“Let’s say so, not one of my best birthdays», He replied to his closest friends and family, as if he wanted to keep them away from the umpteenth worry about his emotional state and health, which in recent times go hand in hand. With others, especially among the long-term Forza Italia parliamentarians, those with whom he shared part of the last quarter in politics, he let himself go: “Maybe it’s my worst birthday, as I remember.” Said by Silvio Berlusconi, who turns eighty-four away from lights, music and the people around, nailed in three rooms of Villa San Martino by Covid-19, the phrase means many things. If yesterday’s is his “worst birthday”, then it means that it is worse than that of 1995, the first after Umberto Bossi’s turnaround and the first expulsion from Palazzo Chigi; worse than that of 2011, when the crazy summer of ECB letters and the spread would have accompanied him first to the laughter of the Merkel-Sarkozy duo and then to the delivery of the bell to the new prime minister Mario Monti; and even worse than those of 2013 and 2014, respectively the first after the final sentence and the first spent in social services.
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Still time
It happens that the adjective “worst”, especially combined with a bittersweet anniversary, accompanies the word “birthday” when the gift you are waiting for does not actually arrive. Berlusconi was expecting one from the result of the swab a which he was subjected to on Monday evening, the day before yesterday; did not arrive. The virus is decidedly less invasive than the days of hospitalization at San Raffaele, when the viral load reached – Berlusconi dixit – record levels. But the account with Covid-19 has not yet been closed. Maybe it will be in the next few hours, in the next few days, who knows. But for now it’s an open account. Instinct, in the last few days, has suggested him several times to evaluate if there were margins to finish the hospital stay; his head led him to heed the advice of the doctors, for whom there is no need for the hospital. Last evening Adriano Galliani had given the news that “The President’s swab is negative,” news denied from well-informed sources.
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The illness of the former premier
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The esteem for Renzi
The hourglass that marks the time of Arcore, where he has the company of Marta Fascina, it seems motionless. And the safe space reserved for him in his home – the upstairs bedroom, the study and the living room on the ground floor – feels like a prison to Berlusconi. During the day of the birthday, and in the days before, the Knight spent part of the time on the phone not only with party and coalition comrades but also with political opponents. Among these also members of the executive and the majority in general, with whom he spoke, in some cases, not about politics but about real life. A few days ago, for example, he received a call from Matteo Renzi. Gossips could imagine who knows what alchemy on the future prospects of FI and Italia Viva. But no, there was talk of something else. With Berlusconi who closed the call like this: «Matteo, you know that for you I don’t have only political esteem, right? I have always had a deep affection for you and that affection still exists ». The affection of the opponents is basically the only positive legacy of these weeks of distancing. “I didn’t know they loved me so well, outside the center-right”, he repeated yesterday before ideally blowing out the candles of a cake that didn’t exist. Perhaps the only thought capable of dispelling the sadness of the moment of loneliness. Even if the thought goes away. Like birthday.
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29 September 2020 (change September 29, 2020 | 23:51)
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