in me the love of classical culture. However, since that subject did not count too much for the final grades, I did not consider it with much interest. That now prevented me from being able to make the most of this trip, not only because the city was full of inscriptions on doors, lintels and on other archaeological remains, in the ancient and already forgotten Latin language, but because the language spoken by the citizens here, the Italians, was a derivation or evolution of it.
In addition to that, the guide the embassy had assigned us served as our translator, talking to the merchants and sellers who approached the group to try to sell us something, or when we wanted to enter some private building to look at the architectural or historical remains in those villas.
By the way, it was not clear to me how art was related to the city. It seemed that ancient benefactors, the patrons of arts of the time, paid generously to the artists to produce their work. That way they made the city a cultural center of reference.
Although in my country we certainly had some patrons that donated part of their wealth to young talents, their generosity was not enough to obtain benefits decade after decade, as an incentive to new generations.
In addition, the government itself provided through various mechanisms, direct aids or scholarships to those that stood out from the rest, but these aids did not focus exclusively on artists. They rather tried to reward those who best performed on a given specialty, so that they would continue to train and progress.
Besides, the government rewarded with financial help young promises in science, research, the arts, and even sports, so they could dedicate their time to them, without having to worry about a job to pay for their studies.
Fortunately for me, I was among those lucky young people, who had scholarships from their government, and on whom depended the progress and future of our country. This government’s scholarship allowed me to study in the same center as others, without having to have a father with a high political office or a great fortune, like some of my fellow travelers had, or without having a remarkable and outstanding sports career that others had as well.
My specialty, on which I had stood out, was mathematics. Since I was a child, I loved to discover the relationship elements had in nature, or guess events before they happened, or predict the behavior of animals and people.
Of all of this I had no idea, but when I started to study mathematics I understood this was the language of the future, since I could use it to put forward theories about present and upcoming events, I could understand the associations of sets and their behavior, and apply this to ordinary life.
Perhaps it was somehow presumptuous, as some professor had discussed with me, to try to find some logic in the world around us, not taking into account instinctive behaviors. Likewise, some of my fellow classmates criticized me as arrogant, since as far as them they preferred to trust on something as intangible as good or bad luck. In my case, however, I was sure that behind every fact and every behavior there was a formula that could explain it.
I then specialized myself in economic theories, with which I was able to predict the behavior of governments with respect to their domestic and foreign trade.
The main theory I had supported was that the population would expand or contract based on the availability of food. So, it was not so much about having a good or bad harvest in the fields, but about the ease or difficulty of the interchange through commerce.
I then reread history from that hypothesis, and I could explain why some peoples were doomed to their disappearance because they did not have a raw material to offer to the neighbor country. Therefore, they were not be able to trade with anything other people needed.
Some of my professors, when I had to defend my thesis, accused me of forcing reality to fit my mathematical model, but I was sure they said that only due to skepticism on their part.
If I could know all the economic variables of a certain population, or at least the most important ones, I could predict without too many errors how many years of subsistence they would have, and whether these people would become dominant or dominated.
Therefore, if a given population, who cultivated and generated raw materials, did not have around them others who converted and manufactured them, they had no chance of growth. It was for me a perfect symbiosis, beneficial to both, where the producer survived thanks to the manufacture of raw materials.
It is true that this led to a rather significant economic difference. Once a product was manufactured, the original producers had to pay more than ten times more for the raw material they had extracted from the land. However, if we talk exclusively about survival, both populations managed to survive.
Perhaps my theories had impressed a few, but it was most noteworthy when applied in other fields. Some had suggested me to present a variation, to try to guess how countries would behave from a weapons point of view.
Although my initial economic idea was more predictable, because people are no longer governed only by the quantity of weapons they have, but by their quality and logistical capacity, elements that in my equations were difficult to assess and to evaluate.
Being distracted while engaged in these thoughts, I suddenly heard somebody scream. It came from the place where the little girl, who had given me the flower, had gone.
I looked everywhere and no one seemed to pay attention to that scream. It went for a few seconds and then it was silenced by the noisy coming and going of people on the street.
I stood still for a moment and a strange thought came to my mind. Maybe the little girl was in danger. A chill went up from my spine to my neck, and suddenly I started running toward the street where I had last seen her, since nobody seemed to care about the scream for help that I had heard.
I then left my fellow travelers without even telling them anything, as I did not yet know where I was going. I ran very fast a few hundred feet almost without breathing, until I stopped all of a sudden at the end of the street, that now branched in two.
I looked everywhere anxiously and surprised. Just a little while ago I had heard the little girl and now I could see her nowhere. No chance she could have run so much in such a short time, as I had done it. That meant that by now I should be seeing her. However, different from the crowded square I had just left, here I could see no one.
It would have been very useful to ask any bystander if they had seen a little girl pass by, but finding no one, I did not know what to do. I could go down one street or the other, but how far? for how long was I going to continue my search?
Although I did not know the little girl at all, to think she might be in danger was worrying me, to say the least, and I did not want to get back, but on the other hand, it seemed useless to keep running aimlessly through these streets.
The only way she could have disappeared was if somebody was carrying her in his arms. I saw no other possibility, since she could not have gone that far on foot.
I came back quite unhappy and worried, disappointed that I could not help her, short of breath due to the effort, when I saw that half way down the street to the right, there was a small door that I had not seen when I passed by running.
I nervously walked down the street again from the very beginning to see if there were any more doors, but I found no other one, “is it possible that they took her this way?” I wondered in front of the little door that was just only a bit higher than my chest.
I put my hands on that old wooden door, swollen by moisture, and I pushed to see if it gave way, because it had no knocker or latch. After a few attempts, the door gave in and it opened with a shocking squeak, like old bikes do when they are rusty after a long time with no use.
I stopped in front of that dark opening, not sure if I would get in or not, because for sure it was a private property where nobody had invited me to come in. Besides, it was very unlikely the little girl had gone in there, because in that case I would have heard that peculiar sound……. Unless the door was already open when they grabbed her.
I stuck my head in to see what was behind this swollen old wooden door. All I could see was a deep and vast darkness, with an intense smell of moisture, more typical of places near the sea, where the moisture in the air drenches the walls, corroding