And so, dear Fedez, I ask you, don’t make me look bad in front of her. Because a world where eight-year-old daughters lose the hope that their fathers can make their dreams come true, well that I think would be the worst world of all, perhaps you would agree.
I thank you in advance from the bottom of my heart, even if just for reading this.
Yo, o bella frate’, o bagna càuda, or you know, whatever you say.
Fedez-fully yours,
Matteo Bussola
FALL
Never Completely
I just took Melania to her first day of nursery school after the long summer break.
The cubby room was teeming with well-dressed parents holding infants, crammed together closer than mussels on sea rocks. There were so many people—I think some must have gotten there at five in the morning just to get in first. The parents all sort of had that look like, “This is the end!” or “This is the beginning!” or “I’m finally getting my life back!” Handing over the little ones was a wrenching series of crying fits. Melania and I were cry number seven. It didn’t last long, but the high note à la Maria Callas at the end won us the critics’ choice award.
When I left, I felt a little guilty before I even got to the bottom of the stairs. I got in the car, and there were no daughters in the back, just empty car seats. I wanted to stop by the newsstand, but I knew Paola was waiting anxiously at home, so I went back right away. I walked in, and there was Virginia lying on the couch watching The Lord of the Rings as Ginevra accosted me to ask if she could have the last chocolate egg. Paola was waiting for me in the bedroom, with that dreamy, slightly lost look that cormorants have when they’re flying and their fish falls out of their beak.
“Well?” she said to me.
“It was fine,” I said.
“Come on, tell me what happened!” she replied.
“Nothing,” I said. “She went in like everything was okay, then she started wailing like she was never going to see me again.”
Paola looked at me vacantly, like that fish wriggling in the flying cormorant’s beak when it’s still falling but hasn’t hit the water yet, not knowing whether the fall will be its salvation or its end.
“Which teacher was it?” she asked.
“There were two,” I said. “I’m going to make myself a coffee.”
I left the room, and Virginia followed to ask for some warm milk. I asked her if she wanted sugar and prepared the milk for her. I took my coffee and went down to the studio.
Now here I am. I no longer hear shouting from upstairs, or the pitter-patter of tiny feet, or towers of blocks falling down. Part of me is happy because it knows that in the next few days, the time I have to work will seem to expand like a bubble. The other part suffers from road lag, that thing parents get when they suddenly realize the path ahead of them is free again, but they’re a week behind in their heads, still writing one-handed with a head on their shoulder and cookie crumbs on their shirt.
It gets better day by day, but you never recover completely.
The Best Part (Les Enfants Qui S’aiment)
In the city, on the way back from the mechanic, I’m in traffic waiting for the light to turn. It’s a bright sunny day, it’s almost one, we’re on the bridge, and the air is too warm for September. All the cars have their windows down.
Right beside me in the next lane, there’s a white Twingo. Inside there’s a boy at the wheel and a girl with long, straight brown hair, both twenty or so. They start making out. They kiss and I watch them as I would admire a sunset, or sunrise, or mountain waterfall. I almost feel like an old peeping tom, but I can’t pry myself away. The kisses are long, exhaustive, fiery. They take short breaks in which the girl puts her head on the boy’s shoulder and he strokes her hair. Then she grabs his head, almost forcefully, and they start up again. They’re beautiful. I watch them and think back to when that’s what things used to be like, or better yet when that was the only thing, when it was all kissing and no problems, no money, no mortgage, work somewhere in the future. When responsibility, essentially, was still just a word. When the only important thing was living, nothing else.
At some point a car honks close by. The girl detaches from the boy, almost startled, the boy turns around. The honking came from the guy in the Audi behind them. The light had turned green maybe half a second ago—we can’t even go yet, but he honked. And I think, what kind of person honks at a couple of kids kissing. I almost want to get out of my car, as if it were a personal affront. “Where do you have to go, asshole?” I think. “Now I’m not going to move until you pass by so I can get a look at your face.”
Then my lane starts moving and the guy behind me starts honking too. I make a gesture at him that’s halfway between “sorry” and “go fuck yourself,” and start moving. I see the Twingo with the two young people a few car lengths ahead, with their left turn signal on. When we’re beside each other again the girl looks out the window and our eyes meet for a moment. In that moment, she’s smiling. The smile isn’t for me but that doesn’t matter. It’s the best part of my day today.
When I get back home, Virginia has just returned from school. I find her at the gate with her backpack still on. I get out of the car and open the gate for her. For a moment, I imagine her as a twenty-year-old, and sadly it’s not even that hard to do.
“Daddy,” she says, “what are we eating today?”
“Virginia,” I say, “I just got back myself. How about spaghetti with tuna and olives?”
“Okay, sounds good!” she says.
I see her smile as she runs into the house, and I’m suddenly assailed by a twinge of guilt about the girl in the Twingo.
Because the best part of my day has been replaced by another.
Mobile Dining
The phone rings. There’s no number. I don’t answer.
The phone rings again. There’s no number. I don’t answer.
A few minutes go by. The phone rings again. The number is from Milan. I’m tempted not to answer, but since I don’t know all the Bonelli phone numbers by heart it’s better not to risk it. It could be one of the editors.
“Hello?”
“Hello, good morning. May I speak to the member of the household who does the shopping?”
“The shopping? Sorry, what shopping are you talking about?”
“The shopping.”
“Shopping like the supermarket, farmers’ market, et cetera?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s me.”
“Ah. Good morning, ma’am.”
“I’m a man.”
“Oh, sorry, I hope I didn’t offend you.”
“I’m not offended. Shall we get to the point?”
“Yes, of course. Mister . . . Bussola, right?”
“Yes, go ahead.”
“We’re a new grocery delivery company, a new shopping service.”
“Mmh.”
“We’re reaching out to potential customers to let them know about our grocery delivery services. May I tell you about them?”
“Grocery wha?”
“Home shopping.”
“You mean, you’d like to help me take my groceries home? Like for little old ladies?”
“Not quite, Mr. Bussola. It’s not that we help you with them, we deliver them directly to your home.”
“I see. No thank you.”
“Why not? You’ll find it’s very practical, think about it: you’re working, you don’t know what to make for dinner, there’s nothing in the fridge. You call us or go to our Web site, it only takes a second to register, and you can do your shopping from the office or wherever you like, with a choice of the best products on the market. We deliver the groceries to your home at whatever time you request.”
“Well, listen, besides the fact that I don’t have an office—”
“It was just an
example; you can also do it from your smartphone.”
“I don’t have a smartpho—”
“Then you can call us from your landline.”
“Will you let me finish?”
“Sorry.”
“I was saying, besides no office or smartphone, I enjoy going to the grocery store too much. It’s one of the pleasures of my life, not to mention one of the rare occasions when I get out of the house. I would never delegate it to someone else.”
“I see. May I ask why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you never leave the house?”
“Are you butting into my personal business?”
“No, no, excuse me, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“During the day I work, that’s it. After three, my daughters are home from school.”
“I don’t see the problem.”
“When they get back they dress me up.”
“They dress you up?”
“As a prince.”
“Oh.”
“Sometimes I play Adelino.”
“Adelino?”
“Adelino kidnaps princesses.”
“. . .”
“And I can’t go out dressed like a prince, or Adelino. I mean, I’ve tried, but . . . you know.”
“Sorry, but didn’t you say you go out to do the shopping?”
“What difference does that make? That’s a matter of survival. And besides, I like it too much.”
“But you go dressed as a prince?”
“Not always. Last time I was dressed as Dame Gothel.”
“Dame Gothel?”
“Rapunzel’s mother.”
“Good day, sir.”
Light
In the car, on the way to nursery school:
“Daddy, look! Three Eiffel Towers!”
“Those aren’t Eiffel Towers, Ginevra. They’re electricity towers.”
“No, they’re Eiffel Towers!”
“No, Ginevra. They look like that. But there’s only one real Eiffel Tower and it’s in a place called Paris.”
“That’s where Lollo lives.”
“No. Lollo lives in Arbizzano. But you’re right, where he lives, there’s a big electricity tower. But they’re not really towers—they’re structures that hold power lines. Like for light.”
“Light?”
“Yes, light. When you turn on the lamp in your room at home, the light comes from those wires there.”
She looks out in the direction of the towers.
“There it is, Daddy!”
“What?”
“The light!”
“No, Ginevra, you can’t see the light inside the wires.”
“But I saw it go by!”
“Oh yeah? And where was it going?”
“To my room, because it doesn’t know I’m going to nursery school right now.”
“Don’t worry, when I get home I’ll let it know.”
“Yes. Tell it before you go down to your studio—that way you’ll be able to see.”
“Okay.”
“But tell it to come back upstairs at night because Mommy has to read me stories.”
“I’ll tell it, I’ll tell it.”
“Also, Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“How come you can talk to the light?”
“Hmm. Because when I was little I was really afraid of the dark, but Grandma and Grandpa didn’t want to keep the lights on at night. And so I learned to summon it.”
“How?”
“I would close my eyes really tight and curl up under the covers and then think about something I liked. That way I wasn’t afraid anymore and the light came.”
“Did it come from the wires?”
“Well . . . some from the wires, some from my thoughts.”
“Thoughts can make light, Daddy?”
“Yeah, they can make a lot. Kids’ thoughts especially.”
“So can the Eiffel towers, though.”
“That’s true.”
We arrive at the nursery school. We sit on the bench in front of the cubbies. I put her smock on.
“Daddy, do kids’ thoughts, the ones that make light, have buttons to press like the lamp by my bed?”
“Well, Ginevra, not all of them do. But some do, yes.”
“And where is it?”
I look at her sideways and she stares at me knowingly because she has figured out what comes next.
“Here!” I say, pushing on her side, where I know she’s ticklish.
She bursts out laughing so loud I can’t imagine what she’s thinking about, but it must be a wonderful thought, because it makes such a bright, warm light that it would put even Paris to shame.
Prejudice
I hear the dogs barking, I know that someone’s about to push the buzzer at the front gate. It rings. I’m chopping onions and right in the middle of making sauce, but since Paola is giving Melania a bath, she wins, and I have to go. The intercom has been broken for a while now, so as usual I push aside the curtain to look out. There’s a young black man with a duffel bag on his back. I think about not letting him in. I’m afraid the sauce will start sticking to the saucepan. And all I’d say to him anyway is, “No thanks, I don’t need anything” and then end up buying a packet of tissues for five euros as usual anyway. I get over my laziness because I figure I should at least answer the bell. Before going out I make sure I have at least five euros in my pocket. I go outside and walk up to the gate. He’s smiling, says hello, I say hello back. I wait for him to pull the duffel bag off his back.
Instead he says, “Excuse me, could you please give me some water?” and he holds out an empty plastic bottle.
I feel like a shithead. “Of course,” I say. I take the bottle, go inside, fill it up, grab a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge. I come back out and hand him both. He doesn’t seem to understand.
“Take this one too,” I tell him. “It’s colder.” He smiles, surprised, and thanks me. We say goodbye and he goes off.
When I get back inside the sauce isn’t even sticking a little.
The News Vendor
“So, Mr. Matteo, anything new coming out?”
The news vendor always does this; he asks me every time now. I rue the day that, in order to convince him to put up a flyer, I let slip the phrase, “I did that comic.”
“What do you mean, did it?”
“I did it.”
“In what sense, did it? Drew it? How do you manage to draw so small?”
And from there followed the inevitable catalogue of niceties: “Huh, do you get paid for it?” “Oh, you draw them by hand?” “So, do you write the bubbles or draw the pictures first?”
For once and for all, the bubbles, or rather, the balloons, are not the text. The dialogue is written first and is only put inside the balloons at the end, et cetera.
At any rate, after giving him advance notice about the release of Lukas and Orfani in the last few months—more than anything to stop him from displaying them next to Poochie—and alerting him about all the Cosmo releases (so he’d hold them for me), yesterday I finally informed him of the upcoming debut of Adam Wild, the new Bonelli comic set in Africa, about which I could boast of being one of the illustrators.
Today I stop by.
“There he is!” I hear before I’m even through the door. “Mr. Matteo, there’s someone here who reads Zagor,” the news vendor says merrily. He announces this as if it were an event.
“Oh,” I say. “Great.”
I shoot a glance at the guy. He’s around fifty, well dressed, hefty. He has hands like Gianni Morandi’s.
“What do you do?” the Zagor guy says, point blank.
Caught by surprise, I don’t understand right away. “What?” I ask.
“For Zagor,” he asks.
“Oh, no, no. I don’t draw Zagor. I’m working on a series called Adam Wild,” I say.
“Oh yeah, I saw the ad!” he says. “The one about Africa!”
“That’s the one,” I say.
“And which issue are you drawing in the Africa series?” he says.
“Well, I’m working on two at the same time. I’m inking number eleven and drawing all of number twenty,” I say.
Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast Page 11
