God's Mountain

by Erri De Luca

  AS WE go downstairs the sound of smashing plates comes from the landlord’s apartment. Rafaniello stops and without knowing who lives in the house says, “This man is drunk on his own blood.” Is that the curse of the dog, Don Rafaniè? He says yes and a cold jolt passes through my kidneys. I was the one who pushed him away from the roof toward the stairs. I struck him with open hands. I drove him away, I deserve to feel a chill in my back. I climb down the stairs after Rafaniello while the sound of smashing plates continues. Maria’s at my house wearing an apron. She’s waiting for me to return. She’s preparing a sauce with onions. Her eyes are swimming in tears. She laughs. Don Ciccio the caretaker knocks on the door. We show him into the kitchen. He sits down with us and starts to speak. “Your families are falling apart and you two have gotten together. You’re still children but you’re doing the right thing. You have to help yourself. Here in Naples you grow up quickly.”

  DON CICCIO speaks softly, with his hands together on the table and his beret on his head, even indoors. “I’ve known you and Maria since you were in diapers, I know what you’ve been through.” Maria stares at him, breathing hard through her nose, a sign of anger. “Marì, if at home there’s no one to protect you and they get you in trouble instead, then no one can help you. The same thing happened in my family. It was wartime, there wasn’t enough to eat, my little sister went up to that apartment and put bread on our table. Marì, don’t look at me like that. Don’t get all worked up if I tell you that I know what you went through. Now you have this boy here. A good boy, hardworking, he respects his elders, even confides in that foreign shoemaker, Don Rafaniello the hunchback, with that hump on his back as big as he is. You’re right to be together. But do the right thing. Don’t rush, you can’t get married or live in the same house yet. Start off by getting engaged. Let other people know your intentions, otherwise you’ll cause a scandal and your parents will have to step in. Even if right now they don’t know you’re alive, when people start talking they’ll turn against you. I’m telling you this because I like you and you’re doing the right thing, Marì, I’m glad that you’re not going up to that apartment anymore.” Don Ciccio said the last words with a catch in his throat and his face turned red.

  IN SPRING I was still a child and now I’m in the middle of things I can’t understand. Don Ciccio is right. Here you have to grow up quickly, and I do, I run. Rafaniello, Maria, the boomerang, I chase after them, in the meantime the scroll is winding up, all written, and I’m not going to Don Liborio to look for another leftover roll. Maria is seated across from Don Ciccio and doesn’t say a thing. In the pot the sauce is simmering on a low flame. She takes my hand from under the table and puts it on the napkin together with hers. I look at her but she looks at Don Ciccio. “Now you tell me, Don Ciccio, m’o ddicite mò?” Maria jumps from Italian to Neapolitan, which leaps from her mouth with the force of a slap. The shorter Neapolitan is, the more razor-sharp it gets. Don Ciccio swallows in silence. Maria enters back into the fold of Italian. “Don Ciccio, would you like to eat with us? A plate of spaghetti?” Don Ciccio stands, thanks her. He has to go back downstairs to his office. “Be careful. I spoke to you like a father, since there’s no fathers around here anymore.” Maria turns back to the stove. I accompany Don Ciccio to the door, shake his hand, and thank him for his interest. “Be careful, kid, be careful,” he says, and fixes his hat as he descends the stairs.

  IN THE kitchen Maria says that no one should come between us. I tell her about the broken plates. “Obviously he’s got too many.” Marì, he’s gone crazy. “No, he’s just jumping the gun. You’re not supposed to break your old things until the end of the year. He’s breaking them now. He’s the landlord, isn’t he? The owner of the whole building. What are a few plates to him?” She pours sauce over the drained pasta. We sit down and eat beside each other. Our legs touch. I know that she’s right. No one should come between us.

  IN THE workshop Rafaniello finishes the last pair of shoes. He can’t sit still at his bench. He raises his head, looks around the room, his eyes alarmed, and becomes even more birdlike, left behind by the ones that migrated. He won’t be coming down to the shop anymore. On the night of the thirty-first we’ll meet up by the washbasins, we’ve agreed. He asks me how the boomerang is. It’s always with me, Don Rafaniè, I keep it ready to fly. He jerks his neck toward the door. I turn around just as Master Errico comes in. “ ’A ricciola guagliò, this morning I caught a sea bass in the waters off Santa Lucia. It was still dark. I was trawling a loose fishing line and she caught me, she caught me, tugging so hard she cut my hand,” and he showed me the bloody red cut. “I gave her some slack so I wouldn’t break the hook, which was tiny. I let her wear herself out, and when she was tired I brought her in a little at a time, and when she was right up alongside the boat I lifted her up with the harpoon. Three kilos! Three kilos, kid! The sun was just breaking over the sea and the bass was shinier than the dawn. I’ll be eating fish for a week. I’ll leave the sarago alone until the New Year. This morning I’m going to cook the head. It’s this big,” and he measures it with his hands. Between his two palms he leaves enough space for a soccer ball.

  I COMPLIMENT him. You’re a specialist, Master Errico, a fishing cabinet maker. He likes that I call him a cabinet maker, but he shrugs it off. “I’m just a carpenter who likes to fish. Nothing special about that. You want to hear something special? Papele the sailor, the one who walks around with the basket of fish that he catches fresh every morning, well, one beautiful day during the war he went out to sea and came back with chickens. That’s right, he was fishing for chicken! He went up to his customers with a basket full of chickens. ‘Papè, did you change jobs?’ they asked. ‘No, signùri, I go out to sea every day.’ Truth is that the Americans had arrived days after our uprising and ordered a halt to all fishing because of the danger of German mines in the bay. Papele went out with his boat anyway. He went right up under the American ships and they threw chickens into the sea that they’d been keeping under ice. That’s how Papele became a chicken fisherman.”

  MASTER ERRICO’S in a good mood. He’s doesn’t say hello to Rafaniello right away, but then he says he’s going to send a slice of sea bass his way. “Look at how the wardrobe has dried. It’s all set.” We screw in the hardware, handles, keyholes, and hinges. With the milling machine he prepares the slot for the lock. I bring the piece close to the machine. My good eye is careful, I keep my bad eye half closed so it can rest. We’ll deliver the wardrobe after New Year’s. While we’re working I ask him about Don Ciccio, whether he was a good man, too. “Good and brave. He was just a kid during the war and he helped the resistance fighters in secret. He ran errands for them during the bombardments, when no one was on the streets. I never saw him come down to the air-raid shelters.” I also ask him whether he remembers Don Ciccio’s sister. “What do you know about Don Ciccio’s sister, kid?” Not much, Master Errico, I only know what he told me, that she ran errands. “Her errand was to go to the landlord, a married man who was free with his hands. She was a girl, a beautiful little girl.” He lights his half cigar, meaning he has nothing more to say.

  AT THE end of the day I close the shop. I accompany Rafaniello home. I take his arm. He walks with difficulty. Don Rafaniè, in a few months things have started happening fast, you and your hump, me and my job. My body’s grown, my voice has gotten deeper. Where are the two of us running to? I ask, and with his little voice he answers, “Where I’m from we tell a joke about a rider who’s having a hard time staying on a horse that’s galloping through a field. A peasant asks him where he’s going and he shouts back, ‘Ask the horse.’ ” I smile, I don’t get it, I laugh anyway. Rafaniello is so light you can pick him up. His bones must be hollow. There’s air in his jacket. I see the curve of his folded wings and pass my hand over him to cover them better. In Naples people call the hump a scartiello. They think that stroking it brings you good luck. People are always putting their hands on Rafaniello’s hump without asking permission
. He lets them. “In my hometown they called me gorbùn and no one would even brush against me. Here I like the familiarity that people have with my hump. I don’t think I’ve brought anyone good luck, but all those strokes have helped me. They’ve awakened my wings.”

  DON RAFANIÉ, I could use a few strokes on my throat to get my voice back. My old voice is dead and my new one is stuck. He smiles and tells me that my voice will come all at once, and it’ll be strong. He tells me a story. “When I was coming down into Italy after the war, I was walking along a country road when behind me I heard a terrifying scream, a harrowing cry, a begging so heart-rending that it made your ears bleed. I set my bags on the ground, turned around, and for the first time ever saw a donkey pulling a cart and a man beating it. The animal was straining its neck. With its harness tight and the bit in its mouth, it was howling in pain, so loud you could hear it for miles. If only I knew how to pray that way. In the Scriptures there are many passages about donkeys. It’s a revered, hardworking animal. But its cry is useless, gigantic, something between it and God, it excludes mankind. It was May. My ears had had enough of the war, enough of horrible sounds. Inside my hump I felt a chill. All of a sudden my eyes were brimming with tears. Throughout the war my eyes had been dry. It took a country road in Italy and the cries of a donkey to awaken them. When your voice comes out it will have the force of a donkey.” Thank you for the blessing, Don Rafaniè. The dark voice I’ve got now makes me sound like a conspirator. Did you know, Don Rafaniè, that the Naples soccer team has a donkey on its banner? It must be because whenever there’s a goal the crowd at the stadium shouts as loud as a donkey. I heard the shout of the stadium once when I was walking by and tears came to my eyes, without my realizing it. That cry was overwhelming. It was more important than scoring a goal, more powerful. In the meantime our conversation had brought us to his room. I lit his candle and we said good night with a nod of our heads.

  I GO up to the washbasins to practice. There isn’t much of a moon, just a flicker of a fishtail over Vesuvius. It’s too low to use as a target. I aim for a higher star, close my good eye, go through the motions of throwing, counting out the number of attempts in my head till I reach two hundred. The boomerang is curved. My shoulders make a curve and my wrist makes one, too. All together they’re going to combine into one big push forward. A combustion of muscle and nerve will unleash a long spinning hurl that will split heaven and earth. The boomerang is hot, sharpened from all the throws I’ve held back, waiting for my fingers to open so it can rise through the darkness. My bad eye sees the sky close up. What will it take to fly? I think of Rafaniello and already see the sky lowering its drawbridge to let him and the boomerang pass. Every night it’s a little lower and then all it will take is a jump from the terrace to reach it. The sky itself will beat your wings, Don Rafaniè, you won’t have to make any effort, just keep them open. With my bad eye I get a good look at what’s going to happen in the future.

  EVEN IN the cold I sweat as my muscles whip through the air. A few swift caresses dry my face. The spirits like to lick the body’s salts, enjoying the taste of freshly squeezed life, whipped into a froth. But when the body bleeds, they want no part of it. They rush to stop it, to press against the wound, drying cuts in a second. My bad eye takes aim at a star in the sky directly above the Castel dell’Ovo, a point to remember on the night of the thirty-first.

  MARIA WANTS to go to the movies, to the Lux, where they’re showing a picture with Totò. Totò is in the desert, shouting, “This tremendous African sun,” and we laugh. Why do we laugh? Because we’re at the movie theater sitting in the back, because we waited, standing, until two seats were free, because it’s the first time that we’ve gone somewhere together, because the darkness tickles us, because sometimes people just laugh, so we laugh too at the voice of Totò that gets his mouth so out of joint when he speaks that he has to knock his chin back into place. Maria laughs the hardest. After everyone else has stopped she keeps on laughing, and her laughter makes them crack up all over again. Nothing very funny happens in the movie but everyone laughs at Maria’s laughter, which she releases like a machine gun, in short broken bursts. A man sitting in front of us starts laughing so hard right after Maria that it sounds like he’s choking. He sucks in his laugh with a wheeze, as if he were ready for the hospital. “Chisto mo’ more.” This one’s gonna die, a woman behind us says, but nothing stops him, he’s pissing himself, and when he comes up for a breath, Maria surprises him from behind with another peal of laughter, and he cracks up again with a pained whinnying, “He-he-he,” and the theater bursts out with another volley that’s got nothing to do with what’s happening on the screen.

  OUTSIDE THE theater everyone’s happy, even though it’s raining and no one thought to bring an umbrella. An old man laughs when he remembers the laughter. A woman says, “Accussì adda essere ‘o mbruoglio int’o lenzulo, c’adda fa’ spassa’!” That’s how the shenanigans between the sheets should be, they should make us laugh! Neapolitans call the movies the shenanigans between the sheets because the real word is too strange, they have a hard time saying it, and they’re afraid they’re going to stutter, “Cimetanocrafo.” ‘O imbruoglio int’o len-zulo is more to the point and better describes how a movie is a trick of light projected on a screen, a sheet. Maria places her arm in mine and we walk in the rain, refreshed by our laughter. At home on the bed in the closet it’s crowded, uncomfortable. Maria says, “We’re better off here, we’re warm.” She means we don’t need to take advantage of the big bed. We make space for each other, one inside the other, and fall asleep cuddled up after a good dose of kisses. I’ve learned to relax my lips. I used to keep them as hard as a callus.

  MARIA DOESN’T mind my smoky voice. She says she likes it, that she wants to hear it when we’re kissing each other. Ask me something and I’ll answer, I tell her. She laughs, saying, “Do you know my name?” I answer but she insists. “Repeat my name, repeat it,” and I kiss her and say her name and it’s love all over again and she likes it so much when I say her name that she thrashes and sobs with her whole body. Maria must be a magic name. She goes straight from kisses to sleep in the time it takes for my piscitiello to go back down. I no longer have to ask, “Arò si’ gghiuto?” Where did you go? Now I know. I say her name a few more times, and she breathes in through her nose, swallows, and snores ever so softly.

  I WAKE up. She’s in the kitchen. She’s boiled some water and she’s pouring it over a coffee filter. At her house they use a moka machine that makes the coffee come out the top. I tell her that if the coffee goes up it’s already tired when it arrives. Maria laughs. Very funny, she says. Truth is, I was only sharing an affectionate thought about coffee that I’ve only just gotten to know and that I like a lot, black with no sugar. I leave money on the table to buy what’s missing from the kitchen. I put on the boomerang, my working jacket, and go down to the shop to open the gates. Mama, I think as I go downstairs, hurry home because I’ve got to ask you some stuff about women. It’s cold. A northern chill in the stairwell makes me close my eyes, and I realize that the answer is no. Papa arrives at the workshop. Master Errico walks up to him. He’s crying. I stand there with the broom in my hand. I squeeze it tight and keep my good eye closed so that I’ll see everything out of focus and I won’t see Papa’s face. He’s ashamed of crying in front of me. Master Errico takes the broom from my hands, pulls it away from me. We go out. He closes the workshop in mourning and goes to the hospital with us. Mama’s not there. They’ve closed her in the coffin. I keep my arms close to my chest so that I’ll get some warmth from the boomerang. The smell of sfogliatelle comes from a nearby bed. A man opens up a bag of pastries and offers us some. That’s when the teardrops burst, now I know how to say it in Italian, because they come out and burst from your eyes with a shot from inside, a shot that forces them out.

  MY FATHER’S stopped crying. His face is drained. He pays no attention to the people who come and speak to him and shake his hand or mine. I keep my
good eye half closed and make myself look the way I’m supposed to for the procession of people from Montedidio. Then Maria arrives. She goes straight to Papa, takes him by the arm, and accompanies him outside. He goes with her quietly to get some fresh air and I stay behind to stand guard over the body of my mother, who didn’t even want me to see her. Maria’s parents came back home to get their suitcases. When they didn’t find her, they left her some money and asked Don Ciccio to look after her. They have to take an emergency trip, they’ll be back soon. “They’re in trouble,” says Maria, who heard about my mother from Don Ciccio. She did the shopping and came home to prepare something hot for us to eat. We leave the hospital. Papa’s in the middle. He doesn’t once look up from his feet. We guide him down the narrow sidewalks, where people are packed together as tight as olives in a jar. He’s gotten thinner, and lets himself be moved about by us and by the wind that slaps our faces and makes them tougher.