by Erri De Luca
WHERE HE lives, in a room that used to be a closet, there’s no electricity. At night he lights a candle. He sets it on a chair. He says that it has to be low because light wants to rise. He also says that the candle illuminates the dark; it doesn’t drive it out. From the flame, the glass of wine in the window absorbs the light, the oil shines, the bread becomes fragrant. What else do you eat? I ask. Onion, he says. When it’s nice and close to the candle, you feel like kissing it rather than cutting it. Then he adds oregano. The salt sparkles when he drops a pinch from his fingertips onto the plate. While he’s telling me about these ordinary things I realize that I’ve never seen them by candlelight before. They look even tastier, more nutritious. They’ll be enough for him to fly to Jerusalem. Then he says that the room gets bigger when there’s just one flame. Shadows move along the wall and keep him company. He says that in winter the candle also heats the room. Late in the evening I write down these things about Rafaniello and then I turn off the light. Mama and Papa don’t like candles. They had to use them during the war.
MAMA HAS been taken to the hospital. The house doesn’t make a sound, nothing moves. I can’t stay there. I wash the floor and grind a little coffee for Papa just to make some noise of my own. Now I’m allowed to turn on the gas. I cook some pasta, so he’ll find it ready when he comes home. I have the key to the door, too. All I had to do was make it to thirteen and right away I’m one of the men. I’ve lost every last bit of childishness I had. Even my voice. Now my breathing is hoarse. I rattle my voice around in my throat, but it doesn’t come out sounding nice. It’s buried under the ashes of my earlier voice. I try to clear my throat, but nothing. A sleepy voice comes out, like someone who just woke up and is saying their first words of the day. I’m always hoarse.
My hands are changing more than the rest of me. Now they can hold on tight, they’re wide enough to grip the boomerang. The wood’s losing weight. I deliver it to my arms, my fists, my fingers. I don’t have a target. I don’t have to hit something. I have the open air, the warm air scented with soap flakes. Some autumn night when it’s cooler and the houses close their windows, I’ll make the throw. I won’t even see an inch of flight, but every night I get ready, a hundred times each arm.
IN THE dark Maria comes up to the washbasins. She doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t tempt my piscitiello away from my body. She told the landlord she’d had enough. He took it badly and threatened eviction. Maria’s parents owe him back rent. Maria spat at his feet and left. She plucked up her courage. Just became a woman and already she knows disgust. I’ve had it with this game, she said, of him calling her princess, dressing her in the clothes of his dead wife, putting precious things on her, and then touching her and asking her to touch him back. Now she doesn’t want it anymore because I’m here. I’m here. It makes me feel important. Till now my being around or not didn’t make a bit of difference. Maria says that I’m here. Before you know it, I’ll realize that I’m here, too. I wonder whether I couldn’t have realized this by myself. I guess not. I guess it takes another person to tell you.
SITTING DOWN on the ground below the wall near the washbasins, Maria makes me put my hands on her breasts. It’s a little crooked, uncomfortable, but I leave them there. The dark bangs over her forehead pick up a fresh breeze from the east. It dries her face. We look at each other without saying anything for long minutes. I didn’t know that it was so nice just to look, to look at each other closely. I squeeze my good eye shut. With the other one I don’t see as clearly, but my nose wakes up, taking in the sweaty odor of Maria and the bitterness of the wood from the boomerang in my arms. She shuts one of her eyes, too, and then switches to the other and we stare at each other and then burst out laughing at the faces we’re making to change the light in our eyes. Tonight she told me, “I care for you.” I care for her, too, but I don’t know how to express it so well and I can’t even answer. So I say nothing.
THE LANDLORD went knocking on Maria’s door. She opened and he begged her, begged her, begged her on his knees to go back to him. Maria went “ntz” with her tongue and pulled her head back, spitting out the word no. From the kitchen her mother asked who it was, then the landlord started making a scene like he was going to send for the bailiffs from the courthouse to confiscate the furniture, and her mother begged him not to, got on her knees, too, and Maria was the only one who wasn’t on her knees and who knew that the knees were wasting their time since she would never go back to the old man. I ask whether her mother knows about our visits. She doesn’t answer. She opens her hands and plants a kiss under my nose. “You’re my boyfriend, my family. If they evict us I’ll run away and come to your house.” Being boyfriend and girlfriend gives you heavy thoughts.
THERE ARE still clothes on the line. Someone might be coming to take them down. “They’re mine,” Maria says. “I brought them up as an excuse to get out of the house. I’ve started washing, ironing. That way Mama can go look for rent money.” How is it that your family can’t manage to pay the rent and is better off than mine? I ask. They get mixed up in gambling, the lottery, the numbers, football pools. They’ve got debts, she says. “But I’m not bringing the back rent to the landlord anymore. He counts it up and says it isn’t enough. She can go.”
MARIA DOESN’T go to church on Sundays. She says that she can’t tell her confessor the things she’s seen, she can’t ask for Communion. I tell her that the landlord goes to church, confesses, and receives the host. “He and the priest are the same age. Between the two of them they work it out. What I need is a thirteen-year-old confessor who knows about disgust, who knows what it’s like to be our age, who knows that we’re puppets in the hands of grown-ups, that we don’t count for anything.” The Heavenly Father sees Maria, I tell her. “Yeah, He sees everything, but if I don’t take care of fixing things myself, He just sits there and watches the show.” I can only bite my tongue at her blasphemy. I turn red, as if I were the Heavenly Father who saw and did not help.
MY THROWING muscles get harder. Now I’m here for you, we’re engaged, I say, and for that matter, Maria, what do people do when they’re engaged? “They make love, get married, run away together,” she says, sure of herself. I don’t ask her again. It’s enough for me that she knows. We look at each other. Our eyes are wide because of the dark. She cracks a smile and the tip of my piscitiello moves by itself. When she opens her mouth and shows me her teeth I get itchy and hot down there. I slip my arm around her shoulder, squeeze a little. It’s the first time that I’ve touched her, that the moves have come from me. Maria rests her whole head on my arm, I can’t see her face anymore, the itching of my piscitiello calms down. I feel a huge force inside. Practicing for the big throw has even given me a muscle to hold Maria. She stands up, gathers to her breast the clothes hanging on the line, and pushes her neck forward for a kiss good-bye. Then I go with my mouth aimed right at hers, so we’re equal. Boyfriend and girlfriend make the same moves.
AT THE workshop I take the boomerang out from under my jacket and leave it in plain sight. Master Errico squeezes it, turns it around, sniffs at it. “It’s thick,” he says, then he spits on top and rubs the saliva in with his thumb. I’m shocked by his familiarity. The boomerang is ancient, it’s foreign, it’s a weapon. How dare he do this? He shows me the spot where he rubbed, it’s turning violet, he puts his mouth over it. “It’s full of tannen. It’s acacia.” I tell him how I got it. It’s not good to work with. It’s too hard. You could break a planer on it. You couldn’t even carve a crutch out of it. It’s not good for the stove. It must be good for something, but he doesn’t know what. He gives it back to me and gets an electric shock as he lays it in my hand. He jumps in surprise: is it electric? I didn’t feel anything, I lie, because I’m used to the tingling of the boomerang. Master Errico makes a dark face like he does when he doesn’t understand why something went wrong. Then he comes out with his motto: “Iamme, vuttammo ‘e mmane”; let’s go, get a move on it. “ ’A iurnata è ‘nu muorzo.”
; I LEFT the boomerang near Rafaniello. The mountain of broken shoes starts to dwindle. In his hands they walk away by themselves. The grease makes them shine; you smell the scent of happy leather. At noon, when Master Errico goes to lunch, the poor come by to pick up their repaired shoes. With the arrival of the first cool evenings their troubles seem to get worse. They cover themselves in army blankets, two jackets, or all their shirts if they’ve got nothing else. “Don Rafaniè, the Heavenly Father is gonna make you rich as the sea,” they say to repay him in words for what they can’t pay in money, along with blessings for his health, or against gossips and the evil eye. “May you be protected from fire, earth, and evildoers,” “May gold rain from your hump.” Rafaniello is happy. He says that blessings are worth more than money because they are heard in heaven. Curses are heard, too, he says, and spits on the ground to rinse his mouth of the sad word.
A MAN who sells combs on the street left his shoes with Rafaniello and went away barefoot. He comes back to pick them up, sits down, and unwraps the dirty rags from around his feet. Rafaniello takes out the shoes. The man can’t recognize them they look so new. He hugs Rafaniello, hump and all, giving him a big squeeze. It hurts Rafaniello because of the wings pressing on him from the inside. The comb seller brought along a basin. He fills it with water and washes his dirt-caked feet, making them clean again out of respect for the pair of shoes perfumed with grease and polish. He does it for Rafaniello, who always recommends cleanliness. He wants to give him a comb made out of bone, but it would take a copper comb at the very least to straighten out the wild red mop on Rafaniello’s head. He hugs and kisses him again and then leaves, singing out to Montedidio the cry of his trade that makes me laugh: “ Pièttene, pettenésse, pièttene larghe e stritte, ne’ perucchiù, accattávene ‘o pèttene,” which sounds all right in Neapolitan, which is always happy to be insolent, but you wouldn’t buy a hairpin from someone who went around saying in Italian, “Combs, combs, thick and thin, even you little nitpickers, buy yourself a comb.” His voice is loud and from down the street we hear him cry, “Don Rafaniello the shoemaker is the master of all masters and even makes the lame walk.”
OTHER POOR people don’t make as much of a ruckus, but from their hoarse little voices come blessings as powerful as a cannon shot. Rafaniello answers, “ Mirzasè,” which in his language means “if God wishes.” No prince carries the blessings that you find in the bones of the poor, which start in their feet, run through their entire body, and spring from their mouths. The poor have a gratitude that no king has ever felt, and they push Rafaniello closer to Jerusalem. So he says, and I believe him. At lunchtime the workshop closes; Rafaniello takes off his jacket and asks me what I see on his hump. I see a cut, a purple spot on the top. It’s starting to break, he says, like an eggshell. I slip the boomerang into the piece of string I sewed inside my jacket and climb the hill toward home.
I PASS the landlord on the stairs. I bite my tongue to avoid saying hello. He doesn’t notice me. He’s climbing fast, out of breath, goes past his own floor, goes to Maria’s. I can see that he’s carrying a box of pastries. For the first time I think of the boomerang I’m wearing as a weapon. I’d like to throw it at him. The wood turns heavy at the evil thought. I enter the house. It’s empty, quiet. I open the windows and let in the autumn air, rotting on the southwest wind. Mama hasn’t come back. Papa walks around the house without speaking. He doesn’t come in to see if I’m in my room, if I’m asleep. We’ve grown apart. I put food on the table with the money he leaves me. On a piece of paper I write down what I spent and leave him the change. For now I’m holding on to my pay from Master Errico. I remember the verses Mama used to sing when she’d sit beside me for a minute after we’d said our bedtime prayers: “Oi suonno vieni da lo monte / viènici palla d’oro e dàgli ‘nfronte / e dàgli ‘nfronte senza fargli male.” O sleep, come from the hills, come to us, golden moon, and strike him in the head, strike him in the face, but don’t hurt him. The music would weigh upon my eyes and close them. Now I turn in without saying good night. Lying on my side, I send myself to sleep, as Rafaniello says when he goes to bed.
I STILL say my prayers. There’s no window inside the closet where I sleep, so while I say my prayer to the Guardian Angel I imagine I’m up by the washbasins with the wide-open sky taking the place of the ceiling. I don’t think I’m praying out of faith, just out of habit, so as not to lose the last words of the night. Rafaniello says that God is forced to exist by virtue of our insistence. By virtue of our prayers His ears are shaped, by virtue of our tears His eyes can see, by virtue of our joy His smile appears. Just like the boomerang, I think. By virtue of practice I prepare the throw, but can practice give rise to faith? I write down his words. Maybe later on I’ll understand them. He says you should sing to air your thoughts, otherwise they’ll grow moldy in your mouth. If I start singing with this cracked voice of mine, we’ll be having a music festival in here! Master Errico wants to be heard over the sound of the planing machine. Don Rafaniè, I ask, you don’t think that by virtue of staying in Naples you’ve become Neapolitan? No, he jokes, but the Neapolitans just might be one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. What? You lost ten tribes? So how many are left? “Just two. One of them is the tribe of Judah, whom the Jews are named after. It’s a name that comes from the verb ‘to thank.’ ” So the Jews are really named “thank you”? “That’s what the word says, but all living people should be named this way, with a word of thanks.”
TODAY IN the warm little sun of November the alleyway people leaned their heads out the windows, pushed their chairs in the street a little closer to the brazier. “É asciuto, ‘o pate d’e puverielle,” says Master Errico. The father of the poor has come out. In the cold months the sun places its own blanket over the shoulders of those who don’t have one. The voices of the street vendors rise in Montedidio, taking advantage of the open windows to call out their wares from the streets to the rooms. “Olives from Gaeta, I’ve got olives, sweet as rock candy, lower your baskets.” Their shouts bring people to the windows. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the street while I was working. It’s not that I wanted olives. I wanted to go out. I’m learning that work is all about being good and doing your job while outside a low sun comes and goes in an instant. Evening falls and you’re still cooped up in the shop. You saw the sun go by and didn’t have a chance to greet it. Sing, Rafaniello says, thoughts need to be released, to find a way out. I nod in agreement, but not even broken breath comes out of my mouth. If I were outside, then maybe a song would break out, but only my eyes can go outside. The door is open. The sea breeze carries the smell of the docks all the way up here. I feel like I’m smelling my father’s jacket, grease and salt, tar and rust. I forget my melancholy. Rather than sing, rather than sigh, I breathe in through my nose the sea air and the wind. The cries of the olive vendor come closer. I think of my father inside the hold of some ship and maybe he, too, feels like coming up for air. He deserves it more than I do. This is my first encounter with sadness.
IN SUMMER my mother used to take me outside the gate, where we waited for his shift to end. You never knew whether he would get out on time or have to stay and put in more hours. I’d be right outside, looking at the people on the Beverello pier getting on the white ferryboats of the Naples port authority. They were on their way to the islands, getting on and off board in straw hats. There was always someone who’d been scorched by the sun. Mama would laugh at how much they looked like tomatoes. “Sbarcano ‘e pummarole.” The tomatoes are landing! She never went sunbathing, never went to the beach. I’ve still never gotten on a ferryboat, but if I do I sure won’t wear a straw hat. We would wait for Papa, and when he came out, fresh and clean with his hair slicked back, in his good jacket and a white shirt buttoned up to the collar, we were the best-looking family on the promenade. We would walk as far as Mergellina, passing by the Santa Lucia neighborhood. He would buy me a tarallo from Castellamare. Mama would give him her arm. I would be on his other side holding his open han
d. People stepped aside so as not to disturb our formation. In Naples they respect families. When the paths of two families cross they say hello.
PAPA IS as tall as the wardrobe and just fits under the doorjamb. On the street he cuts quite a figure beside other men. Mama is tall, too, with dark black hair. She’s skinny. In her face you can see her nerves. When a sudden gesture seizes her she’s dangerous. She snaps like a spring, breaking the things around her. She bends her fork while she’s eating if a thought makes her cross. I stopped giving her my hand when we went for walks. Sometimes she’d be lost in her thoughts and squeeze it so hard I would cry. Papa says she’s stronger than him. On the promenade I don’t think any child was prouder than me. Even in front of the sailing clubs where the gentlemen with the money go, in the shadow of my two giants I felt like I had a fortune that no one could match.
