Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast

by Matteo Bussola

  He stares at me. He has the expression of someone who’s just had a realization. I do too—I realize I’m going to be subjected to his.

  “But the first issue hasn’t come out yet,” he says. “You can’t be drawing number twenty! Or do you already know everything that’s going to happen after?”

  I try to remain calm.

  “Eh eh eh, he knows everything before,” the proud news vendor intervenes.

  “In fact the issues are written and drawn well ahead of time,” I explain. “The first twenty-four issues of Adam are already being produced, for example. But that’s the norm,” I say. “That’s how it works with Zagor also.”

  “What do you mean?” he says.

  “I mean that the artists who work on Zagor draw their issues even years before they hit the shelves.”

  “Years, really?” he says.

  “Years,” I confirm.

  “Even the ones who do the covers?” he says.

  “Even them,” I say.

  “You see? I told you this guy knows everything!” the news vendor says, piling it on. “So now, when’s this issue of Zagor coming out, Mr. Matteo?”

  I look at them both and for a second I feel like I’m in the middle of Kansas in a Wes Craven film. The best part is I know exactly what’s about to happen.

  “Would you draw me something?” the guy asks. Just like that. Like it’s nothing. At eight in the morning. Like I have “insert coin” written on my forehead, but obviously, without any mention of a coin.

  “Um, you know, I’m double parked, and I don’t even have a pen.” I pretend not to see the news vendor stretching a hand toward the pack of new Bics behind him. “And I’m taking the girls to school. But tell you what, I’ll draw you something at home, then tomorrow or the day after I’ll bring it to you here, okay? If I don’t see you I’ll leave it with him,” I say, indicating the news vendor, who’s holding twenty-four Bics in his fist.

  “Ah, that would be great, thanks!” he says.

  “What do you want in the drawing?” I ask, to avoid any misunderstandings.

  He looks at me as if I’d just sworn in church.

  “Zagor!” he says.

  “Yeeeah. But I don’t draw Zagor,” I go.

  They both stare at me with glassy, incredulous eyes like green lizards.

  “Okay, Zagor then,” I say.

  “Zagor in Africa,” he goes.

  I think, “How ’bout a pound of flesh too, while we’re at it?” But I don’t say it.

  “Zagor in Africa, okay,” I say. “See you later then, bye.”

  I leave.

  “Mr. Matteo!” the voice reaches me as I’m opening the car door.

  “What?” I say.

  “Will you draw me something too?” says the news vendor.

  “Huh?” I say.

  “A drawing,” he says.

  “Not for tomorrow, though.” I want to make that clear right away.

  “No, no,” he goes. “Don’t worry. By Saturday is fine.”

  I feel a certain Venetian swear word rise up inside me. On the outside, however, I almost smile, incredulous.

  “What do you want?” I say to him, already prepared for the worst.

  “Canon,” he tells me.

  “Canon?” I repeat.

  “Yeah, Canon. The warrior. The barbarian,” he specifies as if to say, “Don’t you know anything?”

  “Canon,” I repeat again, trying to fight back the tears. “Perfect.”

  “In Africa,” he adds.

  “Canon the barbarian, in Africa,” I say. “Okay, bye then.”

  “Bye!” he says.

  At this point I see only two possible paths ahead of me:

  I switch newsstands, vanishing into obscurity forever like a ninja.

  I go on Saturday and bring him a drawing of a photocopier in the savannah with a leopard on top.

  Letter to My Daughter Who Is Growing Up

  Dear Virginia,

  I’m writing you because there are mornings when I see you clearly, while you’re getting ready for school, and this is one of them. With your red beret that frames your sparkling eyes and your backpack that’s always too heavy and your snack that’s almost never the one you want, you’re so adorable I want to just hug you and never let go.

  You endure the thankless role of being the oldest, and unfortunately not much can be done about it. You always have to be the best, you’re the only one who cleans up after herself, you’re the one who has to see her toys snatched by her younger sisters, and you often have to keep quiet. It was the same for me too, you know. And I know middle children think the same thing and the youngest too—everyone has their struggles. Let’s just say this: having shared your fate of being the oldest, I understand your situation best.

  I’d like to tell you that you’re the origin of everything. That, if it weren’t for you, your mother and I might have split up, crushed by the wall of our differences. Instead, you gave us a way to see opportunities in those differences. Thus, even if you don’t know it, you’re responsible for everything that came afterward: your two sisters, this house, the strength I have today and owe most of all to you. Which is another way of saying that your mother and I owe it to ourselves, but you are still the best synthesis.

  You’re very pretty. By now it’s clear that this will be a big problem. For me, too. Because I know beauty doesn’t protect you from anything. Not from people’s superficiality, not from pain, not from difficulties or defeats. Standing by and seeing these things come along, separately or all at once, will be incredibly hard. Many think of beauty as a sort of umbrella. But sometimes it’s a bag where you can’t breathe. I hope it’s not like that for you, but if it ever is, know that I’ll be there with you to poke all the air holes you need.

  You also have the misfortune of being very intelligent and have inherited the empathetic sensibility of you-know-who. And that is what will make you suffer most.

  I promise you from now on that if you want to make comics you’ll make comics, and if you want to play the harp you’ll play the harp, and neither your mother nor I will ever try to push you toward something just because it resembles us. You will always do only what you want. In return, you have to do your best. Teaching you this lesson is one of my main duties as your parent.

  I’m writing you because I’m not embarrassed to do so, just as I’m not embarrassed about my feelings, but most importantly because this letter will last. And since everything will be digital when you grow up—maybe even love—it might be easier to leave you these words between the pages of an old book, written in twelve-point Garamond just for you.

  I think you know the rest, so I won’t write it.

  Nonetheless, I’ll make sure that you feel it, every day.

  The Kiss

  I go to pick up Melania from nursery school.

  She starts smiling the moment she sees me and runs over to me as if I’d come out of nowhere to save her. Her surprise is due to the fact that I usually take her in the morning while Mommy usually picks her up in the afternoon.

  We get her jacket out of her cubby, put on her shoes, put her slipper socks back, and go out. At the bottom of the stairs, there’s a little blond boy crying inconsolably. He’s a little younger than her, about eighteen months old—Melania could be his caretaker. The boy’s mother looks at him as if she wants to pick him up, but she has another child in one arm and is holding on to a stroller with the other. Melania goes over to the boy and stands in front of him. She gives him a hug, and then a soft kiss on the cheek. The boy stops crying almost immediately, as if someone has flicked a switch. The mom and I look at each other. My uncertain look says “sorry,” because Melania has a bit of a cold and you never know how moms will take these things, but her expression seems inclined toward “thank you.”

  “See h
ow nice the little girl is, Denis?” the mom says. “Why don’t you give her a kiss too?”

  The boy looks at my daughter; my daughter looks at him. Denis hops forward, grabs her head, throws his mouth wide open like a shark, and straight up Frenches her. Surprised, Melania takes offense and pushes him away. He falls on his little behind and starts crying even louder than before.

  The mom shoots me a look that says, “What’s with your daughter—first she acts easy and then she changes her tune!”

  My look, on the other hand, says, “If we give you a lip, it doesn’t mean you can take the tongue.”

  Melania shows me that she wants to be picked up. We say goodbye and walk away, while Denis watches her like a cat does a bird just escaped from its cage.

  When we’re in the car, buckling her into her car seat, I say, “Melania, you need to stop this kissing thing.”

  She stares at me with a serious look, then she starts to laugh. Finally she licks me across the face from my chin all the way up to my forehead. I close the door, laughing myself, and wipe the slobber off with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I turn just in time to catch the hateful glare of the blond boy peeking out from behind his mother’s back. He has an unmistakable look that says, “Go ahead and laugh, you old bastard. Give me thirteen years or so and I’ll be the one laughing.”

  On the way home, Melania sings her “Frère Jacques” made up entirely of vowels.

  I have “Highway to Hell” on a loop in my head, and I remember that the other day in the hardware store, I saw packs of barbed wire on sale.

  The Coat

  I was sick last night and had a dream that left me with a thick residue of fear. A few hours of intermittent sleep don’t exactly foster warm feelings about getting up, but I knew that forcing myself to lie there would have been useless.

  I tried going down to the studio early and working, because putting my hand on the page is the best therapy for clearing my thoughts. It didn’t work. I went back upstairs at seven, made breakfast for everyone, and woke the girls up for school. Ginevra had a cold and I decided to keep her home. Paola did their hair and laid out their clothes, then went back to sleep since she’d gone to bed very late. I had another coffee, the fear was still there, and something was going on with Ginevra.

  “What’s wrong, Ginevra?” I said.

  “I’m mad at you,” she said.

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because you opened my pastry when I wanted to open it myself!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right, tomorrow I’ll give it to you and you can do it all by yourself.”

  “But you always do that! First you do something wrong and then you say sorry!”

  The statement struck me because it’s something her mother often says to me as well. When Paola and I fight—I’m almost always wrong, I admit—and I apologize, she says, “The door has already slammed in my face anyway.”

  It’s true. If she’s already gotten the door, apologies don’t make much difference, that’s how you should learn to pay attention. I worked for years to learn how to apologize, so I always think that my sincerity will be recognized and can make up for the damage. It almost never works that way.

  I gave Ginevra a little kiss on the head and went to take Melania to school.

  When we got there, we found a little boy by the cubbies. They played hide-and-seek and then ran into class. Then I went down to the nursery school to return a book Ginevra had borrowed. Going out into the yard without saying goodbye to her, without jumping in front of the window and seeing her laugh, gave me a strange feeling, as if I’d been robbed.

  I went back to the car, and in the yard of the house across the way, there was a very old woman feeding some cats, six or seven of them. The woman was in a nightgown and slippers and had on a wool hat that was too small for her head. A young man who seemed about twenty came out from inside carrying a tan coat, which he gently placed over her shoulders. The woman didn’t stop feeding the cats, nor did the man try to take her inside. They just stayed there finishing the job. The boy was bent over her, enveloping her with the coat, as if she were a little girl.

  I stayed there watching them for almost a minute. In that time, observing them from a few yards away, it was as if that image were compensation for something.

  When I got back in the car, the fear was no longer there.

  Canon

  Because unfortunately I’m unable to cure myself of being a man of my word, today I’m taking a drawing to the news vendor.

  When he sees me, his face lights up like a lamp.

  “Mr. Matteo!” he says. “DY-lan Dog is out and so is Ken Parker and even BurBEHrry!”

  That last one must be a really hard-core Texas Ranger, I think.

  “Yes,” I say. “I know. I came by just to bring you your drawing.”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” he says. “Thank-ee, sir.”

  I hand it to him. He opens it. On the page stands a magnificent “Canon” the Barbarian in Africa. Since nobody was paying me and I had no time and especially in light of the . . . um, comics savvy of the recipient, I basically copied a Buscema Conan without a shred of guilt. I even wrote a dedication: “Canon, for Renato, in friendship,” because I didn’t want to upset his convictions.

  He stares at the picture, puzzled. He looks like someone trying to read Ikea instructions in Swedish.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask.

  “No, no,” he says. “The drawing is wonderful. It’s just that the name isn’t right.”

  Here we go, I think, he’s finally realized that the name is Conan, not Canon. That’ll be a lesson not to give people any credit.

  “My name is Rinaldo,” he says, “not Renato.”

  The Visit

  Today my mom is coming to visit.

  When my mom comes over, even just for coffee, panic is unleashed throughout the house—the alert rises to Defcon 2, or even 1, depending on how much advance notice she gives us. For example, if I have three days’ notice, I’ll scrub and shine the stovetop, but if I have less than three hours’ warning, I’ll throw the burners straight into a vat of hydrochloric acid and polish them with carpenter-grade steel wool while wearing cast iron gloves. Then there’s the pile of clothes that need ironing, which I affectionately call “Rodney” since it has made a permanent home on the living room couch for three years like a drunk Rodney Dangerfield sprawled across the hood of a Fiat Panda. Every time my mom visits, we roll it into the storage closet after checking to make sure a daughter hasn’t accidentally wound up inside, or that half of a ham and mushroom sandwich that had disappeared followed by a week of accusations along the lines of “you ate it!” “no, you!” but had actually ended up in the pocket of my freshly laundered cardigan. I do a quick sweep of the bathroom; leave Garrett and Cordelia in the basement because my mom is afraid of them; and try with meticulous care to clear a path through the front yard that safely leads to the front door and is free of leaves or turds or pinecones, or turds that look like pinecones. But every time my mom forgets something in the car and has to go back, she accidentally takes the other path, the one with wild boars lurking in the tall grass like Viet Cong.

  Anyway, every time my mom visits, I reflect on how it’s usually with the people we love most that we try to hide who we really are, how we actually live. Because, age and distance and parenthood notwithstanding, we’re always children too—we never manage to fully free ourselves of it. The fact is that as a child, and even as an adult, you’re constantly afraid of disappointing, while as a parent, your role is to guide and protect.

  And then I think about how even when we become parents, we’re terrified of disappointing our children, every day, and we live pressed like a slice of cheese between two pieces of existential bread, between one source of guilt and another. And I think how nice it would be if, rather than being pressed by guilt, we could feel surro
unded by beauty. That would mean seeing the beauty at the heart of things and showing it to others at the same time, without attributing it to what we’re able or unable to do. Because our beauty isn’t hidden by piles of wrinkled clothes or pinecones in the yard, but by everything we do to pretend that the pile of clothes and those pinecones aren’t part of us, with our complications, the risks we choose to take, the decision to prioritize life over always trying to seem perfect. Those pinecones in the yard and that pile of wrinkled clothes and that dirty stove, in the end, say much more about us than everything else. They don’t say we’re bad people, or irresponsible, but that we go on in spite of everything, every day. And that just might be something to be proud of.

  Today my mom is coming to visit.

  I’ll go to meet her at the gate, I’ll bring her inside and make her a coffee on my dirty stove. I’ll have her sit on the couch, on top of one of my wrinkled sweaters, the softest. I’ll endure her look of thinly veiled disapproval with a smile, able to see the beauty behind it that only I, as a son, know so well.

  That will be all we need.

  Three Hundred and Forty-seven

  Yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine about how love, in the end, is always a distance to cross.

  When it’s short you can build a bridge across it. When it’s long, at least one of the two will have to walk a ways. Because in a relationship there’s always one who shifts more than the other, one who is more willing to come out of himself to be vulnerable and venture into the unknown and slippery territory of meeting in the middle. That’s the reason why everyone, sooner or later in life, ends up becoming someone else’s regret. It happens when the person who misses you realizes too late that she didn’t accept the challenge of traveling her little part of the road. The best loves are the ones where you move together, starting from a great distance, sometimes only faintly sensing each other. Sniffing across miles or years apart. And then suddenly you meet right in the middle, as if that’s where you were the whole time, at a point where one plus one doesn’t necessarily make two, but can also make three hundred and forty-seven. Because love is never a perfect algebraic sum; it works more like throwing a stone in the water. When you meet someone you like, you make your move and stay there, counting the ripples that form. There are imperturbable personalities that don’t ripple but stay smooth; others that make slow, wide circles; and still others that, in a mysterious way, begin to resonate with yours. You realize that it’s because the waves are irregular; they come at unpredictable intervals, and when you think the inertia has died down, they start back up again. In that case, the ripples don’t just flow across the water’s surface; it’s as if they originate from down below. Which shows that in the end, love is indeed a distance, but it comes from the depths, from something that must rise to the surface first. It’s a sort of image that appears little by little, like a photograph being developed in a darkroom. Only a few people are capable of revealing that image, even to themselves. Why some and not others remains the real question.