The hands with which he held her by the waist during the slow dances didn’t start to inch down her back and toward her buttocks. He didn’t try to touch her breast after the third beer. In fact, he didn’t even drink a third beer, but stuck to one. When he took her back home, Gerda expected a kiss, but he stood there, his arms hanging down his sides, stiff as a sentry. Moreover, for the entire evening, Vito’s body had been that of a sentinel: it was the only way he’d managed to stop himself from making love to her on the dance hall floor.
Gerda went back to her room in the attic and undressed, a little disappointed. Clearly, Sergeant Anania really didn’t like her.
The following day, Vito went looking for Genovese. It wasn’t an easy enterprise. The Neapolitan went to his office as often as one visits distant relatives: only on special occasions and never for long. When he found him, he asked: would he mind if he, Vito, saw the woman he’d taken to dance instead of him, again?
“Absolutely not!” Genovese said. “I knew you’d get stuck on her.”
He stared at him. There was something in Vito’s expression which, for a rare moment, made him remain silent. Genovese had seen faces like that, head over heels in love, many times, and had formed a specific opinion on the subject: it was never good news.
“You know her brother was a terrorist?”
“Was?”
“The stupid delinquent blew himself up.”
Vito’s face darkened.
Genovese looked at him with his small eyes as sharp as a tailor’s pins. “Anania, you’re not like me. You’re a serious man, so be careful. She’s an unmarried mother, good for a fuck and nothing else. Remember that.”
But Genovese knew that talking like this to a man in love was as pointless as taking roses to a brothel. Guys who got that face, kept it. Life wiped it off them soon enough. That’s why he, Genovese, devoted his own existence to avoid getting it for himself.
The second time Vito met Gerda, he said, “Your eyes are beautiful and sad.”
Those same beautiful eyes widened with astonishment.
Men had always said to Gerda: you’re so cheerful, you’re so lively, you really know how to have a good time. But not sad. That’s something no one had ever said to her.
Only now that Vito mentioned her sadness did Gerda think about it. Yes, there was a part of her that had been sad for years, but she hadn’t noticed. So how did he know?
The first night they spent together, he did not penetrate her. When he saw her naked body, he was so overwhelmed with emotion that his sex had remained inert. With any other woman, this would have made him feel diminished. But not with Gerda. He felt an inexplicable trust that everything was going the way it should, and that there was no rush. She fell asleep and he held her in his arms until dawn, not believing his luck.
The next time they saw each other, he said, “You cross your big toes.”
They were in a bar. He leaned his elbows on the table, raised his hands with his palms toward her, and slid one thumb into the nook of the other.
“Like this. When you sleep on your side.”
Gerda had to think about it. She wriggled her big toes in her shoes to help her body remember and, yes, it was true: when she lay down on her side, she always slid her big toe into the space between the other one and the index. That’s another thing she’d always done, without ever noticing. Who was this man who seemed to have known her since she was a child?
That night, Vito plunged into her like a deep-sea diver, and discovered treasures submerged in pleasure. Nobody had ever told Gerda that they were all there, at the bottom of her sea.
KILOMETERS 1126 - 1191
We’re going through Sapri station. In the compartment next door the following conversation is taking place:
1st Indian man: “Sabri?”
2nd Indian man: “Sapi.”
3rd Indian man (stressing the R): “SapRi.”
1st Indian man (stressing the I): “Saprì?”
3rd Indian man (stressing the A): “Sàpri.”
Indian woman: “Sapri.”
All (satisfied): “Sapri.”
The wife of the ex-policeman opposite me still has all her things in her arms: the jacket, the handbag, the shopping bag, the tickets. She’s holding on to them tight without letting go, resting her head on them, slumbering. When she opens her eyes, her husband says to her, and none too soon either, “Let go of this stuff.”
She looks surprised as though it’s an option worth considering even though it’s odd. She reminds me of those women at the long tables during the Grillfest41, who spend all their time pouring beer, serving Würstel, slicing bread, wiping children’s noses; they never rest, never sit down, never stop even for a minute to have something to eat and enjoy the company. Not because it’s always necessary, not because they’re irreplaceable, but simply because remaining even one second without making themselves useful isn’t something they consider possible.
Finally, the lady lets go of all the stuff she’s holding, the husband puts it on the racks, and I too feel relieved.
* * *
We keep gliding in and out of tunnels. In the short hiatus between two tunnels, a clear stream meanders through a field starred with blossoming almond trees. No human being, only a black bull. It’s an image of almost subliminal brevity but of absolute presence: a large, dark, powerful animal, amid the white petals bursting around.
When we go back into the dark tunnel, my retina retains the imprint of the bull-shaped luminescent spot: its negative.
When Ulli took Costa to meet his family, Sigi said: don’t come in to soil our mother’s house with your shit if you want to take it up the ass then do it in the public toilets, you’re disgusting and your friend even more than you you’re two Schwuchtl42 two Warme Brüder43 two schwule Sauen44.
He couldn’t have found filthier words. He must have been mulling them over in his mouth for months, years, like poison, to then spit them out all at once.
Leni said: what’s the problem? It’s an illness you can treat it the parish priest said there’s a doctor in Val Sarentina who knows how to do it if you want I’ll give the address to your friend as well I’m sure he’ll want to go nobody wants to remain sick and unhappy if there’s a medicine for it.
Sigi said: people like you should have their heads stuck down the toilet, and he took Costa, who was much smaller than him, dragged him to the latrine and did it.
Ulli said: let go of him, and Sigi let go of him but first he flushed the toilet.
Costa said: leave me alone, and didn’t let Ulli put his arms around him, or help him get up, pushed his fist against the ground and stood up by himself without looking him in the eye, his hair dirty with urine.
Leni said: I don’t know why you’re always arguing like this and why we can’t just all be together in peace.
* * *
Ulli had been with Costa for almost two years. The first time I met him, I thought: Ulli has now found his true brother.
Sigi wasn’t just a Nazi in his thinking but also in his coloring, which was like mine: blue eyes, yellow hair, pink skin. Costa, on the other hand, had soft brown eyes, like Ulli and his mother, and the same amber skin. A Mediterranean coloring bequeathed to our valleys by some passing Roman legionary, a Hispanic mercenary on the payroll of emperors, a Levantine merchant on his way to the capitals of the North. Ulli and Costa looked like each other, as often happens in well matched couples, seeing them next to each other you could easily imagine them together for a whole lifetime.
Ulli had wanted to introduce him to his mother for months. In Innsbruck, where they lived together seven months of the year, they didn’t have to hide. But things were different during the winter season, when Ulli had to beat the ski pistes and live in our town. Costa had come a couple of times but found it suffocating. Too clean, too perfect the geraniums in the windows, too
few the avowed homosexuals—actually, to be precise, not one. Ulli hadn’t insisted but found it painful. Costa wanted to move to Berlin, which Ulli liked, he’d been there; but he couldn’t imagine living so far away from his mountains. Leni had stopped asking him about girls years earlier, but this silent agreement wasn’t enough for Ulli anymore.
For a long time he’d had a dream: to come out to her and introduce Costa to her. He’d explain to Leni that this was the love of his life and she would not only accept it but would even be happy about it. What mother doesn’t wish for her children to love and be loved?
However, I thought it was a bad idea to take Costa all the way up there, to that maso. I knew Leni, and especially Sigi. I should have told Ulli. But there was a problem. I was so ashamed of the jealousy I felt for his happiness that I acted like envious people always do when they have a fair criticism: they keep quiet because they’re afraid of being seen through. So I listened to Ulli without saying anything, without sharing my reservations.
So it was Costa who told him what I should have told him. Costa, the man with whom he wanted to share his life, who made him realize why he had been born, but he did so while also telling him to go away, while walking out of his life forever: “You shouldn’t have taken me there.”
Ulli repeated that to himself while lying on my sofa, seeking refuge in my home.
“I should never have taken him home.”
I had to lean over him to make out his words. I’d covered him with an eiderdown but he wouldn’t stop shaking.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
Sometimes we know our words are useless even as they’re coming out of our mouths.
Sometimes not. I found out exactly ten days later.
I cannot get this out of my mind: when I stopped talking to Ulli openly, I too began to kill him.
At Belvedere Marittimo there’s an enormous papier mâché mozzarella hanging from a rope in front of a food shop. It’s like the teddy bear hanged by the American girl. Now it’s the woman in the compartment next door speaking loudly on the cellphone in Hindi, with rounded Rs, and Ds soft as chapati. These Indians must be spending a fortune on the cellphone. Actually, they probably have one of those subscriptions where it costs less to talk to New Delhi than to Rome.
“Hallo, hallo!” she shouts at increasing speed, then bursts out laughing. As a rule, only cheerful sounds come out of their compartment: the child’s gurgling, happy voices, contented snoring. Suddenly, the woman starts speaking in perfect Italian: “Where are you? We’ll be there in an hour.”
She laughs again then hangs up. Then the cell phone rings again. This time, it’s mine. I take it out of my bag and look at the screen while it keeps ringing: CARLO. He must have found a way to absent himself for a minute from Easter lunch with his relatives. I let it ring. I can feel the eyes of the lady from Messina boring into me with curiosity, obviously wondering why I don’t answer. And I think she may be guessing correctly: a man. The ringing finally stops and I put the cellphone back in my bag.
At Cetraro, the railroad passes near an intersection and you can read the blue signs on the highway. The one that indicates the direction from which we come tells us that Salerno is two hundred and twenty kilometers away. Others point to locations inland, with names that evoke defended rocks, people in flight, incursions from sea plunderers: Castrovillari, Spezzano Albanese, Saracena.
The arrow that points South, however, is a promise:
REGGIO CALABRIA 254
1971-1972
In off-season, when the hotel wasn’t full, Gerda sometimes asked Frau Mayer for a couple of days off in order to go to see Eva, who waited for her visits like a devout person waits for a miracle: with faith, but no certainty. She’d follow the ascent of the blue bus from Bolzano along the curves, until it reached the space outside the little church. Ulli wasn’t with her: the meeting between Eva and her mother wasn’t his thing, he knew that now, and it was the only time he kept away from her. Eva would place herself in front of the doors, forcing the passengers to parade past her like a little honor guard, examine them one by one as they got off, and feel contempt for them because they weren’t her mother. When Gerda finally appeared, like a vision at the top of the steps, happiness and anxiety would explode in Eva’s chest: now, all she had to wait for was the forthcoming, certain separation.
That day, the brakes of the bus were still huffing painfully when all of the passengers had gotten off. None of them was Gerda. Eva looked up at the driver. He shrugged, his shoulders strong because of all the bends on the mountain along which he’d turned the steering wheel. He was sorry for her, truly, but he had to keep to a timetable; he pushed a button and the doors closed. In the glass, Eva saw her own reflection which then ran along the blue side of the bus until all she had left before her, against a backdrop of glaciers in the distance, was the square. A tan Fiat 600 was maneuvering there.
Eva seemed like the same blonde girl of a minute ago but, in reality, what was left of her was just an outline with her features: inside, there was a void. She felt neither sadness nor disappointment, only perhaps a vague hint of relief. Because, now that the threat that had always been hanging over her had come to pass, she could finally stop worrying: her mother would never come back to her. That’s why, when the woman got out of the Fiat 600, she didn’t notice her. Nor did she pay attention to the man in black uniform walking up to her. Only when the woman called Eva by name and the man came close to look straight into her eyes did she begin to notice that something strange and wonderful was happening.
None of the men Gerda had known had ever acted like Vito.
While Gerda was cooking Schlutzkrapfen, Vito and Eva did a crossword in Italian. Eva had never done one before, neither in Italian, nor in German, nor in Chinese.
While Gerda served the food, Vito asked Eva about school, her favorite subjects, the girl who sat next to her.
While Gerda did the dishes, Vito reminded Eva to clean her teeth.
When Gerda was about to put Eva into the small bed, Vito protested. “Absolutely not. This Sisiduzza was here before me.”
So Eva was able to stay in the large bed, just like when she was alone with her Mommy.
Gerda lay down next to her, and Vito lay down on the other side. She saw them through her eyelashes: two dark, trembling figures, like at the bottom of a glass of blackcurrant juice. Vito read to Eva the adventures of Sandokan, Yanez and the Tigers of Malaysia. Gerda had never read a book out loud to her before sleeping, let alone in Italian. Eva couldn’t understand all the words of that language made of soft sounds and vowels but it didn’t matter. She lay there listening to him, still, her eyes half closed, the blonde hairs of her forearms on end because of the caress of his voice.
“What does ‘Sisiduzza’ mean?” she finally asked.
“Tiny little spark,” Vito replied.
So, framed by their arched bodies like the cockles of a shell, she felt more luminous than the Pearl of Labuan. Rocked by Vito’s voice, her eyelids grew heavy until they closed completely.
“Eva is asleep,” her mother said.
Only then did Vito lift her and put her delicately into the little bed.
Eva slept more soundly then than she had done since she was a baby.
Genovese had lent Vito his camera. There were many pictures taken over those two days.
Gerda in front of the little church, wearing a midnight blue shirtwaist. Gerda sitting on a wooden bench outside the hayloft. Gerda and Eva in a field covered in dandelions.
One picture was taken by Eva, who’d quickly learned to look through the viewfinder and press the shutter button: Vito and Gerda looking into each other’s eyes, smiling, with her bending her knees so as not to be taller than him.
Another picture was taken by a passerby to whom Vito’d handed the camera: Eva between Gerda and Vito, against the backdrop of glaciers, all smiling lik
e a family on holiday.
When Gerda took him to meet Maria, Sepp and their whole numerous family, Vito said as he entered the Stube, “Griastenk!”45
For over half a century, soldiers, office workers, civil servants, and teachers had addressed the two elderly peasants in Italian, demanding that they reply in Italian, and laughing at their poor command of the language. Now a Carabiniere who said hello in South Tyrolean dialect with a Calabrian accent—that was something they’d never come across. Vito asked them if, that evening, they felt like trying the artichokes he’d brought back from his village, and Gerda invited them to eat with them in the furnished room.
When Eva picked one up, it seemed to her more like a flower than a vegetable: an enormous bud, prickly on top and with a heavy stem. You just had to look at it to know it came from a land of abundance. You never saw vegetables like this on the hard, vertical land of masi, for instance. Vito cooked the artichokes with herbs from the south. Sepp and Maria tried them without saying a word, concentrating, as though trying to discover their secret. When Vito offered them a second helping, they both said yes.
It was the first time Gerda had entertained in the small furnished room. Real guests to give food to and have a conversation with, while breaking bread and dropping crumbs on the tablecloth. And she, a real hostess, with her man at her side.
Before the guests arrived, Vito had brought a plank of wood into the room. He wanted to put it on the only little table in order to make it longer and for everyone to fit around it. Eva was drawing and didn’t reply when Gerda asked her to clear away her papers and pencils.
“Eva, do as your mother says right away,” Vito said in a voice that wasn’t harsh but did not brook objections.
Eva looked up from her drawing and stared at Vito with wide-open eyes.
He was chiding her! Vito was neither the school teacher, nor the parish priest, nor Sepp (who never raised his voice at anyone anyway), and yet he was chiding her. Eva got up and removed the pencils from the table, her eyes downcast. She didn’t want it to be noticed that she was sulking, of course, but only in order not to show how happy she was.
Eva Sleeps Page 27