The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  Thus Sandro often finds himself possessing random knowledge about parrots and giraffes or Hitler’s passion for cars—he hasn’t a clue where he first heard the stuff yet there it is, embedded in his brain. Like when he went to meet the parish priest. Things got off to a rough start, since the latter inquired as to why Sandro had never attended church, which was his favorite Gospel, which commandment he liked best. But when their talk turned to beavers, victory rose into view. Father Ermete said the Ten Commandments were fundamental, like the precious green wood with which beavers build their dams. The beavers are the children, see, and they have to build their dam to stop the flow of moral corruption.

  “You must know that beavers are admirable animals,” said Father Ermete, growing feverish. “They are strict monogamists, they mate for life. They have a faithful and loving spirit and they’re devoted to their work.”

  And Sandro nodded in agreement, since, without understanding why, he knew those things too, and he added that beavers are larger than people think, can weigh up to forty pounds, and in prehistoric times there were beavers as big as bears, and . . .

  And Father Ermete gazed at him, leaped to his feet in excitement, and the two continued to talk about beavers and their lives in the woods and by rivers, until somehow they arrived at the astonishing virtues of octopi, animals so intelligent they make fish look retarded.

  Indeed, Sandro would make the perfect leader for the children; knowing the Gospel may be important but only a nutjob could ignore the presence of God in octopi, beavers, and Nature’s far-flung miracles. A nutjob like Mother Greta, for example, who had complained to the cardinal not once but twice about how Father Ermete dedicated his homilies almost exclusively to animals. “The mass is like a documentary film, Your Eminence, the faithful may as well stay on their couches in front of their television sets.” Those were the exact words of that vile nun who knows nothing about religion and less about what makes the world turn. Case in point: the cardinal told Father Ermete all about it while unburdening him of two crates of exceptional white wine that Father Ermete’s brother makes on his small vineyard in the hills of Candia, and the men laughed and raised a toast.

  Sandro can raise a toast too, for he is officially the new catechist. And although it strikes him as ridiculous to be here teaching religion in this badly lit room papered with drawings of Jesus, Sandro looks around, takes a deep breath, and begins to usher the children toward Paradise. Or someplace nearby.

  “All right. My name is Sandro. Don’t bother telling me your name because I’ll forget it immediately. How about I just point a finger when I’m speaking to one of you, okay?”

  Everyone nods, and a hand shoots up beside Luna. It’s the weirdly dressed kid who’d been at the hospital with her. He has on an extra large checked wool sweater and over that a checked vest.

  “Excuse me, Mister Sandro, why’s Mother Greta not here?”

  And before he can get the last word out a kid twice his size sporting a beard of peach fuzz smacks him upside the head.

  “That’s easy. Mother Greta’s not here because I’m here. Why? Would you guys rather have the Nazi nun?”

  They all laugh and shake their heads. Sandro smiles back and crosses his legs, feeling as if he’s already conquered them. Being a catechist isn’t so hard. He might even have a talent for this. Of course that’s the case; Sandro’s sure of it. He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, to two water stains in the shape of Sardinia and Corsica, although he’s really looking at the sky beyond. He resumes talking.

  “Because if you like that old hag just say the word and I’ll go get her.” They laugh again, two girls hug each other, the big kid smacks Grandpa Kid on the back of the head again, to vent his joy. But most importantly there’s Luna, who tries to hide her smile with her ghost-white hand. Sandro looks at her, and she quickly fixes her eyes on the ground. She tries to suppress her smile but it’s no use.

  “All right, kids, let’s get started. Marino told me that last time you read a passage from the Gospel and analyzed it. Let’s us do the same thing today, okay?”

  They nod and pick up their Bibles. A blond boy in a Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt with a pair of sunglasses resting on his head says Marino already chose what to read for today.

  “He did? All right, which one then?”

  “Genesis 19.”

  Genesis 19. Where the hell is that? Couldn’t they just say the page number? Plus his Bible is thousands of pages long, a tiny cube-shaped affair his mom has kept on her nightstand for her entire life and never once opened. The words Pocket Bible are written on the cover, and the text inside is so small that the lines look like layers of black streaks. Sandro looks up and peeks at the kids, who are open to the first page. Right, makes sense Genesis would be at the start of the story. There it is, and there’s the number 16 in a slightly larger font, then 17, 18—here we go.

  “O.K., guys, who’d like to read?”

  The same blond boy informs him that last time the catechist read.

  “O.K. then, pipe down and listen up, because afterward I’ll ask you what happened and we’ll analyze it, O.K.?” Sandro coughs, takes a breath, and begins:

  Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. And he said, “Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” They said however, “No, but we shall spend the night in the square.” Yet he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he prepared a feast for them, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

  Someone raises a hand and, despite having his head buried in that microscopic book, Sandro notices it. It’s the same kid in the vest seated next to Luna.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Sandro, what’s ‘unleavened bread’?”

  “It’s . . . well, it’s simple. You should know the answer yourselves. Anyone know what it means?”

  Silence. Everyone endeavors to disappear. Behind their Bible, behind their classmates. Even Luna becomes anxious; she stares at the ground and chews her lip. Sandro doesn’t want to embarrass her, but the problem is that no one in this room knows what unleavened bread is, Sandro least of all. So he has to make something up.

  “It’s a grain, an ancient kind of grain they ate back then. Like beans.”

  “Aren’t beans legumes?” asks the boy in the vest.

  “I said like beans, like! No more interrupting. We’re getting off track,” says Sandro. Then the big kid with the beard smacks Grandpa Kid in the back of the head again, and Grandpa Kid apologizes and looks back down at his Bible.

  “See, kids, the moral of this wonderful passage is to welcome people with open arms. Two strangers knock on the door and what does Lot do? He rushes to welcome them. He invites them into his home. What a wonderful gesture. Think about what you or your parents would do in that situation—would you have been that generous?”

  “Things were different back then,” says a little girl in a grown-up skirt and white button-down, by all appearances the world’s worst enemy—a lawyer. “There are a lot of bad elements around nowadays. Our house got robbed three times in two months, even after my dad put bars in the windows. Besides, those two were angels. Of course he was kind to them. My dad would have invited two angels in too. I’d like to see Lot greet a couple of gypsies.”

  “Okay, thanks. Let’s not lose sight of the gist of the story—the kind reception. Two angels arrive and Lot invites them into his home. What happens next?”

  Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.”

  Sandro breaks o
ff. He goes back and rereads the passage. That’s what it says. He stares at the words the way the kids stare at him—alert, dead silent. Everyone except for Grandpa Kid who, unsurprisingly, has his hand up again.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Sandro, what do they mean ‘relations’?”

  “They don’t mean anything. They wanted to have relations with the angels. That’s all. But that doesn’t matter, let’s keep going.”

  “What does ‘relations’ mean?”

  “Nothing. Like, bonding, you know, the way people bond over video games.”

  “But what does that mean then? Those men wanted to play video games with the angels? How can you bond with an angel?”

  “No, you can’t bond with an angel, no—whatever, let’s move on, I said no more interruptions!”

  The one thing is to forge ahead, get past this story about the maniac neighbors and relations with angels and arrive at the moral of the story. There must be one and it must be good and religious—this is the Bible for fuck’s sake.

  But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, and said, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like.”

  Sandro stiffens once more. Who the hell wrote this? Is this really the holy book you have to read to go to heaven? Where are the loaves and fishes multiplied to feed the hungry? Where are the Samaritans helping their neighbors? Here the best neighbors can expect is rape and torture. How can you read this filth to minors?

  Sandro draws a blank. He closes that tiny terrifying book and looks up at the wide-eyed stares of the kids. They too are stock-still, except for the blond kid who told him which passage to read. That little son of a whore is yukking it up.

  The others start laughing too, hitting one another, shouting things like, “Let’s have relations! Let’s have relations!” The little girl dressed like a lawyer points straight at Luna and says, “Her! She’s never had relations with a man. Give her to those people!” Luna looks at her. “What? And you have?” “More than you!” replies the girl. Luna sticks out her middle finger, and at that point Grandpa Kid gets between the girls, puts both hands out, and says, “Lord, please, let’s not lose our cool. Let’s not lapse into vulgarity. Remember, we must always maintain a certain—” then nothing, because in the general excitement he is struck by a wave of smacks, pinches, punches—everything human hands can think up to hurt someone.

  “Shut up!” shouts Sandro. “Sit still and shut up or I’ll call Mother Greta.”

  But no one falls for it. Or maybe they can’t hear him amid the screams, the laughter, the falling chairs, the blond kid grabbing the hand of the girl next to him and trying to rub it against the crotch of his designer jeans. “Oh Monica, let’s have relations together, let’s have relations together!”

  Sandro yells for them to be quiet and separates the kids, his teeth clenched and his hands making fists. The anger rises to his head and starts climbing up the few remaining hairs on his head. But they’re fine and cut short, which may explain why the anger turns back, descends to his throat, and streams out by itself, and after a minute Sandro hears this cry escape his lips, bounce off the walls and the kids’ heads and the magic marker drawings of Jesus, a cry that, returning to him, goes like this: “Enough, knock it off G—dammit!”

  Just like that, plain and simple, during his very first catechism lesson Sandro has blasphemed in the convent. And afterward there’s finally silence, a silence signaling the opposite of peace, like the silence after a gunshot, after thunder strikes overhead, and you keep quiet, not breathing, and check to see if you’re still alive.

  The kids look at each other, speechless. A shocked Grandpa Kid covers his ears with his hands as if the curse were still hovering in the air, waiting to ambush him.

  It makes Sandro feel even dirtier, more revolting, more guilty. He’d like to say something, to try to make up for it, but at this point he can’t trust what might escape his lips, so he keeps silent. He looks away, at the walls, at the window framing the sky strung with clouds, and Sandro thinks he’d like to be one of those clouds out there, shapeless, going where the wind takes him, and all it does is pass over and perhaps release lots of rain on the ground, and the drops of rain on the ground disappear without a trace, and . . .

  “Amen.”

  Yes, “Amen.” That’s the word that breaks the deafening silence. “Amen.” And it came from none other than Luna. She had taken off her sunglasses, her eyes were crystal clear, almost transparent, her expression serious but her lips quivering. In the end she gives in and smiles.

  So who cares? He’s not here to evangelize the youth. He doesn’t give a shit about these kids. Let them join the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Manson Family. All that matters to him is that Luna is now beaming at him.

  Sandro smiles back. He really smiles. For the first time in six months.

  It’s such an easy thing to do, when it’s not impossible.

  MEMORY TSUNAMI

  It was just your average Over-40 championship soccer match when the weather took center stage, painting the field of Club Versilia 2000 white with snow. A stunned referee Marchetti had to interrupt play. “We were playing well,” says Cantini, the top scorer for VersilFungo-Ristorante Mamma Rosa. “We were outclassing and outrunning Mastro Chiavaio, but with all the snow we couldn’t stay on our feet. It’s too bad because in my opinion . . . ”

  You turn the page. Clearly the star player is going to say that if they hadn’t stopped play his team would have won handily, and below that the goalie for the other team will say the same thing, only vice versa.

  On the next page there’s talk of the marble crisis in Carrara. Once upon a time they made a killing selling it across the globe. Then one day in addition to the marble they sold the equipment to extract the stone from the mountains, and that was that.

  You keep flipping through, already knowing which headlines you’ll find, which photos, every word of every article in your stack of newspapers. There are people who take pride in reading a paper or two a day, but you, Serena, read fifteen. The only difference is that every morning they go to the newsstand to pick up the day’s paper. You, on the other hand, stay shut inside the house and flip through the same old papers from March 23rd, the day time stopped.

  Gemma rescued them from the library for you. The woman who works there gets her hair cut at the shop and just gave them to her, seeing as no one will ever come looking for them besides you. You said you wanted them for a keepsake. As if that were a day to remember, as if it were possible to forget.

  You began reading them from the top down, every article, the classifieds and ads, and six months later you’re still doing the same. By now you know all the pages by heart, which is a staggering undertaking but you don’t care. What you’re after is even more implausible: you want to know why on earth that day, that godforsaken day that should be ripped out of every calendar in the world and burned and have its ashes spit upon, Luca asked you to buy him the paper.

  He’d never read the paper before, never even chanced to leaf through it. What was so important about that day? Did he want to know about the snow on the soccer field? The marble crisis? The hunting dog abandoned on the side of the highway that a month later found its way back home and bit its owner? You don’t know, you can’t know, maybe Luca simply wanted a copy of the paper printed on the same day he became an adult, and you’re here chasing a thousand phantoms. Enough. You gather up the papers and throw them on the nightstand. Then you pick up your blue notebook.

  In it you’d copied out the messages Luca had sent from Biarritz, that godforsaken place up north by the ocean. That way you kept them all together, and they became a memento for you, for him. Because memories are beautiful. To look back at what you used to be like makes you smile. Memories lend your life warmth. Yet then what
happened happened, and now your life is over, and memories are all that’s left. They have nothing to lend warmth to, so they catch fire, asphyxiate you, you no longer know where you are. And the more you try to escape them, the more they dog you.

  We’re headed back from catechism, and the air is weird. I ride behind Zot and the wind slithers inside my hood and runs through my hair. It’s not cold but I feel it swirling around my glasses, riffling my eyebrows, tickling my neck. That must be why I’m laughing.

  Or else it’s because I’m kind of happy.

  I had been expecting the massive jaw and evil eyes of Mother Greta, and instead she’d never showed. Not even afterward in the courtyard. In fact we walked out and the new catechist hung back with Zot and me. He asked us what kind of music we listened to. In his opinion, asking people’s names and what they do and which sign they are is pointless. Finding out their favorite bands told you all you needed to know.

  But I didn’t answer, since I don’t know much about music and I was afraid to say something stupid. Mr. Sandro kept insisting. “Go on, name a group you like, a singer, there’s no wrong answer. It’s like naming your favorite color. They’re your tastes. That’s all.” And I was about to tell him that I love Michael Jackson when Zot fired off a bunch of super weird names of singers he likes and the only two I can remember now are Claudio Villa and Beniamino Gigli. Mr. Sandro looked at him and burst out laughing. Then he turned to me. “Sorry, Luna, but why do you hang around with your grandpa? You should leave him at home by the fireplace where he belongs.”