Lost Words

by Nicola Gardini

  “Better an oppressor than a beggar! . . . And I’d make a better boss than the old lady. Sometimes I wonder how much of a communist you are. As far as you’re concerned, things should never change.”

  When I heard them mention the old lady in the film, I remembered the news Mantegazza gave me. “The old lady died!” I hollered. My father turned two questioning eyes on me. “Our old lady!” I clarified. “Signora Armanda! She’s dead!”

  My mother turned pale. “The old lady died?”

  My father burst into laughter, having grasped the misunderstanding. “So, the old lady died,” he repeated to himself. “That old fascist is dead.”

  My mother expected us to go upstairs with her. In the event of a tenant’s death, she claimed, her professional duties required that we, too, the family of the custodian, had to participate in the expression of condolences.

  My father muttered the word “condolences” between gritted teeth, and went straight back home. I stayed behind with my mother. There was no one in the apartment except for the younger Mantegazza, their dog Bella, and the deceased, who had been laid out on the large double bed. Not even death had managed to tame the shrewish expression furrowing the skin between her almost invisible eyebrows. The dog howled from its prone position on the sheepskin rug near the bed.

  “Poor Signora Armanda! Did she suffer?” my mother asked.

  “Hardly!” said Mantegazza—perfectly coifed and made up—without the least emotion, as if she were reporting a news story she’d heard on TV. “This morning I got up, prepared breakfast, and called out to her. I went in the bedroom to see because she didn’t answer. She was already cold. The doctor thinks she died last night, after going to bed. At one point, I heard her gasp for air. That’s when she must have died. In my opinion, it was indigestion from the Christmas cake. It’s really awful, the panettone they make nowadays . . . when I was a little girl, it had a completely different taste . . .”

  “You’re right,” my mother agreed, although she had never laid eyes on panettone when she was growing up.

  Mantegazza asked her to prepare the body for the priest’s visit and started to hand her a ten-thousand-lira bill. “I wouldn’t think of it,” my mother protested, taking a step back. “I was really fond of Signora Armanda!”

  Mantegazza waved her hands impatiently, in her theatrical manner, as if she was drying the money in the air. “Come on—take the money! I don’t want to argue.”

  Without wasting a moment, my mother undressed the body and gave it a sponge bath. She noticed there was no hair between the dead woman’s legs. Amused, she said that Miss Armanda had reverted to being a little girl. The corpse didn’t bother her in the least. She dressed it in nice clothes and painted its sunken cheeks and lips with a little rouge. “We really are nothing but dust,” she commented while arranging the curls over the corpse’s gray forehead.

  Padre Aldo arrived close to suppertime. He lit a candle, said a prayer, and blessed the remains. He didn’t linger because he was expected back at six o’clock for the Christmas greetings. Mantegazza extended a banknote that quickly disappeared into his outstretched hand. “This is the first time I’ve blessed a deceased person on Christmas Day,” he observed. And at the door, he asked me, “Why have you stopped going to Mass?”

  At Mantegazza’s request, my mother also handled the funeral arrangements. She took care of every detail, from the floral wreaths to the vestments to the transportation. Meanwhile the dog sniffed at her feet and, growling, bared its few remaining teeth.

  *.

  The body remained in the house for almost a week, laid out on the bed just as my mother had arranged it. To get rid of the smell, Mantegazza smoked like a chimney. At night she slept on a sofa in the living room, although she deeply regretted—so she said—leaving her poor mother all alone in that big bed.

  Early in the afternoon of the 31st, the coffin was closed and loaded into the hearse. The undertakers had wanted to lay the coffin out on a bier in the lobby, but my mother said absolutely not. The signore would’ve taken it as a bad omen—on the last day of the year, no less!

  Besides the seamstress and her daughter Rosi, only my mother and I went to the church. No one else from the apartment complex came. The minibus that Signora Mantegazza had rented for the tenants was sent back to the garage, unused. Not even her relatives were there, unless you considered the dog a relative. It took up a post right below the head of the coffin, and was a little more vigilant than usual. Next to the coffin were wreaths from the other tenants, from Mantegazza herself, and from the director of the swimming pool where she worked.

  The seamstress wore a mangy raccoon coat that we had seen, years earlier, on the old woman. Her gestures and expressions reeked of servility: she was clearly counting on getting a share of the deceased’s estate. And while enticing the old lady with cups of coffee, she must have discovered that the coat hadn’t been left to us.

  During the religious service, Rosi couldn’t sit still for a minute. She kept running from one end of the church to the next, throwing the pews into disarray, and snuffing out the candles. My mother watched her, stifling her laughter. Mantegazza, despite her annoyance, tried to pay attention to the words of Padre Aldo, who had the good sense to keep the service down to the essentials. At the moment of benediction, the seamstress faked a sob. Mantegazza did not even deign to look at her. My mother was seized by an uncontrollable euphoria. To avoid bursting into laughter, she had to bend herself in two and groan. Not to be outdone, the seamstress unleashed another torrent of tears. Mantegazza continued to ignore her, while my mother seemed to be overwhelmed with grief.

  Outside the church, Mantegazza asked if we wouldn’t mind following her to the cemetery. The question, which sounded more like a command, caught both my mother and the seamstress off-guard. For the first time they looked each other in the eye, as if they were both wondering how they could escape this unexpected burden and, calling a momentary truce, came to a mutually beneficial agreement: in the end, without a sound, they both got into the big black Mercedes.

  We rode through streets I had never seen, sad and gloomy, impervious to the Christmas lights. Until then I had imagined the city was more beautiful beyond the fields surrounding Via Icaro, beyond the gates enshrouded in fog. I was wrong.

  Because of the cold, the priest at the cemetery also limited himself to the essentials. A moment before the gravediggers started to cover the grave, the seamstress told her daughter, “Rosi, take a clump of dirt and throw it on nonna.” The little girl, figuring nonna was the older woman standing in front of her rather than the one lying in the grave, grabbed a handful of soil and threw it at Mantegazza. “Good God!” the woman shouted, jumping to one side. “Signora Bortolon, a little respect! Don’t you realize I’m burying my mother?”

  My mother giggled, and I giggled with her. The seamstress gave Rosi a slap across the face. “Apologize to Signorina Mantegazza!” she hollered. The only thing you could hear in the cemetery was her strident voice. The little girl fled through the deserted gravestones, which were dappled with the remaining snow. Handfuls of dirt were scattered onto the casket. Without thinking, Mantegazza, after a long final drag, tossed her cigarette butt into the pit.

  “How old was Signora Armanda?” asked the seamstress, unremitting in her gall. Mantegazza blew smoke through her nostrils and chewed on her lower lip with an absent look while the gravediggers finished their work. I thought she hadn’t heard the question. “It was a secret,” she said after a long pause, staring into space. “Momma was against anyone knowing—but what’s the sense of secrets anymore? She was ninety.”

  “What a woman!” crowed the seamstress, “to make it all the way to ninety. That I should be so lucky!”

  *.

  “She was here not even ten minutes ago,” my father remarked, “the Maestra—and what a character! She can’t weigh more than eighty pounds.”

 
; The gift-wrapped packages were placed on top of the television set. From their shape you could tell they were books. I could imagine which ones. The biggest package was her Webster’s. The second was her copy of Madame Bovary, in French. On the title page she had written, “For Luca, Happy New Year!” Her holiday wish for me was a warning, not to lose my bearings amid the myriad false idols I would encounter.

  “Can I go upstairs to thank her?” I asked my mother.

  “You’ll thank her later, she knows you’re spending the holidays with your parents . . .”

  We had nothing planned for the evening. Gemma and Carmen were going to a pizzeria with their husbands. My mother didn’t have the least intention of wasting her money, especially since her own pizza was so good. Nor, for that matter, did she feel like leaving the building unguarded on the last night of the year, with fireworks going off everywhere and a bunch of drunk men on the prowl. “If anything happens, you know who they’re going to blame.”

  We turned on the television and sat down to eat. The front door kept slamming as people came and went as if it were a regular work day—a constant reminder that everyone was out merrymaking except us. Even the Vignolas were having fun.

  We made the dinner last for as long as possible so it would look as if we, too, were celebrating New Year’s. The menu was elaborate. My father had requested chicken soup, pig’s feet and lentils, an assortment of side-dishes, and gorgonzola with walnuts, one of his favorites. My mother let a few minutes go by between one course and the next, and she asked us to eat slowly. How would we make it to midnight, otherwise?

  By ten o’clock, my father was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. My mother was sleepy, too, but she forced herself to stay awake. There was still the dried fruit and the canned peaches. And the coffee . . . to be capped off by a toast, with the bottle of Prosecco the landlord had sent, and the panettone. But my father wanted to eat the panettone right away, and then have a cup of coffee. My mother, following the order she’d established, opened the can of peaches and served them to him. He still wanted panettone, so she dropped a rough wedge onto his plate. She and I would have our servings later.

  The feast was over.

  My father disappeared into the bedroom. After washing the dishes and helping me to open up the bed, my mother joined him. She set the alarm clock for eleven fifty-five so we could all get up to toast the New Year together. Otherwise our wishes wouldn’t come true.

  I closed my eyes and pressed Flaubert’s novel to my chest. In that position, with a book I still couldn’t read, I was finally able to survey the room more serenely: the gas meter, the window, the sliding bolt lock, the key drawer, the intercom, all the knickknacks you wouldn’t find in a normal home, and all the protrusions that hindered our movements and freedom. Suddenly they no longer felt oppressive, wrong, and unsightly, but rather provisional, as provisional as the people carousing upstairs and the fireworks going off in the fields.

  At midnight we opened the bottle from the landlord and drank a toast to the New Year. My father gave me a kiss on the cheek and drew my mother toward him. She broke away from his embrace impatiently, raising the glass to an audience that only she could see. “Happy New Year! Auguri! Happy 1973! The time has finally come for us to buy a house, too! Happy New Year! Viva the new house! Viva 1973!”

  My father didn’t have the courage to contradict her, so he stroked her hair tenderly. And she continued, rebelliously, “Happy New Year! Viva 1973! Viva the new house!”

  *.

  After the holidays Miss Lynd also gave us an envelope. We really weren’t expecting it, and inside was a ten-thousand-lira note, compensation for all the help my mother had given her. At the sight of the money, my mother was puzzled. The gift cheered her up—it was cash, after all—but she was also a little offended. She would have preferred to keep the Maestra in her debt. “No one’s going to buy me,” she said.

  She had become jealous. She realized that the Maestra was transforming me. I had stopped watching television and my nose was always in a book. I spoke in a strange way and often used words that to her were unknown, incomprehensible, even foreign . . . She appreciated the change in me, since it came from the time I was spending with an exceptional person, but she also disapproved, since it had made us grow apart. Her problems and dreams no longer interested me. I had stopped participating in her long vigil for the sale of the building, and, sharing her hopes that we would soon be taking over the Vignolas’ one-bedroom apartment. I had already found a new home. It was on the fifth floor of the building, not the first. And it was filled with books. And English was the language spoken there.

  The money had to be returned. But thinking long and hard about the matter, she decided to keep it, since the purchase of a home remained an absolute priority. On the intercom she thanked the Maestra and said that, to reciprocate, besides the usual weekly cleaning, she would start ironing her linens. The Maestra told her there was no need. She didn’t iron anything, much less the linens. Ironing was a waste of time. All one had to do was hang them out properly while they were still wet.

  “Thank goodness not everyone thinks like your Maestra,” my mother said, “how in the world would I make a living otherwise!”

  The following Sunday, when she went upstairs to clean, the Maestra sent her away. Thank you, she said, but she would no longer be requiring her services.

  *.

  Once school started, my English lessons would also resume. My mother could no longer use the holidays as an excuse to keep me from going upstairs. I returned to the fifth floor with renewed enthusiasm. Every day I collected dozens of unknown words and definitions, copying them into my notebook, which slowly filled up with my handwriting. At night, before turning out the light, I would reread the words to memorize them, but also in an effort to go beyond the threshold of sleep and beyond the pleasure I had felt in the afternoon.

  In a passage from my textbook we came across the word God. Having ascertained that I knew the meaning, the Maestra asked me to define it. It was customary for me to give her either a description or a synonym (although, according to the Maestra, there were no true synonyms—were there perfect equivalents for life, time, air, flower . . . ?). An example would be even better. But never, ever, should I provide a translation. Dumbfounded, I sat there in silence. Happier than if I’d given her an answer, she took my silence for the indisputable proof that God did not exist.

  “Very good! One can hardly expect to define such a ridiculous term. Every language has a certain number of such words: meaningless words that belong to the realm of religion. Of course, if you look it up in a bilingual dictionary, you find Dio. So what? There are languages in which the concept of divinity is completely absent. In Hebrew—the language of the people of God!—the word exists, but you’re not supposed to utter it . . . An old friend of mine considered God to be ‘the shortest and ugliest of our mono-syllables.’ For me it means something only if you read it backward . . .”

  I knew the Maestra was critical of priests, but I overlooked the possibility that she might actually be an atheist. I was used to my mother’s form of religion, the religion of women who speak to God with the same candor they use to haggle over the price of vegetables at the market. I was convinced that all the mothers of the world—because, in the end, Miss Lynd was a mother, too—shared the same God, an invisible being, creator of heaven and earth, to whom they turned to pray for help. He was also my God. Every night, since childhood, I would say my prayers to him before falling asleep. For years and years I had asked him to give my mother enough money to buy the Vignolas’ apartment, and lately I also thanked him in my prayers for bringing the Maestra into my life.

  “Poor Luca, you obviously believe in God, right?” she surmised, “and in the poor Blessed Mother . . . the Immaculate Conception . . . the Resurrection of the Son . . .” She shook her head, disconsolate. I didn’t know what to say. I knew my mother would be ver
y unhappy if she could see me so unprepared to defend the faith. “It’s not your fault, caro Luca,” she persisted. “At school they don’t teach you to read the dictionary, but they do teach you that God, with a capital G, is great and good and merciful, that things happen because it is the will of God . . . Your son gets sick and dies, but it is all part of His divine plan. Populations are slaughtered by the millions, yet even this is part of His divine plan. It’s so complex! Such PERFECTION! Everything fits into His divine plan: wars, fascism, concentration camps, famine, disease, social injustice, unemployment, fratricide, the exploitation of children! Yesterday I went to the young people at the Home for the Disabled to wish them a Happy New Year. Have you ever been there? . . . You should go! It would force you to realize the unimaginable sophistication of the divine plan: bodies without arms, heads with one eye, tongues that are ten inches long, giant skulls, no ears, no legs, no torso! One patient is dragging himself around, another is slithering, and yet another is jumping like a grasshopper. Many of them don’t move at all, and only scrunch up their faces. As for words, no one knows how to speak. They make sounds, yes, and they’re very good at it! Shrieks, moans, gasps, gurgling, whinnying, hiccupping. What a concert! What a show! The joyous beauty of the divine plan! Why not? Let us give thanks to God for all this! Whom else—seeing that there’s no one to thank? . . . God is no one! When will people wake up and realize this?” Her indignation propelled her from her armchair, back and forth across the small room, which swelled with her spirit, expanded into a cosmic stage. “God is a beautiful fairy tale. God can do everything. For children he’s a kind of wizard, a witch doctor! He moves mountains, resuscitates the dead . . . is there anything your God can’t do?” She heaved a sigh and her sarcasm gave way to melancholy. “I have never been a believer. I have always been strange, ever since I was little. And unhappy—a very unhappy girl! Was it because I didn’t have God in my life? I don’t think so. People don’t know what to do with someone like me. I’ve often ended up alone because of my ideas, and I’m not talking about voluntary solitude—that’s another matter, which I’ve allowed to grow inside me like a garden. In Latin there’s a good word for it, secretum. Did they teach you that in school? . . . I’m talking about another kind of solitude, the kind you don’t choose, the kind that threatens to turn your garden into a desert. I’m talking about abandonment . . . And one day you will abandon me, too—won’t you, my sweet Luca? If you abandon me, I’ll understand . . . I’m crazy!”