We Are Family

by Fabio Bartolomei

  Here in the principality we do things properly. Vittoria gets to her knees and with her usual style she leaps to shore, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Al?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re the best brother in the world.”

  “Vittoria?”

  “Yes?”

  “You owe me two Elvises.”

  Me and Casimiro spent the whole morning cleaning up the little lake, we picked up two heaping boatloads of plastic bags, bottles, and rusty cans. While waiting for Vittoria to come home, there’s nothing left to do but to get rid of some of the dirt. Keeping us company for the past few minutes are a man and a boy, dressed in black pants and white shirts. They’re trying to find a way to bring a little religious comfort to our house. We pretended not to see them when they first got here, we ignored them while they were walking the circumference of the lake in search of a ford to get across. I think that at a certain point, the older man tried to persuade the younger man to take off his shoes and attempt the crossing. Before their arrival, we were thinking of excavating a drainage canal to let the water run off once it becomes stagnant, and instead now we’re evaluating the feasibility of an inflow system, to keep the water level as high as possible.

  “Excuse me? Are you acquainted with God?” the young man shouts to me, clearly uninterested in getting all muddy.

  All it would take is a couple of inches of water and a drawbridge to keep salesmen peddling vacuum cleaners, magazine subscriptions, and supreme beings away from our door. I wonder how much piranhas cost.

  “All your problems have a solution, did you know that?” the young man insists.

  Casimiro, do you know what Raimondo would say if he were here?

  “Do you have a pamphlet you could give me?” I shout.

  All the old man has to do is glance in his direction. Without blinking an eye, the young man takes his shoes off and ventures a first step into the muddy bank. While the poor young man gasps and flails as he tries to reach the life preserver that his comrade is waving in his direction, I cross my arms over my chest and go inside, because it’s starting to get cold. The principality of Santamaria will go down in history as the most protected and inaccessible state of all time. Without an invitation, not even the word of God could get in.

  65.

  There’s no article in the principality’s constitution that requires me to clean house. I already do plenty and I have no intention of sitting down to fold every single T-shirt in that multicellular organism that has now completely colonized my bedroom floor. Relegated to the minority by two women! They don’t want to get mud on their shoes, they don’t want the moat to become a permanent thing! Roberta came to lend a hand, but all she’s done is vote against me and gossip with Vittoria. Forget about monthly cleanup, in half an hour all they’ve done is wash the coffeemaker.

  “Al? What are you doing?”

  So typical, just because I’m quiet and minding my own business, Vittoria starts getting worried. Still, the phrase stirs a cheerful feeling of nostalgia. That was the question Mamma always used to ask me.

  “What are you burning?”

  “Nothing,” I reply.

  At this point, if she were here, Mamma would emerge from the doorway anyway. This time, though, it’s Roberta who looks out. Something tells me I shouldn’t be so happy with this overlapping of roles.

  “What are you making?” she asks.

  “Nothing . . . it’s just a gift for Mamma and Papà.”

  Roberta kneels before me and admires the album cover. She sees the labels with the dates, she pulls the strings, she’s as amazed as a little girl. They’re only flashes, like in all adults, but in her they’re more frequent. That’s why I like her.

  “So that’s you? And that’s Vittoria?” she asks me.

  “Yes, and that’s the day she tried to kill me for the first time.”

  “She tried to kill you?”

  “Someday I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  “And now what are you doing?”

  “I’m putting you in.”

  “That’s me? Can I help?”

  “No, tonight we’re going out. Even though you don’t deserve it, I’m taking you out to dinner.”

  Before going out, the women are obliged to go to the bathroom. These are difficult years for them, fluffy hairdos are in style. From the double-locked keyhole I hear the puffs of hair spray, the sighing and huffing, then running water, the buzz of the hair dryer, new puffs of hair spray, new sighing and huffing. I have a half hour, plenty of time to extract my favorite T-shirt from the pile, the one with Steel Jeeg, and my evening sweatshirt, the elegant black one. I also have time to brush a little dirt off my gym shoes, watch a cartoon, chomp down half a box of wafers. And finally Roberta emerges, looking exactly like she did when she went in.

  “You’re beautiful,” I say, just to forestall tragedies.

  “Well, where are you taking me?”

  “To a place downtown.”

  Friday night is a good time to go out to eat in the Italian republic. All you have to do is ask around and make a few phone calls, and you can put together a little map of inaugurations and various buffets. At 7:30 there’s an inauguration of a beauty parlor on Via della Scrofa; at 8:00, a gallery opening on Via del Babuino. And then if you’re still hungry: until 11:00, samplings of typical Pugliese dishes in Piazza del Popolo. Things are jumping in the Bel Paese: Italy has become the world’s fifth-largest economy, everyone thinks the future is bright. Even the beauty parlor, which has chosen the futuristic name of “Hair Look 2000.” Before we go in, Roberta is overcome by a sudden surge of shyness.

  “But are we on the guest list?” she asks me.

  “Watch and learn,” I reply.

  I go over to the proprietor, a woman who’s busy showing off an array of things. She has an orange complexion, the result of a low-quality self-tanner. A pair of hoop earrings the diameter of a 45 record. A hairstyle Madonna might have worn in, say, “Express Yourself,” though she clearly missed the point.

  “Buonasera, I’m Prince Santamaria,” I begin.

  My seriousness puts her at a loss. She hastens to grasp my hand.

  “Thanks so much for coming . . . ” she says.

  If there are still people in the Italian republic who are intimidated by a title of nobility, well, that’s certainly not my fault. She must have thought I’m an eccentric prince or a fallen aristocrat, but still a VIP she can brag about to her guests. As long as we have their eyes on us, we pretend to be interested in the bold interior design: checkerboard floors, black walls dramatically crisscrossed with large triangular mirrors and, in the corners, brand-new infrared heat lamps for longer lasting perms. As soon as they look away, we head for the spumante and the mini-pizzas.

  At the gallery opening, things go much better. By the time we get there, security has relaxed its vigilance and we are able to enter without displaying the embossed invitation. Everyone is taken by the exhibition of the work of a photographer who immortalizes androgynous models in bodybuilder poses, their hair slathered with product and standing straight up on their heads, teetering on dizzyingly high stiletto heels. Undisturbed, we fill two big plates at the buffet and we carve out a little privacy for ourselves on a sofa.

  “I’ve never dined this way,” Roberta tells me.

  “Next time, if you prefer, I’d be glad to take you to a restaurant.”

  “No, this is more fun. My folks are obsessed with the Michelin Guide, and with them I only ever eat in the very best places.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I thought it was the greatest . . . yet another of the countless pieces of bullshit I’ve foisted off on myself.”

  “Do you lie to yourself frequently?”

  “No, otherwise I’d stop believing myself.”

  I think I must have just g
rown up, in that exact instant. I feel as if I’ve understood for the first time what Vittoria meant when she told me that I shouldn’t fall in love with girls just because of their looks, but that I ought to let myself by conquered by their thoughts, their words. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to her right away, but frankly the idea of taking advice from someone who fell for Solitary Puma . . .

  “What does ‘love’ mean to you?” Roberta asks me.

  Well, right now I’m a little baffled by the logical segue here. We were talking about restaurants. So where did this hard question come from? Now then, keep calm. “Love.” In Italian: “Amore.” Book: Devoto-Oli, Vocabolario illustrato della lingua italiana, ed. 1967. Illustrated Dictionary of the Italian Language; page: the one with the botanical illustration of the Amorino (Reseda lutea, in English, the yellow mignonette or wild mignonette); definition: “Between two people of the opposite sex, impassioned and exclusive devotion, instinctive and intuitive, striving to ensure reciprocal happiness, or well-being, or sensual pleasure.” I ought to take this medieval, late-Christian Democratic definition, and improve upon it with words of my own. But I’m not used to doing that. I like “instinctive and intuitive,” I like the idea that the “impassioned devotion” really is what they say it is, when it doesn’t ask you to choose between “happiness, or well-being, or sensual pleasure.”

  “Don’t you know?” she insists.

  Wait a minute, just wait a minute! How am I supposed to explain to her that love is the instinctive and intuitive discovery of space? That at five or six years of age, you think you can devote yourself in an impassioned and exclusive manner only to your parents, and in fact at that age when people ask you who you want to marry, you proptly reply “Mamma,” don’t you? Then you grow up and become a man and you discover that your impassioned devotion is, in fact, exclusive but, miraculously, also extendable. Can I tell her that love is the discovery that you have lots of space inside you, and that it’s a pity not to use it all?

  “It’s all right, never mind,” she says to me with an unconvincing smile.

  “It means that I have no doubts, that all questions have the same answer. Who do I want? You. What do I want to do? You. Where do I want to go? You. What do I want to eat? You.”

  I have to make a note of this gaze of hers. I need to write: “There’s a very specific kind of gaze that means ‘I am yours’. Description: intense, luminous, compliant. It resembles: a white flag fluttering from a trench, a castle drawbridge being lowered, a suicidal antelope offering its jugular vein to a lion.” And then I ought to write about the value, at the same time anesthetic and exciting, of her face as it comes closer to mine, about the thoughts that go AWOL as her lips press against my cheek and then move slowly along with low-frequency smooches toward my mouth, about her breath as it feeds mine, about our tongues that speak to each other like the necks of giraffes in love. My favorite pranks, like sucking hard on her tongue, or blowing air unexpectedly into her cheeks, seem for the first time like sheer idiocy.

  66.

  “By virtue of the powers bestowed upon me, I pronounce you husband and wife,” I say.

  Raimondo plays “Love Me Tender” on Papà’s Martin, the bride and groom exchange a kiss, the guests throw rice. With the idea of celebrating weddings in Las Vegas style the principality’s average population has risen to 5.6 units. It may be garish and ostentatious, but an extra hundred Elvises now and then come in handy. And after all it’s just a good excuse to party, to spend time together, to eat Mamma’s chocolate ciambellone, which by now Vittoria makes beautifully. I push my way through the guests to reach Raul, who wanted to introduce me to his new girlfriend, but I’m waylaid by a friend of my sister’s, a tall drink of water with milky white skin, lipstick intentionally smeared all over her mouth, and a black dress riddled with safety pins.

  “Who is that good-looking guy?” she asks me.

  She points at Raimondo, but it can’t be true. Still, I struggle to accept it and I take her over to meet him, but only after checking to make sure he’s the one she means, as if the individual in question weren’t there.

  “Who do you mean, him?”

  “Do you think I’d meet someone who plays the guitar as well as him and not bother to talk to him?” she asks.

  “No, it’s just that I thought that your music . . . that is . . . he’s more of a guy who . . . ”

  “Sex Pistols, Clash, Bad Brains,” says Raimondo.

  Because he absolutely detests punk music, but he seems to feel differently about the girl, as far as I can tell. They start talking about rehearsals, they exchange phone numbers, the pale one tells of a tour through the social centers of Puglia and Basilicata, he replies that he’s weighing offers at the moment but the idea is certainly interesting. I’m not needed here. But witnessing a bullshit match without being able to compete is quite frustrating.

  Roberta couldn’t come, she had a prior commitment with her folks, and so I find myself besieged by Vittoria’s friends who want to play. “Get the soccer ball!” “Bring out the frisbee!” “Let’s make water bombs with balloons!” If Mamma and Papà could only see me, with everyone chasing after me to play and me acting all standoffish, putting on a pose and then finally giving in with: “Okay, okay, I’ll go get the balloons” . . . and then I rush inside because one of them might change his mind but instead, four against four, this is going to be an epic battle.

  “Is all this ruckus going to be going on much longer?” Dario shouts from his room.

  “The party has just begun . . . ” I reply.

  “Well then, you’re going to have to take this whole day off my bill, because I paid to live in a quiet, out-of-the-way place, not in a commune of freaks!”

  I decide to go in to try to calm him down. He must be on edge because he just got here last night and he must be tired, but what need is there to shout? I’ll time the exact duration of the party with a chronometer and I’ll take the exact number of minutes of lost peace and quiet off his bill.

  “So what’s that?” I ask him.

  “Just forget you ever saw it.”

  “Firearms aren’t allowed in the principality.”

  “I’ve read the constitution. There’s nothing about weapons in it.”

  “Yes, it says that we’re a peaceful principality. Besides, weapons do nothing to contribute to the physical development or the mental development or the happiness of the children, and so . . . ”

  “Listen, deep down we think about things the same way, we’re both exiles for the same reason . . . You took refuge in this hovel and you think you’re going to change the world by playing at being a prince, I want to change the world too, but I’m serious about it.”

  “You’re going to put that pistol outside.”

  “Well, listen to him . . . and just how do you think you’re going to make me?”

  He comes toward and taps me on the chest with a stiff forefinger, pushing me a step back. I’m not afraid of people who are shorter than me and I instinctively wave my fist under his nose.

  “Don’t make me do it,” I tell him.

  “Just try if you have the nerve!” he shouts into my face. “Come on, just try! . . . Hey, hold on . . . what the hell are you doing! All right, cut it out, I’ll put it in the car. As long as you stop!”

  Vittoria arrives in the room. I stand in a corner with my face to the wall and scratch the paint.

  “You made my brother start crying!”

  “Me? We were having a man-to-man discussion and all of a sudden he . . . ”

  “Listen, Dario: first, stop having man-to-man discussions with my brother. Second, Al doesn’t start crying for no good reason . . . something must have happened!”

  “He has a pistol!” I say.

  “Informer!”

  “Is that true? Dario, let me see what you’re hiding behind your back . . . right away!” Vittoria or
ders him.

  Dario doesn’t know what to do at this juncture. In the end, he sputters and shows Vittoria the hand he was hiding behind his back.

  “A-a-ah! . . . Then it’s true! Collect your things and get out of here! Now!” Vittoria shouts.

  The effect of the surprise suddenly comes to an end.

  “Kids, don’t test me,” he mutters through clenched teeth. “I’ll stay here as long as I feel like it. That’s the way the world works, the man with the gun gives the orders!”

  When the last little knot of guests leaves the principality, we gather on the street, over next to Raul’s van.

  “I just figured out who that guy is . . . you’d better forget about him, he’s dangerous.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?” I ask him.

  “Me a friend of that guy? What are you, kidding me?”

  “No, certainly, but he is friends with Er Piattola, Er Gazzetta, and Tarzan . . . ” says Vittoria, pointlessly reminding him of the exceedingly strange guests he’s brought here.

  “Look, you’re getting me wrong, I never wanted to have anything to do with guys like him.”

  “So is he a terrorist?”

  “Some terrorist, that one . . . He talks about politics to put on airs, but he makes a living by doing armed robberies and selling arms. He’s a bad person, give him back all his money and tell him to get out of here.”

  “He threatened us, he said that if we send him away he’ll report us for the illegal electric hookup . . . He’s only going to leave when he’s good and ready,” says Vittoria.

  Is this what we’ve come to? Just five years after the founding of the principality, we’ve already undergone the first armed occupation. So now what would a real prince do? Would he call the police? Would he hire a mercenary army? Would he scamper to safety with his women?

  67.

  Years and years of incursions into enemy territory have made secret agent Al and the Russian spy converted to capitalism Kasimir great experts in international espionage. Cun­ningly hidden in the lair of a notorious arms trafficker, they listen to his radio conversations.