On Earth as It Is in Heaven (8 page)

“My cousin Nina.”

The swing started to sway back and forth again. The hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. My head was spinning. My throat was dry.

To regain control, I forced myself to start talking.

“Did you know that they took me to the gym?”

“To do what?”

“To box, worthless piece of crap. I come from a family of boxers: my father, my uncle. But my mother pitched a fit.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, she said that I gotta study, that she won't hear of it, that I can't become a boxer, that sort of thing, women's talk.”

“And so?”

“And so, first things first, if she got mad at me that's your fault, if you hadn'ta cut off your finger, I wouldn't have had to beat up Pullara, and none of this mess woulda happened.”

“That's true.”

“I know it.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, the damage is done.”

“I'm really sorry.”

“Not as sorry as me. I made a deal with my mother. Really, Umbertino made the deal. I can if I make good grades at school.”

“Jesus, that's tough.”

“Gerruso, I'm not an idiot like you. I've got all my fingers.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“It matters, it matters. You've lost a part of you, you were already an idiot, now you're more of one.”

“But, wait, if I've lost a part of me, I oughtta be less of an idiot, right?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“What did your grandfather do for a living?”

“Traffic cop, same as my dad.”

“There, it's obvious that you're completely hopeless. If you'd had a grandfather who was a cook, like mine, you'd understand the intelligence of fingers.”

“Would you explain it to me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You're an idiot, you wouldn't understand.”

“Right.”

“Hey, stump-finger, you wanna hear something great?”

“Yes.”

“I learned to make fried rice balls:
arancine
!”

“Bravo-o-o.”

There wasn't a trace of envy in Gerruso's voice. That was too bad: What's the point of telling someone something if it doesn't make them even a little bit envious?

All the same, I explained my grandpa's lesson to him: before beginning to boil the rice, he had me touch every grain with my fingertips.

“It's the fingers that recognize the quality of the ingredients,” he had said.

His hands moved with agility, a caress for every ingredient. Then the boiling, the addition of saffron, meat sauce, and peas, the ball rolled in the breading, then the frying, and finally sheer admiration for the way that out of the incandescent oil there emerged an
arancina a carne
—a little meat orange—beautiful, spherical, appetizing, delicious.

“If you were a friend a mine, I'd have brought you one, Gerruso.”

“Thanks, that's nice of you.”

Without warning, the door to the room swung open. Umbertino appeared in the doorway. He had the look of someone who expects to enjoy what's about to happen.

“Davidù, see if you can guess who's come to the hospital.”

“Pullara.”

A quick spark gleamed in the center of his pupils. In the silence that followed, I understood that I'd given the wrong answer, but I also sensed the pride that he felt when he heard me utter that name.

Umbertino did nothing more than step to one side.

Behind him, outside the door, with a bouquet of flowers in one hand, was Nina.

Red hair worn in a braid.

Light-colored dress, ankle-length.

Deep, dark eyes.

White shoes.

Mulberry lips.

And the swing began to sway again.

Behind her, two adults. Nina had both a mother and a father. Gerruso's aunt and uncle weren't as ugly as their nephew, and they had all ten fingers. They went over to him and told him that it was just a matter of minutes, his parents were coming to see him. Nina was with them. She wasn't looking at me.

I leaned against the wall. I felt weak and sick.

Why was Nina over there with Gerruso? He was ugly.

Why wouldn't she come over to the wall with me? I still had all my fingers in one piece.

I couldn't say or do anything.

The wall was all I had left.

Umbertino was already bending over me.

“Hey, everything all right?”

“Uncle, I'm sick.”

“Look me in the eyes. I said, look me in the eyes. Now.”

His voice was warm. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper.

“You're not sick.”

“Oh, yes, I am.”

“Davidù, you're just growing up, and what you're discovering is that it's not just your head that decides what and who you like, but your body, above all. Do you want to leave?”

He held out the palm of his hand to me. It was big and welcoming. I felt like crying and I didn't know why.

“Best wishes to everyone, ladies and gentlemen; ciao, Gerruso, take care of yourself; ciao, youngster, you're a sweetheart; ciao, Ester, I'll call you tonight.”

I didn't know whether Nina was responding to that farewell; I couldn't bring myself to look in her direction.

And yet I had them, the words.

I had them.

They were the first words that had come to mind.

Nina, I wanted to tell her, look, my hand is clean, my fingers aren't always covered in blood, can I twirl them in your hair until they vanish?

At the door, my uncle stopped.

“Davidù, someone wants to say goodbye to you.”

“Gerruso?”

“Lift your head, light of my life.”

There was an unfamiliar gentleness in my uncle's voice.

I lifted my head.

Nina was smiling at me and waving goodbye to me.

Then she raised her hand to her mouth and blew me a kiss.

And I died right then and there.

“Davidù, I'm sorry, I didn't understand how much you like her.”

In the car, my uncle was patting my head.

I would have fallen to the ground at Nina's feet if my uncle hadn't held me up. My legs had betrayed me. There was a new knot of hardness in my groin.

“It's normal to be ashamed. When you really like somebody, your body does strange things.”

“Did it happen to you, too, Uncle?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And did it get hard down there, too?”

“Like marble, if I do say so myself.”

“So I'm not sick?”

“Since when is feeling the life in your own body a sign of sickness? There is only one truth and it's a simple one: that girl gets your blood up, with a vengeance.”

“Is it always that way when you like someone?”

“Even worse, kid. There are people, poor things, who instead of marble find a deflated balloon.”

“I don't understand.”

“I knew that we'd get here sooner or later.”

“What do you mean by ‘here'?”

“The fact that you're turning into a young man.”

There were no rough edges to his voice.

He spoke words as soothing as the taste of warm bread.

Words of a father.

He drove slowly, carefully. He listened to me listening. He confided in me, revealing to me fears, anxieties, sorrows, not shying away from the gray areas. He explained to me that when you like a girl, your penis swells up and gets stiff.

“And that's good for when we're in bed with them. Because as soon as you're inside a woman, that's when the fairy tale begins, but that's something—listen to your uncle—that's something you should never tell women, because women are such kissy creatures, it takes the patience of a saint, it's a truth you'll find written in the Gospels: blessed are those who put up with all the kisses of women without complaining before getting down to the real business. And in any case, no, the string doesn't tear off, that's all bullshit. Any other questions? No? Good, now your uncle is going to explain all the best positions for you.”

Umbertino was stripping himself bare. He warmed me up, spreading himself over me like a blanket. His memories proliferated along with the explanations. My heart felt lighter, even if a small thorn remained stuck in it and stubbornly refused to be plucked out. It was still there when I got home. My mother wasn't home yet, but this time it was better that way. I stretched out on the bed and shut my eyes. The only thing I could feel was that tiny unexpected thorn. The one person I wanted with me, right then, wasn't there. Nina. I wanted to show her my clean fingers, tell her that as far as I was concerned she had already won, she had both parents, I'd lost my father, so it was two to one, her favor. Also, I wanted my father. My father, whom I'd never met, was the one who should have been consoling me, not my uncle. It was my father who should have explained to me that I wasn't sick, that my penis was standing up in a sign of respect for women, that the swing I felt surging back and forth in my stomach was just my heart dancing. An uncle is an uncle, not a father. But he wasn't there next to me, and neither was Nina. I did what my mother often did: I shut the door to my bedroom and bit my pillow hard to make sure the rest of the world couldn't hear me cry.

It would be five years before I saw Nina again.

For four days Rosario, stripped naked, had been stretched out in the sunlight.

On the first day, all the other grape harvesters chose not to pay any attention, dismissing him as odd.

“He's completely crazy, never says a word to a soul, if he won't work, he'll have to hash it out with the boss, and what the fuck do we care about that.”

If he wouldn't work, he wasn't going to get paid, and it was none of their business.

The next day, the same scene; they began to mock him openly.

“Damned lizard.”

He ignored them.

On the third day, they progressed to outright insults and abuse, piecing together a mythical saga of his faggotry, but it fell on deaf ears. A stone is indifferent to the words of mankind.

It was on the fourth day of his sun worshipping that Melino Miceli, the row boss, renamed him
La Nèglia
, the worthless thing.

The
nèglia
is something that has no use. Once it has been recognized as devoid of any practical utility, a useless thing just gets in the way, generates confusion; it undermines the very idea of an established order. The larger relationship with the system of things is compromised. To describe something as worthless is an indication of defeat: no potential uses can be found, the interplay of possible combinations—or perhaps we should say: the imagination's ability to create hypotheses—turns out not to be boundless. The thing, in all its infinite piety, sits there, on the mantelpiece, in a cardboard box, or in the garbage, intent on performing the most merciful act imaginable. It serves our ends, allowing us to do anything, allowing us to do to it what we will, never pronouncing judgment on our inadequacy.

But
La Nèglia
cared nothing for details like the harvest, his pay, the insults, being fired.

He'd been drafted.

He was slated to board a troopship, in two days' time.

He was going to war.

Destination: Africa.

How big a place could that be: Africa?

People said that there were no such things as shadows in Africa.

They said that all the savagery in the world was there, lions, snakes, negroes, in Africa.

His friend Nenè would have liked it.

“Come on,
Nèglia
, come drink the first glass with us.”

One of the harvesters brought my grandfather a glass full of wine. My grandfather opened his hand to take the glass.

“Look,
La Nèglia
is moving,” said one.

“When it's time to drink, even the stones start to move,” opined another.

“
Nèglia
, drink it or I'll cut your throat,” chimed in Melino Miceli.

In the silence that came in the wake of the threat, the rock decided to prove to the world that it was made of flesh and blood, and therefore capable of motion. It turned its head, it opened its eyes, and it tipped the glass, pouring the wine out onto the dirt.

Melino Miceli decided that the time had come to show why he and no one else was the row boss. Cursing a blue streak, he walked over to Rosario, turned to face him, and without a word of warning raised one arm. Silhouetted against the blue of the sky was a wooden club, gnarled and stout. A shadow fell over my grandfather's face. Even then, he remained motionless.

“Still, this Melino Miceli, he was trouble. But why were you lying out in the sun?”

“What do you think?”

“For the same reason you wouldn't drink.”

“Exactly. I was doing what you do every day.”

“What?”

“I was training.”

“For what?”

“To withstand heat and thirst.”

The gnarled dark wooden club was swinging down from above to strike
La Nèglia
when a gleam of light illuminated the September air. The glass tumbler had already been tossed straight up by Rosario's hand. The movement was so fast that none of the grape harvesters even saw it happen. The silence that ensued was dictated more by amazement than by dismay. The glass struck the row boss square in the face, tearing his forehead wide open. Melino Miceli lost his balance and the swinging club, deflected, just grazed my grandfather. On the ground, shards of glass glittered amid drops of blood and scattered grapes. Rosario put on his clothes, walked away from the grape harvest, went back home, and told them that he was being shipped out to Africa.