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Rating: In March 1938, Ettore Majorana boards the Napoli-Palermo mail ship, after expressing in two letters his intention to commit suicide. At 32 years old, he is the most brilliant physicist of Fermi's generation, with whom he studied. The greatest scientists of the time admire his extraordinary speculative qualities. Solitary, gruff, reserved, the young Majorana has the skills to solve the problems associated with the invention of the atomic bomb. Then, the sudden disappearance. His family thinks of a getaway prompted by madness, but the secret service's searches, urged by Mussolini himself, are in vain: the body will not be found.
Did Majorana really kill himself? Was he kidnapped? Or perhaps, faced with the nightmarish prospects opened by the discovery of the atomic bomb in the Europe of Hitler and Mussolini, did he choose to "disappear"? What lies behind the Majorana mystery?
This, in short, is the plot of a splendid investigative novel born from the ingenious mind of Leonardo Sciascia in 1975. The writer from Racalmuto engages in the reconstruction of the life of the Sicilian physicist Ettore Majorana, describing significant events such as the encounter with Fermi and the "Ragazzi di Via Pisaperna" (Oscar D'Agostino, Emilio Segrè, Edoardo Amaldi, Franco Rasetti, and Enrico Fermi himself) at the Physics Faculty of the University of Rome, during which time a fierce scientific rivalry developed between Majorana and the Roman physicist. Sciascia skillfully portrays the complex and misunderstood personality of the "precocious genius," endowed with an extraordinary capacity for discernment and speculation (elaborating a theory on the back of a cigarette pack). Such immense talent requires enormous spiritual and character strength to avoid being crushed by one's own genius. A strength that Ettore Majorana did not have (to stay on the same example, after Majorana illustrated the theory to Fermi, who asked his permission to publish it, he dismissed his speculation as a "nonsense" and threw the pack away).
Ettore talks little, burdened by the weight he carries, by that talent that can be destructive, capable of reaching discoveries that Fermi and the others could not even imagine, but always terrified by the fear of a possible publication, so much so that those exceptional discoveries become in the blink of an eye "child's play," trifles.
And then there was the atomic bomb, which was gaining increasing traction in a Europe dominated by Mussolini and Hitler. A young man like Majorana must have immediately understood the destructive effects of that technology and perhaps, more than others, felt that his natural speculative predisposition could lead to dire consequences.
Sciascia's narration is, as always, clear, lucid, and evocative. On one side is the rationality of the investigator, reconstructing scenarios and situations, and on the other is the evocative spirit of the writer, who imagines fascinating (but never banal or impossible) hypotheses, providing different keys to interpretation, essential more than ever in a case shrouded in the deepest mystery. The writer continues his description of events and meticulous collection of documents, and after describing Majorana's brief period in German lands (where he met and mingled with the German physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg, who more than anyone else opened his eyes to recent atomic discoveries), he arrives at the key moment of the novel. It is the evening of March 25, 1938, and Majorana departs on a steamer from Palermo to reach Naples, where he taught physics at the University of Federico II.
Before leaving, he sends two letters, one to the rector of the University, Antonio Carrelli:
"Dear Carrelli, I have made a decision that was now inevitable. There is not a single grain of selfishness in it, but I am aware of the annoyance my sudden disappearance may cause you and the students. For this, I ask you to forgive me, but above all, for having disappointed all the trust, sincere friendship, and sympathy you have shown me in these months... I also ask you to remember me to those I have come to know and appreciate in your Institute...; of whom I will keep a dear memory at least until eleven o'clock this evening, and possibly even after."
And one to his family:
"I have only one wish: that you do not dress in black. If you wish to comply with the norm, you may, but for no more than three days, bear some token of mourning. Afterwards, remember me, if you can, in your hearts and forgive me."
On March 26, however, he first sends a telegram to Carrelli, explaining not to pay attention to the content of the letter, and a second missive:
"Dear Carrelli,
I hope you received the telegram and the letter together. The sea has rejected me and I will return tomorrow to Hotel Bologna, perhaps traveling with this same sheet. However, I intend to renounce teaching. Do not mistake me for an Ibsenian girl because the case is different. I am available for further details."
From that day on, no more news is heard of Majorana. Sciascia describes the diligent search efforts by the Italian secret service and suggests various hypotheses, from suicide to an escape caused by "madness." Arguments that hardly convince the Sicilian writer, both because he has come to know Ettore by now and because the physicist's correspondence itself does not indicate a resort to such an extreme act. A man with such a rational mind does not leave things to chance, and (contrary, this time, to what Candido, another of his protagonists, states) things are not so simple. For this reason, at the end, he offers us a suggestive and personal thesis for solving the case of "The Disappearance of Majorana."
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