“Little kid!”
IN THE PRESENCE OF MY STUDENTS IN PRISON, I also frequently feel like a well-intentioned kid, or maybe just a kid, period, who has gone and gotten mixed up with much bigger and more experienced people. Bigger not so much in terms of age (now I’m older than nearly all of them, after all), but in terms of overall human stature. And why on earth did I do it? Out of a punctilious point of honor, out of a sense of playfulness, out of sheer boredom—in fact, all of them kid reasons to do something. The aspiration to experience something constantly new is driven from the very outset by an illicit principle, it leads you to the borders of the illegal, and often beyond. Maybe that’s what happened to Jervi. How did he ever end up on that rooftop? And how could I ask the Prince and get more information from him without letting him figure out that I already know about that story and that it already concerned me personally? The guy that he referred to as “that asshole” was an ex-classmate of mine, no less. But with people like him, it’s very difficult to bluff, in fact, practically impossible.
I TRIED TO CIRCLE BACK to the topic in the days that followed, but my student, from the moment he realized that I was interested, and for real, not like with his goofball publishing projects, withdrew. Curiosity had aroused his suspicion of my partial familiarity with what had happened and alarmed him. Or maybe he was just doing it out of spite.
As for how Stefano Maria Jervi really died, I was left with the doubts I had had initially, still intact, and a series of theories arranged one atop the other, and hidden each from the rest, like the layers of a cake: composing an unknowable truth.
Perhaps something that had been nothing more than criminal activity had been mistaken for the maneuverings of a terrorist cell: the illegal fabrication of fireworks for New Year’s Eve, which Jervi was taking part in.
Or else maybe Jervi really was a terrorist, because back then, in that convulsive phase that was to accentuate the movement’s decline, the various revolutionary groups had chosen to form alliances with common criminals and with the Camorra, to commit kidnappings and murders: and the supposed fireworks business was nothing other than a cover for the management of a genuine, full-fledged arsenal.
Maybe Jervi really had made some blunder that blew him sky high or maybe someone had lured him onto the insane asylum roof by some deception. In those days, there were countless scores being settled with spies, real or presumed: anyone might wake up one fine day and just decide to turn informant. Had Jervi simply not had a chance to squeal yet? Had he planned to? Or had his confederates simply made a mistake? Back then, everyone was suspicious of everyone else.
Or maybe the Prince had just told me a lie, and that was that.
He’d done it for the fun of it . . . just to watch me fall for it . . .
Ma pecché? But why?
Perhaps, as is so often the case, he was telling half a lie. Maybe both things were being warehoused in those abandoned washhouses, bombs and New Year’s Eve fireworks, Tokarevs, Sig Sauers, Glocks, Škorpions, along with ordinary firecrackers.
Maybe Jervi had been killed elsewhere and then transported up there and blown up with all the rest, to mislead the investigators.
It isn’t easy to distinguish in Italy between the two phases that, according to Marx, succeed each other when the same event occurs in history: first as tragedy, then as farce. Rather, these two phases overlap, merging into a single event, at once dramatic and grotesque. He had jotted this down in his papers, my old and beloved teacher, the only person I’ve ever had and acknowledged as a master in my life, Signor Cosmo: Tragedy and farce are, in our country, tragically, comically simultaneous.
Maybe Jervi had committed suicide.
But deep down, what does it matter?
EPILOGUE. It’s been a number of years now since I stopped teaching at the MS. If you’re interested in life behind bars, I invite you to read the article below that I had the unfortunate idea of publishing in the weekly magazine of a prominent daily paper. It is the story, saccharine sweet and picturesque (soap and water, in the modest opinion of its author), of a typical morning of a teacher in prison. The names are all fictional, except for one. This is a detour from the main body of this book, so anyone who does not wish to read it is welcome to skip the chapter, they won’t have missed a thing. It is in any case on account of this semi-innocent article that I no longer teach at the MS, and once you’ve either read it or left it unread, I’ll tell you the reason.
13
TO GET TO THE CELL in the maximum-security wing where school is taught, you have to go through eleven checkpoints, a combination of iron gates and armored doors. The first six open automatically: a guard gives you the once-over, either in person or by a video camera, and pushes the button. The next three gates have to be operated by hand, by an officer in the roundhouse: with a large yellow key he opens the gate for you and, as soon as you’ve passed through, slams it shut behind you, with the usual distinctive bang. (In fact, the roundhouse, from which all the wings extend, with their cells, and that unmistakable metallic crash are the most garish signals of prison, the icons acquired by the habitual visitor—but they hit you like a punch in the nose if you’re going in for the first time.) The last two gates are left ajar, and I slide through, squeezing myself thin and dangling in one hand the transparent plastic book bag containing the roll book, the ruler, the official notarized pages, the tiny Hoepli edition of the Divine Comedy, the pencils—in other words, the accoutrements of a normal teacher in a normal school.
Practically all of my students are standing near the whiteboard where they’re commenting, ironically or pityingly, on their classmate’s efforts; he stands there, marker in hand, swollen with doubts, trying to solve a math problem. A couple of them are over by the open window, smoking. The teacher, a woman, is trying to steer the student toward the correct answer with a few comments: she can’t just abandon him to the anguish of those numbers, but she can’t spoon-feed him either, otherwise what good would the exercise do him, what’s more, the others would make fun of him—pitiless mockery. Actually, though, the ones cracking funny, if they had been at the whiteboard, would be just as helpless. It’s incredible to watch a hardened bandit turn helpless in front of a piece of homework or a math problem. Accustomed to acting tough when being grilled by the cops, they turn into marshmallows when given an exam. Even certain Roman hardasses, accustomed to pulling off armed robberies . . . One time I had a student who was taking his final exam in literature, and he came close to tears in shame, tangled up halfway through a poem by Pascoli.
If everyone stands up in this cell-classroom, it’s in part because there is no heat, the heating doesn’t work, it never once worked this winter—and so they mill around, stamp their feet, rub their hands. The mathematics teacher wears an overcoat, as well as a woolen skullcap, fingerless gloves, and unfailingly yellow-and-red oversized scarves, the colors of the AS Roma soccer club; there’s a tall, neurotic Sicilian who seems ready to go skiing with a Jean-Claude Killy style of cap, dating more or less back to that period, the late sixties, faded from repeated washings. It is brutally cold in there, even though the February weather is mild. It’s damp—I can’t figure out why, but it’s always damp in prison, even in the dog-day summer heat.
Since the bell doesn’t ring in here to mark the end of the hour and I came in stealthily, it is several seconds before I am noticed, whereupon the ironic, festive ceremony of greetings begins, along with the ritual of offering coffee.
“Aho! Americano! The professor’s here, aren’t you going to make some coffee for the professor?!” someone calls toward the cell across the corridor from our classroom.
Until just a few weeks ago, the Americano’s voice would ring out in response, in a heavy Roman accent: “Nooo! Nun je lo preparo er caffè ar vostro professore . . .” No! I’m not making coffee for your professor . . .
“And why not?”
“Perché è daa Lazzio!” Because he roots for Lazio, instead of Roma.
But the
n, within minutes the steaming pitcher of coffee would arrive, along with the little plastic cups so we all could have some. A thin line of coffee at the bottom of each little cup.
“Fine,” after we’ve had our coffee, “let’s get down to business,” and I start the lesson by handing out photocopies with the epigrams of the Palatine Anthology, in Milo De Angelis’s lovely Italian translation. You need only read the first three or four poems and the atmosphere starts to warm up, a strange languid feeling starts to spread as everyone’s attention grows intense.
Ieri, con la testa appoggiata alla mia spalla
piangeva, in silenzio. La baciai. Le lacrime scendevano
come da una fonte misteriosa sulle nostre labbra unite . . .
One day, she leaned on me—I knew not why—
And, resting on my neck, she gave a sigh.
She wept; I kissed her, and our lips grew wet
As streams of dew flowed on them as they met.
We speak of pagan Eros and Christian Amor, of the lyrical tradition that begins with Sappho and ends up at Sanremo Song Festival, of the demon that possesses men and leads them to escape from the self that imprisons them. The inmates fight among themselves for the chance to read poems aloud, putting theatrical emphasis into their reading. Where regret or sensuality are strongest, their voices reach the appropriate pitch and vibration, and I decide that literature actually has meaning.
“Now, I want to read this one, though,” with an arch expression, and I start in:
Doride, culo di rosa, l’ho distesa sopra il letto . . .
Having stretched out Doris the rose-bottomed on top of a bed.
After an hour spent like that, as the temperature in class rises steadily, I decide the time has come for a bucket of ice water.
“Now we’ve had enough of those faggots the ancient Greeks, let’s move on to some grammatical analysis of simple sentences . . .”
“Nooo!!”
The classes in Rebibbia are widely variegated. Nigerians, Romanians, Slavs, and a fruit cocktail of Italians. Here in the maximum-security wing, I have, among others, two Romans, an elegant Colombian, a Sardinian, and then various subjects of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Faces, voices, personalities, physiognomies. I want the lingua franca to be Italian but frequently Sicilian and Spanish gain the upper hand—nearly all of them, in the course of their illegal trafficking, have had to learn some amount of Spanish.
And then, of course, there’s Wilmo.
Every year, inevitably, in every class, there’s a young man like Wilmo.
Wilmo is truly unrestrainable. In his small, light blue eyes, the thousand ideas that pass through his head burn like electric discharges, the observations, the answers to questions never asked, the objections, the wordplay, the anecdotes—and it is all transformed into an explosive burst of laughter. Despite the fact that he has been in prison for years, he has not yet assumed the hieratical calm typical of the older prisoners, the ones who have learned to control their movements, to slow their respiration in order to avoid being touched by what happens around them in prison. Wilmo does not want to slow things down, in fact, he constantly accelerates. The words pour out of him, he wants to answer all the questions, solve all the problems at the whiteboard, read aloud, correct mistakes . . .
A few years ago, the members of a rival gang tried to stop him, with fifteen bullets. “Fifteen?!” I exclaimed. “And they all hit the target, Professor!” Wilmo laughs, as if proud or just amused at the astonishment he’s caused.
“Excuse me, though, they must have been small-caliber bullets . . .”
Not at all—9 mm! When the surgeons got to work on him, they couldn’t believe that that colander lying there on the operating table, that fountain of blood could still be among the living. So what does Wilmo do? Are words enough to tell the story? No. He pulls up his T-shirt to show me the scars of his entry and exit wounds. Then he comes closer to me and points out a couple of pale marks on his face, a streak that runs along his jaw, and, at the right corner of his mouth, a crease that I just thought was a wrinkle of expression: instead it’s the point where the bullet entered his mouth.
“I just swallowed it!” He laughs.
The lesson, which up to that point had sailed along as taut and direct as a violin string, bends, collapses, plunges into the void: but I know what to do about it, I let the fishing line hang slack, I let the lure bob easily, and in just a few minutes’ time I’ll hook all my little fishies again with a good hard yank. Another go at the parts of speech will bring them back to the fold of reason.
To keep the prisoners in line, others use billy clubs, I use syntax: subordinate, relative, and concessive clauses.
What good does it do to study, here, in prison? Does it do any good, help anyone? I couldn’t say. I have no assurances to offer in that connection. I’ve wondered for years, and with some personal torment, and then I’ve stopped asking myself, the hell with it, I just settle for life as it is, and I enjoy those glints of intelligence and pleasure that I can see passing over my students’ faces as we read, as we argue, the sizzle of a concept that is transmitted like an electric bolt, from one head to another. The buzz of minds at work. I can’t be certain that I’m really taking them anywhere with Petrarch and modal adverbs, and most of all, that I’m steering them away from the reason they ended up in here in the first place.
Reintegrate, reeducate, resocialize . . . all these “re-somethings” guarantee nothing, I’d have sufficient evidence to say that this method works and enough to say that it’s a failure. There’s a high rate of recidivism in crime. Among my former students there are those who now have gainful employment, who, in short, “rebuilt their lives”—and others who went merrily off into a hail of bullets just ten days after being released from incarceration. And the strange thing is that often the ones who fell right back into it, into the mayhem of drugs or armed robberies, were the first in the class . . . you would have “bet your life” on them . . .
Before I leave, and before they go back to their cells, to make their lunches, as they stream out of the classroom they insist on shaking hands with me, and I shake hands with them even though it seems a little absurd, given that we’ve been seeing one another regularly since September, and tomorrow I’ll be back here, so why this theatrical farewell, this ceremonial salutation? Perhaps it’s because, in prison, you never know, maybe they’ll transfer you tomorrow, or they’ll send you to trial, they’ll release you, or maybe . . . A certain caution suggests never taking any future event for granted. Perhaps that comradely salutation is because we’ve just spent a few hours together that were less inhuman than usual.
Wilmo thinks he needs to give back the photocopies of the poems. “No, keep them, just remember to bring them tomorrow.” Without textbooks, the school in here relies on the wheezing, limping photocopying machine downstairs: if it breaks or runs out of supplies, forget about classes. Two years ago, in September, before school began, I had made up my mind to buy a couple of reams of paper with an accompanying supply of toner, beating my colleagues to the draw: and I had selected, cut out, assembled into a collage, and photocopied a hundred or so poems and other famous pieces, such as Hamlet’s monologues or the face-off with Polyphemus, or Palazzeschi’s nursery rhymes, in short, a little anthology, created with one student in mind in particular who passionately loved reading: Scarano.
Last year, every time I entered the classroom, this elderly Neapolitan, Scarano, with his long white locks, nicknamed “Archilochus” since the day we read the famous poem by that Greek poet describing how he abandoned his shield and took to his heels during the battle, would ask me, in a faint, ironic, and slightly wheedling voice: “Can we read some really nice poem today, what do you say, eh?” Scarano never wanted to study history, or grammar, or do abstruse and tiresome exercises, all he ever wanted was to enjoy “some really nice poem,” the way you might listen to a serenade or a canzone. He’d enjoyed Ariosto’s knights, and the death of Clorinda . . .
“Where’s Scarano?”
I suppose to myself he must be talking to his lawyer or in the visitor’s room, seeing family.
“Mmm . . . professo’ . . . didn’t you hear about Scarano?”
“Hear what?”
“He died a week ago.”
For months he had been hearing a whistling in his ears, and had had pains in his chest, he kept asking to be seen by a specialist, but they wouldn’t arrange for it. They weren’t taking him seriously. I remember, in fact, that in class he’d hold his hand to his temple, trying to stifle that incessant shrill noise. He was pale, tired. And then, one night, he up and died. His heart gave out. In the outside world, it’s called “medical error” or “malpractice,” while in prison it’s part of the punitive routine, which in spite of all the fine words about the objectives of reeducation still remains the deep-seated underlying reason for the very existence of prison: a punishment that is first and foremost corporeal in nature. Prison, and everything that’s in it—in terms of health, work, food, human interactions—must necessarily be much worse than can be found in the outside world, where people live in freedom: otherwise what deterrent effect would it have against crime? And there’s no need to go all the way to the verge of tragedy: the most unremarkable toothache can turn into a nightmare if they won’t give you the pill you need. Will they give it to you? Won’t they? Well, it all depends, if you’re in luck or you’re clever or you count for something. The only therapy they’d never dream of skimping on involves psychopharmaceuticals. The plastic bicchierini, or cups, the “goccine,” or drops (who knows why in the brutal world of Italian prisons there is such rampant overuse of these coy little diminutives: the “spesino” or gofer, the “domandina” or application form . . . as if the convicts were being infantilized into some sort of oversized nursery school). And so the prisoners, sedated with horse-pill doses of sedatives, lie helpless on their cots, bothering no one, mumbling, furry-tongued, especially the junkies who would otherwise spend their night howling at invisible moons . . .
The Catholic School Page 136