“Mamma's not home from the hospital yet?”
“No. It looks like a bomb went off on top of your head.”
She started laughing, between a hacking cough and a mouthful of smoke.
Grandma smelled of tobacco and chalk.
She was an elementary school teacher.
She taught me to read and write.
I was four years old.
She had pestered me.
“Davidù, shall we learn how to read and write?”
Every goddamned day.
She was relentless, and I finally gave in. In part because she promised that once I learned, she'd teach me how to burp on command.
She was as good as her word.
“What did you do today?”
“At school, nothing, the teacher let us draw because she's working on our report cards, then in the piazza me and my friends talked about when we would be grown up.”
“When we
will
be grown up.”
“Okay, but you knew what I meant.”
“Davidù, it's not enough for someone to understand the things you say. Words need to be treated with care. What did Grandma teach you? What are words?”
“The expression of our thoughts.”
“Why do we use the future tense?”
“To give a direction to our plans and hopes and all that kind of stuff.”
“Bravo, light of my life, if you were a little older I'd offer you a nice cigarette.”
“Why aren't you upstairs with Grandpa?”
“I wanted to smoke in blessed peace, as if it were six forty in the evening.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's something I've done since I was a girl. Back then, the war was still going on and the Americans had reached Capaci. They were giving away chocolate bars and cigarettes. I met this soldier, Michael. He gave me my very first pack of cigarettes, in exchange for a dance.”
“Did you kiss him?”
“No, silly. Back then I had a job, I'd already been working in Palermo for a few months, at the city library, and I was studying for the civil service exam.”
“Because in those days, civil service exams were tough, you always tell me that, Grandma.”
“I even know Ancient Greek.”
“The story, Grandma.”
“The library is next to the church of Casa Professa. Bombs hit them both during the famous raid of May 9, 1943. In the wing of the library that was still intact, I spent the day archiving books that had been dug out of the rubble. I wrote down title, author's name, missing pages. Bombs don't just sweep away people, houses, and hopes. Bombs erase memories, too. When the workday was over, I leaned against the sycamore tree in front of Casa Professa and lit my favorite cigarette, the six forty evening cigarette. I'd leave the workday and my job behind, savoring that nice pungent taste and relaxing, from the first puff to the last. While I smoked, the crowds streaming into and out of the Ballarò market kept swelling. Back then, the market was especially crowded at the end of the day. So crowded you had to hold your packages high over your head to get anywhere. The houses didn't have refrigerators back then, and they had to sell everything before it went bad, so they cut prices in the evening. The kids would stand in line to buy salt, playing rock, paper, scissors. The women gossiped about love affairs and girls who had eloped. Here and there, a man, scented with cologne, stood in line for potatoes, singing the first few notes of an aria and winking at anyone who met his gaze. I couldn't say how many cigarettes I smoke every day, twenty, maybe twenty-five, but the one I really enjoy, my favorite one, is the cigarette of six forty in the evening, and even when it's not six forty in the evening, say right now, I pretend it is, I stop whatever I'm doing, I walk away from everything and everyone, I savor my cigarette, and to hell with the world.”
Grandma taught her pupils bad words, too, secretly; she said it helped prepare them for life. “Life is more than verbs and arithmetic, it's mud and dirty words, too, and knowledge is better than ignorance.”
A police car came toward us, slowed down, looked us over, drove by, and went away.
On the bed, a note from my mother, in her distinctive nurse's handwriting.
“Your uncle wants you to go someplace with him at 4, he'll come by to pick you up, goodbye, light of my life.”
In the kitchen, Grandpa was cooking lunch. Whenever there were strangers around, he was practically mute. Grandpa Rosario talked only to me and his old friend Randazzo. He worked as a cook.
“What are you cooking?”
“
Pasta ch'i tenerumi
.”
He blanched and peeled a tomato, then sliced it. Grandpa's hands were lightning fast.
“How do you know how long to cook everything? Are there tables, like for multiplication?”
“You just have to learn to get the ingredients right.”
“And how do you learn that?”
“By getting them wrong.”
On the shelf in the dining room stood a photograph of my parents on their wedding day. My father's right arm protectively encircled my mother's shoulders, his hair was parted to one side, his suit was dark. He was smiling. In his blue eyes there was a fierce note of hope; he could hardly have known he'd be dead within the month. In the photograph, my father was as handsome as his nickname implied: the Paladin. Mamma wore a white dress and held a red rose. Her eyes were shut as she breathed in the scent of the flower: serene, a definitive serenity.
“So that's that: I'm bettin' on this fine trifecta: Pirollo, Little Frenchman, and Abracadabra. A fabulous combination. Let's go on home now.”
“Aren't you going to watch the race, Uncle?”
“Why on earth would I wanna waste my time watching the race?”
“You made a bet.”
“Davidù, get this into your head once and for all: once you've gone and made your bet, it's none of your business no more. It's even written in the Holy Scriptures: first you size things up, then you lay your bet, and after that, to hell with it.”
The calm detachment with which my uncle had made his bet. That's what I was thinking about on the piazza, in the sweaty aftermath of lunch, while we subjected Gerruso to a firing squad of slaps and smacks.
Nino Pullara had issued the order: “Let's play neck-slap; Gerruso, you're it.”
That pathetic loser, unaware that the game was nothing more than a pretext to beat him up, started over to the wall without a word. He dragged his feet as he walked. An inexorable march. He knew he was headed toward certain pain, but he was so stubbornly determined to be part of our gang that his sense of personal dignity had long ago lost its battle against his resignation. Why didn't Gerruso just look for other friends, friends who were as fat and worthless as he was? Why did he accept all this misery? I felt not a scrap of pity for him. He was a weakling. Weaklings deserve no respect.
Gerruso reached the wall, covered his eyes with his right hand, wedged his left hand under his armpit, and held it open, flat. He was ready to play the game. But Pullara had decided to twist the rules. Even if Gerruso did guess who'd slapped him, we'd say he was wrong, he'd have to turn back around, and he'd get another smack on the back of his neck and then another and another, over and over again.
The goal wasn't to play.
The goal was to slaughter him.
The first slap was thrown by Danilo Dominici.
Gerruso took it, suppressing a groan of pain, then turned and looked hard at us.
“Danilo Dominici.”
“No.”
Pullara had answered for the rest of us.
Gerruso wasn't cheating.
Pullara was.
Lele Tranchina took a running start and slapped with every muscle in his body. Gerruso throttled a cry of hurt deep in his throat. He turned around, without looking at anyone in particular.
“Tranchina.”
“No.”
Gerruso turned back to the wall without a word. He was a weakling. He deserved all the pain in the world.
I spat on the palm of one hand and rubbed it into the other, the way they did in the movies I'd watched at the theater with Umbertino, who would say after every killing: “Finally a movie the way they oughtta be made, not one of those French pieces of garbage for people who are sick of living. Look at that beautiful explosion! Now this is art.”
The truth is, Gerruso, you were born for French movies.
I hit him with such extreme violence that I even surprised myself. The slap didn't erupt into the ringing sound of a smack; instead it was muffled at impact by his entire body into a single, cavernous moan.
Gerruso looked at me instantly, ignoring everyone else.
“Pullara.”
Why, Gerruso? Why? What possible reason could you have for being such a loser? You'd guessed who it was that time, too; you should have said my name; that's not how the game is played.
“Wrong!”
Drops of saliva sprayed out of Pullara's mouth. His pupils gleamed with fire. He would be the next one to deliver a neck-slapâit was obvious.
“Turn around, you dumb baby. Now I'll bet we make you cry.”
Pullara didn't state the challenge with detachment; he was ferociously committed. He was hopping in the air, waving his hand to warm it up. Once again he broke the rules, bringing his clenched fist down straight onto Gerruso's ear. Gerruso bent over like a snapped twig. Pullara burst into an animal howl, one finger pointing straight up at the sky. Gerruso stood back up, both arms dangling at his sides.
“Pullara,” he said.
His eyes hadn't wept a single tear.
As I walked home, a powerful white Vespa roared past, cutting across my path. Two men, both wearing full-face helmets. I saw myself reflected in the visors. My expression was relaxed, even though both hands had leaped to cover my mouth. It was an instinctive movement. The body bent over in anticipation of danger, warning the senses to react. In Palermo, the defensive crouch is an art handed down from one generation to the next. It becomes more refined as you grow in the city's womb. It was the helmets that made me crouch. No one wore helmets in the city, especially in that heat. Grandma said that heat waves made people lose their minds.
“Have you ever wondered why people kill each other over a parking space in the summer? It's the heat.”
“Does that worry you?”
“Not in the slightest, light of my life, nothing can happen to me, I don't even have a driver's license.”
Uncle Umbertino was already waiting out front.
He was bouncing on his toes.
“You're late, I've already been standing here for a hell of a long time, two minutes at the very least.”
“We were all smacking the fool out of Gerruso.”
“Who's Gerruso?”
“Just a kid.”
“You rough him up good, so he felt it?”
“Yes.”
“Good, there's always some good reason to beat the fool out of a body. But listen, there's been all kinda uproar in this neighborhood: engines roaring and screeching tires, more'n I'm used to.”
“What does it mean?”
“How the fuck do I know, I'm no mechanic.”
“Isn't Mamma home yet?”
“Do you think for one second that if your mother was upstairs, I'd be waiting here in the middle of the street in all this heat?”
“But don't you have your own keys to our apartment?”
“Yes.”
“So why didn't you use them?”
“For two reasons. First of all, I wanted to make sure you had your keys, like you oughtta.”
“Here they are.”
“Make sure you don't lose them.”
“What's the second reason?”
“I left the keys to your house at my house, absurd, ain't it? Now, let's go to the barbershop.”
“But I don't want to get my hair cut, Mamma cuts my hair for me.”
“Davidù, what the hell do I care about your hair, you'll come to the barbershop with me because I'm asking you, nice and polite, to come with me. Now get moving, because I'm already sick and tired of waiting.”
There was a sign in red paint on the front of the barbershop.
TONY: SHAVE and HAIRCUT
Inside, sitting in the revolving chair, was an old man, his face coated in white foam. Standing next to him, straight razor in hand, was the barber, Tony.
“Is there much of a wait?” my uncle asked.
“This shave, haircut for the gentleman, then you.”
“Do you have a horse-racing sheet?”
“What do you think? Would it be a barbershop without it? Right over there.”
Umbertino took a seat, began reading intently about the ponies. I sat down next to him, on a red chair that creaked all over. In the stack of newspapers, a glossy magazine. On the cover, it said ADULTS ONLY. The pages were wrinkled and torn.
“So you're telling the truth, Tony?” the old man asked the barber. It seemed as if the foam was talking.
Every movement of Tony's body spoke eloquently of his sincere concern.
“I swear it's true, he was a certified genuine faggot.”
“But didn't you notice at first that he was queer?”
“Now to look at him, he looked normal, an upstanding citizen, I even talked to him about the game, you understand? We talked 'bout soccer together, that's what I'm telling you.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Exactly.”
The customer whose turn came before ours was sitting to my left. He had curly hair and a bristly mustache. He felt called upon to break into the conversation at this point in the story.
“But Tony, are you sure he didn't infect you?”
“Right! That's exactly the problem. This momosexuality is one hell of a disease.”
“The worst thing there is,” the customer with the mustache agreed.
“No laughing matter, that's for sure,” the barber reiterated.
Finally Umbertino's voice. He spoke without lowering the racing sheet.
“I hear that them as get infected wind up taking it straight up the ass.”