When my mouth isn’t full I tell them about Pietro, who makes the best pizza in Germany because the dough is Italian. It’s thin and crispy, not thick and soggy like everywhere else in Bochum. I’m going to be a restaurant chef, just like Pietro, I tell them, preferably in Italy, because I love food.
The Mama ladles another helping of pasta and ham sauce onto my plate. She’s delighted I’m enjoying it so much.
And suddenly I start talking about Papa, that he’s the best salesman in the world. He can sell anything, I say, car tyres, mattresses, bicycles, computers, fish and vegetables. When Papa is dealing, he can always get the best price. He got olive oil so cheaply that the whole cellar was full of it; there was even some in my bedroom. It was there for a whole year! In the end, he even had to give oil to his friends as presents. And he always has the cellar full of stuff he gets from his friends. Even the Football-President is his friend.
I tell the story about the Football-President on my birthday, the way Papa tells stories, waving my hands and with proper expression on my face. Then I show them the signature on my keeper’s jersey. Even the girls think this is great and Grandma Francesca laughs so much that you can see her only tooth.
Matteo’s family is cool. Papa would like them too. You can make noise when you’re eating here, dunk your bread in the sauce, drink wine and drive tractors. And Grandma Francesca is there, right in the middle of it all.
I’d love to stay longer with Matteo’s family. But I can’t, because of the ferry. Then I think of dessert; I definitely want some of that.
I’m the first one to finish my ice cream.
“Can we leave straight after the meal?” I ask.
When we’re back in the yard, standing by the car, my case feels three times as heavy as before. It’s full of water, bread, a big chunk of ham and a bottle of olive oil for Papa.
The Mama gives me big sloppy kisses on the left and right cheeks, then I get into the car with big brother Bernardo. The whole family waves me off, even Grandma Francesca. I lean out the window and look back, so that I can see them all, until we turn the corner.
On the journey Bernardo explains how you get the best oil out of the olives. I think that’s important, for when I’m a chef.
But I can’t keep my eyes open, they just close.
I dream that Mama is sitting on Papa’s shoulders. Papa is dancing with her, all around our flat. The music is so loud, that you could hear it all the way down to the street. And Mama bends to one side, so that she doesn’t bump into the light on the ceiling. I hold my arms out in case she falls because she’s laughing so much. But she doesn’t fall even though we are spinning so much that, at last, we all fall onto the bed, dizzy. I’m lying on the bed in between them. On my left, I can feel Papa laughing, on my right Mama’s laughing too. There’s nothing better than lying between them. I spread myself out so that I can feel more of their laughing in my tummy. I lie like that for hours.
I wake up. I’ve no idea how long I’ve been asleep for. My phone rings. It rings and rings. I pull it out of my pocket. MAMA!! I nearly drop the phone. Mama knows that I’m not at Martin’s is the first thing that comes into my head. Maybe she met his mother in town, or maybe Martin called to ask me to play football.
“Something important?” asks Bernardo.
I shake my head and look out the window until the ringing stops. Why’s Mama ringing me now, when there’s a ferry and she didn’t ring earlier.
I get a text. I don’t dare to open it. Later, when we are racing along the motorway, I open it.
“How did last night go?” it says. “I had a bad night. Are you gone to football? You forgot your football boots. Do you want me to bring them to you? There’s food in the fridge in case we don’t see each other later. I need to leave again at six. XX Mama.”
I sink down into the seat, really deep. Mama didn’t notice a thing! I roll the window down and shovel warm air into my face. Maybe Mama’s standing in front of the shoe rack, in her nightdress because she’s on night shift. I want to give her a hug, right now.
I’d really like to text back and say that I’m not at Martin’s but am sorting something out for us, that it’s going to be the way it was in my dream, with Mama on Papa’s shoulders, with music playing and lots of laughter. That’s what I’m bringing back for us!
“Hi Mama. Night was good. Martin’s lending me boots. Staying with him tonight too. Thanks for the food. See you tomorrow. Hope shift goes well. C.”
I can’t write any more, not yet.
“There’s the sea.” Bernardo points out the window.
I see glimpses of blue between the houses. We’re in Naples already and are heading down to the docks, following the signs for the ferries.
Then suddenly it’s there in front of us: Pietro’s sea! I’ve never seen the sea before. It goes as far as the sky and doesn’t stop at the sides! You wouldn’t know that from the photo in Pietro’s pizzeria. The photo should cover the whole wall! I’m going to tell Pietro that. It should go from the bar all the way to the window!
Bernardo stops in front of the departures hall for the ferries.
“I’ll bring you as far as the right exit, okay? Where does your ferry leave from? Show me your ticket?”
“No, it’s okay. I can manage,” I say quickly and grab my case.
Bernardo doesn’t really know what to do. But I make him see that I know my way around travelling on my own. “Thanks a million for bringing me. When I open my restaurant, I’m going to invite you all, the whole family, with Grandma Francesca and everyone else. I promise.”
Bernardo laughs at that, but I’m deadly serious.
“Well then,” he says and shakes hands. “Have lots of fun with your Papa.”
I slam the car door and head for the hall. Bernardo only drives off when I turn around and wave.
When you’re only eleven you’ve no chance of doing things. Clearly, I wasn’t getting anywhere with the woman behind the ticket desk. Women at ticket desks never give me tickets, whether they’re in a stadium or a station. And this one just told me I couldn’t even travel on the ferry on my own until I was eighteen.
Now I’m standing outside at the wire fence. The ferries are in the port, on the other side of the fence. They are bigger than our apartment block in Bochum and there’s black smoke pouring out of their chimneys.
The ferry in front of me has PALERMO written in big thick letters on its side. It’s tied up at the end like a huge garage. An aeroplane could fit into it! And I need to get in there; I’ve just got to!!
A man, dressed in white, from head to toe, is standing just in front of the ferry. He’s whistling signals as trucks reverse into the ferry. Everyone, except the wild dogs, obeys his referee’s whistle. The dogs prowl between the trucks just as they like.
Fifty metres to my left there’s a gate with men in uniform standing in front of it. If I were a dog I could scuttle in past them and past the man in white too. I could just walk on to the ferry.
One of the dogs comes up to the fence and stands in front of me. I’m sure he’s smelt the ham in my case.
He bends his head low and gives me a loving squint, just like Rudi in the train yesterday.
“Is there any way you can help me out?” I ask him, taking ham out of my case.
The dog wags his battered tail. But the chunk of ham won’t go through the fence. The dog slinks along the fence and suddenly appears over on my side of it. At first, I can’t imagine how.
“How… how did you get through the fence…?” I ask as the dog disappears off with the ham.
I find the hole right away. A piece of the fence has rusted through, right at the bottom. I crouch down in front of the hole. A dog can get through, and a case. But what about a mozzarella-belly?
The man in white is still busy with the trucks and the men in uniform are chatting over at the gate. No one notices me pushing my case through.
I don’t find doing forbidden stuff so hard any more. I only need to think of
Papa laughing when he opens the door to me. And I can’t help it if I need a ticket to get to him. Nobody else in my class needs a ticket for his Papa, only me.
I slither on my belly across the ground, over to the other side. The wire rips the back of my suit jacket. But I’m through, just the same. On the other side of the fence I button the jacket over my tummy so that I don’t look a complete scruff-bag. I stuff my tie under my jersey. I keep the man in white in my sight. He whistles to signal a huge truck across the square. A proper gangster would hide by hanging under the truck. But I always fall off straightaway whenever we’re supposed to be climbing ropes in PE. I need to run, to get into the ferry somehow, without being noticed. I look at the ground as though I had lost something. That gains me a couple of metres.
Suddenly there is a bang. It sounds just like a shot. I freeze to the spot. For a second I think the guys in uniform are shooting at me. I hear people screaming. And then I see two men roaring at each other. The man in white whistles and bellows at the pair of them. The two trucks behind them have bumped into each other. The bigger truck has crashed into a smaller one and half its load has slid off. There are wooden pallets and boxes of fruit everywhere. Apples and oranges are rolling all over the place; the place is full of them! Some even roll almost as far as me.
People come running. Somebody gathers up oranges. There’s just another couple of metres to go. He looks at me as if I were stupid, just standing there. So, I start to help him. I collect so many oranges that I have a mountain of them in my arms by the time I get as far as the trucks. There’s complete uproar. The driver is still shouting. The man in white is shouting into his walkie-talkie and someone comes out of the ferry pushing a trolley. I pack my oranges into the orange box, just like the other people. We load the boxes of oranges onto the trolley, until it’s full. By that time sweat is rolling down my face. Then I stand there, nothing in my hands and don’t know what to do next.
“Grab onto the front, otherwise the whole thing will topple over again!” says the guy pushing the trolley. Off he goes and I realise, he means me.
I run to the front of the trolley, grab hold of it and stumble backwards. I can’t slip up now! Can’t let any boxes fall or trip up while I’m running backwards. I just need to keep going, as far as the ramp, and in through the huge snout. If that works, I’m there! I’m on the ferry!!
“Now we have to pull all this garbage in on foot. Rats!!” says the guy as we rattle up the ramp onto the ferry.
“Rats!!” I say at the same time.
My case is still out there, right where I picked up the first oranges! I can’t go back though! If I go back, then I’ll never get up the ramp again!!
I can’t let the case out of my sight, Papa’s cologne, my white shirt, all the stuff from Matteo’s family! It’s all gone! I’m just lucky that I’m wearing my keeper’s jersey.
The case gets smaller and smaller as we burrow our way into the ferry. Then it disappears between people and trucks.
“Are you one of Rizzoli’s people?” the trolley guy asks me while we’re waiting for the lift.
I nod and hope that he doesn’t ask me anything else.
“Which league?” He points at my Bochum jersey.
“Bundesliga,” I say casually.
I don’t think that this guy is that old, about seventeen or so. Suddenly his eyes open wide.
“German Bundesliga?! Germany’s got the best teams in the world!” He says. “Is that a good team?”
“The best in the whole of Germany,” I say.
When we’re standing in the lift with the trolley, Adriano tells me all about his team from Palermo. He pushes up the sleeve of his cook’s jacket to show me a tattoo on his arm and I show him the keeper’s signature on my jersey.
“That’s from the Number 1 in Germany,” I say, because that’s what he is, for me.
Adriano gives me the thumbs up. If you chat about football, you have friends everywhere, Papa always says.
When I tell him that I have a season ticket for the stadium and go to all Bochum’s home games, Adriano gives me a funny look. He looks at Pietro’s tie knot sticking out from under my jersey, at my suit-trousers and the torn jacket.
“Every home game in Bochum…” he repeats. “And you’re one of Rizzoli’s people, yeah right? And you’re not even from Naples, are you? You’re from Germany, aren’t you?”
“I… I’m half-Italian…”
“You’re too young to be working!”
“I’m fifteen…”
“Yeah right! What on earth are you doing here?”
Now I’m really in a panic. Adriano doesn’t sound nice any more. And if I’m not his football friend, just a liar standing there, he’ll bring me to the man in white.
Adriano’s waiting. I need to say something. He’s not going to believe me any more if I say I’m one of Rizzoli’s people. I can only tell the truth; I can’t think of anything else. I look Adriano straight in the face. And then I tell him as much about Mama and Papa and my plan as I can while we’re in the lift. And I tell him the rest as we roll the trolley into a room full of food and unload it. I help Adriano like a world champion, because of our football friendship.
“Can’t you hide me someplace? Please!” I ask after the last box is unloaded.
“Why should I believe your story about your Papa?” asks Adriano.
“It’s true. I swear on my jersey!”
Adriano thinks about this, his eyes narrow to slits. “Okay. Then I want your jersey.”
“My keeper’s jersey??!!”
“If it’s not worth that much to you, then your story isn’t true,” says Adriano. “You can hide yourself behind the boxes, in exchange for the jersey.”
I try to get my head around this. My jersey is worth more than anything to me!
“Can’t I give you something else?” I pull the seventeen euros out of my pocket, but Adriano shakes his head.
“It’s much too risky for me to hide you here. I’ll only do it for the signature,” he says.
My belly goes into knots. The jersey or Palermo. I’ve no choice. I smell Papa’s cologne as I pull the jersey slowly over my head, just like our keeper does when we lose a match.
“Here…” I whisper. My voice is gone. I give the signature a last kiss. Then I’m standing there in my vest.
I’ve got to sit on the ground behind the boxes of fruit, so that no one will see me. Don’t you dare come out and don’t touch any of the food, Adriano said. And he’ll collect me at the end of his shift, at midnight. By then there won’t be anyone left in the kitchen and we can go through it. He comes in a couple more times with more loads of fruit. Then he turns out the light and closes the heavy door behind him. I hope he doesn’t forget all about me.
I’ve hardly any space behind the boxes. And there’s nothing to do. I think about my jersey, and the case. Then back to the jersey that Adriano owns now…
Pietro comes into my head; he’s waiting for me right at this minute. His pack of cards is always on the table when I get there. And I always go, unless I’m sick. I’ve never let him down before. Today is the first time. But I can’t just ring. I couldn’t just tell him I’m sick; I couldn’t do that to Pietro. He’s too honest for that.
I get tired from sitting around and because it’s so dark.
I stretch out on the ground behind the boxes. I’ve almost forgotten that someone might come in. But I mustn’t sleep, just relax a bit, can’t fall asleep…
When I wake up, the ferry’s throbbing! Are we moving already? It is 21:17!!! I’ve slept for a whole four hours!
I’m really cross that I fell asleep and that I’m hungry again. I can’t feel any of the pasta from Matteo’s family left in my tummy. I light up the room with my phone. There are shelves full of bags of flour, tins of fruit, sacks of potatoes, trays of eggs, cartons of milk, boxes of peppers, onions, cauliflower, jars of gherkins and beans… and I’m forbidden to touch any of it.
If Pietro were here he wo
uld conjure up an omelette or cauliflower baked in sauce and stuffed peppers. I go through Pietro’s whole menu. I can’t help it; I can never forget about real hunger.
I sneak out of my hiding place and go along the shelves, like a gangster in a chamber full of gold. A gangster would stuff all his pockets. But I only take one jar of gherkins and close the box again.
The gherkins go down the hatch like a single mouthful and I feel even hungrier than before. I can’t get the beans out of my head and sneak over to them. They’re in plastic packets with tasty tomato sauce. I try to think of something else. But, in the end I rip open a packet and shove a load of beans into my mouth.
I’m only on the second mouthful when the door-handle moves!! The packet of beans flies out of my hand and slithers across the floor. SOMEBODY IS LIFTING THE DOOR HANDLE!! There’s no time to pick up the packet. I stumble and just about manage to get back to my place behind the orange boxes when the door opens and someone turns on the light.
I can see a man in a cook’s apron through a gap between the boxes. He is older than Adriano and has a beard. I don’t dare even to swallow the beans in my mouth. Perhaps he only wants to get to the sacks of potatoes, I hope. Please don’t let him go to the gherkins and beans! But he goes straight to the shelf, right through the beans mess.
“Merda!” he shouts. “MERDA!”
He uses his apron to wipe the red sauce off his shoe and roars for Adriano. Then he runs out in a rage.
I gulp down the beans and then he’s back again, with Adriano this time. What if Adriano betrays me?
“If you let something fall, then you pick it up and clean up the mess, do you understand?!”
“It wasn’t me!” says Adriano.
“You’re the last one who took something out of here! You’re absolutely useless. Now get a cloth and clean up that mess.” The man takes two tins of peaches off the shelf and goes out.
Adriano has to follow him. “I’ll get you back,” he hisses in my direction.
Nobody Can Stop Don Carlo Page 4