Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (6 page)

T
uesday March 23, 10:48
P.M.

Our neighbor Elisabetta Fabiani is addicted to two things: dogs and thrillers. It’s pointless to talk to her about anything in which there is no mention of a dog or of Hitchcock or Agatha Christie, Colombo or Derrick, Montalbano or Poirot. Elisabetta watches the police shows on TV every day. She is mad for the series
Rex
, which is about the adventures of a dog who is the assistant to a police inspector; he has an uncommon intelligence and performs extraordinary feats.

Saturday January 16, 11:28
P.M.

The barking of Elisabetta’s dog sounds like wailing; it makes me happy. Stefania can’t bear it. This morning she quarreled again with Elisabetta and threatened to call the police if her dog doesn’t stop barking in the middle of the night. “You’re a racist, a fanatic, you hate animals,” Elisabetta accused her. Stefania was furious, and she asked me with amazement and candor, “Am I a racist and fanatic because I can’t sleep at night on account of that insistent barking?” I answered, “Of course you’re a fanatic, but only of love!” Then she laughed and kissed me for a long time.

Tuesday November 14, 10:57
P.M.

Tonight Elisabetta warned me about the Gypsies who sell things that have been stolen from the market in Piazza Vittorio. She told me that animals are more civilized than Gypsies from any point of view. After a long, circuitous digression she got to the point: “Don’t open the door of your house to that drunken Gypsy who, under the pretext of feeding the pigeons, sells drugs.” I realized that she was referring to poor Parviz. “He’s not a Gypsy, he’s Iranian,” I reminded her, and she answered with great conviction: “It doesn’t matter if he is Iranian or American or Swiss or whatever. The important thing is that he behaves exactly like a Gypsy, and that’s why I say that Gypsies are not born but made.” I said goodbye without commenting.

Thursday March 23, 11:45
P.M.

This morning Elisabetta asked me to support her legal battle in defense of the dogs of the world. She reported that the tenants intend to vote on a building rule that would forbid dogs to use the elevator, and that this law is directed against poor Valentino. She reminded me that racism began in the United States when blacks were forbidden to sit on buses next to whites. She would like me to sign a petition in defense of the right of Valentino and his fellow-creatures throughout the world to use the elevator, the metro, the buses, to take airplanes, trains, ships, to have the right to inherit, to sexuality, to housing, and so on. I signed the petition without discussion.

Wednesday August 27, 10:49
P.M.

This morning I ran into Elisabetta. She was very depressed. She said that she still hopes for Valentino’s return, and that she possesses irrefutable proof that Sardinian kidnapping gangs are involved in what happened to her little pet. It’s obvious that the dog filled her life after her husband’s death and the departure of her only son. Valentino isn’t simply a dog but a true companion who protects her from solitude.

Sunday October 20, 11:08
P.M.

Elisabetta’s condition gets worse every day. I saw her tonight walking barefoot near Piazza Vittorio calling her vanished dog. I feel sorry for Elisabetta. How can a human being become so attached to an animal?

W
hen I get married and have a child I’m going to call him Amedeo. This is a promise I’ve been making to myself for years. Sadly, so far I haven’t experienced the joy of having children, though I’ve been pregnant plenty of times. I know that the Church, the Pope, and the priests are definitely against abortion, but why do they think only of the fetus? Don’t I deserve a little care and attention? Who thinks about poor Maria Cristina Gonzalez?

Signor Amedeo is the only person who treats me kindly and supports me in difficult moments. I’m unfortunate and stupid, this I don’t deny. My situation inspires bewilderment and surprise. Usually women are so happy when they get pregnant, but I weep, out of fear of losing my job, fear of poverty, the future, the police, everything. I sit on the stairs and cry after telling Signora Rosa the usual: “I’m going to do a little shopping.” If she saw me crying she would throw me out, because she has often told me that crying brings her closer to death. And she is afraid of dying. In the beginning I used to cry alone in the bathroom. But the bathroom is horrible and sad, no one comes to rescue me. I prefer the stairs, because Amedeo doesn’t use the elevator. He’s the only one who asks me how I am, I tell him my troubles and cry on his shoulder.

Signora Rosa is eighty. She was paralyzed ten years ago, and she only leaves her wheelchair to go to the bathroom or to lie down in her bed. She has four children, who take turns coming to see her every Sunday for a few hours. When one of them arrives, my weekly holiday begins: from noon to midnight! I don’t know what to do to enjoy my brief time off. I look at the hands of the clock on the wall and hope from the bottom of my heart that time will stop, so my freedom will last longer. I do all I can not to waste precious minutes, I make a plan filled with activities, but in the end I do the same thing every time: I go to the station where the Peruvian immigrants gather. Their faces satisfy my thirsting eyes and their words warm my cold ears. It seems to me I’ve gone home, to Lima. I greet them all with a kiss even if I’ve never seen them before, then I sit on the sidewalk and eat Peruvian food, rice with chicken and
lomo saltado
and ceviche. I talk for hours, I talk more than I listen, that’s why they call me Maria Cristina the chatterbox.

When the sun begins to set, I get more and more depressed, knowing that my journey to freedom is about to end. So I cling to the bottles of beer and Pisco to shelter myself from that storm of sadness. I drink a lot to forget the world, to forget my problems. I’m not the only one who has to deal with old age and imminent death every day. There are a lot of us, united by the destiny of our work with old people who at any moment will move on to another world. As the time passes we are transformed into stray dogs. Some let their tongues go, hurling insults in Spanish and Italian. Some provoke the people sitting nearby, and so in an instant fists are raised, and kicks and punches fly. I, instead, move silently out of sight, and under the wing of night go with a young man who resembles me in every way. Each of us empties into the other’s body our own desire, hope, anguish, fear, sadness, rage, hatred, and disappointment, and we do this quickly, like animals afraid of missing the season of fertility. We lie on an isolated bench or on pages of a newspaper spread out on the ground. Lots of times I forget the pill and here begins my pregnancy problem, the mad attempt to abort. I know that the pill is very important, but I always forget because I’ve had so much to drink.

I often wish old Rosa would die. Yet when I think of the consequences I’m filled with a strong feeling of regret—I’m afraid that her death also means the end of me. Where can I go? How can I support my family in Lima? What will become of me? This life is just not fair. Must I live out my youth a prisoner among phantoms of death? I want a house, a husband, children. I imagine waking in the morning, taking my children to school, going to work, embracing my husband at night, and finally seeing our bodies join on a comfortable bed and not on a sad park bench or an abandoned train car or under a hidden tree.

I would like to feel at peace but I don’t even have documents. I’m like a boat with torn sails, subject to the will of reefs and waves. If I had a residency permit I wouldn’t let that Neapolitan concierge make fun of me and insult me. She always calls me the Filipino. I’ve told her many times, “I’m not from the Philippines, I’m from Peru!” I’m from Lima, I don’t understand how someone can confuse Peru with the Philippines! I don’t even know why she persists in insulting me. One day I lost patience and said to her, “Why do you despise me? Have I somehow been disrespectful to you without realizing it?” For example, I know she’s from Naples but I’ve never insulted her by calling her la Napolitana. So many times I’ve said to her, “Why are you so rude to me, don’t you see that we belong to the same religion, that love for the Cross and the Virgin Mary unites us?”

I’m afraid of the concierge because she could report me to the police. I don’t have a residency permit, and if I fell into their hands they wouldn’t be indulgent with me and in the blink of an eye I would find myself back in the airport in Lima, back in the inferno of poverty. I don’t want to return to Peru before achieving my dream of a house, a husband, and children. When I have a residency permit I won’t be afraid to say whatever I want, I won’t call her Signora Benedetta, I’ll say “Neapolitan concierge”! I pray to the Virgin Mary, only she will save me from these cruel people.

I suffer terribly from loneliness, and sometimes it makes me caress madness. I watch TV all day and eat, I devour huge quantities of chocolate. As you see, I’m very fat. I’d like to lose weight, but in these conditions I can’t manage it. It’s not a big deal, losing weight isn’t so hard. When I get married I’ll feel calmer and then my weight will go down automatically. They wouldn’t let me have my friends in the house after the neighbors complained. The truth is that that damn Benedetta said bad things about me to the old lady’s daughter, Signora Paola, telling her that I bring men home and stay with them all night, so then I don’t take care of the sick woman. Then they said my weight was responsible for breaking the elevator, they say it’s more than the capacity of the poor elevator. They said to me, “First lose weight, then use the elevator!”

Is it right that they forbid me to use the elevator while they let Signora Fabiani’s dog pee there? That dog is happier than I am, he goes out more than ten times a day, he wanders in the gardens in Piazza Vittorio like a little prince or a spoiled child. Instead I can’t leave the house even for a minute, because Signora Rosa has heart problems. What would happen if her heart stopped beating while I’m not there? I don’t want to think about the consequences. I envy little Valentino. I’ve often dreamed of being in his place. Am I a human being? Sometimes I doubt my humanity. I don’t even have time to go to Mass on Sunday or put myself in the hands of a priest to confess and wipe away my sins. So I’ll be damned, and Hell will be waiting for me in the next world.

Signor Amedeo a murderer! That’s ridiculous. I’m sure he’s innocent. And they accuse him of being an immigrant. Is immigration a crime? I don’t understand why they hate us so much. Fujimori, the ex-President of Peru, was an immigrant from Japan. You hear so many lies about immigrants on TV. And yet in spite of that I can’t do without television. Once the TV broke. My hands shook, my heart was pounding. I called the four children of Signora Rosa one after another and asked them to come right away. They thought their mother was dead or about to die, Signor Carlo even called a funeral home before he came, and when they arrived they found a depressing situation. Signora Rosa was there yelling at me to stop crying. I gathered my strength and said to them, “I will not remain in this house a moment longer if you don’t get the TV fixed immediately.” Signora Laura asked her husband to get a new television. The four children of Signora Rosa left the house when, reassured, they saw me watching a new episode of
The Bold and the Beautiful
on channel 5. TV is a friend, a brother, a husband, a child, a mother, and the Virgin Mary. Can one live without breathing?

I watch the Mexican and Brazilian telenovelas every day, and I know all the details of the actors’ lives. It’s enough to tell you that the last episode I saw upset me as if it were my own mother’s funeral. Anyway, I don’t consider myself simply a spectator but an actress who plays an important role in the serial. I often shout advice at the characters. “Marina, watch out, Alejandro doesn’t love you, he’s a cheat, he wants to get your money and throw you out of your father’s castle,” or “Talk to her, Pablo, tell her you love her and want to marry her!” or “Caterina, don’t be hard on your husband, you’ll drive him into the arms of his new lover, that whore Silvana!” Often I feel solidarity with the poor, the unfortunate and despised. I get up from my chair, go to the TV, stare the bad man or woman in the eye: “What do you think, you rat, you’ll get what you deserve, the good will win in the end!” or “Carolina, you are vile, why are you so mean to Eleonora, that poor orphan? Damn you, you deserve to go to hell,” or “Julio, you’ll never find peace, you’re a criminal and you’ll get your punishment—that young, good-looking Alfonso Rodriguez will see to it!”

Yesterday on RAI 3 I saw a program about infertility, and I learned that the main cause of it is anxiety. I said to myself, for consolation, that abortion has at least one positive aspect—it proves that I’m healthy. And this means, fortunately, that I can hope to have children and a husband and a house, and weigh the same as Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigova, Naomi Campbell, Laetitia Casta, and the wife of Richard Gere, whose name I can’t remember. It’s possible that I’ll become a famous actress in the near future, especially after that young Dutch Johan insisted on having me in his next film. I told him I don’t have a residency permit, but that didn’t matter to him. I asked him to give me some time to lose weight, but he got angry: “I hate Hollywood cinema because it betrays reality. Don’t lose weight. Being fat makes you more beautiful.” After calming down he apologized: “I’m against any form of catenaccio.” I didn’t understand what he meant and I wondered: “What is catenaccio?” I heard some tenants say that Johan is nuts. It doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t marry him, have children by him. What matters to me really is to become a famous actress. Then who will dare prevent Signora Maria Cristina Gonzalez, thin, beautiful, the mother of Amedeo, Jr., from using the elevator?

S
aturday May 23, 10:55
P.M.
Today I read an article in the
Corriere della Sera
with a significant title: “Is the Italian a Dinosaur?” The article analyzes the problem of Italy’s falling birth rate; compared with the other countries of the world its growth rate is very low. The author states that the Italian is doomed to die out in the next century. The solution lies in the increasing presence of immigrants. Maybe Italy should make an agreement with the Chinese authorities to import human beings. There really are a lot of old people in this country.

Sunday October 26, 11:29
P.M.

This afternoon I saw Maria Cristina at the station with her fellow-countrymen and she seemed happy, like a fish returning to the sea after a brief agony far from the water. You can’t help feeling sorry for that girl; she goes out of the house only for a few minutes at a time to do the shopping. Maria Cristina suffers terribly from solitude within those four walls.

Wednesday June 23, 9:58
P.M.

Tonight I saw a great film on TV, with Alberto Sordi and Claudia Cardinale, which tells the story of a certain Amedeo, an immigrant who works in Australia. The life of Italian immigrants in the past closely resembles the life of the immigrants arriving in Italy today. Throughout history, immigrants have always been the same. All that changes is their language, their religion, and the color of their skin.

Tuesday October 26, 11:44
P.M.

Tomorrow Maria Cristina will go to the doctor for an abortion, not for the first time. Stefania is right when she says that Maria Cristina will enter the
Guinness Book of Records
for the number of abortions she’s had. I wonder if I’m like her, if all I do is abort. Is wailing an abortion of the truth? Auuuuuuuuuu . . .

Thursday June 3, 10:09
P.M.

This morning I read an article by the philosopher Karl Popper on the influence of television in our daily lives. Popper maintains that TV has become a member of the family, and that its voice is the most listened to in the whole family. Maria Cristina said to me one day, “TV is my new family.”

Saturday April 20, 11:52
P.M.

Tonight I quarreled with Lorenzo Manfredini. I told him to leave Maria Cristina alone. That poor girl lives in a prison. I thought of going to Inspector Bettarini, but I was afraid of causing problems for her, because she doesn’t have a residency permit. That thug doesn’t deserve his nickname, the Gladiator. It’s an insult to Spartacus, the liberator of the slaves!