We Are Family

by Fabio Bartolomei

  “Three!”

  “A-a-al!”

  25.

  The cold has driven the vacationers extinct. From one week to the next, the children with their life preservers and swim masks have vanished, as have the mothers with their straw hats and transistor radios, the fathers with their binoculars and sports dailies, the grandmothers with their pans full of rigatoni with meat sauce and breaded cutlets. Filling my leisure time without annoying anyone is a challenge. Raimondo swung by to play Papà’s guitar, I was hoping to have a little time to play with him but he could only stay for ten minutes. His parents had to go to Rome and to make sure he stays at the bar they call every half hour, he has five minutes to call them back. Vittoria’s friends have left and there’s no chance that any classmates come out here before next summer. What we need is a stroke of luck, what we need is for the promised home to pop up unexpectedly.

  Given the general state of desolation, Mamma gave me permission to watch TV, but only in the afternoon and only with Vittoria next to me. After turning the two antennas in all possible directions we can only manage to see the first RAI channel. And then the picture will only stay clear if you plant a foot on the round antenna and remain motionless for the entire duration of the program. We laugh with Loretta Goggi, Alighiero Noschese, and Enrico Montesano, we wait in vain for the Kessler Twins to make a mistake, we imitate the grimaces and smirks of Mina and Aldo Fabrizi, and sometimes, when Papà is home, we put on a chorus of Ricchi e Poveri, just to annoy him. Today, after rejoicing at the announcement by the young lady with the puffy hair: “And now, in an unscheduled surprise, a cartoon of Popeye,” we watch Raffaella Carrà dance with a blonde male ballerino. After their performance, my sister has an idea.

  “Should we do it ourselves?”

  “Do what?” I ask.

  “The dance. I just lift you onto my shoulders, I let you slide down my back, then I grab you by the neck and between my legs,” she says.

  In other words, Carrà’s part is for me. Concerning this point there’s not a lot of argument because my sister is taller and heavier. Acrobatic dancing might not be my favorite pastime but, seeing that Vittoria already feels like a grown-up and the opportunities to play together are drastically waning, I reply in the affirmative. As the tape recorder plays “Jailhouse Rock,” my sister and I go for it, trotting and pirouetting and all the rest.

  “Okay, now take a running start . . . ” says the ballerino.

  It all happens very quickly. The ballerino takes the young Raffaella Carrà by the waist, she leaps into the air and remains suspended over his head, arms spread wide, then she slides trustingly in an angel’s pose down his back and, smiling, hits her head right on the floor.

  I’m brought back to consciousness by Raul. He was installing burglar-proof security hooks on the roller blinds and when he heard the thump, he was the first to come running. Stretched out on the bed with a wet rag on my forehead, I try to reestablish contact with the blurry reality around me.

  “Signora, he’s regained consciousness,” Raul tells my mother.

  At the recommendation of the door repairman, Mamma, who places a lot of trust in the advice of specialists, goes to the kitchen to get a steak from the fridge. She comes back with a mustard-colored package in one hand.

  “Darn it, we’re all out of steak, would these be all right?”

  I wake up with a handful of beef strips on my forehead. The cold bovine blood streaks down my temple and fogs my vision even more. The picture of Mamma, Vittoria, and Raul looking down at me in silence flickers up and down like on the television set when Papà tells me to stabilize the resolution and I go over and give it a good hard smack. Raul slaps my face gently, human heads and television sets aren’t really all that different after all, and the picture grows clearer. Vittoria is smiling, but Mamma’s not.

  “Can you tell me exactly what happened?” she asks me.

  “I fell down.”

  “And how did that happen?”

  “I was being Raffaella Carrà.”

  26.

  Mamma dressed Vittoria down good and proper, and that evening Papà performed an encore every bit as intense. Not since the days of breeding lizards in Agnese’s jewel box had anyone gotten such a scolding around here. I’m so used to being the guilty party that with every new incrimination I felt like saying: “I swear I didn’t do it on purpose!” Vittoria took it badly, because her status as a grown-up young lady had been repeatedly called into question. On the other hand, I wasn’t mad at her, because I’m the genius of the family, and a genius should never entrust his own invaluable gifts to Vittoria “Ricotta-Fingers” Santamaria. In any case, I wrote in the human flesh diary: “The murderer of household pets has taken her crimes to a new level. Beware!” Because of this accident I was forced to postpone a highly sensitive mission for forty-eight hours; until yesterday my head hurt so much I couldn’t even comb my hair. Nothing could be worse than to have a brilliant plan and be forced to postpone it. The only positive aspect is that I thus had more time to work out the details and foolproof the plan even more securely. I’m about to do something that’s against the rules, but then again the factory workers at Fiat Rivalta have organized against the increase in ticket prices announced by the private transportation company, and six hundred Turin families have occupied the apartment houses in the Falchera quarter, so one thing is clear: you’re allowed to break the rules if it’s for a good cause. I glance at my watch, in mere minutes Mickey Mouse’s arms are going to reach my second-favorite position, after the one that means 9:15: the one with both arms straight up. In the darkened room, I’ve put on six T-shirts and two woolen sweaters. Now my new jacket, which according to Mamma’s plans ought to have fit me perfectly by the time I got to high school, is fittingly filled out. A fake Zorro mustache, a bag with everything I’ll need, a chocolate ciambellone, plenty of money. I’ve got everything. No! I almost forgot the hairy hand! Don’t worry, Al, it’s still five minute to midnight. I tiptoe across the room, I take the jar of glue from my table, I slap a healthy helping onto the back of my hand, I count to ten, and then I sprinkle it with a shower of Vittoria’s hair that I cut when she wasn’t looking. A masterpiece.

  I take forever to make my way through the apartment because everything squeaks or creaks, except for the front door which I took great care to oil in advance. I time my moves to Papà’s rhythmic snoring and then I go, I pull the door open, and . . . I’m out, and I close it behind me. I head downstairs, out the street door, and from there I run to the car, taking advantage of a cloud that covers the moon.

  “If the Prinz starts up on the first try, the mission will have been a success.”

  “If it starts up on the first try, it’ll be a miracle, more than anything else,” says Casimiro.

  The gods are favorable, and the car starts right up. The theory that children learn quickly is accurate, and if the children in question are geniuses then all it takes is a couple of drives with Papà behind the wheel to figure out the use of the instrumentation and such basic rudiments as balancing the gas pedal and the clutch. We get started a little jerkily, but we do get started. I wait until we round the curve before switching on the headlights and I follow the directions on the road map that I memorized before setting out. Take the first right, straight for two-thirds of a mile, take the second left, the first right, straight until you reach the stoplight, turn right there, and keep going until the roundabout. Driving isn’t hard, you just need to be cautious and straddle the double white line on the asphalt, the same as the little racing cars on the electric track. I’m sitting on the very edge of the seat and pushing the pedals takes so much effort that my legs are already numb. Am I going to be able to keep this up for six hours? Go through the intersection, continue until you see the sign that says “Highway,” and then turn right. There’s not another car in sight, and if I’d known that in advance I could have spared myself the camouflage until I
reached the tollbooth. Staying on the white lines isn’t easy, especially on curves, but after a couple of miles I already feel much more confident.

  At the end of a straighaway, the Prinz’s timid headlights illuminate a row of flickering smudge pots and a line of wooden barricades.

  “Don’t worry, Casimiro, there’s not a single successful mission that didn’t start out with a snag or two.”

  “The Battle of Taejon in the Korean War . . . ” he reminds me.

  “The storm over the English Channel on June 5,1944 . . . ”

  Here, on the other hand, it’s a detour due to construction underway that plays hob with my mental road map. I start wandering around the outskirts of Rome, down dark streets and past rows of gray apartment houses that strike fear into my heart. I drive down long boulevards, hoping the whole time that I’ll fetch up against the tollbooth in the end. Then I decide that the tollbooth must be outside of town and the minute I spot a little greenery, I head straight for it. I wind up on a road that seems to be leading right out into the countryside. I’m a good hour late on my original schedule, I can’t waste any more time, I’m just going to have to ask someone for directions. I drive slowly along the sidewalk hoping for help from some late-night stroller, and after I round a curve, the car’s headlights illuminate a house. And a large wooden sign. On it is written, “For Sale.”

  “Casimiro, technical intermission for home inspection.”

  We get out of the car, leaving the engine running. We cautiously approach.

  “Spacious, understated, surrounded by greenery,” says Casimiro.

  “Sign reading, ‘For Sale.’”

  “Do you feel what I feel?”

  “Yes, Casimiro, this is the place . . . ”

  Now I understand just what that certain something is that allows me to recognize the promised home: It’s the activation of dreams. I don’t have to make the slightest effort, I don’t need a real estate agent to tell me to imagine the place personalized to suit my preferences. It’s the house itself that suggests it to me. Here Agnese and Mario Elvis can lie in the sun, here I can splash with Vittoria in a nice inflatable pool, I measure the length by my strides. One . . . two . . . three . . . four: Mamma and Papà’s bedroom. Five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight: my room. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen: the living room. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen: the kitchen. Twenty and . . . almost twenty-one: Vittoria’s little bedroom. This is the place!

  I’m strongly tempted to head straight home to tell everyone else, but there’s another mission to be accomplished. And so I go in search of landmarks, after which I retrace my route to get the name of the street, and on my way I also find a sign pointing me to the highway. This will be remembered as the magic night of the Santamaria family. I need to make up for lost time, but I don’t want to overdo it, I’ll floor the accelerator only once I’m on the highway. Within sight of the tollbooth I pull over to touch up my disguise. Even though there should be no need to say a word, I try out my voice, I trained for the whole week, if I pull my head down between my shoulders and stiffen my neck, I can talk like an old man of at least twenty. I get a little overwhelmed, and when I start up again, the engine cuts out. Come on, just this one last little obstacle and then it will all be highway. The tollbooth is scary, it’s shrouded in a light mist that creates strange haloes around the lights. I proceed slowly out of fear that the engine might die again, and I keep one foot on the gas pedal while I use my other foot to offset it with the clutch. My leg muscles are exploding. When I pull up to the booth, I adjust my fake whiskers one last time, and roll down the window with my eyes straight ahead. Out of the corner of my eye I observe the tollbooth attendant as he hands me a ticket without so much as a glance, I reach out my hairy hand, I take the ticket. He ignores me, doesn’t even look my way. I put the ticket on the dashboard, pretend to adjust my jacket, and he doesn’t even turn a distracted eye in my direction. All this work for nothing? I wave my hairy hand to attract his attention, and then in a nice deep voice I ask: “Is this the right way to Milan?”

  “Signor Mario Elvis Santamaria? . . . My name is Mancuso, I work at the North Rome tollbooth and I have your son Almerico here with me . . . Listen, don’t ask me.”

  Casimiro, my friend, we’re in trouble deep. Now how are we going to explain this to Papà? It was all supposed to be a nice surprise. This time we’re getting the belt, I think.

  “You’re in for it now, kid,” Signor Mancuso tells me.

  “I am, aren’t I?”

  “There was a tone in his voice . . . just look: I got goose bumps, and I don’t have anything to do with it!”

  “I don’t have an-n-n-nything to do with it either! All I wanted was to export Mamma’s ciambellone!”

  “What did you want to do?”

  “Mamma’s c-c-ciambellone with the chocolate meteorite inside! . . . Would you care for a slice?”

  “So that’s what that smell was. But wait, where did you want to take it? To Milan?”

  “I read that th-th-they have the biggest pastry company in Italy there . . . How is it?”

  “Excellent, absolutely outstanding.”

  “Too bad, though, if you’d found the c-c-chocolate meteorite you could have taken another slice.”

  This is one of those moments between father and son. One of those moments that occur when the son gets up to something serious and bad and the father, instead of pounding him within an inch of his life, decides to have a man-to-man talk with him, just eleven years early. Even though the decision is absurd, it strikes me as intelligent to reward it, and so I go along with it. We stroll in the park, in silence, every so often we talk, but about other things. A nice tree, a nice butterfly, a nice bright sun that, oddly enough, is warm. This interlocutory phase is starting to get on my nerves.

  “You see, Al . . . ”

  Here we go, this is it.

  “ . . . sometimes we make mistakes, even with the best intentions.”

  He looks at me, I look at him.

  “It’s the hardest thing to understand, I know, but you’re a big boy now.”

  He smiles at me, I smile at him.

  “Don’t think for a second that I haven’t figured out the reason why you stole the car . . . ”

  He laughs at his own joke, I laugh along with him.

  “It’s admirable that you wanted to do something good for your mother, but you were really too reckless . . . ”

  He nods at me, I nod back.

  “ . . . you could have hurt yourself or someone else, lots of people are killed in car crashes.”

  He looks at me, I smile at him. Holy cow, I just made a mistake!

  “What do you have to laugh about?”

  “Nothing, nothing, sorry!”

  “What did I just say, Al?”

  “Eh-eh-eh . . . car crashes! You were talking about ‘car crashes’!”

  “Right, and before that?”

  “Eh-eh-eh . . . ”

  “Al, you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said! What the devil have you been thinking about?” he shouts at me.

  I try my famous captivating smile but it doesn’t work. I turn to run.

  “Al! Come here, right now!”

  I’m sorry, I was thinking about the promised home.

  “Al, don’t do this, it’ll only make it worse!”

  I’ve found the promised home but I can’t tell you now, when you’re angry.

  “Al, the minute I get my hands on you . . . ”

  When he doesn’t specify, it’s really going to hurt! I try again with the smile.

  “This time you asked for it!”

  Okay, I confess, I was actually thinking that in the promised home there’s going to be a long hallway to do cannonballs into the bathtub! Bewildered gaze! Captivating smile! Beginning of tears! Stop, Mario El
vis, this is the power of my mind commanding you, sto-o-o-op no-o-ow!

  27.

  I don’t know, I can’t really imagine that such radically different things can happen on the same plane. The world that plans the first trip to Mars can’t possibly be the same world that devises the destruction of the Earth, the world that works to save poor children can’t be the same world that kills them by dropping bombs pretty much at random. Maybe there’s a parallel world, subterranean, gray, and wrong, like in the comics, if that were the case, then all we’d have to do is put big blocks of cement over all the manholes. My moments of meditation under the vase of geraniums always seem to abound with answers and solutions. Even though I’m preoccupied today because Papà went to take a look at the promised home. He’ll come back overjoyed, he’ll throw his arms around me, he’ll tell me that I was a genius to find it, because the darned thing really was well hidden. But enough of that, the chosen one has other things to think about. It’s not like the only problems the world has involve unhappiness and cruelty, there’s also the problem of generalized idiocy. The Americans and the Russians claim that they possess a nuclear arsenal powerful enough to destroy the planet four times over. I don’t get it, after the first time, what’s the point? Could it just be a manner of speech? “I hate you so much that I’d kill you four times!” Or maybe it’s like when Walter brags, thinking he can buffalo us when he says that he knows a way to kill us just using his pinky finger. Men are just bigger, hairier kids, they talk about the Cold War and the strategy of tension, and with these big important-sounding words they can fool anyone, but not a kid. You’re not strategizing tension, you’re just boasting, the way Walter does. But this isn’t the only absurd aspect of it. In my secret diary in human flesh I jotted down certain phrases that old people really seem to like: “Live every day as if it were your last,” “Carpe diem,” “The grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace,” “Live as if there’s no tomorrow.” The old people know perfectly well that to be happy they ought to think the way we children do, but then they keep forgetting that fact and scold us continuously because we children don’t think the way they do. Why do they do it? Are they confused? But if they’re so confused, then how do they manage to rule the world? The unmistakable tractor-like sound of the Prinz’s two-cylinder engine distracts me. I can’t wait to lock eyes with Papà and drink in his astonished and grateful gaze. I run out onto the road, I pull open the door even before the car brakes to a stop.