The Lost Girls of Rome by Donato Carrisi Page B

her apartment, as she had seen David do many times.
    She had sealed the door and window, replacing the small light over the mirror with one that emitted a non-actinic red light. She had recovered the enlarger from the attic and the tank for developing and fixing negatives. For the rest, she had improvised. The three small basins she would use for the processing were those she washed her underwear in. From the kitchen she had taken pliers, scissorsand a ladle. The photographic paper and chemical products, which she put to one side, had not yet reached their expiry date and were still usable.
    The Leica I used 35 mm film. Sandra rewound the roll and took it out of its compartment.
    The operation she was about to carry out required absolute darkness. After putting on gloves, she opened the spool and extracted the film. Relying on her memory, she cut the initial part with the scissors, rounding the corners, then slipped it into the spiral of the tank. She poured the developing liquid, which she had previously prepared, and started calculating the times. She repeated the operation with the fixing liquid, then rinsed everything under the running water, put a few drops of colourless shampoo in the tank, because she did not have absorbent, and finally placed the roll to dry on the bath.
    She started the timer on her watch and leaned back against the tiled wall. She sighed. This wait in the darkness was nerve-wracking. She wondered why David had used that old camera. Part of her hoped that there was no particular significance to it, that the sole reason she was placing so much importance on it was because she couldn’t resign herself to his senseless death.
    David only used the Leica to try it out, she told herself.
    Even though photography was their passion and their work, there were no photographs of the two of them together. Every now and again, she reflected on this. It hadn’t seemed so strange when her husband was alive. They hadn’t felt the necessity. When the present is so intense, you don’t need a past. She had never thought she ought to be hoarding memories because she would need them one day to survive. But now, as time went on, her stock of memories was dwindling. The time they had spent together had been too short compared to the time that, statistically, she still had to live. What would she do with all those days? Would she ever again be capable of feelings as strong as those she had felt for him?
    The sound of the timer roused her. At last she could switch on the red light. First she took the roll that she had hung and viewed it against the light.
    Five photographs had been taken with the Leica.
    At the moment, she couldn’t make out their contents. She made haste to print them. She filled the three containers. The first with the developer, the second with water and acetic acid for the stop bath, the third with the fixer, also diluted in water.
    Next she used the enlarger to project the negatives on to photographic paper until they were imprinted. Then she immersed the first sheet in the basin with the developer. She gave it a gentle shake and, gradually, the image began to appear in the liquid.
    But it was too dark to see anything in it.
    Maybe David had made a mistake while taking the shot. She bathed it in the other two containers anyway, then hung it over the bath with a clothes peg. She did the same with the other negatives.
    The second photograph showed David bare-chested, reflected in a mirror. With one hand he was holding the camera in front of his face and with the other he was waving. But he wasn’t smiling. On the contrary, his expression was serious. Behind him there was a calendar, and the month displayed was the one in which he had died. This might well be the last image of David when he was still alive, Sandra thought.
    The grim farewell of a ghost.
    The third photograph was of a building site. She could see the bare pillars of a building under construction. The walls were missing and the area