IN THE kitchen Maria says that no one should come between us. I tell her about the broken plates. “Obviously he’s got too many.” Marì, he’s gone crazy. “No, he’s just jumping the gun. You’re not supposed to break your old things until the end of the year. He’s breaking them now. He’s the landlord, isn’t he? The owner of the whole building. What are a few plates to him?” She pours sauce over the drained pasta. We sit down and eat beside each other. Our legs touch. I know that she’s right. No one should come between us.
IN THE workshop Rafaniello finishes the last pair of shoes. He can’t sit still at his bench. He raises his head, looks around the room, his eyes alarmed, and becomes even more birdlike, left behind by the ones that migrated. He won’t be coming down to the shop anymore. On the night of the thirty-first we’ll meet up by the washbasins, we’ve agreed. He asks me how the boomerang is. It’s always with me, Don Rafaniè, I keep it ready to fly. He jerks his neck toward the door. I turn around just as Master Errico comes in. “ ’A ricciola guagliò, this morning I caught a sea bass in the waters off Santa Lucia. It was still dark. I was trawling a loose fishing line and she caught me, she caught me, tugging so hard she cut my hand,” and he showed me the bloody red cut. “I gave her some slack so I wouldn’t break the hook, which was tiny. I let her wear herself out, and when she was tired I brought her in a little at a time, and when she was right up alongside the boat I lifted her up with the harpoon. Three kilos! Three kilos, kid! The sun was just breaking over the sea and the bass was shinier than the dawn. I’ll be eating fish for a week. I’ll leave the sarago alone until the New Year. This morning I’m going to cook the head. It’s this big,” and he measures it with his hands. Between his two palms he leaves enough space for a soccer ball.
I COMPLIMENT him. You’re a specialist, Master Errico, a fishing cabinet maker. He likes that I call him a cabinet maker, but he shrugs it off. “I’m just a carpenter who likes to fish. Nothing special about that. You want to hear something special? Papele the sailor, the one who walks around with the basket of fish that he catches fresh every morning, well, one beautiful day during the war he went out to sea and came back with chickens. That’s right, he was fishing for chicken! He went up to his customers with a basket full of chickens. ‘Papè, did you change jobs?’ they asked. ‘No, signùri, I go out to sea every day.’ Truth is that the Americans had arrived days after our uprising and ordered a halt to all fishing because of the danger of German mines in the bay. Papele went out with his boat anyway. He went right up under the American ships and they threw chickens into the sea that they’d been keeping under ice. That’s how Papele became a chicken fisherman.”
MASTER ERRICO’S in a good mood. He’s doesn’t say hello to Rafaniello right away, but then he says he’s going to send a slice of sea bass his way. “Look at how the wardrobe has dried. It’s all set.” We screw in the hardware, handles, keyholes, and hinges. With the milling machine he prepares the slot for the lock. I bring the piece close to the machine. My good eye is careful, I keep my bad eye half closed so it can rest. We’ll deliver the wardrobe after New Year’s. While we’re working I ask him about Don Ciccio, whether he was a good man, too. “Good and brave. He was just a kid during the war and he helped the resistance fighters in secret. He ran errands for them during the bombardments, when no one was on the streets. I never saw him come down to the air-raid shelters.” I also ask him whether he remembers Don Ciccio’s sister. “What do you know about Don Ciccio’s sister, kid?” Not much, Master Errico, I only know what he told me, that she ran errands. “Her errand was to go to the landlord, a married man who was free with his hands. She was a girl, a beautiful little girl.” He lights his half cigar, meaning he has nothing more to say.
AT THE end of the day I close the shop. I accompany Rafaniello home. I take his arm. He walks with difficulty. Don Rafaniè, in a few months things have started happening fast, you and your hump, me and my job. My body’s grown, my voice has gotten deeper. Where are the two of us running to? I ask, and with his little voice he answers, “Where I’m from we tell a joke about a rider who’s having a hard time staying on a horse that’s galloping through a field. A peasant asks him where he’s going and he shouts back, ‘Ask the horse.’ ” I smile, I don’t get it, I laugh anyway. Rafaniello is so light you can pick him up. His bones must be hollow. There’s air in his jacket. I see the curve of his folded wings and pass my hand over him to cover them better. In Naples people call the hump a scartiello. They think that stroking it brings you good luck. People are always putting their hands on Rafaniello’s hump without asking permission. He lets them. “In my hometown they called me gorbùn and no one would even brush against me. Here I like the familiarity that people have with my hump. I don’t think I’ve brought anyone good luck, but all those strokes have helped me. They’ve awakened my wings.”
DON RAFANIÉ, I could use a few strokes on my throat to get my voice back. My old voice is dead and my new one is stuck. He smiles and tells me that my voice will come all at once, and it’ll be strong. He tells me a story. “When I was coming down into Italy after the war, I was walking along a country road when behind me I heard a terrifying scream, a harrowing cry, a begging so heart-rending that it made your ears bleed. I set my bags on the ground, turned around, and for the first time ever saw a donkey pulling a cart and a man beating it. The animal was straining its neck. With its harness tight and the bit in its mouth, it was howling in pain, so loud you could hear it for miles. If only I knew how to pray that way. In the Scriptures there are many passages about donkeys. It’s a revered, hardworking animal. But its cry is useless, gigantic, something between it and God, it excludes mankind. It was May. My ears had had enough of the war, enough of horrible sounds. Inside my hump I felt a chill. All of a sudden my eyes were brimming with tears. Throughout the war my eyes had been dry. It took a country road in Italy and the cries of a donkey to awaken them. When your voice comes out it will have the force of a donkey.” Thank you for the blessing, Don Rafaniè. The dark voice I’ve got now makes me sound like a conspirator. Did you know, Don Rafaniè, that the Naples soccer team has a donkey on its banner? It must be because whenever there’s a goal the crowd at the stadium shouts as loud as a donkey. I heard the shout of the stadium once when I was walking by and tears came to my eyes, without my realizing it. That cry was overwhelming. It was more important than scoring a goal, more powerful. In the meantime our conversation had brought us to his room. I lit his candle and we said good night with a nod of our heads.