Lea covers her ears with her hands in utter horror.
WHEN THEY GO BACK to Giaele, to reassure her, the little girl seems to have a small rock in her mouth.
“What do you have there?” Gioacchino asks her.
“Open your mouth!” Lea orders her.
Giaele opens her mouth and atop the frighteningly swollen tongue, there it is, poised on the redness: the berry, likewise red, that she had shown off earlier with such pride.
“Spit it out!”
“Spit that thing out now, Giaele!”
“Spit it out!”
And Giaele, drooling, spits out the little piece of fruit into Gioacchino’s hand.
“What happened? What’s happening?” shouts the mother. Then she screams again at the pain in her ankle and her last scream is muffled into a moan.
THEY TRY TO CALL across the lake, to pass word of the emergency, but it’s too far and the group being led by their father is deep in the thick of the woods. When their trail emerges and runs along by the lakeshore again, only Ezechiele, who is the last in line, thinks that he can see someone waving their arms on the far shore, at the edge of the rocky ridge, but he just assumes they want to wave hello and he waves back, then calmly goes on walking, light-footed, unhurried, the way his father has always told him to do. And in the meantime, he looks around carefully, an eye out for acorns or bird feathers or little twigs with interesting shapes to collect for his mother.
ELISABETTA AND RACHELE have made peace. Too much peace. They walk through the woods, arms around each other, which makes it difficult to sidestep obstacles: where one could get through easily, the other has to stoop in order to avoid taking a branch in the face, or else trips over a root hidden beneath the leaves, but it doesn’t matter. Marching along close beside her, Lis plants frequent kisses on her sister’s cheek and, sniffing at her, pays her exaggerated compliments, which ring false but are utterly sincere. “What nice hair you have . . . how shiny and sleek. It looks like, I don’t know, a fur coat . . . a cat’s fur coat. It almost tickles. And it smells so nice . . .”
“I used some of Mamma’s shampoo,” Rachele confesses.
“And didn’t she notice that you’d used it?”
“Not at all!” Rachele explains that she added a little water to the bottle, leaving it at the same level. They laugh and hug each other closer.
“Your hair looks good like that,” and with a little smack she knocks Lis’s hat behind her back, after all, there’s no need for it in the woods, it’s cool in the shade of the trees, and she caresses the short tousled locks.
WHEN THEY GET BACK to the point of departure, from which the lake trails split in two directions, they find no one but Eleonora Rummo, overwhelmed with pain and sobbing, sitting on a rock, with her ankle ligaments torn. The rest of the group to which my classmate Gioacchino belonged had headed on down the trail to the valley at top speed, in search of a possible rescue.
“Stay here with your mother!” Davide orders Ezechiele, who can do nothing other than to obey and remain there, as his father lopes back down the slope. Taking giant steps, despairing lunges, he gathers up his children, first encountering Lea, who instead of walking is lurching, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and then Tobia, who’s striding along briskly, head bowed, wiping his tears with the sleeves of his denim shirt. Gioacchino Rummo, at the head of the line, is almost running with his little sister in his arms, down toward the bottom of the valley, where they left the van. By now, Giaele’s face is so swollen that her eyes can no longer be seen, and from her puffy, bluish lips comes a rattling breath, in increasingly quick, short puffs.
“Come on, Gia’, keep breathing . . .” Rummo tells her in a faint voice, ravaged by exhaustion. His arms hold his sister, who at first was light as a feather: but now those arms are heavy as lead, and his knees are on fire. “Keep breathing, girl, keep breathing, it’s not far now . . .” and “Look at me, Giaele, look at me! We’ll be there soon and then you’ll be fine . . .” At last Davide Rummo catches up with him and tears his daughter out of his son’s arms. Rushing away down the hill as fast as his legs will carry him, he yells at Gioacchino, by now out of strength and out of breath: “Run! Run!”
IT TURNED OUT to be the unfortunate intersection of a very slight quantity of toxic content in the berry and the little girl’s elevated allergic sensitivity, of which there had been no prior indication. This sort of episode usually manifests only in the very young, tending to lessen with age or disappear entirely. By the time they got Giaele to the hospital she’d been dead for ten minutes. All efforts to revive her in the car had been fruitless: the architect Rummo, the father that is, had been driving with the horn blaring while my classmate tried to blow air into his sister’s clamped mouth. Spasm of the glottis is what this phenomenon is called. Solanum dulcamara, or bittersweet nightshade, is the name of the poisonous plant. Gioacchino had dutifully kept in his pocket the berry that Giaele had sucked on, now withered and pruned, and he showed it to the doctors. It was useful only in that it gave them something specific to put down on the death certificate.
I HEARD THIS STORY from Ezechiele Rummo, the firstborn, many years later. Gioacchino would never have told me about it. For Ezechiele that had been the great torment, the true regret of his life, not to have been able to do anything to help his little sister; and indeed, to have wasted time along the way gathering twigs and stupid acorns: acorns, at age eighteen!
My classmate, on the other hand, somehow succeeded, I could never guess how, in transforming it into an “opportunity” to become a grown-up, a man. And I say that with nothing but the greatest admiration.
DEAR GIOACCHINO, this was the story that came spontaneously to me to tell, not some other. Yes, I know that it’s more about your lovely family, and your sister, and the misfortune that befell you all, than it is about you. I hope that you aren’t too upset. Likewise, I hope that this doesn’t infuriate any of the others I talk about, faithfully or unfaithfully, at length or only briefly, in this book.
16
I HAD MET EZECHIELE RUMMO at his house, around the year 2000. He was throwing a party for the tenth anniversary of the founding of his publishing house, not particularly big but quite active, which I consider to be a worthwhile and courageous undertaking, more than a great many others would be capable of. The sign of a very distinctive obstinacy and faith. It is work, it is only work that opens paths where no roads exist. Connecting his surname to that of my classmate, I recognized in him the unmistakable family trait: he was a tall, corpulent man, with a shy smile, and little patches of blond still popping up here and there among his largely gray hair. I was struck with curiosity about the collages made of items from nature that dotted the entire wall behind the desk in his office, and I asked him who had made them, and when. They really were quite lovely, and I would say, if the expression itself weren’t the exact opposite of what it’s meant to signify, “in fine taste.” It was odd that someone with a personality as reserved as his should have willingly set out to tell me the whole story, with its tragic conclusion. The thing that made him most uncomfortable while also stirring a sort of bitter amusement, so that he smiled as he shook his head, was the account of his mother’s stream of profanities. “She was cursing without the slightest idea that it wasn’t that, that it wasn’t a broken ankle that offered a good reason to curse God!”
Referring to Gioacchino, he too admitted that he was amazed at the way that young man had managed to find a state of equilibrium.
He called Gioacchino a young man, though he was now my age, that is, over forty, because of the natural habit of considering younger brothers youngsters for the rest of your life.
“That which is a source of suffering must become the source of the most profound joy. Yes, that’s it, that must be how it is . . .” Ezechiele murmured. “But it’s a miracle that I have no idea of how to explain, and one that, unfortunately, was not afforded to me: bad things remain bad, and the same is true of the good things, fortunately. I
don’t know if the same has been true for you, Edoardo . . .” I nodded my head in a way that might have conveyed assent, and yet it was true, and how. “Those things might possibly fade or become more vivid, kindle with light, but they never shift from plus to minus or vice versa, they are never transmuted into something new . . . No, what never happens is that grief takes on a positive significance, that it becomes a reason to live, and to live better . . . to live more fully.”
Ezechiele Rummo sighed and looked down at me, clearly moved, from the height of his massive frame. I felt like throwing my arms around him. There is no good reason for cursing God. But just then the leading author of Rummo Books had arrived: practically all on her own, with her popular series of novels all set in Sardinia, she was keeping the publishing house running, bringing in 80 percent of recent revenue, and Ezechiele turned away to give her a hug.
17
OF THE MANY SPIRITUAL RETREATS that I went on in all my years at SLM, I remember only two things.
The first was the bread meat loaf.
AS IS WELL KNOWN, when you’re mixing up a meat loaf, you have to knead in along with the meat and everything else some breadcrumbs, stale slices of bread crumbled up or else grated: it’s to bind the other ingredients together and bulk them up. It’s all in the quantity, just like in any dish. But in the case of the meat loaf that they served in the lunchroom at SLM and at the religious shelters where we went for our spiritual retreats in preparation for Easter, the recipe was taken to an extreme, and the concept of percentage started to lose meaning, because among the various ingredients, bread had expanded to take up 90 or 95 percent of the volume, and in fact, unless I’m misremembering, they actually called it “bread meat loaf.”
THE SECOND THING is a story that I’ll tell at some greater length.
During one of those spiritual retreats we discovered (where exactly? In the bunkroom, I think, or else down some hallway, or perhaps in the bedroom of the spiritual director, where we snuck in while he was in church at prayer . . . I tend to lean toward this third possibility because now, as I write, I seem to have it before my mind’s eye, hanging over an iron bedstead, practically bigger and heavier than the bed itself . . .) a painting of the flagellation of a saint.
It wasn’t clear which saint this was, since the image was dark, grim, except for the glittering halo around the head turned up to heaven, imploring divine aid.
Behind the saint’s back, strapping powerful men reared up, taking turns delivering the blows: one had the whip raised high, the other was lashing the saint on the lower back, which gleamed white and was discolored with bruises in the shadows.
After we went back to the bunk room, we persuaded Marco d’Avenia to strip down, that is, to take off his sweater and shirt so he could play the martyr (“What are you whining about? It’s the leading role!”), and then we started in on him, at first at a gentle rhythm, as if in slow motion, and then beating him a little faster. We pounded his naked, pudgy shoulders with a pair of cords we had knotted at various points along their length. We delivered the blows with symbolic majesty, with a sweeping, theatrical gesture accompanied by oaths and words of derision, like the executioners in one of those films they still show on TV during Holy Week, in Technicolor: blue and yellow cloaks, pink faces, streaks of bright blood on Jesus’s back . . .
IT WAS A HOLY SPECTACLE. We had stamped evil grins onto our faces. On his knees, with both hands tied behind his bare back in the middle of the bunk room, Marco d’Avenia was begging for mercy, at first as part of the game, just as we had promised him a flagellation as part of the game, and then for real. He lurched each time the whip came down, even though it was little more than a love tap. Tears welled up in his eyes and then streaked down his cheeks. At last he burst into tears. “Stop, I’m begging you!” he shouted, and the authentic fear he was displaying made a few of the torturers want to stop, while others wanted to go on, intensifying the blows, until d’Avenia’s fear was transformed into real pain.
Now you could hear the whistle and snap of the cords on our classmate’s flesh. “Listen to me, that’s enough! Let me go,” and on his fat, freckled shoulders you could start to see the welts raised by the lashes he had received. Marco had bowed his head, pulling it in between his shoulders to hide his terror. He’d stopped breathing. He awaited each lash and received it with a moan, and during the intervals, which were actually growing shorter and shorter, we too held our breath. After one blow that was harder than the others, d’Avenia raised his head, shouting: “Have mercy! What did I ever do to you? Why?” and his sniveling broke into outright sobbing.
At that point, to give a crumb of meaning to that punishment, and to steer it back onto the tracks of the sacred passion play or, actually, a parody of one, that it had started out being, one of the torturers stopped whipping him, lowered his arm, and demanded of d’Avenia: “If you wish to be spared, then will you disavow your faith?” D’Avenia was so racked with sobs that he failed to understand the question and Chiodi had to repeat it to him, remaining firmly within the phrasing he had taken from some Sunday reading, the Acts of the Apostles, the Acts of the Martyrs, etc.
“Let me repeat it to you one more time. It’s up to you to save your own life. Abjure your God!” “Which God?” d’Avenia stammered, and bubbles of tears mixed with saliva formed on his lips. It was painful to see, but also ridiculous. At this point one or two of our classmates muttered in a low voice: “Maybe we should stop. What if someone comes along?” and I, too, as if coming to from my torpor, added my own protest to those feeble objections, “Yeah, now that’s enough . . .” and yet my voice was lost in the air crackling with tension, so much so that I began to wonder whether I had really spoken at all, and I cleared my throat to speak again. But the executioner was indifferent to us, determined to complete his inquisition of the martyr. “You know perfectly well which God! The God in which you have had the insolence to claim you believe. That’s the God you need to abjure, you filthy pig. Now deny Him!” And as further proof of the fact that his victim had no other way of saving himself than to disavow his faith, he lashed his shoulders with another blow of the belt, this time really hard, so hard that it tore a genuine scream of pain from our classmate’s lips.
“Nooo!”
SPRAYING SPIT FROM HIS MOUTH, like a dog, d’Avenia tried in vain to free himself from the twine bindings we’d used to fasten his wrists behind his back, the thin kind of string you use to truss a roast for the oven, with no result other than to dig the bindings deeper into his flesh, and he tried to get back on his feet, staggering from one side to the other, awkwardly flaccid, incapable of getting up unless someone helped him. Having called out to them to stop, but seeing that they defiantly continued, that they persisted, I was tempted to turn and leave so that at least I was no longer responsible for what was happening, which I had at first found amusing, but then it had turned absurd. Absurd precisely because increasingly true-to-life, real. I personally like performances, but I care less for reality. Often, that’s how I’ve gotten by, by avoiding reality. All you need to do is get out of it, leave the room, turn your attention elsewhere, if possible, toward another performance. This attitude of mine was very similar to that of Pontius Pilate, seeing that I did not approve of what was happening, but I did little or nothing to prevent it, except to murmur a series of barely audible urgings to stop. Those appeals to reason, the kind you know in advance aren’t going to do any good unless they are accompanied by a forcefulness at least as great as whatever they are meant to halt. No less cowardly, then, were my classmates, or maybe they really were just carried away by the ceremony. I could sense their excitement. Not merely reason, but mildness and pity are swept away once the action has built up inertia, on its downhill course. Another lash of the whip.
A HORRIFIED SCREAM, feminine this time, followed by a prolonged cry of anguish that broke into a piercing high note.
“Nooooo . . .! Stop whipping me! That’s enough!” and d’Avenia turned his eyes up to the
ceiling of the bunk room. Exactly as the saint in the painting was doing, toward the dark sky where his Savior lurked in hiding, every bit as much a coward. Then he tried to turn his head as far as he could, craning around to see his torturers standing behind him.
“I . . . I . . .”
His lips were swollen and there was a chaotic glint in his eyes.
“I don’t believe in anything!”
At this point the flails, the whips, fell to the sides of the torturers.
AT LAST I TOOK A BREATH. We all took a breath. We came back to earth, or perhaps it had been on the earth, the bare, dirty earth, that we had been standing for the ten minutes that Marco d’Avenia’s auto-da-fé had lasted. He, too, was breathing heavily, drenched in sweat, looking over his shoulder to see if any other lashes of the whip were on the way, even after his abjuration. It was then, as I gazed at his face, that I fully grasped the situation, from a detail that had escaped me until then. Something obvious, that is to say, belonging to the category of truths to which my otherwise renowned intelligence (which was vivid and gleaming, especially at that age, during my adolescence, at school) always arrives later, regularly the last to pull up, revealing itself to be, therefore, a form of reverse obtuseness, a sort of presbyopia that can glimpse that which is far away but not what is right before your eyes, grasping that which is abstruse, not things that are glaringly evident.
In Marco’s face, chaos wandered freely. The things that form in the soul of someone who has undergone an injustice without even understanding whether it was truly unjust: astonishment horror mortification and hope for the cessation of the punishment . . .
But there was also something else. A tautening of his features, his face seemingly split into two bands at odds with each other, at the top, suffering still, while below that . . .
The Catholic School Page 47