What Hell Is Not

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  One day, Turiddo had lost all of his money and so he had decided to bet his future earnings. He needed to repay his debt. Otherwise his fellow gamblers would have killed him by beating him with a stick. Or they would have hanged him or drowned him like an old donkey.

  So he fled into the night and sat down on a little wall with his head between his hands and pain in his heart. Dogs were barking and the moon was so scared that it practically disappeared. Then something moved. It was the giant cape of a man with an old hat that was darker than night. It was so big that it even covered his face. Turiddo was frightened.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I can help you,’ he said. ‘Come tomorrow at midnight to Hangman’s Crossing with your mother’s heart and I will give you the money you need.’

  ‘But who are you?’

  There was no answer, and the cape was swallowed up by the night. Turiddo fell even deeper into despair. He couldn’t hurt his mother. She had suffered greatly in order to raise him right. But the barking of the dogs reminded him that an awful death awaited him if he didn’t pay the debt. And so the next night, as she was sleeping, he cut into her chest with a knife and took her heart.

  He wrapped it up in a towel and rushed to Hangman’s Crossing. The night was blacker than ink. The stars had disappeared. He was so scared and so mad at himself for what he had done, Turiddo ran like a crazy, tortured soul. But it was mostly because his mother’s heart, which he held tightly under his arm, wouldn’t stop beating. It reminded him of one of the prickly pears that she would set out for him every night.

  He wanted to be rid of it as soon as he could and the hour of his appointment was nigh. The road was bad and Turiddo, in his haste, stumbled. The heart was still beating, all covered in blood. It fell out of the towel and rolled along the path. Turiddo could hear a quiet voice coming from it. He thought that he must have gone crazy. But when he bent over to pick it up, he could hear the voice loud and clear. It was a sad, piercing voice in the silence of the night.

  ‘My son. My blood. Did you hurt yourself?’

  The heart was asking its son, the blood of its own blood, if he had hurt himself.

  Francesco’s mouth is hanging wide open. Wonderment and silence are a gauge of the truth of any given story. Once a story is finished, if you return to thinking about what you were thinking about beforehand, or if you immediately start talking, the story is not a good story. Or the narrator is not a good storyteller. But if the persons listening to the story remain silent, perhaps with their mouths halfway open, you can rest assured that it was a good story. And it will surely liberate someone from the prison of desperation or boredom, which represent life’s great lie. That’s why only children know how to listen to a story, even when the story never changes, because they never tire of listening to the truth.

  Turiddo paid the debt. And when he returned home, he found a dish with fresh prickly pears on the table and he cried every last tear he had.

  ‘My mother told me that God is like the mother. For God, a son will always be a son.’

  ‘Why do you like this story so much, Don Pino?’

  ‘Because it reminds me of my mother. It was she who taught me how to forgive.’

  ‘What ended up happening to Turiddo?’

  ‘I don’t know. My mother never told me. Who knows? Maybe he repented.’

  ‘Either that or he went to hell.’

  ‘With a mother like that?’

  ‘If you have a good mother, does that mean you won’t go to hell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you are bad?’

  ‘Even if you are bad.’

  ‘Have you ever been to hell?’

  ‘Every once in a while.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, Francesco?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Think about it. Think about what you did after you suffered terrible pain and didn’t have a way to escape it.’

  Francesco hesitates. He can’t stop fiddling with his hands. He closes his eyes and puts his hands over his eyelids.

  ‘The time I kicked the dog.’

  ‘What was wrong about it?’

  ‘Because the dog hadn’t done anything.’

  ‘That’s it. That’s hell. The loneliness that you felt after you kicked the dog. Hell is all the times you decide not to love or you cannot love.’

  ‘Does that mean I will go to hell?’

  ‘No. Not if you ask forgiveness.’

  ‘Who do I need to ask?’

  ‘Jesus. And then the dog.’

  ‘And how do I do that?’

  ‘By confessing to Jesus the loneliness that you felt after having visited hell. It’s like telling a story. And Jesus loves all of our stories, even the saddest ones.’

  ‘How does he hear me?’

  ‘If you tell me the story, I’ll make sure that he hears it.’

  ‘Alright. I’m going to tell you the whole story then.’

  Francesco tells him about the dog. And then about the time he spat on his friend Antonio and the time he punched his mother. The time he stole a bike. The time he burned lizards and the tail of a cat. The time he threw rocks at the other team and cracked open a kid’s head. The time . . .

  Don Pino listens with his eyes closed and nods. When Francesco finishes, he opens his eyes and smiles at him.

  ‘Is that it?’

  Francesco lets out a deep breath like someone who has revisited all the evil that he has inside. And then he calms down.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’

  He guides Francesco’s hand to help him make the sign of the cross. And then he gives him a hug.

  ‘What did you just do?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. God has erased hell. Those things never existed. They have been erased.’

  ‘And so now I can go to heaven?’

  ‘Yes. But you don’t go to heaven, Francesco.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘You are either in heaven or hell. You don’t go there.’

  ‘I don’t understand what that means.’

  ‘Both are inside of us. It depends on the space that we give to the one or the other.’

  ‘Can you say that again?’

  ‘When you kick the dog, you are giving space to hell. If you pet him, you are giving space to heaven. If you kill someone, it’s hell. If you save someone, it’s heaven. You decide.’

  ‘This makes me happy. Very happy.’

  ‘See? There you are! You are in heaven.’

  Chapter 38

  The Hunter knows that what needs to be done must be done. Now more than ever, now that Mother Nature has chosen him. The thing that needs to be done now is to kill a man. That’s what they told him. And they told it to him because his greatest assets are speed, determination, and the guarantee of precision.

  He was a tireless worker up until the time he was twenty. He had worked all his life like a mule. He did it because he loved his wife and their first child. Then things had gone the way that they do in the world: Wrong. He lost his job and he needed money. He knew the right people and so he began with robbery.

  The path toward bigger things was like walking up a staircase. And then there was money. Lots of money. And easy money. Without breaking his back. When he opened a sporting goods store and it didn’t take off, they gave him 2 million lire a month in living expenses. Then his devotion and obedience took it to 5 million. To think that when he was working construction, he practically had to kill himself and he barely made more money than someone who is disabled.

  Today, all he has to do is kill someone every once in a while. Nothing pays like determination. And no one is as determined as he. You don’t pay state taxes on determination. Maybe on your soul, but that itch passes quickly, especially if you have a family to take care of.

  When there’s someone who needs to be killed
, the Hunter is a sword that’s already been drawn from its sheath. Silent and sharp.

  That’s why Mother Nature chose him. He wanted him in his army, in his firing squad.

  He sees the man leave his house. He’s around forty years old.

  It’s the early afternoon and the street is empty and there’s a festive, tired silence in the air.

  The Hunter detaches himself from the wall like a stone that has come to life. The handle of his gun presses against his abdomen and his belly, full from a Sunday lunch.

  The man turns the corner on to a street even more deserted. Words tumble from televisions and evaporate as soon as they hit the street. The man is walking at a relaxed pace and his cigarette smoke accompanies him as the Hunter moves up beside him and shoots him directly in the head. The pistol’s silencer shares its whimper with the man. It’s a merciful whimper, after all, because the man doesn’t even have time to suffer.

  The soul departs through the hole that’s been opened up in his head and it blends in with the voices from the televisions. And then it evaporates like the voices. A piece of iron and a piece of flesh. Then the Hunter shoots the traitor two more times in the heart and he continues to walk on. The laundry continues to dry, suspended and unsullied between the sky and the earth. The wind caresses it and everything seems simple and pure.

  But the blood spreads.

  He takes a walk around the block and rids himself of the pistol by hiding it in the usual store. He goes home and caresses one of his children’s heads and plays with him. Then, an hour later, he hits the street again and moves toward the crowd of people who have gathered around the dead body.

  The police are already there, collecting evidence.

  With circumspect piety, the Hunter asks about what happened.

  A little girl is kneeling next to the man’s body. She has a half-naked doll next to her.

  Her mother is trying to move her away from the blood as it stains the little girl’s knee.

  ‘Will Dad come back after everyone is gone? Will the blood disappear and will he open his eyes?’

  The mother turns away and sobs as the child holds her father’s hand. He’s already been relegated to the realm of memories, and the last memory of him will remain a border that cannot be crossed. His face has been misshapen by the gunshot. His heart has been splattered inside his ribcage.

  The Hunter has no eyes. He observes the scene like someone watching a film for the umpteenth time when there is nothing good on TV.

  That which needs to be done must be done.

  Chapter 39

  Today is one of those days on which the wind softens the streets, blowing not from the sea but from the land. It covers the din of televisions that stagnates when the heat is deadening and sets everything into cautious motion. I’m on the bus that takes me to Brancaccio and I watch the homes and people go by. My soul is brimming with words that I’d like to write.

  I am reminded of Italian class from my freshman year, on the earliest written examples of the Italian language. One was a riddle that compared writing to a black seed that had been planted on a white page. That sheet of paper was as fertile as a field of crops at the time of planting.

  ‘Without words, things almost don’t exist,’ our teacher told us.

  ‘Especially words that lie underneath a layer that covers them. The page is the soil and once it’s been plowed, tilled, and nourished, it generates complete, precise words. These are words that name things and allow them to exist within us because they cannot yet show themselves. These words bring things to light or they shed light on things.’

  Then we learned about the second document, the one in which a builder inveighs against the poor workers and flogs them with violent words: ‘Pull, you sons of whores!’ he says to them. And our teacher told us that this is another thing that words do. They can be hurtful. But words also allow us to feel their exhaustion, their pain, and their frustration beneath the burden they carry. They must bear the weight of their existence.

  I love the fact that in early Italian literature, writing is described as a seed and bad words are used. In the end, what are words for if they are not used to speak of good and evil? To bless and to curse. This is what words are for. And once again, it’s what you choose to make of them.

  I come upon Don Pino as he is arranging fresh flowers in a vase near the altar.

  ‘I have to say a blessing over the dead. Come with me.’

  ‘We’re getting the day started off right . . . Who died?’

  ‘I don’t know. They shot him.’

  Bless the dead. Who knows if it can even be done?

  Chapter 40

  The Hunter cuts a baby goat into pieces.

  ‘The meat of a milk-fed kid is more tender than lamb. It’s very delicate. The flavor and aroma are less intense, and that’s why you need to cook it well, with wine and the right spices. It will melt in your mouth.’

  ‘Does “milk-fed” mean that it’s little?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, but the important thing is that you give it only milk to eat and no grass. Just look at the color of the meat.’

  The knife cuts through the pink fibers with meticulous skill. The skin lies bunched up in a pile in a corner like clothes that someone has taken off. The kid seems more and more naked and shameless. Its eyes stare into the void and its lifeless tongue is stretched between its teeth.

  The Hunter pulls out the entrails and they wiggle in his hands as if they were still alive. He sections the animal with the patience of a surgeon. Its compact muscles give way under the sharp blade. The fat is white and solid and the meat shakes as if those cuts continued to hurt.

  ‘I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘Just tell me what,’ replies Nuccio as he watches the tip of the knife detach the tendons that bind the meat to the bones.

  Then the Hunter sticks his hands into the ribcage of the animal and searches it. When he pulls them out, he is squeezing a little heart that drips with blood.

  ‘When you chop this up and cook it with the liver, lungs, kidneys, sweetbreads, salt, chopped onion, and bay leaves, it tastes like heaven.’

  He gathers all the innards in a bowl and they float in the blood. Now all that’s left of the kid is its tender meat.

  ‘We need to burn down a few doors.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s child’s play.’

  ‘Take it easy, Nuccio. You’re getting ahead of yourself. Don’t get cocky and don’t fuck this up.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’

  ‘Once upon a time there was a Roman emperor who liked to kill his slaves on the lawn in front of his palace simply because he liked the way the fresh blood looked on the green grass.’

  ‘Who told you this story?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I read it somewhere. Or it might have been in my son’s history book and he told it to me.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because we don’t do that type of thing. That emperor ended up being killed by his own guards. They cut off his head as he tried to hide in a latrine. They dragged his naked body across the city and in the end, they threw him in the river.’

  ‘He deserved it.’

  ‘Yeah, he deserved it.’

  With just a single blow, the Hunter cuts through the neck of the goat and its head bounces on the table, alive for just an instant, as if it were aware of this last injustice.

  Chapter 41

  The coffin is in the center of the room. It’s open and surrounded by black dresses filled with women. The men come in and bow and after a few seconds of silence, they leave. Laments, curses, and prayers are mumbled. The boy is standing, stuck in a corner. Everyone looks at him inquisitively. Then they return to their whispering overflowing with hypotheses. Don Pino sits down next to the little girl with the doll. He recognizes her from the toy. She’s been cleaned up and she smells nice now. Her wild eyes are full of tears and she has a runny nose.

  Don Pino prays in s
ilence.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m saying a prayer.’

  ‘What good will that do?’

  ‘I am speaking to him.’

  ‘But he’s all full of holes. He’s lost his breath. That’s what my mom told me. He won’t ever come back.’

  ‘That’s not true. He’s in heaven.’

  ‘But I want him here. Not in heaven. Well, what I really want is for him to be at the beach because we used to go to the beach every Saturday and he would teach me how to swim, a little bit at a time, because I’m really scared of high tide. But he wasn’t. Now my dad can’t come with me anymore.’

  ‘He’s alive and he doesn’t want you to feel alone. He hasn’t left you.’

  ‘He has left me. Because he can’t hold my hand anymore when we cross the street to go to the beach.’

  ‘I’ll take you to the beach to learn how to swim.’

  ‘But do you know how to swim at high tide? You seem a bit . . .’

  ‘A bit what? I swim like a fish!’ Don Pino lies to her.

  He’s probably more afraid of high tide and choppy seas than she is.

  ‘If he’s alive, I’m going to leave him the doll that he gave me. Can I put it there in the box?’ asks the girl, pointing to the coffin and revealing a few missing teeth in her mouth.

  ‘No, no. He gave it to you and it will make him happy if you play with it. He wants you to play with it. So that when you dress it up, when you talk with it, when you caress it, you’ll remember him.’