“Swear to god, I can’t take it no more,” said Pietro, resorting to another cigarette as well as his own dialect.
It wasn’t just a dark mood, I could see that now, but rather a discontent with roots that went frighteningly deeper than I’d thought. But whatever it was that was undermining him, I had to help him snap out of it. I changed tactics, talking about the practical steps we needed to take in order to get our plans off the ground. The more details I came up with, the more momentum they gained.
I suggested that while he was completing his civilian service I could get an odd job and start saving up for our plane tickets. In the meantime Pietro could work on his résumé and research jobs in oil, starting with his petroleum geology professor. As for my own future career (a dauntingly adult word), the truth was I’d never thought seriously about what I could do with a degree that was as elegant and flimsy as the parchment it was printed on. Even in this respect I was waiting for fate to show me the way, to assign me a new dot for starters, and then like a chameleon I would blend into that new scenario. I was good at that.
However, it was difficult to say at which point my destiny, work-wise and location-wise, had become so entirely, and probably unfairly, pinned on Pietro. I realized that as much as he needed me to get him out of Naples, to the same degree I needed him to get me out—to tear me away from the city, help me battle my fears, and tell me not to look back. I was sitting there on a bench gesticulating and confidently itemizing the concrete details of our great adventure, but inside I was afraid of being full of baloney, of ultimately being all talk and no action. Hot air. I wasn’t quite sure how, but somewhere along the line I’d become just another dreamer in a city already teeming with them.
“Then we’ll be free,” I wrapped it up rather overdramatically.
“Free . . .”
Liberi . . . Indeed it was a lovely word even just to pronounce, the tongue arching toward the palate as if about to take flight. But it didn’t seem to make any impression on Pietro. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“I’m just tired, baby, that’s all. I’m a prisoner of my family. And sometimes I feel like a prisoner of the university too.”
Out of the blue I was reminded of that evening when Pietro had dismissed the notion that I’d experienced an earthquake in the underground city. Undoubtedly he was right, but hadn’t I felt something, a sensation of bewilderment and loss as if every cell in my body had forgotten its purpose? Now I had the same intuitive feeling of loss that I couldn’t deny and yet its source was a geological impossibility.
“Pietro, do you still love me?”
“Don’t you know the answer to that?”
After Pietro went home to keep on typing up his thesis, I stopped in a local market and bought him the heaviest band of silver (from Mexico, or so said the vendor) that I could find. I bought it on impulse, and only afterward did I think to give it to him on his graduation day. I wasn’t sure, though, if I’d gotten the right size because, even though Pietro had large hands, they were, in the words of Sonia, the hands of a gentleman.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: September 7
Dearest Heddi,
I was waiting for your email. I was anxious but I knew it was coming. What can I say? Every time I read your words I feel the distance between us grow smaller. I always read your letters with a smile, for the way you write. It was wonderful to see you again, unforgettable; it will be a chapter of its own in the book I’ll write when I’m an old man. You haven’t changed a bit, at least not on the outside and, as far as I could tell, not on the inside either.
I’ll try to be honest. I expected you to tell me that you’d found love again, that you’d moved on . . . maybe I even hoped so. It would have mortified me a little, made me feel like a dog with its tail between its legs and reminded me of what an idiot I was to leave you . . . basically I wanted, and perhaps I still want, the extra dose of suffering I deserve. But instead I came back home with a much stronger feeling: I feel I have to do something. That something is to leave everything behind and escape, to come to New Zealand.
But obviously there’s a wide gap—an ocean—between words and deeds, especially when it comes to me. I won’t deny that I’m in a very confused state of mind. I spend a lot of time imagining the scene, the places, your house, your friends, and I try to paste myself into those pictures. I like what I see. But I’m also well aware that I might be misunderstanding, or at least it might be easy to misunderstand, what I feel for you and my desire to live a life that’s different from the one I have, the one that is probably my lot. What do I feel for you? An affection that knows no bounds: such a large part of me belongs to you, was created and shaped by you, from the way I dress to the way I think, to my craving to see the world . . . I want to come see you “down under” if for nothing else than to see what possibilities I still have and what is left to salvage of what we once were or what we could have been. I don’t know if I can make it . . . I will certainly try.
I know it’s difficult to understand my behavior, but every which way I look at my situation it’s hard to see a way out. It’s that terrible combination of my character, my matriarchal-patriarchal upbringing, the ball and chain of my possessions and attachments, as well as laziness and fear. It seems that whatever I do I have to give something up, and giving up means losing out . . . I haven’t figured it out yet, you’ll have noticed . . . I’m confused and afraid but I don’t want to make the same mistake again. I don’t want you to wait for me. I want to surprise you . . .
I’m holding you close,
p.
26
AND THEN it was Pietro’s turn, a much less formal affair compared to the discussion of my thesis. Unsurprisingly, Lidia and Ernesto showed up that day at the Department of Geological Sciences, accompanied by Gabriele. Although the cloister was a peaceful spot, the urban commotion banging at the door made their parents look overheated and overwhelmed, like peasants fresh off the transalpine train. Their mother in particular, deprived of her kerchief and her dialect, looked out of her depth, and I was again nagged by that insidious compassion that came back whenever I was finally feeling strong.
Afterward I gathered them under an arcade for a family portrait. I clicked once. Twice. Three times. From one frame to the next there was no change in their expressions or postures, like they were painfully posing for a daguerreotype. All four had their arms crossed and were, despite me urging them to move in closer, remarkably disconnected, as though they were magnets with matching poles and therefore repelled each other by their very nature. I hoped in any case that this memento of Pietro’s graduation day, nicely framed, would be worthy of a second glance, unlike that ludicrously feminine shawl. I was well past trying to win his parents over, but I recognized that giving them such a gift on such an occasion was the proper thing to do. One last show of goodwill before taking their son away.
I waited until they’d gone to give him the silver ring, which Pietro slid onto the ring finger of his right hand. “I love it, baby,” he said. “I’ll never take it off.”
I was just in time to give him that private symbol of love, which very conveniently advertised publicly that he was taken, for soon he was called to carry out his civilian service in the province of Rome and I got an under-the-table job in the café in Piazza San Domenico. It was the kind of frantic and servile work I was used to in DC, but I also had to clean the bathrooms, which resembled crime scenes after those free concerts. The irony was not lost on me that my highbrow degree had led me to soil my hands in such a humiliating way, whereas Pietro’s degree, which practically required him to, had led him to work, albeit without pay, in a library.
Like an out-of-shape runner, the bus struggled up the hills of the Castelli Romani, which from the window looked like a set of postcards. On the phone Pietro had told me it was like that. Jewels he’d called them. I listened to my fellow passengers as they chatted away using those lazy consonants, th
at laid-back accent the Romans had every right to have after so many centuries of extraordinary and strenuous endeavors. Except for the background sounds, the journey was much like the one to Borgo Alto. A hilly land possessive of its clusters of houses, the road that wandered and lost its train of thought and never seemed to get to the point.
When the bus finally arrived at the edge of the town, Pietro was waiting for me along with four or five others, his hands jammed into his pockets and barely restraining a smile. It was that inner battle he always fought in the name of discretion, but it moved me nonetheless.
He kissed me and grabbed my bag. “Welcome to Monte Porzio Catone, population 1,227.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, plus one. Today, plus two,” he said, starting off. “Monte Porzio Catone, population 1,229.” He seemed to like repeating the name; it rolled off his tongue with a Roman drawl he’d clearly been practicing since he’d left. I noticed too that he looked refreshed—his eyes were bright, his skin glowing—and I suddenly understood the toll it had taken on him to complete his thesis in such a short time.
“You look great. The fresh air must be doing you good.”
“Fresh air is a God-given right.”
The way to his place was a freshly swept pedestrian lane. It was like walking into a tourist brochure: bicycles leaning up against buildings that were only two or three stories high, hot-pink geraniums oozing from balconies that had nobody leaning over them, nobody screaming their head off, and an ambiguous light that could have been either morning or afternoon sun, as you pleased. It looked like a movie set. It was the siesta and the only sounds were our footsteps over cobblestones, a series of little pillows that rounded the soles of my sandals. I had the crazy thought of moving to that sleepy town just to be near him.
“Remember,” he said, taking out a set of keys, “if anybody asks, you’re just stopping by for a coffee. If my supervisor finds out I have an overnight guest, I’m in deep shit.”
We stopped at the door of a new structure, “the summer villa,” as he called it. Beside it was a soccer field littered with banners and foldout tables and chairs, and beyond that was the wall encircling the village. We’d walked straight through the town in a matter of minutes.
“This weekend they’re putting on a dog show,” he explained. “Cani e Castelli. It’s the biggest event on the Monte Porzio summer calendar.”
“A dog show? Let’s go!”
“Sure, if you feel like it.”
His apartment, on the ground floor, resembled a motel room. Newly tiled and painted, it had an electric burner, a bathroom, a single bed, and a single window. Pietro opened it up, letting in the pleasant scent of freshly cut grass from the sports field.
“So what do you think?”
“Well, it’s hardly what I imagined. It’s very comfortable.”
“I know. I lucked out, didn’t I,” he said with satisfaction. “I’m always on my own and there’s nothing to do in the evenings, but it won’t be for long. In two or three weeks another poor soul will be joining me to liven things up. Some guy from Calabria.”
“The unification of the nation, right?” I put on a lighthearted tone but deep down I was troubled by his semantics. Lucked out? This town, his apartment, in fact this entire situation, was only temporary, a minor, calculated deviation in our plans. So then why was Pietro talking like it was the final destination?
I handed him the latest issue of National Geographic; he suggested we go for a walk. Preparations were in full swing on the soccer field, where dogs of all sizes and colors were weaving through the people, sniffing each other, rolling on the grass, and chasing tennis balls. As soon as they saw us strolling past, they leaped up to greet us with senseless joy. Pietro looked at ease, ruffling a few coats and letting the dogs play-bite his hand.
He took me along the wall that signaled the end of the old town. We leaned over it, our elbows on the rough stone, and gazed out over the valley, which was barely visible in the summer haze.
“Up here I have the illusion of being—how the hell does it go?—master of my fate, captain of my soul . . .”
“It’s a pretty spot.”
We continued down the dirt path that followed the wall. The cicadas were scratching at the tree bark and the dusty heat was a veil we had to move out of the way with our hands. I asked Pietro if we could have a look around the town center, but he wanted to wait till evening. “I’d like to take you out to dinner. There’s this little restaurant that looks promising. I’ve been wanting to try it out since I got here but I don’t have the bucks to live the high life anymore.”
“I have some money,” I offered, but it was the wrong thing to say to Pietro, who always wanted to be the man.
“Keep your money,” he said sullenly, looking down at his shoes, which were the same ones he wore when we first met but which suddenly didn’t seem so practical in this heat. “Anyway, I was waiting for a special occasion to go. I’ve invited Giuliano and his girlfriend to join us. They’re driving in from Rome.” The same Giuliano who used to be his classmate, the one who’d saved him from possibly spiraling out of control.
They had ventured all the way to the capital and were living together, so I expected Pietro’s friends to be two alternative students, even more alternative than us. Yet Giuliano wasn’t a boy at all but a soft couch of a man. He was tall with square shoulders and square glasses like little televisions reflecting the fluorescent light of the restaurant, and the beginnings of a potbelly. He worked part-time although he hadn’t yet finished his degree. As they talked about felsic and ultramafic rock, Pietro watched his old friend with an admiration I could almost touch.
His girlfriend, Rosaria, dark-haired and olive-skinned and native as well to the province of Avellino, had fertile hips and a warm, no-nonsense voice. From across the checkered tablecloth, every now and then she widened her eyes at me with implied exasperation before finally announcing, “Boys, we like rocks too—well, sort of—but enough is enough. Why don’t you pour us some more wine?” I let Giuliano fill my glass, too, but only so I could be Pietro’s wine bank. Rosaria said, “There, that’s better. Now let’s talk about something we can all join in on. For example, the wedding.”
Pietro blushed, curling his fingers over his mouth.
“Not yours, you poor pup,” she clarified. “Ours.”
Pietro nodded with approval, congratulating them both. Rosaria accepted his best wishes, pretending to be in a huff and saying it was about time, after seven years together.
“Now we can finally tell our parents we’re living together,” said Giuliano.
“No, sir, not before the wedding!”
As if to celebrate the good news, the waiter arrived just then with a steaming plate of coda alla vaccinara and roasted artichokes. We all dug into the oxtail stew—“a country recipe,” as Pietro and Giuliano praised it—as we discussed the dress, the church, the reception. They had “only” ten months to get ready.
Talking about these topics made Giuliano grumble, but I think it was only out of embarrassment. Like Pietro, he was humble and unaffected, and most certainly he didn’t like the prospect of spending an entire day in the center of attention. To make light of it, he turned toward me to say, “Eddie, do you see what women are like in our neck of the woods? They’re high-powered planners. Rosaria would make a great manager of a multinational company, don’t you think?”
“Well, what can you say?” she said, punctuating the air with her fork. “You know the old proverb: Choose wives and oxen from your hometown.” Mogli e buoi dai paesi tuoi.
We burst out laughing, and Pietro proposed a toast. “To the best couple I’ve ever met.”
We drank. Giuliano told us we were obviously invited to the wedding. “And don’t you dare bring an envelope full of cash. We would never accept it from you. All you need to do is turn up, eat, and dance.”
“Like total boors?” said Pietro cheerfully. “It would be an honor. I wouldn’t miss it for the wo
rld.”
When the men started up again with rocks, I took the opportunity to ask Rosaria more about their Irpinia wedding, which she seemed more than happy to answer. The music, the party favors, the honeymoon: she had in fact worked it out down to the last detail. The concept of a wedding as a lavish party had never entered my mind, yet our conversation still managed to make me feel that they were the real adults and not Pietro and I—regardless of our degrees, our titles as dottori, our great potential . . . and our great expectations. They had their feet firmly planted on the ground, and next to them we were nothing but fluid and elongated shadows at their backs, slender and prolonged forms of youth.
Toward the end of dinner, I nudged my wine toward Pietro, but he made what almost seemed like a gesture of annoyance. “I’m good,” he said.
Afterward we went back to Pietro’s hygienic apartment. Through the window, the soccer field was filling with the silhouettes of four-legged friends and their chaperones. There was talking, barking, laughter, music. The sky was split in two: on top the night pressing down, and below a sunset the color of a bitten-off plum.
There was nowhere to sit in that bare space but the single bed. I sat on the edge, while Pietro leaned back comfortably against the wall. “I really enjoyed meeting Giuliano and Rosaria,” I said. “They’re lovely people.”
“And now they’re settling down too.”
“Did you know that in English people say ‘to tie the knot’? As if marriage was a knot that can’t be undone.”
“More like a ball and chain.”
My heart sank violently.
“It’s just a figure of speech, baby. They make a great couple.”
“Right, they’re the best couple you’ve ever met.”
At my involuntarily bitter tone, Pietro hastened to say, “You and me, we’re like spaghetti and sauce. There’s no contest.” He rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Jesus, I’m tired. I could almost go to sleep right now.”
Lost in the Spanish Quarter Page 28