Born Twice (Vintage International)

by Giuseppe Pontiggia

  His expression is serious until he sees me smile.

  “He had a small brain,” he adds excitedly. Every shot that hits the mark is for him a conquest.

  “Now you’re exaggerating,” I say. “He was a good doctor.”

  “No,” he replies, with euphoric intensity. “He was a dwarf!”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I ask. “Now you’re picking on people’s physical disabilities. You, of all people, making these kinds of discriminations?”

  He looks at me in confusion. Then he throws his arms up in the air with that deprecatory air he assumes from time to time.

  “Come on,” he exclaims. “He was normal!”

  A Voyage to Crete

  Why do they insist on bringing a portable elevator over to the airplane to lower him down to the ground? It’s coming slowly toward us like a castle across the incandescent, blindingly bright runway until it hooks on to the forward door of the plane like a harpoon. I tried, in vain, to explain to the Greek pilot that just as Paolo had boarded the airplane by the stairs, so he could debark by them.

  “Maybe in Italy,” he had said, as if alluding to some exotic country (and maybe he was right), “but not in Greece!”

  And so, Paolo, taking precedence over all the other passengers, is lowered slowly to the tarmac of Heraklion airport, on the island of Crete, like a gift from the heavens being lowered onto a stage by a piece of theatrical machinery. I can just imagine his embarrassment (which is really ours), as well as his pride. It’s much better for him if they exaggerate his handicap than if they minimize it. When he comes out of the elevator cabin, aided by a stewardess who seems very taken with her role, he smiles into the sun, shielding his eyes with his hand and waving without actually seeing us.

  The monumental Babylonian hotel (who ever went to Babel anyway?) sits on top of a small hill. Landscaped into its slopes, which extend all the way down to the sea, are terraces, restaurants, swimming pools, and dance floors. From where we’re standing we can see a cluster of tiny bungalows on the distant beach.

  “Ours is the last one, right next to the water.” I point out to him proudly.

  “You’re crazy! I never should have let you decide,” Franca exclaims.

  “Why? What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “Him,” she says, pointing at Paolo. “How will he ever make it all that way?”

  “There’s a tapis roulant,” I say.

  I read about it in the guidebook. I like the expression; escalator doesn’t even begin to compare with it.

  Franca leans out over the balcony. She scrutinizes the landscape until she can discern a group of tourists standing Indian file, rising motionlessly past the cypress trees, gliding over the grass in the golden light of sunset like beatific divinities ascending toward the restaurant in the unending light of the Aegean.

  That night, on the white and circular restaurant balcony, from a corolla of lights situated high up in the dark, comes a voice from a loudspeaker extending a warm welcome, first in English and then in Italian, to Paolo. There’s a smattering of applause, some of the diners look around the room, others turn to look right at us.

  Franca blushes. I put down my glass, Paolo is pleasantly shocked.

  “That’s nice, don’t you think?” Franca says.

  “Yes,” I say. “I just hope that they do it for all of them.”

  “All of whom?”

  “All of the guests. I’m not sure they do it for all the other kids.”

  “Does it really matter?” Franca exclaims.

  We compete by alternately attributing to each other our shared frustrations.

  “It’s nice of them,” she adds. “That’s all.”

  Paolo has trouble swallowing his food, letting us know he fears one of those discussions that he knows by heart.

  “You’re right,” I say, reaching out and squeezing his hand.

  “You’re too self-conscious,” Franca tells me after dinner. We’re sitting together on a swing. Paolo is being accompanied to the balcony’s edge by the waiter to look at the night sea—swollen, shining, and immense.

  “Perhaps,” I say. “But we’ll see who’s right.”

  There’s always the temptation—irresistibly vulgar in its own way, but no less real—to think that any act of kindness will be tallied up and added to the cost of our stay, which already exceeds our budget but not our needs. I will eventually change my mind about this. At first, Paolo deters people. Then he attracts them. He has learned—out of natural talent and experience—that we look to others to have both our prosperities and our misfortunes forgiven. That’s why he trusts in people. He knows it’s the best way to kindle trust. He feels constantly something I experience only in moments of grace: affinity for the world. By the end of our week, he has become the Benjamin of that heterogeneous community, united by the most temporary of connections, proximity, and by the most pathetic of motivations, the obligation to have fun. He has become the most sought-after companion. It is as if his handicap were a kind of vacation within the greater vacation.

  On other holidays, his handicap has incited hostility, not to mention aversion. It all depends on a series of factors—all of which are understandable though not always fair—such as the unpleasantness of his problems, the cost of the stay, the weather, the season, local traditions, majority opinion, the courtesy of single individuals, faith and ideology, and, finally, culture (though I wouldn’t rely too much on that). Civility can do a lot, but it’s not enough. In one situation a person might be accommodating but in another situation that same person might show aversion. People who coexist with a handicap know that. So do people who don’t.

  The grotto where Zeus was born, on Mount Ida, is a wide crevasse that splits the earth diagonally. Once you have descended into it, the aperture above looks like a luminous hole in the heavens, obstructed by overhead brambles and supervised by soaring hawks. Down at the bottom are a series of dark damp caves, marked by time and the remnants of offerings.

  Paolo leans against the mossy rock and doesn’t move. More than patience, traveling with me has taught him how to surrender.

  “Don’t move,” I say. “I’ll come and help you.”

  I delicately pry his fingers away from the stone and help him over a dark rivulet. A shiver runs through me as I think about how senseless I have been to bring him all the way down here, down slippery paths that we will only have to climb again later—I don’t know how—toward freedom.

  Franca had refused to come with us.

  “Where was Amaltea, the goat?”

  “Here,” I say, pointing out a deep niche in the rocks. I had told him that the Cretans were good liars, so I lie too, in honor of the island. I had also told him that in addition to Zeus’s birth-place, you could see his death place.

  “Where’s his tomb?”

  “They never found it.”

  This time I just can’t bring myself to lie.

  On the way back to the hotel, traveling over the high plains that are punctuated with windmills, we suddenly come across an abandoned building. Its locks are rusty and it’s falling into ruins. I’m struck, in the silent wind of late afternoon, by an old neon sign on its roof: HOTEL ZEUS.

  “How do we get to Lato?” I ask at the hotel.

  “I suggest you don’t go by car,” the concierge replies in Italian.

  “So how do we get there?”

  “There’s a taxi driver who can take you. Otherwise you’ll ruin your car.”

  “It’s probably better if we don’t go,” Franca says.

  The concierge looks at her, a glimmer of understanding in his eyes.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “The lady is right,” the concierge says, still looking at her. “There are only ruins out there. The road itself is a ruin.”

  We’re on our way to Lato with the taxi driver, the car bumping up and down as if it’s crossing a dry riverbed. There are sandy patches, stony parts, pebbled areas, and expanses of dust and dirt.
Paolo is thrilled.

  “What’s so special about Lato?” Franca asks.

  “Two acropoleis on the mountains.”

  There they are, high up in the blue and green. The driver stops the car in an open area halfway along the valley, blocked in by low stone walls.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” he says with a half smile, both in pity and as a challenge. He points out a steep path that winds up the barren hillside.

  I help Paolo over the stones and ruins. We advance slowly, hunched over and contorted under the blazing sun.

  “Let’s take the shortcut,” I say, pointing out some steps carved into the wall.

  Never trust shortcuts (and not just those in the mountains) if you’re trying to conserve your energy. Our fatigue is multiplied; the steps gradually transform themselves into a rock slide. I help Paolo along with my right hand, until he simply cannot go any farther. He can’t get down. He grasps the wall, his arms and legs spread-eagled against it. I let myself slide back down in a tumble of stones to the path where Franca is standing, shaking her clasped hands at us in an act of disapproval or prayer, I’m not sure which. Then I climb back up toward Paolo. What am I doing? Who am I, standing here in this baking heat, in this valley, at four o’clock in the afternoon, panting, clawing at the cracks in this archaic fort? Things never feel quite so absurd as in moments of extreme danger, perhaps because they summon us to our destiny.

  Sweat streaming down my face, I manage to grab Paolo by the ankles.

  “Let go of the wall!” I yell.

  He doesn’t trust me.

  When I finally manage to get him down and pass him on to Franca, who reaches up for him, I think of the deposition from the cross. I don’t know why. He is exhausted but pleased. “I’m going to tell Alfredo about this,” he murmurs, from where he’s lying on the ground.

  “You’ll see him in three days, when we get home,” Franca says, also flat on the ground, her arms open to the sky.

  Lucent Crete: sunset, leaves on the trees, terraced vineyards, the car crawling along between rocky walls. The high Minoan road, which traverses the mountains of the island, is now behind us. The sea is not far away, the sun is on the horizon. There’s a sudden peace. Silence and ruins on the hillside.

  “Stop,” I say to Franca, who’s driving.

  But it has already passed.

  We stop at a restaurant on the coast. The sun filters through the reeds covering the pergola. A giant Greek salad, colorful and refreshing. Franca ordered the spicy cheese, Paolo the grilled fish.

  “Homeric food,” I say.

  It has less effect now than when I said it two days ago at the Hotel dei Cureti, facing Mount Ida, a large platter of roasted mutton on the table. Never repeat yourself. They no longer notice the cleverness; they notice that you’re repeating yourself.

  I look at the waves breaking on the beach below, between the rocks. A few suntanned kids glide along the crest of the waves.

  “How about a swim?” I ask Paolo with a smile, avoiding Franca’s eyes.

  “Now that’s enough,” I hear her say.

  I look at her. She doesn’t know what to make of things anymore.

  I do. I know she’s generous and indomitable. She puts up with two great burdens. I don’t know which of us is a heavier load, him or me. I place my hand gently on her shoulder. She can guess what I’m thinking. I smile; my eyes are shiny. I raise my glass of resinous white wine.

  “To Franca,” I say.

  Paolo, amazed that I didn’t say mamma, raises his glass too.

  We go for our swim at night, under the stars, in front of our bungalow. The water is salty and warm. Paolo has finally learned how to do the breaststroke, taking deep breaths and dunking his head under the water. When he emerges from the glimmering surface, I tell him he looks like a dolphin. He keeps doing it until he’s exhausted, like I would do when I was young, when I knew someone was watching me. He floats on his back, panting, facing the sky.

  “Come back!” Franca calls to us from the shore.

  In front of the Heraklion Museum, leaning against the wall in the bright luminous colors of the afternoon, is a row of horse-drawn carts.

  Paolo points them out to me. “Don’t you want me to ride in one?”

  I look at him, crestfallen. “But you don’t need one,” I say. “Why do you want to go in one?”

  “Because it’s less tiring,” he replies.

  Put Yourself in His Shoes

  Bertoia, an elderly man who’s ill, comes to visit me occasionally. I’m not really sure what he’s got; he’s reticent about discussing it. When asked, he becomes elusive, raising his eyebrows in a threatening way. He’s slightly cross-eyed. He follows conflicting therapies that have gradually deformed his body. He’s extremely thin and fragile. I see something of Don Quixote in him—not Cervantes’s but Doré’s. He walks into my study like an engraving, a mass of lines preparing themselves for decomposition.

  “Have you ever tried putting yourself in your son’s shoes?” he says at a certain point.

  Is this a question or an accusation? “Well, I try and imagine his reactions,” I say.

  “No,” he says, shaking his finger at me.

  It’s an accusation.

  “You have to do more than that,” he says, staring off into space, the creases under his eyes deepening. “You have to get into his head!”

  “But I can’t,” I say.

  “What do you mean you can’t?” he asks darkly, hunching over as if to protect himself from an attacker. But he’s the one attacking here. “I did!”

  I lean back dismally in my chair. Why has he come to see me? Why now? It’s late July, my most coveted moment: vacation in the city after exams. I’ve been planning for months to read Five Weeks in a Balloon by Verne. Who gives him the right? He always felt like my protector. Formerly an accountant at the Art Institute, he was a zealous bookkeeper, a devotee of schedules, a maniac in an almost mystical phase of life.

  “I often think about your son,” he says. “I have gotten into his head.”

  He looks like he’s hallucinating. I’m not sure if it’s the illness or the medicines that make him feverish.

  “You should too,” he adds. “You’ll see how well you’ll understand him.”

  I understand it’s a monstrous proposition but I try anyway. Who else will listen to us if not the insane?

  I try to think, I am Paolo, but am struck by a sense of terror and vertigo. I have neither his past nor his future, I cannot imagine what he imagines, I cannot share in anything he experiences. We can never, as they say in that ruthless and horrid expression, get into someone’s brain.

  “I can’t put myself in his shoes,” I say.

  He extends his skinny arms along the length of the chair and proudly raises his hollow face. “What about an actor?”

  “They do it for fun,” I say. “They’re neither themselves nor the other.”

  “Can I tell you what I think?” he asks, looking straight ahead of him.

  “Of course.” People only ask that when they think badly of you.

  “You are trapped in your own egoism.”

  “That may well be,” I say firmly.

  He has that horrible air about him that older people have when all they can do is predict the misfortune to come. Maybe Cassandra didn’t have a choice, she simply foretold the future.

  “Step outside yourself,” he says, “and get into Paolo’s head.”

  “No, I’ll stay in mine,” I reply. “He’d prefer it that way too, believe me.”

  He grips the arms of the chair, like a monarch at the theater. “Then you will never know,” he says, raising his bony finger, “exactly who your son is.”

  That’s right, I think to myself, I won’t.

  Scolding

  I lent him an expensive camera for a school trip and he forgot it on the train. He takes rather interesting photographs. It’s not so much the fleeting moment that he captures as the precarious point when his eye blin
ks and his body precipitates forward. His pictures, at times oblique and with slanted shafts of light, communicate a mobile and adventurous existence, the complete opposite of the posed universe that haunted the official class photographers in the schools of my youth.

  I give him a scolding, condensed to its essence. Rapidly. I believe that rapidity, in scolding, is a much appreciated quality. The unpopularity of sermons, in any given situation, derives more from their preconceptions than from any particular accusations. My parents, in the recent Paleolithic age, held the superstitious belief that litanies of words produced great works. “Never tell lies! Do you understand? Under no circumstance!” fathers used to say, dazed by the very lies they were telling. Then, only a few minutes later, when the phone would ring, they’d shout out, “I’m not home for anybody! Do you hear?”

  Then came the age when conventional psychoanalysis transformed our children into toys whose movements could be programmed. “He demolished the motorbike and now he expects me to punish him,” said a young colleague of mine, for whom paternity seemed like a marvelous opportunity to try out pedagogical theories. “So without punishing him,” he went on to say, “I bought him another one. I surprise him, you see? I disorient him. That’s how I teach him.”

  His son was effectively disoriented. I didn’t follow all the phases of his education but I do know he was the first one in his age group to try drugs. But I don’t want to establish a relationship of cause and effect here. It’s certain that the son, taking everything into account after the accident, couldn’t have been too comforted. His weak father didn’t even consider him worth scolding.

  Paolo listens to me. I have a serious discussion with him. He’s starving for seriousness; he never has fun when I’m having fun with him. I know it, but I continue to have fun with him by returning to that phrase he uses when a joke bombs, that idiotic alibi “But it was a joke!”

  This time I say, “You made a mistake. You won’t be able to use the camera for a few months.”

  He replies, “Thank you for talking to me about it man to man.”