What Hell Is Not

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  Then Gianni’s mother called us and our playing was silenced by images from another world, the world of doomsday movies.

  ‘What movie is this?’ asked Enrico, who joined us after a cool shower, with a Coke in his hand.

  Nobody answered. Our swimsuits were still dripping wet and we felt naked and inadequate. We were attending a funeral in bathing suits. And what’s more is that this was our own funeral, our city’s funeral.

  An entire stretch of highway had exploded. We would have taken that same route to get home.

  It had blown Giovanni Falcone and everyone who was with him to bits. The images were inconceivable when viewed from so close. They belonged to another dimension. But when we realized that it was our own dimension, we got dressed and waited in silence to go home.

  In that moment, I realized for the first time that safe borders in life are an illusion. At seventeen, you dream of nothing more than a swimming pool, maybe because life is beginning to seem so vast that it’s best to put up a fence around it. From then on, the pool became my surrogate for the open sea where sailors drown. We were swimming-pool swimmers, gold fish in a fishbowl. We knew nothing of the sea and its cruelty. And I still feel safe in that perfectly illuminated water, in that parallelepiped where everything is controlled and controllable. No waves, no whirlpools, no undercurrents. A sterile perception of tranquility.

  I cross the city and cut through Favorita Park without engaging with my thoughts. They are too heavy for a day like this. It’s incredible to think that hardly a year has passed. The trees freshen up the air as I pass by. They are like oxygen odalisques. The last stretch of road extends before me in a straight line like an asphalt rug over an oasis.

  Everyone is there: Gianni, Agnese, Marco, Eleonora, Margherita, Leo, Giulia, Teresa, Daniele, Manuela, Alessio, Luigi . . . I can feel a burden lifted from my shoulders as I am thrown in the water with my clothes still on. That’s the price you pay when you arrive late to an obligatory ritual like the first swim after the last day of school. Then there are water games, human towers pitted against other human towers, dodgeball, volleyball, contests to see who can stay underwater the longest and who can swim the farthest. Grazing the bodies of the girls from my class reminds me that I am made of blood and flesh. But the girl from my poem is not among them.

  ‘What are you doing for the summer?’

  ‘I’m going to England at the end of the month.’

  ‘I’m going to America.’

  ‘I’m going to our family’s house on Pantelleria.’

  ‘First I’m going with my parents to the Aeolians and then to Elba with my friends.’

  ‘I’m going InterRailing around Europe.’

  ‘What cities will you visit?’

  ‘Palermo, Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Vienna, Munich, Berlin, and Paris and then I come back.’

  ‘How long does that take?’

  ‘However long it takes. You get on the train and then get there when you get there.’

  ‘Sounds great!’

  ‘What are you going to be doing in England?’

  ‘I’m going to the college where my brother went. I’ll be away for a month and a half and I’m going to learn English.’

  ‘How’s your hot brother doing?’

  ‘He’s taking it easy. He has the most beautiful girlfriend in the world and he works in the most beautiful place in the world. What more could you want?’

  ‘He sure has done well.’

  ‘He has. And I want to learn to speak English perfectly, just like him.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘So I can impress at least half of the girls in the world.’

  ‘And what about the other half?’

  ‘I’m planning on studying Spanish on my own. And if need be, I’ll do French, too. That way, I’ll have at least three-quarters of the world covered. Of course, you have to keep in mind that I don’t care for Asian women. So that should be enough to keep me satisfied.’

  ‘You’re so full of it, Federico.’

  ‘You’ll see. You’ll see.’

  ‘What are you going to major in in college?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but definitely something in the humanities.’

  ‘All those books have turned your brain to mush. What’s so interesting about the humanities?’

  ‘The essence of life. Leopardi said that art concentrates what is scattered in nature before our very eyes.’

  ‘You are such a pain! You’re always complicating your life with these theories. Take a look around: Sea, sand, sun, girls. And you’re talking about Leopardi? What’s wrong with you? What else do you need?’

  ‘Obviously, you’ve never had a Spleen,’ I respond with an intellectual air.

  ‘What’s that? Some type of drug?’

  ‘No, it’s a cocktail.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘When the sky weighs upon your soul like a lid. When it rains inside of you. When all this or this all that you say is never enough.’

  ‘Do you hear what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’m just playing.’

  ‘See what happens when you read all those poems?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You end up full of doubt, uncertainty, and questions.’

  ‘Well, what’s literature for? If not for asking questions?’

  ‘I dunno. It’s “required reading.” What good is that?’

  ‘To free you from clichés. To never take anything for granted. To test the status quo.’

  ‘Like what, for example?’

  ‘Like “the clear knowledge / that anything pleasing in the world is just a brief dream.” ’

  ‘What’s that from?’

  ‘The last line from the first poem of Petrarch’s Songbook.’

  ‘Please! Anything but Petrarch! Dante’s okay. But Petrarch? No way! He’s the lamest poet in the top ten of lame poets.’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  We stand there in silence. It’s one of those moments when I’m joking but I realize that I can see everything from afar. I love words that put distance between me and other people. I give names to things that others don’t seem to see. And so I retreat to the folds of silence and hope that someone will someday find me there.

  Another swim washes away all melancholy. We have a pastry for lunch. It’s a prodigious balancing act between ice cream and butter cream, not dissimilar to the great artistic masterpieces. And so we let the sun, sand, and salt smooth out our green lives.

  All of a sudden, I remember that I made a plan with Don Pino. There’s something sharp in that thought, like something annoying sticking out from your soul.

  Wherever you turn, it pricks you. And this leads to the umpteenth unanswered question. I have a box full of them tucked away somewhere. I dig up my ‘poet in the grass’ notebook and on the first blank page I find, this is what I write, using my odd handwriting:

  ‘What is all this life disconnected inside of me? Why can’t I give it a name?’

  Chapter 7

  When the game is over, they all swarm off as the alleyways swallow them up. Dripping with sweat, Don Pino stands there alone. He looks at his watch. He realizes that he’s running late and that he’ll have to skip lunch. Just like always.

  A girl, five or six years old, is sitting in the corner. Black ribbons run down her arms and legs. The writing on her t-shirt is no longer legible. It’s written in a language that could have descended from the Tower of Babel. Her hair is messy and knotty like a baby Medusa. She’s tormenting an unclothed doll, ripping out and replacing her arms and legs. The doll’s face is blemished like the girl’s and its blond hair is clumped. She looks at everything around her with the blue and ever-open eyes that dolls always have.

  As Don Pino approaches her, he can smell the acrid odor of urine in her clothes. He recognizes her. He saw her this morning at the train crossing. It was as if she hoped the train would sc
oop her up in its gust of air.

  ‘Aren’t you going home for lunch?’

  The little girl continues to torment the doll.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  She raises her head to reveal eyes that are as black as tar. For an instant, it is as if another child is dancing in those eyes. But then rage and diffidence prevail and the black becomes even more dense and threatening like the sea by night.

  She doesn’t answer and she crosses her legs together with her arms. Her legs are so thin that they look like dried-out branches. She looks the doll in the eyes. She buries her head between her legs. And the doll stares at Don Pino. She bends over and the odor caked on her skin and clothes becomes even more acrid.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ Don Pino asks the doll, as she offers the eyes that the child denies him.

  The girl shakes the doll.

  Then Don Pino sits and leans against the wall. They sit there in silence for a minute, two minutes, three, four . . . He reaches out to stroke her hair.

  She recoils like a wounded animal. She jumps to her feet and shrieks before running away. Her back is like an eel in the muddy afternoon light. She’s holding the doll by its foot. She stops once she reaches a safe distance and shoots him a dark look. Then she runs away without turning back. She practically stumbles because her slippers are too big for her.

  Let the children come to me.

  For the Kingdom of God belongs to them.

  In hell, even that seems like a lie to him.

  ‘Forsake her not,’ Don Pino asks his silent God.

  When he gets home, Mimmo, the policeman who lives upstairs, is looking out his window with his ever-lit cigarette in his mouth and his theories about criminal goings-on in the neighborhood. They’ll do him no good at work but they are invaluable when it comes to getting to the truth.

  They nod at one another and then Don Pino mimes a puff on a cigarette and shakes his head.

  ‘It’s the last one,’ announces Mimmo with an air of innocence.

  ‘Really?’ asks Don Pino, pretending to be surprised.

  ‘Yeah, the last one in the pack.’

  Chapter 8

  My bedroom is a port. Petrarch also said his room was a port. There’s nothing sentimental about it. Not because my stuff is so well organized. Actually, sometimes you need a map to get around in my room. It’s because I know where to find everything.

  My poster of Bono from U2 reminds me of who I wish I were and never will be. A row of school books, a hodge-podge of novels and poetry books. They remind me of who I am and who I would never want to be: A jumble of words still not articulated in the syntax of the future.

  A syntax mastered by my brother Manfredi, my partner in laughing at nothing; in epic fights that culminate with someone biting someone else on the calf; in soccer and tennis matches; in voracious consumption of television shows, especially MacGyver and The A-Team, and cult animated movies and shows like They Call Me Jeeg or Captain Tsubasa or The Rose of Versailles or Lupin III. He totally looks like Jigen. He’s confident, someone whose deeds speak more loudly than his words. But he doesn’t smoke cigarettes. When he sets out to do something, nothing can stop him. He’s seven years older than me and he just began his specialization in neurology. He knows everything about the brain and how it works. And one day he will be the best neurosurgeon on the block. He can be detached. He always gives scientific answers and he improvises the rest. But there’s not much he can’t answer with science. I wish I had his confidence instead of this heap of disconnected words. This is the reason I go to him when the precarious balance between words and reality is off. There’s never been a time that my brother got it wrong. There has never been a time when he couldn’t solve my math equations on the first try. I am convinced that we are the perfect couple of brothers from the 1990s.

  This summer I’m going to the college where he went while I was in high school. My parents are obsessed with us learning English. If my brother agrees with them, it means they are right. My parents are only right when my brother says they are. He’s my trick shot, the bank on the pool table that guarantees that my Oedipus complex will be less bloody than expected.

  When I ask him too many questions, he reminds me that, given my age, I produce testosterone every two hours. An adult, on the other hand, only needs to replenish it every twenty-four hours, he explains.

  ‘You’re overdosing on wasted energy, Federico. If you would find a girlfriend instead of reading all the time, you wouldn’t be on the verge of collapsing and drowning in your production surplus. And then, to make matters worse, you keep asking all these questions . . .’

  He’s stupid when he says stuff like that, but I know he’s right. After all, his girlfriend is the most beautiful girl in all of Palermo. Sometimes my friends come to my house just because they are hoping they will run into her. Her name is Costanza. She’s the daughter of an important Palermo businessman, a real big-shot. I’ve never been able to understand why God lavishes certain gifts on certain people in a disproportionate manner when there are other people whose lives would be tolerable if they just had a little bit of that same good luck. Beauty, intelligence, and money. Some people have a rigged horoscope.

  Of all the gifts in life that one can have, I was saddled with the least useful: A love for words. Of all the things I’ve studied up until now, there’s nothing I love more than Petrarch, which makes me an ipso facto strange guy. But his ability to return obsessively to the same terms, honed down to the point where they become transparent, really hits home for me. Petrarch is someone who concentrated all the things in the world into a few select words. He was someone who knew how to stow and dock the chaos of life. I got the idea for the five words from him. Our teacher spoke endlessly about Petrarch’s ‘monolingualism’ and his ability to let the soul breathe with just a few essential words that had been cleaned like polished diamonds.

  Dante, on the other hand, assimilates everything, the coal along with the diamond. Compared to Petrarch, he’s dirty, even to the point of stinking. I could use some polishing myself because there’s more than enough chaos out there to go around. Especially when it comes to love. And Petrarch can simplify love to the point of it becoming a diamond.

  The other day my brother and I took a swim together far from the shore. It’s the place where I’m never afraid to ask him questions that I’m embarrassed about. Maybe because my body is hidden underwater and the motion of the sea mixes up the embarrassment.

  ‘How did you manage to win Costanza’s heart?’

  She’s the one that first called me ‘Poet.’ And my brother always gets a laugh out of calling me that.

  ‘Federico, when it comes to women, it all depends on strength. When they see a man worthy of this name, they allow their hearts to be won. It’s not that you win them over. It’s not a hunt. Don’t act like a drooling adolescent. The point is to be a man. Women are women because there are men, and vice versa.’

  His argument is flawless but the problem is what does it mean to be a man?

  ‘Knowing how to make decisions and taking responsibility for your mistakes. Never being afraid to be alone because you are determined. The opposite of a man is a chameleon, someone who resigns himself to whatever situation and just blends in, someone who doesn’t make a choice.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘No. You also need to be a gentleman. Not as an affectation but in the sense that you know you have something extremely valuable in your hands. Federico, men are not just males. Males want one part of a woman. Men want the whole woman. Men are willing to give up a little bit of love to have sex. Men want love, and sex is part of that love. A woman falls in love with your hands because that’s how she can tell that you know how to protect her, caress her, take care of her, entertain and possess her.’

  Treading water slowly so that I could keep myself afloat, I looked at my hands and decided they were too small for such tasks. I don’t even really know what I want, let alone whether or not I am
able to make decisions and take responsibility for my mistakes. The fewer mistakes I make the better it is. I’m like a warrior from the era of knights in shining armor, except someone stole my armor. Without protection, how can I go out and search for monsters, beasts, and my enemies? What good will all these words do me when I’m out in the woods so full of danger? Sometimes all I have is words, and I’m not immune from acting like a chameleon. But to be a man you have to have vertical motion. Manfredi is vertical. I am like all the poets that we studied in school. I zigzag.

  This is another thing I blame God for. He exaggerated with my brother. I might as well have been made out of what was left over after he made Manfredi. I’m just an incomplete vagabond, like Michelangelo’s statues with the bottom half still stuck in the stone. I can spend hours drawing new paths in my self-imposed maze without finding an exit. Sometimes I think that you generally have more courage as a child. Then you have to become like a rock to tolerate the waves of life.

  Sleep hits me like a lead pipe and I am freed from my thoughts. I wake up and I’m still wearing my clothes and it’s already nighttime. I dreamed of Don Pino’s smile. I don’t usually remember my dreams but I can remember this detail, and Flaubert used to say that God is in the details. Who knows if that’s true or not. When the abyss devours the walls of my room, I hope I will be able to fall asleep on command. It’s the only way to escape from yourself.

  Chapter 9

  Hell does not exist. If it does exist, it is empty. They say.

  They probably live in neighborhoods with gardens and schools. They are unaware.

  Hell is the enormous cement buildings, decrepit hives abandoned by beauty. They turn to cement the souls of those who inhabit them.

  Hell makes its nest in the basements of these buildings crammed with white dust, cut as best as it can be cut, and a balance of human flesh.