The Catholic School

by Edoardo Albinati

  By the way, zippers were called chiusura-lampo, or “lightning fasteners.”

  NEVRASTENICO: this term, “neurasthenic,” straight out of nineteenth-century psychiatry, was still used as a pejorative to describe an intolerable individual; and the equivalent of antianxiety medicines were “tranquilizers.”

  FARE UN REPULISTI (carry out a thorough cleansing, that’s what my mother would say when in the throes of the cyclical, maniacal urge to do a deep clean and straighten up, for example, in the cellar or the garage: “È ora di fare un bel repulisti”—but you’d also hear political extremists use it when the time had come for radical solutions against their political adversaries: “Assaltiamo la loro sezione e facciamo un bel repulisti” (“Let’s attack their offices and clean them out”) or else “Il QT ha bisogno di un bel repulisti” (literally, “The QT needs a thorough cleansing”).

  IN ROME, something of little worth or a small object whose name you don’t know is offhandedly dubbed a “cazzabubbolo” (a mix of the obscene “cock” and the old-fashioned “sleigh bell”), and a small person or child, a “soldo di cacio,” literally “a pennyworth of cheese.”

  Traffic police were called “pizzardoni,” a term that may have referred to their caps or to their resemblance to certain aquatic birds.

  Roman dialect expressions I haven’t heard since:

  “Ha fatto un grifo!” (“He pulled a griffin,” meaning he fell off his bicycle or motorcycle), “è annato a scroscia’ contro un palo!” (and hit a lamppost!)

  La pula (the police).

  Andare a fette, to go on foot, where “fette” (slices, as of bread or pizza) means feet.

  Mannaggia alli pescetti, a minced oath, like darn and heck, involving a comical imprecation against little fishies.

  In Rome, at least, if something was useless or broken, one would ask, rhetorically: “E con questo, che ci faccio? La birra?” (“What am I supposed to do with this? Make beer?)

  “Fate voi,” literally, “you do it,” for “be my guest,” would be latinized into: “Fate vobis.”

  IN ROMAN DIALECT: “gajardo!” to mean nice, impressive, noteworthy, impressive. I haven’t heard it in years. It was once very common. Everyone said it.

  A sly and undisciplined young man would be compared to a fishing line: “È proprio una lenza!”

  The classic Roman curse, involving contemptible dead ancestors, or mortacci, would be tuned up with the Italian name for Disney’s Goofy, Pippo: Mortacci de Pippo.

  And then there’s the surprising etymology of “mortanguerieri . . .” a variant on “mortacci” with the added suffix of “warriors.”

  MOREOVER:

  Porca l’oca (a comically minced oath mixing a swine and a goose)

  Vattelappesca (beats me, literally, “go fish for it”)

  Mi ha buggerato (he screwed me, interestingly from the same root as the English “bugger”)

  Che sagoma! (what a character! from “sagoma,” meaning silhouette or cardboard cutout)

  Roba da chiodi (a comical variant on Roba da pazzi, already an exasperated equivalent of, say, the English usage of looney tunes!)

  Le zinne (breasts), una zinnona (a shapely woman)

  È uno scorfano (the word for scorpion fish, to indicate a homely young woman, a pejorative term, more extreme than the companion insults, “cozza” or “racchia”)

  Stai fresco (you’re out of luck, possibly a learned reference to Dante, see

  Inferno, canto 32, line 117).

  Sei una schiappa (for someone who’s bad at a game or sport, especially tennis: una vera schiappa)

  Papale papale (verbatim, literally, from the emphatic use of “papal”)

  Costa uno sproposito (something expensive is “disproportionate”)

  Un bel gruzzolo, un gruzzoletto (from the Lombardic, a funny-sounding term for a pile of cash)

  Marcantonio (from the name Mark Antony, a big strong man)

  Faccia da impunito, race d’impunito: a broad use of the adjective derived from “impunity,” tantamount to “shameless.”

  Vai a farti friggere! (Go fry your head in it!)

  Vai a farti un bagno! (Go take a bath!)

  Va’ a fa’ l’ovo! (Go lay an egg!)

  Non mi dare il cordoglio! (Spare me the grief!)

  Mannaggia a Nerone (Darn that Nero!)

  Che c’hai le paturnie? (A phrase roughly equivalent in sound and meaning to the “screaming meemies”: “What’s up with you? You got the screaming meemies or something?”)

  Guarda quanto ben di dio! (Look at this cornucopia of delight!)

  Se non le è d’incomodo . . . (If it’s not too much of a bother, an inconvenience, in a piece of quaint phrasing)

  A EUPHEMISM FOR PREGNANCY, to say a woman is “in stato interessante,” in “an interesting condition.”

  To say someone was a prostitute, the phrase was “fa la vita,” or “leading the life.”

  If a girl wouldn’t “play ball,” then you’d say, “Manco fosse Maria Goretti!” (“She thinks she’s St. Maria Goretti!” The saint in question is an Italian virgin-martyr, and one of the youngest canonized saints, murdered by her would-be rapist.)

  A restless person was “a breakneck,” as in “scavezzacollo” or “rompicollo.”

  Going to sleep or just lying down for a quick catnap took the verb “coricarsi,” for example: “Sei stanca? Perché non vai a coricarti un po’?”

  Mopping the floor was termed “dare lo straccio,” or “passing a rag.”

  To laze about was to “stare in panciolle,” literally, to lie “belly-up.”

  Whenever anyone was interviewed about young people, on TV or in the press, who knows why, they always felt called upon to specify, “the young people today.”

  Denatured alcohol was called “spirit,” as in English “spirits.”

  UN TIPO DA SPIAGGIA (a peculiar character, literally, “a guy off the beach”)

  Stagnino (old-fashioned term for plumber, from tin, in Latin: stannum, symbol Sn).

  Rivoltella and rivoltellata for, respectively, revolver and revolver shot.

  Tonto, tontolone, and tontolomeo (terms for a simpleton; my mother and my grandmother would use the latter variant with a certain fondness: “Sei davvero un tontolomeo!”)

  Ellalléro! (a word trotted out when someone was exaggerating, saying things that stretch credulity).

  Metti giudizio, porta pazienza (be judicious, exercise patience: here, it is the underlying concepts that have vanished).

  Squattrinato, mattacchione, pelandrone, scorbutico, pruriginoso (five colorfully quaint terms for being, respectively: penniless; cheerfully eccentric; lazy and slow; grouchy; and itchy or prurient)

  IN ROME, at least, without thinking twice about it, we would use the gravest diseases, sicknesses, and handicaps as insults. “What are you, a spaz?” we’d upbraid someone incapable of performing an elementary task; we’d say that a skinny boy had a case of rickets; from the bleachers at the soccer stadium you’d hear voices shouting out, “Hey, Encephalitis!” when the referee missed a call.

  AND THEN THERE WERE A FEW FRENCH WORDS whose disappearance marked the international decline of that language, but which were still widely used in our parents’ day: vedette, entraîneuse, gigolo, chaperon, exploit, mannequin, to say nothing of the dusty lampshades, or abat-jours, the paletots (overcoats), secretaire, negligée, refrain, consolle, and frigidaire. Advertisements were called réclames: “Have you seen the réclame for Ovaltine?” And an advertising campaign was called a battage.

  “MI PUÒ FARE LA PREMURA” (or else: “Mi può usare la premura”), politeness entailing the use of a word roughly equivalent to “solicitude” (to, say, put aside a small loaf of bread for me . . .)

  “UN BEL GIORNO . . .” (literally, one fine day, to indicate one particular day, any ordinary day, but which had proved decisive): “. . . e un bel giorno dico basta coi capelli lunghi, decido di farmi la frangetta” (“. . . and one fine day I say to myself, I’m done with lon
g hair, I’m going to get a pageboy”), etc.

  That was an era when adjectives were applied to things that were usually used for people, which meant our mothers might call a dress “amusing” and the fabric used to upholster a sofa “likable.” A slender young woman had “un bel personale.”

  “HOW DO YOU KNOW?”

  “L’ha detto il giornale radio.” (I heard it on the radio newscast.)

  15

  IT’S THE END OF THE YEAR 2015. Thousands have drowned trying to cross the Aegean Sea. Now that it’s winter, the seas are high and the crossings are even more dangerous. The refugees are trekking across Europe en masse. One day they’re turned back, the next they’re welcomed. An elderly archaeologist had his head cut off, and his decapitated body was strung up from an ancient column. Lazio, the soccer team, was unable to make it into the Champions League, instead being eliminated in the preliminary games by a German team named after the company that makes aspirin. With all his vast experience and his precious contacts at the land registry office, the surveyor Rocchi has yet to come up with a system to free me of the twenty square feet I own, unwillingly, in the middle of a courtyard. These are all pieces of purely bad news, but there has been good news as well. There must have been, no doubt about it. Only I can’t think of any right now. It’s Christmas. I’m at the midnight mass at SLM. I did it, in the end; and Don Salari is there, celebrating mass.

  He’s older and more twisted than ever, but he is a stout and durable man. He has quite a way about him. Maybe he’s sick, maybe he’s old: but he bears his cross magnificently, the way all the recent pontiffs, old and in pain, have done—and as the current pontiff is already doing, because he’s in much worse shape than he appears—limiting to a barely perceptible grimace on his already haggard face the discomfort that he feels as he turns to face the altar, handling the accessories for the mass and turning the pages of the book on the lectern, just gesturing in the direction of kneeling, that tiny bow. He is so weary and rigid, Don Salari, that you’d think he’s at risk of breaking in two from one moment to the next. Even his phrases have become rigid, the syntax that strings them together is always on the verge of crumbling, produced as it is by a mind that has long since dried up, and a pair of desiccated lips.

  “Not only would we never know God if it hadn’t been for Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t even know ourselves. It’s only since the advent of Jesus that man has existed, that man, indeed, that men taken one by one, have had any importance and become worthy of attention. All of them. Before Jesus no one cared about his fellow men, much less about themselves, or their own inner life, which was nothing but a filthy and repugnant pit. That is where the heroic inhumanity of the past lay. Show no care for other men. I tell you that without Jesus the world would be a living hell. Someone might retort: But it still is! I would reply to them: Friend, don’t curse! Hell truly is another matter entirely: here we have only pale and provisional examples . . . imitations . . . miniatures . . .”

  I STARTED LISTENING, for once, seriously and intensely. That evening, Don Salari was truly inspired.

  “AS A RESULT, everything in a man is open to question, every single claim to be worth something is open to suspicion. And so, in order to prove himself better than others, he must fall back on hairstyles, clothing, buildings, ancestors . . . If I walk down the street and a man looks out a window, should I think he is looking out the window so he can see me?”

  WE COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND ANYTHING if it weren’t first, as a necessary condition, incomprehensible to us. Understanding is a process, a change of state. It is therefore necessary that a truth be well hidden before it can reveal itself. You must first be unaware, only then can you comprehend. In fact, you might say that only that which is mysterious can to some extent be rendered intelligible.

  At the time, back then, I understood and I didn’t. I saw and I didn’t. That night at SLM the faithful who were attending mass weren’t strangers to me, I didn’t feel they were different. And yet I didn’t know any of them. Certainly, in among them there must have been some old classmate of mine or other.

  I started looking around at everyone present in search of some familiar facial features. I wouldn’t have been capable of connecting them to a specific name. Children from forty years ago who grew up and became men and are now almost old. There was one, however, who really stood out. He responded, in a voice that was both loud and clear, to the formulations launched into the congregation by Don Salari at the microphone. He didn’t mutter under his breath, but replied to the ritual appeal of the old priest in a direct and, how shall I put this, confident, trusting manner. Those words had a real meaning for him, they weren’t just a formula to be mechanically repeated. He would have uttered those words, even if they hadn’t been written in the booklet or the prayer book. Those words were destined to produce a concrete effect. This, after all, is what prayer is supposed to be good for.

  I observed him more closely. He was a big tall man with white hair and a translucent complexion, he looked like an old Swede, well seasoned, decorous, like those in the audience in the overture to The Magic Flute as filmed by Ingmar Bergman. I thought I recognized him: this was Ezechiele Rummo, the older brother of my classmate Gioacchino. I hadn’t seen him in years and years. I know that his little publishing house had folded a few years earlier, it could no longer stand up to the costs of production. The Sardinian author, Rummo Books’ biggest seller, had suddenly become a pill in the marketplace, from one title to the next; and so she had decided to change publishers, moving on to a much more commercial house which was capable of paying her large advances and undertaking a major marketing push, but the popularity of her early novellas had never returned. Sitting next to Ezechiele, who already looked elderly to me, there was a genuinely elderly man, skinny and dried out, but with a beautiful head of silvery hair and round tortoiseshell eyeglasses. Only Le Corbusier himself could have carried off those glasses, I thought to myself, without making them seem like an architect’s cliché. I almost immediately repented of this sarcastic notation. Sitting next to him in the pew were two extremely good-looking young people, who both resembled their grandfather to a stunning extent, a man in his early thirties and a younger woman, who held a little child in her arms, a little boy with a perfect, marvelous head of hair, so blond it looked white. They really could have been brother and sister or husband and wife, those two, with their young child; or else a little brother born from a late second marriage of Ezechiele’s, I speculated. The Rummo mold was so strong and distinctive that it was even able to influence the spouses; or perhaps they were chosen precisely because they had such a strong resemblance to start with, they had chosen as their wife or husband someone who already belonged to their same race: that is to say, blond, tall, Catholic, altruistic. And so the blond woman at the end of the row of Rummos at midnight mass might perfectly well have been Ezechiele’s wife, or perhaps one of the sisters, Elisabetta or Rachele, or maybe even a grown daughter of Ezechiele’s, but it was impossible to say, because, while the others were sitting, she remained kneeling and praying, holding her face buried in her hands. She had a short red coat from the sleeves of which extended her long pale fingers, and behind those fingers she was hiding her face. I thought a stupid thought. Yes, very stupid. Perhaps this, simply this, was the reason I’d stopped going to mass as a young man; because during the course of the service I could never seem to stop a flow, stunning in its sheer volume, of thoughts that had nothing at all do with the mass, alien, a great many of them stupid, others that would make you blush, sinful, others still just funny and nothing more.

  I thought, then, that I would have been tremendously lucky and undeservedly pleased, when entering the SLM church, to have gone and sat, by purest chance, next to that woman in the red coat, simply because when the time came to exchange the sign of peace, at the end of the recital of the Our Father, I’d have been able to shake hands with her. I would have held her hand, warming it for an instant, because it was surely cold. I’d have
made peace with her. And, since I would have been the last one sitting in the pew, the end of the row, I wouldn’t have had to make peace with anyone else. Just with her. I felt a pang of sorrow because it hadn’t happened. And I certainly couldn’t move now, putting myself at the end of the row of Rummo’s, forcing them to scoot in tighter in their pew to make room for me, while Ezechiele responded to Don Salari, who had just exhorted his parishioners, “Let your hearts be raised”:

  THEY ARE TURNED TO THE LORD.

  “Let us give thanks to the Lord Our God.”

  IT IS A GOOD AND JUST THING.

  “It is truly a good and just thing to give thanks always and everywhere to You . . .”

  AND IT WAS TRUE, in Ezechiele’s case: his heart was turned to the Lord, as was the stolid yet sincere heart of his father, the architect Davide Rummo, now well into his eighties. At last the woman in the red coat took her hands away from her face and I realized that she, too, was old, like the architect, and that in fact she was the other architect, his wife, Eleonora, mother of Ezechiele and Gioacchino and that vast litter of children who were all now at least fifty years old. All but one. I guessed that she had just finished praying for the distant memory of Giaele. Her bloodless hands, which I’d so regretted not being able to grasp, were the hands of a little old lady, and her face was haggard. Her eyes were red and distracted. It broke my heart to see her.

  Well, yes, I wish I had the strength, I alone, for that entire family, the strength to shape the divine will with my invocations. Restore the lost happiness. Renew the oath. And obtain an easy forgiveness for having coveted my neighbor’s wife, even though all I wanted to do was touch her hand during a religious ceremony. It had happened to me at certain funerals, where I had decided to try to judge which woman was the most desirable among all those present, which one looked best in tears. Instead of thinking about the dead man, and mourning for him, I was totting up rapid rankings as if I were at a beauty pageant. Beauty + grief, an irresistible formula. Someone like Don Salari was certainly well briefed on the distractions that are generated in your mind. Did he condemn them? Did he lump them together with the other sins? Did he teach how to master them or was he all right with them as they were, because he, too, had understood that from brute death we all recoil in search of softer, gentler thoughts, more pleasurable, sensual, vital ones—like touching, kissing . . .? Spying on the neighbors?