedes.
    “Finally there was a crash. A VW was trying to pass someone, and we plowed into him from behind. Mother died; we had to watch her, with metal in her chest. It was horrible.
    “I worked in the store after school. The women in the village were all kind to me, but I was very lonely. At night I studied, I studied hard so I could get my Abitur and go to the University. Ever since the accident I hated my father.
    “I went to Heidelberg. The German university life is very free. No one keeps track…you simply attend the lectures that you choose. I had saved some money, and father helped me too, so that I could rent a room in someone’s basement. The first year I spent Christmas with my new girlfriend’s family. I didn’t go home until Pentecost—and what I saw was very surprising.
    “The coal strippers had taken away our village. They have a machine; it is as big as the cathedral at Worms. They