Sandro has spent the best nights of his life that way. And perhaps that says more about his social life, but what’s the point in pretending otherwise? The best Saturday nights in his twenties were when he would jump in his car, enter at Versilia, and decide north or south. Once, on a night when he couldn’t buck the need to disappear someplace, Sandro took the highway for Florence, then for Bologna, and from there drove all the way to Rimini. Coast to coast, from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic. By the time he got back home the sun was up. His mom had been worried but his dad couldn’t stop smiling. He patted him on the back and winked at him, pleased his son was spending his nights doing what he no longer could. And Sandro grinned back, slyly, knowingly, because it was better that way, better to make his dad think that he had blown his money on a fancy dinner and condoms to chasten the chick he’d taken out. Instead it had gone to pay for tolls, gas to get nowhere, and a sandwich and beer consumed alone at an Autogrill in Rimini, where Sandro had felt good to be that far away.
And he’s feeling good now, in Rambo’s jeep, even if he’s not alone. As a matter of fact it’s crowded and chaotic. He checks the side-view mirrors and sees these two tiny hands, one here and one there, one hand belonging to Zot and the other blindingly white hand belonging to Luna, minuscule hands dangling from the open windows and flapping in the wind, like birds with their wings out. Sandro would like to be that weightless, that free, the wind blowing him about and carrying him off. But for the time being it’s enough to see the kids’ hands in the mirror, and every so often he looks up and finds Serena’s face. He doesn’t want to look at her too long but his eyes won’t listen to reason. He commands them to look at the road but they spring back up every chance they get. If there’s a better place than this one, with his hand on the wheel and the open road in front of him and all the wonders to marvel at back there, well, you’ll have to tell Sandro yourself, because he’s never heard of it.
Come to think of it, don’t waste your breath. He doesn’t care.
The others chatter and study their maps after every town we pass, and that fool Sandro at the wheel spends most of the time looking at you in the mirror. Not you, Serena, you fix your eyes on the seat in front of you and try not to notice the cars overtaking you, the campers overtaking you, even trucks bearing huge loads and old men in hats overtake you. Everything is going faster than this jeep, which rocks back and forth and rattles like fifty broken washing machines trying to clean a stone. But really you’re practically stopped.
And that’s just fine. Actually, you’d prefer it if he did stop or better yet shifted into reverse and brought you back to Forte dei Marmi.
It’s the first time you’ve traveled this far from home. The first time in your life post-Luca, that is. Hardly a life but you don’t know what else to call it, so that’s what we say, and even the word home doesn’t make much sense, seeing as you don’t have one anymore. Not even you know what it is you’re afraid of leaving behind, Serena. Maybe the streets that take you back to Luca, the pain that sits on your chest whenever you see something that reminds you of him; hearing, smelling, touching—all five senses gang up to make sure you don’t get a moment’s peace, to reinflict the pain you’ve pushed away, and yet for some frightening reason, having it around calms you down, since it has become the one thing you can count on every day. Maybe that’s why you don’t want to travel far; you don’t want to leave your pain alone and unguarded. Even if no one would ever want to take that from you, and besides there’s no way you can leave it behind: this pain follows you everywhere, it clings to you even on the highway in the middle of the Apennines, surrounded by woods and valleys and villages built who knows how many centuries ago on mountaintops to get away from a world that may never have been very good. You’ve lost sight of the sea. You try to get your bearings, to figure out what side it’s on, but you can’t tell where Forte dei Marmi is nor your street nor the cemetery.
By now that’s your center. Actually, it’s not even a center—it’s the only piece of the world where you somehow manage to stay on your feet. It’s like when the amusement parks and circuses used to pitch tents for the summer. On the one hand you were sad because the cats in town began disappearing. Your mother blamed the gypsies, said they stole them to feed to the lions and tigers, which had always sounded like bullshit to you and you never believed her but, honestly, the cats were disappearing. And yet you were happy, too, because in addition to the circus came the amusement parks and their rides. In a corner by the sea was your favorite, the Tagada, which was practically just a platform balanced on a pole where kids sat in a circle while the platform spun around and around and you had to stay seated and tough it out. But there was always this little punk in a vest and jeans rocking El Camperos and a shark-tooth necklace, his hair short in front and long in back. As soon as the ride started up, he’d go stand in the middle of the Tagada, stick his hands in his pockets, and whistle to show he could take it in stride. And he’d move his feet in such a way that the whole ride spun in circles while he stood still in the center. You have no idea who that tamarro was. You wouldn’t see him all year but when the Tagada arrived he’d materialize in the middle of the ride. And now that the amusement park has stopped coming, who can say what happened to him, whether he’s still alive, what he does, if he found another axis to stand on and play cool. You don’t know, Serena, all you know is how much you’ve come to resemble that boy; the world spins around you warped and at warp speed while you try to stay on your feet in the center, which is made up of a bed, a street, and a cemetery, and if you move even just a foot you’re sure you will fall and hit the ground and the world will spit you out into nothing.
In fact you should be there right now, in bed, the shutters closed and your head on the pillow. Instead the road runs on and the villages go by, and Sandro calls the kids’ attention to a sign that says WELCOME TO LUNIGIANA, with a drawing of a moon and a photo of those stone statues your little girl was telling you about. Luna and Zot look at one another and shout, “Yeeeeee!” They really believe this business about Luca sending messages, but you don’t, you can’t let yourself believe. Luna is young and has time to adjust. You on the other hand have reached an age when the damage is beyond repair, when all that’s left are dents and scratches that add up to one big wreck answering to your name. You mustn’t give in, Serena, you must hold fast to something solid, true. Except nothing in this jeep fits that description; everything wobbles and totters as you officially enter Lunigiana. So you try to hang on to the kids’ joyful “Yeeeee!” after every little village and to Luna’s eyes; even behind her dark shades you can see them. You don’t need to see them to know what your daughter’s eyes look like. They’re happy, wide open and full of excitement as they take in everything passing by outside. Happy, too, is her voice as she touches your arm and asks you something.
Only you didn’t hear what. You look, you take a breath. “Sorry, Luna, I didn’t catch that,” you say, and you try to smile at your daughter, you try to stay strong for her.
“Sorry, Luna, I didn’t catch that,” Mom says.
So I ask her again if there’s any chance she brought a tape to listen to.
“Tapes? Who listens to tapes anymore?”
In the front Mr. Sandro raises his hand. There’s no car radio but he brought a tape player and three cassettes he made specially for this trip. But Zot brought some too, a whole bagful Ferro is rummaging through. He handles it so roughly the plastic sounds like it’ll tear. He holds the bag up and examines what’s inside. “Gino Latilla, Giorgio Consolini, Nilla Pizzi, the Quartetto Cetra . . . ”
“Anything recorded after World War II?” Mom asks.
Immediately Mr. Sandro says that he has something, that his tapes are more modern, or modern enough. But Mom ignores him. Besides, there’s nothing left to discuss; Ferro drops the bag of tapes and holds one up in the air.
“Here we go! Bow to the king!”
I can�
�t see what it is, then Ferro removes the tape and hands me the case. I hold it to my face. The words Claudio Villa, Emperor of the Italian Songbook appear above a photo of a man dressed as a matador, with that little hat matadors wear, like an upside-down flowerpot.
“Oh no, not Claudio Villa,” says Mom all desperate.
“But Villa is one of the greats,” says Zot. “His vocals will break your heart.”
“Don’t count on it,” says Mom. And Mr. Sandro immediately sides with her and says Villa is unlistenable, that his tapes are better, that he made them specially for this nice trip and—
“Save it for your fag stags,” says Ferro. “Now quit insulting the great Claudio. Pipe down and brace yourselves for a trip to melody heaven.”
He rams the cassette into the tape player and out comes this screech of violins and a voice that screeches even louder and makes my head spin.
When winter comes to town
and snow coats the ground
I hug my bundle of pain
and hum my refrain
heading out for far lands
“Oh, hell yes!” says Ferro. He lifts his hand and twirls it around in the chaotic air. Next to me Zot does the same. “‘Chimney Sweep’—now this is a song. How do we pump up the volume on this contraption?”
Mom points out to him that her ears are already ringing, and Mr. Sandro says it’s already as loud as it will go. So Ferro adds his own crackly voice to Mr. Villa’s.
I fly like a swift,
not knowing what I’ll find,
without a ray of sunshine,
without a cozy nest.
Chimney Sweep’s the only name I know,
never felt my mom’s caress,
never got from her a kiss,
the only mother I ever had was the snow
He turns back to look at Zot, the only one to give him satisfaction. But Zot has stopped twirling his hand in the air. Actually his hands are busy covering his face.
“You okay, Zot?” he asks.
No answer.
“Yo, kid. What’s up?”
“Nothing, sorry.” His voice is trembling so much you can hardly understand him. “It’s just this bit, this part with the mom . . . fast forward, Grandfather, please.” Then he stops talking and tries to shake it off with a few heaves that might be coughs. But Zot’s not coughing; he’s crying. It seems so unlikely. Zot always smiles. The only times he isn’t smiling are when he’s laughing. Now he’s all hunched and bent over the seat because of the story of a boy who sweeps chimneys and doesn’t have a mom.
I don’t know what to say or do but I try. I put my arm around his shoulder and squeeze. “Oh, Zot, it’s just a song.”
So it’s Christmas, Chimney Sweep,
put it out of mind,
so every child’s got his fireside,
his toys beside him in a heap,
when you ask if you can play
you’re treated awful meanly:
“Don’t touch,” he says, “go away,
run along and sweep the chimney.”
“Son of a bitch,” says Ferro. “That spoiled little shit with his toys and his warm fire. Chimney Sweep ought to kick his ass.”
No one comments. Or I do, actually. “You said it, Mr. Ferro,” I tell him. I didn’t mean to but that’s what came out, since, well, that rich kid really bothered me. And I know it’s a song and that kid doesn’t actually exist, but in the real world there are a lot of people meaner than him, and no one ever does anything to them and they continue to be as mean as they feel like. So if this kid in the song got what’s coming to him that would be music to my ears. But nope, nothing, all poor Chimney Sweep does is sing.
The violins grow louder, as does the voice of Mr. Villa, and they give it one more shot, planting the song deep down in your skull. Then the song is over.
Mom says, “Hallelujah” and sigh. Zot dries his eyes and Ferro does too before asking how to rewind the tape.
“Why?” we all ask, terrorized to guess what he wants. Unfortunately, we guess right: “Because we’ve got to hear it again. Suck it up.”
But nobody offers to help, so he tries doing it himself, smacking and punching the machine, and all he succeeds in doing is turning the radio off for a while.
“It’s not fair,” I say. And I don’t just think it. I actually say it out loud. Because, sheesh, it’s not the littlest bit fair.
“What’s not fair, Luna?”
“That they treat that poor guy so mean.”
“Who?”
“Chimney Sweep. Why do they treat him like that?”
“Because he’s black,” says Ferro. “What with working in the chimneys he’s all black, so people steer clear of him.”
“I get that. But people steer clear of me because I’m all white. What do you have to be for people to like you?”
For a moment no one answers me, in part, I think, because there is no answer. But then Mr. Sandro goes, “You know, Luna, I think that in this world, if you want people to like you, you have to be as gray as they are. We’re not gray, and they make us pay for that fact every day.”
I don’t think he even realizes how beautiful what he said is. But he must when he sees all of us in the backseat staring at him, speechless. He turns around for a minute to see what’s going on and I smile nice and big, and Zot most definitely does too, and Mom turns the other way but not immediately. For a minute she looks back at him too, and this silence is really beautiful and could last all the way to Pontremoli.
Instead it lasts a few seconds, until Ferro gets back to hitting the tape player and somehow manages to rewind the song and Claudio Villa starts singing about poor Chimney Sweep again, only not from the beginning.
“Listen to those golden pipes. Shit, Villa’s the greatest, hands down; other singers are shit under his shoe.”
“You’re right, Grandfather, he was great. Although I prefer it when Robertino sings this song.”
Ferro whips around, his hands gripping the seat. “What the hell did you say? Robertino?”
“Yes, in my opinion, his version of ‘Chimney Sweep’ is more intense.”
“Hold it a minute, you’re comparing that half-pint Robertino to King Claudio Villa? Watch what you say or I’ll toss you out of this car.”
“Excuse me,” I say, “who is Robertino?”
“What you need to know, Luna, is that Robertino was very famous in the glorious sixties,” says Zot. “He was a boy with a heavenly voice.”
“Listen to him. Heavenly.” Ferro spits a laugh. “No one in Italy’s ever heard of Robertino. He was big in Denmark, Germany, those countries up north.”
“He was very popular in Russia too.”
“My point exactly. What the hell would you know? He was export-quality, like mozzarella with dioxins, like hazelnut oil. Claudio Villa on the other hand was an artist. You know what’s written on his tombstone? No little angels, no bullshit from the Gospel your friend the catechist here pushes. There’s just something the great Claudio said: ‘Life, you’re beautiful. Death, you suck.’ Period. What a maestro. What a poet. And what a voice he had, listen to that—how do you raise the volume on this thing?”
“It’s all the way up! It’s all the way up!”
Ferro leans back into his seat and listens to King Villa once again arriving at that sad finale of this super sad song.
Only, like all artists, Mr. Claudio Villa is an unpredictable person and this time decides to do the finale totally different. His voice begins climbing toward that high note and screeching like before but all of a sudden it dips, his voice sinks, trembles, and crumples up into a low, twisted note, and then, along with the music, drops dead.
“Whoa, what’s going on?” screams Ferro. He’d had his hand on his heart, braced to sing along to the finale, and now he uses both to s
trangle the tape player.
“Easy,” says Sandro. “It must be the batteries. The batteries must be dead.”
“Then put some new ones in pronto!”
“I don’t have any.”
“Goddammit! What about you all?”
We shake our heads.
“Well then, we’ll have to hit the next Autogrill. There’s one before Pontremoli.”
“No way,” goes Mom, “we’ll pick them up in Pontremoli. We can survive without music for a while. In fact we’ll be just fine.”
Ferro turns around, sneers, rattles the tape player again, but it only makes a noise like bits slamming against other bits.
And then, out of nowhere, Zot shouts, “Aha!” He springs into the back of the jeep and starts rummaging through the stuff we packed. Ferro watches him, praying he’s brought batteries. Mom looks on, baffled. And me, I don’t even bother to look, because unfortunately I already know what he’s up to.
No one else gets it until Zot returns clutching his accordion, broken and stitched together, with pieces of scotch tape dangling off it.
The Breaking of a Wave Page 33
