Doctor in distress

It is winter 1936. Every weekday morning a group of young people travel by train from Ferrara, their home city, to Bologna where they are studying at the university. Theirs is a six-carriage stopping train, often infuriatingly late because of delays on the line, thus contradicting the famous Fascist boast about improvement of Italian railways. But these youths enjoy their ride, its camaraderie and little rituals.

Only one carriage is not third class, and here, they notice, an eminent member of their own community is sitting: Dr Athos Fadigati. To this ENT specialist’s clinic most of them have, during childhood, been taken. Fadigati is an unmistakable yet paradoxically elusive figure, overweight, fastidiously dressed, with his homburg, yellow gloves and gold-rimmed spectacles which make him conspicuous for all his preference for privacy. And over the years he has acquired a reputation not only for exceptional medical competence. ‘Well, I’ve heard it said that he’s….’