God's Mountain

by Erri De Luca

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  God’s Mountain

  A Riverhead Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2001 by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore Milano

  Translation copyright © 2002 by Michael Moore

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-7865-4620-4

  A RIVERHEAD BOOK®

  Riverhead Books first published by The Riverhead Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  RIVERHEAD and the “R” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: March, 2004

  ’A JURNATA É ‘NU MUORZO—the day is a morsel, reads the sign over the doorway to Master Errico’s workshop. I’d already been standing out front for a quarter of an hour to start my first day of work off right. He gets there at seven, rolls up the gates, and speaks his words of encouragement: the day is a morsel. One bite and it’s gone, so let’s get busy. Yes, sir, I answer, and so it went. I’m writing my first entry today to keep track of these new days. I don’t go to school anymore. I turned thirteen and my dad sent me to work. It’s the right thing to do. It’s time. You only have to stay in school till third grade. He let me stay until fifth because I was sickly and also because that way I’d have a better diploma. Around here all the kids go to work even if they never went to school, and Papa didn’t want that. He works at the docks. He never went to school and is just learning to read and write at the night school run by the longshoremen’s cooperative. He only speaks dialect and is intimidated by proper Italian and people with an education. He says that you do better in life if you know Italian. I know Italian because I read library books, but I don’t speak it. I write in Italian because it’s quiet. I can put down what happens every day, sheltered from the noise of Neapolitan.

  I’M FINALLY working, even if I don’t make much, and Saturdays I bring home my pay. It’s the beginning of summer. At six in the morning it’s cool. The two of us have breakfast together and then I put on my smock. We leave the house together. I walk up the street with him a ways and then head back. Master Errico’s shop is in the alley down from our building. For my birthday Papa gave me a piece of curved wood. It’s called a boomerang. I took it in my hands without asking what it was. A tingle, a little electric shock went through me. Papa explained that you throw it far and it always comes back. Mama was against it. “Ma addò l’adda ausa”; where’s he gonna use it? She’s right. In this neighborhood of alleyways called Montedidio there’s not enough room to spit between your feet, no room to hang out the wash. All right, I said, maybe I can’t throw it, but I can still practice the moves. It’s heavy, like iron. Mama gave me a pair of long trousers. She got them at the market in Resina. They’re good quality. American. Rugged, dark. I put them on and rolled them up to my knees. “Now you’re a man,” an ommo, “you bring money home.” Yes, I bring home my pay on Saturdays, but it’ll take a lot more than that to make me a man. Meantime I’ve lost my voice and have a frog in my throat.

  PAPA GOT the boomerang from a sailor friend. It’s not a pazziella, a toy. It’s a tool that ancient people used. As he explains, I get to know its surface. I rub my hand over it, in the direction of the grain. From Master Errico I learn about the grains of wood. There’s a right way and a wrong way. I follow the boomerang’s grain when I polish it and it shakes a little in my hands. It’s not a toy, but it’s not a tool either. It’s something in between, a weapon. I want to learn how to use it. I want to practice throwing it tonight, after Mama and Papa have gone to sleep. Italian has one word for sleep and another for dream. Neapolitan has just one—suonno. For us they’re the same thing.

  I SWEPT the floor of the woodshed today and got attacked by fleas. They went for my legs. At work I wear shorts, and my legs turned black. Master Errico stripped me and washed me down at the pump in front of the shop. We were laughing like crazy. Thank goodness it’s summer. There were mice in the woodshed, too. We put down some poison. “ ’O súrece! ’O súrece!” he screamed. They give him the creeps, not me. Then I got paid. He counted out the money and gave it to me. At night I started to practice with the boomerang. I learned that it didn’t come from America. It came from Australia. The Americans are full of new things. The Neapolitans gather around when their ships weigh anchor and they come ashore. The latest thing is a plastic circle. It’s called the Hula Hoop. I saw Maria spinning it around on her hips without letting it fall to the ground. She told me, “Try it.” I said no, that I didn’t think it was for boys. Maria turned thirteen before me. She lives on the top floor. That was the first time she talked to me.

  I SQUEEZE the boomerang. It gives me a shock. I start going through the moves to throw it. I wind it around behind my shoulder, then thrust it forward like I’m going to release it, but I don’t. My shoulders are quick, like Maria’s hips. I can’t let the boomerang fly free. We’re too cramped on top of Montedidio. My hand grips the last half inch of the wood and pulls it behind me. I keep doing this, back and forth. My back loosens up. I work up a sweat. I keep a tight grip. All it takes is a flick of the wrist for it to slip from your fingers. After a while I can see that my right hand’s getting bigger than my left, so I change hands. This way one side of my body keeps up with the other, equal in speed, strength, and exhaustion. My last few unreleased throws really want to fly. It hurts my wrist to hold them back, so I stop.

  I DIDN’T want to stay at school. I was bigger than the other fifth graders. At snack time some kids used to take cakes out of their bags. To us poor kids, the janitor would hand out bread with quince jam. When it got hot the poor kids would come to school with their heads shaved like melons, on account of lice. The other kids still had hair to comb. There were too many differences between us. They went on in school. We didn’t. I had to repeat grades a lot because I used to get sick with fevers. Then they promoted me but I didn’t want to go to school anymore. I wanted to help out, to work. The studying I’ve done is enough. I know Italian, a quiet language that sits still inside books.

  EVER SINCE I started working and training with the boomerang I get hungrier. Papa is happy to have breakfast with me. At six the first rays of sunlight slither into the street and make their way into the houses, even the lower floors. We don’t turn the light on. In summer the sunlight treads lightly over the ground before climbing up and becoming an oven that sits on top of the city. I put bread inside my cup of milk, which is darkened with coffee substitute. Papa used to get up alone every morning and now he’s happy that I’m there, to talk to, to leave the house with. Mama gets up late. A lot of the time she’s weak. At lunchtime I go up to the washbasins on the roof to hang out the laundry, then I pick it up in the evening. I never used to go up to the terrace before. It’s high above Montedidio and gets a little breeze in the evening. No one can see me so I practice there. The boomerang quivers in the fresh air. My sleeve gets twisted when I squeeze the boomerang to keep from letting go. It’s wood that was grown to fly.
Master Errico is a good carpenter. He says that wood is good for fire, for water, for wine. I know that it’s good for flying, too, but I won’t say so if he won’t. I was thinking I’d like to throw the boomerang from where the washbasins are, from the highest rooftop in Montedidio.

  MY ARMS are tired, sweaty, so I stretch out for a bit on the pavement by the clotheslines. By now there isn’t even a sliver of the city above me. I close my good eye, and look up with the other one, the blind one, half open. Instantly the sky grows darker, denser, closer, right on top of me. My right eye is weak, but it can see the sky better than my good eye, which I need for the street, to look people in the face, to do my job in the shop. My left eye is sly, fast, understands things in a “Ll’Italia mia sta in America”—my Italy is in America. That’s where half my family lives. “Your homeland is what puts food on your plate,” she says, and stops. To tease her, Papa says, “Then you must be my homeland.” He doesn’t want to disagree with Mama. In our house we never raise our voices, we don’t get into arguments. If something bothers him, he puts his hand over his mouth and covers half his face.

  MASTER ERRICO has me spreading pore-filler on wood and sanding it down. Then I polish the doors of a wardrobe for clothes. How many clothes does this family have? We’re making eight doors, two levels. They call it a “four seasons.” Today I tested the latch on the first door and it fit so well that it made a vacuum sound. The air escaped from inside. Master Errico made me put my face near the door. I could feel the air stroking my cheek. That’s how the spirits rub up against my face. against my face. They dry away the sweat. Spirits are happy in old buildings. But if someone says they saw them they’re lying. You can only feel spirits, and only when they want.

  MASTER ERRICO gives space in his shop to a cobbler named Don Rafaniello. I clean up his space, too, around the workbench and the pile of shoes that he fixes. He came to Naples from somewhere in Europe after the war. He went straight to Montedidio to Master Errico’s and started fixing the shoes of the poor. He makes them new again. They call him Rafaniello because his hair is red, his eyes are green, he’s short, and he has a hump on the top of his back. In Naples, it took one look for them to nickname him ravanello, radish. That’s how he became Don Rafaniello. Not even he knows how many years he’s been in the world.

  KIDS DON’T understand age. For them forty and eighty are all the same mess. Once on the stairs I heard Maria ask her grandma if she was old. He grandma said no. Maria asked if her grandpa was old. Her grandma answered no. Then Maria asked, “So there’s no such thing as old people,” and got smacked across the face. I can tell how old people are, except for Rafaniello. His face is a hundred, his hands are forty, his hair, all red and bushy, twenty. From his words, I can’t tell. He doesn’t talk much, and when he does, it’s in a teeny tiny voice. He sings in a foreign language. When I sweep up his corner he smiles at me, making his wrinkles and freckles ripple like the sea in the rain.

  HE’S A good man, Rafaniello. He fixes the shoes of the poor and won’t take money from them. One guy came by who wanted a new pair. Rafaniello took his measurements with a piece of string, made a few knots, and got to work. The guy came back to try them on for size and there they were. They fit like a glove. Rafaniello cares about people’s feet. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, so the flies never bother him. They buzz around him but never land on his skin, no matter how many there are. Master Errico shakes his neck like a carriage horse to get them out of his face when his hands are busy. He even snorts like a horse. I swat a rag around him and they leave him alone for a second.

  I WEAR sandals even in winter. My feet are growing and this way they can stick out a little without having to buy a new pair. They’re small on me. I sweep the floor in my bare feet, so as not to wear them out. Rafaniello took them one morning, and when I put them on at noon they fit me so well I was afraid they were the wrong sandals. I looked at him and he nodded yes, yes, with his head. I tell him, thank you Don Rafaniè. He answers, “You don’t have to call me don.” But you’re a good Christian. You do acts of charity for the feet of the poor. You deserve to be called don. “No, call other people don if you want to. I’m not even a Christian. Where I’m from I had a name that was almost the same as Rafaniello.” I didn’t say a word. Till then we’d almost never spoken. The sandal leather smelled nice. It had come back to life in his hands. At home Mama complimented me, saying that I was good at getting people to like me. But with Don Rafaniello it doesn’t count. He likes everybody.

  I HEAR screeches and Neapolitan voices. I speak Neapolitan but I write Italian. “We’re in Italy,” Papa says, “but we’re not Italian. To speak the language we have to study it, like being abroad, in America, but without leaving home. Many of us will never speak Italian and will die in Neapolitan.” It’s a hard language, he says, but you will learn it and be Italian. Me and your mother won’t. “Noi nun pu, nun po, nuie nun putimmo.” He’s trying to say “we can’t,” non possiamo, but the words won’t come out. I tell him how to say it the Italian way. “Good boy,” he says, “good boy. You know the national language.” Sure I know it and I even write it in secret and when I do, I feel a little like I’m cheating on Neapolitan, so in my head I conjugate the verb “can,” potere. I’ pozzo, tu puozzi, isso po’, nuie putimmo, vuie putite, lloro ponno. Mama doesn’t agree with Papa and says, “We’re Neapolitans and that’s all there is to it.” “Ll’Italia mia,” she says, doubling the l of the article. “Ll’Italia mia sta in America”—my Italy is in America. That’s where half my family lives. “Your homeland is what puts food on your plate,” she says, and stops. To tease her, Papa says. “Then you must be my homeland.” He doesn’t want to disagree with Mama. In our house we never raise our voices, we don’t get into arguments. If something bothers him, he puts his hand over his mouth and covers half his face.

  MASTER ERRICO has me spreading pore-filler on wood and sanding it down. Then I polish the doors of a wardrobe for clothes. How many clothes does this family have? We’re making eight doors, two levels. They call it a “four seasons.” Today I tested the latch on the first door and it fit so well that it made a vacuum sound. The air escaped from inside. Master Errico made me put my face near the door. I could feel the air stroking my cheek. That’s how the spirits rub up against my face. Then Master Errico took it apart and covered it. It’s a big job. He’s been tinkering with it for a year. The drawers are made out of beech, the joints are dovetailed. It feels great to run your hands over them. He checks the squaring again and again, greasing the runners until the drawers don’t make a sound when he pulls them out and slides them back in. He says it’s like dropping a fishing line in the sea. They rise and fall silently in his hands. Master Errico, I say, you’re a genius, a fishing cabinet maker.

  EVERY DAY Master Errico buys the paper Il Mattino. It’s an expense, thirty lira, but a man’s got to know what’s happening in the world, he says. He reads some of the news out loud to us: the sword fell out of the hands of the statue of Roger the Norman that guards the Royal Palace. In Genoa there was a big riot between the police and the factory workers. Master Errico’s voice is strong. The pieces he reads stay with me. On Sundays he goes fishing, dropping a line from a rowboat off the port. All day long he sits quietly in the traffic of the ships going by. He waits until a sarago surrenders. Sarago swim near the breakwater, believe it or not, beneath the black sheet of water. They’re down there, he says, as crafty as street urchins. There’s an art to robbing them from the sea. For bait you use mussels. One day he’ll teach me. “I’ll learn you,” he says.

  SARAGO NEVER sits on our table. We eat anchovies. Sarago is expensive, but Master Errico brings it home every Sunday and cooks it in crazy water. “Heaven and the sea allowing,” he says. He manages by himself. He’s sixty and doesn’t wear glasses. He strains his eyes, and has to measure what he’s going to cut again and again, be careful. The boy he used to have was good, but he hung out with the Mob when he was growing up and now he’s doing time. That’s how I end
ed up here. I lend him my eyes. I mark down the inches. Then he calculates how much he needs to cut and corrects the measurement.

  I SPEND my days cleaning the tools, the machines, getting rid of wood chips, sawdust. Exercising with the boomerang is making me stronger. My shoulders are filling out my shirt, a ripple of muscles presses against the cloth of the back, and there’s a long callus along my palms where I squeeze the wooden handle. In the evening up by the washbasins I throw harder and harder. I go through the whole motion of throwing it and then at the last minute I squeeze, at the end of the run from my shoulders to my arm. My thrust gets stronger. The boomerang is itching to fly away. My palms sweat, giving off a smell of bitter wood, more bitter than chestnut. No one sees me, only the spirits that blow an occasional dry kiss to my face. The street is noisy even at night, but I’m higher than anyone, up among the clotheslines, where the loudest noise is the boomerang’s edge slicing the air as it passes my ears.

  RAFANIELLO IS tired. He sleeps badly and his hump is burning. But he’s happy. He says it’s a good sign. He confides in me when Master Errico goes out to buy wood. He tells me his story. He came to Naples by mistake. He had wanted to go to Jerusalem after the war. He got off the train and saw the sea for the first time. A ship blew its whistle and he remembered a festival in his hometown that began with the same sound. He looked at people’s feet, at how many bare feet there were, lots of children like in his town, so skinny, fast, they could be his own. He comes from a hard-luck town that lost all its children. The crowds in Naples remind him of them. There are so few people in his old town they don’t even say hello to one another anymore. In Naples you could spend all day saying hello to people and go to bed tired just from that.