I’m doing well, too. Which doesn’t happen too often. I’m far from the person I was when I arrived in Montreal. I came because I was tired of doing lines of coke, partying without having any fun, and most of all working on projects not even the artists themselves believed in. Creating without conviction. Difficult, but still possible.
Maybe that was the problem with God. He created the universe without being all that convinced himself, and that produced the world we know today: sloppy and ungrateful. I don’t know who abandoned whom—God his people, or the people their God. Either way, the result is the same: I come from the same country as the pope and I’ve never been dragged to church. I left Italy because I couldn’t see myself staying there. I hadn’t yet figured out that you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror before you can ever see yourself doing anything.
Manue still hasn’t found fault with me, unless you count my lack of self-confidence. When I look at her, I feel like I’m seeing the real me. Not because we’re so alike, but rather because she leaves room on her face for me to find myself there.
I hope I pluck up the courage to tell her soon. Perhaps when she wakes up. It turns out she needs her sleep after all.
•
Italy in the 1950s or today—night—old abandoned house—weak lighting.
An old man is standing in front of a broken window. We can’t see his features. A young man in his 30s walks up behind him without a sound, then stops in the middle of the room, empty but for a large sofa covered with a white sheet.
fabio—What are you doing, Granddad?
sergio—There you are.
fabio—Were you waiting for me?
sergio—I was waiting for you to come, yes.
fabio—Where?
sergio—At this point in your life.
fabio—What were you doing while you waited all these years?
sergio—I was looking ahead.
fabio—What did you see?
sergio—Many things I’ll never experience. The future is astonishing. How are you finding it?
fabio—It’s OK. I have a harder time with the past.
sergio—Don’t waste your time on it. There’s no point.
fabio—Do you think immigrating was the right choice?
sergio—What do I know? There’s no objective answer to your question. It was the right choice provided you make it work.
fabio—Did you think a lot about Italy when you were off at war?
sergio—About Italy, no. About my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters, yes. We aren’t a country, Fabio. We are human beings bound together by blood, friendship, even hatred.
fabio—Will you come back to see me?
sergio—I doubt it. I told you everything you need to know. Go out through the back door. I didn’t have time to cut the brambles at the front. You might hurt yourself trying to find your way.
Fabio exits. The camera follows him outside, where day is beginning to break. He walks past the house and his grandfather waves to him through the window. It’s the last time he will see him.
•
“I feel like a croissant. I’ll go grab some. What kind do you want, Manue? Chocolate? Almond?”
“Wait. Before you leave, I’ve got a question.”
“OK…”
“Fabio…”
“Yes?”
“Will you marry me?”
“…”
“I know that’s usually the guy’s line, but with women’s rights and all I think a girl should be able to ask a guy to marry her. Don’t you think?”
“…”
“You aren’t saying anything.”
“You’re right.”
“You’re right? That’s not an answer to a marriage proposal.”
“No, I was agreeing with you about women’s rights.”
“Oh, OK. So?”
“I don’t know. Marriage… I mean… We’ve never even kissed!”
“Exactly. Which means we’ve never hurt each other.”
“You’re right. That’s a very good start.”
EPILOGUE
In Capital Letters
Carpi, October 31, 1946
Sergio,
My brother Irio has been ill for a few weeks now. I’m worried that he’s caught whatever you have and he will be sent to the mountain to recover as well. If he leaves, I don’t know how my father will manage with the farm. He isn’t getting any younger. He needs Irio’s strong arms to lift heavy loads and take care of the animals. I wish I could take his place, but I wouldn’t know where to start. My mother needs me in the house. I’m afraid this terrible disease will take everything from us.
I’m tired of living in fear. The war is over, but the anguish it wrought hasn’t disappeared. What if it never goes away? You were at the front; surely, you witnessed unspeakable horrors. How do you do it? Your strength amazes me, Sergio. You survived, you are still standing. I would have gone crazy over much less. Yet you haven’t lost your smile.
If you ever need to talk about what you’ve been through, I am here to listen. The stories you have to tell must be awful. I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to sit through to the end, but I’ll try. I don’t want you to carry all that pain alone. If one day we marry, we will have to share everything. Including that.
With all my love,
Luisa
Gaiato, November 11, 1946
My beloved Luisa,
Today marks exactly one year since I returned to Italy. I didn’t think I would be celebrating the occasion so far from home. And so close at the same time. Gaiato is less than eighty kilometres from Carpi. I wish you could visit, but it is too dangerous. I’m sorry to hear that the disease has reached your doorstep. I hope Irio will pull through without needing to come here. But if it becomes necessary, I would gladly welcome his company. It would be like having a part of you by my side.
Your last letter made me smile. “If one day we marry…” Of course we will marry! I promised before I left, and I will keep my word. There is no other woman I would want to spend the rest of my life with. Only you. And you needn’t worry about me. I’ll beat this bloody tuberculosis, I swear. I’ve survived even more dreadful ordeals, as you said. This one doesn’t frighten me. I’m confident, and you should be as well. I know it isn’t always easy, but you mustn’t give up hope.
I won’t bore you with my war stories. I wouldn’t put you through that. The past should stay in the past. Put it out of your mind. It’s sweet of you to be there for me, so attentive, but it would not be good for me to talk of everything I saw while I was gone. I would need to wake the demons and battle them a second time, and I don’t know if I could. Maybe later, when I’m older. At that point I’ll be able to remember everything without it being too painful. And who knows? I may be able to speak of this tragedy to our grandchildren. So that they know it happened, so that they won’t make the same mistakes as our generation.
With you, I want to focus only on happy things.
Sergio
Carpi, December 2, 1946
Sergio,
Christmas is fast approaching, and my mother and I have begun the preparations. We made the panettone and prepared the batter for tigelle68. It will be a great feast. The whole family will be there: my cousins, aunts, and even our neighbour who lost her husband in the war. We will all gather together to celebrate for the first time since 1939. I really wish you could be with us, too. Will you at least have a special meal to mark the occasion? I wouldn’t want you to be sad and lonely.
I know you don’t want to speak of the war, and I respect that. But I was just wondering… what did you do on days such as Christmas? Did the fighting continue? Did you eat anything other than dry bread? I can picture you at the front, biting into a loaf, quietly singing hymns, and it pains me. I hope that this year you will have a Christmas worthy of its name. I’m sending along a small present. It isn’t much, but I hope it will put a smile on your face.
And on Christmas, I’ve decide
d I can finally tell you: I love you.
Luisa
Gaiato, January 7, 1947
Sweetest Luisa,
If you only knew how your last letter warmed my heart. The band you sent is magnificent. Though some may call it sacrilegious, I wear it on my ring finger. Will you allow me to officially call you my fiancée from now on? How I wish I could give you an ornament in exchange! But there aren’t too many shops at the sanatorium, I’m afraid.
Though the band is splendid, your greatest gift was the “I love you” that shot through the air like a golden arrow. I heard you whisper it gently, and it sent shivers down my spine. I read the sentence over and over, at least twenty times a day, and it gives me courage.
I’ve also dreamed of saying “I love you.” Long before today. I confess that I was afraid of rushing things. And I wouldn’t have wanted to chase you away with my words. But now that you have uttered them, I won’t hold back any longer. Of that, you can be sure! I will write in capital letters so you cannot miss it.
I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU,
Sergio
P.S. At the front, Christmas was a day like any other. Though I’m shut up in this sanatorium and far from you and from my family, this year will be the happiest Christmas I’ve spent in ages.
Carpi, January 22, 1947
Sergio, my fiancé,
I write these words and I like the way they sound. Sergio, my fiancé. I think I blushed when I read your last letter. The words in capital turned my stomach inside out. With you I am carried away by emotion, and it’s embarrassing. I, who always believed myself to be above these things. Affairs of the heart, romance, I thought all that was for others, women who had nothing to occupy their days apart from dreaming of a prince who exists only in fairy tales. How wrong I was. Princes do not exist, of that I am still certain, but you are very real. You may be far, but you are out there, somewhere, in flesh and bone. Speaking of which, have you managed to put some meat on your bones? You were terribly skinny the last time I saw you. You were handsome, no doubt about it, but I was afraid you would break. That a gust of wind would carry you off.
Irio is doing better. He probably won’t need to go to the sanatorium. It seems the brisk winter air has done him some good. He must rest another few weeks at home and is not allowed to set foot in the fields or the barn. But at least he’s getting his colour back.
I forgot to tell you… I spoke of our engagement to my father. I feared his reaction, but I needn’t have worried. He hugged me and said simply, “I’m happy to welcome Sergio Cavaletti into my family.” My mother has already begun cleaning her finest dishes in preparation for the big day. The porcelain had been gathering dust in an attic cupboard since her own wedding. She told me I could keep them after the party. It would be her gift to us. That gave me an idea: what if we opened a shop and sold tableware, silver, and that sort of thing? We’d never be short of customers what with wedding gifts and everyday necessities. People will always need pots, kitchen utensils, and dishware. What do you think?
My head is full of projects, thanks to you. You inspire me.
Your Luisa
Carpi, June 16, 1992
Dear Fabio,
My grandson. I have wanted to write this letter for a long time. I’m starting to get old, my hand trembles when I write, and I cannot put it off any longer. If I want to tell you certain things, it’s now or never.
I always avoided speaking of the war, as you know. I believed that if I kept silent I would eventually forget. I was wrong. What I experienced on the front has never left me, thought it hasn’t stopped me from being happy. I’ve had a wonderful life thanks to you, my two darling daughters, and your grandmother whom I love with all my heart. But even moments of joy have had a metallic aftertaste. The taste of blood. I see my brothers-in-arms perish, their open wounds gushing like rivers. They were not lucky like I was. I tried to be happy for them, too, and not just for myself. For all the men who didn’t survive the atrocities. It hasn’t always been easy.
Remember this: you have to work hard to be happy. Laughter doesn’t fall from the sky. It takes hold only if you decide to make room for it.
To make room for my laughter, my quiet little joy, I needed to bare my soul. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice in the matter. I had to talk about everything I’d seen in Ukraine and Russia, in the camps, on the way home. I didn’t want to shift my burden onto anyone else’s shoulders so I decided to commit my story to paper. I’ve written all that I can remember, down to the rawest details, the vaguest hopes. Names, dates, wagon numbers, colours, smells—all sorts of things have come back to haunt me. Twenty years later.
I wrote these pages in my early forties, when I thought I might be going mad. It freed me, to a certain extent, knowing that my experience might have served a purpose. To make me a man, in the broadest sense of the term. The man who walks the earth and for whom one lifetime is not enough to realize just how precious life is.
I decided that this story would fall to you. But you are still so young. I will wait a while longer before giving you this package. It will be for your twenty-fifth birthday, the age at which I returned from the war. Wounded indelibly, but also taller, stronger. It is not my wish that you experience war, only that you understand everything I was lucky to learn because of it.
I am not a writer. The pages I’m leaving you are not the pages of a novel. They contain only truth, neither style nor metaphor. For those, I leave it to Primo Levi, whom you know. I used to recite this poem under my breath each time I thought I was about to lose my head:
You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find on returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.69
I love you, my boy, and I am proud of you.
Sergio
* * *
68. Type of bread resembling an English muffin traditionally eaten in the north of Italy, accompanied by cheese spreads and cold meats
69. If This Is a Man, Primo Levi, 1947. [Stuart Woolf, trans.]
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Behind the eyes we meet Page 24
