Goodreads asked Raphael Canossa:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Raphael Canossa When I was swimming diving at the Geneva Plage privée des Paquis, across from the famous Fountain of Geneva and very close to Quai Wilson, I noticed a silver coin lying on the sand. It seemed to me that it was a Roman coin - with the profile of some Emperor stamped on it. The moment I spotted it, I was out of breath, so I hastened to take a deep breath and dived again to pick it up - but the goddamn coin was gone! After that, I dived like a madman, for about half an hour, and furrowed all the sand in the spot, but the coin was gone - as if it were bewitched, spell-bound. I left the plage feeling kind of devastated, even ruined.
A week later, I was strolling across the Mont-Blanc street. And there, in one of the numismatic shops, I spotted that coin - right in the shop-window. With a beating heart, I ran into the shop and asked for the coin to be demonstrated to me. The owner, kind of reluctantly, gave it to me. That was a silver Denarius of Emperor Heliogabalus. I asked him how he got it, what was the source. The shop owner just as reluctantly told me that it came from a collection of a renowned Italian professor. But there was insincerity in his voice and pose, and I didn’t quite believe it.
So the mystery remained unsolved. And I still believe that there had been a mysterious connection between that silver coin under the water at the Geneva plage, and that silver Denarius of Emperor Heliogabalus in the shop window at rue Mont-Blanc.

flag