Behind the eyes we meet

by Mélissa Verreault

  The sun is out, but it’s cold. The damp air chills to the bone. I should have brought a warmer sweater. There’s been a heat wave in Italy for the past month, so I only packed light clothes. But the wind has turned since I arrived. It’s a mountain wind, from up on high. From corners we can’t reach. From the place my grandfather went.

  I didn’t sleep much last night; I need a coffee. The onion pizza didn’t go down well. The older I get, the more I take after my father. He’s here, with his brothers. I’m surprised they came: they don’t talk to each other much, the lot of them. Sergio is my mother’s father. They weren’t related by blood, so they didn’t have to be here today. I’d almost forgotten that in Italy, everyone is family.

  •

  Mass takes forever. I don’t understand half of what the priest is saying. His sermon is peppered with Latin and dialetto carpigiano; I don’t speak either. My grandmother speaks almost nothing but dialect. I can understand her, but I can’t answer her in this language that doesn’t exist. When she and the last members of her generation die, they will take the dialect along with them. We should have reclaimed the language—we, the younger generation—and made it our street code, our patois, our pride and joy. But we were too busy playing video games and watching Hollywood blockbusters.

  •

  I never go to church. My grandfather wasn’t very religious, but he respected tradition. A part of him would have liked to believe that God existed. The voiceless part. The part that never talked about the past. The part that made him so mysterious.

  One day when I was little, I asked him if he’d seen Jesus during the war. In my child’s mind, the war had happened in some distant past, at least as far-off as when Jesus walked the Earth. He’d said that the son of God didn’t visit battlefields. I asked my parents if I could get baptized and become a son of God, too. That way, I wouldn’t have to go to the front if war ever broke out again.

  But World War III never happened. It was a good thing, too, since I didn’t receive any of the other sacraments. I would have probably been sent off to fight.

  Military service was still mandatory when I was eighteen. Pacifists could spend the year doing community service, or “conscientious objection.” I managed to avoid that, too, through an administrative loophole. When I think of my grandfather and everything he was forced to endure, I tell myself I’m a coward. Whether you take part in the war or oppose it, at least you’re standing up for your convictions. Doing neither feels like I’m disrespecting Sergio. Yet that’s exactly why he fought: in the hopes that it would be the last time.

  •

  Next stop for the funeral procession: the cemetery. But first, we’ll release the birds. A man built like an American football player prepares them for flight. He encourages people to gather round, gives a short speech about Sergio and the impact he had on his life, pays a final tribute. Three men help him open the cages. Doves flood the sky. A pearly storm lifts up from the ground and soars home on the wind. I knew it: I’m crying.

  •

  It’s stupid. Or not. I wish Emmanuelle were here. I barely know the girl. I’m shaking, I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s easy to blame the mountain wind. It probably has more to do with the void my grandfather has just opened up. In my own life, and in the lives of all these other people. The hole he left divides us, cuts us off from one another. We are all here for the same reason, but grief is personal.

  There is something different about Emmanuelle. She doesn’t think like everyone else. She speaks quickly and tends to mumble, so I have to listen carefully if I don’t want to miss anything. It’s as if she’s afraid she won’t have time to finish her thought, as if something will surprise her and cut her off mid-sentence.

  She’s the kind of girl who walks down sidewalks magically leaving a trail of darkened streetlights in her wake. The kind of girl who watches as lightning bolts strike down trees in her path, while the sky remains a blaze of blue. The kind who finds coins in her cereal boxes, whose acupuncturist accidentally leaves a needle stuck in her forehead and who spends a whole day walking around like a giant voodoo doll, completely oblivious. A fantastic girl, one I wish I could have introduced to my grandfather.

  •

  I love the cemetery. There’s nothing creepy about it, even if death winds itself through every crack. The headstones covered with flowers of every colour, the grass is a dazzling green, the trees are majestic—everything is clean, neat, bright. There’s no other place in Carpi that feels so alive. Italians take care of their dead, it’s true. Should that alone have convinced me to stay?

  I’d rather take my chances in a country that takes care of its living.

  •

  My dishevelled grandmother clings to my arm as we go down the stairs to Sergio’s final resting place. A warehouse of corpses. Aisles, rows, sections, several floors, and hundreds—thousands—of decomposing bodies. Model cadavers. Specimens on display to give us a taste of our own demise.

  We follow the cemetery attendant through corridors of marble and concrete. We’d get lost otherwise, swallowed up in the labyrinth of tombstones. Men and women have come to pray at the stony graves of loved ones who passed on six months or two, five, twenty years ago. A dozen people gather around a tomb, chatting loudly and giggling. Gypsies. Members of our party stare at them. Everyone hates the gypsies; they resent them for taking millions of euros from the state and giving nothing in return. Personally, I have nothing against them.

  It was one of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Canada: no gypsies. America has its panhandlers, its homeless—bums, as they say in Quebec—but no gypsies. Except for maybe a few in the United States. Here the gypsies camp just outside Carpi, not far from the highway and all the shopping centres that sprouted like mushrooms in the late ’90s. They beg and steal to survive. Some sell drugs; others, their bodies. It’s the white Italian taxpayers who buy their coke, their sex. And then later when newspaper headlines report that hundreds will be driven out of the country, a cry goes up: “Serves them right! Damned vultures!” Hypocrites.

  I wonder who’s using whom. Their being here works in our favour: it gives a face to our rage. We convince ourselves it’s their fault our country is on the verge of bankruptcy. It absolves us of our share of responsibility.

  •

  We all end up at my grandparents’ house for coffee and tortelli dolci56. My grandmother motions for me to follow her upstairs. She wants to show me something. We enter the room where my grandfather died. I shiver; Luisa doesn’t flinch. She acts as if Sergio were still there, running her fingers along the sheets as she passes the bed, murmuring something indecipherable. She opens every drawer of the massive wooden wardrobe that takes up one whole wall, looking for I don’t know what. After some time she takes out a shoebox from back when shoes were still made in Italy, not China. She hands it to me without saying a word and heads back down into the living room where guests are laughing, leaving me alone with the treasure chest. I’ll open it later. I’ve cried enough for one day.

  * * *

  56.Traditional dessert from the Emilia-Romagna region

  Our Children Without Homes

  i decided to use this time in Carpi to clean out my parents’ garage, where half my life is stored. Tools, dishes, clothes, a dresser, a couch, old CDs, a skateboard, cans of spray paint, an easel, ice skates, a Santa costume stolen from a movie set, history, geography, and math textbooks, old report cards, planks of wood, Plexiglas panels, some sheet metal, tons of paper, VHS tapes, a Commodore 64, a car engine, a photo of Greta, the parakeet I got for my ninth birthday, and another of Sandra, whom I should call. A little bit of everything—though nothing of real use, when I think about it. Yet I can’t bear the thought of getting rid of any of it.

  I filled the car with anything recyclable and dropped it all off at the city’s collection centre. I had to take three trips, since my old Fiat
can’t hold much. I’ll have to sell the car, too, though I won’t get much for it. That’s why we end up keeping all of these useless things: because they aren’t worth anything other than the sentimental value we attach to them.

  We like to pretend they’ll come in handy one day rather than let them go for next to nothing. It’s less painful to our memories.

  •

  I didn’t have to call Sandra. She left a message on my parents’ answering machine. Giuliano told her I was in town for a few days. After offering her sympathies for my grandfather, she showered me with abuse.

  Porco dio! Perché non mi hai detto niente? Cazzo! Sarei venuta con te alla cerimonia. Non sono più la tua ragazza, è quello? Da quando non siamo più insieme? Lo posso sapere? Perché non mi chiami mai? Sono tre settimane che non ci siamo sentiti su Skype. Non hai risposto alla mia ultima mail. C’è qualcosa che non va con te? Dobbiamo parlare. Subito. Ti aspetto al bar della biblioteca alle sette. Se non vieni, ti uccido, lo giuro.57

  •

  We’d been together three years when I decided to move to Montreal. She couldn’t come, or didn’t want to. But she insisted that we stay together. I agreed, though I knew it was pointless. I never cheated on her, but I’m not sure that counts as being faithful, either.

  I don’t think of her very often. I always forget to return her calls. I forget her, really. Without meaning to, I’ve quietly erased her from my existence. Her body has sort of vanished, like a charcoal drawing smudged by a distracted hand. Nothing left but those long legs that always got me hard. I won’t tell her that. She’d definitely call me a bastard.

  I’ll just tell her I don’t love her anymore.

  •

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  “I might have.”

  “Did you meet someone else?”

  “No.”

  “Liar. I can see it in your eyes. You look like you did when we first met. You’re in love with somebody else. You’re over me.”

  “You know me well, but not well enough to know it isn’t about love. It’s about freedom.”

  “I’ve never stopped you from doing what you wanted.”

  “Not on purpose. But unfortunately as long as we’re still together, I’ll feel like a prisoner in Montreal.”

  I could have told her before, it’s true. But if I’d dumped her over email or the phone, she’d have called me a heartless son-of-a-bitch. I would have been the bad guy either way.

  Sandra left without finishing her drink. If looks could kill. She’ll never forgive me. But what can I do? She almost ran into the doorframe on her way out. She caught herself at the last minute, rubbed her hands on her pants as if to smooth out the wrinkles, and continued on, head held high. She’ll find another guy, probably a much better one than me.

  She left me with the bill. I owe her that much. A half-drunk glass of red wine.

  •

  Before the Internet, cheap plane tickets, globalization, satellite TV, and text messages, love must have been less complicated. Not any easier, but simpler. The love of my life would have grown up in the same village, or possibly the neighbouring one, but no further. We would have had a dozen children, spent our whole lives together, died of a disease that’s easily curable today, and wanted for everything—but we would have been able to dream. Dreams are a thing of the past; today there’s no room to fantasize. Too much noise. Too many words. Too many ways to talk. Not enough to say. Because we know everything in a fraction of a second.

  We often think it must have been hell. Marrying at seventeen and spending the next sixty-five years with the same person. No abortion or divorce. Being handcuffed to someone else because one fine day, on a whim or because we had to, we said, “I do.” Yet we know nothing of those loves, the ones that were forced. Were they any less real than our free love? Our one-night stands, our fuck buddies, our indefinite engagements, our breakups without litigation, our children without homes?

  Luisa and Sergio truly loved each other, of that I’m certain. Better yet, they respected each other. I’m not sure I can say the same of any of my relationships. My love has always been selfish.

  •

  I haven’t opened the box my grandmother gave me. It weighs a ton. I have no idea what secrets it might hold, but it must have belonged to Sergio. It’s best to wait until I get back to Montreal; what if whatever’s inside stops me from going back? The weight of legacy too often holds us back from living the lives we were meant to.

  * * *

  57.Why didn’t you say anything? Jesus Christ! I’d have come with you to the funeral. Are we no longer together, is that it? Since when? Why don’t you ever call? We haven’t Skyped in three weeks. You didn’t answer my last email. What’s going on with you? We need to talk. Right away. I’ll meet you at the library café at 7 o’clock. If you don’t show up, I swear I’ll kill you.

  The future is elsewhere

  i dreamed about my grandfather.

  He had put on his soldier’s uniform and was getting ready to leave for the front, but he had the face we’d buried: waxy, drawn, defeated. He’d been called to fight despite his age. This tremendous, absolute, and unprecedented war required every man—including fathers, minors, and the sick—to lend their support. I was eight, holding a Kalashnikov with two thick black lines painted under my eyes. I was a higher rank than Sergio and ordered him around like a little tyrant. He didn’t listen, doing only as he saw fit, so I had to shoot him for insubordination. It broke my heart, but I had no choice.

  I woke up in a cold sweat, feeling as though it were my fault Sergio was dead. I glanced over at the shoebox; it was still there, on the nightstand. I was increasingly worried about what I would find inside.

  I got up and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. I heard something dripping and thought I’d left the faucet running. It was my mother crying. At 3 a.m. And it hit me: I’d lost my grandfather, but she’d just buried her father.

  •

  I tried to imagine how I would react if my father died. How I would have taken it if I’d been young when it happened, like Manue. All the things she was never able to do with Yvon. All the special moments she missed out on, the rows she avoided, the questions she was never able to ask.

  I thought about all the soccer games I had played with my father in the backyard, trampling my mother’s geraniums in the process. All the lazy Sunday drives we had taken together when no one had to work and nature seemed to want to reclaim the city. All the card games he’d taught me, the puzzles we had put together, the gelati al pistacchio e alla nocciola58 we ate for supper when my mother worked late, the films by Truffaut and Godard we’d watched together, the flashlight he’d slipped me so I could read my comic books under the covers for hours past my bedtime.

  My mother was still sobbing in the room off the kitchen. My father was gently consoling her, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I stood rooted to the spot next to the sink, terrified and powerless.

  •

  I eventually fell asleep on the couch. My mother just came in to wake me. It’s nine o’clock. Someone is on the phone. It’s Carlo, the assistant director I’ve often worked with over the past few years.

  “Where’d you get this number?”

  “You gave it to me one time. I saw Sandra at a party yesterday, and she told me you were in town.”

  “Just for a few more days, then I’m going back to Montreal.”

  “You sure you don’t want to stay in Italy? I’ve got a great project for you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I know all about these “great projects”—independent films directed by egomaniacs unwilling to listen to a soul. Low-budget ventures where you have to fight for your paycheque, stories nobody’s interested in, empty theatres. I’ve paid my dues. And that’s exactly why I left for Canada. I’ve had enough of playing my part in the decline of
the Italian movie.

  Ever since I was a little boy, I’d always wanted to make movies. With Les 400 coups and 8½ as inspiration, I could see myself working on the masterpieces of the future. In the end, though, I’ve only worked on amateur films with disjointed storylines, music videos for misogynistic rock artists, and commercials for car companies. The type of stuff that beats dreams to a pulp.

  •

  My parents wish I would stay longer, but they understand. They were the ones who encouraged me to move to Canada, convinced I’d have more opportunities. They’d have liked to leave everything behind and follow me, but they were too old. Still, they are healthy and have many good years ahead of them. I guess at some point you’re too old to start over. You can either choose to accept your life as it is, or live with bitter regret until it makes you sick. I’m not sure exactly when you reach this point—at forty, at fifty?

  The more I think about it, the more I realize it isn’t death that scares me. It’s that awful day when I’ll no longer be free to live where I please.

  •

  I ran into Vincenzo when I went out to buy bread. What a prick. He suggested we grab a coffee. What I like about Italy is that coffee goes down in three gulps while you’re still standing at the counter where you ordered. Conversations over espresso never last very long. If I had nothing more to say to Vincenzo, I could leave once my cup was empty.

  •

  Vincenzo works for the clothing company his father started in the 1970s. In those days, Carpi was the t-shirt capital of the world. Clothing companies popped up everywhere and businessmen made millions selling cotton tees. But it became a total fiasco once China got involved; only two or three companies survived, and they are having trouble reinventing themselves.