We Are Family

by Fabio Bartolomei

  “I’m tired right now . . . but later on you and me are going to have to have a little talk.”

  Now I understand why Mamma and Papà spent whole evenings at a time doing the accounts. Home economics has a mathematical logic that is hard to accept: (part-time work + freelance work + sale of notes and papers + room rentals) – (mortgage + assorted expenses + unexpected outlays) = 0. It’s been going on like this for far too many months, it’s time to retrench. I also understand why most of the young men I know dream of working as a butcher, it’s normal that they prefer to live with just one thought: “Ferrari or Porsche?” The Santamaria family is behind the times, the styles of consumption are changing, now people are buying exotic vacations, designer suits, second cars, while we’re stuck at the ISTAT demographic profile of the average family of the Seventies, we’re still worrying about a refrigerator and a washing machine. Sometimes I question the underlying assumptions of my plan: while we’re struggling to keep our heads above water, the economy of the Italian republic is going great guns. In the outside world they’re building hospitals that sit unused, sports arenas that never open to the public, superhighways to nowhere, viaducts that stop in midair. An impressive show of force, befitting a genuine superpower: So you spend billions to drop atomic bombs in deserts and on Polynesian atolls? We spend just as much to drop cement more or less at random. Maybe I should pave over the whole field and build a nice big parking lot, or maybe, just for the day, I ought to stop thinking entirely, because I’m starting to hear voices. Actually, I do hear them, insistent and crackling, and in fact they’re coming from Dario’s room.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him.

  “When are you guys going to make up your minds to install some doors, too?” he replies sarcastically.

  “Sorry, it’s just that I thought I heard voices coming from in here . . . ”

  With a smile he seems to apologize for his tone of voice. He waves me into the room.

  “I was just listening to the police channel,” he explains.

  “And why would you do that?”

  “It’s fun, it’s better than watching an episode of CHiPs.”

  “Can you listen to the firemen, too?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Ni-i-ice.”

  “So listen . . . this whole thing about the principality, why is it so important to you to be a prince? Is it because you like to feel important? Give other people orders?” he asks me.

  “No, not at all, it’s just that I like to have clear boundaries.”

  “This is 1986! Everyone else is trying to knock down boundaries and you’re trying to create new ones?”

  “You see, Dario, strange things are happening out there . . . The Communist Party is going to hold its congress in the PalaTrussardi, you understand? We’re allowing bishops, citizens of a foreign state, to urge Italian voters to support the Christian Democrats, telling them that to do otherwise is a sin and they’d make God upset? Boundaries are useful, believe me, otherwise you’re forced to accept everything. With a clearly demarcated boundary, you can decide what to let enter your world and what to keep out. And after all, they started it.”

  “Started what?”

  “You’re strange, so you can’t have a job, and you’ve been a housewife for too many years, so you can’t have a job either, as for you, you have excellent grades, but since you’re the son of a strange person and a housewife, you can’t have a proper job, and your house is no good either because it’s in an administrative black hole, and there’s no one willing to come out and hook up the electric power or the gas . . . tell me that those aren’t borders. So here you have us: This is the world’s smallest principality, and it’s governed by Mario Elvis and Agnese Santamaria, prince and princess of a genuinely secular micronation, truly independent, unfailingly peaceful. Here we welcome the weak, the poor, the disenfranchised, society’s rejects . . . no disrespect intended for present company.”

  “Certainly, of course . . . Anyway, I’d rule out the poor, with the exchange rate you’re talking about . . . ”

  “If you can prove that you’re without means of support, you have a right to free accommodation for a month, plus all the winter nights that the thermometer drops below freezing. It’s written in the constitution of the principality. Article 10, paragraph 3. Are you without means of support?”

  “No, in fact, give me fifty Elvises, I want to take a shower and get something to eat.”

  “Fifty Elvises, certainly . . . and the first shower is free.”

  63.

  The new letter from Mamma and Papà is a disappointment. The newspaper articles that I’d enclosed with our last response, as evidence of the waste of public money, did nothing to persuade them: once again they rejected my suggestion that we call them by retrieving tokens from the phone booth. Given my insistence, they wrote that from now on they’ll call us, three times a week, at Tiziana’s house or wherever else we want. They’ll have to spend a hundred thousand lire or so every month, as much money as Mamma earns making ciambelloni all day, but we shouldn’t worry, they’ve tightened their belts for a lifetime, and they’re not going to refuse to do so now in order to satisfy a sacrosanct request.

  “Let’s have them call us at Tiziana’s place, that’s more convenient,” says Vittoria.

  I vanish beneath the surface of the water. I remain underwater for a few seconds, in search of tranquility.

  “What’s wrong, Al?”

  Vittoria’s voice is deformed, it seems to come from a megaphone tucked away inside my stomach.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks me.

  How I wish I had the lung capacity of a sperm whale, just a quick glance at the world above every two hours and then down to the seabed, far from everything. I reemerge with a cap of bubble bath ill suited to my mood.

  “I don’t really want Mamma and Papà to have to tighten their belts . . . make more sacrifices . . . ” I tell her.

  “But what do you care if they’re happy to do it!”

  “They’re not happy . . . It’s obvious that they can’t, otherwise they would have called us a long time ago.”

  “We’ll make short phone calls, that way they won’t spend much.”

  I tried that out for myself once, years ago, right after breaking into the token box. I called a hotel, chosen at random, in Paris, the tokens dropped down in a metallic shower, it ate up so many tokens I couldn’t even hear the voice of the hotel switchboard operator. I told him that I wished to speak with Monsieur de Gaulle, Monsieur Charles de Gaulle, and in the time that it took him to look for that name in the registry and tell me that they didn’t have any Monsieur de Gaulle staying with him, there were two more token avalanches. Mamma, I’m fine how are you? Are you two having fun? The university is going just fine, thanks, let me talk to Papà, ciao Papà, hold on, let me put Vittoria on. They’d spend five thousand lire just to tell us hello. Mamma used to walk a mile just to save four hundred lire on vegetables. She’d open perfume bottles and add distilled water so it would last longer. Papà got sore hips because he’d repair his own shoes, and one heel was always higher than the other.

  “Papà would only eat chicken wings,” I tell Vittoria.

  “What?”

  “When Uncle Armando was alive, he’d eat even fifteen meatballs at a time, then he suddenly seemed to think that chicken wings were plenty. He used to say to us: ‘You guys go ahead and finish the chicken, I’m bursting at the seams.’”

  “So?”

  “I’m not feeling well, Vittoria . . . Let’s stop talking about these phone calls.”

  “Al, you shouldn’t be upset, these are perfectly normal things. All parents make sacrifices for their children. Just relax, if you want, we can talk it over tomorrow.”

  No, I never want to talk about it again. How could I help but notice that we were so poor? I’ve always thought th
at poor people were sad, that’s why. Mamma and Papà have always been so unmistakably happy and I believed all the nonsense they told me. The reason we don’t throw clothing away is that after spending all that time on your body, your clothing becomes fond of you, and we just could never be so cruel. We don’t go to restaurants because Mamma’s a better cook and it would only hurt the chefs’ feelings. Small cars are the most technologically advanced vehicles available, just like with radios, television sets, and electronic calculators: the more things advance the more research succeeds in making them compact. I grew up with bedtime stories foisted off on me at every hour of the day, for twenty years I just luxuriated in one colossal slumber.

  The time has come to look reality in the face: if an old and miserly duck dives into a mountain of gold coins, he’ll just break his neck, if you’re allergic to kryptonite then you’ll die of anaphylactic shock, if at the age of fifty you’re making a living as an Elvis impersonator, you’re never going to become the commander of the Space Shuttle, the most you can hope for is copilot. Mamma and Papà were never really happy, in fact, they were sad, with all the work they had to do make us happy, sad and exhausted. It’s time to come back to the real world, there’s a principality that’s waiting for its constitution to be completed.

  64.

  I never thought I’d see Roberta again. And instead she showed up on a flimsy pretext, she said that she just happened to be in the neighborhood. No one just happens to be in this neighborhood unless they intend to come to the principality. We ate dinner with her: she couldn’t keep her eyes off the wall of LEGO bricks and swore up and down that when she has a home all her own, she’ll call me and Vittoria as her masons. Then my sister said that it was time for her to get some sleep and shot me a wink. “Listen, she isn’t the kind of girl who just slips off her T-shirt, she’s not like Tiziana,” I felt like telling her. In front of her favorite window, the one overlooking the hill, we talked about the principality, about future plans, and about how talented my father is, how when he sings “Amazing Grace” it’s impossible to tell him from the real Elvis. In the fog of our kisses, we failed to notice that outside it had started pouring rain. So I took advantage of the opportunity, and I asked her to stay and sleep with me, I encouraged her by telling her that there was a game we absolutely had to try. We lay down on the bed, arms around each other, in an uncomfortable position that started pins and needles up and down my arm after a minute, but still I have no intention of moving. My hand, draped as if by chance over Roberta’s breast, unfortunately transmits no information about what it’s feeling.

  “Now look out the window and memorize what you see,” I tell her.

  “All I see is rain, Al.”

  “Look carefully, concentrate on the details of the countryside.”

  “I can see a tree branch and in the distance, the lit-up sign of the gas station.”

  “What else?”

  “Three . . . no, wait, four antennas on the roof of that apartment house over there.”

  “Now let’s close our eyes for an hour and then you’ll see . . . ”

  Roberta smiles, maybe she’s thinking I’m going to spring some trick on her. But she goes along with it, she shuts her eyes, leans her head against my chest, restoring feeling to my arm. To keep ourselves awake, we stroke each other’s hair. I like to take the finest hair, the hair that grows around the temples, and let it slide slowly between thumb and forefinger. She prefers to roll the longest hair, on the forehead, around her finger. There’s a scientific explanation for the fact that right now brilliant ideas are popping into my mind: Roberta’s caresses are stimulating the blood flow to that prodigy of nature that is my brain. Responsible Neocolonization: a project for fair and ethical behavior guidelines for those superpowers that just can’t seem to keep their paws off the wealth of Third World countries. Instead of destabilizing governments, installing dictators with piloted coups d’état, or relying upon armed interventions to put down civil wars specially fomented for the purpose, the superpowers would publicly challenge each other to duels over the construction of hospitals, schools, roads, and gelato shops. Whoever builds the most over the course of a year would have the right to exploit the country’s natural resources for the following year. Every year, the riches at stake would be up for grabs again, until the authorities of the local government decide to say thanks very much, everyone, and we’ll take over from here on in. Unemployment: unemployment would be considered a state-sponsored fraud, any person who has finished the mandatory course of studies has the right to be taken into the world of work and to be given a job befitting the studies completed or, as an alternative, they would have the right to the reimbursement of all their educational fees and tuition paid, from kindergarten on. Global Election: seeing that he claims to be the most powerful man on the planet, the president of the United States of America will have to be elected with planet-wide suffrage. Otherwise, let the Americans elect him themselves, but not put on such airs about it. First of all, though: open-door policy at the UN. One day a week would be dedicated to listening to the voices of ordinary citizens, chosen on the basis of their IQs. Every idea suggested would be put to a vote and, if approved, transformed into law then and there.

  “Why are you sighing? Is it time to open our eyes?” Roberta asks me.

  “Shall we try?” I ask her. “On the count of three: one, two-o-o, three!”

  Roberta looks out the window. She smiles. She looks more carefully. She stops smiling.

  “Where’s the branch? The tree branch is gone . . . and so is the lit-up sign!”

  Now all you can see out the window are the crowns of a line of holm oaks and, further on, the roofs of apartment houses, bristling with antennas. I explain to her that the principality is built on a cement raft because, seeing that it is a free place, it is first and foremost free to go where it pleases. A thousand years from now, when the poles have melted and the water level has risen, the principality of Santamaria will be safe and sound on the hilltop, the sole surviving realm on this planet.

  “Come on, let’s try it again. Close your eyes,” I tell her.

  “But hold me tight, Al. This game is starting to scare me a little.”

  We opened and closed our eyes three more times before being overcome by sleep. The wild plum tree disappeared and reappeared, while in the background first the apartment buildings poked up over the horizon, then the hill.

  When we wake up the wild plum tree is still there and, even more importantly, so is Roberta. I get up to make breakfast, and when the table is set and ready, I go out for the flag raising. I open the door, I lift the roller shutter, and then I become aware of the existence of a supreme being Who must love the principality very much.

  “Vittoria, Roberta . . . look at this nice surprise!”

  I walk around the house, sticking close to the cement running board. The principality has slid into the basin and now it’s at the center of a nice big pond. Between the house and the shore there must be a good fifty feet of water. When I finish my tour, I return to find Vittoria and Roberta petrified at the front door.

  “A little lake! With water lilies!” I cry, beside myself with joy.

  “Al, those are garbage bags!” Vittoria replies.

  “Could we try to refrain from being so cold and analytical and just try to consider that, once we’ve fished the garbage bags out of the water, we could install a nice array of water lilies?”

  “Al, this is no game! I have to get to the university! And this water is stagnant, the mosquitoes will eat us alive!”

  It’s no good, they just can’t seem to learn. No matter how hard I try, people can’t seem to glimpse the beauty of the world. The principality has become a castle with its own moat, and the two of them are worried about mosquitoes and how they’ll get to the university. While the two women grumble in the bathroom, I go and prepare the all-too-ordinary solution to this devastating catast
rophe which is bringing grief and famine upon our family.

  “Al, we’ve decided to call the fire department, maybe they could bring a drainage pump . . . ” says Vittoria.

  “The principality doesn’t have a fire department.”

  “We could ask them to come in from outside of the realm . . . ”

  “The principality may not have a fire department, but it does boast a very well-run ferry service, with departures every five minutes, starting now!”

  “Oh lord, Al, where did you come up with this? Do you think it’ll take our weight?”

  The old dinghy we bought in Torvaianica actually is much smaller than I remembered. It’s a child’s rowboat, it can barely hold an adult, but this isn’t the time for acting dubious, otherwise these scaredy cats are going to ruin everything.

  “Certainly it’ll take the weight. I’ll carry you to shore, one at a time. For just two Elvises apiece.”

  “Al, you’re a gouger!” says Vittoria.

  “It’s for the good of the principality, I don’t want to hear any arguments.”

  I slip the plastic paddles into the oarlocks, and I take my seat before anyone else. When I was little, I used to be able to lie down on the bottom of the boat, now the only way I can fit in is by bending my legs.

  “If we overturn, it’s going to be a disaster . . . ”

  Having painted the grimmest imaginable scenario, Vittoria steps into the rowboat and entwines her legs with mine. I set the tape recorder on my thighs, press play, and, as Elvis sings “My Way,” I start to row. On the second stroke, a section of oar, time-yellowed, breaks off. Vittoria doesn’t even notice, she’s too busy studying the progress of a microscopic hole in the bottom of the boat, through which minuscule drops of water are oozing. From her smile, though, I understand that she’s starting to enjoy the crossing. When we’re a few yards from the shore, I swing the boat around so that her side is the first to hit land.