The unruly gang (am I way too ruly?) clambers off at the next stop, shoving each other out the doors with high masculine spirits.
Ah, youth; how I hate them.
The damaged doors opened for the rabble, but now the doors won’t close. Now our arthritic train cannot move. The stoic conductor examines the damaged doors, tries to heal them in the heat. He wears a dark blue uniform of thick cloth but seems unaffected by the southern climate, while sweat falls from my sleeves. Father Silas said that men in Italy do not wear shorts, that shorts are for children only. The conductor and another Italian man work to coax the doors to close.
On the station platform, I see my pretty cousin Eve and Tamika with the gang that smashed the doors. No sign of Ray-Ray, who can disappear for hours, days. Why are Eve and Tamika on the platform? For pancakes and syrup? Did they jump off at the wrong stop? Why do so many people think track suits are a good look?
I leap from the carriage just as the afflicted doors finally close, and the train and stoic conductor shunt away without me. The suburban station sign and walls are crowded with Day-Glo graffiti faithfully imitating American-style tags, going for a Fort Apache, the Bronx look. A new empire paints over an old empire, and the rebels all agree on hairdos.
“Hey!” calls my cousin. “I met these Italian guys at the beach this afternoon. Really. This is Giorgio and Pepino and Santino and I don’t know all of them yet. They invited me to a party. Want to come with?”
Tamika is not sure. “Maybe I’ll go back to the hotel.” Tamika is smart and she is shy; we both try to avoid crowds. “The next train won’t be long.” Tamika has put something on her white sneakers and her feet glow like lamps as she moves away.
“Well, then you come with me.” My cousin Eve drags me by the arm. “Please!”
I have a sick feeling; I have no desire to go to this party, but I worry about her going there alone. She likes to move, likes to jog and dance, is enthused by the world, where I am reticent, hesitant.
My cousin says, “We can buy beer right here at the station.” Eve is betting that cold beer will appeal to me; she knows me well.
“You will come?” says Santino from the beach. “It’s a very nice apartment for real in a very nice freaking party. Yes, you may also enjoy it.”
. . .
In a line we pass the military base and rows of monochrome flats, a line of pedestrians in a drab herniated Italy, walking to a party and party to an Italy that has little to do with tourist brochures and silk suits and Bernini’s genius marble limbs and asses.
We walk inland, away from the sea, around a dun hill and heartbroken canal (Oh, what gummy toxic sludge dumped there?) and a cluster of Chinese factories and a military base with dark green tanks, World War II-vintage tanks like hunched guardians either side of the gate. A fat bee accompanies us for a few moments, some kind of Mother Nature fugue I enjoy, then the rotund bee rejects us for greener pastures. Odd to think of all the centuries of history here, but to a local bee it means little, does not alter its minutes.
Outside, we can hear the party before finding stairs like a ladder into a crowd, a crowd spilling into a dim hall from the main rooms. In the living room leans a pole lamp with blue light bulbs, so we all look reasonably unhealthy, and every surface crammed with glasses, ashtrays, vats of red wine, cloudy Ouzo, grappa, tins of German lager, and green bottles of Italian beer.
Past the pink sofa hides an invisible but loud stereo: Jesus and Mary Chain ply distorted fuzz-box ditties. Are Jesus and Mary Chain still churning out discs? I liked them when I was younger; funny to hear them buzzing in this other world. A circle is smoking dope, and a young woman is coughing up a lung. The fuming joint finds its way to us. Of course I feel nothing at first, and nothing will come of nothing.
A man flashes a glassine envelope of coke to the young woman. A neighbour, we are told by Pepino and Santino — Eve can tell them apart. The neighbour lives across the hall, a party crasher attracted by the crowd, the women. The neighbour is not invited, he is not welcome, he does not carry himself well.
“Come stai?” asks the person who is Pepino or Santino.
“You are from America?” asks the other.
“I’m not from America,” I say.
“Yes, you are.”
“No, Canada.”
“Ah, Canada. That’s much better culture.”
“Bene.”
“So, Mister Canada,” asks a third man, “do you like Napoli?”
“Si, Mister Italy, certo, very much, molto simpatico, it’s amazing.”
“Mister Canada calls me Mister Italy. Ha ha ha.” Eve laughs with them.
The unwelcome neighbour offers coke on his wrist to Eve and the younger woman, he says, “My coke is very fine. Just think, all the way from Ecuador to Napoli and to your pretty nose. Think of that. I bring it here in crates of bananas.”
“Don’t listen to his big talk,” says Mister Italy. “He doesn’t bring it here.”
“You should watch your fat mouth,” says the neighbour.
“Bananas!” says my cousin. “Bananas have big hairy spiders! I hate spiders!”
Eve gets mad if I laugh about her spider phobia, my cousin very serious about this fear, as if spiders are hiding now in the small amount of coke. I wonder if I could get some of that man’s product. We are sweating, and I drink cold beer I bought at the train station. The party-crasher neighbour with the coke is after the women. Like me.
Mister Italy tells him he should leave the party. Mister Italy turns away, the unwelcome neighbour sucker-punches Mister Italy, and the young man drops, holding his slim face.
“Get out!” shout Santino and the others. They insult the neighbour, slap him, push him out the door to go back to his apartment. He crosses the dim hall; all the doors are wide open.
Eve looks at the table as if there might be spiders there.
“That cake,” she asks me. “Is that icing or mold? It looks like mold.”
“I’m going with icing,” I say and sample some.
“I can’t believe you ate that.”
“I’m starving. Besides, I’m more pleasant when I eat.”
In the fetal position, a bearded young man rocks in the corner, arms hugging his knees while three women look bored. They are all younger than me, the new norm; now I am always the oldest person present as music plays loudly and wild ones turn this way and that, shouting into songs and bright conversations.
I’m happy when I eat. Did I say that already? I’m losing my mind. I don’t want to be the guy with his fly open or food stains decorating a shirt front, but I see it in my future like a train approaching and not long before it arrives.
A stoned woman walks past with a half-open blouse, the curves of two breasts much revealed. Rare once to see even a lady’s bare ankle. Blouses fling open and life goes on. A startling blue vein runs down one breast to disappear into her blouse. Bright as a streak of blue paint or a cobalt serpent, and she is so happy to make public the blood pulsing in her vein.
My high school girlfriend worried about veins on her high school breasts. Your breasts are beautiful, I tried to reassure her, but she worried about a tiny vein. And this Italian girl so happy to show the bright paint of her breast, a giant vein moving blood like a map inside her omniscient breast, a scaffolding in there holding up the 3-D model. Blood is red as wine so why is a vein blue? Why am I blue? I wish to be canny, captivating: is that too much to ask?
The neighbour motors back from his apartment carrying a staple gun, the neighbour crosses the hall, crosses the room and puts the staple gun to Mister Italy’s thigh, driving in a heavy duty staple. Mister Italy leaps, tears springing out of his eyes, Mister Italy flees the room yelling and cursing.
“I’m worried about him,” says Eve.
“Is he all right?” says the stoned woman. “Does he even know his way?”
“To what?” I ask.
The stoned woman disappears down the hall of muffled echoes. Later she comes back to t
he sofa and says to my cousin, “Don’t worry.”
Good advice. I try to not study her sea-blue vein, though I find it fascinating and would pay money to look carefully and touch it, but I do not believe she would be interested in such an examination.
The neighbour wanders off to the kitchen, still wielding the staple gun; everyone in the kitchen is shouting normally. The party in the living room rages around me, roller coaster voices, the droning fuzz-tone of Jesus and Mary Chain picking up speed and slowing to a halt.
The stoned young woman with the cobalt vein on her breast dances jerkily in the living room, blouse coming completely asunder, her skin taking in the air, the last button no longer intimate with eyelet, free. I assume Cobalt Girl is aware of her blouse and breasts out there like vivid menus, though who knows. Above her neck hovers her very own brain, choreographing her dance in conjunction with our music and shouting.
My cousin pins her mouth to my ear. I enjoy Eve’s mouth at my ear.
“What?” I whisper into her warm hair.
“Have you not noticed?” My cousin directs my gaze with her eyes.
This young woman’s brown nipples are extremely thin and long, like tiny twigs, where a bird might perch. Now, would milk squirt a greater distance from such narrow nipples? A question of physics, pressure. And my cousin’s nipples so tiny and pale pink, glimpsed once in a hotel room, in repressed memory. Forget that image.
Cobalt Girl dances with Santino, dances with elbows close to her waist, hands and wrists outward as she shimmies, almost the Twist. I would like to start a new dance craze. Do the Mashed Potato. Do the Staple Gun, do the Lazy Lawyer, do the Dee-vor-cee dividing his assets and sheckels.
Santino grins at me, Santino whispers in her ear and they dance some more and then they stop.
“You must watch, my new friends,” says Santino. “In an American movie we saw a dancer do this.”
The other, is his name Pepini? Penino? My brain is not to be relied on. Where is my drink?
Santino takes one paper match and splits the middle of the match so that there is an opening. Cobalt Girl takes the match from Santino and carefully places the opening of the one match to her breast so that the match grips her long nipple. Santino hands her another such match.
She lights both matches, pointing each head up and away from her skin, then Cobalt Girl dances proudly in front of us, shifting her hips and smiling at her party trick.
She says something in Italian.
“Do you see this in Canada?” Santino translates.
“No.”
“No, I thought not. Not in Canada, eh.”
Is that an Italian “eh” or a Canadian “eh”?
The stoned woman dances and moves her head side to side, she’s seen this sultry style of dancing on videos, moves so that her hair swings about like a star on celluloid. I was worried about the small flames hurting the skin of her breasts, but instead the burning matches cause her swinging hair to catch fire, perhaps a tad too much flammable hairspray or some weird gel.
Eve points a finger like a gun, says, “That isn’t good.”
Santino looks from us to Cobalt Girl, stops grinning, and calmly throws his drink on her, so I pour the remainder of my beer over her burning hair. Others add their drinks. It is as if we are allowed to urinate on her. Cobalt Girl is crying, tears and drinks tracking down over her bare breasts and snuffed black matches, Cobalt Girl runs to the bathroom, hair smoldering like a volcano. It’s kind of sexy. Where is the volcano, I mean the washroom? Where am I?
Sometimes when travelling I must look about and remind myself where I am, what new kingdom I gaze at. I like that feeling of being momentarily lost, of a brief gap, of having different eyes, new eyes upon gnarled trees and brightest scooter. I am near Napoli on a scratchy pink couch, and I am prying open a cold beer that is warm. Sometimes I feel like that dead Roman rat I saw beneath the trees. Sometimes I feel like a chocolate bar with too many bite marks. Sometimes I feel the world is a very beautiful white T-shirt.
Another giant joint makes the rounds, strong and harsh behind my teeth. I feel instantly stoned or re-stoned, I’m not sure of the order, not used to this quality. Eve says that Mister Italy is back. By the door a teenager from the train is showing Santino and Mister Italy a knife with a beautiful handle the shade of dark honey, as if an ancient scorpion might be trapped there in amber. They admire the lovely knife.
The woman with hair once on fire is laughing again, though her hair looks frizzily fucked up; she moves room to room laughing, smoking up from a tiny bag of weed.
She says to me in Italian, “After that ordeal I am very thirsty, tell me, do you have birra?”
“Si. Yes. I’m happy to share.”
“That’s good you are happy with me.” Cobalt Girl smiles, puts on a porkpie hat, just a girl who likes the traditional drugs. It may simply be the fine dope, but her laughing makes me laugh, I like her.
I’m not happy, but I know I can be happy again. I know it is there, but what port of call, what passport, what bright map on my wall, what coast and sea? I know a port exists, know it is close. When I find it I will write a book called Duct Tape for the Soul, and it will sell gazillions.
“Thank you for the birra.”
“Prego. De nada.” Or is that Spanish? I get the words mixed up, think I’m in Spain. Pliny was in Spain. I wonder if Cobalt Girl was with the group kicking out the train window. She mimes tossing beer on her hair. Si, si. She mimes a moonwalk. Michael Jackson! Yes! I get it now. His hair burnt too!
The kitchen group fights as if one pulsating organism. Perche vendichi su di me l’offesa che ti ha fatto un altro? Why are you taking revenge on me for someone else’s offense? It sounds too Sicilian for words. Why are they all so fucking loud?
The white doorway pours noise into the living room; young males run out and males run into the kitchen talking in tongues, raucous Italian voices producing a rapid clatter of words, like a rock beach rolling in brisk surf.
Mamma mia, che rabbia mi fai! How you enrage me!
Mi trattengo dal dire quello che penso solo per buona educazione. I refrain from saying what I think only because of my good upbringing.
Santino has a silver pen, or is it the knife? What is he saying to Mister Italy?
Hands waving. To give a lesson!
In the kitchen dozens are shoving each other, Naples’s surly suburban dancers pushing and fighting, two sides, three sides, one room of the party becoming a minor brawl. A young woman says something and is knocked over and kicked by the older neighbour, and she crawls the floor like a shouting crocodile. Maybe this is normal (the word normative pops into my head from Sociology 100, hi Professor Gee), I can’t tell as there is so much noise in Italy, so much life, so many scooter horns beeping threats and throats calling out la dolce vita, vim and vengeance, someone shouting dare una lezione, give him a lesson, a leg for a leg.
During the day, they shout at me at the grocery cashier, at the café, in the street, from the kitchen; it’s a hectoring country, it’s almost comic to be shouted at so much. Which leg do they mean? Mister Italy’s leg? Staple Gun Guy the neighbour’s leg?
I start to stand up, but the stoned woman laughs and pulls me down into her lap and smoky smell. She says her name is Maria and she’s friendly and warm, she’s Italian! From this odd perspective I have a sideways view of the crowded kitchen.
Santino bends low, his face looking sleepy as he swings his arm low in a resigned arc that ends with a knife driven into the neighbour’s thigh. Blood gushes immediately at the base of the knife, as if Santino struck an oil well, and in the room a general hiss of understanding and pity and then more voices, more shouting, more gesturing. His leg, his blood-splattered denim, blood falls from him, blood on the floor.
I stand up too fast and feel pressure in my brow; my brain is collapsing, back to the baboon, back to the apes. Maria props me up as Santino runs out of the crowd like a hunched assassin. Mister Italy and others follow him out the door
in a more assured manner. Staple Gun Guy looks at his liquid leg. The knife is gone from his leg. Who removed the knife?
Maybe the assailant thought a jab to the leg was not dangerous, but how the blood wells, how it pours from the man, blood born in the kitchen, he can’t stop the blood freed from tiny culverts and tunnels. The neighbour’s blood is dark, but glistens. Blood polka-dots around the kitchen, dots the size of coins, red coins painting the canvas so quickly. Maria the stoned woman stares at Staple Gun Guy. It’s like opera. How can there be so much blood draining from one cut? The eye can’t understand the image it seizes (I smote him thus).
The neighbour looks down at his leg, nature staring back. No more chronic for you, no more nose candy. A young woman holds a tea towel to the gushing leg. “It won’t stop!”
The knife must have met an artery, severed an artery, we meet in a rented room of blood, blood so scarlet on their white floor and dark rug and a trail as he heads to the door, to another country. The neighbour wishes to go home with his staple gun. It’s my party and I’ll die if I want to.
He passes by, and my cousin stares as if a monster is walking past on a moor (amore!). The monster passes the armchair the shape and colour of an ancient tombstone and the coffee table with my bottles and the small baggy of cocaine under the blue light bulb. My cousin took a first-aid course, says he shouldn’t walk if he’s bleeding like that, he should really stay still.
The neighbour makes it to the door, but in the hall he falls like a Doric column. He has bled out. Now the kitchen empties, groups pushing and shoving, not to fight, but to exit. Party-goers nimbly leap his body blocking the doorway and flee like goats down the long hall. An older woman opens her apartment door to peer out at the raucous stampede, the mad stomping hurdle race. Spying blood and a body, the woman dials her small silver phone, whispers, Madonna save us.
six@sixty Page 10
