Chapter 12
«You were away quite a lot! How was it?» Teresa welcomes me when I get back to the room.
Giuliana and her are in front of the mirror. Teresa, with a brush, is trying to straighten some of the locks of our daughter. I like to find our features on the happy face of Giuliana.
«Dad, tell us everything. Did you talk or did you act like mummies?»
«In the beginning, indeed, we were tense, then we loosened up a bit.»
«And then?»
«And then what?», they both seem on a string.
«Did you clear things up?»
«It was a beginning.»
«I understand», Giuliana says, turning to her mother, «they must have grunted three or four times, and he calls this "talking." Practically they didn’t say anything».
Teresa nods and looks at me with a reproachful expression.
«Hey, what do you want? Do you think that with a few minutes talk everything can be fixed? I wish it were so simple.»
They look in each other’s eyes and start laughing. «Between me and Mom it works exactly like that. OK, see you later.»
Giuliana leaves the room under the pleased eyes of her mother.
«So», Teresa insists, «what did he tell you?»
Now her tone is more serious.
«My son always considered me an egotist sick of success, so engrossed by himself as to using the illness of others as a mean to reach notoriety.»
While I am speaking I join my wife in front of the mirror. I look at my reflection. Generally I only do that to shave, a mechanical operation in which I look at my skin, rubbing it with my fingertips to verify the accuracy of the shave. Details prevail, the overall image has a minor importance. But now I am looking at myself, not my chin, not my profile, just me. I scrutinize myself, I question myself. I look for the identikit of the man described by my son. I see the cheeks, slightly dug, two thick grizzled strips – once dark like my hair – above my small black eyes. My face surprises me. It’s pleasant without excesses, as usual, but greyed like a plant that rarely saw sunlight. Teresa, who looks at me every day and knows me more than I do, anticipates me. Her hand slips slowly down from my cheekbone to the hollow of the cheek, then carefully caresses my neatly shaved chin. She looks at me in the eyes and beyond, she slips inside me as only she can, leaving me completely unarmed and without hideaways. And there she reads my discouragement, my sense of guilt for a belated awareness of the so many mistakes I made.
«Paolo, listen to me. Marco is a teenager who is living a difficult period. For a boy his dad is an important reference point. He always considered you a perfect man, but an absent father. Telling you unpleasant things is his way to make you pay for this absence, but I believe that he doesn't judge you as severely as he wants you to believe. He always felt a great admiration for you, but he is angered because he can never have a part of your time for him.»
«Maybe he sees better than you and me.»
«You are not at all that kind of person, and you know it well. Being a physician is what you have believed in for all your life. He doesn't know about the sacrifices you have made. He sees things from the perspective of a child, who is naturally partial, and also a little selfish. Perhaps it’s time that you say something more about you, to help him understand.»
I crawl under the shower. I open the cold water and I stay under it, freezing myself. I will finally cancel the traces of a long warm day.
The air doesn't cool down even after sunset. The absence of the sun leaves in us the vain hope that the temperature is lower, but the skin drenched in dampness and sweat returns us the certainty that we will still have to wait for the coolness. For dinner we choose a bakery in the historical centre, where they serve sandwiches and cold dishes. We are all tired enough by the long march of today, and we just want a fast meal and a bed in which to crash. None of us imagines that this will be a special evening. We sit at a table outside; a small room refreshed by air-conditioners isn’t worth a third of an enchanting sight on the quiet evening of Palermo alleys.
A man draws near to distribute the menus. I absently take one of them and immediately start reading, but in an amazing day like the one that is going to end, something more had to happen.
I explain my children that you can’t leave Palermo before eating at least once a sandwich with panelle and crocchè. They make sort of a stand, which prompts even the waiter to intervene. At which I look up and I see him.
«Antonio Palazzolo?» the words come out by themselves from my mouth before my thought puts them together.
He looks at me for a second, as if looking for something, then his face widens in an expression of cheerful incredulity.
«Paolo Manfredi? I can’t believe it! Where are you cropping out of, my friend?»
As I am standing up to greet him, he pulls me to him with a hold that almost breaks me in two.
Keeping shaking his head, he tells me, «The last news I had on you said you were in America, then I knew nothing else.»
«Those are many-year-old news. After the specialization I returned to Europe. I have been living for a long time in Paris with my family.»
I make introductions and explain Teresa and the children that Antonio was the son of some of my parent’s friends. We spent many evenings together, having a good time until late at night while the adults chatted or played cards. His family too had left Torre to move to Spain, where they had some relatives.
«You work here now?» I ask him.
Antonio takes a chair from the next table and sits down between me and Giuliana. Then he begins telling his story.
«I am the owner of this place. Actually we lived in Madrid a short while. The sister of my mother had remained here in Tower; she suffered a lot for this forced separation. My father, you know, was attached to his roots too, and he couldn’t come to terms with what had happened. After the dismay of the first five years, comforting news started to arrive from Sicily about the intentions of the new "owners", so to speak. So we returned and tried to start anew. My parents, in time, were even able to repurchase their old house and they have been living there for some years. They will be happy when I tell them that I saw you again. Tell me of your parents. How is our pharmacist?»
My eyes immediately allow him to understand that my parents didn’t have the same happy ending. I briefly tell him of the painful ordeal that brought away first my mother, ten years ago, then my father, shortly afterward.
«How did they live away from here?»
«They felt a lot of nostalgia, especially my mother.»
«But why haven’t you come back, at least them?» my long-time friend asks me.
«I think that they didn’t for me. They would not have been able to pay for my studies if they had stayed here, with the uncertain situation that was arising in Sicily. And also my father didn't accept the fact that Italy had betrayed us, and he hoped that at least I could set roots somewhere else. He regretted it when the tumour was diagnosed to my mother. He felt guilty for all the suffering she had brooded inside, as if that illness were the tangible aspect of it. He died seven years ago. After the death of my mother he seemed to lose the desire to carry on.»
Antonio shrugs. He has the same ruddy complexion he had when he was twelve, and the same imposing obesity with which he dominated me when we wrestled.
«Obviously you will be my guests tonight. I’ll immediately have some of our specialties prepared for you.»
Then, turning to the children, «Because, as your father says, you cannot leave Palermo without knowing the taste of the panelle. But if you won't like them, you can always ask for the classic grilled sandwiches.»
He doesn't let me time to add anything and goes back inside the bakery to give directives.
«Dad, is it true that those who prepare them spit in the oil to see if it is hot, before frying them?» Giuliana asks me in a low, disgusted tone.
«Who told you?»
«Vito, when we were in Mondello.»
/> «Once we said so of the peddlers who fried them in the street, in the three-wheeled lambretta, in front of schools or along the shore. There was a big cauldron full of oil, so exhausted as to be black, where panelle fried instantly. And there was people who said that, in order to check the temperature of the oil, they did what Vito explained you.»
«Legends Giuliana, just legends», Teresa laughs, «and by now you don’t see the lambrette of the panellari anymore. They were forbidden because they were not decent and they didn't guarantee the respect of hygienic regulations. You no longer eat panelle in the streets like once. A pity, because it was a very characteristic thing and they had a special taste», my wife adds with a sigh, «we often ate them as half-morning snacks at school, although they were not the healthiest thing».
«But it was a disgusting thing», my daughter insists.
«Boiling oil disinfects everything, don’t be afraid», I laugh too.
«Dad, you are not witty.»
From that moment, everything that follows is a lot of pleasant things. The table fills of appetizers that we devour quickly. There is a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere. I would say party-like. Antonio sits at our table with a jug of cold beer, trickling on stories and memories of our past life. Marco and Giuliana are enticed by the histories of when we were teenagers. They have a good time finding out that I was embarrassed with girls and not really adept at physically confronting my peers. Marco, in particular, seems almost encouraged by my imperfections. Teresa smiles. Often she leaves her left hand on my arm, sometimes on my thigh, I feel her close. Drops of complicity that allowed us to survive as a couple all this time.
The table is soon filled of much more food than we will be able to eat. When the sandwiches stuffed of steamy panelle arrive on the table, I open one of them and spray it with lemon juice and salt. Tasting it, I feel drawn back by thirty-five years, buying an identical one from the peddler who stood every day in front of the school in his battered lambretta. I fear that even tonight I won't sleep serenely, but maybe this time it won't be because of ill thoughts, but for the struggle that will take place in my stomach.
Without us realizing it, it’s midnight. Teresa is the first to realize and to exclaim, «Happy birthday, doctor!»
The children follow in her wake.
Antonio asks me, «How old are you?»
«More than I would like. I just left the club of the forty and joined that of the fifty.»
«Welcome then. You get used to it, don’t worry. And it’s not even that bad. But they must be celebrated properly.»
He goes inside and comes out after a short while with a bottle in his hands.
«I am sorry it, this is not the champagne kind of place, however I have a bottle of passito of Pantelleria. We will toast with this.»
A bony and pale boy brings us five glasses. Antonio uncorks the bottle and pours the wine while my family applauds and sing the happy birthday tune. The few people still at nearby tables raise their glasses and hint a smile at me. Giuliana throws herself at my neck with a "I love You, Daddy." Marco squeezes my shoulder with one hand and simply says "happy birthday." It’s OK. It’s still something.
And so, with kisses and toasts, I officially become a fifty-year-old man.
The oranges of Dubai Page 13
