A LADY DETECTIVE CONFESSION 4,000 love letters from a stranger Miriam Tomponzi: "When she came to me, Marisa was prey to despair. For 12 years she had received letters from a lover without a face. She didn't know who it was. But in the meantime this affair broke up her engagement and turned her life upside down. Why would he write to her? And where did he hide?" Text by Laura Pizzardello. When she came to me she had the look of someone who, before giving up, wants to send one last SOS. She was exhausted, and explained her case to me briefly, as if she wanted to get rid of this anguish. "I've been slave to a nightmare for 12 years. In the beginning, getting a love letter every day filled me with curiosity, just because I didn't know the sender. I have long lived in hope that he would finally take off his mask and let me recognize him. But he hasn't, and now I can't get rid of him anymore, please help me." Marisa, 32, lived in Rome, where she successfully carried on her work as an agent for a famous German pharmaceutical firm. At the age of 18 she had left Entrèves, a small town in Valle d' Aosta, where she had been born, heading for Rome. She continued studding and worked at the same time. A year later she had met Marco due to her passion for the movies. Both of them frequented a workshop about François Truffaut's works. One evening, after the projection of "Gli anni in tasca", he had invited her to a pizza. The first kiss, the first caresses and finally love for the first time, the true one, exciting, full of whispers and expectations. That summer she went to her parents' with Mark on a short holiday. She wanted to rest before starting the stage in the pharmaceutical firm. Walks, evenings spent with the old friends and memorable dinners of fondue. Back in Rome, she had started her new job with great enthusiasm. She was proud of the way she had come through. And she had Marco. For sure, they were both very young, but time would settle everything. One morning, like she had done for months, after greeting the porter she gave a glance at the letter box. There was an envelope. At first she thought it was from her mother. She would often write to tell her about Entrèves' every day life. She will have run out of her usual envelopes, she thought. But, to be true, the handwriting of the address was also different. It was too accurate, too straight, and in capital letters. All the letters were the same size. "My tender little love, I saw you and I loved you. Now you are in my heart for ever. I won't tell you who I am not to spoil the magic of our epistolary meetings. But know that at each letter I will be there with you.. "She stopped reading to make sure the letter wasn't addressed to someone else, but that perfect handwriting was the same that had written her name on the envelope. Postmark: Rome. I interrupted Marisa's tale and asked her to show me see some of those letters. They all had been written with a stencil, signature included, always the same: "I love you, Antoine." How could he know that in her youth she had a passion for the protagonist of Truffaut's movies? Why did he sign as Antoine, and why did he use the stencil? I soon realized he was determined to stay anonymous for a long time, otherwise he would have had no reason to use a tool that disguised his handwriting. How many people were there in Rome, or all over the world, capable of writing an anonymous love letter? After that letter, another 4,000 followed. All of them full of tormenting love, all written with a stencil, all signed Antoine but from different places in Italy. This latter detail made the search for the mysterious character more difficult. Marisa was 20 when Antoine entered her life and she could never have foreseen that singular curtain would turn out to be a 12-year-long nightmare. What she asked me was not an easy task, 12 years were quite a lot, and there were so many clues to follow. My collaborators and I started scanning her life. I felt horror for the ravaging impact that those letters, that one-way, a bit perverse love, had made on the young woman's existence. Her only guilt was that she was the desired object of a man who didn't even have the courage to show his face. On the day she came to me, Marisa showed me a picture that suddenly gave me an idea of what she was experiencing. The picture showed a stone fireplace by whose sides were two soaring piles of letters. They all were from Antoine. I asked her, noticing that she had not mentioned him for a long time. "Our engagement finished two years after Antoine's first letter. He helped me as long as he could, but then..." Then, that perverse mechanism she had initially gone through like a game had ended up involving her. When the letters were late she was seized with a sense of panic, like she lacked something, she felt lost. She had fallen into a trap. Little by little she had kept to herself, she wouldn't see her usual friends anymore, she wouldn't go to the movies or on holiday. To cool down the fever of delay she could only go home, in the evening, open the letter box hastily and start the ritual: she eagerly reached for the envelope written with the stencil, went upstairs feigning calm, lay it on the table and, before opening the envelop, she observed it for some minutes. The reading last hours. She went back to the most intense passages, those speaking of her, so well built and full of melancholy: "...My life, unfortunately, is not as I'd like it to be. A marriage that I dare not define a mismatch, but one based on mere brotherly affection between two persons. And then, those children I wished and I never had. You have become my conscience, my daily diary, the reason for my happiness. Your smile at times seems to me clouded by suffering, I hope I'm not the cause of your malaise. Tell me it's not like it, tell me you have found a reason for our love, just like I have. There is only one way for me to know: hang a white handkerchief on your balcony, I will see it and I will love you more". And she performed the task, she hung the handkerchief, hid behind the curtains to see if anybody was standing under her balcony, ready to jump down and catch him. But all she could see were cars, plenty of cars, too many cars. Poi era successo che il perverso meccanismo inizialmente vissuto come gioco aveva finito col coinvongerla. Quando le lettere ritardavano veniva presa da un senso di panico, le mancava qualcosa, si sentiva perduta. Era finita in trappola. A poco a poco si era isolata, non aveva più voglia di incontrare i soliti amici, di andare al cinema o in vacanza. Per placare la febbre dell'attesa doveva solo tornare a casa, la sera, aprire frettolosamente la cassetta delle lettere e iniziare il rito: afferrava con impazienza la busta scritta col normografo, saliva le scale con finta calma, la appoggiava sul tavolo e, prima di infilare il tagliacarte nella fessura, la osservava per qualche minuto. La lettura durava ore. Ritornava ai passaggi più intensi, quelli che parlavano di lei, così ben costruiti e pieni di malinconia: "...La mia vita purtroppo non è come la vorrei. Un matrimonio, non dico sbagliato, ma fondato solamente sul fraterno affetto tra due persone. E poi quei figli che avrei voluto e non ho potuto avere. Tu sei diventata la mia coscienza, il mio diario quotidiano, la ragione della mia felicità... Il tuo sorriso a volte mi sembra velato di sofferenza, non vorrei essere io la causa del tuo malessere. Dimmi di no, dimmi che come me hai trovato una ragione al nostro amore. C'è un solo modo perché io sappia: metti un fazzoletto bianco sul tuo balcone, lo vedrò e ti amerò di più". Three years of psychoanalytic sessions had not been of much use. She had got her thoughts into order, but not her heart, not that dark unconscious recess which at night made her desire a man without a face, with faint features, who in a deep, mellow voice told her the fable of their life together. "We will find him", I said to her in a reassuring tone. We took to examining her circle of friends, by now sporadic and superficial. Nothing important came out. There was nothing left for us to do but steal into her working entourage. A collaborator of mine managed to be hired under an assumed name by the pharmaceutical firm as an assistant of Marisa. Together, they visited customers, all of them doctors, but even there we found no clues for the identification. My father gave me the idea. If Antoine was so much in love, he wouldn't resist the news that Marisa had determined to get married. We worked feverishly for the news to spread fast, and the date of wedding was published. A congratulating announcement on a daily paper informed that in a few days an important party would be given. We rented an apartment in the center of Rome and organized a buffet, false parents, false fiancée and so many guests. Antoine would surely show up. I scattered detectives all over the zone. Their assignment was to stop all passers-by without attracting attention, to make a note of the plate numbers of all the cars and to photograph whoever stopped at the entrance of the palace where the party was taking place. It took some months to cross the information, but in the end our constancy was rewarded. Antoine wasn't a stranger anymore. As we had foreseen, he hadn't resisted the temptation to see his beloved Marisa before the wedding and, like so many others, he had been stopped and photographed by my collaborators. "I know him," shouted Marisa at a point, while examining the photos. Profession: doctor. Civil status: married. "Now it's up to you to decide what to do," I said to her. Nothing could stop her anymore. She presented herself at the consulting room and when he was in front of her... "Just one letter in reply to your four thousand ". Antoine and Marisa are married by now, they live in Valle d'Aosta and they have two sons. It all had begun with a careless smile the young pharmaceutical agent had addressed to the young doctor. They had casually met in a cafe and they had breakfast together, a 20 year-old woman and a 25-year-old man. And four thousand letters before their second meeting.