Characters
Frau Bellini
Resident of the Pozzuoli nursing home, with her own cup
Frau Bellini lives in the nursing home in Pozzuoli that Lena Voss visits to check how quickly it could be evacuated. She sits alone by the window in the common room, small, very upright, her white hair pinned in a tight bun, pearls in her ears. She is lucid; nothing about her seems lost, and she surveys the room as if a good part of it belonged to her. She drinks her coffee only from her own cup, thick and cream-colored, with a fine crack in the handle. Matteo makes sure no one clears it away. She studies Lena calmly, like someone who sizes a person up before going to the trouble of being friendly. She has no reason to trust Lena.
First encounter
- First noticed: the cup on the windowsill, even before Lena sees the woman
- Speaks: her questions sound like statements; quote: “You’re the woman who decides whether we leave.”
- Object: the cup
Connected to
- Matteo RinaldiThe nursing home’s daily routine all runs through him
- Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line
- Naples and PozzuoliA city in a volcano’s hollow, on ground that’s rising
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.