Excerpt from Three O'Clock in the Morning by Gianrico Carofiglio, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

My mother called my father, and half an hour later he joined us. This made me think the problem was quite serious and that perhaps I had underestimated my symptoms. My parents had separated when I was nine and since then Dad had come to Mom's apartment—which had previously also been his apartment—only a very few times, and never in the evening. Whenever I went to his place, he'd come to pick me up, I'd go downstairs, get in his car and we'd leave.

He asked me the same questions and I think I gave him the same answers. After which they called Dr. Placidi, our family doctor. He was an elderly, friendly gentleman with a big white moustache, broken capillaries on his nose and a sickly sweet smell on his breath that I was only able to identify many years later. I don't know if my parents were aware that our faithful doctor wasn't exactly a teetotaler.

He came to our apartment and examined me, but mainly asked me lots of questions. Did I have convulsions? He explained what they were, and I said no, I'd never had them. Did I have colorful hallucinations or moments of total darkness? No, not those either.

All I had were these periods of sensory overload, during which I remained conscious and was still able to orient myself, although with difficulty.

That afternoon at Ernesto's, everything had been more intense. Still basically, it didn't seem too different from when I became distracted at school, stopped listening to what the teachers were saying and started fantasizing.

"Do you ever get distracted at school?" the doctor said.

"Sometimes."

"As if you don't hear what the teachers are saying to you?"

I glanced at my mother and father. I wasn't sure I should share that kind of information with them, but then I decided it was important to cooperate with the doctor and nodded. He smiled in approval, as if I'd given the correct answer. The smell of his breath was a little stronger than usual.

He made me do strange exercises. I had to balance on one leg, close my eyes and touch the tip of my nose, first with my right index finger, then with my left index finger; take hold of one of his thumbs and squeeze it hard.

"Nothing to worry about," he said, at last, addressing my father. "It's a normal neuro-vegetative disorder. It happens to children, especially the more sensitive ones. When he's in his teens, these phenomena will disappear." Then he turned to me and added, "Your brain is electrically overactive, it's a sign of intelligence."

Neuro-vegetative disorder was a vague diagnosis. It could mean anything or nothing. Like going to your doctor to complain about a headache and he examines you and tells you you have a headache.

But Dr. Placidi had a reassuring manner, a reassuring way of speaking—apart from his breath—so my parents were duly reassured. Life resumed its regular course; what happened that afternoon was quickly forgotten.

2

The years passed, fairly normally.

Despite the somewhat approximate diagnosis, the doctor's prediction was turning out to be accurate.

Now it only happened once a month, and the sensations were increasingly tenuous and indefinite. The only worrying thing was the déjà vu, with its aura of a vaguely supernatural phenomenon.

Basically, it was a thing of moments, and I was about to file it all away, like when you empty the wardrobes and shelves of your childhood room and put away forever the exercise books with the big squares, the textbooks, the smock and bow of your elementary school uniform, the boxes of toy soldiers and animals and cars.

I was in my first year of high school and had just gotten home from school. My mother, too, had just come home from the university. She was making something for lunch or talking on the phone; I'm not sure which.

I was in my room, sitting in the rocking chair, reading a cowboy comic book.

Excerpted from Three O'Clock in the Morning by Gianrico Carofiglio. Copyright © 2021 by Gianrico Carofiglio. Excerpted by permission of Harper Via. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.