Lost Words

by Nicola Gardini

  The Maestra uttered these last words with a sob and turned her head in the other direction, where there was still a little daylight.

  “Luca, I’m sorry! . . . I’m crazy! Do you know the first word written in the first English dictionary? You don’t? . . . Abandon . . . you will abandon me, Luca. You, too.” Then she called herself an idiot, because her tirade had ruined everything. She laughed desperately, and I laughed with her, because I was fond of her and couldn’t stand the idea of losing her.

  “You are crazy, too,” she concluded with a comic grin, wiping away a stubborn tear with the tip of her little finger. “Otherwise you would’ve already stopped coming here. But instead you come to see me every day. A young boy visiting an old lady . . . Unheard of . . . only in fairy tales, like God . . . I must tell your mother . . . Elvira, has Luca seen a doctor? If I were your mother I’d be worried. Why do you come here? You should be running around in the courtyard, playing with children your own age . . .”

  She brushed aside the voile curtains and cast an almost cruel gaze across the street, where a group of boys was chasing a soccer ball on the muddy ground, illuminated by the Christmas lights.

  “Yes, you are crazy, too, Luca. Life is going to be a journey through the ruins for you, too . . .”

  *.

  She’d never worked harder in her life, doing people’s ironing, cleaning apartments, knitting wool sweaters and trying to sell them. At night, after my father went to bed, she would work on the multi-colored blanket that sat heavily on her lap like a shaggy dog, billowing out in waves onto the floor.

  She imagined that Aldrovanti would make the announcement with a very formal telephone call, or maybe in person. The sale of the establishment—how she loved saying that word! So much finer than “the building” or “the complex,” because it lent the seal of bureaucracy to her fantasies, conveying both security and durability—stability, that was the key, while the other words indicated something vague and confused that didn’t suit the long-awaited opportunity of a lifetime. It was hardly an everyday occurrence: Aldrovanti might very well want to speak with her one on one. To prepare for the big event she counted, over and over again, the money she’d managed to set aside. Her bed was covered with financial statements, banknotes, and pieces of paper on which additions and multiplications had been scribbled. Even my birthday savings, tucked away in the tin box, were included in the calculation. I saw her moving her lips silently and raising her eyes to the ceiling in search of a solution. My presence got on her nerves. “Go to the front room!” she would shout, “before some Jehovah’s Witness sneaks in. Go on! You’re only in my way here!” No matter how many times she counted, she was always a million lira short, but she still hoped that the sale would be announced as early as tomorrow. She was convinced that the missing money would appear out of nowhere, all of a sudden, by magic. It had to appear! She had eighty percent of the total, and that was already a lot, a whole lot. From the depths of the armoire she dug out her checkbook and stared at it in disbelief, already savoring the moment when she would tear off the first check to write in the amount of the down payment. The very thought made her dizzy. Would she know how to fill out a check? What if she made a mistake? She’d look like such a fool! Oh, what did it matter. Some saint would rush to her aid. And if she made a mistake writing out the first check, she’d get the second one right . . . she had ten checks total. Plenty to spare!

  The first half of January had passed and Aldrovanti still hadn’t made the phone call. My mother’s nerves were frayed—she prayed to the saints, to God, to the Virgin Mary. Her prayers alternated with curses. She cursed life, the apartment complex, the world . . .

  With or without the intercession of some saint, the building manager finally appeared, shortly before the end of the month, accompanied by two consultants. The three of them inspected the building from top to bottom, inside and out. They also went downstairs to the boiler room. Under the stairs Aldrovanti noticed the lair of the gray cat. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of urine and reached back toward the outdoors, as if to grab a last mouthful of breathable air. When she turned around, she knocked over a saucer of leftover milk, brought there by someone or other. All hell broke loose.

  She raced up the stairs and started to shout the most offensive words imaginable: saying my mother’s neglect had turned the building into a pig pen, that this wasn’t a public-housing project, that the landlord would die of a heart attack if he ever laid eyes on such filth! The cat had to go—and immediately! And to think she had told my mother, when she started working there so many years ago, that no cats were allowed in the building! . . . My mother tried in vain to explain that the cat helped keep the mice away, which infiltrated the courtyard from the fields at night. Indeed, one cat was hardly enough . . .

  “Oh!” the building manager laughed derisively, lowering her voice but not her contemptuous tone. “So, would you have us turn the building into a kitty mill? Don’t talk nonsense, Elvira! We’re not in your village anymore. If mice are a problem we call the exterminators! Do you or do you not know your duties? Do I have to write them out for you and tape them to your refrigerator door? And for heaven’s sake, get rid of that rag! This is first and foremost the loge, not your kitchen . . .”

  The consultants determined that the tiles on the rear façade showed signs of deterioration, some had already started to detach from the cement wall, and the possibility could not be excluded that, unless work were done as soon as possible, they might fall. So from then on, no one was to venture into that area.

  Aldrovanti’s tirade did not keep my mother’s spirits depressed for long. What she did mind, however, was that the reason for the visit of this unpleasant, domineering woman wasn’t the sale of the building. What if she was fooling herself? In fact, if the landlord wanted to sell, why was he so worried about maintenance? That should have been the new owners’ problem! . . . Or maybe—and here I saw her succumbing to a new illusion—since the landlord, l’ingegnere, was a gentleman, a true gentleman!—he wanted the building to be in the best possible condition for the sale . . . “What more can we do?” she concluded. “Be patient? . . . I’ve been very patient, haven’t I, sweetheart? Hasn’t your mommy been patient? We’re almost there . . . I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces! Their jaws will drop. Ah, yes, my dears. Now I’m an owner, too! Time to go looking for another doorwoman! . . . And your father had better not try to stop me! If he doesn’t back me up on this, I’m going to ask for a divorce. Anyone who thinks that only the rich can afford a divorce has got to be an idiot! I’ve got money, too—me, a nobody. I don’t need anyone! And there’s plenty of work to go around! Your father had better watch out! Patience, I just need a little more patience . . . Sooner or later the ingegnere is going to sell.”

  *.

  The knitting dropped from her hands. The door would’ve burst open if it hadn’t been held firmly in place by the crossbars.

  “Don’t move, for the love of God!” she ordered me. Another colossal blow shook the wooden doorframe. The windows of the loge trembled. So did the cups and glasses in the cupboard. The Murano vase skated across the smooth Formica tabletop.

  “What the hell is going on?” shouted my father, running out of the bathroom half-naked.

  “Quiet!” The pounding stopped.

  “It must be some drunk,” my mother said, “let’s have a look . . .”

  “You’re not going to open the door, are you?!”

  “Let me handle it . . .”

  She was already pulling back the bolt. She cautiously opened the door a crack, taking a peek outside, while my father got the longest knife from the table drawer.

  “It’s Signor Zarchi!”

  “Let me see . . .”

  My father pushed her to one side and opened the door a little wider. The inarticulate howling continued, getting louder and louder. By now the whole building must’ve been awake. You co
uldn’t understand a word, only the repetition of a sequence of vowels: “Ooooia, eee . . .”

  “What the hell is he saying? Is he drunk out of his mind?”

  My mother called Signora Zarchi on the intercom.

  “Madam, did you hear that noise? Down here, in the lobby, your husband is making a scene. He’s drunk as a skunk. Please come get him before something happens,” she said, removing the knife from my father’s hands and opening the door.

  “Hey!” she shouted out, authoritatively, the way you would scold a child.

  Startled by that unexpected voice, the enraged hulk of a man quieted down all of a sudden, turned slowly, and made a few shaky steps in my mother’s direction. She quickly closed the door and stood looking at him through the window. The poor man started howling again, but he had been placated, at least in part. He could barely stand. His jacket hung down on one side and his shirt was untucked from his dirty wrinkled trousers. He was gasping for air, and in the effort to speak clearly, he twisted his facial features into horrible grimaces, as if he wanted to convey an important message to my mother—and he was making progress, his utterances becoming clearer: the sounds that were indecipherable earlier, the ooooia’s and eeee’s, started to rearrange themselves gradually into two complete words. Whoooo, priiiee . . . The words coming out of his mouth were distorted, but he was clearly saying Whore . . . priest. Whore . . . priest. Whore . . . priest. Whore . . . priest. Whore . . . priest. Whore . . . priest. Whore . . . priest. Whore . . . priest.

  “That whore is doing it with the priest!” my father translated, filling in the blanks in the syntax as if he were solving an ancient enigma.

  Signora Zarchi arrived in a long pink dressing gown. From the opening of the elevator, she called out timidly to her husband. “Romano . . .”

  He turned around and, recognizing her, lost what little reason he seemed to have regained: “WHORE!” is the word that burst out of his heart, through his lips. This time the word echoed loud and clear. Signora Zarchi retreated to the back of the elevator and, before closing the doors—setting aside her normally seraphic air—she begged my mother to have him taken away before he killed her, the animal. The elevator whooshed upstairs. The only thing the jealous husband could do was bang a fist against the frosted glass, through which you could see the rubber pulleys dangling, like a pair of lowered suspenders.

  The tenants, who had been leaning over the railings the whole time, started to murmur. Malfitano’s parrot suddenly appeared in the stairwell, unleashing ear-splitting shrieks and snatches of prayer, until a call from his mistress brought him back to the second floor. The seamstress, Signora Mellone, and Signora Dell’Uomo collapsed in laughter, partly to ease the tension, partly because they were so amused by the bird’s performance. “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, out pops the parrot!” Then, perfectly coordinated, Vezzali and Paolini came down the stairs and immobilized Zarchi. He was so debilitated by alcohol and his outburst that even my mother could’ve tackled him. As soon as the two men took him by the arms, he sagged and ended up on the floor, at the foot of the stairs, as if he had rolled all the way down from the top floor. Signora Mellone suggested they call emergency services. A few minutes later the ambulance arrived. To speed things along, my mother opened the gate, letting the ambulance drive into the courtyard and park by the front stairs. Signora Zarchi came back down, this time with her half-asleep daughter. She had removed her dressing gown and donned a long dark dress. She dispensed her gratitude and apologies to the brood of hens as the emergency workers lifted her husband onto the stretcher. Getting into the ambulance herself, Rita repeated her mother’s words, which echoed into the empty night.

  *.

  By mid-March the stems of the roses were already as tall as me. If you looked carefully, in the midst of the luxuriant foliage you could also find an occasional rosebud. The air was filled with corpuscles, dust, and pollen, clumping together into fuzzy little balls that stuck to the sidewalk. The mud was drying in the fields and the tree branches were growing and adorning themselves with soft bright-green gems and fresh shoots. The hydrangeas were a halo of buds. The gray cat (my mother, ignoring the manager, had thought twice about getting rid of her) sharpened her claws on the bark of trees and wandered through the flower beds on the prowl for birds. At night she howled in heat, with an almost human lament. The children went back outdoors to shriek to their hearts content and the bigger boys played soccer in the field across the street. At night, behind the little hill, now cloaked in a light emerald fuzz, there were more and more cars parked with foggy windows.

  My mother was also feeling the warmth of spring: she kept the window open from dawn to dusk, listening to the song of the blackbirds and the whisper of the breeze between the leaves of the sycamore tree. At the enchanting sound—despite the delay in the long-awaited announcement—she would start to daydream: in the new bedroom she would hang curtains like the ones she had seen in the Dell’Uomo apartment, beige with embroidered hems. She would buy any furniture she needed at the factory outlets in Brianza . . . There was no need to change the bed and the armoire right away—she could get by with what she had for a little while longer . . . But a proper sofa-bed was needed for me, one that could be pulled out with a finger or by simply flicking a switch . . .

  Easter Sunday was like summer, and although my father didn’t suffer from the heat like my mother, he put on a short-sleeved shirt. The sunlit air billowed in white tufts. “I’ve never seen a spring like this,” my mother exclaimed as we left the church. “Can you smell it? Can you smell the fragrance?” The spring breathed new life into her dreams. The renewal of nature foretold the renewal of her life. Light and joy emanated from her face, as if something amazing had happened to her, as if she had fallen in love . . .

  The moment had come for me to choose which high school to attend. The Maestra took it for granted that I would enroll at the Classical Lyceum. But my parents felt a technical school that taught bookkeeping would be more suitable. To my mother the Lyceum sounded too abstract; to my father it sounded ridiculous. What the hell was the point of studying Latin and Greek, two languages that hadn’t been spoken for centuries? There was no point whatsoever. It would be a joke, a waste of time and money . . .

  One night, after closing, the Maestra came downstairs to the loge to plead her case for the Classical Lyceum. Bewildered by her unexpected visit, my father was completely disarmed by her arguments. He timidly suggested that we were proletarians who couldn’t afford to waste money and time on a useless education. She replied that the word proletarian was as old as the law of the twelve tables, the most ancient Roman legislation, and she launched into a praise of etymology and dead languages that left my parents tongue-tied.

  The next day she helped me fill out the preregistration form.

  “Very good, Luca,” she said approvingly, after a final look at the completed application. “Let me be clear about one thing: no school really does its job . . . School is a factory of lies. But a classical education is better than the others. At least you’ll learn a few words of ancient Greek. You’ll read Thucydides in his own language! Did I ever tell you about the opening of the Peloponnesian War? Wait . . . now where did I put it?”

  She browsed through the volumes on the top shelf and found what she was looking for. She read quietly, to herself, the opening lines of the work in the original, and then she translated it for me, along with other passages from the introduction.

  “Beautiful,” I said, to gratify her.

  She admitted that Thucydides was a very difficult author, and that she wasn’t sure if she had understood him herself, even after many re-readings. “A possession for all time . . .” she ruminated. And addressing me again: “I wonder whether it is right to expect things to last forever . . . Certainly, for love of the truth . . . Let me give you an example. In Moscow, in Red Square, the embalmed body of Lenin is on display. You know who he is, don�
�t you? . . . I was only able to observe it for a few moments because there was a long line of visitors and the guards refused to allow me enough time for serious contemplation. But those few moments were enough to impress on my memory the unmistakable color of his hair and beard, the yellow pallor of his skin . . . At that moment I didn’t think about his fame or historic importance—I thought, instead, about the durability of matter, about the physical survival of something that no longer has a direct relationship with the reality around it. Lenin belonged to the past, yet there he was, looking the same as he had when he was alive, as if the dead man before me were not really him but rather everything that had surrounded him when he was still alive. That’s what moved me: the solitude of the embalmed body. And what that solitude represented—a self-consciously transient universe that was determined to endure, and had chosen Lenin to represent that era to posterity. Lenin was a remnant, a relic, a trace . . . And the others? Where were his contemporaries? What was the purpose of preserving only one man’s body, of spurning the laws of death and becoming not just a contemporary of posterity, but surviving it? . . . And what of the mummy of Ramses II, at the Cairo Museum? . . . To think that after so many centuries he still bears the face of a despot . . . Are you following? . . . What is the truth? . . . Now it’s time for you to go . . .”