On Earth as It Is in Heaven (23 page)

“I like swallows.”

“Should I read it to you?”

“You brought it with you?”

“Yes.”

“All right, let's hear it.”

“Poem: ‘I've seen the swallow, it goes and ungoes, in the distance, it turns on the wind, once, again, and yet again again, a flutter of the wings and another of the eyelashes, in the overturned meaning of life.'”

“It's full of mistakes.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You even get things wrong in your dreams.”

“Anyway, the dream went on, you went into the water and you were walking on the strip of salt. You were very handsome.”

“Gerruso, wait a sec, tell me the truth, swear to me that you're telling the truth.”

“I swear.”

“Are you gay?”

“No, why?”

“Are you coming on to me?”

“No, why?”

“The dream, the poem, me, you.”

“I don't understand.”

“And when would you ever understand.”

“If you explained it to me.”

“No, I'm not going to explain anything to you.”

“Would you like me better if I were gay?”

“Have you lost your mind? Gerruso, let's drop this once and for all.”

“Okay.”

“No, I have a better idea, just shut up entirely.”

“All right.”

“No, wait a sec, what about the dream? Was there more?”

“Yes.”

“The part with me in it, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Then go ahead, I give you permission.”

“Thank you. You were looking out at the horizon and you were doing something stupid.”

“What?”

“You were throwing punches into thin air, right in front of you.”

“That's not a stupid thing to do, it's what I do every day as part of my training. What next?”

“My dream kept going but you weren't in it anymore.”

“So that's the end of my part?”

“Yes.”

“Was your cousin Nina in the rest of your dream?”

“No.”

“Then from this minute forward, shut your mouth and let me look at the water in goddamned peace.”

“Fuck, they've pulled a fast one on us. I knew this would happen, Gerruso, you're a disaster.”

“She told me she was coming, and if she told me she was coming, then she's coming.”

“Sure, of course, she'll never show up.”

“They're women.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Doesn't your uncle always say that women are late for everything except for the exact second when it's time to bust your balls?”

“Gerruso, you need once and for all to get over this bad habit of talking about me or any of my family.”

“Sorry.”

“Fuck, already half an hour late, five more minutes and I'm going to leave.”

“No, that's it, I'm leaving.”

“Where are you going?”

“What the fuck business is that of yours?”

“Maybe you wanted me to come along.”

“The last person I ever want to see again in my life is you.”

“Don't worry, they're coming.”

“Look, the only reason I'm still here is to tell her to go fuck herself the second she steps off that bus. It's obvious that she's your cousin. Your whole family is screwed up: it's in your blood.”

“Look, a bus.”

“She won't get off this time either.”

“You want to bet?”

“Sure. If she doesn't get off this time, I'll smack you on the shoulder every day of your life, you worthless stump-finger.”

“But if I win, you have to stop calling me stump-finger . . . at least for the rest of the day . . . agreed?”

Nina and her girlfriend stepped off the bus, hand in hand. In the midday Palermo sun, Nina's hello rang out clear as a bell. Gerruso ran to meet her. Nina loosed her fingers from her friend's and gave him a hug. They stood there, stationary in the roundabout where the bus line ended. They would come say hello to me, sooner or later. If only we didn't have this friend of Nina's underfoot.

“Who's he?” she asked, pointing in my direction.

I disliked her already.

“Davidù,” Nina replied.

It would have been perfect. A dream come true. I'd come up with a foolproof plan. But Gerruso, as usual, had screwed everything up by doing things without being asked, telling Nina to bring along an extra friend. Nina—she was the only one that mattered. But now, here was her girlfriend, skinny and blond, and once she had been informed of my name, all she could think to say was: “So why doesn't he come over and introduce himself?”

And dislike ripened into hatred.

She regarded me coolly as I walked over.

I said hello, extending my hand to her.

“Pleased to meet you, I'm Davide.”

The blonde left my hand dangling in midair.

“He's shorter than you, Nina.”

I wanted her dead, but only after a long period of horrible suffering.

Eliana Dumas. Blonde. Skinny. Fourteen. The Buttana Imperiale. The Imperial Whore, in person.

We got to the second inlet and I still hadn't succeeded in squeezing in a word edgewise with Nina. The whole way, the blonde complained about the fact that the sun was yellow, that June was hot, that it was a long way to walk. Once we spread out our beach towels, Nina exclaimed: “It's nice here.” Maybe even then, during that first personal interaction, I should have understood how easy it was for Nina to read my mind, gathering the loose yarn of my thoughts and knitting them back together, when my anguish was darkest and I could no longer see.

Inopportune as ever, Gerruso butted in.

“Nina, do you know how to dive?”

She shrugged her shoulders, forming a tiny dimple at the base of her neck. I was starting to feel weak again. Gerruso referred the question to the most unlikable fourteen-year-old girl on the face of the earth.

“Diving is stupid.”

In my head, I cursed her and her family a thousand different ways, but it was only when the Dumas added “And anyone who dives is soft in the head” that my body acted of its own accord and broke into a run, launching into a breathtaking dive headfirst into the waves. Blondie, take a look at this, watch and learn. In midair, I experienced the beauty of a sharp knife slicing. The challenge between me and the Buttana Imperiale had begun. Of course, checking the seabed before taking a dive is usually considered wise. In the length of the coastline, there was one—just one—stretch of shoals, and I was about to hit it square on with my head. Twisting to my right with tremendous torque, I just managed to graze the shoals with my left side. Blood poured and it stung like a bastard, but that cut was nothing compared with the laceration of my pride. I swam angrily. I could feel my heart pumping in my ribs. My self-respect was kicking, lashing out, shattered.

When I got out of the water, it was Gerruso who noticed the cut.

“You're bleeding.”

The Dumas remained poker-faced.

“I told you, you can get hurt diving.”

It was Nina who tossed the monkey wrench into the works: “I like diving.”

Then Nina started talking about her father, Emerico, and her mother, Lia, Gerruso's mother's sister.

“Ah, so Gerruso isn't your last name?”

“No.”

Her father worked at the Fiat plant in Termini Imerese. Her mother ran a stationery shop. Like me, she had no brothers or sisters. I told her so. Gerruso pointed out that I was basically an orphan, that my father was dead. That unexpected twist stirred the blonde from her indolent torpor.

“So how did you manage?”

“Manage how? Manage who? Manage what?”

“Without a father.”

“We just managed.”

“Just managed how?”

“We just lived, day by day.”

“Without a man in the house?”

“Oh, if that's what you're asking, we always had plenty of men in our house.”

“Oh, you did?”

“Yes.”

“Like who?”

“Like Uncle Umbertino.”

“Who's that?”

“My mother's cousin.”

“Her cousin or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Nina, when are we leaving? I'm starting to get bored.”

Without a word to a soul, Nina stood up, dived into the water like a nail piercing the waves, and swam off toward the horizon. She got lots of her moves wrong. An instant later, I was in flight, heading away from the only rocks breaking the surface. With vigorous strokes, I caught up to Nina. When I was near her, with Sicily as a backdrop and the sea spreading out as far as the eye could see, I no longer felt so shy and ashamed. I was even able to speak to her.

“Ciao.”

She smiled at me.

Nina, you have such big eyes, capable of watching over me even from afar. That's what I wanted to say to her. Instead the words tumbled out before I had a chance to weigh them.

“When you dive, you get your liftoff wrong. And when you swim, the way you move your left arm is wrong. And you're all uncoordinated when you kick. And you turn your head in both directions to breathe. And the way you hold your hands, actually, is wrong, too.”

My heart stood still in my chest.

What. The fuck. Was I. Saying.

Nina's eyes had opened wide.

There was astonishment in every syllable she uttered.

“Do I really make all those mistakes?”

I no longer trusted my own mouth. I answered the way my grandpa did, by dipping my head forward. Nina's eyes got bigger still, and truly, it was no contest, she was much more beautiful than the Sicily that lay off in the distance.

“And you noticed all those things just by watching me for a couple of seconds?”

I nodded my head again.

“My cousin told me that you're a boxer. Aren't you too young to be a real boxer? I thought you couldn't start boxing until you turned eighteen. How old were you when you started boxing?”

For an instant, everything came back to me, crystal clear.

The gunshot, the hurtling shards of exploding glass, Gerruso passed out on the pavement without the end of his finger, Pullara raving out of his mind, my uncle running, and Nina standing motionless, fearless.

“Nine.”

“It was that same day?”

“Yes.”

“The man who came to the piazza and then brought you to the hospital, is that your uncle Umbertino?”

“Yes.”

“He's nice, he called me ‘honey.'”

“Yes.”

“Well, so will you teach me?”

“Teach you what?”

“To swim the right way.”

The surface of the sea was smooth. In that velvety water, I felt safe and protected.

“Look, the movement doesn't start from your arm, it starts from the center of your body, like that, you see? You have to concentrate on your pelvis, Nina . . . Why are you laughing? Did I say something stupid?”

“That's the first time you've ever called me Nina.”

And she pushed off. And I saw her, as she swam along getting every single movement completely wrong, for what she really was.

Perfect.

Stretched out on their beach towels, Gerruso and the blonde were arguing animatedly.

“No, I know I'm not wrong. It's something you can say: ‘laugh-making movie.'”

“No, you definitely can't say that. You don't even know basic grammar.”

“Yes, you can. It's something you can say. Like, it's Latin or something.”

“And what do you know about Latin?”

“
He
knows Latin.”

I felt all eyes on me. They expected an answer. But I wasn't even dry yet, I could hardly be expected to speak. I tilted my head and, showing the palms of my hands, rocked my head back and forth, yes, that's right, nothing to be done about it, I know Latin.

“I don't believe it,” said the Dumas, stung to the quick.

“How come you know Latin?” Nina asked me. Not an ounce of doubt in her voice, she was sincerely curious. I couldn't believe that it could be so simple to release me from my paralysis. I answered in a low voice, to keep her girlfriend from hearing me.

“
M'u 'nzignò mia nonna
.”

That's how it came out, in dialect: my grandma taught me.

I spoke from my blood.

“In Italian, anyway, that's not something you can say,” the Dumas said to hammer home the point.

Gerruso was genuinely surprised.

“Something you can't say? What do you mean: ‘Not something you can say'? I just said it! And I say lots of other things just like it: tear-jerking movie, fear-making movie, yawn-making movie. You can say it, and how.”

“You're just ignorant. But how on earth could he know Latin?”

“His grandma.”

It was Nina who provided that answer.

“Ah, is she a schoolteacher? My mother is a teacher. In fact I know all five declensions, and the verb
sum
.”

Gerruso glanced over at me with a mist of terror clouding his eyes. I reassured him with a nod of the head. I knew how to conjugate the verb
sum
, in all tenses and all moods. My grandmother truly is a very, very, very persistent woman.

“Ah, then my mother and your grandma are colleagues. Where does she teach?”

“At Tomaselli.”

“Tomaselli? What's that? A new high school? A humanities magnet school? Is it in town? Where is it? I've never heard of it.”

“It's an elementary school.”

“An elementary school?”

“That's right, why?”

“They're teaching Latin in elementary school these days?”

“No.”

“Well?”

“She majored in classics.”

“And now she's stuck teaching elementary school.”

“What do you mean, ‘she's stuck teaching'?”

“If she'd been more successful in her career, now she'd be at the classical high school, like my mother. Instead, there she is, stuck teaching kids who barely know how to read and write, so maybe she just didn't know Latin and Greek all that well.”