Born Twice (Vintage International) (14 page)

“So far, I follow you,” the principal says, with a sigh of relief.

I’ve always thought that the best way to change someone’s mind is to convince them that you’re not actually doing it.

“As such, my son is allowed to study within the public school system.” There’s another linguistic aid that should help convince the principal: the use of the term “public school system.” “But he also has the right to be treated with special regard. For example, he doesn’t do gym with the other children.”

“Naturally!” the principal exclaims.

“And then he’s got the teacher’s aide to help him,” I add.

“That’s right,” she says emphatically.

“So, if we want to help him just a little bit more, let’s permit him to be with some of his old classmates.”

She takes her time to reply, knowing all the while that my eyes are fixed on her. Mustering up all the authority she can, she says, “Did you know that your son has been rather unlucky? There’s only one of his old classmates in his new class.”

“I know.”

I say no more. Silence has to work in my favor.

“Well, what can we do about it? You’re against the most democratic measure that’s been introduced,” the principal complains.

“No, it’s simply that in this case a random drawing goes against intelligence.”

She raises her eyebrows. “And what would you propose to do about it?”

“Violate the law in order to respect the spirit.” I’m surprised by my fearlessness. “Change the results of the drawing.”

“No,” the principal says, sliding even farther back in her chair.

I look at her in dismay, aware that I have asked too much. I chose the wrong words, not the wrong objective. It’s always the same thing.

“Let me think about it,” she says apprehensively.

There’s a large blue globe on a shelf above her desk. It caught my eye when I first walked in: an unappeased dream of my youth.

“Would you mind if I brought the parents’ representative in on this?” she asks, pointing toward a door behind her desk. “I asked her to make herself available in case there was a need.”

“Fine.” I nod.

I’m not sure whom she’s seeking to help. Perhaps she’s not even sure herself.

She goes out of the room, closing the door behind her. I look at the globe. The midmorning sun shines down on the play-ground below. There’s a warmth in the air, a brightness, the feel of vacation. I imagine the sound of children’s voices. It would be time for recess.

“This is our dear friend Professor Frigerio,” the principal says, reappearing at the door and gesturing toward me with uneasy kindness. “This is Signora Matteucci.”

Signora Matteucci is tall, elegant, and refined. She looks persuasive. She smiles at me knowingly, as if we have already met.

“I explained the situation to Signora Matteucci,” the principal says. “She has a degree in psychology. Even she was surprised.”

“Don’t pay any attention to the degree in psychology,” my new enemy says collegially. “I’m not a psychologist. I work part-time in an advertising firm.”

“I suppose that’s pretty interesting.”

“Not as interesting as you’d think,” she says; I can tell she really works there. “But let’s talk about your case.” She crosses her legs and folds her hands gently over her knees. Her smile is not promising. “So. You’d like special privileges for your son, is that right?”

It couldn’t have begun any worse. I smile and shake my head.

“Well, then, why don’t you explain things to me.”

“I’ll start with a given,” I say. “The state wants to integrate disabled children into the system instead of isolating them in special schools.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she concedes placidly.

I’m using the jargon that I abhor, that of my interlocutors. I know it strips me of my strengths and credibility even as I acquire it in their eyes. I alter my course.

“Look, Paolo is disabled. He’ll have a teacher’s aide,” I say heatedly. “I’d like him to have the aid of his friends too.”

“Why, Professor Frigerio? Tell me why,” Signor Matteucci says with profound calmness and curiosity. She leans toward me as if I were telling her a secret. “Why does your son need his old classmates so much?”

“They need him too!” I say. “Naturally, his classmates have provided him with friendship, solidarity, and admiration. But he’s given them a lot as well. Having him in the class has been an added encouragement for them, a kind of stimulus. That’s what his teacher always said. It might have been out of compensation, perhaps, but what difference does that make?”

“I believe you.” Signora Matteucci nods, opening her eyes wide. Many women do that; they think it has a special effect.

“It was entirely unexpected,” I go on to say. “A class that benefited from a disabled student as much as he benefited from them. Why do we have to interrupt this experience?”

“But who’s interrupting it, Professor Frigerio?” Signora Matteucci asks, in an amazed yet pedantic tone. “Your son will enjoy other equally positive interpersonal relationships.”

“Yes, but he suffers from a particular kind of anxiety.” I’m unsure which point to give more importance. “The thought of losing his friends, who in turn will find themselves together in another class, seems unfair to him—”

“It’s up to you to convince him otherwise,” the principal interrupts.

“I agree,” I say, “but why complicate his life more than necessary because of a random drawing?”

“Now calm down, Professor Frigerio,” the principal replies loudly. “I can understand your frame of mind, but we do not invent the rules.”

“I understand,” I say. “No one knows that as well as I do.” How did I come up with that one? “But it’s ridiculous to chain ourselves to a lottery.”

“Why?” the principal asks with genuine surprise. “How often has it happened in history?”

Now I’m the one who looks at her in amazement. I can tell this is not the path to take.

“Let’s think about this calmly, Frigerio,” Signora Matteucci suggests gently. She has dropped the title of professor, which gives her leave to speak to me in a more confidential, even intimate, manner. “Talk to me—but be sincere. Please!”

“All right,” I said, nodding.

I know from experience that invitations to sincerity invariably hide aggressive impulses.

“Why do you fear new classmates for your son, Frigerio?”

“He’s the one who fears them. Actually, no, he doesn’t fear them; he’d just like to be with a few old classmates. They were connected. They protected him.”

“Now there’s the key word,” Signora Matteucci exclaims with careful enthusiasm, looking up at me. “Protection! You want to protect your son too much. But he has to face life.” Then, as if relinquishing herself to an irresistible novelty, she adds, “Life is all about risks!”

I listen to her in astonishment. There will always be someone to point out the road that you take every day. They’ll tell you that they do it in your best interest, and ultimately you end up having to thank them.

Signora Matteucci can’t resist sinking the knife in a little bit deeper. “It’s not that you want to protect yourself, Frigerio, is it? And that the child is a projection of your own fears?”

“Who, me?” I look down. “No, believe me. The problem is very simple. It’s a problem of common sense.”

I use this word in desperation. It had always seemed like abnegation to me, but here it’s turning into a conquest. But never jump to conclusions. We credit people with intelligence they don’t really have. It happens all the time.

The two women are looking at each other, and that seems like a positive sign. But then Signora Matteucci demurs.

“Frigerio, you’re not taking advantage of your role as a teacher, are you, to ask us for this infraction of the norm?”

“Taking advantage?” I look up. “I don’t really think that’s the right word.”

“You’re right, I meant something else, but you know what I mean.”

I nod, even if I don’t really understand. Maybe she chose the wrong term on purpose so she could correct herself.

“Still, it is a problem,” the principal says in alarm. “How do we get out of the drawing? It’s the law, after all.”

“You don’t have to get out of it,” I say confidently. “It’s just that the drawing will have a more intelligent outcome. Why should we accept a stupid drawing?”

“Because it’s a drawing,” she says.

“And we, who are more important than a drawing, can modify it. It’s enough to read a D instead of a C. A pen mark is enough.”

“How very removed you are from it all, Frigerio!” the principal exclaims.

She’s given up on the title now, too, and this makes me feel better.

“What do you think?” she asks, turning toward Signora Matteucci.

“Nothing. I don’t know a thing about it. Never saw a thing.”

I lean back in my chair.

“Section D, you said?” the principal asks, to be sure.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“For what?” she asks.

Matteucci (I leave off the Signora too, when I say goodbye) disappears again through the little door behind the desk. I have participated in a drama; I’m a wreck, I’m happy, I’m depressed. I’ve won a small victory in a war that is destined never to be over.

I take leave of the principal. On the way out, I can’t resist reaching up and touching the globe. I spin it slowly in a counterclockwise direction.

Death of an Actress

My mother died when Paolo was still learning to walk. I don’t think she’d like that as a start to her obituary. Even though she continued to dedicate her energies toward this goal up to the very end (she helped Franca every day with Paolo’s exercises in an indefatigable competition with my mother-in-law), she always had an exclusive sense of her own personal destiny. Although the love she felt for her grandson was relentless, it still didn’t complete—to use a favorite metaphor of hers—the scene. We tend to think that our parents exist as a function of ourselves, and when they don’t, we repay them with inextinguishable hate—at least until we reach their age, when their perspective becomes ours. But by then it’s usually too late to tell them.

My mother, who spoke as if I had learned how to walk at the age of nine months, waited nine years in vain. Ambitious and bitter, never content with the cards that life had dealt her, wounded by what she had been denied, she put hyperbolic meaning into the humiliations to which she was subjected. Paolo, unsteadily taking his first steps, was to be seen as a champion, with utter admiration. She made her friends share in these triumphs. The tears that occasionally fell from her eyes were the only sign of her torment; they were enough to offset the disquiet that she felt upon his successes. If it’s solidarity you’re after, it’s good to let some kind of passive voice inhabit your stories. People will always be grateful for it. And you know they never love you as much as when you’re not doing well.

A dilettante in an amateur theater group in the town where she grew up, my mother never entirely abdicated her destiny as an actress. She simply sacrificed it in the name of pride. Julius Caesar, who would rather have been the top dog in a small town than an underdog in Rome, succeeded in becoming the top dog in Rome. But because my mother was afraid of not being able to emulate him in the capital, she gave up on the town. That was the difference between Caesar and my mother: he would have been happy with the town.

After giving up on the idea of making the theater her life, she decided to transform her life into theater. She loved ceremonies, parties, and receptions of all kinds. My father, a commanding officer in the Carabinieri, was originally seduced by her theatrical career but slowly came to find it nauseating. Believing that he shared in it, he never opposed what he saw as her aesthetic existence, although he never really understood, even at the very end, just how foreign aesthetics were to their lives. While my mother, during one of their parties, would stroll radiantly through an apartment far too small for her ambitions, he would withdraw into a corner, his unwavering stare revealing his struggle to stay awake. I never asked whether he betrayed her, a question children never raise until they, themselves, consider betrayal. And when they finally do ask, they discover virtual abysses in their parents’ pasts, hypothetical dramas and comedies performed with simulated patience. When I asked myself about it, I could never come up with an answer. He was much older than she, a fact that revealed just as much as if he had been younger. I continue to delude myself, however, that I can retrospectively interpret my mother’s behavior.

Despite the dramatic tone of the epitaph my mother had inscribed on his tombstone—
struck down by untimely death
— my father left her longing less for his person than for the uniform that he had worn. That’s what she remained faithful to, dreaming in her patriotically visionary way that she had been the lifetime companion of a hero.

When he was accidentally killed during a military exercise, she shut herself off in theatrical mourning for years, raising her children to venerate his memory. As happens with many widows, her conjugal life became more desirable in retrospect than it actually had been, mainly because it was over.