No, Papa!

by David Elvar

  He gestured at his own. ‘What you see here. What we always had before your mother took you away.’

  I looked down at it, remembering all too well the breakfasts before-my-mother-took-me-away, remembering how the traditional Sicilian breakfast is a little more than a one-way ticket to Pukes-ville USA. You see, you have two cups, one small and holding a hot, thick espresso with lots of sugar, the other holding cold milk. You also have a plate stacked with little fatty and sugary biscuits. And what you do is dunk a biscuit in the milk and shove it in your mouth, following it with a quick slug of espresso. So yeah, Pukes-ville big time. But like I say, it’s the traditional breakfast there, and if nothing more, all that caffeine at that time of the morning could go a long way towards explaining the average Sicilian’s driving habits.

  I didn’t answer, just glanced over the rest of the table. ‘Got any toast?’

  ‘But this is what we always had! Don’t you remember? Our little family breakfasts together? You with your little cup, your little plate?’

  ‘You with your little computer,’ I added dryly.

  ‘Lisetta! You will not speak to your father in such a way!’

  ‘You never noticed, did you?’ I went on, ignoring him. ‘You were so wrapped up in your damn computer and your damn work that you never saw what really went on!’

  ‘Lisetta, what are you saying!’

  ‘You want to know how our little-family-breakfasts really went? Huh? Do you?’

  ‘Lisettina—’

  ‘No, you don’t, do you! Well, I’ll tell you. Mum and I used to play-act our way through your little ritual then when you’d gone to work, the moment you were out the door, she’d chuck that filth down the sink and make us both a proper breakfast.’

  I finished. He looked shocked. And angry. And something else I couldn’t quite figure out but was like he’d just learned something that could never have occurred to him without being helped to see it. And it was unpleasant. I didn’t care, pressed home the attack.

  ‘So I’m going to ask again: got any toast?’

  A silence. Then a little laugh. Yeah, he did it again, just brushed me aside with an imperious wave.

  ‘We have no bread. We were travelling all day yesterday and I have yet to buy some. So…’

  He slid the plate of little biscuits across the table and towards me. I looked down at it, didn’t move to take any. Yeah, I was hungry, had barely eaten in almost 24 hours, but I wasn’t going to hand him that victory, no way was I going to give him that.

  ‘Forget it,’ I said, getting up again. ‘I’ll grab something later. I’m going out to take a look at the garden.’

  The summer had been long and hot, it seemed, the grass faded and brown, carrying the air of a withered old man who’d spent too long in the desert. The tree was still there, though. It looked healthy enough, and I guessed the gardener had concentrated on it what little water he was allowed. I say tree but it’s more a bush, not that high and more rounded than you’d expect a tree to be. No trunk, no branches, just this riot of leaves squatting squarely in the middle of the lawn. I remembered it well.

  I was two when I first saw it. My father’s secondment to an English university had ended and we moved here, the only place he could find an academic job. Mum always said there was something strange about that, him just happening to find a job when he needed it most and in his home country. We know now how he did it, of course: he has “friends”. And he uses them. Aside from money changing hands under the table, that’s how a lot gets done in Sicily. So that’s how we found ourselves torn from the country we’d both been born in, my mother and I, and found ourselves dumped in somewhere neither of us knew or could relate to.

  I remember we arrived here, in this house that we were told was now our home. And while my father unpacked his laptop (couldn’t stay too long from his precious work, could he, not even long enough to show us where the toilet was), mum took me out to explore the garden. It was a little overgrown, the grass long and ragged, but standing proud out of this sea of parched green was the most beautiful sight my young eyes had ever seen.

  I was sure it was a tree, for it towered over me in a way that seemed more friendly than threatening. It had broad leaves of the lightest green, and sheltering beneath them, some strange-looking flowers, almost cowering, as though trying to hide from a sun that would shrivel them to dust even after forging its heat through several layers of pollution. Pretty, maybe, but still strange.

  They were white in colour and shaped like elongated bells. Mum asked me if I liked them and I told her I did. She laughed and said they were called Angel Trumpets, and I believed her, believed that all the angels in Heaven carried one to blow when they got tired of plucking their harps. From that day on, I called that light green bush with its strange white flowers The Trumpet Tree. And here I was now, twelve years on. A little older, a little wiser. Grown now so tall that I could almost see over it. And I was alone.

  It was in that moment that it hit me, all that had happened and what it meant. It seemed as though the sudden flight from England had left it far behind but following, following and waiting for me to stop long enough in one place for it to catch up.

  I thought of mum, the strange lightness she seemed to be feeling on that holiday in England, that holiday away from my father.

  I remembered her coming quietly to me one evening at bedtime, telling me she had decided we should stay and would that be okay with me? And oh yes, I remembered the grateful sigh of relief as I threw my arms around her neck and said that would be great!

  Then there was John, the man who suddenly seemed to appear two months into our new life. She’d smiled a lot at the time. So had I. And I will never, ever forgive him for telling me the Haggis was a real animal, with legs longer on one side than the other so it could stay upright as it walked along the sides of Scottish mountains.

  Yeah, I remembered all this, all the good stuff and when it started to turn bad. Mum telling my father she’d met someone else and wanted a divorce. My father, six months after we’d left, suddenly deciding I’d been “abducted” and starting his stupid court case to get me to where I didn’t want to be and with who I didn’t want to be with. And he’d won. Somehow, and we didn’t know how, he’d won.

  And I was back.

  Alone.

  Only then did it sink in, only then did I understand what life now held for me. And there was nothing I could do to change it. I felt a kind of wetness on my cheek, something strange and salty dripping down onto a lip that really shouldn’t have been trembling like that.

  Alone.

  Totally, utterly alone.

  What happened next, you don’t want to hear.

  FOUR

  I got my toast. In the time I’d needed to get myself back together, my father had been down to the supermarket and bought some bread. It was victory of a kind but I knew I’d got it less by me beating him and more by him just giving in. Maybe he thought he’d pushed me far enough for one 24-hour stretch. Figured. Like all bullies, he’s a coward at heart.

  I sat opposite him, munching on the first food I’d had in what felt like ages, him glancing up from his computer from time to time. Smiling. Beaming that same false grin he always wore when pleased about something. I had the feeling I was about to learn what this particular something was.

  ‘I have something special planned for today,’ he said eventually.

  ‘You’re sending me back to England?’

  He laughed: a big joke I’d just cracked. I wasn’t joking.

  ‘Even better than that. We are going to see your family. Your family!’

  That word. Breathed excitedly like it was supposed to mean something. That’s another thing about Sicily: the family is everything. That’s where your first and only loyalty lies. Nothing else matters. If you don’t believe me, just spend a single afternoon in the company of any Sicilian family and all you’ll hear is something about how a great-aunt twice removed on the mother’s side’s second cousin�
�s pet cat contributed half a word to the third rewrite of Benito Mussolini’s last shopping list, that or some long and tedious tale of how great-great-great-grandfather Antino invented the hamster. Little things like that matter, but when people have no future, they’ll tend to live in the past. It’s all they have, which was why my father was making such a big deal out of it then. Like it cut any ice with me, of course.

  ‘My family’s in England,’ I said. ‘You should know, you took me away from it.’

  ‘Lisetta, do not speak like that! Your family is here! It is us!’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what this legal fight was all about, wasn’t it?’ I jeered. ‘Who I belonged to and where I was to live. And when it comes down to it, you just couldn’t stand the idea of me wanting to be with mum in England instead of with you in this parched dump with your shrivelled ancestors.’

  ‘Lisetta, you will apologise immediately for your disrespect!

  ‘Make me.’

  I was glaring at him, daring him with my eyes to force me to get down on my knees and beg forgiveness for insulting his precious family. Like hell I would. And he knew it.

  ‘The matter is closed,’ he said, looking down at his computer again. ‘We are going to see your family and there is an end to it.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘We can’t go.’

  He looked up, puzzled. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Today isn’t Sunday,’ I said simply. ‘Sunday was always the day we went to see your family, remember? The little weekly ritual so you could tell your mummy what a good boy you’d been all week?’

  ‘Lisetta!’

  ‘And yesterday was Friday so that makes today Saturday so we can’t go. You’ll just have to wait another 24 hours for your weekly pat on the head, I guess.’

  ‘Enough! It is nearly a year since your beloved nonna and nonno last saw you. Now you are back, they have the chance to. So we are going today.’

  ‘Don’t give me that!’ I said. ‘You just want to parade your victory in front of your mummy—isn’t that it?’

  ‘They want to see you, they are desperate to see you.’

  ‘Yeah, like you were desperate to get me out of England after you got your judgement yesterday.’

  ‘I had the tickets booked—’

  ‘Why the hurry? Did you think I might try to get away from you or something?’

  ‘That is enough!’ He slammed his fist down on the table. ‘The law is the law! And in a democracy, we must all obey the law!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, back to the law again. You always run crying to the law when you can’t get your own way, don’t you?’

  ‘I said that is enough!’

  ‘Like the time the newspapers criticised you for a report you’d made for the drug industry.’

  ‘They were wrong, they did not know what they were talking about. The finer points of biology…ah, what did they know?’

  ‘Enough to win the defamation case you brought against them? Oh, we all felt the fallout from that one.’

  ‘Are you finished? Or is there more?’

  ‘Try me. You didn’t have to start a legal fight against mum and you know it. You only did so when she told you she’d found someone else. Suddenly, she’d “abducted” me and you weren’t going to have that, you weren’t going to see me forming a bond with another father figure. And you knew I didn’t want to come back but you still went ahead with your stupid court case.’

  ‘What are you saying here? Do you know what you’re saying?’

  ‘What makes you think I don’t? You proved it over and over again: all you had to do was listen, to what mum wanted, to what I wanted. All you had to do was accept that we were happy where we were and just leave us to it. But no, the great Dr. Pellegrino had to have it his way. He had to control us. Like he’s always controlled us. Deciding for us everything from where we were to live down to what we had for breakfast every morning. And as long as the great Dr. Pellegrino got it his way, nothing else mattered, no one else mattered. I never realised it before but you are selfish beyond belief.’

  He didn’t answer, just sat there as we glared long and hard at each other, sparring again with eyes instead of words.

  ‘Are you finished now?’ he said eventually. ‘Or is there yet more you wish to say?’

  ‘I’m finished,’ I hissed back. ‘For the moment.’

  ‘You are damaged by your time with your mother,’ he said briskly. ‘But enough of this. Finish your bread, we will be leaving soon. To see your family.’

  Everyone in Sicily drives. Like I said, I think that’s the word for it. You see, there are only two rules to be followed when driving in Sicily. Rule One is that you have right of way over everyone else. Rule Two is that everyone has to follow Rule One. That’s pretty much it, really.

  It’s about 60 miles from Catania to Messina so the journey takes maybe an hour and a half. In theory, anyway. My father likes to try and improve on that time, along with just about everyone else doing the same journey. So what you have is a kind of free-for-all with cars. Fast. Noisy. And dangerous.

  It was after yet another car cut in front of us and my father screamed yet another obligatory curse that I felt myself smile. He glanced across at me, seemed puzzled by something.

  ‘Is something funny?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Just remembering mum, something she once said.’

  ‘Your mother! Pah! Nothing she said was of consequence. What did she say?’

  I ignored the contradiction. ‘All these cars, have you ever noticed? They’re all FIATs.’

  ‘So they are all FIATs,’ he said, glancing round as if to make sure. ‘So what of it?’

  ‘Well, she once told me what the letters in FIAT stood for.’ He didn’t answer, didn’t ask. I told him, anyway. ‘Fool In A Tizz. I think she was making a point about Sicilian driving.’

  ‘And I suppose you think she was being funny!’ he snapped.

  ‘I kind of thought so at the time,’ I replied easily. ‘And this journey sort of reminded me of it.’

  ‘You think it polite to speak of your fellow countrymen in such a way?’

  ‘Fellow countrymen! This is a joke—right?’

  ‘This is your country, Lisetta, these are your countrymen. These are the people you were born to be with.’

  ‘I hate to stick a pin in your pretty delusion but I was born in England—remember? I’m English—always was, always will be. So you can take my fellow countrymen and—’

  ‘Lisetta! You will apologise immediately for your disrespect!’

  ‘Hey, you want respect?’ I retorted. ‘Take a look at the driving all around you.’

  He didn’t answer. And he didn’t answer because, right on cue, another Fool In A Tizz cut right in front of us. I felt every thread of my seatbelt as my father stepped on the brakes, waited for the inevitable curse.

  ‘PORCO MISERIA! NULLA FACCENTE!’

  ‘Like I said,’ I went on when he’d finished, ‘I’ll show as much respect as what I see around me.’

  Game, set and match. He changed the subject.

  ‘You will behave yourself with nonna and nonno.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘You will do as you are told! They are your grandparents, the heads of your family, and you will show them the respect they deserve!’

  ‘You mean say Yes and No in all the right places and look interested in whatever they’re saying,’ I said dryly.

  ‘I mean exactly that! They have missed you. They wanted you back as much as I did.’

  ‘Yeah? I guess they must have helped you a lot with your case against mum, then,’ I said.

  ‘What they did does not concern you!’ he snapped. ‘What they did, what we all did, was only for your own good!’

  I looked at him. Hard. Something about what he’d just said didn’t sound right. ‘What you all did?’ I repeated. ‘Tell me more. Just how many of your precious family were involved in this?’

  ‘Whatever was done does not concern you.
You are back. It is over. Finished.’

  ‘Oh, you think? I bet mum’s launching another appeal even as we sit here.’

  He laughed. ‘I wish her well with that! She will find that things have, ah…changed a little since we left.’

  ‘What!’ I was looking at him intently. One thing my years with him had taught me was that he had this vicious streak that didn’t show itself too often, but when it did… ‘What have you done to her? Tell me or I’ll—’

  ‘You’ll what?’

  The sneer flashed on-off-on-off as he glanced between me and the road, me and the road.

  ‘It is all in place,’ he went on. ‘Your mother is, ah…no longer in the picture.’

  All at once, visions were rising in my head, visions of the Mafia being engaged to arrange a “disappearance” of someone inconvenient, of her being tied to a concrete block and thrown into the deepest part of some quiet lake somewhere, leaving people to wonder where she’d gone, why she hadn’t got in touch with them. And in that same moment, the nightmare vanished in a puff of reason. My father was too great an intellect to associate with the likes of the Mafia. No, he’d find other ways. Probably through the law, the courts. He liked making court cases, we’d noticed.

  I felt myself breathe again, decided I didn’t need more, not then. No, I’d find out what he’d done soon enough. Instead, I just sat back in my seat and watched the performance still unfolding around me, watched a Fool In A Tizz glance off another Fool In A Tizz, both drivers shaking fists at each other, both blaming the other. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? They both have right of way over everyone else—remember?

  It’s about 60 miles from Catania to Messina. It’s a long journey.

  FIVE

  ‘She is too thin.’

  My grandmother was prodding me with her walking-stick, glaring at me from out of the usual tight bun of grey hair bound severely on the back of her head, the perpetual shawl held fast over sagging shoulders by her other hand, as bony and wrinkled as the one wielding the stick.

  ‘She is too thin and she does not stand up straight. Stand up straight, girl!’

  Girl. I’d always hated her calling me that, like I was some kind of servant. I ignored her, didn’t stand up straight.