Born Twice (Vintage International) (6 page)

“It’s really quite common,” she said with a sigh. (It’s always reassuring to discover that our absurdities are normal. That’s how we cope with them.) “It’s pure jealousy of the younger sibling, who gets pampered by the parents and is always the center of attention.”

“Yes, but because of his problems.”

“That makes no difference,” she had replied. “Alfredo stopped being the sun and became a satellite. He’ll never be able to forgive his brother for that. That kind of wound never heals.”

I’ve never been able to understand why the wounds of the unconscious refuse to heal. All other wounds heal, but unconscious ones continue to bleed for as long as we live. Perhaps because they’re unconscious, because everybody knows about them except us. Alfredo wasn’t aware that he hated Paolo, at least on the surface. Once I described his brother’s condition to him in great detail, comparing it with his.

“So?” he asked.

“So you have to help him,” I said.

“Why? Don’t I already?”

“No,” I replied, “you do the exact opposite.” I’ll never forget how he cried, at first in a whimper and then with growing distress. The only way I could calm him down was by shaking him. “Think about it!” I had shouted in his face.

“That was the last thing you should have said,” my psychiatrist friend comforted me by saying. “Only love can attenuate the wounds. Now you have to love him even more than before.”

But I loved him less. That’s what worried me. You can make practically anything happen except feelings. And still, those who are closest to you will continue to tell you what you should do and how you should behave. They construct logical systems and create mathematical proofs and come up with undeniable conclusions: If you love then you should react in such and such a way. But I feel differently. Franca is barely surprised by me anymore, while the other one can only accuse me. How many times did I pretend to react the way they expected me to? And while I know that mine was a fiction, can we be sure their proofs were flawless? That the reactions I simulated were the only “right” ones? Life is so much more than a proof. Anyway, they were the wrong reactions for me. Perhaps maturity means respecting the injustice of one’s own reactions. Perhaps maturity means substituting the injustice of conventional thinking with unjust freedom. Even if this—I am beginning to realize—sounds like the introduction to a manual on criminal behavior.

Alfredo, who was not living up to my expectations, could have relied on the very same alibi. If he felt aversion toward his brother, was it really his fault? And wasn’t I also not living up to his expectations of understanding and solidarity? The rationales of the weak make sense to us only when they become our own.

Alfredo had been dethroned and could not be resigned to that. To top it off, he didn’t even like his brother. The frailty that should have made him feel more tenderly toward him—there’s that
should
again—actually drove a stake between them. The pathology distanced him. His discomfort changed to repulsion. I knew what he was going through because sometimes I felt the same way.

This made it feel foreign to me. We’re reluctant to accept those flaws that, magnified in others, we fear in ourselves. Because of the difference in scale and the accompanying sense of remorse, they become unacceptable. Alfredo would smirk when Paolo would try, and fail, to catch a ball. Then, when it happened a second time, he’d laugh. That’s the difference between us: I’d get exasperated while he’d be amused. (There’s never a lack of comparisons that favor us.) But Paolo, on the other hand, who stood between us, sometimes just couldn’t take it anymore and would start to cry; his hands would grip at the smooth floor as if it too might slip away from him.

One on One

The principal of the elementary school is disabled. He limps when he walks, dipping slightly with each step, his left leg extending out to the side. When he sits down, he plants his cane in front of him like a baseball bat and rests his chin on top of his hands.

Writing about him now, after so many years, I realize that I never knew—nor was I ever curious to know—the cause of his impediment. It could have been the war. Maybe he had polio. My general indifference, which is even more telling because of my personal case, teaches me something about the distance that exists between the disabled and us.

In any event, his impediment was eclipsed by his enormous vitality. He’d get up from his desk suddenly, violently, rotating his stiff leg outward. And when he came down the hall—tall, bearded, and gaunt, hunched over his cane with that lopsided gait of his—teachers and children alike would move aside to let him by. And if someone didn’t notice in time that he was advancing toward them, they’d leap out of the way to avoid an encounter. He was fully aware of the uneasy feelings he provoked in others. Indeed, he often chose to intensify them by waving his cane in the air to emphasize his words or to point someone out, in both cases managing to transform a simple gesture into a threat.

I knew he was feared within the school as a serious womanizer. All the female teachers had to defend themselves from his gruff rapacity. From the older women he expected the smallest display of sexual loyalty, a kind of temporary and immediate relief. Though somewhat more careful with the younger ones, he was no less insistent. Once, called before the Superintendent after being accused by one of his victims, he shamelessly managed to have the charges reversed in the name of corruption. I’d like to hope that today such a reversal wouldn’t be possible and he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. But back then the victim gave up trying, as she said, to nail him to his responsibilities. Nor was there any lack of women either, among the so-called “non-faculty staff ” who had had some kind of intimate relationship with him, an expression that in his case suggested something sordid and lecherous.

This bristly-faced, smooth-talking city satyr was constantly on the prowl for sexual favors, for pleasures stolen through intimidation and surprise, for brief liaisons with women who were at their wits’ end in silent despair. He reminded me of the pillager of a ruined city or a jackal after an earthquake. Or of one of those men who’d be shot on the spot—now there’s an unparalleled expression (we find a variation of it in “summary execution”). It’s a terminology that, under the guise of “equality,” always managed to satisfy my homicidal instincts.

It’s a shame we can punish only those who commit physical crimes and not those who are guilty of psychological ones. I detest men who “collect” sexual adventures; they use trickery and deception to obtain that which rapists obtain with force. Moreover, these psychological rapists are considered great seducers. What distinguishes the two, besides the apparent identity of their object (never a better word) of desire, is that they are never won over by their prey, they’re never taken with their victims’ loss of power. These men court women with the same dark determination with which misogynists avoid them. Essentially, both groups hate women, only in different ways and with different consequences. That the scorn they have for their victims is matched by their victims’ image of them validates them, provides them with the final stamp of approval. As such, the man finds the alibi to begin his hunt all over again.

The principal of the Martin Luther King Scuola Elementare might not have needed an alibi. He was only concerned about the penal repercussions. While psychological thieves are unquestionably of lower principles than apple thieves (the biblical fruit being the preferred one for such metaphors), no laws exist to stop them. Indeed, if their intentions are never transformed into action, a crime is never actually committed. This is the minuscule abyss that separates the penal from the moral code.

These prejudices were well established within me when I met with the principal in his office on the second floor of the recently completed school. Its structure—cube-shaped buildings connected by staircases, bridges, and open, airy corridors— and the outlying constellation of lawns and shrubs gave it a modern feeling of spaciousness and light, entirely different from the Lombrosian isolation of my own school.

His manner is both gruff and courteous. He wants to make me feel like a colleague. Given his seniority in age, he has the sad privilege of inviting me to address him with the informal
tu.
He observes me carefully. He has sunken cheeks and his eyes are bright with excitement. Pointing to his bad leg, which juts out from behind the desk, he refers to the unfair circumstances that unite us. There is a kind of caustic glee in this casual show of solidarity; it’s the bitterly private sense of humor of someone who enjoys imposing his handicap on others.

“Now let’s be clear,” he says promptly.

I’ve always disliked that phrase. It’s never the invitation to transparency that it seems to be. On the contrary, it always inaugurates an exchange of hostilities.

“You’re lucky to have found a principal like me.”

He looks up to see how I react to what he’s saying.

“If there’s anyone who knows what it means to be handicapped, it’s me.”

I nod, glancing discreetly at his leg.

“Your son will have everything he needs here: the right teacher, the right classroom on the ground floor. . . .”

I ought to be happy, and in fact I am. But something about this man reminds me of a tour guide or a real estate agent, extolling a product in order to justify its price. What price will I have to pay?

“You won’t have to worry about a thing. Just transportation, that’s all.”

“That’s not a problem; we’ll bring him by car or he’ll come in his go-cart,” I assure him. “My wife will take care of that.”

“Fine, but—” He stops himself, as if interrupted by a thought, as if he were considering me in light of an idea that flashed through his mind. But he held off. “You won’t have to worry about a thing: lunch breaks, recesses, absences. I imagine your son requires special attention.”

I hesitate for a moment.

“Yes,” I say. “Better add it to the list.”

“I’m giving you the best teacher I’ve got. A blond girl from Bolzano, Signorina Bauer. A very understanding person, though not with men.”

He peers at me intensely.

“Do you like women? There’s a pretty good choice here. Ah, if it weren’t for this damn leg.”

He extends it out farther, an expression of pain suddenly crossing his face.

“Still, I manage,” he continues. “You know, I just can’t do without it. Who was it that said it was as necessary to him as food itself ? Well, the same goes for me.” After a brief pause he adds, “My wife died ten years ago. It’s better that way, poor thing. I really wasn’t cut out for marriage.”

Just then, the secretary must have looked in and signaled to him because he nods and she enters the room with a file and some papers for him to sign.

I look at him carefully. As he sits there against the light, a large plate-glass window behind him, his silhouette reminds me of the devil, come down from some craggy peak to reign over this glass palace.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I lie (as one always does when answering like that). “No, actually”—I correct myself—“I was thinking about the impression I get of your school.”

“Really? And what would that be?”

“That it’s efficient, things get done. But people had already told me about it.”

“Oh, really?” he asks, apprehensively curious.

“Yes,” I say. “The only negative things I heard have to do with your adventures.”

“Which ones?”

“Those with the opposite sex.”

I don’t think I’ve ever used that term before, suggestive of both evolutionism and isolationism. It’s probably because of him. He looks at me in utter dejection.

“And you believe all that nonsense?”

“No. I’m just referring it to you.”

He shrugs. “Water under the bridge. I never forced anyone to do anything. It’s a free country, don’t you think?”

“Of course.”

“A few years ago I had some problems with a teacher, but she packed up and moved back to the country.” His eyes flash with anger. “Poor thing.”

He used the same words to describe his wife. (Where there’s contempt for people, there’s contempt for language.)

“What do you expect!” he says, gesturing toward the sky. “I’m just a little ship! I navigate by sight.” Then, after a pause, he adds, “We have to distract ourselves somehow, don’t you think? Life has been rough enough on us already. I know a thing or two about it.” He scrutinizes me. “But you have your own troubles. There has to be some kind of compensation, don’t you think?”

“Of course,” I reply.

More than an associate, he’s looking for an accomplice. And he finds one. We give up so easily in dialogue! And we’re equally as inflexible in our monologues.

“You’re not some kind of moralist, are you?” he suddenly asks suspiciously.

“No,” I say with a smile. I could practically be his surrogate. “There’s nothing worse than that.”

“I agree.”

When you have to find something to agree on, pretend to find it in words.

He observes me with curiosity. “I only ask because I have the impression that you and I will get along.”

“Yes, I’m sure we will.”

“You’re at least twenty years younger than I, but intelligence has no age, right?”