by Viola Ardone
It’s time for our snack, but I’m not in the least hungry. Alcide pours himself a glass of red wine. We sit at a little table and eat facing each other like two men. He tells me he didn’t learn his craft from his father. He did it all on his own. His father worked the land, but he loves growing things and he loves music, too. He has a musical ear. I don’t know what my father did, but I decide there and then that I want to make music when I grow up.
People bring Alcide instruments from all over, even from out of town, and they leave them with him. He sits at his worktable and slowly makes them new again. I love being at the workshop with him. I feel like I’m an instrument myself that needs tuning, and that he’ll be able to put me right before I get sent back where I came from.
“Look! This is a guitar, this is a trombone, this is a flute, this is a trumpet, this is a clarinet. Which one do you want to try?”
“Is there a violin?” I ask. “My friend Carolina from the Conservatory plays the violin.”
“Playing the violin is really hard,” he says. “Sit here.”
He gets me set up in front of a piano and shows me how to play the seven notes of the scale that I already know. I try again and again. I start mixing the notes. Just like numbers, the sounds are infinite. I imagine myself as a musician, like the ones I saw in the theater when Carolina and I snuck into the rehearsals. Don Alcide claps. I look up and take a bow. A that very moment, a lady in a fur coat sweeps in.
“Good morning, Mrs. Rinaldi.”
“Good morning, Mr. Benvenuti. Has your son come to work with you today? You look so alike.”
Alcide and I look a little embarrassed, because it’s true we’re both redheads.
“You see, you need to start calling me Babbo. Even Mrs. Rinaldi agrees.”
As he goes into the storeroom, he adds, “He’s not my son. He’s staying with us for a while. But for Rosa and I, it’s as if he were one of our own kids.”
Mrs. Rinaldi and I are left on our own.
“Rosa has family in Sassuolo, if I’m not mistaken. Are you one of them?”
“No, I came on the train. The children’s train.”
Alcide comes back with the violin and puts it on the counter. I remember Carolina’s fingertips made hard by the strings.
“I changed them all,” Alcide tells Mrs. Rinaldi.
She sits a pair of glasses on her nose and turns the violin over. She touches all the strings and plucks them to check everything is in order, or to make sure they’re not duds. Eventually, she looks satisfied and thanks Alcide. Then she lowers her glasses and looks over them at me, just like she did with her instrument, to make sure I am not a dud.
“They’ve brought them all the way up here, the poor little things,” she says. “But when this little jaunt is over, they’ll be going back to their poverty. Wouldn’t it have been better to spend all that money helping them back home?”
Alcide puts his hand on my other shoulder and squeezes tight without saying a word.
“I suppose, at the end of the day, this is better than nothing,” the lady goes on. “At least you’re learning a trade. What do you want to do when you grow up? Tune instruments, too?”
I feel Alcide’s hands, which are so light when he repairs instruments, becoming heavy now that he wants to keep me here in this spot and not let me go. I look at the lady, who has taken her violin back, and is about to leave.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to tune instruments when I grow up.”
Alcide doesn’t release one finger from my shoulders, but he leans over to one side to look at me, as if he were seeing me for the first time.
“Ah, no? What then?” the lady says, a little shocked.
“I want to play them. People will pay to listen to me play.”
The lady is lost for words and leaves. Finally, I feel a little like Nobèl again, back home on my street.
20
THAT MORNING, ROSA MAKES A CAKE WITH YELLOW custard cream in it, as well as a cheese-and-salami pie. She says she does this for her other kids, too.
Last year, I had a fever. The doctor had to come all the way to the house. Mamma Antonietta’s face was white as a sheet, but she didn’t cry. Mamma Antonietta never cries. She looked at the photo of my big brother, Luigi, on her bedside table and held her head in her hands. The doctor pulled a face like someone who has left a little pasta alla genovese for one last mouthful, and then discovers someone else has eaten it. “You’ll need to give him some medicine,” he said. Mamma Antonietta waited until he had gone, and then she put her hand into her bra, where she kept the holy card of St. Anthony—the enemy of the devil—and pulled out a hankie with a roll of banknotes inside.
“Last year, I had a nice present,” I say, eventually.
Rosa smiles.
“What present would you like this year, now you’re with us?”
“Anything is fine,” I say. “As long as it’s not like last year.”
Rosa seals the pie with a thick crust and rubs olive oil onto it with her fingers. The radio is playing some happy music, and she’s moving like a dancer I once saw at an American party.
“When Derna gets here, we’ll pop it in the oven and eat it nice and warm. Help me lay the table, will you? You’re my knight in shining armor today.”
She takes my hand and twirls me around the kitchen. Nario watches us from his high chair, clapping his hands, but he is always out of time with the music. Rosa spins around, and I end up stepping on her feet. She laughs, and I go bright red in the face.
“When we were young, Alcide and I would go to the dancing halls. Now I only dance in the kitchen,” she said. Mamma and I never danced, even in the kitchen.
Derna comes back early from work. She says there’s a surprise for me. I ask her what it is, but she says it will come in its own time. In the meantime, Rosa gets up to fetch the pie and then she goes out to the chicken pen. I follow her to help her, because today I’m her knight. The oven is outside the house, behind the animal pens. I’d never seen it before. I look inside, and it’s enormous. It reminds me of the photo Pachiochia showed Mamma to persuade her not to send us on the train. My knees start to wobble, and I bolt and run into the pen. Rosa comes inside and finds me trembling beside the cow that is about to give birth. I’m too scared to look her in the face.
“What’s the matter?” she asks. “Is it because of your birthday?”
I shake my head and don’t lift my eyes from the ground.
“What’s happened? You can tell me, you know. Did someone treat you badly at school? Were they teasing you again?”
I don’t say a word. I can feel the cow’s warm breath on my neck.
“Have they been giving you trouble? I’ll go and talk to them myself.”
It had happened in the first few days. Benito Vandelli, one of the boys at the back of the class, called out, “Napoli.” He scrunched up his nose every time he came close and said there was a stink of rotten fish. Uliano, the boy who was at the front of the class, but now sits next to me, told me not to take any notice, because everyone had teased Benito the year before, and that was why he was so mean.
That afternoon at the workshop, while we were polishing a piano for a client, Alcide said there was no such thing as bad kids. It was just prejudice. Which is like when you think something before you even think it. Because someone has put it in your head and you can’t get it out, however hard you try. He said it was a kind of ignorance and that everyone, not just these kids, needs to watch out and not be prejudiced.
The next day, when Benito called me “Napoli,” Uliano told him to shut up and said, “Benito is a Fascist name.” Benito didn’t answer and went back to his desk in the back row. I thought it wasn’t his fault they had given him the wrong name. I realized it was true that even good people have prejudices. Like me, right now. I saw Rosa’s enormous oven in the garden and I remembered Pachiochia saying Communists put children in the oven and eat them, and so I ran away and hid in the cattle pen behind the cow th
at was about to have a calf, and now I’ve gotten my shoes dirty with cow shit on the day of my birthday party.
“I’m sorry, Rosa. I’m all mixed up. Nobody’s ever organized a birthday party for me before, and I’ve never had a present, except an old tin box Mamma Antonietta gave me. I’m not used to being happy.”
Rosa hugs me. Her hands smell of flour and water pastry. I feel the cow’s warm breath behind me and Rosa’s warm bosom in front of me as she pulls me toward her. Her hair, like Derna’s, is as soft as cotton wool, but brown, like her eyes. I don’t know why but suddenly I blurt out a confession.
“I’m the mortadella thief.”
Rosa strokes my forehead and wipes my eyes with her hand as if she were brushing away my tears.
“We don’t have any thieves in this house,” she says, taking my hand and leading me back home.
21
ALCIDE COMES IN THE DOOR WITH RIVO AND Luzio. He’s singing happily at the top of his voice, “Libiamo, libiamo nei lieti caliciiiiii . . .” Let’s drink, let’s drink from the joyful cups . . . He holds a package wrapped in colored paper with a ribbon tied in a bow.
“Happy birthday, son! Many happy returns!” he says, and everyone claps except Luzio.
I stand there like a stockfish. They start shouting at me to open the present, but I don’t want to rip the paper. I’m hoping it’s the wooden rifle I’d seen at the toy store. I untie the ribbon slowly, pull the paper off gently, and find a violin inside. A real violin.
“I made this with my own hands, especially for you” Alcide says. “It’s a half-size. I worked on it every evening since the day Mrs. Rinaldi came.”
“But I don’t know how to play.”
“There’s a client of mine who teaches music at the Conservatory up in Pesaro. She said she would give you a few lessons to get you started. What is it you always say? ‘Nobody’s born knowing everything’!”
Alcide chuckles under his mustache.
Rivo comes up and takes the violin out of my hands. He starts screeching the bow across the strings, making a terrible din.
“No, it’s not a toy,” Alcide says. “You need to treat it with great care. It’s your violin and you must always keep it with you. It’s yours.”
Inside the case, in fact, there’s a label with Amerigo Speranza written on it. I am awestruck. I’ve never had anything of my own before.
“I got a bike for my birthday,” Luzio says, staring out the window. “I don’t let anyone touch it. It’s mine.”
I stroke the smooth wood of the instrument and push down on the tightly stretched strings. I run my fingers along the horsehair of the bow.
“Are you happy, son?”
I’m so happy I can’t speak.
“Yes, Babbo,” I finally manage to say. Alcide opens his arms wide and pulls me into a hug. He smells of aftershave and a little of the glue he uses in the workshop. It’s the first time I’ve been hugged by a father.
“When are we having the cake?” Rivo asks, tugging on Alcide’s arm.
“Amerigo doesn’t like cake; he only likes mortadella,” Luzio says, pointing up at the ceiling. Rosa glares at him, and he shuts up.
“First, there’s another surprise,” Derna says, pulling a light yellow envelope out of her pocket.
“It’s for you, from your mother.”
So, Mamma didn’t forget my birthday!”
Since I’ve been up north, we’ve written three letters to her, but we’ve never heard back. Derna opens the envelope, sits in an armchair, and I hear Mamma Antonietta’s words pouring out of her mouth. I’m plunged back into my life back home. I’m not sure that I like it.
She says she asked Maddalena Criscuolo as a favor to write this letter and to read my letters that have arrived. She says she didn’t answer immediately because she was too busy. She says life in our street is the same as ever. The winter has been cold this year, and luckily, I’m up in northern Italy where they keep me warm, dressed, and well fed. She says Zandragliona sends her love and tells me my treasures are safe where we left them. She says Pachiochia has never asked after me but that one can see she’s full of bile because all the mothers who sent their kids up north tell everyone how well they are doing, and are slowly turning Communist out of gratitude. She says Capa ’e Fierro is out of jail thanks to his connections, but that he doesn’t work with her anymore and has given up his stall at the market.
Derna and I had sent a letter inviting her to come visit at Christmas. She says she can’t. That for now, as things stand, it’s not possible. She says that anyway the months will go by in no time, and that, before we know it, I’ll be back home getting under her feet as usual. She says I was born eight years ago, more or less in this period, and that she hopes her letter gets there in time for my birthday. She says it was cold that day, she felt the pains coming and called the midwife. But by the time she got there, I had already arrived. I had done everything on my own, as usual, and I couldn’t wait to get my head out of the sack. I realize she’s never told me this before and think that Mamma Antonietta talks more in letters than she does in person.
At the end of the letter, after Maddalena’s greetings, there’s a crooked scribble. It’s her name: Mamma Antonietta. She says Maddalena is teaching her to write her name, at least, so she can put her signature on things when she needs to, instead of a cross. I can picture her, sweating, huffing and puffing, invoking Our Lady of the Arch with every stroke of the pen as she stoops over the brown table, and I’m happy there’s a sign that she has made with her own hand, especially for me. Like Alcide’s violin.
I ask Derna if we can answer right away, or I’ll forget what I want to say. She goes to get some letter paper and a pen and sits at the kitchen table. I dictate, like the teacher does with us at school, and she writes.
I tell Mamma that today is actually my birthday, and that her letter was the best present ever. I don’t tell her about the violin, or she may get upset. I tell her that Rosa has made me lots of good things to eat, but that she is still the queen of alla genovese. I tell her that I’ve made a name for myself up in northern Italy, and everyone knows me: the vegetable man, who they call a greengrocer here; the meat man they call a butcher; and the sewing store they call a haberdashery. I tell her there are some trades back home that don’t even exist up here, like the water cooler man and the tripe man. In fact, when I asked Derna where I could buy ’o pere e ’o muss, a delicacy back home I love, her face screwed up into a question mark. She said, “Can you repeat that?” and so I did, but she still didn’t understand. I tried again but it was useless. She said she thought I was saying operemus, which she said was a word in Latin. “What’s Latin?” I asked, and she said it was an ancient language. I said that was possible because ’o pere e ’o muss is an ancient tradition that consists of eating pig’s feet and a calf’s head boiled together in a big pot. She finally understood, and we went to the meat man they call the butcher, and he said he had tripe all right but that people up here don’t think the feet or heads are special like we do. I sign my name at the bottom of the letter, a little crooked so as not to show her up, and Derna sends greetings, too.
I hope my letter gets there before Holy Night. Last year, it was just the two of us, but at midnight we went out into the street to wish everyone Merry Christmas. Even Capa ’e Fierro came with his wife. She clung to her new bag as if her life depended on it, and looked at Mamma as though she’d stolen something from her.
Everything is different up here. There’s no nativity scene. They have a Christmas tree, which has nothing to do with Mary, Joseph, and the baby in the manger. They have a tree. A real tree, with festival lights strung around it and colored balls hanging from its branches like the sausages hanging from their kitchen beams. They say that Father Christmas comes and leaves presents under it. Well, he’s never come to my house. Maybe because he couldn’t find a Christmas tree there. The kids here say he must’ve come, because he goes to all children. They say he dresses in red and has a lon
g white beard. That’s when I thought maybe he only goes to visit the Communist kids. The only person who ever brought us anything was Capa ’e Fierro, but he doesn’t have a beard, white or black, and he doesn’t dress in red. Capa ’e Fierro has brown hair and blue eyes, and I would never call him Father, not even at Christmas.
Derna folds the letter in four and puts it in the envelope. But I tell Derna I want to send a present to Mamma Antonietta, so she can put it under a tree, like they do here. There’s a tree right outside Zandragliona’s tenement apartment: a lemon tree. Derna says I can draw a picture and we can put it in the envelope with the letter. I’ve never drawn a picture in my life.
“It’s easy,” she says. “I’ll help you.”
She sits me on her knee, takes my hand in hers, and we start moving the pencil together. We draw faces, hands, noses, and eyes. Then we draw hair and clothes. Rivo goes to get his pencil case because Derna says the picture will be nicer with lots of colors, and we fill the page with pink, yellow, and blue. Derna’s silky hair tickles my neck while our hands move up and down the page until the faces appear on it.
Mamma Antonietta appears in her good dress with little flowers. I’ve drawn her at Zandragliona’s house on Christmas Eve, with Maddalena Criscuolo and Capa ’e Fierro, without his wife. In Zandragliona’s tenement apartment I’ve drawn Ciccio Cheese, who may be back home waiting for me, and the monkey trained by the old man. It looks just like the cave in Bethlehem. At least in my drawing, I think, she’ll be in good company over Christmas.
22
ULIANO HASN’T COME TO SCHOOL, BECAUSE HE has a fever. I ask my teacher whether by any chance it’s bronchial asthma, like my brother Luigi’s, but he says it’s mumps. That’s lucky, otherwise I’d be left all alone again. Luzio’s always in the front row, and Benito is sitting next to me. We’re getting along fine now; he doesn’t pinch his nose anymore when he sees me, and I let him copy the math problems sometimes.
During recess, everyone gets up and gathers into little gangs, but Benito and I sit in our places, and we each do our own thing. Mr. Ferrari stands behind his desk watching me.
