The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  “Surprise! We don’t need to be without music!”

  “I can’t believe you brought that shit!”

  “Well, I did, Granddaddy! And it doesn’t need batteries. All it needs is enthusiasm!”

  He places his hands on the keys and readies himself. “All right, I’d like to begin with an original track. I composed this song last night and I’m dedicating it to this adventure of ours. It’s called ‘A Promise to Grandpa.’ And a one, and a two, and a one-two-three-four.” And all revved-up Zot starts squeezing the accordion. It just huffs at first. Then that huff gives way to something more like a coughing fit, then out come these whelps that remind me of little dogs fighting. And into the fray enters Zot’s voice, singing:

  Happiness is this trip we’re onnnnn.

  Luna, Serena, Sandro and Zot.

  It’s each other we looovvvvve.

  But I’m making a promise

  with the voice of a doooovvvve.

  Grandpa, I’ll place a flower

  on top of your tombstonnnne.

  “Zip it for Christ’s sake!” shouts Ferro, giving him the sign of the horns, and with his free hand he tugs at what’s between his legs. “If I die I’m taking you with me you little shit. I’m taking you with me!”

  “Yes, Grandfather, that way we can be together in Heaven!”

  Zot returns to playing. Ferro reaches out and tries to nab him, and Mr. Sandro tries to intervene. “Behave yourselves!” But all that gets him is an elbow in the shoulder. “Shut up and drive, queen.” The car swerves to one side and everything jostles. I press close to Mom and Mom screams real loud, “Enough! Quit it! We’ll stop at the Autogrill—happy? Now enough. I swear the next one to act up gets clocked in the teeth.”

  No one moves. No one says anything anymore. We just stare at the road in front of us and steer straight ahead without ever stopping. Till we get to the Autogrill, that is.

  EVERY PLACE IS VIETNAM

  The house belongs to the old man.”

  “What old man?”

  “The old man I was telling you about, the one who left with Sandro.”

  “Oh right, sorry,” says Marino, and goes back to staring at the space between him and the damp-stained walls half hidden behind piles of junk. “It’s true, you did tell me that.”

  Of course Rambo had told him. He’d also explained what they were doing there, how it wasn’t prudent to show up at Marino’s house in the ambulance. There were too many nosy folks hanging around; it was better to have them drop him off here. And tonight when Sandro gets back from his little field trip, they’ll take him to the apartment under cover of night, without the risk of someone coming to bust his balls.

  “But who’d ever do that.”

  “I don’t know. Your uncle, for example, the chief of police.”

  “Not a chance. He’s my dad’s—rest his soul—brother. He doesn’t even talk to Mom. There’s no risk of his coming. Please let’s go to my house.”

  “We can’t, Marino. Don’t push it.”

  “Please, Rambo, Ghost House scares me. Don’t you remember the story about the partisans being hanged? They strung them up from those trees outside. Do you realize that? From those trees there. Let’s go to my house. I’m asking you nicely.”

  No, said Rambo. And Marino said yes. Rambo said no. And Marino, yes. So Rambo was obliged to tell him everything. About the guy from the veggie mart who had come looking for his mother and why he was looking for her. And Marino sat there for five minutes, silent and motionless, looking up at the ceiling in this little dark room. Then he asked Rambo where they were again, as if his brain were trying to erase all that unpleasantness and reset the clock. Except every time it was the same shit all over again.

  Worse, actually, since Marino keeps recalling new details, and details are what do you in. Ugly things, accidents, defeats, people you love who leave you—over time the great pains burn a little less, once you manage to put them in perspective, regard them as general facts in a larger context that justifies and softens them so that they become formative experiences or instances of growing up, because deep down they’re not such tragic events, no, instead they’re necessary steps in life and everybody has to take them. They concern the universe and not just you. Come to think of it, they don’t concern you at all . . . And that line of reasoning almost works, the survival instinct befuddles you into believing it. But then come the details, and they’re what really screw you, those minor details hiding in the folds of your brain, and when you try to lead a tidy and peaceful and happy life, they turn up to pitch you into the darkest depths of reality: the whiff of ragout filling the hallway when she bid you goodbye, the thick pants you were wearing that made your legs itch, the cutting look she gave you as she was leaving and you asked if she was already seeing somebody else . . . Details are tiny, pointy shards of reality embedded in your brain that remind you that such moments aren’t everybody’s, aren’t just life or a universal experience, that this shitty thing happened in one place at one time, it happened to you, and the details of it will stick to your soul forever.

  That is what is happening right now to Marino, his head on the pillow and his eyes roaming at random. He should stay nice and quiet, stare at the ceiling and think as little as possible. Instead he’s still laboring to deny it and continuing to hurt himself. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t add up,” he says, suddenly turning to Rambo. “How come she always sent me to the store? Couldn’t she have gone herself?”

  “Beats me. Maybe she didn’t want to see him in the morning,” Rambo improvises. “Maybe all she wanted in the morning was fresh fruit and she’d send you to pick it up.”

  “No, Mom never ate fruit. She made me eat it because it’s good for me. Then she’d get mad when Franco sold me the crappy stuff. And I used to tell her, ‘Mom, you’re never happy with Franco’s fruit. Tomorrow I’ll go get it somewhere else.’ And she: ‘That’s not happening. Not ever.’ She always sent me to him and there was always something wrong with the fruit and every day she would bring it back to him and . . . ”

  Marino goes no further. Or maybe he does, but only to himself, and there he sees things that will make you lose your voice. Things Rambo knows, and Sandro too, but they had decided not to disclose them to their friend. What was the point of telling him the truth when it didn’t help anything, when it is so shitty that there is no way it could be of any benefit to you. So Rambo looks at Marino and says nothing, then goes to the window and checks outside. The silence is oppressive.

  But it’s even worse when Marino breaks the silence to ask for his pan.

  The nurses had left it for him. They call it a pan but it looks more like a plastic white scooper. Rambo had asked them what he was supposed to do with it and they had told him that he’d understand as soon as the time came. Now that time has come, and Rambo understands he has to slip it between Marino’s legs, wait until what needs to be drained is drained, throw everything away, and rinse the pan, and everything would be in order.

  Fat chance it would be in order.

  “Look, Marino, I’ll close my eyes and hold it under your butt. You have to do the rest on your own. Got it?”

  “Sure, if I’m able to, sure.”

  “You have to be able to. Then I’ll hand you a towel and you can wipe yourself off and we’re good. Good?”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Of course you can. Because if you can’t, you’ll make do. Sorry, I don’t mean to be a dick and it’s not that I’m not a true friend. Actually it’s on account of our being friends. Because if I have to pick up your shit and wipe your ass when you’re done, well, forget friendship, after that I couldn’t even look you in the face. You understand, right?”

  Marino frowns, nods. Rambo lifts the sheet and spies Marino’s prone legs slightly spread apart. He sets the pan down by his feet and slowly slides it upward, reaches Marino�
��s knees, and closes his eyes. With just two fingers he slides it farther up, and when he feels it bump into something, he stops.

  “Let it rip, Marino.”

  “Hold on, you stuck it under my thigh,” he says, tugging the sheet.

  Rambo opens his right eye a tiny bit, gets Marino’s naked body in focus, and spots the white pan that had snagged under his leg—oddly in shape for a guy who doesn’t play sports and spends most of his time in bed. Not muscular but, you know, nicely made. But Rambo can’t think about that right now.

  He sticks out the same two fingers that have already been contaminated, frees the pan, and this time, without closing his eyes, tries to guide it straight up to where it has to be inserted. But the pan won’t budge. It gets stuck just below and lodges there, obliging Rambo to sacrifice another finger. He joins it to the others and pushes. Nothing. He takes the plastic with his whole hand and feels something warm that may be the naked skin of Marino’s thigh, so with a flash of energy he slides the pan farther up, really hard, and lodges it so deep Marino yelps and sticks his hands between his legs, over his naked junk, which he now squeezes himself yet a moment before, for just a second, Rambo had held it in his hand.

  “Agh! That’s too far! Too far up!” cries Marino, who manages to push it away.

  Rather than apologize, Rambo springs back against the wall, his eyes bulging, and his hand a mile away from the rest of his body, on the end of his arm which he holds out in front of him. Like in that film he’d seen as a boy where the guy loses his hand and they sew on another one, only it belongs to this real psychopath who’d been executed the night before, and at first it works great and everything’s dandy, but later the hand starts to kill people again and in the end even tries to murder its new owner, who looks at it just as Rambo is looking at his hand now, there at the end of his arm: his since birth yet suddenly unrecognizable.

  “Rambo, please. I can’t go if you’re here.”

  Without even answering he runs out of the room and slams the door behind him.

  He runs down the hall and into the kitchen, where the walls aren’t as black, and a large window lets the afternoon light in. And underneath the window is another rifle waiting for him.

  But Rambo doesn’t pick it up right away. He can’t. First he turns the tap as far it will go and sticks his hand under the jet of water, palm up, palm down. Then he pours half a bottle of dish soap over it and rubs it in till it vanishes into a cloud of lemon foam. Next he picks up the sink sponge and begins scrubbing his hand with the coarse side, hard, so hard it hurts. But Rambo doesn’t stop. Because the germs may have died a while back, and gone, too, is any trace of disgust at his having touched Marino there, at his having felt something clammy rub against his palm. Yet something else won’t be rubbed out. Something resistant to water, soap, and his will to tear the skin off his hand. It remains behind. Much as Rambo scrubs, he can still feel it making every muscle in his body shiver. An absurd, frightening sensation that feels a lot like pleasure.

  That’s right, the sick pleasure of having touched that naked skin, along with the even sicker desire to touch it again and again.

  No way. Impossible. It can’t be true. Those two kids are to blame. It was they who had come up with that story about his liking men. That’s what they’d said to Rambo. Who the hell were those two to talk? A girl pale as a ghost and a spastic, radioactive boy—what the fuck do two freak shows like that know about men and women, or life, or normal stuff? Two of nature’s gags rely on other people being sick and queer as them. Pure rubbish. Utter madness. Him like men? He’s not even attracted to women. He doesn’t look at them when they pass by nor has he ever touched one in his life. And if he’s not into women, the idea of his being into men is a joke.

  The truth is that Rambo is a fighter. He’s against everybody. Love plays no part in his life. There’s only war. There’s only battling the world that keeps him down. For him there’s no woman, no soul mate. He’s a real rebel. Not like those phonies who act cool, whom all the girls go mad for. And if every once in a while he feels this strange sensation, when he’s watching the TV, when he’s passing by a shop downtown, when he used to go to the public pool and get changed with other dudes, that’s normal. It happens. They’re mind games. Society seeping into Rambo’s thick skin. The trick is to avoid it, keep your distance, and scrub it off like he’s doing now.

  He turns the tap off, gazes out the window, and sighs. He’s finally ready to pick up that rifle.

  A double-barrel Benelli that has seen better days yet will get the job done. Just like Rambo, if the old man is to be believed and someone really has his sights on capturing this house. The Russians, the Chinese, heck even the Americans, the Germans, the Arabs or Italians—powerful millionaires run rampant the world over. Morals, on the other hand, are nowhere to be found.

  That’s where men like him come in, men who dig in and won’t abandon the trenches, even if this isn’t his house, even if this is a pretty hard perimeter to defend. Walled with thick trees, like a forest. Or rather a jungle where your only chance of winning is to employ guerrilla tactics. The place is practically Vietnam, and Rambo knows all about Vietnam. He may never have been, but he’s seen a barrage of movies about that spectacularly bloody conflict. So what if almost all of them were shot in some Hollywood studio? Or that the Italian versions were made in the middle of the Apennines? That doesn’t mean anything. In fact it’s better that way, because it shows you that Vietnam doesn’t only exist in Vietnam. It exists everywhere. Vietnam is a messy situation where people ambush you and slit your throat and unfortunately that description fits the entire planet. Enemies and dangers are everywhere, ready to destroy you. On the road, in front of Marino’s apartment, amid the tangled branches of this jungle, but even here at home, even in your own hands, under your skin, in your head.

  Every place is Vietnam. And Rambo knows it. His life is war.

  FIRST STEPS

  Go on, Sandro, now’s your shot.

  The kids asked for ten euros for a guide to Lunigiana and between the two of them it will take an hour to decide what to get. The old man went to the bathroom and before going asked for a sheet of paper and a pen—you’d rather not know what for.

  And now you and Serena are alone amid the aisles of the Autogrill.

  She has paused in one corner where there’s a mirror and products like lipstick, eye shadow, random makeup, stuff women make themselves pretty with; a good sign, perhaps. She bends over and pokes around the boxes, and Sandro watches her from the other end of the aisle, trying to figure out what makes this woman so mesmerizing, how her beauty can withstand Serena’s abuse, her boys’ clothes, her hair in disarray, those combat boots on her feet that would ruin the thighs of every other woman on the planet. Everyone’s but hers, that is; her brand of beauty refuses to be mortified. On the contrary, it attacks with greater ferocity, like a wild boar, and if you’re going to shoot a boar, you’d better lay it out flat with the first shot, because if you merely graze it, it’ll go berserk, overpower you, toss you in the air, and pummel you into the earth, while you turn around and around and if you have an arm left to wave you start waving it wildly, bidding the world goodbye.

  That’s what Serena’s beauty is like. Now, Sandro probably shouldn’t explain to her that she reminds him of a wounded boar, but he at least ought to make something up and go tell her right away.

  Go on, Sandro, now is your shot.

  And Sandro needs to strike quick, since under normal circumstances, he might not do anything. No, Sandro would spend another hour spying on her and contemplating her mysterious beauty, telling himself oh well, they’re spending an afternoon together, and they may never have spoken but at least she didn’t beat him up, so you might say things hadn’t gone so badly. That it was a first step. Which is exactly what always burns Sandro, this first step business. Because he could easily go home right now and be happy to cling to that first s
tep—not a big one but real nonetheless—and use it to sleep tight and hold out hope for tomorrow, then for the day after tomorrow, then for the following week, then for the spring to melt their hearts in just five or six months and ignite Serena’s passion . . . and he’d go on that way until it was too late and all he could do was resent his hard luck while trying to cancel Serena from his thoughts.

  But not this time, if things don’t go smoothly this time it’s his fault, his and this first step nonsense, which only means something if afterward there’s a second step and a third and so on, and all those steps point in a specific direction, which in the end leads to where you want to go. Or in the ballpark. If the second and third don’t exist, however, then taking the first step is like putting one foot in front of the other—what the hell are you doing then? Nothing, that’s what you’re doing, and in fact that is the story of Sandro’s life, one step to the right, one step to the left, one foot forward, one back . . . it’s like a dance you make up, and, dancing, you sway and skip, and you might even break a sweat but by the end of it you’re still in the same spot.

  At first that was fine. The party was full of beautiful girls, interesting people, killer songs. The dance floor was crowded and everyone was dancing and grinding. Then, gradually, people started edging away, couples withdrew into the dark corners of the club, sucking face on love seats, screwing in the stalls, fogging their car windows outside, and then they were off, on the road, speeding toward the future. And Sandro? Look at Sandro, still here, all by himself in the middle of an empty dance floor, one foot forward, one foot back, left-right, forward-back, shake them hips, hands in the air . . . the colorful lights go out, the music fades, and the floor is so empty that one step won’t change a thing, no matter the direction, you will always be a fool stranded alone in the middle of nothing. Well then, shit, enough already. It’s time Sandro took the plunge, lived his life, tried doing what he’d told Luca to do, yes, and if it works, yahoo, and if it fails whogivesashit, he deserved it. Fuck first steps, Sandro will take twelve in a row, as many as it takes to cross the aisle, walk past the salamis and cheeses and gardening tools, and reach this wonderful woman with her skin the color of June year-round, leaning over, looking for God knows what but it doesn’t matter now, because Serena may not know it yet, but what she’s really looking for is him.