ROME – In the middle of the afternoon, the toll of those infected by the coronavirus in the perimeter of Villa San Martino grows by one unit. After Silvio Berlusconi e his girlfriend Marta Fascina, even one of the men in the escort is positive. A sentence that causes the inhabitants and workers of the Arcore residence to fall into despair, because it seems to be staging the remake of what had already been seen in Brianza Villa Certosa, in Sardinia. Even the sancta sanctorum of corporate Berlusconi – the political branch has escaped it, as there have been no recent close contacts between the Forza Italia parliamentarians and their leader – will hold your breath.
With the exclusion of the firstborn Marina, who together with the rest of the family has done a swab negative result, other members of the board of Fininvest they are locked up in solitary confinement waiting to be tested.
With Berlusconi again in France, the traditional Monday lunch – the one in which the founder takes stock of the company every week – had been postponed to Tuesday, dinner time. These are the hours preceding the outcome of Berlusconi’s precautionary buffer.
At the meeting with the boss are present among others, too Adriano Galliani e Niccol Ghedini. No one can imagine the storm that is about to hit the villa, no one can imagine that after two negative swabs (made between 19 and 25 August) the former prime minister could be infected. The news on Wednesday afternoon, that going around the world, changes the sign of history.
Now all those present at the meeting, for more than twenty-four hours, have been locked in the house and have cut off contact with the surrounding world, waiting to undergo new tests.
the same fate that Berlusconi has been experiencing for a day and a half. Enclosed in a perimeter that includes the living room on the ground floor of the Arcore residence (the one with the windows facing north on the park of the villa) and the dining room, the former premier eats the meals that are left in maximum condition safety and without having close contact with domestic workers.
Received messages from the Quirinale, spoke with president of the Conte Council and rejoiced – in public and in private – for this solidarity that I did not expect, especially by political opponents.
The tape to rewind to go up the chain of contagion leads to a geographical map in which different points are marked with red. Capri, reached by boat from Sardinia by her daughter Barbara, which passes an evening between two clubs in the company of friends, his ex-husband and his new girlfriend (all positive); Pantelleria, where the last born Luigi – still unaware of the symptoms of his older sister – he is stopped shortly before going down to the port and subjected to a swab (positive).
And above all the Sardinia. A few days after mid-August, Berlusconi knows that the virus has already surrounded Villa Certosa, where his children Barbara and Luigi had already had the opportunity to spend the days prior to their respective departures for Capri and Pantelleria. And not alone, since there is a coming and going in the house (friends, friends of friends, Briatore, service and escort personnel, perhaps almost a hundred people) in which the number one rule imposed in the days preceding the politicians of Forza Italia arrived to hold meetings (Only show up with a negative swab result) may have been ignored. Or maybe not, since a contact with a positive is enough to ideally erase the slip of paper with the negative written on it that the guests of the Knight’s residence are obliged to present at the entrance.
It comes to August 19. Berlusconi decides to return to Arcore, he even allows himself one stop on the lake in Angera, where there is a family home. He undergoes two negative swabs. So he moves from home, he goes in France, returns to Villa San Martino earlier this week, convinced that he has left too long a distance from the Villa Certosa cluster behind him. Not that long for Covid-19, as what happens next will prove. The result of his swab, then that of Marta Fascina, then the escort man, then who knows.
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