“I must have told you a thousand times but you don’t listen!” Grandma shouts at me.
“Just why is it that you don’t listen?” Mamma asks me.
It’s not hard to understand, the whole world talks to me, everyone calls me at the same time, everyone has something important to tell me, and they all demand my attention. Right this very second, my mother is calling me, and so are the colorful lighter on the table, the new toy soldiers still attached to the plastic strips, the tube of Crystal Ball magic bubbles, and a spider walking on the bottom of the shelf. I don’t know how old people can handle it. Doesn’t anyone call them anymore?
11.
I’m lucky, I was born in the years when anything is possible. Science and technology are so good now that with just a few bucks you can solve any problem, it says so in the papers. “Brand-new mathematical method to win twice a month at Lotto and the Totocalcio soccer pool, 2,500 lire,” “TALLER WOMEN TALLER MEN with a world-renowned system. Rapid, guaranteed success, 2,400 lire,” “Giulio Capece SPECIALIST IN LOVE POTIONS makes them in 99 different ways, 3,000 lire.” Once I’ve figured out what’s going wrong in the world, I’ll be able to solve those problems by means of spectacular, inexpensive inventions. In the meantime, I go on studying. Car trips are very useful when it comes to understanding the world. Observing it from the car window, I’ve noticed that very few people smile. They don’t smile in their cars, they don’t smile at the bus stops, and they don’t smile on the sidewalks. Seeing that, as far as I can tell, people aren’t happy when they’re on asphalt and cement, it seems to me that getting rid of them might make everyone happier. Still, there’s something about this thought that doesn’t work. A few days ago, while Mamma was listening to the radio, I heard that a young man, a left-winger, which must mean that he used his left hand to write just like I do, was stabbed to death in a park and that a man shot his wife to death in their home. And in both cases, asphalt and cement had nothing to do with it. So maybe I should take a different approach to the problem. Killing someone else is the worst thing that an old person can do, it’s like how stealing someone else’s snack is the worst thing that a kid can do. So are these men capable of killing a left-handed young man and a wife nothing more than snack-thieving children who’ve gotten older and therefore meaner? If that’s the way it is, why bother to wait, why not just catch them in kindergarten and throw them in prison? It seems easy, but in Papà’s newspaper, the one with floppy pages and tiny words, I read that they’re still looking for the people who years ago put a bomb in a bank and killed seventeen people. They must have been some very very old people. Like, in their eighties, because if even at age twenty you’re capable of stabbing to death a left-hander you don’t much like, it must take some time before you can get so mean that you’d kill seventeen strangers you’ve never even met. One solution might be to keep an eye on all the old people, from seventy-five years and up. I’d already figured out that Grandma’s magazines didn’t tell the whole truth about the world, that the famous actor who left his wife for a ballerina couldn’t be the planet’s principal problem, but the floppy newspapers, the radio, and the TV news aren’t doing anything to help me see things clearly. But for now, I’m going to have to set aside the issue of saving the world, because we’re on the last verse of “Surrender,” Mario Elvis is singing, “Be mine forrreeveeer . . . ” and now it’s Vittoria’s and my turn.
“Be mine to-niiight!”
Papà slowly slips the key into the lock. He turns it very very slowly because otherwise you can hear the click. He was really good, we put our hands over our mouths because even our laughter is supposed to be silent. Now Papà blows on his fingertips, warms up his hands, and starts opening the door, one millimeter at a time. One millimeter. Two millimeters.
“Use the felt pads, I just waxed the floor!” Mamma shouts from the kitchen.
Once again, Agnese wins. Mario Elvis shakes his head and smiles, he can’t believe that he has such an excellent wife that, after waxing the floors, she develops the superpower of ultrahearing. He steps onto the felt pads and slides off, with both hands behind his back. When he reaches the end of the hall, he turns a graceful pirouette. Vittoria and I put on our little felt skates and set off down the hall, hand in hand, just like on the cover of Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates.
“Agnese, come on! The ice is stupendous tonight,” says Papà.
“No.”
“Oh, come on!”
From the kitchen comes the sound of a pan dropping and Mamma snorting.
“Anyway, I don’t know how to ice-skate . . . I don’t know how to do anything at all!” she says.
We exchange a glance.
“Princess of Monaco treatment?” Vittoria asks.
“Hmmm, I think that’s exactly what’s called for,” Papà replies.
The Princess of Monaco treatment is something that Papà invented as a way of telling Mamma that she’s the finest woman on earth without resorting to words. This is how it works: you kidnap the princess from the kitchen, you ignore when she protests: “No, no, everything’ll get burnt,” and you make her sit on the throne, which is of course just the armchair in the living room. Papà stands behind her and massages her temples, Vittoria and I sit in front of her, we each take one foot, and we start caressing it. If Princess Grace of Monaco is pretty, it’s because she lets people massage her for two hours a day. But since Mamma is prettier, ten minutes every so often is enough for her.
12.
While the other children chase after Roberta, who runs back and forth in the backyard for no good reason, the explorer Al Santamaria takes advantage of a momentary distraction on the part of the mothers and vanishes into the hedge. Did anyone see me? No, to the other children I’m invisible and to the mothers, for the past twenty minutes all that exists are those little plastic vases which must be much more than just food containers, otherwise there would be no explanation for all of those “oooohs” and “aaaahs.” All the better, that way the search for the promised home won’t have to stop for a stupid party. On this side there’s nothing interesting, only a row of identical houses that seem to be made of sand, with the same rectangular pail. On this side, on the other hand, things look better. The apartment house with the big marble lions near the front door might be the right one. From the apartment on the second floor comes the smell of homemade cake. That’s a sign.
“Who is it?” asks an old voice from the intercom.
“Hello, my n-n-name is Al, can I have a glass of water?”
It’s not really all that hard to get into the homes of old people. Two of them live in this place, they have the agreeable manners and quick way of speaking of people who have a lot to do. The man is painting the stable of the manger scene, because “if you don’t get these things done in the summer, you never do them at all”; the lady is ironing sheets with an iron that you don’t plug into the dangerous holes, but that you put on the stove like a frying pan. The apartment is so silent that it seems like no one has ever uttered a word in there. The silver objects on the dressers and credenzas are covered with large sheets of plastic. There are lots of carpets but the two of them play a strange game, they go from one room to another without ever walking on them. They step around them, they jump over them, it must be some kind of game: whoever touches the carpet dies. The apartment is big, if you walled off part of the living room there would be a bedroom for each of us.
“Does your mother know that you’re out and about on your own?” the woman asks as she fills the glass with water.
By now, I’ve figured it out: all old people belong to a secret organization established to keep an eye on us kids.
“Yes, she gave me permission. As long as I d-d-don’t go far or cross the street,” I tell her.
“Do you want another?”
“No, thanks . . . Is the electric wiring new?”
The woman puts a hand on her hip and looks a
t me.
“Giulio, this little boy wants to know if our electric wiring is new!”
The woman’s voice runs down the hallway, across the living room, and reaches the man’s ear. Since it’s an old lady’s voice, it runs very slowly and the answer takes a while to come back.
“It was put in in ’39 . . . they did things right in ’39 . . . We astonished the world in . . . ”
The last “thirty-nine” never gets there. It must have gotten lost somewhere in the hallway.
“Can I see the balcony?” I ask.
We walk along next to a very long carpet, we edge around a wide carpet, though in the end I step on it with one foot, just to see if anything will happen. Nothing does. There’s one last carpet, a little one. I jump on it behind the woman’s back and then I walk out onto the balcony.
“It’s nice!” I say.
“In the evening, we sit out here and enjoy the cool air.”
“Are you s-s-selling this apartment?”
“Why, do you want to buy it? No, dear, we’re going to live in this apartment until we die.”
“So h-h-how is your h-h-health?”
I didn’t ask to go to Roberta’s party. No. This idea of moving me up a year really screwed me, now I have to go to the parties of my new classmates and also to the ones of my old classmates, a double ration. I’m in trouble because when I get back from my expedition, instead of running after the other children, I choose to sit by myself reading magazines near the women who were playing with the plastic containers. When Papà came to get me, Roberta’s mom immediately ratted me out, saying: “I’m afraid that Al didn’t have much fun. What a strange child, I wonder who he takes after.”
The trip home isn’t a particularly nice one. Papà doesn’t sing the way he usually does.
“Listen carefully to me, Al,” he says.
After all, I know what you want to tell me, but I listen to you all the same. I stop thinking about that strange piece of news about something called the “vote of confidence” that’s constantly in the press, and I listen to you.
“Knowing how to keep company with other people is important. You need to learn how to play with other kids, even if you don’t like their games . . . just for the fun of being together.”
The fin that’s at the end of the fish is called the caudal fin.
“That’s part of the process of growing up, your intelligence is nurtured through regular contact with other people.”
I want to become one of those magicians who saw women in half. Who knows if they just let you start sawing them, or if you have to take a class first.
“Believe me, Al, being intelligent won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t know how to get along with other people . . . you son of a bitch!”
What is it Papà called that driver? “Son of a bitch”? Did I hear him right?
“In other words, you’re a smart kid, try to make friends with all your classmates.”
I know “bench,” “batch,” and “blanch.”
“Is that clear, Al?”
“It’s very c-c-clear, Papà.”
When we get home, Papà is happier. Talking is a very important thing to him, and in fact I always let him talk. Mamma is outside the street door with a number of other ladies from our apartment house.
“Agnese, where are you going?” Papà asks as he greets the other ladies with a deep bow.
“Back to the fruit vendor, look at the disgusting tomatoes he palmed off on me.”
Yes, no, should I try, I shouldn’t try, good bad right wrong, what should I do, should I try?
Sure, I’ll try.
“Fruit vendors really are a bunch of sons of bitches!”
At the base of those sons of bitches of the KGB in Berlin, Generaless Agnesova and General Elvisovic are exchanging secret messages. Hiding like a genuine son of a bitch, secret agent Al is eavesdropping.
“They say she’s not long for this world . . . ” Agnesova whispers.
“If you want, we can bring her home,” Elvisovic reassures her.
They’re talking about Grandma Concetta. She’s been in the hospital for days but, according to what those sons of bitches the doctors say, the disease must be terminal and she can’t come home.
“I don’t know, she doesn’t recognize anyone anymore . . . why inflict that on the children?”
That last phrase is mysterious. Even Casimiro isn’t understanding a thing by now.
“Mario, how long can we survive without her?”
“Don’t think about that now, we’ll be fine for a while.”
“We already pay too much rent.”
This must be a secret code of some kind. We can’t have suddenly become poor. Could that be? Is all you need a Grandma in the hospital and a so-so family becomes poor?
“Oh my God, that smell, I can’t take it anymore . . . pass me the pomade,” says Elvisovic.
The whole Santamaria family has been walking around with smears of mentholatum under their noses on account of that little son of a bitch Ciccio. He stinks to high heaven because he has a skin disease that can only be cured by a special soap that costs too much. Since the little mutt has hairy armpits just like Mamma and Papà—I know because I picked up his paws and saw it—I thought I would solve the problem by putting deodorant on him. It didn’t go well, now Agnese is angry because she found tufts of dog fur under her armpits, Ciccio stinks twice as bad as before, and no one, except for me, finds the idea of the menthol-mustachioed family funny.
13.
For a week Mamma and Papà have sent us to the secondary headquarters of the Santamaria family, the one where Uncle Armando lives. It’s much smaller and there aren’t any forbidden games because after all everything’s already broken. The television set is held together with duct tape, the sofa is stained and has a tear on the right armrest, the only vase still even resembles a vase because of a spiderweb of glue that holds the pieces together. It’s heaven on earth. At my house, there are objects everywhere, all of them are fragile, and Mamma has scattered them here and there to make sure that every corner of the apartment is the wrong corner to play in. I have to take care not to scratch the table, not to knock over the bric-a-brac and conversation pieces, not to break the windows, not to destroy another lamp. I’ve only broken one of them, the one in the living room, with a soccer ball I kicked. Mamma got really mad, according to her it was impossible not to know that if I kicked a soccer ball indoors I was bound to break something. I even considered offering her an explanation: “You know, Mamma, this is how it works, first of all, you need to forget all those old-people ideas like ‘the principle of cause-and-effect’ and ‘the analysis of consequences,’ you always talk to me about these things but the only things I know the meaning of are ‘now,’ ‘right now,’ ‘immediately,’ and what I wanted, now, right now, immediately, was to kick that soccer ball.” In the end, though, all I said was the usual: “I’m sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose.” With Uncle Armando we did whatever we wanted, when I started making waves in the bathtub and when Vittoria set a hot frying pan down right on the table, all he said was: “The water on the floor will dry eventually,” and: “These days polka dots are in fashion, all you need to do is make a few more burned spots like that one and it will look like a super-modern table.” At night we always had a very important job to do: Uncle Armando has lots of girlfriends but he has trouble making up his mind which one to pick, he says that his tastes are just too finicky. After dinner he’d put us to bed and then he’d get out a magazine full of pictures of women because there’s even a mail-order catalogue for girlfriends, which clearly cost less, just like the shoes that Mamma orders. Uncle Armando told us that we needed to choose one by looking at the face, because the important thing is the eyes which are the mirror of something or other, while the other parts of the body can trick you. He would leaf through a few pages and then as
k us: “What do you think of this one?” and he’d fold the page so we could only see the face. Uncle Armando’s girlfriends were beautiful even though they always had too much makeup on and their mouths puckered up as if they were blowing out candles on a birthday cake. The final runners-up were Ramona, who was Uncle Armando’s choice, Chéri, picked by Vittoria, and Cindy, who wore a cowboy hat and was my favorite. Unfortunately, Mamma and Papà came to pick us up before we could crown a winner.
When we get back to the Santamaria family central headquarters, Grandma isn’t there. Mamma tells us that she’s gone. I ask where she went, Mamma picks up a vase with a little green plant in it and tells me that this is how life works: first we’re little tiny sprouts, then we grow and get tall and strong, then we start to yellow and wither. The question is: why did they forget to water Grandma? Then Mamma gets out the book on birds, points to the drawing of a seagull skeleton, and tells me that this is all that’s left of us when we pass away, but that we shouldn’t be sad because the most important thing is our soul, and our souls are eternal. From Mamma’s smile I gather that being eternal is a fine thing.
I’m not sad, it’s just that my thoughts are all mixed up. I can’t sleep, I’m feeling too many things all at the same time: Grandma Concetta is gone, she passed away, an angel carried her off, now she’s in heaven, she’s a seagull skeleton, her soul is floating around someplace, in other words, she’s dead, and no, Vittoria can’t move straight into her room.
“C-c-casimiro, did you hear what Mamma said?”
“Grandma is dead.”
“No, the l-l-last thing that she said.”
“That Grandma is in h-h-heaven, and that an angel took her there, that is: she’s dead.”
We Are Family Page 5
