A FOREIGN shoemaker knows how to speak Italian so precisely that I’m moved, thinking of my dad who struggles to learn and doesn’t know half as many words as Rafaniello. Did your Italian vocabulary come to you in dreams, too? I ask him. No, he says, he got it from books, reading Pinocchio over and over. I read it, too, I tell him, happy to have found something we’ve done together. He says that in his town Pinocchio would be named Iòsl and would be made out of wood, his whole life dedicated to his creator. “Now you know of my life as Rav Daniel and of the lives of the people from my town who are no longer here. Those who die leave history as a legacy to their children, to their relatives. My people left it to me and to some others. I’m telling you this because I’ll be leaving before long, when this hump of bone and feathers finally cracks.” Don Rafaniè, tell me about Jerusalem, about this place we can’t copy. He cleans out his mouth, spits, then says that he still doesn’t know, but someone told him, “In the city of Jerusalem, death is afraid of being swallowed by life. It’s the only city in the world where death is ashamed of its existence.” He closes his eyes, rocks his neck, he’s already there. It must be a special place, Jerusalem. In Naples death isn’t ashamed of anything.
RAFANIELLO LIKES garlic and oil, not tomato. From his bread with vegetables to my bread with anchovies, the lunch hour goes by. He says I’ve got secrets. He can read my mind, so I don’t say anything. He asks how my mother is doing. I haven’t seen her for a month. Papa doesn’t want me to. He says she’s under a tent with tubes attached and only he can go. To change the subject I say, you know, Don Rafaniè, you took the same journey as Saint Patricia. She wanted to go to Jerusalem, too, and a storm forced her to land in Naples. I tell him the story of the saint. She died young in Naples and left behind miraculous blood. It liquefies and solidifies all the time, even more than Saint Gennaro’s blood. This gets Rafaniello’s interest. Do you want to know how they got Saint Patricia’s blood? One night a worshiper broke open her tomb and with a pair of pliers removed a tooth from the saint to keep as a relic. Though she had been dead for a hundred years, she started to spit blood from her gums. They collected it in glass jars and that’s how the miracle was born. Don Rafaniè, things happen here that if you tell people about them, they think you’re crazy, but they happen anyway. Naples is one big secret. “This is a city of blood,” he says, “like Jerusalem.” I know, I know, people are obsessed with blood here. They put it in their curses, in their insults. They even eat it cooked and then go to worship it in churches. Women are always going around saying, “ ’O sang,” bloody this and bloody that. Even the sauce we eat on Sundays is so dark, so thick, it looks like blood. Rafaniello is amused at the mysterious voice I’m using. Mysterious because it’s hoarse.
AT THE washbasins Maria tells me that the old man came over with some pastries. Her mother went out to buy some coffee and he started up with his begging, saying that if she didn’t come to him he’d die. “So I told him, go ahead, die. A lot of people younger than you die, you can die, too. His face turned from gray to red. He made like he was going to grab me. I ran around the table and he couldn’t get me. ‘You’re mean,’ he said, and started breathing so heavy he foamed at the mouth. Then he stopped, put a hand on his forehead, calmed down, and left. He left the pastries behind and we ate them.” Maria says that he’s dying, that he looked death in the face when she told him to die. All it takes is one word to wipe a man out. Maria knows a lot of things. For instance, she knows that she’s stronger than an adult. I’m scared of adults. She isn’t. She even attacks them. It must be because she’s a girl and she’s known disgust. She’s thirteen and her breasts are growing faster than my boomerang muscles. She lets me touch them. They’re firm. She says, “They’re yours.” My piscitiello gets hard and my mouth waters. She asks if I want her hands. I say no, Maria, don’t do the same things to me you do to the old man. She says okay, you’re right, we should make love, but she tells me in Neapolitan, “Avimma fa’ ammore,” with two ms because that way it’s tougher, more real. And I say we’re already doing it. She says no, she means another kind, the kind where both of us are naked in bed like married people.
22
IT’S CHILLY at night by the washbasins. The clouds in the sky fan out like a fishbone. To feel warmer I practice harder, doing more turns. The Christmas month is at the door. During the day bagpipers come up to Montedidio. Maria brings a blanket to the roof. We sit on the ground and cover ourselves. When we’re done talking, she pushes her mouth right on me. That’s how we say good-bye. No good nights, no see you laters, no till tomorrows. Nothing. A kiss on the mouth and we’re all right. I practice a little more. Right away the boomerang gets hot. The wood trembles, ready. It slices the air, pushes against the sky. I keep my feet far apart so I won’t lose my balance when I start the release and suddenly stop short the flight of the boomerang. My right and left arms grow at the same rate, like Maria’s breasts. The written part of the scroll gets longer. I don’t read back. I can see that it’s heavy. The part still to go is getting lighter. Maria doesn’t know that writings about her are inside the scroll.
THE LANDLORD came by to pick up Master Errico’s rent. Master Errico saw him coming and said, “Vene chillo che tene.” The keeper is coming. He means that some men work and do things, and others just keep, they’re owners and they don’t do anything. The landlord doesn’t say a thing. He’s feeling low. He’s got the blank look of someone who just got out of bed. Master Errico says nothing except, “good morning.” He pays with the money he has ready. When the landlord leaves he says, “Something’s eating the old man. Greedy as he is, this is the first time he hasn’t counted out the money.” I ask if he’s really so greedy. “Greedy’s not the word for it. He’s got a virgin hand. No one has ever managed to pry his fingers open.” For Maria’s sake I added my own two cents, saying that he was an evil man. Master Errico immediately reprimanded me. “Listen, kid, talk behind someone’s back and their ass will answer you.” I was so embarrassed I slapped myself. Either say it to his face or keep quiet.
THE REST of the day I was thinking about Uncle Totò, whom I never knew. He was killed at noon one day in front of the main post office when an airplane dropped a bomb. Papa was his older brother. When he used to go down to the docks he would take Totò with him as far as the sidewalk on Via Medina, where Totò used to shine shoes. The bomb cut him in two. Papa ran from the docks after the bombing and found Totò at his usual spot. The shoeshine stand remained intact. My uncle was cut in two. It was July. There was dust all over the bodies of the dead and not a single fly. They were dead, too. This detail stuck in my father’s mind and he repeats it whenever he wants to remember Uncle Totò. Every year Papa brings me with him to lay a flower on the common grave. The cemetery is a zoo for the dead. They’re locked up inside. I went with Papa and Mama to the zoo one autumn day. We brought along stale bread. I gave some to the elephant, who took it from my hand with his trunk, so delicately it was like a caress. Papa was happy to hear me say the names of the stranger animals. There was some bread for the hippopotamus, too. I dropped a piece into its open mouth, which was as wide as a closet. Papa collected berries from the eucalyptus, a name he can’t pronounce. He says “calìppeso.” He keeps them in his pocket. He likes the smell and sniffs at them when he’s in the hold of the ship.