by Viola Ardone
“I’ll leave the door open, so there’s a little light,” she says, disappearing behind the door.
I am alone in the room. It’s so dark it makes no difference whether my eyes are open or closed. After a while, the lady comes back with a glass of water.
“You can drink it, son. Don’t worry, we haven’t poisoned the wells. Is that what they told you?” she asks, as if she were angry.
“No, no, of course they didn’t,” I say, trying to appease her. “Sorry, it’s just because Mamma always tells me to sip my water slowly, so I don’t get indigestion.”
The lady looks upset, as if she’s lost face somehow.
“I’m sorry, son,” she says, in a kinder voice. “You drew the short straw with me. I don’t really understand kids. I don’t have any of my own. My cousin Rosa is good with them. She has three.”
“Don’t worry, signò,” I reassure her. “My mother had two, but kids are not her strong point, either.”
“So, you have a brother?”
“No, ma’am! I’m an only child.”
The lady doesn’t say anything. Maybe she’s still upset about the poisoned water.
“Tomorrow morning we’ll go to meet her kids. Kids need to be with kids, not with signorinas, as you call them.”
I’m embarrassed, because I still can’t bring myself to call her by name.
“You’ll like them, they’re almost your age . . . How old are you? I didn’t even ask. You see what a warm welcome I’ve given you. You must excuse me . . .”
The lady is asking me to excuse her. When I should be asking her to excuse me for being here in her house, eating and drinking, sleeping in her bed, and waking her up in the middle of the night.
“I’ll be eight next month,” I tell her. “Anyhow, I’m not scared of the dark. One time I was locked inside a chapel with some live skeletons!”
“You’re a brave boy; you’re lucky. You’re not scared of anything.”
“Well, one thing . . .”
“That I’ll take you to Russia?”
“No, ma’am! I never believed the stories about Russia . . .”
“I’ve actually been to Russia, you know? With some companions from the Party.”
“I’ve never been anywhere, and I’ve never had companions. This is the first time. That’s why I’m scared.”
“It’s only natural . . . all these changes . . .”
“No, ma’am! The truth is, I’m not used to sleeping alone. At home, there was only one bed: for me, for Mamma, and for Capa ’e Fierro’s coffee stash before the police took him away. But don’t tell anyone or Mamma will kill me. It’s a secret.”
She sits on the bed beside me. She smells different from Mamma. Sweeter.
“I’ll tell you a secret, too. When the mayor asked us to take a child in, I said no. I was scared.”
“Are you scared of kids?”
“No, I was scared I wouldn’t know how to console them. I know about politics, about labor relations, and a little about Latin. But I don’t know anything about kids,” she says, staring at a fixed spot on the wall like Mamma always does when she’s doing the talking. “I’ve become a bit brusque over the years.”
“But you did take me.”
“I came to the station to lend a hand and make sure everything went smoothly. Then Comrade Criscuolo told me there had been a problem with the couple that was supposed to take you. The wife had been rushed into the hospital because her baby had come early, so there was no one to come and pick you up.”
“So that’s why I was the last one there!”
“When I saw you sitting there on the bench all alone, with your lovely red hair and those cute little freckles, I decided I would take you. I don’t know if I did the right thing. Maybe you would have preferred a real family?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I have ever preferred is my mother.”
The lady strokes my hand. Her fingers are cold and chapped. She hardly ever smiles, but she did take me home with her.
“I thought I was the only one left because nobody wanted me.”
“No, son. Everything was organized. We worked on it for weeks. Every child had a family to go to.”
“You mean they didn’t choose the ones they wanted?”
“Of course not. It’s not like a fruit-and-vegetable market!”
I’m embarrassed because that’s exactly what I’d thought it was.
“Now we need to get to sleep, though. I’m working tomorrow. You know what I’ll do?” she says. “I’ll lie here right beside you. Here we go. Is that okay?” The lady lies down beside me. I don’t know whether it’s okay or not, but I scoot over and make room for her on my pillow.
“Shall I sing you a lullaby? Would you like that, eh?”
Lullabies make me feel sad in my belly but I don’t tell the lady, so that she doesn’t get angry with me again.
“Yes,” I say, with my eyes closed and a foot touching her leg. I really hope it’s not going to be the one about the bogeyman, though. The one where he keeps the child for a whole year. Because if it is, I’m pretty sure I’ll start crying, and tomorrow they’ll put me straight back onto the train and send me home. The lady thinks for a while, and then she starts singing the song we heard when we arrived at the station. The one where they sing “bella ciao ciao ciao” every other line.
When the song comes to an end, I don’t say a word for a while, and then I ask, “Signò, do you mind my cold feet on your leg?”
“Not at all, son. Not at all.”
I slowly drift off to sleep. Finally.
14
“AMERÌ,” A VOICE CALLS, “AMERIGO, WAKE UP! Your brother Luigi’s coming back. Hurry, hurry! Get out of bed. This is his place!”
My eyes tight shut, I say, “What about me? Where am I supposed to go?”
“You?” Mamma Antonietta answers. “You’re up there now, with the lady . . .”
When I open my eyes, it’s morning. Through the window opposite the bed I can see brown fields and frozen trees, with skeleton branches and a few dry leaves left hanging there. There are no other houses. Nobody walks by, and I can’t hear a single voice outside.
The lady is in the kitchen at the end of the corridor. I watch her from the door as she makes breakfast and listens to the radio. I’d only ever seen radios in rich people’s houses when they gave me rags to take away. On the table there’s a big cup of milk, a thick chunk of bread, a jar of red jam, a slab of butter, and a big hunk of cheese. I wonder whether Tommasino woke up to all these good things in the house of the man with the salt-and-pepper mustache. The lady has also set the table with a knife, a fork, a teaspoon, and cups and saucers in a set, all the same color.
She’s wearing the gray skirt and white blouse again. She still hasn’t spotted me. I’d like to call out, but I’m embarrassed. She looks different than last night. On the radio, a man’s voice is speaking fast. I catch the words children, hospitality, disease, Communist Party, south, poverty. The man is talking about me. The lady stops cutting slices of bread to listen and sighs, puffing out all the air she has kept inside her at once, like Capa ’e Fierro, except without the smoke rings. Then she starts slicing again.
After a while, she turns around and looks surprised to see me.
“Ah, here you are. I didn’t hear you. I’ve got something ready. I don’t know whether you like it or not.”
“I like everything.”
We eat together in silence. The lady only really talks at night; during the day she doesn’t say much. Anyway, I’m used to it. Chatting isn’t Mamma Antonietta’s strong point, either. Especially first thing in the morning.
When we’ve finished our breakfast, the lady tells me she has to go to work, but she says she’s not leaving me on my own. She’s taking me to her cousin Rosa’s house, the one with the three children, and then she’ll pick me up when she’s done. I’m thinking that I’ve just arrived and I’m already being moved on, and my belly is churning again. Mamma Antonietta h
anded me over to Maddalena, Maddalena handed me over to Signora Derna, and now Signora Derna is handing me over to her cousin Rosa. Who knows who this Rosa lady is going to hand me over to? It’s just like the lullaby about the bogeyman.
I go with the lady into the room where I slept. You can’t see the sky or the fields or the trees anymore. I try to wipe the window with my hand, but nothing changes. It’s not the glass that’s dirty. It’s the air. There’s a pall of smoke covering everything. I sit on the edge of the bed.
“Do you want me to help you get dressed?” the lady asks.
I can’t see the clothes I arrived in anywhere. There’s the apple Mamma gave me, that I had in my pocket, sitting on the desk, though.
“I can get dressed on my own, thank you,” I answer.
She takes some clothes out of a brown wooden wardrobe. Woolen sweaters, shirts, pants. They belonged to her cousin Rosa’s oldest boy, and now they’re going to be mine. I tell her they look new. On the desk, there are some notebooks and a pen. She says I’ll soon be going to school.
“Again?” I say. “I’ve already been there once!”
“That’s why you need to go. Every day. You couldn’t have learned everything, right?”
“No one is born knowing everything!” I say, and, for the first time since we’ve been together, we burst out laughing.
I look at myself in the mirror in my new clothes and see a boy who looks like me, but isn’t me. The lady buttons up my coat and puts a hat on my head.
“Wait,” she says, going into the other room.
She comes back with a little badge in her hand. It’s red with a yellow half-circle in the middle and a picture of a hammer, just like hers. She sits down next to me and pins it on the lapel of my coat. The image is the same as the flags I saw in the Communist headquarters in Via Medina. That must mean they’ve made me into a Communist. I have a sudden flash of the sad, blond young man and wonder whether he ever solved that terrible “problem of the south.”
“Are we ready?” the lady asks as she puts her hat on.
“Sì, Signò . . . no, sorry, I mean . . . yes, Derna.”
The lady makes a face as if she’s just won a straight five-in-a-row at the lottery.
We step out and walk hand in hand. Her steps are not as fast as Mamma Antonietta’s. She doesn’t leave me one step behind. Or maybe it’s me walking faster, because I’m scared of being left on my own in the smoky gray air.
15
“THEY SMOKE A LOT UP HERE, DON’T THEY? YOU can’t even see the street.”
“It’s not smoke; it’s fog. Are you scared?”
“No. I like it when things are hiding and then they come out all of a sudden, like a surprise.”
“This is my cousin Rosa’s house. When the weather is nice, you can see it from our window, but the fog makes it disappear.”
“I’d like to disappear every now and again, but down south we don’t have fog yet.”
Derna rings the doorbell with a name on it.
“What does it say?” I ask.
“Benvenuti,” she answers.
“Did they write it to welcome us?” I ask.
“No! It’s my brother-in-law’s name,” she answers, trying not to laugh.
A boy with shoulder-length brown hair opens the door. His eyes are bright blue and he has a little gap between his two front teeth. He gives Derna a hug and then turns and does the same to me.
“You’re the kid that came on the train. I’ve never been on a train. What’s it like?”
“Crowded,” I say.
“That jacket isn’t yours. My brother wore it last winter,” another boy says as he runs toward us along the corridor. He’s the same height as me and his eyes are black.
“Mine, yours . . . what’s the difference? It belongs to the person that needs it,” a tall, thin man with a reddish mustache and blue eyes scolds. “Rosa, you’re not bringing up our boy as a Fascist, I hope.”
“Well done, boys. That was a nice way to welcome this poor child, who’s already been through enough in his life,” the wife says, carrying a baby. She gestures that I should follow her into the living room.
“We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I’m Rosa, Derna’s cousin; the joker over there with the mustache is Alcide, and these are our three boys: Rivo, who’s ten, Luzio, who’s turning seven, and Nario, who isn’t even one yet.
Their names are hard to understand, and they have to repeat them three times before I learn them. Where I come from, we have names like Giuseppe, Salvatore, Mimmo, Annunziata, or Linuccia. And then we have nicknames like Zandragliona, Pachiochia, Capajanca, Naso ’e Cane . . . after a while nobody remembers what their real names are. Take Capa ’e Fierro, for example. If you asked me what his first and last names were, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea.
Up here, it’s different. Their father says he invented the names himself. They’re not in the calendar of saints because, for one thing, he doesn’t believe in saints. He believes in calendars, he says, but not in God. He says that he chose these names because he is a revolutionary, and when he calls his three kids together it spells Rivo-Luzio-Nario! When he says this, he looks at me, waiting. I look back and realize he’s expecting a reaction from me. Then he starts laughing out loud on his own, his mustache twitching. In the street where I live, nobody has a mustache, except Pachiochia but she’s not a man, so she doesn’t count. To please him, I start laughing too, though I don’t get what the big joke is. I’m just pretending, and I hope he doesn’t notice.
Derna says she’s going to work, and she’ll pick me up this evening. Rosa’s husband leaves too. He has to go to an important person’s house. It’s a rich family, and all the kids study music at the Conservatory, which is why he’s going to tune their piano. As soon as I hear the word Conservatory, I blurt out: “I went to the Conservatory, too, when I was back home in the south!”
Alcide looks at me, his mustache suddenly still and serious.
“What instrument do you play, then?”
I feel my face blushing a hot red.
“No instrument, Don Alcide. I used to go to the Conservatory . . . from the outside. To listen to the music. I’ve never been inside. I used to wait for my friend there. . . . She really did play an instrument. I mean, she played in the Conservatory. Her name’s Carolina, and she says I have a musical ear.”
He looks at me, stroking his mustache.
“Do you know the notes?”
I say I do.
“All seven?” he asks.
I recite all seven of them, from do to ti. Carolina taught me. He looks happy and puts a hand on my shoulder. He says that sometimes after school I can come with him to the piano shop.
“Will I be allowed to touch the keys?” I ask.
“None of my children have shown any interest in music. Lucky you arrived, right, Rosa?”
Luzio scowls at me as if to say, “Look what’s just arrived fresh on our doorstep.”
“If you’re a good little helper, I’ll give you some pocket money,” the boy’s father says.
“I’ve been getting pocket money for over a year,” Rivo boasts. “I work in the cow pen and give the cows water.”
“And you stink of cow shit,” his younger brother teases.
“We all work here, to each his own,” their father says.
“Don Alcide,” I say, “I used to go and collect rags with my friend Tommasino, but I’m much happier working with pianos. At least I won’t be getting a bald patch on my head.”
The man tugs at his reddish mustache and then holds out his hand.
“Agreed, then? I’ve found an assistant. But you need to stop calling me Don. I’m not a priest, you know!”
Luzio snickers.
“Whatever you wish,” I say. “So . . . what should I call you?”
“You can call me Babbo,” he answers brusquely.
Luzio stops snickering, and I am just as shocked.
16
“BYE, BABBO, SEE YOU THIS E
VENING!”
Rivo walks to the door with his father and gives him a kiss. Luzio takes a marble out of his pocket and rolls it down the corridor. I wave bye-bye without saying a word. I can’t bring myself to call him Babbo. I’ve been told this is how people here say “Dad” but to me it feels like a joke. On my street there was this big fat man and every time we bumped into him, Tommasino and I would chant: “Babbasòne, babbasò, you look just like a rum baba!” Alcide doesn’t look like a babà, so how am I supposed to call him Babbo? Anyhow, he’s not even my father.
Rosa has to go out to pick dandelion leaves in the field. Rivo fetches a pail of water for the cows. He says they have a vegetable plot, too, and a few animals, though there are only a few hens left, and he also says that he’s learning to milk the cows, but that you need to do it delicately. Rivo knows so many things and he wants to explain them all to me at the same time. Water, fertilizer, the milk that comes out of the cows, the cheese they make out of the milk that comes out of the cows.
The animals are not just theirs; they keep them together with other families, and they all contribute their work. They eat some of what they produce and take the rest to market. I wanted to tell him that I went to the market, too, with Tommasino to sell sewer rats, but Rivo isn’t listening. He starts talking again, pulling on his boots and donning his jacket to go work outside with the animals.
He asks me if I want to come. I don’t answer. Pachiochia was right, I’m thinking, they brought us up north to put us to work.
“Rivo, you’ll drive him crazy with your chitter-chatter. Leave him alone for a while. He needs to get used to us slowly. He’s just arrived! You see, Amerigo, this boy is made of quicksilver.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he can’t stay still or quiet for a second.”
“I get it. Like when Mamma says I was sent by God to punish her.”
Rivo bursts out laughing, and so do I. Luzio doesn’t even smile. He goes on playing with the marble. Rosa picks us some shoes full of mud and opens the door.
“Luzio, if your brother wakes up, come and call me.”