October 20, 2010

October 20, 2010 is Miraijin’s birthday and the date of a water birth that draws Marco Carrera into a new form of family life. Chosen in advance by Adele Carrera as a special day for the child she called the Man of the Future, it becomes the occasion on which Marco accepts his daughter’s decision to raise the child without a father and discovers, in the water with her, a rare sense of belonging and purpose.

A date chosen in advance

The date is woven into Adele’s expectations before Miraijin is born. She tells Marco that the child will be the new man, the Man of the Future, and that he will be born on a special day. Adele has already settled on both the name and the date; her conviction gives October 20, 2010 a significance beyond its place in the calendar. She notes the numerical pattern in the date, 20.10.2010, and regards the day as auspicious.

The date also marks Adele’s determination to define her child’s origins on her own terms. When Marco asks who the father is, she does not answer, and he learns not to press her or impose his own wishes. He accepts that the father is absent, just as he accepts that Adele intends to remain close to him rather than leave home. Her choice makes the birth a test of Marco’s ability to meet the unexpected without taking control of it.

The water birth

At eleven in the morning on October 20, Marco joins Adele in the tub, where she gives birth with the midwife Norma present. His participation follows hesitation: he has discussed the prospect with his psychoanalyst and recognizes that the decision raises questions for him, but he agrees to be there. The birth is quicker and, as Marco perceives it, less difficult than Marina Molitor’s long labor when Adele herself was born.

The experience reverses Marco’s earlier association between the delivery room and helplessness. Rather than feeling useless, he feels that he belongs to the event and that his presence matters. When the newborn remains in the water briefly after birth, Marco feels no impatience or alarm. The three are held together by the water, which becomes more than a setting: it gives Marco a physical share in the birth and, for a short interval, the feeling of a family united.

A new family arrangement

The child’s arrival confirms the arrangement Adele has proposed. Marco has loved and raised her while trying to make her feel free to develop her own views; he had expected that freedom might take her away from him. Instead, she tells him she does not intend to separate from him and wants him present in Miraijin’s life. Her confidence that he can be both her father and the child’s grandfather gives him a place in the family Adele is making.

That closeness carries complexity. Marco worries about Adele’s wellbeing and feels guilt over the life he believes he could not give her, but he also sees that she has remained steady after moving to Florence. By the time of the birth, the thread-related disturbance that had resurfaced in Munich has disappeared, and she has shown no further signs of detachment from reality. October 20 therefore arrives not only as the fulfillment of Adele’s prediction but at the end of years in which Marco has watched her establish a life on her own terms.

Birthdays, funerals, and remembrance

The novel’s treatment of dates connects Miraijin’s birthday to later family rituals. At Letizia’s funeral, held on her birthday, Luisa Lattes explains a Jewish popular-mystical tradition in which dying close to one’s birthday is associated with the righteous person. The contrast places the meaning of a birthday beside death and remembrance, without making the two occasions equivalent: October 20 is the day of Miraijin’s arrival, while Letizia’s birthday becomes the day her family gathers to mourn her.

Years later, Marco and Luisa scatter the mixed ashes of Marco’s parents at the Mulinelli. Marco recalls the scene as he confronts Luisa about what she withheld concerning Giacomo Carrera’s love for her and the reason for Giacomo’s earlier flight. The act of scattering ashes, which had made the brothers’ absence and estrangement palpable to Marco, forms another family gathering around a date remembered for what it revealed. In the novel, time is marked not just by birthdays but by the occasions on which relationships are clarified, lost, or renewed.

The date’s later echo

Near the end of Marco’s life, Miraijin invites family and friends to be with him. Marco begins by thanking them and recognizes that their presence follows her initiative; he intends to make clear that they are not responsible for his decision. The gathering becomes a final family ritual, one in which even Giacomo’s brief breakdown and the brothers’ later embrace bring a long separation into the present.

Read beside that farewell, October 20, 2010 is the beginning of a relationship that persists through change and loss. At Miraijin’s birth, Marco finds that he can take part in a child’s arrival without the helplessness he once associated with fatherhood. At the end, Miraijin helps gather the people who matter to him. The date’s importance lies in this connection: it marks the moment when Marco joins the family Adele has chosen, a bond that continues to shape the novel’s later scenes of separation and reunion.