I don’t always feel like listening to Gaetano. Especially when he comes by at eleven o’clock at night. And especially when I’m in a bad mood, like tonight.
Monica was here yesterday, and she told me that my mother couldn’t come and see me this time, either. She hasn’t visited once since I’ve been in prison in Italy. I haven’t seen her since the days when I was in hiding in Spain, before I got arrested. I’ve spoken to her, but it’s not the same as having her here. I have to see her to know if she’s doing all right. ‘She’ll come next week,’ Monica repeats, but I know she’s not telling the truth. Only one thing would stop my warrior mother from coming to see me, and I’m scared I know what it is.
Gaetano parks himself in front of the door of my cell where I’ve been minding my own business. He looks inside and asks, ‘What are you thinking about? Love?’
‘Love? In prison?’ I ask bitterly. ‘That stuff’s for the rest of you.’ Those of you who are free, is what I mean. Those of you who don’t have to look at your loved ones through a grille.
‘Not me.’
That’s right, I’d forgotten Gaetano’s also got problems with his wife.
‘My commiserations,’ I say sullenly. Get out of here, I think. It’s not a good night for this.
‘What’s wrong? Am I bothering you?’
I look up, struck by his wounded tone. He has the sweet, round face of a character in a film, who always dies in the second scene. Poor guy.
‘No, you’re not bothering me,’ I say.
And off he goes. Talking about his wife. The warden. The prison. And after a while I start talking, too. Not about prison but about Naples, about the sea—I’m trying to drag him out of this place, at least mentally, just like I wish I could do for myself.
‘I could see right from the early days that you were different from the others,’ he says at the end of what seems like a long confession.
I’m different? I mean, I’ve always known that. But I’m different in the sense that I’m maladjusted, a hothead. Even in here I refuse to let anyone tell me what to do, where to go, what to think—whether it’s guards or prisoners. I’m a rebel. There’s only one person who has always been able to tell me what to do. Mamma. The one time she came to see me in Spain she made me swear: ‘Fight it. You’ve got to fight not to be sent back to Italy.’
I fought and I lost. I came back to Italy, Mamma. I disobeyed you, but it’s not my fault. I hoped I’d at least see you again. But you won’t come. You won’t come…
‘I can still imagine her out on the balcony waiting for me,’ I say to Gaetano, following my train of thought rather than the conversation. I haven’t spoken about her in months.
That’s when I realise something’s not right.
Gaetano never got past fifth grade, but he’s a fine psychologist—like I said, all the guards are. Gaetano wouldn’t even be able to explain how he did it, but somehow he’d got our little chat to head in that direction.
It’s almost three in the morning, the darkest time of night. I realise that Gaetano has been quiet for a while. I shake myself out of my thoughts and turn to him; in the shadows I meet the whites of his eyes. Suddenly I realise why he ended up at my cell tonight. I want to be wrong but I’m not.
‘Why did you come here?’ I ask quietly.
‘Oh, I just felt like talking.’
‘Why did you come here?’ I repeat, and this time my tone is menacing. I might be locked in a cell but the voice coming out of me is that of someone who could grab Gaetano by his neck and squeeze until it broke.
‘Sasà,’ he sighs. His tone is one of surrender, and my name sounds like the toll of a funeral bell. ‘I didn’t want you to find out over the phone. Your mother’s dead.’
5
‘You may my glories and my state depose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those.’
Richard in King Richard II
Act IV, Scene I
‘Whoa, you kicked the ball right into my face!’ the goalkeeper roars. My penalty kick almost cost him an ear.
‘Well, why didn’t you move?’ I shout back resolutely.
‘Because I’ve got to stop the ball!’
‘Go on, then, stop it. Play!’ I give him a fuck-off gesture, which he returns.
I’m playing football like it’s war. I’m kicking penalties not to score goals but to hurt.
To hurt the way I’m hurting.
We’re at the height of the regional tournament between Campania, Sicily, Calabria, Puglia and Lazio. Lombardy and Friuli-Venezia Giulia don’t have enough inmates to form a team, oddly enough. Today’s the big match—Sicily versus Campania. It’s a proper Mafia derby.
‘What’s up with you?’ asks Antonio, who’s playing defence. He puts a hand on my shoulder but I shrug it off angrily.
‘Nothing’s up with me. I’m playing football, aren’t I?’ I’m basically telling him to fuck off, too. ‘What is this—a football match or a knitting circle?’
What can you do? Everything’s going badly today.
On the other side of the field, the Sicilian side, they’ve taken advantage of this argument to bench Leonardo. Poor guy. He gets on well with the guards, does everything he’s told, is always on his best behaviour and was supposed to be going to Mass today but instead was forced to play football. And now they’ve sent him off first thing. Just to spite him.
I see him mournfully dragging himself to the edge of the field. He’s missed out on going to Mass but he can’t go back into his cell until the exercise hour is over. He’s looking away so nobody can see that he’s close to tears, but I notice. So does the Sicilian who sent him off. He goes after Leonardo.
‘What, you’re crying now? Stop crying, or you’ll spoil our fun!’
Nope, that’s it.
‘Sasà, where are you going?’
Where am I going? To punch that bastard’s face in.
‘Leave him alone.’
The Sicilian looks at me in astonishment. He hasn’t been inside for long so he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.
‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to leave him alone,’ I repeat, in case it wasn’t clear the first time.
‘Or else?’
That’s it. I’m going to kill him, I suddenly realise. I’m so full of rage and frustration that if I start beating him up I will actually kill him. I won’t be able to stop myself. I can’t stand people like that, who pick on the weak. Sure, Leonardo’s crap at football, but this guy has no right to do this.
I clench my fists. My body is tense, like a tightly strung bow made entirely of nerves. For days now, weeks, I’ve been building up tension; my rage keeps growing, but I haven’t found any release, not even through rough play on the football field. Out on the field you run, but it’s not enough. You don’t use up your strength, you don’t vent your emotions. I’m ready to explode.
The Sicilian’s teammates quickly surround him and whisk him away. They’re worried. They know the way I’ve been lately and if there’s trouble, who knows how long we’ll be banned from playing. Here in Rebibbia, it’s unlikely someone will beat you up. Nothing ever happens among inmates, partly because of the risk of a tougher sentence, and partly because the mentality in Italy is that once you’re in prison, the war is over. You enter prison to serve time, not to carry on wars: they used to do that in the seventies, but not anymore.
The Sicilian lets his friends take him away, and they explain to him who I am and why it’s not a good idea to make me angry. I hear the other guys’ voices telling me to let it go, but it’s as though they’re coming to me through a red fog.
I shove them away violently and go and sit in a corner of the yard.
I hate everybody. It’s been two weeks since my mother died and it’s been two weeks since I slept.
I talk to her. She might be dead but she’s certainly not gone.
‘You’re crying. Now you’re crying?’ she reproaches me bitterly.
‘So what if I am? Aren�
�t I even allowed to cry?’
‘You should’ve thought of that earlier! Before you left me all on my own!’
‘You’re the one who told me not to come back to Italy. You made me swear!’
‘Because if you had come back they’d have killed you! But who got you into all that trouble? Was it me?’
‘I got into it by myself, so why don’t you just leave me there? At least leave me in peace!’
‘Get up off your arse. You’re a shit of a man, that’s what you are!’
‘Well, if I’m a shit of a man it must be because you made me that way!’
It’s like that all day and all night. My mother has become my worst enemy. Towards dawn I plunge into an exhausted sleep, confused, agitated, and when I wake up and see her photo on the wall I’m consumed by rage and the whole thing starts over again. At one point I thought about tearing it into confetti, but then I couldn’t do it. My head is full of hatred for everybody and full of painful tears that don’t know how to get out.
Now I’m doing the exact opposite of what she taught me. I’m doing whatever I feel like. I’ve reverted to being a guappo, a swaggering criminal, like when things were at their very worst on the streets of the Quartieri. I don’t greet anybody in the corridors, I keep to myself, with my eyes to the ground. I’ve started running in the yard, as though it’s possible to escape this thing that’s inside me. I play football violently, spitting out swearwords.
‘Has something happened?’ the guys keep asking, but they don’t get that I’m still in this state because of my mother’s death.
‘Why are you asking? Why does something have to have happened?’ I always answer angrily.
I’m being de-habilitated. I’m once again the guy that used to say to the local Camorra boss, ‘You want watches? Go and steal them yourself then.’ The guy who got condemned to death because he refused to be intimidated. I’ve sent Monica away twice. I don’t even want to see her. She arrived in Rome from Naples with a package of freshly washed things for me, and I didn’t go down to meet her. They brought up the package and I sent that back, too.
Why didn’t you tell me you were so sick? I’d have escaped, I’d have run away and come to see you. Why didn’t anyone tell me you were on the way out, that I would never see you again?
I don’t give a damn about good relationships, good manners, or anything in this shitty life anymore. I don’t care that if I keep this up I’m going to fall apart. If I was the kind of person to kill myself, perhaps I’d kill myself, but taking my own life is the very last thing on my mind. Finding a way to kill me has always been other people’s concern; mine has been finding a way to stay alive. This was my mother’s problem, too.
See, Mamma? You’re free of problems now. You’re free of me. Are you happy?
After two weeks I give up.
In the morning I go to the infirmary.
‘Give me some drops.’
‘The doctor has to prescribe them.’
I go to the doctor.
‘The psychiatrist has to prescribe them.’
I go to the psychiatrist, ready to smash the place up.
‘Give me some drops.’
‘Why do you believe you need medication? Are you troubled?’
‘Of course I’m troubled!’ I explode. ‘You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about!’
‘Can we talk about it? What’s the problem?’
‘You already know the problems a prisoner has,’ I say through clenched teeth. I don’t want to talk to him about my mother. ‘This shitty place, the never-ending night, the thought of my wife who might be cheating on me, I can’t take it anymore, you have to give me some drops!’ I get agitated, I shout, I don’t even know what I’m saying. I obsessively repeat the same thing: give me the drops, give me the drops. I already know that you give them out to everybody, that hundreds of us are on sedatives, why can’t I be, too? Why should I have to be stronger than everyone else, better than everyone else? Give me some fucking drops, so I can calm down and get this war out of my head.
I finally get through to the doctors. They prescribe the damn drops: forty in the morning, forty in the afternoon and forty before bed. One hundred and twenty drops a day, a dose fit for a wild horse. Then, just to be on the safe side, there’s this South American kid who doesn’t drink, and I get him to give me half a litre of wine in the morning and another half in the evening. I’m not allowed wine because I’m on medication. He buys it for me, two cartons of wine for two euros, and I give him two packets of cigarettes in exchange, which are worth twice as much. So I’m sorted.
In the morning, forty drops and a quarter-litre of wine, in the afternoon forty drops and another quarter-litre of wine, and in the evening forty drops and half a litre of wine. A litre of wine plus the drops and I’m laughing to myself in my cell like a halfwit. I no longer care that my mother died, I no longer care about anything. The mix of drops and alcohol eliminates all feeling—pain, fear—and makes me contemptuous, rude, indifferent. The cruellest hour is when I first wake up in the morning, I open my eyes and I’m dazed but sober, I see her things, her photo, and I’m assailed once more by that need to cry tears that won’t come, the rage rises within me, the voices in my head start up again. I grab my bottle of drops and carton of wine.
And then everything’s fine. It’s the only way. It’s all over, apart from this shitty living death that continues to drag on.
Cosimo turns up unexpectedly one afternoon. He’s doing a life sentence. They told me as soon as I arrived that he’s on good terms with the guards, but he’s no infame; it’s in the interests of helping the other prisoners, not to snitch. He’s in charge of activities and courses. When I was still doing all right he asked me to write the match reports after every game. I’ve given that up now and haven’t talked to him for a while. Or to anyone, for that matter.
I can hear him arriving from a long way away because he’s greeting people loudly as he walks along the corridor. If he’s out of his cell today it must be because he needs to organise one of his activities. But he’s usually very discreet, so why is he making all this racket?
It’s like he wants to announce his arrival to me. In fact, a short time later he stops at the door of my cell. He’s never come to see me before. He leans on the little barred window and asks, ‘Everything okay, Sasà?’
‘Yeah, Cosimo. I’m making coffee,’ I say listlessly. I don’t want to be rude to Cosimo. He’s a good guy.
‘Were you expecting me?’ he asks.
‘No, to tell you the truth. I wasn’t expecting anyone.’
‘Listen, have a read of this. We’re doing a theatre workshop. Do you want to join in?’ He holds out a bundle of papers through the bars.
‘Why are you asking me?’ I don’t approach the window or reach out for the papers. That stuff doesn’t interest me. I know for this sort of thing there’s a particular type of person Cosimo hopes to involve. He wants leaders, people of strong character, people who’ve got something he can draw out.
‘Because you’re an artist,’ he says simply.
Something runs through my body like a shiver, shakes me up and then passes. As though it never happened, all that remains is the surprise.
‘Sure I am. A crime artist,’ I say bitterly. ‘Please don’t make fun of me.’
‘Read it.’ He waves the pages at me. ‘Just read it, okay?’
‘What is it?’ I don’t reach out my hand, but I approach the door.
‘It’s the script for a play.’
A play? I’ve never been to the theatre. I’ve been to the cinema a couple of times, sneaking through the security doors to avoid paying for a ticket. I remember La boum, and another film, very dramatic, called The Balloon Vendor, which my whole family saw together. We all cried watching it.
‘What play?’
‘It’s Neapolitan. By Eduardo De Filippo—Napoli milionaria.’
God, it’s that stupid play my parents used to watch every Christmas when they’d
show theatre on television. I think of it as old people’s theatre, I think of someone sitting on a chair reciting poetry. I think of those teary Christmases when it’s cold and you’re penniless—you turn on the television and they’re screening one of Eduardo’s plays.
‘Couldn’t you find anything more depressing?’ I ask sarcastically. ‘We’re already in prison…’
‘It’s a beautiful play, and I’d like to give you one of the main parts,’ Cosimo says, trying to tempt me.
‘Which one?’
‘Donna Amalia.’
‘What? A woman’s part? With all due respect, don Cosimo, you can f—’ I swallow the rest of the sentence, turn my back on him and take the coffee maker off the heat because it’s about to bubble over.
I hear something dropping to the ground, but I don’t turn around. I hear Cosimo walking away and I still don’t turn around. When I finally turn to face the door, I see his bundle of papers is there on the floor in front of it. And you can stay there, I think. That kind of paper’s not even any good for rolling tobacco.
But eventually I do pick it up. I don’t like my cell to be messy. I put it on the bedside table. Tomorrow I’ll take it back to Cosimo. Me, as Donna Amalia? As if I’m going to get up on stage like a trained monkey. And dressed as a woman as well!
I place the coffee maker on top of it, which means I’ll be taking it back to him a bit damaged. That way he’ll learn not to throw things into my cell.
The next morning, before I take my drops, curiosity gets the better of me. I’ve never read anything apart from my legal files, unless you count the odd porno magazine. Let’s see what Eduardo has to say. I take a quick look.
Set Me Free Page 5
