She tells me what it is.
“Okay,” I tell her when she’s done.
“Thanks,” she says.
“A quick shot to celebrate?” I ask teasingly.
She smiles.
“Your Jack Daniel’s is long gone.”
“You’re not the one who’s been drinking it, am I right?”
“Let’s just say that Miorita really enjoyed it.”
“I knew it.”
“But you can’t even begin to imagine how much good it did me to see you walk in here with that bottle in your hand.”
Alagia? Alfredo? I wish you were both here right now. Ears wide open.
I pull out my cell phone, I dial the number.
She picks up on the second ring.
“Vincenzo,” she says, happily surprised.
“Ciao, Nives. Do you have a minute?”
“I . . . yes, of course, why not. I’m happy to hear from you, I wanted to . . .”
“We can talk later. Right now there’s a person here I want you to talk to.”
“A . . . person?”
“Yes.”
And I hand the phone to her mother.
As I leave Ass’s building, I catch myself thinking how odd it is that a person who feels damaged deep inside can still be deserving of someone’s love. Whether it’s a terrible father sleeping in an oxygen tent or a sad sack like me who does nothing but rack up one failure after another doesn’t much matter. We’re all the same. Unhappy in different ways, doing what we can to make sure that not everything is a dead loss.
I never asked love to save my life. All I wanted was for it to be there when I felt its absence, to never abandon me entirely. Even when it was ramshackle and ridiculous, I never gave up on it.
My phone rings.
I glance at the display.
It’s Alessandra Persiano.
For a second my heart leaps up into my mouth, then it sinks back to its proper location unassisted, without my having to do anything to persuade it. Perhaps it simply no longer cares that much.
That’s what I would have said to Paolo Di Stefano, if he’d asked me, “How do you want to die?” during Proust’s questionnaire.
I look at the phone in my hand as it squeaks and vibrates. It’s like holding a mouse. Alessandra Persiano’s name keeps blinking, like a cry for help.
I put the phone back in my pocket, I start walking again, and for perhaps the first time in my life, I avail myself of the right not to answer.
NOW, THEN
This is a work of fiction (it’s odd that novels so often point out this fact: have you ever purchased a couch and found a notice, perhaps on the consumer safety label, informing you that “This is a very wide upholstered seat with a backrest and armrests”?). Events, names, characters, and places are all imaginary. Any resemblance to actual events, real persons, and mothers-in-law is purely coincidental. Not so for real persons mentioned in this book, whom I fictitiously enlisted in what I hope is the most respectful way possible as far as their public images are concerned.
I thank Prof. John Spanish for his advice on the subject of video security.
I also wish to thank Ernesto Franco, because he knows what a writer is and what he does; Paola Gallo, who knows how to point out a novel’s better qualities and shortcomings with the same tact and delicacy (and who wears boots with all the flair of an authentic cowgirl); and Maria Ida Cartoni, who has an unmatched talent for describing a book in a sentence or two at the most, and nailing it every time.
My special thanks to Dalia Oggero, who has been following me since I took my first literary steps, and who after all these years still lets me know whether I’m keeping up the pace or just scampering on all fours.
D. D. S.
(The chapter “When You Wake Up and Realize You Died in Your Sleep” appeared in the February 2008 issue of Rolling Stone Italy, in a slightly different version.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diego De Silva was born in Naples in 1964. He is the author of plays, screenplays, and six novels. I Hadn’t Understood, the first book featuring Vincenzo Malinconico, was a finalist for the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, and winner of the Naples Prize for fiction. He currently lives in Salerno.
More from Diego De Silva
Vincenzo Malinconico is a wildly unsuccessful lawyer who spends most of his time at the office trying to look busy. His wife has left him. His teenage children worry him to death. And he suffers from a chronic inability to control his sentence structure.
When he is asked to fill in as the public defender for alleged Mafioso Mimmo lo Burzone, Malinconico seizes the opportunity to turn his life around. Without dwelling too long on what it might mean to be employed by the mob, he rushes to re-learn the Italian criminal code, all the while attempting to resist any further advances from his employers. Malinconico’s life becomes a comical battle to finish what he has started without falling further into the clutches of the mafia.
I Hadn’t Understood is one of the subtlest and most cunning accounts of the mafia’s influence on everyday life in recent decades. And it is certainly the most entertaining. Written with a neurotic’s love of detail and wry humor, I Hadn’t Understood is an engaging story of family, fatherhood, and the perils of navigating the Italian legal system.
ISBN: 9781609450656 – March 2012
Read more on Europa Editions website
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