What Hell Is Not

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  ‘Now get out of here. Or I’ll give you the rest of what you have coming!’ I yell at him.

  ‘Just try it and I will kill you. You aren’t the one who gives orders around here. Get it? You’re the one who has to get the hell out of here. Otherwise I’m going to call my father and we’ll see how that works out for you.’

  I sit still without saying a word. Something inside of me is breathing more slowly now. There are many eyes on me, eyes like those of stray dogs who are ready to defend themselves against a stranger. My arms fall to my sides in desperation. I lower my stare. I throw the whistle to the ground in disgust and start to walk away.

  ‘Go fuck yourselves and your neighborhood of savages!’

  Just at that moment, Don Pino shows up.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘What’s happening? This is happening!’ I yell as I show him my lip.

  ‘Who did that to you?’

  ‘I don’t belong here. I don’t belong to this place. It was a mistake for me to come here. If you had been here, this never would have happened, damn it!’

  Don Pino pulls out a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to me. Then he turns toward the kids.

  ‘What is this all about? Who did this?’

  ‘I did. This asshole shows up and thinks he’s in charge.’

  ‘Is this any way to do things around here?’

  ‘We don’t want him here.’

  Many of them start nodding and they add their own nasty comments. That’s it. I’m going to get out of here before something inside me transforms into tears. But Totò gets in my way and hands me a glass of water to clean my bloody lip. He always brings a water bottle with him when comes out to play soccer. The water is warm. It does more for the soul than for the lip.

  ‘You need to be careful. He might actually call his father . . .’

  ‘Who the fuck cares? His father should have taught him better . . .’

  ‘His father taught him just as his own father taught him,’ interjects a female voice.

  Lucia.

  I hadn’t noticed she was there. She looks at me without pity.

  ‘He busted my lip. And now it’s my fault?’

  ‘They are taught to defend themselves, and that’s it. If you don’t want to become a victim, then you have to learn how to attack. You can’t let yourself be humiliated in front of everyone else. That’s how they were brought up. It’s not because they are bad kids. It’s because this is their life.’

  ‘Normal people don’t act like that.’

  ‘This is how normal people are brought up here. Nothing that you consider normal is normal here.’

  After Don Pino gets the game started again, he comes over. The kids are quick to forget what happened.

  ‘What are you doing here, Lucia?’

  ‘I brought you your sandwich like I always do. Otherwise you’ll forget to eat.’

  ‘It’s because of the heat. When it’s hot like this, I lose my appetite.’

  ‘During the winter, you lose your appetite because it’s too cold. During the summer because it’s too hot. You always have some excuse for skipping a meal or eating something that’s not good for you.’

  She hands him a plastic bag. Inside there’s a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil and some fruit.

  Don Pino smiles as he takes the bag.

  ‘Thank you.’

  As I watch the scene, I feel like an astronaut who’s landed on an alien planet, or an explorer who discovers a new land that isn’t virgin land as expected.

  ‘Let’s go. I’ll come with you to get your bike.’

  Before we head out, I turn to Lucia. She’s got her back to me. But then she turns around and our eyes meet for a moment. She has a bitter, wounded look on her face.

  ‘Don’t judge what you don’t know. What do you expect to learn at Classics High School if you haven’t even learned that?’

  As I zip up my backpack, I see the book that I brought for her.

  It takes more than reading books to be a man.

  It takes more than thinking good thoughts to be a good man.

  Chapter 20

  The chain is lying on the ground. The pole seems depressed standing there alone without my bike. Don Pino seems even more depressed.

  ‘I’m sorry. Unfortunately, that’s the way it goes around here. If you’re not from the neighborhood, you have to pay a price to be allowed in. I was wrong to think that you’d be protected by being here with me. Instead . . .’

  The street seems inert and unaware. At this time of day, the heat starts to loosen its bite and the sea breeze begins to caress you with unexpected grace. But in my case, it only makes my lip burn even more.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘I’ll catch a bus.’

  ‘I’ll take you to the bus stop. I know the way.’

  ‘But you’re busy, I’m sure.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’

  I’d rather be alone with my pain but he is insisting on being part of it.

  ‘Are all the kids here like that bad seed?’

  ‘He’s not a bad seed. He’s a seedling just like the others. It all depends on how you take care of that seed. Did Lucia’s family seem like that to you? Mario used to be one of the farm workers that lived in this part of the city. This used to be green, fertile land. Then they covered it up with cement and tar. The old landowners all got rich and the farmhands now can barely get by. They live in two- or three-room apartments that have been built out of the old farmhouses. Their daily struggle isn’t what but if they will eat. But they live their lives with dignity, despite their poverty. Here, there’s dignity around every corner. You just need to know where to find it. There are plenty of people here who know how to keep their heads held high even in the face of the whipping that life has given them.’

  We move slowly through a sort of maze that feels as suffocated as it is suffocating. The asphalt has been bleached by the sun and there’s no escaping. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.

  ‘There are also a few new families who have come from other parts of Palermo because of how affordable it is. Day laborers, most of them with steady jobs. They keep to themselves. They use the neighborhood more than anything else as a place to sleep. But some of them actually set down roots here. You saw Totò, right? The one who gave you water from his water bottle? He comes from one of those families. A lot of them help me out and they have even started a homeowners’ association that lobbies for services they still don’t have, like sewage, schools, and public spaces.’

  ‘Are we heading out?’

  ‘We are. But I need to show you something.’

  He just can’t let it go.

  ‘What’s that?’

  We end up on a wide boulevard. Via Hazon. Cement giants not only suffocate any hope of seeing the Mediterranean but they also guarantee that you can’t feel the sea breeze. The street is dotted with potholes and trash bags. Garbage bins are arranged like barricades used in urban combat. Weeds grow in bushes along the sidewalks. Little kids play on the pavement with a Super Santos ball and they move like a swarm chasing after the ball, which appears intermittently between their legs.

  ‘Have a look at this building.’

  A monolith that stretches up toward the sky like a Tower of Babel.

  ‘Hell is not below the ground. It’s in these cement housing projects. Scores and scores of families live here, people who have moved from the historical center of the city. And now they are camped out in these dilapidated buildings. The city has stuck them here, in apartment buildings that have been transformed into evacuation shelters.’

  ‘How do they get by?’

  ‘However they can. Some of them work under the table, if they’re lucky. Otherwise they sell contraband cigarettes or drugs, or they work as prostitutes. Many of them are under house arrest. Others are in jail. Nearly all of them are illiterate. The children don’t go to school and they learn their parents’ trade, whatever that may be. The rest o
f them live on the street.’

  ‘Why don’t they look for something better?’

  ‘If you had been born here, you’d be just like them.’

  I don’t know what to say. It feels like someone just gave me a slap in the face.

  ‘For months, I’ve been trying to get access to the basement in this building. It belongs to the city. But it’s being used for things you can’t even imagine.’

  ‘Don Pino, I don’t know what to say. I have nothing to do with this place.’

  ‘You do have something to do with this place. You came here and now you are leaving with less than what you had before you got here.’

  ‘In the end, the balance from my visit is a busted lip and a stolen bike. Not so bad, all things considered.’

  ‘Actually, it’s worse than you think.’

  We arrive at the bus stop. The street is lined with bands of stray dogs and kids. On the street where I live, elegant women walk their Newfoundlands, greyhounds, and German shepherds. Here there are nothing but mutts and strays. In the unforgiving afternoon light you can see all their misery on display.

  The bus stops as its brakes squeal.

  ‘Good luck, Don Pino. I’m leaving on Sunday.’

  I don’t know what else to say. Before the doors of the bus close, he hugs me tightly.

  ‘Forgive me. Have a great trip! Bring me back some tea, some of the good stuff!’

  His smile is his farewell.

  There are a few empty seats on the bus. I tumble onto one of the benches. My lip still hurts and fills my mouth with the taste of evil and its depths. The clotted blood gives me physical reassurance that I am made of flesh and bone and not of air and dreams.

  The sun sinks and stops slapping everything in its view. Sand. Dust. Stone. Then, little by little, other colors begin to prevail. Paint, glass, wind. From darkness we slip into light, passing through every gradation of shadow in between.

  The borders of the city I knew are as wide as the space between my eyes, no more. This is all I have been able to see in my seventeen years. I thought I had seen the entire world and not just one tile in a mosaic. Instead, its belly is shadow and grief.

  The bus comes to a stop in the glow of Via Libertà’s indefatigable light. I get off and I want to smell the clean air. The green plants in the Giardino Inglese seem as if they have been shellacked by ancient potters and decorated leaf by leaf. The trails are now golden in color and even the breeze seems cooler here. Hope is in the air you breathe, the sky, and the things that descend from the sky, the sea and the things that rise from the sea. Everything seems unchanged.

  But now I know that not everything is here, just like when I used to point my finger at the blue of the map and it was the sea. And when I pointed to the brown, it was the mountains. And when I pointed to the green, it was the grasslands. Maps hide too many things, and it’s best to keep them at arm’s length.

  The price you pay for reality is too high for me.

  Chapter 21

  Don Pino trudges down the same train tracks that I wanted to follow when I was a kid. But I would always get scared and turn back. I never had the courage to make my way to the end.

  His grandfather used to tell him that the tracks could take you anywhere. The train, he would say, could even be taken onto a ship so it could cross the sea. He used to listen to him in amazement and he would imagine the tracks as they dove into the sea.

  When he was a kid, his father meant everything to him. A cobbler, a day laborer, a man of action, and a man of few words. His mother meant everything to him. A seamstress, she was affectionate with her children and she believed they needed to study to make a life for themselves. He held their hands as he tried to give them the courage you need to die. The mother had passed six years prior. The father, just a year prior.

  The voice of a woman who calls someone to a simply set dinner table brings him back to a time when his memories become hazy. The road rolls back up like a spool of film and the show is the same as always: Low-lying apartment buildings, with their frosted windows and yellow windowpanes, enclosed balconies that have been transformed into the spaces needed for living. Everything is poor and ugly.

  Their immobile façades are lined with ruffled clothes hanging in the wind. Mimmo, the policeman, smokes his cigarette wearing only his undershirt and underpants. Mimmo has a sharp mind, and he’s a special detective down at police headquarters. But there’s not much else special about his life. Don Pino feels safe having him in his building, right above him. It’s like having a police escort but without having to tell anyone about it and without the inconvenience of having it follow him around everywhere he goes.

  Actually, it’s like having an underwear-clad guardian angel. Mimmo shares his insights about the neighborhood, about unexpected changes and the painfully slow metamorphoses. Connections are dissolved and created, almost as if there were a chemist busy with chemical reactions unseen by the inexpert eye.

  When he gets home, after a day at work, Mimmo gathers all the data from his attentive observations and builds maps of the geography of power and criminality. He basks in the contemplation of the web of intrigue but doesn’t do anything about it other than take pleasure in its perfection, as only a Palermitan mind can do. A mind like that can keep cool even when the subject at hand is burning hot.

  He’s lost in ruminations worthy of an Arabic alchemist or a tangled murder mystery. He stares off into the void. But the arrival of his friend shakes him out of it.

  He says hello to Don Pino with a nod and he awaits the good-natured perfunctory admonition that comes every summer evening. It’s a scene written in a script that has been repeated over and over again for years.

  ‘You smoke too much, Mimmo.’

  ‘You gotta die from something, Father.’

  Chapter 22

  ‘I’m not hungry. I’m going to sleep.’

  ‘But where have you been all day?’

  ‘At the beach, Mom. I told you yesterday that I was going to Mondello.’

  I avoid eye contact and I try to hide my face with my hand by pretending that I’m scratching my nose.

  But my mother understands something’s wrong without me having to explain it to her.

  All it takes is the tone of my voice.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean, “nothing”?’

  ‘Nothing, Mother, nothing.’

  ‘Federico.’

  ‘It’s stupid. A ball hit me in the face when I was playing soccer.’

  ‘A ball? Come over here. Let me put some ice on it.’

  I give in to the alarmed tone of my mother’s voice.

  ‘Just look at what you did to yourself. What on earth for? You and your soccer. You’re both obsessed. You and your brother. No, “obsessed” isn’t the right word. You’re both sick with it!’

  The ice eases the pain and I start to notice the state my body is in. I stink and I can feel my foul mood all over me.

  ‘Poet, what happened to you?’

  Manfredi comes into the kitchen. I’m sitting at the table with my mother and she’s holding the bag of ice to my face.

  I start to mumble a ‘nothing’ but my mother pulls my hand away from my face for a minute and shows my brother the work of art that I’m wearing.

  ‘Unstill life with a perpendicular slant,’ comments Manfredi. ‘How did you manage that? Did you fall out of your stroller? Or did you get in a fight with someone because they were better at reciting Petrarchan sonnets?’

  ‘GO OOO ELL,’ I tell him, emphasizing each syllable as much as I can with ice pressed up against my lip.

  ‘Aaa you shuh?’ says Manfredi, mocking me.

  ‘Yeah, go on and go right ahead.’

  He moves toward me and slaps me on the back of my neck.

  ‘Be respectful of your brother.’

  ‘Take it easy, both of you.’

  ‘So what happened to you?’

  ‘I got in a
fight.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me it was a ball in the face?’ my mother asks.

  ‘It was over a girl, right? That would be understandable. But first there would have to be a girl worthy of our family name. And she would have to be capable of seeing beyond the fact that you are a toad. And then she’d have to be able to stomach being with you after your first kiss. Or maybe it was a girl that did this to you after you tried to kiss her?’

  ‘It was this one kid . . .’

  ‘Better one than two . . . Who was it?’

  ‘This one kid.’

  ‘You never forget your first busted lip. Poet, you are becoming a man.’

  ‘And you’re the same asshole as always.’

  ‘Federico, stop talking like a juvenile delinquent.’

  ‘Why should I? Do you have a problem with juvenile delinquents?’

  ‘Fede, if you don’t cool it, I’m going to bust your other lip,’ says Manfredi, laying it on thick.

  I jump out of my chair, lunge at my brother, and I start punching him willy-nilly. He’s not quick enough to stop me and I manage to punch him in the stomach. He bends over in pain.

  My mother tries to grab me but I manage to wriggle free.

  ‘Leave me alone. I said, leave me alone!’

  I hole up in my room and let the anger seethe into every cell in my body. I’ve become violent with some of the people I love most, and it only took a few hours to get this way. Hell has latched onto me and now I’ve brought it back to our house like an unknown virus.

  I feel like a stranger in my own home, in my own city. I feel like a stranger to myself.

  Chapter 23

  Hell has a minimal and indivisible unit, an identifiable molecular state: The interruption of accomplishment, the compression (not the comprehension) of life. Hell is everything that sullies, wounds, closes off, interrupts, and destroys, and every possible variation on the theme of interruption. To oppose hell you must repair, resume, reconcile . . .

  Don Pino knows that hell works more efficiently on tender flesh: Children. Their souls must be protected before they are evicted from their bodies. Their most sacred possession must be looked after.