We Are Family

by Fabio Bartolomei

  Now what’s that look on their faces? Are they smiling? So I guessed it, didn’t I?

  “Al, maybe she doesn’t know because it could have been more than one guy,” Roberta tells me.

  “I knew that! I was just asking . . . to make sure . . . ”

  It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to figure out how a sister can become a bit of a slut. Studying, working, a principality to run, the parents far away, too much freedom, her brother’s magnanimous attitude, a legislative lacuna in the principality’s constitution.

  “At least we can rule out the idea that it’s Dario, I’d like to hope.”

  “Certainly Al, don’t even joke about it . . . ” she reassures me.

  “Or Lorenzo, I hope.”

  “You’re right, Al.”

  “Or Cris, Albert, Gianluca, Francesco, Guido, Sasà, and all the other geniuses I’ve met!”

  “This is my daughter, your niece, and that’s all that counts.”

  Please God, I can’t take care of everything myself, just don’t let it be Solitary Puma.

  77.

  “NSU Prinz 4L! Five standard seats, price 750,000 lire plus 20,000 lire for the front disc brakes!” That’s what I said, I can still remember. And that’s when Papà threw in: “And what did the Santamaria family say about the front disc brakes?” And in chorus we replied: “Plthththth!”

  It all ended on account of the 20,000 lire. “The Santamaria family lacks nothing!” My ass, the Santamaria family has always lacked everything and now we can no longer pretend that’s not the case. I’ll walk without stopping, I’ll cover enormous distances, I’ll reach places no other human being before me has ever reached on foot, and people will remember me as the Walking Prince who died of hunger and exposure after an epic journey around the world.

  “Right, C-c-casimiro?”

  I threw my life away, I failed at everything, I wanted to save my family but I couldn’t do that, I wanted to save the world but I couldn’t save so much as a thousand-square-foot principality. I’ll weep till the day I die, I’ll go down in history as the Dehydrated Prince, the greatest genius of the twentieth century who died of grief, because he was betrayed by fate and his sister Vittoria.

  “You tell her, C-c-casimiro, that she’s a traitor!”

  Now I go back out onto the road, because I can’t walk on the meadow, I can feel my feet sinking in. It’s no good though, they sink in here, too. It’s not the ground that’s giving way, it’s me. Mamma and Papà were the equilibrium and the solidity under the bottoms of my feet. I’ll go down in history as the Wobbly-Footed Prince who died because he sank into himself. That liar Vittoria follows me, she hangs back at a safe distance, the coward. I’ll sprawl to the ground before her eyes, she’ll see what her lies have done to me and she’ll go mad from the grief.

  “Right, C-c-casimiro?”

  Now I’ll worry her, Casimiro, I’m going to start walking right down the middle of the road. It’s a straightaway, the cars ought to have no trouble avoiding me. And if they don’t manage, then one of those absurd things will happen, like I’ll wind up sitting on a cloud, I’ll be reincarnated as a pink flamingo, or I’ll find myself surrounded by seventy-two sticky virgins.

  “Al, not in the middle of the street!” Vittoria shouts at me.

  Yes, in the middle of the street.

  “I’ll walk in the street, too, that way they’ll hit me first!”

  Mamma and Papà have wound up just like Grandma Concetta, Uncle Armando, and Ciccio. Vittoria takes me by the arm, for a second I hope that it’s just a joke after all, but this isn’t the face she puts on when she’s kidding around, it’s no good, I keep on looking at her but she doesn’t have the right face! This is the joke that she’s played on me, for the past eight years.

  “You made a fool of me . . . you all made a fool of me!”

  “That’s not true, I didn’t tell anyone else. Tiziana knows it because I was at her house when the police called. Roberta and a few others figured it out for themselves, but there was no plot! I was just afraid . . . ”

  “All those l-l-letters . . . th-th-there were even postmarks on the envelopes!”

  “Al, I was beside myself, I didn’t want you to feel the way I was feeling. Every day I couldn’t wait to write something that would make you happy.”

  “But the postmarks?”

  “The company I work for has offices in Munich, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels . . . I’d send the letters every time I traveled, sometimes I’d ask colleagues to do me a favor . . . I knew that sooner or later you’d check the postmarks.”

  “All those trips just to make a bigger fool of me!”

  “No, Al. That’s my job, I travel with my boss.”

  “A college graduate who still w-w-works as a secretary . . . ”

  “What college graduate are you talking about, Al! I had to quit school immediately and find a job!”

  “So yet another lie . . . you never took your degree!”

  “We needed the money to pay the mortgage!”

  “Then Mamma and Papà never sent us money . . . It was all from you . . . ”

  I turn and run, I no longer want to listen to her. The hope chest where Mamma kept her dowry is full of those letters. I weighed them, they’re thirteen pounds, twelve ounces, and one hundred forty grains of lies. Can you believe it, Casimiro? It’s absurd, we fell for it for years. It’s an inexplicable thing. And we let that incompetent fool sister of mine pull the wool over our eyes!

  “Al, I was too young myself . . . I couldn’t bring myself to inflict this pain on you, I was afraid you’d have one of your fits! I was just waiting for the right time, but it never came,” she shouts.

  “Are you t-t-trying to tell me that you waited eight years to tell me: the good news is that you’re going to become an uncle, the bad news is that you’re an orphan?”

  Then there’s another question, Casimiro: Where are Agnese and Mario Elvis? Where are they buried? If they’re really dead, then there has to be a grave somewhere.

  “So wh-wh-where is it that th-th-they’re buried?”

  “Nowhere . . . they found the car but not their bodies.”

  “Then wh-wh-what are we talking about? Why are we standing here wasting time, why don’t we go look for them right away?”

  “No, Al. It’s been eight years, I kept my hopes up at the beginning, but we have to make peace with the idea that they’re dead, they fell into the sea and the current swept them far away.”

  “Far away where? Let’s g-g-go find them! Maybe they’re in the Suez Canal and they don’t know how to tell the Egyptians that they want to come home!”

  “Al, they’re dead!”

  They died because the Santamaria family has always lacked everything, even the money to pay the tolls on the highway. Who knows what provincial back road they took, one of those roads that are all curves the whole way, and they died all alone, while we were sleeping. We should have been in the Prinz ourselves, I could have done something. I’d have taken a nice deep breath on the way down and then, once we were in the water, I’d have gotten one of the doors open and then I could have rescued everyone.

  “Isn’t it t-t-true that I could have saved them, Casimiro?”

  Instead, we left them all alone, they must have flown off the road saying: “Mario,” “Agnese,” no, actually, screaming: “Mario-o-o!” “Agnese-e-e!” Oh God, no, banish that picture from my head, Mamma and Papà screaming. Now I start beating myself until that thought flees. I’ll go down in history as the Brain-Damaged Prince, who died by carving his head open and eradicating the bad thoughts from his brain one by one. I can hardly breathe. Mamma and Papà are my sternum and all the muscles that expand my thoracic cavity. Now I’ll climb up that hill, perhaps from there I’ll be able to glimpse the sea and get an idea of the currents.

  “Al, stop, please, m
y feet hurt.”

  “C-c-casimiro, tell her to stop following us!”

  “Stop torturing yourself, there was nothing we could do.”

  “You could have done something! At age nine, a person ought to know how important a car’s b-b-brakes are! You should have told Papà to spend the extra twenty thousand lire!”

  “The brakes? Al, he dozed off . . . ”

  “They died in their sleep?”

  “Yes. Do you remember what Mamma and Papà always said about death?”

  “C-c-certainly, they wanted to die in their sleep, or else while doing something nice.”

  “And it went just the way they wanted, Al. They died in their sleep, while doing something nice . . . both at the same time!”

  Is there anything worse than your parents’ death? Sure there is: a retarded sister who tries to console you. What good are such low hills? You can’t see a thing from up here. But I’m not stopping, walking is the only thing that will do me any good, even if my feet continue to wobble and my knees seem to do whatever they want. Nothing makes sense anymore, I’m finished as a man, finished prematurely at the age of twenty-two. I could have saved the world, but since the Santamaria family lacked everything, instead I had to think about heaters, walls, and bathtubs. I’ll just die here, in these woods, I’ll collapse to the ground, dead in despair.

  “Al, wait for me!”

  “C-c-casimiro, why don’t you tell her to go away? Casimiro? . . . Would you answer me?”

  What’s become of him? Why is he hiding?

  “You knew it, didn’t you, C-c-casimiro? You knew it all along!”

  Betrayed by everyone. That’s how Almerico Santamaria is going to wind up, alone like a dog, betrayed and abandoned by his nearest and dearest. There’s a hole in the ground up there, it’s not very deep but it’s large enough to hold me in my last few hours, I’ll end up eaten by ants and worms, disassembled and carried off piece by piece, stockpiled in dens and hives in fragments so small that no one will ever be able to put them back together and weep over my corpse. I lie down in the hole, with my ankles I gouge out the last few inches I need to remain completely stretched out. Now I cover my legs, my belly, my chest with dirt and leaves. This is the time to say farewell, I cover my face, my hands disappear beneath the soft, damp pile. I wait for the end to come.

  “A-a-al?”

  No one will ever find my corpse, but when people come into these woods, on nights with a full moon, they will hear my spectral voice.

  “A-a-al?”

  I’m going. I’m going into the realm of the Santamarias.

  “Al, I see you . . . ”

  No one has ever found Al Santamaria when he decides to hide.

  “I told you, I can see you.”

  “It’s not true,” I tell Vittoria.

  “You’re under the leaves.”

  “How did you spot me?”

  “I can see your nose.”

  “Now I’ll cover it up and I’ll die of suffocation. You just go away and don’t tell anyone where I am.”

  “Then I’ll die here with you. My life means nothing without you.”

  I can tell that she’s laid down next to me. And now that doesn’t bother me a bit. Soon it will be pitch dark, and I don’t feel like dying all alone and in the dark.

  “Maybe you’re right . . . dying is the best thing to do. I’m sort of sorry about the principality . . . ” she tells me.

  “Think of your daughter, the principality is utter nonsense.”

  “No, Al. The principality is the most courageous and meaningful achievement of the twentieth century. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t both die . . . it’s just that, oh, I don’t want you to say bad things about the principality.”

  “A filthy mess of a house without walls!”

  “That’s exactly the magnificent thing about the principality, so tiny and so powerful . . . without royal halls, without banquet halls, reception halls, and ballrooms, without precious stuccoes, Renaissance paintings, or golden candelabra! There’s not another place in the world where you can feel like a princess without needing anything in particular!”

  “Well, I deserve no credit, I didn’t really do a thing.”

  “You saved my life, Al, if it hadn’t been for you, I’d be dead now, or I’d have gone crazy. Instead, day after day, you made me realize that my life still lay ahead of me, that I would have other beautiful days, and that, thanks to you, I would have them all the time.”

  “No, Vittoria, I didn’t do a thing.”

  “Al, all credit for the principality belongs to you.”

  “You built it with your own money.”

  “That’s not true, I always set the money from my paycheck aside . . . I was afraid that the principality might collapse or sink into the marsh and I didn’t want us to have to live in the street.”

  “How did I fail to notice?”

  “I lied a little bit about what I was earning, I padded the expenses, falsified the ledger books . . . ”

  “You are Italian to the marrow . . . ”

  “What counts is that it’s all your doing. You found the promised home, you transformed it into a principality that endured and prospered despite a thousand challenges. There’s no other place on earth where such happiness reigns, and it was you who made it what it is today. Who else has ever succeeded in doing such a wonderful thing? Geniuses your age go on TV to show off what prodigies they are by multiplying three-digit numbers!”

  “This is true. Still, the fact remains that nothing will ever be the way it was before, so I’d rather end it all.”

  “Of course you will, I wasn’t saying it to keep you from dying. It’s just that I was thinking the same thing myself, that nothing will ever be the way it used to be, and that’s partly true, but what still exists is just as wonderful . . . We have our baths in the tub, our candlelit evenings, the commemoration of Elvis, the flag raising at dawn, lots of people who love us, and who knows how many other projects to improve the principality.”

  “You can run the principality, that’s the right thing. I’ve failed at every turn. I wanted to save the world and I wasn’t even able to save Mamma and Papà.”

  “No one could have saved Mamma and Papà. If only. But you did something impossible: we’re still a family, you ensured the survival of the Santamarias! Your plan to save the world is actually working . . . ”

  “What do you know about it, I never told you a thing.”

  “Do you remember at dinner when you told Mamma and Papà that you’d figured out how to save the world but that you’d never reveal it because it was a surprise? Well, that night I waited for you to fall asleep and then I read what you’d written on your hand . . . ‘It isn’t possible to make the whole human race happy all at once. The battle for the salvation of the world has to be fought house by house.’”

  Well, we certainly lost our battle. Or, really, I lost it. I hate that fact, I did everything I could to win, including cheating, but whoever figured out the rules of this game must have been good at his job, because there’s no way of cheating that will bring back Mamma and Papà, there’s no trick that can turn the principality into a success. Only by making the principality a happy place could we have gone on to contaminate other people, other families, with an exponential contagion that would have led the planet to evolve on the model of the principality of Santamaria in the course of no more than two generations. But instead, who did we contaminate? Adele and Roberta, for sure. Raul and Raimondo, yes. Also Carlo and through him, his son Gianni. Then certain other guests—Dario not included—all left with smiles on their faces, and Vittoria’s friends, no doubt, at least when they’re here, are happy. Also the clerks at the ministry, not all but many of them, whistle while they work, and sixty-four of them signed up for the next weekly competition of “Stamp and File Away the Application.” B
ut Agnese and Mario Elvis are certainly not happy, and so it’s all pointless.

  “Leave me here. Think of your daughter and don’t tell anyone where I am,” I tell Vittoria. “Understood? Understood? Vittoria? Where are you?”

  “I’m going back to the principality . . . ” she shouts from a distance, “ . . . to carry on the legacy left unfinished by my brother!”

  I can just picture how she’ll carry on the legacy.

  “Wait for me, I’m the chosen one!”

  78.

  The year 2012 will be remembered as the year of reunification. After zipping all over the field, gravitating around the holm oaks, after tucking itself away at the foot of the hill and pirouetting freely, the principality autonomously annexed itself to the Italian republic, city of Rome, nineteenth district, with a last stirring of rebellion, between the street numbers 91 and 93 on Via del Fossone. It took thirty years to travel two hundred fifty yards as the crow flies and to win recognition. Annexation to the Italian republic wasn’t a particularly traumatic event, we interpreted it as the crowning achievement of Agnese and Mario Elvis’s dream of a normal life, including utility hookup. The experience as an independent principality has formally come to an end, even though we actually enjoy keeping our political institutions, and feel more comfortable with the constitutional charter we drew up ourselves.

  We haven’t rented the room since the early Nineties, when a flood of businessmen and politicians started seeking asylum, and thanks to the solidarity fees we charged, we earned so much money that even now we can afford to offer hospitality free of charge to those who really need it. Vittoria lives far away, in a promised home all her own, and recently I’ve been seeing more of her because her daughter, Agnese, has problems with her math tests and is only willing to be tutored by me. She’s a twenty-year-old with a good head on her shoulders, she devotes every free minute she has to studying, at least the time left over after sports and going out with her friends. Sometimes a fair amount of time will go by without me seeing my sister. In these cases, generally within the space of twenty days at the most, one of the two of us will receive a letter full of invented occurrences, as an homage to the good old days. It’s the signal that now the most important thing of all is to meet in the bathtub, with at least a foot and a half of foam, lit candles, and letter in hand. I’m very lucky, because I have so many most-important-things-of-all, all of which take absolute precedence, all of them must-do items. Work, too, is one of these. I continue to work for the ministry of finance, with a part-time contract as an outside consultant to the office of economic and financial planning. Even though the offices have been completely computerized, I still start my workday delivering the mail with the cart that they gave me when Dottor Masci retired. He got a gold watch, I got a customized four-wheel-drive vehicle, painted fire-engine red, with high-performance tires. A little exercise before sitting down for a four-hour stretch does me good. I have three degrees, I could aspire to higher positions, but I work to be happy, not to become rich. Our money is enough for us, because we are enough for us, we don’t much care about what restaurants serve as a backdrop, what vehicles contain us, what monuments frame us in our photographs. The principality is no longer independent, but we’ve become even more independent ourselves. For the past few years, I’ve even started working as a volunteer fireman because: “The principality encourages the expression of one’s own talent in the interests of the collective.” Article 22. I’m in charge of sprinkler systems, specializing in arson. But nothing is as important to me as Roberta. She took her law degree and for a few years worked as a lawyer in her father’s office, among wealthy clients and cases befitting a prince of the court. One day she said to me: “I’m not happy,” and so I told her: “Stop doing whatever it is that’s making you unhappy, immediately.” Luckily, that didn’t mean me. Two months later she opened a small law office near our home. Her last client was our daughter, and she too is more important than anything else in the world. Her name is Maria, I would have preferred Maria Elvis but Roberta correctly pointed out that the appellation of Elvis is one that has to be earned on the field of battle, and for the moment, she only sings cartoon theme songs. Maria has recently proclaimed her bedroom to be an independent principality. When I slipped Article 5 of the constitution under her door, which reads: “The principality of Santamaria is one and indivisible,” she replied that she would speak to me only in the presence of a lawyer. Maria is seven years old, I have a perfect understanding with her. Someone told me once that I’m an ideal father, because no one understands children the way I do and that it’s unbelievable that I feel like playing with her the minute I get home from work. What else would I want to do? I think of nothing else all morning long. Sometimes we argue, but never because she doesn’t listen to me. When it happens, I try to follow her line of sight, to understand what it is that’s calling her, toward what discovery her mind is running. I’m pretty good at it, I can still sense the old calls, the eye of the reclining doll that remains half open, a solitary ant everyone else assumes is in search of food but which is actually just out for a stroll, this noise in the street that sounds just like Mario Elvis’s Prinz.