What Hell Is Not

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  The messages are contradictory.

  The photo on Via San Ciro is a secret confession. It will be seen by those who are meant to see it.

  The burned body of the boy is a false confession. It will be seen by those who are meant to see it.

  Actually, there is no contradiction.

  During Don Pino’s commemoration, some politician – good with words but not so good with facts – quoted the very Sicilian answer given by Gaspare Uzeda to Massimo D’Azeglio. In the novel The Viceroys, Uzeda is one of those gentlemen landowners who were the progenitors of the Mafia. He was told that ‘We have made Italy and now we need to make Italians.’ And he answered: ‘We have made Italy and now we need to make our own fortune.’ And he was right. In fact, we still have to bring unity to Italy and to the Italians, but as far as shared values are concerned, they are already united in their own self-interest, especially in Sicily.

  Mimmo smokes his cigarette calmly while his thoughts race like bats: Blind and yet confident in their nocturnal movements.

  He wishes he could hear what Don Pino thinks of all of this, but that’s no longer possible.

  He’s not the type to cry. But this time his eyes are red. The air is stale and gloomy. He can hear the voices of the kids who preside over the place where Don Pino was killed. They cross through the piazza like a cool wind. Mimmo watches them. They have gathered around the spots of violet-red blood. Someone tried to wash it off but he was rudely chased away by the kids themselves. Mimmo talks to his friend as if he were there to hear him: ‘You have to die of something, Father. But there’s one thing I’m sure of: You found out what kind of death no one wants to die.’

  The time remaining is monopolized by the children. The world of adults runs out sooner or later. It becomes exhausted. The children, on the other hand, resemble budding grain that leaves room for the possibility that they will someday become someone else’s bread. They wander the streets, swarms of kids looking for games to play.

  One of those games entails climbing up the little wall that runs along the train tracks and attracting dogs using rotted meat, stolen from some butcher shop, as bait. They throw rocks at the dogs: If you smash the dog’s head open, you win, but you can also score points by striking their bodies or legs.

  Francesco is standing on the wall and he has a rock in his hands. He’s about to throw it at a dog’s muzzle. The other kids have thrown their rocks without hesitation and now it’s his turn. The dog barks and tries to chomp down on the meat. He growls at the devil-children. Francesco gets down from the wall and moves slowly toward the dog. The others egg him on to strike from close range.

  The dog is a mutt and one of its forelegs is bent backward, just like Nino the cripple, who begs outside the supermarket. It’s black with snow-white spots, as if someone had sprayed it with bleach. There’s a piece of meat between Francesco and the dog. The child moves toward it with his arm raised. He’s holding the rock snugly in his fist. The dog can’t decide between danger and hunger. He chooses hunger and jumps on the meat but the child is faster. Francesco grabs the morsel and throws it as far as he can. The dog stops, uncertain of what to do. Then he runs, limping, in the direction of the food. Curious as to why he did this, the pack shouts furiously. Francesco follows the dog with the rock loaded in his hand. Whimpering, the dog is about to disappear behind a car.

  ‘Get out of here! Go away!’

  The dog stares back at him and barks.

  Francesco pretends that he’s throwing the rock and the dog flees. The other kids can’t see him anymore and they call for him to return. He yells back that the dog has run off. And then he leaves.

  He finds the dog around the corner. He’s licking his paw as he waits for a better moment to look for the meat. Francesco moves toward him slowly and crouches down near him.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  The dog looks at him. It’s calm only because it’s desperate.

  ‘Come with me.’

  The dog knows that this is his only hope.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  It smells him without answering.

  ‘Would it be okay if I called you Pipino?’

  The dog continues to smell him.

  ‘Come with me, Pipino. I’ll be taking care of you from now on.’

  He offers the dog a candy he has in his pocket and to his surprise, the dog takes it right from his hand, delicately. It then follows him.

  We should fear alone those things

  That have the power to harm.

  Nothing else can frighten us.

  It is God’s grace that makes me so

  That your affliction does not touch,

  And neither can these fires assail me.

  I remember the time that Don Pino quoted these lines from Dante’s Inferno. He was talking about fear. Only now do I fully understand them. Don Pino’s sacrifice wasn’t his death. That was the consequence. His sacrifice is what the word sacrifice tells us: Making things sacred. Don Pino made everything he touched sacred. He protected it like you would any precious thing. I read these lines and take them as a testament: I no longer need my anchor-words from Petrarch. Now I need bow-words that contain all the courage necessary to face the open sea. It doesn’t matter how complicated the maze is. All that matters is the thread that binds us to love.

  The little girl. What happened to the little girl? Mimmo only has one clue: The doll. This time, he has decided to give up on his inert thoughts, however perfect they may be. He’s hit the streets like he used to when he was young and didn’t weigh as much. The mother is looking for her but she’s vanished. Mimmo talks to people from the neighborhood and gathers some clues and some ideas as to her whereabouts. It takes him twenty-four hours to find her sleeping near the train tracks.

  He recognizes her. Her clothes are filthy. Her arms and legs are all scratched up.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  She doesn’t answer, and tries to run away. But he holds her by the arm and shows her the doll. Little by little she gives in to his tender strength.

  ‘Your doll has been looking for you. You left her alone . . .’

  She followed the train tracks until she was so tired that she couldn’t walk anymore. Those endless tracks were too much for the legs of a little girl. She surrenders to the fearful crying typical of children who are looking for something to hang on to.

  ‘I got lost.’

  ‘Where were you going?’

  ‘To see my father.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘At the end.’

  ‘The end of what?’

  ‘Of the tracks.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Donpino.’

  Author’s Afterword

  As the years pass, adolescence begins to resemble a dog. It’s like a canine that barks as his master attempts to abandon him but then doesn’t have the heart to leave. And so he always turns back.

  And then comes the time that it seems like it’s really going to happen. But then the hound follows the master’s scent until he reaches his home and waits outside for him curled up on his doorstep. And this is so that he, the dog, can return home quietly and take his place where he belongs, guarding the memories of the age that marks the end of innocence.

  It’s an exciting and dramatic age, full of memories both bitter and sweet. And it’s marked by the credentials of truth, the ‘first times,’ the details of days and nights in which love and pain shake one’s flesh and cut to the bone. This is why, years later, I love to walk once again through the streets of this story. And with every stroll I take, something emerges more clearly from the port and the memories under which it is buried. It’s the port that the dog watches over.

  Years ago, someone once told me the story of a man. When he had something difficult to resolve, he used to go to the same spot in the woods. He would light a fire and recite ritual prayers to God and then his wishes would come true. As time went by, his secret was lost. A generation later, anothe
r man visited the place in the woods. He didn’t know how to start a fire but he remembered the prayers. And all of his wishes came true. A generation later, another man forgot the words of the prayers but all he needed was to reach the place in the woods. And just like the others before him, his wishes came true. And then no one could remember where the place in the woods was.

  The Spasimo is my place that the faithful canine watches over: An abandoned and roofless church in the Cala neighborhood of the city. It was built over the border between the sea and the earth, where children and their parents erect sandcastles as they defend their dreams. The walls of the Spasimo still stand there, as if the tide had ripped them up out of the city. Between these walls, light alternates with shadows underneath a sky framed by stone so yellow that it seems like gold as the arches and vaults give way to the purest blue. When I no longer remember how to light a fire and when the words of the prayers escape me, I need just the right place to coax them from memory.

  It was here that I found an answer that many are searching for: This is where the Mafia was born.

  And it’s all Raphael’s fault.

  He created a painting where the colors look like enamel made of light and the bodies are Greek statues in the moment before they take flight into absolute beauty. And at the same time, it’s a dark painting. Christ and Mary have Apollonian faces that contract in Dionysian pain. Just as every man and every woman ask, they ask: Why?

  They don’t seem to know anything that other men and women do. They don’t have any magic tricks to perform. Christ is heading toward Calvary, nearly crushed by the cross. He carries the weight of hell on his shoulders. It’s been refined to an art form by men wholly capable of sophisticated thought when their goal is war or torture. The wooden hell of the crucifixion awaits him. A soldier threatens him with a spear and another drags him along using a rope.

  He is immersed in the hell of men and he cries over their hell. There is just one man who helps him, someone who just happens to be passing through, Simon the Cyrene. Otherwise, Christ is aided only by the scarce pity of the unknowing onlookers who aren’t accomplices in the spectacle.

  Christ moves along but needs the help of the Cyrenaicans with every meter of road he covers. The mother cries for her son. He cries because, like every man, he cannot bear the pain of his mother. If she could, she would scoop him with her open arms and hold him close to her bosom. It’s hard to say whether or not that maternal gesture is inspired by an arrival or a departure, by receiving or by giving, by the port or by the swooning.

  That painting, Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary, also known as the Spasimo di Sicilia (‘The Swooning [Virgin] of Sicily’), arrived in Palermo in that roofless church in 1517. It’s a painting that has a story of its own. During the seventeenth century, in circumstances that remain unclear, it seems that a local citizen secretly gave it to the viceroy of Spain and then it was given to the Spanish king in exchange for favors, income, and titles: A ‘Don’ to precede one’s name and the clang of money in the bank.

  The Mafia was born that day.

  Ever since that day, when the solution to the maze was taken away and the ineffable beauty of Raphael’s ‘Spasimo’ was exchanged for a title, a job, a recommendation, and a favor, the city has been unable to decode itself: The solution has been lost. Even though the absence of the solution could help the city to understand. It’s like an armless and headless Greek statue: The bust alone can evoke the beauty of the missing pieces. If the painting were still here, Palermo would understand. But the painting is in a faraway museum in another land.

  The inhabitants of the city need to be told that the thing they are missing in order to save themselves is the Spasimo. Rome has Michelangelo’s Pietà. Florence has Simone Martini’s Annunciation. Naples has Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy. Milan has Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Venice has Titian’s Assumption. Palermo? It had Raphael’s Spasimo a very long time ago. Just one of the many ‘long times ago’s that we use in my city: Raphael bartered for a little taste of power. Would Palermo once again reclaim its title as Pearl of the Mediterranean if we had that painting and that place back?

  I’m not sure. The one thing I do know is that the place is no longer there.

  Or maybe it is. Because when the man in the woods forgot where the place was, he discovered that all he needed was his wishes. And those wishes were in his heart.

  A place where you can escape to. That’s what Don Pino and the boys and girls were looking for. He helped them to find that space within themselves. It was the only way to block the violence.

  Money, respect, strength? You had to get there before this sacrilegious trinity did. This was one of the reasons that I decided to become a teacher and a writer: To unearth that place, first in me and then in the children. And it needs to be done every day. Otherwise it would mean giving up on the search for the words that you need to cull life from life. You have to find that courage not to barter Beauty with Compromise. And you need to remain faithful to your own desires over time.

  My first thanks go to my parents, who shared the light with me in this city. Thanks to my brothers, Marco and Fabrizio, and my sisters, Elisabetta, Paola, and Marta. They are this city’s walls of flesh and blood.

  Thanks to my professors and classmates at Vittorio Emanuele II High School.

  And thanks also to the passionate and highly talented editors who helped me revise this book page by page: Valentina Pozzoli, Antonio Franchini, Marilena Rossi, and Giulia Ichino.

  Thanks to the whole team at Oneworld, who believed in this book with passion, especially Juliet Mabey, Alyson Coombes and Paul Nash.

  Many thanks to Jeremy Parzen for his accurate translation.

  Thanks to my students, their parents, and my fellow teachers. We all sail in the same boat as we face the stormy seas of these uncertain times.

  Thanks to my closest friends. It would take up too much space to name them all here. As Don Pino used to say, hope is the result of friendship. And I get all of my strength from my friends.

  Thanks to the organizers of the Pino Puglisi International Prize. They shared yet another sign of Don Pino’s presence in my life: The award came while I was writing this book.

  Thanks to Francesco Deliziosi for his wonderful book about Father Puglisi, and thanks to Roberto Faenza for his film.

  They were an inspiration to me.

  Thanks to the people who read my previous books, especially the teachers and students that I have met across Italy over the years. I need to apologize to many of them because I don’t always manage to answer every letter, email, enquiry, and comment on the blog, even though I read every one.

  Last but not least, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this book. I hope that the hours you’ve spent reading this story have been as rewarding as those I spent writing it. I hope that it gave you, like me, greater courage in facing life, even when it hurts to the point of death. And I hope it has been a place you can escape to when the flame goes out and your words fail you. In order to make sure that they stayed intact, they had to be tended like coals under the ash. They burn there together along with our greatest desires.

  * * *

  The basements on Via Hazon were sealed up just a few days after Don Pino was killed. But they were reopened, by a clandestine sledgehammer crew, not long after. Their restoration began only in 2005.

  The Giuseppe Puglisi Middle School was officially opened on January 13, 2000.

  A Oneworld Book

  This ebook edition published in North America, Great Britain and Australia

  by Oneworld Publications, 2019

  Originally published in Italian by Arnoldo Mondadori as Ciò che inferno non è, 2014

  Copyright © Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano, 2014

  English translation copyright © Jeremy Parzen, 2019

  The moral right of Alessandro D’Avenia to be identified as the Author of

  this work has been asserted by him in accordance wi
th the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78607-275-7 (hardback)

  ISBN 978-1-78607-274-0 (eBook)

  The European Commission support for the production of this publication

  does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views

  only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for

  any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

  This book has been translated thanks to a translation grant awarded

  by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

  Questo libro è stato tradotto grazie ad un contribute alla traduzione assegnato dal Ministero

  degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale italiano.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either

  the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies,

  events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpts from “The Dry Salvages”and “Little Gidding” from FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot.

  Copyright 1941, 1942 by T.S. Eliot; Copyright (c) renewed 1969 by Esme Valerie Eliot.