by Viola Ardone
Tommasino’s office is cramped, but well organized. He shows me the photo of his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, who are now both in their thirties. They are both good kids, he tells me. The boy had gone to law school, but soon realized cooking was his passion and opened a restaurant in the Vomero quarter; the girl had become a teacher, but was currently on maternity leave. News of his children, more than anything else, makes me falter and recalculate the distance that lies between us after all these years. When he shows me a picture of his granddaughter, I understand that there is a crevasse across the time that separates us. Our lives have gotten out of sync.
Tommasino runs his hands through his hair, which is still dark and curly, with a few flecks of gray, and combed back. We’re both over fifty, but I feel as though I have aged worse than him, more in a hurry.
“Carmine has suffered a great deal. I don’t mean like us; things are different now. But if there were still those trains, our trains . . .”
Tommasino is not ashamed of our story. He looks around his office, and I can see that the little gray room stuffed with files fills him with pride. I look at my hands, the calluses on my fingertips, and I feel as though I have made it to adulthood with no purpose.
“Amerì,” Tommasino continues. “Think about it. You’re the only family he has left.”
I sit in silence. I don’t want to answer. I don’t even know what the question is. Tommasino looks at me with the same face as the boy’s yesterday when I left Maddalena’s house, as if I hadn’t kept a promise. I’ve never promised anyone anything. I preferred to be alone rather than make promises. In order to avoid his gaze, I observe all the details in his office: the books lined up on the shelves, the desk in light wood, the chair with the shape of his back imprinted on it from all those years working here. On his desk, in a frame next to the one of his wife and children, and another of Donna Armida and Don Gioacchino, I see a photo of his babbo up north, his hair and mustache a little more salt than pepper, and of the wife, with her still impressive breasts and a few more wrinkles on her face. There is the answer. It’s right in front of my eyes.
48
RATHER THAN GO BACK TO THE HOTEL, I DECIDE to wander around the narrow streets of your neighborhood and say goodbye to them for the last time. The streets that felt oppressive and heavy when I first arrived now seem familiar. I am still scared of the past but, if anything, I’m going hunting for it.
This evening, your street is silent. I feel like I’m the only person left in the whole city. Before reaching the end of the street, I stop in front of a ground-floor apartment emanating the bluish light of a television. The shutters are open. Two chairs have been placed outside the door. It’s Zandragliona’s old apartment.
I wait there awhile, as if expecting to see her popping out at any minute with her apron tied around her waist and a wide-open smile on her face. Instead, a man’s voice calls out to me.
“Are you looking for anyone in particular?”
An old man, with thin gray hair tied into a mangy pigtail that hangs down over his shirt collar, stands at the door.
“Who are you looking for?”
“Nobody, nobody. Sorry for the intrusion; good night.”
The man shuffles out of the tiny apartment, dragging his feet. His eyebrows are bushy and bristly, and his eyes are an intense blue. He looks at me, blinking nervously. I turn back and stop in front of him. It is the old man from the church.
“Didn’t Zandragliona live here once?” I ask, finally.
“Peace be with her soul . . .” the man says, rolling his eyes up toward heaven. “She died . . . well, it must be four years ago now,” he continues, counting to four on his fingers and blowing out smoke rings as he does so. “Right after Gorbachev died . . .”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Gorbachev is still alive.”
“Nossir,” the old man insists. “Zandragliona told me in these precise words that Gorbachev was dead, communism was dead, and she didn’t feel very well either. And then, a few days later, she died . . .”
I look at him to see whether he’s joking, but he doesn’t seem to be. He goes on producing smoke rings and carrying on with his story.
“I’m a widower, and I was living with my married daughter, her husband, and her children: two girls and one boy. Zandragliona didn’t have any family, so after a few months, when nobody had claimed the property, I moved into the apartment. Are you family?” he asks, quite concerned, thinking he is about to lose his home.
“Don’t worry. I have no claim whatsoever.”
“You must be a journalist, then. Your face is familiar.”
“No, I do commercials for aftershave.”
The old man stands there without saying anything, blinking at intervals that appear to be regular. He lights another cigarette and blows a few more smoke rings that circle in the air. Finally, I get it.
“You’re Capa ’e Fierro, aren’t you?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, but he shifts to one side of the door.
“Trasìte!” he says, inviting me in, and controlling his impulse to blink long enough for me to see his old expression, his eyes the same blue as before. I stay on the threshold, uncertain. Then I stoop and go in. I can see the whole place in one sweep: the wallpaper, yellowing in the corners, but the same as before, the gray tones of the floor, the irregular, chipped tiles around the perimeter of the room. In the corner, in front of the bathroom door, I see what I think might be my special tile.
“Being that you are so kind . . .” I say to the man, who is lurking in a corner, lighting another cigarette, “I’d like to look for something that belongs to me, if you don’t mind. May I?”
The man looks around him and opens his arms wide as if to ask what could possibly be of any interest in this place. Or perhaps to signify “go ahead” . . . I roll my sleeves up and kneel on the floor near the row of tiles next to the bathroom. I crouch with the same familiarity children have with the ground, the street, the floor. “Amerì, get up off of the floor,” you would always scold.
I skim the tiles, stale dust under my fingertips. The pads of my fingers caress every square, feeling for irregularities. In the end, I focus on one tile that feels more worn out than the others. I stick my nails into the space between the tiles and pull, gently at first and then harder, but it won’t budge. The old man observes me in silence, every now and again screwing up his eyes in an involuntary spasm. I feel as though he is studying my every gesture, but he may just be worried about his floor. At that very moment, the tile comes loose and I fall over backwards with the ceramic square still in my hand. Underneath, there’s the hole.
“How do you know me?” the old man says as I survey the floor tiles.
I remember the packages hidden under our bed, the rags I collected for you every day that we cleaned and mended and took to Capa ’e Fierro, so he could sell them. You and him locked up in our apartment with work to do, you used to say. Both of you sending me away.
“I kept a stall at the market when I was a kid, like you,” I said.
The old man has stopped talking. I can’t tell whether he’s angry that I’ve wrecked his floor or just curious about what’s down there. He’s probably thinking about that money Zandragliona was supposed to have squirreled away. Or maybe he’s going back down the same memory lane I am, trying to reconstruct the face of that redhead out of this middle-aged man.
I turn the other way, dig down into the hole with my arm, and take out a tin box with rusty corners. Under the layer of dust, you can still see the blue enamel and the trademark of the cookies it once held. Not that I had eaten them; the box was a gift to you from the deli on Via Foria. You used it for your sewing kit, but then it was Capa ’e Fierro himself who gave you a professional box made of wood, with twin lids and two expandable sections that opened upward, and lots of little compartments for all the different-colored cotton reels and the various-sized needles. The new wooden sewing box had three trays that could be lifted on metal hinge
s. It was so beautiful! To me, it looked like a spaceship from the science fiction comics on the shelves at the newsagents on the Corso. That was why you gave the cookie tin to me. You had never given me a present before, and that powder blue tin felt unique and precious. I never let anyone play with it, not even Tommasino. Zandragliona was the only person I showed it to, and we decided together to put everything I wanted to save inside, as if it were a strongbox. Zandragliona told me she had a secret place, and that’s where my treasures have been preserved all this time and where they would have stayed if this old man with his bewildered expression hadn’t invited me in. They would have outlived Zandragliona and even me. Like everything that is suspended, postponed until the next day without knowing you are about to die, without knowing that the next day is a day that will never come. Like your pasta alla genovese. Capa ’e Fierro and I stare at the tin box. Neither of us is in a hurry. Time has stretched out for both of us. All of a sudden, it has become comfortable, like my shoes. I place the tin on the brown Formica table without saying a word. Then I put my nails into the groove under the lid until it pops up with a metallic ring. One by one, my treasures reemerge onto Zandragliona’s table, and with them, perfectly preserved, my capacity for recall.
The wooden top with string wound around it and a metal tip . . .
Amerì, do what Mamma says and stop that spinning, for the love of God!
The American beer bottle tops that a black, black soldier gave me . . .
Wuz ior neim, liddel boi? Wuz ior neim?
A piece of dry bread that Tommasino and I had swiped from Pachiochia’s house . . .
Get out of here, you’re a darn-right thief, you. You’re no better than a rat, stealing bread like that!
Pieces of string, a walnut-shell boat with a tiny sail, a half-burned candle, a safety pin, a parrot feather that I picked up who knows where. Four objects that were already old or damaged when I first found them in some corner of some street somewhere. They were all the toys I had.
And then there were two yellowed pieces of paper folded in four, the corners consumed by mold. I unfold them, scared they will disintegrate right before my eyes. One is a newspaper cutting of a complete stranger, a tall man with curly hair I always imagined was red, with the caption below in block letters: GIGGINO ’O ’MERICANO. I had kept it so that I could fantasize about a father.
Capa ’e Fierro has been gaping at the relics as I take them out of the tin one by one. Then he abruptly drops to his knees. He’s so skeletal that I worry he’ll break. We are inches apart, and, for an instant, I think he wants to pet me. Instead, with a grunt, he sticks his arm into the hole so far that his ear is touching the floor. He would climb right down into the pit if it meant unearthing Zandragliona’s famous supplies of money, jewels, gemstones, and gold. But he finds nothing. The only treasure is mine.
“It’s not true you do commercials for aftershave,” he says, with the air of a challenge.
I put the tin under my arm, wave goodbye, and head toward the door.
“Come and see me every now and again,” the old man says as I leave, suddenly adopting the familiar tu form as if he were superior to me. “There are a lot of things I could tell you . . .” I hear him calling out when I am already out on the street. After he has closed the door, I stop a few yards from his window. From the shadows, I can see him blowing smoke rings up to the ceiling and then, certain he is not being watched, sticking his hand back down the hole. I go back to the front door of the apartment and see a white sticky label on the mailbox with a name written in pen: Luigi Amerio. In this city, everyone adopts a nickname, which they use all their life and even have printed on their death notices, otherwise people wouldn’t know who they were. I never knew that Capa ’e Fierro’s real name was Luigi Amerio.
In his first and last name, Capa ’e Fierro bears the names of both your children, Luigi and Amerigo. Or was it us that bore his name without our knowledge?
49
“MADDALENA TOLD ME YOU WERE CALLED Speranza, like me.”
“I’m called Benvenuti. I was adopted.”
“Am I going to be adopted now?”
Carmine trots by my side and never stops talking. You told me that I, too, used to ask a lot of questions when I was a kid. I was like quicksilver. What was it you called me? Ah, yes. A punishment from God!
“Mamma says that when I walk in the road, I have to hold an adult’s hand,” he says, trying to catch hold of mine.
“We’re on the sidewalk here. There are no cars.”
He thinks about it and shakes his head. He’s not convinced. When Maddalena called me at the hotel and asked me to take the kid for a walk, because she was busy, I realized it was a trap. She’s as stubborn as ever; things have to go as she wants them. Her world has no one left behind. I think of the big hall in Bologna, and the shame I felt when all the other kids were picked, and nobody took my hand to lead me away.
“Is it true that when you were little you had another mother?”
We get to the end of the sidewalk.
“My father told me. Nonna never wanted to tell me the story.”
The traffic lights turn green for pedestrians.
“Lucky you! I’d love another mother sometimes,” he says, reaching out to hold my hand as we cross the road. I notice his eyes are welling with tears.
His hand is soft and cool to the touch. Carmine squeezes hard and dries his eyes with his other arm. Together, we get to the other side of the road.
We’re on the sidewalk again, but he won’t let go of my hand. I remember Derna’s smell when she wrapped me up in her coat at the bus station before going to Modena. I’m scared. The hand that until now had only been good at moving the bow of a violin was now potentially a tool for giving consolation and strength. It’s so powerful, I’m not sure I’m capable of exerting it. The hand holding the child’s, all of a sudden, feels weak. It has made a promise it may not be able to keep.
“It’s too hot to go to the zoo today. I’ll take you back to Maddalena’s.”
“Can we go another day?”
I think about my flight back to Milan and my concert tour, and I don’t answer.
“When you get back, there’s a surprise for you.”
We get to Maddalena’s door. Retracing my steps back to the hotel, I feel the softness of his palm pressing into the middle of mine.
50
WHEN I GO BACK INTO THE JUVENILE COURT, the doorman with the comb-over lets me through on the spot. He even calls me sir. In your city, titles are not academic, they’re honorary.
“Come this way, sir. Justice Saporito is expecting you,” he says, walking with me to the elevator and pushing the button for me. Tommasino opens the door and then goes to sit behind his desk. I sit down, too.
“I came to say goodbye.”
Tommasino combs his hair back with his hands as if he still had the rebellious curls he had when he was seven years old.
“Well, that’s news. Last time, you ran away without saying anything!”
Then he looks over at me.
There’s a knock at the door. Tommasino says to come in. The doorman’s head comes around the door.
“Justice, would either of you like an expresso?”
In this city of ours, coffee is much more than a drink; it’s an act of devotion. Tommasino waves his hand, and the doorman disappears behind the door.
“Do you remember the painted sewer rats?” I ask him as I stare at the photos on his desk.
Tommasino’s serious expression cracks into a smile
“Who could ever forget it?”
“Before we left, anything was possible, even selling rats as hamsters. When we got back, I didn’t believe anything anymore. The magic had gone out of me. There was nothing down here, just my mother. Everything else was up there. I chose everything else and became what I became: Maestro Benvenuti.”
I stop, because I’m unsure how to go on. Then the words start flowing on their own, without my having to choose the
m.
“I’m still the other person, too. The one that has the same last name as Carmine.”
I’m not sure Tommasino is following me. His life has been different. He’s never had to choose. On his desk there isn’t a single photograph missing.
“I thought I might take the boy,” I blurt out. “I’m the only family he has left, as you said. Until things settle down a little, anyway. Until we know a little more . . .”
“That’s a really nice offer, Amerì, but . . .”
“I know. I know it’s complicated. I live on my own, I travel a lot, but I can do something for him. I have had good things happen to me, and I have never given anything back.”
Tommasino opens his mouth to say something, but closes it again.
“I’m not saying forever; just for a few months. We’ll leave together and then we’ll see . . .”
“Amerì, there is no need now: the mother is out of jail.”
“Ah . . .”
“She went home yesterday.”
“Has she been cleared?”
“Not exactly. She’s under house arrest, in consideration of the fact there is a juvenile. Anyway, they have dropped some of the charges against her.”
“What about Agostino?”
“We don’t know yet. They’re preparing the case. We’ll see. The indictment is serious.”
“Drugs?”
Tommasino makes an apologetic face as if it were all our fault, mine and his in equal parts.
“And the boy? Are we sure he’ll be okay? And the mother . . .”
“I don’t know. I’m not happy. The right thing to do isn’t always the easiest. The mother is back, and that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t put a smile on my face.”
“I’d like to see him before I go. I want to speak to him. I want to tell this woman that she can call me, that I can help them. Her, the boy, my brother. Do you have their address?”