Born Twice (Vintage International) (17 page)

I know that both survivors and the dying pray. I know that winners pray as well as those who enter a losing battle. I gave up celestial accounting a long time ago; I gave up the balance sheets of giving and having; I gave up the fiscal expectations of the divine.

I’ll be content (a fitting adjective—both melancholy and lucid) with a final encounter with the voice. When all else is lost, I know it’ll still be there.

A disabled person has faith by way of compensation. That’s what other people think, anyway. Nor does this interpretation, which is both astute and generous, lack coherence. If we all turn to the Almighty in times of need (as happens in human relationships), who needs him more than a disabled person whose life requires constant assistance? This would confirm that my relationship with the Almighty is not so unusual.

“How very fortunate,” they say about Paolo’s faith. “Otherwise, in his condition . . .” the more sensitive among them delicately add, without completing the sentence. “What a wonderful help,” the most euphoric say. The cynics, feeling even more lucid than the others, take up Voltaire: “If it didn’t exist, it would have to be invented.” They don’t think about themselves, they think about him. It’s the marginal utility of the disabled, an economist of social pain would say. They are part of the collective delegate that suffers for others, and their burden is so large because it embraces the universal. The reality of it is only slightly different. Disabled people, accustomed to living with deformation—and to putting up with it—don’t have the same untenable image of it that those who are healthy do. Faith, for them, is not an escape but a conquest.

The poor will inherit the kingdom of heaven; that’s not such a bad trade-off. He who inherits the earth, even a little portion of it, has nothing to complain about but always does. That’s the grotesque side to a relationship in which the person doing the commiserating is actually the first one who deserves commiseration. Beware of telling him so, though. The person who shows pity toward others never imagines that he or she actually inspires it. That’s how they exorcise it from their lives. That’s how they try to distance it, when actually it’s the fastest way to earn it.

I know Paolo is attracted to ceremonies of all kinds. He prefers the festive ones, such as baptisms, communions, and weddings, but even funerals fill him with gratifying compunction. I pointed it out to him once, lightly and ironically, but he didn’t appreciate it.

He’s also good—people say—at
consoling
friends and relatives, a classic ritual that has fallen into disuse. He uses the resources of his slow and irregular voice to pronounce words that seem to come from some remote place, creating an emotional reaction in those who hear him. I am both proud and disturbed by this. I wouldn’t want these people to overestimate the strength of his words just because the vessel that transmits them is weak.

I decide to be sincere with him (in other words
I need him
) and I confess that this news makes me both glad and concerned. He looks at me with resignation and disappointment. Then, his voice weary, he says, “It surprises you, doesn’t it?”

Once, in smiling solemnity, he said something that had a scriptural quality to it: “You are not the only teacher.”

I find myself turning to him as an intermediary. You can tell I subscribe to the belief, without really knowing why, that people with problems have insider access to the Almighty. And that the Almighty is, in turn, easily influenced. I am so struck by this thought that I try to defend myself by imagining just how many people believe it. As a result, I magnify it to such a degree that a collective absurdity casts its shadow (or its light?) over me.

He looks at me and intuits the tortuous paths I have traveled in order to arrive at this request. He replies with a sentence he might have heard at mass or at a meeting of the church youth group (in trying to judge our children objectively we oscillate between beneficent megalomania and apprehensive underestimation). He has the power, however, of making the words his own at just the right time, which is how he manifests his originality.

“Prayer isn’t magic, you know.”

Able and Disable

To use a rash euphemism, Paolo doesn’t have good memories of one of the doctors at the Center. He continues to remember him with hate not only because he loathed his irony but because he was incapable of responding to it. An offense becomes intolerable when we add to it the embarrassment of weakness.

From what he told me I could tell that when it happened he’d feel paralyzed, like an insect caught in a spider’s web. It happened to me too when I was young, during my stint in the military, with a sublieutenant who was as uncouth as he was shrewd, as pusillanimous as he was mocking. Never would I have been able to convince him of my worth. With those who want to deny us, there’s always going to be a desperate struggle. The more we seek to prove ourselves, the more the other, intuiting our need to do so, denies us. And he’s the one we always want to convince; he is the incarnation of our invincible enemy, the one we suppress inside.

Paolo didn’t know how to respond to the doctor’s sarcastic remarks when he was accused, for example, of preferring his church youth group to the Center.

“But it’s true,” I tell him placidly, trying to induce him to think objectively. When we’re right, we like frustrating others— children and parents alike.

“No!” he burst out saying. “He was just teasing!”

I look at him incredulously. He’s exaggerating. He knows I enjoy his taste for hyperbole.

“He was being terrible! You have to make him pay for it!”

“Are you joking?” I ask.

I don’t know if I should entertain the maturity of a game or the immaturity of a deferred vendetta.

He looks at me to see whether I’m joking too.

“Yes and no,” he says.

He’s always divinely ambivalent, both infantile and knowing, subtle and simple. He understands that a coexistence of contraries provides its own access to knowledge.

“So he was just teasing a bit. What harm is there in that?”

“No, he was being perfidious.”

His expression is serious until he sees me smile.

“He had a small brain,” he adds excitedly. Every shot that hits the mark is for him a conquest.

“Now you’re exaggerating,” I say. “He was a good doctor.”

“No,” he replies, with euphoric intensity. “He was a dwarf!”

“What does that have to do with anything?” I ask. “Now you’re picking on people’s physical disabilities. You, of all people, making these kinds of discriminations?”

He looks at me in confusion. Then he throws his arms up in the air with that deprecatory air he assumes from time to time.

“Come on,” he exclaims. “He was normal!”

A Voyage to Crete

Why do they insist on bringing a portable elevator over to the airplane to lower him down to the ground? It’s coming slowly toward us like a castle across the incandescent, blindingly bright runway until it hooks on to the forward door of the plane like a harpoon. I tried, in vain, to explain to the Greek pilot that just as Paolo had boarded the airplane by the stairs, so he could debark by them.

“Maybe in Italy,” he had said, as if alluding to some exotic country (and maybe he was right), “but not in Greece!”

And so, Paolo, taking precedence over all the other passengers, is lowered slowly to the tarmac of Heraklion airport, on the island of Crete, like a gift from the heavens being lowered onto a stage by a piece of theatrical machinery. I can just imagine his embarrassment (which is really ours), as well as his pride. It’s much better for him if they exaggerate his handicap than if they minimize it. When he comes out of the elevator cabin, aided by a stewardess who seems very taken with her role, he smiles into the sun, shielding his eyes with his hand and waving without actually seeing us.

The monumental Babylonian hotel (who ever went to Babel anyway?) sits on top of a small hill. Landscaped into its slopes, which extend all the way down to the sea, are terraces, restaurants, swimming pools, and dance floors. From where we’re standing we can see a cluster of tiny bungalows on the distant beach.

“Ours is the last one, right next to the water.” I point out to him proudly.

“You’re crazy! I never should have let you decide,” Franca exclaims.

“Why? What’s the matter?” I ask.

“Him,” she says, pointing at Paolo. “How will he ever make it all that way?”

“There’s a
tapis roulant,
” I say.

I read about it in the guidebook. I like the expression;
escalator
doesn’t even begin to compare with it
.

Franca leans out over the balcony. She scrutinizes the landscape until she can discern a group of tourists standing Indian file, rising motionlessly past the cypress trees, gliding over the grass in the golden light of sunset like beatific divinities ascending toward the restaurant in the unending light of the Aegean.

That night, on the white and circular restaurant balcony, from a corolla of lights situated high up in the dark, comes a voice from a loudspeaker extending a warm welcome, first in English and then in Italian, to Paolo. There’s a smattering of applause, some of the diners look around the room, others turn to look right at us.

Franca blushes. I put down my glass, Paolo is pleasantly shocked.

“That’s nice, don’t you think?” Franca says.

“Yes,” I say. “I just hope that they do it for all of them.”

“All of whom?”

“All of the guests. I’m not sure they do it for all the other kids.”

“Does it really matter?” Franca exclaims.

We compete by alternately attributing to each other our shared frustrations.

“It’s nice of them,” she adds. “That’s all.”

Paolo has trouble swallowing his food, letting us know he fears one of those discussions that he knows by heart.

“You’re right,” I say, reaching out and squeezing his hand.

“You’re too self-conscious,” Franca tells me after dinner. We’re sitting together on a swing. Paolo is being accompanied to the balcony’s edge by the waiter to look at the night sea—swollen, shining, and immense.

“Perhaps,” I say. “But we’ll see who’s right.”

There’s always the temptation—irresistibly vulgar in its own way, but no less real—to think that any act of kindness will be tallied up and added to the cost of our stay, which already exceeds our budget but not our needs. I will eventually change my mind about this. At first, Paolo deters people. Then he attracts them. He has learned—out of natural talent and experience—that we look to others to have both our prosperities and our misfortunes forgiven. That’s why he trusts in people. He knows it’s the best way to kindle trust. He feels constantly something I experience only in moments of grace: affinity for the world. By the end of our week, he has become the Benjamin of that heterogeneous community, united by the most temporary of connections, proximity, and by the most pathetic of motivations, the obligation to have fun. He has become the most sought-after companion. It is as if his handicap were a kind of vacation within the greater vacation.

On other holidays, his handicap has incited hostility, not to mention aversion. It all depends on a series of factors—all of which are understandable though not always fair—such as the unpleasantness of his problems, the cost of the stay, the weather, the season, local traditions, majority opinion, the courtesy of single individuals, faith and ideology, and, finally, culture (though I wouldn’t rely too much on that). Civility can do a lot, but it’s not enough. In one situation a person might be accommodating but in another situation that same person might show aversion. People who coexist with a handicap know that. So do people who don’t.

The grotto where Zeus was born, on Mount Ida, is a wide crevasse that splits the earth diagonally. Once you have descended into it, the aperture above looks like a luminous hole in the heavens, obstructed by overhead brambles and supervised by soaring hawks. Down at the bottom are a series of dark damp caves, marked by time and the remnants of offerings.

Paolo leans against the mossy rock and doesn’t move. More than patience, traveling with me has taught him how to surrender.

“Don’t move,” I say. “I’ll come and help you.”

I delicately pry his fingers away from the stone and help him over a dark rivulet. A shiver runs through me as I think about how senseless I have been to bring him all the way down here, down slippery paths that we will only have to climb again later—I don’t know how—toward freedom.

Franca had refused to come with us.

“Where was Amaltea, the goat?”

“Here,” I say, pointing out a deep niche in the rocks. I had told him that the Cretans were good liars, so I lie too, in honor of the island. I had also told him that in addition to Zeus’s birth-place, you could see his death place.

“Where’s his tomb?”

“They never found it.”

This time I just can’t bring myself to lie.

On the way back to the hotel, traveling over the high plains that are punctuated with windmills, we suddenly come across an abandoned building. Its locks are rusty and it’s falling into ruins. I’m struck, in the silent wind of late afternoon, by an old neon sign on its roof: HOTEL ZEUS.