On Earth as It Is in Heaven (15 page)

My grandfather had certainly been lucky: in the kitchen he was out of the sun, there wasn't a lot of talking, they searched you only on the way in and on the way out, he was reasonably free to move, and he almost never ran into Melluso.

He'd come up with a new recipe for beans and he wanted the lieutenant to be the first to taste it. D'Arpa thanked him, took the plate from his hands, and went on explaining how the National Fascist Party was committed to the fight against the Mafia.

“It's really a competition to see who has the bigger dick. In Sicily, the Mafia can't win, it would be a disaster, and it's the same thing with those corrupt assholes, the Communists, they can't win either.”

D'Arpa hated them. When he was a teenager, four Communists had beaten him bloody. His crime was being the son of a large landowner.

“That's why I took up boxing, so I could do a better job of defending myself when the time came.”

Once a week, they held tournaments, which included boxing matches, in the prison camp. D'Arpa still didn't feel up to fighting, he was tired, he needed to build up his strength to withstand the blows he knew he'd certainly receive.

“So you've never cooked before, Rosà? Not even back home?”

“No.”

“And now you even invent your own dishes. You see, life is funny, and sometimes it leads us to discover talents we never dreamed we had.”

He dug his spoon into the food and tasted it.

“Mmm, good, nice work, I like it. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

Rosario shrugged, he'd never talked about that with his friend Nenè. His one dream was a profession where you talked as little as possible, that much was true.

“I've always known that I'd have to take care of the family land, but when I was a kid, I dreamed of being a merchant: traveling, hearing new languages, seeing the world, having a home port to come back to.”

“How is it going in the woodshop?”

“You know, it's not bad at all. Cutting wood, planing it, driving nails, building a chair, learning how to make furniture, how to make a door—not really bad at all.”

D'Arpa put his bowl down on the table and started gesticulating.

“You know who I envy? Randazzo. He learned the farmer's life as a child, he knows plants and the exact times for cultivation. Have you seen him use a hoe? He's very precise when he sinks it into the soil. His body is accustomed to certain movements, he's performed them all his life, his hands are familiar with trees, branches, fruit. You need to start from childhood and learn a profession, Rosà. If I'd grown up on a boat, now I'd know the winds, the currents, and how to navigate by the stars; I'd be able to say exactly where to launch the nets based on the intensity of the swell. Instead, I'm stuck overseeing family land. I have to finish a table for the officer who arrived the day before yesterday, see you later back at the barracks.”

Rosario stopped to look out over Randazzo's vegetable garden. Every morning, after the general search, Nicola weeded, cleared away stones, and covered the plants to protect them from the lash of the sun's rays. He irrigated them with water filtered through a shirt.

“There's too much salt, and that's bad for the plants,” he explained.

His favorite plants were sheltered under the rudimentary roof of a shed made of wooden planks: they were small and green, with tender leaves. Nicola denied himself water to make sure the plants had enough to drink.

“Taking care of plants is like taking care of yourself,” he confided to my grandfather, as he showed him just how deep you need to plant onion bulbs. “Plants are honest. If you take care of them, they give you fruit and flowers. They keep you company, they never complain.”

A guard warned my grandfather that it was time to get back to work. Rosario picked up D'Arpa's plate and headed back to the kitchen. Halfway there, he dipped his finger in and sampled the new recipe. It was foul-tasting. Far too much salt. He'd forgotten to filter the water. He peeled the potatoes, performing the movement that Nicola had taught him, thumb cocked on the shaft of the knife, the potato turning in the other hand, the peel falling away in a single ribbon.

“Patience has nothing to do with it. You have to be able to read the signs in the dirt, otherwise the rabbit traps will always stand empty.”

Mino Iallorenzi had been hunting with his father ever since he was a kid. Wild game, rabbits, hares.

“But the animal that's best of all is also the most dangerous: wild boar. If it's alone, there's a good chance you can catch it, but if they're in a herd, then good luck catching them, they gallop like hell and destroy anything that gets in their way.”

“Like tanks.”

D'Arpa always managed to find the perfect comparison.

“I'm starving for meat,” said Marangola.

How long had it been since they'd tasted any? Months. The prisoners never got to eat animal flesh.

“The cocksuckers that work in the kitchen eat it all for themselves.”

Melluso had no doubt about it. Rosario and Nicola were eating meat and not even sharing a bite with their fellow prisoners.

“That's not true, I've never seen a scrap of meat in the kitchen,” Randazzo retorted.

“Don't waste time on him,” D'Arpa recommended.

Melluso sniffed loudly and spat on the ground.

“If I come into the kitchen to clean up and I see meat, you have to give me some, is that clear?”

Rosario didn't ignore that threat. If it weren't for the fact that they were searched regularly, he would have forced Nicola to carry a knife with him. Melluso was like a weed. His presence ruined the good plants.

Iallorenzi explained a number of hunting techniques—how to lay traps, how to recognize animals by the sounds they made, by their gait.

“The animal has to run to where the hunter wants it. The most important thing in hunting is right there: the trick is to herd them right into the trap.”

Marangola interrupted to point out a few differences from the world of fishing. In his experience, the only fish you really hunt are the tuna and the swordfish. Fish with unsuspected power, respected by all fishermen. Sometimes, even harpoons weren't enough. He recalled seeing speared swordfish, harpoons plunged half a yard deep into their flesh, swim away alive; tuna able to drag boats down into the deep.

Iallorenzi piped up with his point of view: “In the sea, blood dissolves, on land it becomes a trail for a hunter to follow. On dry land, a wounded animal has only hours to live.”

Randazzo had to agree. He knew animals well. In the countryside where he came from, they raised rabbits, chickens, and pigs. They had guard dogs to watch over the poultry. Nicola knew it: a wounded wild animal was bound to die before long. Hunters will follow a trail of blood to the very end.

“Have you ever slaughtered an animal?” Nicola asked.

The only one to answer in the affirmative was Mino Iallorenzi, who shot back: “Some parts should be eaten while they're still warm.”

“That's right, the liver and the brains and the heart and the kidneys and the belly, and you can also collect the blood from the throat while it's still hot, and you can use it to cook black pudding; it's delicious.”

If meat had arrived in the camp, Nicola would have known how to fix it.

“What's it like to cut an animal's throat?” D'Arpa asked.

“The smell is powerful, the blood is hot, and you can feel the life ebbing away.”

Nicola's father made him cut the throat of his first hog when he was just seven. He'd had to learn to slice through the jugular with a single clean cut in order to keep the beast from suffering: the hog would bleed to death more quickly if the blood was able to gush out all at once. You had to pull the head back high, so that the women could catch the steaming blood in a bucket.

“Every animal has a death that belongs to it.”

With chickens, the rule is simple: one hand holds the body, the other twists the neck. The first time, Nicola got it wrong, he twisted with both hands and the hen's head came off in his hand. Terrified, he dropped the hen's body. It was still moving; it managed to run a few yards, until its movements grew gradually more feeble and it petered out and it finally collapsed.

“What's it like for the animals in the countryside where you live?”

“We treat them well.”

“Do they live better or worse than us?”

Nicola didn't answer.

The sirens sounded outside the fence, the candles were extinguished, leaving them in darkness, and in no time at all a few people were already snoring, indifferent to the heat, the stench, and the insects.

“No, I swear it's true, she never called, I'm at home all day long, my mother never lets me go out, she says that Palermo is too dangerous now. If you want, I'll call Nina.”

“Okay . . . no . . . I don't know . . . I mean, yes, yes, call her, but don't tell her . . .”

“Don't tell her what?”

“Nothing, Gerruso, don't tell her anything, just ask her how she's doing. And whether she'll come see the fight on Sunday. And remind her that it's my first fight. And ask her whether she ever thinks about me, at all. No, better not. Forget what I just said. Just ask her how she's doing. No, scratch that, don't even call her. Listen, let's end this phone call right now, that's probably the best thing to do.”

“All right, but I'll hang up first. Ciao, P—”

“Don't you dare use that nickname.”

“Why not? It's nice.”

“I don't give a damn.”

For the past three days I'd been trying to reach Nina. When someone finally answered the phone, it was her mother on the other end of the line.

She wouldn't let me talk to her.

“Don't ever call here again,” she said, as an opener.

“She doesn't want to talk to you,” she added.

“I never liked you, not one little bit,” she concluded.

“So are we saying goodbye?”

“I already said goodbye to you, Gerruso.”

“Why are you so grumpy?”

I told him what had happened at the gym, that afternoon.

Maestro Franco wanted to see how fast my hands were.

My left side was in pretty bad shape.

He'd held his palms open flat and waited for mine.

A test of speed.

He shot out his hand three times and grazed me but couldn't land a punch.

Then he lifted my T-shirt to take a look at the bruise.

“Try to get better fast.”

“So, can I fight, Maestro?”

Franco crammed his cap down onto his head.

“What do you think, Umbè?”

“Sure, he can get into the ring. Anyway, his opponent, Brullera, the one from Catania, is taller and stronger than him. Carlo, come here, take this twenty thousand lire and go bet it on Brullera to win, he's certain to beat my nephew.”

He waited for me to react, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Then my uncle decreed that I was destined to lose even if I'd been in perfect health, since my father had lost his first fight, too. That was when I felt the first drip of hatred for him.

I didn't regret it in the slightest.

“Anyway, Gerruso, you gotta stop calling me on the phone.”

“But it wasn't me that called you.”

“Then who was it?”

“It was my finger, that's who dialed the number.”

“Don't tell me that you use your stump-finger to dial my home number.”

“It fits so snug into the holes, just right.”

“Listen, I'm tired, I just finished my workout, I still have to go smear some pomade on my side, ciao.”

“Do you want me to come over and put it on for you?”

“Are you an idiot?”

“It might be good for you, my hand has a different weight, maybe the stump-finger is miraculous.”

“No, really, do you have the slightest idea of how much you disgust me?”

“I couldn't say, how much, ninety-one?”

At the police station, my mother, uncle, and grandfather came to get me. My mother rushed to my side.

“How are you, light of my life? How are you both? What happened?”

It was Gerruso who told the whole story, confirming the version that I had just given the carabinieri. As soon as he came to the story of the beating, he enriched it with a bounty of detail that I'd suppressed in my account.

“Lift your T-shirt, Davidù.”

The size of the bruise astonished even the police officers.

“Signora, he didn't tell us a thing.”

There would be no charges. The trip to the police station was a formality. Now that our families had arrived, we'd be released. No one told me that what I'd done was wrong. Gerruso's mother came in, too. She shouted the whole time. The first thing she did, instead of asking “Are you all right?” was to slap her son's face, grab him by the ear, and charge out the door. Gerruso threw his arm behind him and waved goodbye, waggling the hand with the stump-finger. Umbertino dropped a coin into the slot of the phone in the corridor of police headquarters and called Franco.