What Hell Is Not

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  ‘I was born there, and I can tell you that you’re not missing much. No grass there. Just cement. There’s a lot of work to do . . . all of those children. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never make a difference. I need more manpower.’

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘I could use three hands! Why do you think I asked you to come visit when you have time? I really need to do all I can this year because this summer is different.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll stop by before I leave . . . as long as we don’t have to talk about God.’

  Don Pino smiles. It’s a strange, peaceful smile, as if it had emerged from the depths of the sea while there was a storm above on the surface.

  I can still remember my first lesson with him. He came to class with a cardboard box. He put it in the center of the classroom and asked us what was inside. No one guessed right. Then he jumped over the box.

  ‘There’s actually nothing in it because what’s important is what’s outside the box. You need to think outside the box to get out of the box.’

  And he was right. He’s someone who can break open the boxes where you hide. The boxes that cage you. The boxes full of empty words. The boxes that separate one man from another. Boxes that act like the thick walls in the Pink Floyd song.

  Don Pino’s words distract me from this unexpected but indelible memory.

  ‘What’s the sense in talking about God? If I explain love to you, will you fall in love? When you fall in love with a girl, do they have to explain what a girl is beforehand?’

  ‘No, they don’t. First I see her and then I want to meet her.’

  ‘Very good. You can tell that you’re one of my students. We must be given God before they explain Him to us. Either you touch God or there is no theorem that can make you like Him.’

  ‘So how do you do it?’

  ‘What’s this? Are you talking to me about God now? Didn’t you just say that you didn’t want to talk about God?’

  ‘Well, just out of curiosity . . .’

  I watch him and I’m actually hoping that he will answer because when it’s just us, I have no problem talking about God. I think about God often, especially at night when I’m alone. After a storm, too, when all the things swallowed up by the sea are gently deposited on the beach: Messages, wrecks, dead people, and treasure.

  ‘Come give me a hand with the kids in Brancaccio.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how. They need people who know what they’re doing. I don’t even know how to get there.’

  ‘Do you know how to play soccer?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you have any free time?’

  ‘A little before I have to leave.’

  ‘A little is more than enough. Do you know how many tiles there are in the mosaics in the Duomo in Monreale?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Neither do I. No one has ever had the courage to count them. And yet it’s the largest mosaic in the world. And every tile, no matter how small, is important. I’ll look forward to seeing you there. At the Church of San Gaetano. You’ll find me at the Holy Father Center. Write down the number. Call me before you come and I’ll tell you how to get there.’

  He says goodbye with a hug. I’m not sure how to hug a Bible studies teacher and so I stiffen up as he wraps his arms around me with a warmth I wasn’t expecting. I can feel his strong hands on my back like someone who leans on and supports you at the same time.

  Don Pino smiles and leaves.

  I continue to watch him as he walks away. He’s dressed like always. Black pants, a little too wide. A pair of giant shoes that make him look like he’s anchored to a base more than to his shoes, like my brother’s Subbuteo players. A shirt and a blue jacket. He wears the same thing whether it’s cold or hot outside. He’s short and between his height and his thin gray hair, he looks like you’d expect a country priest to look.

  That’s enough now. Time to get out of here. June is for orange blossoms and the beach. I pump the pedals on my bike as I head to the harbor where I’ll sit and dream about taking the girl in my poem there.

  I’ll tell her that I’d like to talk with her for the rest of my life, or we can just sit there and let the sea say it itself. The sea is so sparkly today. It’s as if the sun had blown its light into it. I can’t resist jumping in. I swim until I run out of breath. The more you push, the better you float, according to some strange principle that we studied at school. It’s like that in the sea and maybe in life, too. And then I give myself over to the water and the sky, and I float like a dead man.

  Chapter 5

  Don Pino heads up from Piazza dei Quattro Canti di Città toward the hills. That square is also sometimes called the Teatro del Sole or Theater of the Sun because at any given hour of the day, the sun cuts through one of the eight wedges that form the piazza. Nature and power. Sacred and profane. Pagan and Christian. Light and grief. Here, they mix. It’s the true center of the city where the Càssaro – the ancient Phoenician road that connects the port, fortress, sea, and necropolis, now called Corso Vittorio Emanuele – runs into the street that was built at the end of the sixteenth century by the Spanish Viceroy Maqueda. Where they come together, they form a perfect cross, a cross that no one wants to bear. A cross and a mixed blessing.

  He’s returning from the umpteenth pointless battle fought in the corridors of bureaucracy, where every challenge is lost to fatigue and disenchantment. They will never build this middle school in Brancaccio, nor will they ever let them use the basement in the building on Via Hazon to make a school hypothetically possible in the meantime. These are all properties owned by the township and they have been taken over by squatters and their criminal activity. They are like Dante’s circles of hell, except they have addresses and zip codes. A multifunctional hell: A warehouse for weapons and drugs, a pit for dogfighting, an alcove for a prostitute’s young flesh. But the permits never come. The permits for normality never arrive, either. But Don Pino won’t give up. He won’t ever stop trying, even if it means working his knuckles to the bone from knocking on the doors to the permit office.

  That’s Palermo. The well-lit, sparkling neighborhoods of the rich and newly rich lie just a stone’s throw from a constantly growing hell. It’s a hell where men’s misery is needed for the Mafia to show that the State is a mere past participle. Don Pino knows why they say no. He knows who says no. But he continues to prod, just like a drop of water on a stone. One day he goes to present a request. One day someone from the housing cooperative board goes. One day a friend goes, another day . . . Drop after drop, the stone will finally break in two.

  ‘ “Give me time,” said the water drop to the stone, “and I’ll make you budge.” ’

  His mother used to repeat this to him over and over again to teach him the patience that he didn’t have.

  The Holy Father Center is simply not enough for all the neighborhood’s children. It’s a place where they can play, study, and be together but it’s nothing close to the work that is done in a school. The kids need to go to school in the morning and the center in the afternoon. That’s the only way to keep them off the streets and away from the rules of the street. They have to be able to touch beauty in order to want it. Hell is the place where space for desires is already taken. That’s where you take your orders head-down.

  Sometimes people think that the Mafia is about extortion, murder, and bombings. But Don Pino knows that the real violence comes in the form of a neighborhood where 10,000 souls live but there is no middle school.

  As the congested traffic swarms, he remembers the story of the greatest pianist of the twentieth century. She became great possibly because she also worked as a schoolmistress. In a Russian school, where there’s a naughty child, despised by everyone, and impossible to educate. He’s a motherless and fatherless orphan. He steals from his classmates, he insults the teachers, and he hits the little girls. One day the child almost kills another with his blows. They decide to expel him. The teachers line up like a firing squa
d. The principal stands behind him in silence and escorts him like a prison guard. The schoolmistress watches him leave. He is alone among teachers who fire upon him with their eyes and don’t hide their satisfaction between their tightly drawn lips. And she begins to cry. The little one, with his gray eyes full of apathy and hate, hears her sobs and turns around. These eyes have a glow of goodness that no one has ever seen before. He stares at the schoolmistress while the principal pushes him forward.

  He manages to break free and runs to her. She hugs him and shouts out that he will change, he will change, he will change. From that day onward, he remains attached to her skirt, like a dog. No one can explain this transformation. But he confides his secret in her.

  ‘No one has ever cried for me.’

  All this child wanted was to make someone love him but he didn’t know how to do it. That’s why he wanted so much attention and that’s why he broke the only rule that life had taught him. Those who don’t know how to build something know only how to break something. And maybe they break things that others build so they can learn how to build themselves, so that they can at least exist a little.

  We need a school like that. And just like the Holy Father Center, it needs to be an alternative for these kids. No one cries for them, no one cries for the lives of these children.

  The Holy Father Center was opened last January so that there would be at least one place in the neighborhood where young people could gaze into the eyes of someone who saw the value of their lives. When they found out that it was Father Puglisi who was opening the center, the landlords, who happen to frequent certain circles, doubled the rent. The money had been collected lira by lira and in less than two years, the dream had become a reality. He’s not an ‘anti-Mafia’ priest, as some say. He’s never been anti- anything.

  He parks and gets out of his car. His knees are aching and it’s not always easy to smile in the face of men’s evil. He walks up the same street he did in the morning. It’s always the same one, with its apparently muted beauty and its silence pregnant with possibilities, like an expectant mother in the first month.

  Children are playing soccer in a little lopsided piazza.

  ‘Why don’t you come see me? You can play ball at the center and relax instead of playing here like stray dogs,’ he says, smiling but with a firm tone. He knows that he needs to prod their pride first and then their souls. The one that seems to be the biggest among them stops the ball. He has goalie gloves on and he’s standing in front of shutters that haven’t been opened for as long as anyone can remember. They’ve been battered by soccer balls the kids have kicked up against them. There’s a sign on them that reads ‘24-HOUR-ACTIVE CARRIAGEWAY. DO NOT BLOCK.’ It’s their goal and it rattles every time someone scores.

  ‘We like it fine right here. What do you expect, priest?’

  Don Pino moves toward them and then kneels on one knee. He looks up at the boy and their eyes lock. He can see all the reckless toughness you find in people who are afraid of being weak. The boy clenches his jaw. He doesn’t know how to defend himself from someone who bows before him and no longer commands him.

  ‘You’re right. This is a great place to play. At the center, we have goal posts with nets and the lines are drawn on the field. So you can do corner kicks, throw-ins, and even penalty kicks. But I get it. It’s better here with the cars coming through and without the lines. But you could at least use a referee . . .’

  The boy stares at him in silence. He just can’t give him the satisfaction of hearing him say yes.

  But Don Pino knows that silence means yes around these parts. He takes a whistle out of his pocket. He’s won more battles than Frederick II with that little whistle. He draws it to his lips and blows as hard as he can.

  ‘I’m dressed in black like a referee. Put the ball in the center of the halfway line. Where are the captains? We need to do the coin toss!’

  ‘This is the final match in the Champions Cup as Brancaccio faces off with Milan. Who’s playing for Brancaccio?’

  The boy from earlier gives him the ball and smiles. He raises his hand. His team gathers behind him.

  ‘Is the Brancaccio captain the famous goalie?’

  ‘Gaetano Passalacqua.’

  ‘It’s really him!’

  ‘Passalacqua’s men certainly won’t be intimidated by Milan. And now here’s the other captain.’

  A child, six or seven years old, with dark hair and black eyes as deep as wells. He approaches without saying a word.

  ‘What’s the name of the Milan captain?’

  ‘There’s no Milan here. We’re from Brancaccio, too. Get it?’

  ‘Of course! Milan was eliminated by the other Brancaccio in the semi-finals!’

  ‘The other Brancaccio? What are you talking about? We play for Brancaccio, too!’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Of course. Brancaccio has two teams. Just like Milan has two teams: Milan and Inter. And Rome has Roma and Lazio. Let’s just say that it’s Brancaccio vs Also Brancaccio. Okay?’

  The little boy softens up and begins to smile. This man is barely taller than they are and he has very little hair left. He’s nice.

  ‘What’s the name of Also Brancaccio’s captain?’

  ‘Salvo. My name is Salvo Imparato.’

  ‘Okay, perfect. Imparato and Passalacqua. Come over here and shake hands. Heads or tails?’

  The two boys do as he says and their eyes sparkle. And this little corner of hell is transformed into a real man’s game.

  ‘Also Brancaccio wins the coin toss. Brancaccio gets to choose ends.’

  Gaetano points to his shutters. The end is more important than anything else.

  Don Pino puts the ball in the center and blows his whistle.

  The hot sun is cooking the asphalt. Don Pino runs and sweats as much as the kids and it’s hard to tell them apart. Watching them have so much fun, it would be easy to think that heaven is a soccer game with a referee who’s not a jerk.

  Salvo shoots and scores on the volley and Gaetano only manages to partially block the shot.

  The referee blows his whistle.

  ‘One-nil. Brancaccio kicks off!’

  It’s a ring around the rosie made up of children with ripped, faded t-shirts, some of them in their undershirts, others shirtless. And it seems to make time stand still.

  As the game starts up again, Don Pino notices one boy standing to the side apart from the rest. He’s watching with his arms crossed.

  ‘You’re not going to play?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you want to play?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answers, with his eyes betraying him and revealing the truth.

  ‘Weren’t you playing earlier?’

  ‘I was. But then you got here.’

  ‘You’re not playing because of me?’

  ‘My father doesn’t want me to.’

  ‘What?’

  Silence.

  ‘What’s your father’s name?’

  ‘You ask too many questions.’

  ‘You tell your father to come see me. I’ll explain to him that it’s okay for you to play. I’m harmless.’

  The child steps away from the dirty, crumbling wall. He moves toward the halfway line.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Giovanni. What team should I play on?’

  ‘The one that’s losing.’

  Giovanni runs to take his place on the field and smiles, even though he’s a little confused.

  He doesn’t know which father he should obey.

  Don Pino watches them play. For a second, their hearts seem to be made of flesh, not asphalt. Their yells ring through the streets like waves crashing on the rocks on days when the wind lashes at the land and at the hopes of men.

  Chapter 6

  The day after school lets out, everyone goes to the beach in Mondello, our own personal Caribbean. It’s a collective and mandatory ritual and it’s
the real last day of school, when the sea, sand, and sky are our teachers. I go to Mondello on my bike, even though I’m sopping wet by the time I get there. But there’s nothing like tossing your bike down on the ground just one meter from the shore and diving into the water like a seagull making a nosedive in search of prey. Then I head up to Notarbartolo where I live. It’s a neighborhood with shop windows so shiny they look like mirrors, and freshly cleaned stuccoed buildings. The morning here is prodigious, squandering away its light on streets and gardens that look like jade, emerald, and malachite, depending on the hour of the day. Oversized trees explode from sidewalks. Too big for their stony soil, they taunt the highest balconies, like the enormous ficus in front of the house where Giovanni Falcone lived.

  Everything slopes toward the sea and the wind rises along the street unimpeded. My street is named after Emanuele Notarbartolo. He was a mayor of Palermo and the president of the Bank of Sicily in the late 1800s. His battle to wipe out corruption in the customs houses of the time earned him twenty-seven stab wounds on a train that was traveling to Termini Imerese. As the steam soiled his white nobleman’s collar, he was probably looking out peacefully at the sea when the assassins killed him. They had been sent to kill the determined politician by his colleague, Deputy Palazzolo, who was close to the Mafiosi who ran contraband. Naturally, no one was ever convicted of the crime, except for the killers themselves.

  Then there’s Falcone’s house, its tree laden with drawings and letters. It was a Saturday afternoon, May 23 of last year. I will never forget it. We were all at Gianni’s house. He’s one of my classmates and he has a villa on the sea with a pool. We were taking turns between acrobatic dives and watermelon slices, relaxing on the white beach chairs with lemon ices. Water polo and water volleyball and contests to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest. The competition was so fierce that you felt sorry for the losers, whose faces would turn white when they couldn’t take it anymore. And when they came up for air, we burst out laughing and razzed them. We watched the girls whose bathing suits stuck to their smooth skin, taut as the drums of an imminent war. It was as if we were suspended in time, oppressed by the wait for something that seemed never to happen in the distracted succession of our games. Maybe it was just the beginning of summer with the wait for its promises over. The crystal-clear water lapped up against the dark blue tiles. The reflections were hypnotic.