Finding the Thing Within (6 page)

Part 5

Francesco Aiello had recently bought a plot of land in the country with the intention of one day building a cottage. As with all the land above and around Trabia, it was considered agricultural land, and it could be built on for 0.03 metres cubed for metres squared and so to build a house of at least one hundred metres squared, the area of the lot of land should have been no less than 10 metres squared. The land that had come into Francesco’s hands measured 17 square metres, which multiplied by 0.3, gave 510 cubic metres. This divided in turn by an average projected height of three metres allowed the construction of a house over 170 metres squared, easily accommodating four people.

The problem was that he didn’t know who were to be those four people. Yes, he had Barbara, his daughter, but no real family to speak of. She was already quite old, nearly twelve, and would spend time with him and her mother alternately. Anyway, Francesco had no desire to even think about settling down again. He liked younger girls, twenty to thirty-year-olds, and all the girls he had been with were in that range. Women, as is known, want to create a family, and straight away. Francesco didn’t share the same enthusiasm for such a project after the failure of his first attempt. He wanted to sleep around for as long as possible to avoid the risk of getting so emotionally involved again.

It was all the fault of that fucking doctor who had told him thirteen years ago that due to an inflammation of his testicles, he would be sterile for a certain period. The first time he had sex with his girlfriend she became pregnant and so he did the correct thing and married her. His life with her was hell. His wife Giovanna, at the time a beautiful woman, had the character of a poisonous wasp.

You had to be careful around her because if she stung, it was fatal. She was spoiled and presumptuous. In the early days everything was going well, but it very quickly turned sour. She would have a bitter savageness in their ever more frequent public quarrels. One Saturday evening Rosario was invited to go with them to a pizzeria, and as so often happened, he accepted. That evening started well, with kisses, sweet words and caresses, but quickly deteriorated inside the restaurant. Francesco made fun of her for some mistake she had made at work (back then they worked together selling encyclopaedias) and she said he had gone too far:

“Stop it now or this pizza’s going in your face.” “No you won’t,” laughed Francesco calmly. “I said stop. You know I will!”
“I don’t think so.”
Giovanna wasn’t going to give him another chance

and launched the pizza straight into his face, to the amazement of Rosario, who was also risking getting hit, being next to Francesco. He felt the eyes of the other people in the restaurant on them. Even Rosario wanted to crawl away with shame and Francesco, covered in tomato sauce and pieces of artichoke, got up and walked staunchly towards the toilets.

Talking about marriage now sets him off into fits. His land in the country was beautiful and he cared for it lovingly. One day he planted a pear tree and another, when work permitted, a peach tree. As time went on he became ever more eager and Francesco was working there when Rosario came to visit.
“Hey, Francesco, FRANCESCO,” he called repeatedly but Francesco had no chance of hearing him over the sound of his trimmer. Rosario walked into the middle of a clearing near Francesco, so as to be seen. Francesco switched off the trimmer and walked over, smiling.
“Ciao, Rosario, what’re you doing here?”
“Not much, just came to see you.”
“Great. Nice day, you can give me a hand!” “Fine. What should I do?”
“That wood over there needs collected together and burned.”
“Ok.”
“Oh Ros, who was that guy in the car with you the other day? Up to naughty business, huh?”
“Well I was up for it, but then it wasn’t possible. Actually, come to think of it, we could have come up to your office.”
“You’re a dirty man...and you could have told the secretaries that you you’d come for a ‘closed-door' meeting!”
“I came to tell you about something.”
“What?”
“That afternoon, I had a date with a guy.”
“Yeah, I got that much.”
“No, I mean with another, straight after.”
“You don’t give up, do you? You old queer, and anyway…?
Rosario laughed and beamed like a child given candy “So then I met this fella and since then I’ve seen him again, we went to the sea together.”
“You really like him?”
“No…Yes!”
“Well, is it no or yes?”
“He’s charming and tall. He goes to gym a lot and he has a body to die for.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“Well it’s just that he’s bald and bespectacled but I like him. Yesterday at the beach was really great. He’s mature for his age and refined.”
“Listen. I say let’s burn this wood.”
Rosario, with his interest in electronics, was always experimenting with new ideas. About a year previously, mobiles could only take one SIM card at a time and you had to physically remove it to change cards. Rosario had thought it would be good to create an interrupter which could switch between two SIM cards. His idea for the switch would surely have worked but, he had procrastinated and never did anything with it. Some time later, working in a phone shop, he heard that a big phone company had come up with an interrupter and electronic circuit which performed the same function as his own idea. He bitterly regretted not having applied for the patent when he first had the idea. Then he began to hear of complaints about the company about burned-out circuit boards.

He started thinking.
What if he could build and patent a far simpler design? One that wouldn’t need the added complication of the circuit board.
He got to work on a pro

totype and in no time he was turning the simple mechanism in his mind into physical reality. It had worked and he decided that this time he was not going to be slow getting the patent. He sent letters to various phone companies informing them of his innovation, but had not received any replies.

That evening there was an email:
“Thank you for contacting us Mr Mollica,

Let me start by saying that we are very interested in your patent design. We would like to ask if it is possible to see some kind of prototype and a proposition for the signing over of the rights to this design, or some other arrangement as you see fit.

Also would it be possible to see some technical drawings so our technicians can get a better idea of the patent.

Best wishes. Gino Bassetti”

Rosario was excited. He burst out laughing then crying, he was so happy he wanted to shout. He wanted to tell everyone immediately! Everyone, that is, except his mother. She wouldn’t understand anything about it anyway. He called Giorgia straight away and then Francesco. He thought he might as well tell Lorenzo too.

“What, really? That’s great! And so now what do you have to do?”

“I have to get a decent prototype ready for them. That one that I made work before was fairly rough, I can’t send that, they’d laugh at it. Anyway, I have to get on with it so I’ll speak to you tomorrow, ok?”

Lorenzo had posted a letter, but he had almost forgotten it, with all the excitement of the other letter from the company. His head was whirling with thoughts. He pinched himself as he read to prove to himself that it wasn’t just some perfect dream.

“I’ve just had such a great day with you! It doesn’t matter now how things might eventually end up between us two, I had a great time and it was like being with someone that you’ve known for years…this is a good thing! Who knows what you thought of me...compared to all your experiences? I’d like to know...Sorry if I seem a bit hesitant and maybe a little hazy when I write...I know that it seems smaller when I write in this way, but that has been my choice in how to deal with this adventure...You’re a really great person and I really hope our little pseudo 'friendship' becomes something more sincere and less conditioned (in a sexual sense).

Kisses,
You’re Lorenzo”

Rosario was dizzy with glee. Everything was going so well with Lorenzo and now also his financial situation, a problem for some time, was looking rosier too. He rushed to the phone shop where he had worked, but found with bewilderment and dismay that the same company that had brought out the first dual SIM card phone had brought out another version without the problematic circuit! Rosario’s face finally dropped. He thought about the lessening probability that his own patent would not be accepted. He went to his gym and worked out for two hours before returning home, depressed and bitter.

“I had an amazing day too, and you’re the reason. I don’t know where we’re going with this either, but it doesn’t matter, let’s just live it for what it is. One of us may get tired of the other and we can finish it without much fuss. Neither of us has promised anything to the other and it’s better like this because some promises can’t be kept for some reason or another. I like to keep promises so I avoid making them! Anyway I know I can add a name to my most intimate friends (even if I still don’t know your surname).

This morning I told you about how I was crazy with happiness but now I’m the opposite, upset and pissed off. After I left you, I passed by a shop window and saw on sale a phone with a dual SIM card, just like my project. So someone is commercializing something that I’ve patented but because they got there first they could sue me for plagiarism. Anyway, I don’t think the company which has showed interest in my design knows about this other product; otherwise they wouldn’t have even shown an interest, wouldn’t you say?

Lady luck has been a right dick to me (maybe not the right expression, don’t laugh). It seems that written into my DNA somewhere it says that I have to lead a mediocre life and anything good that may come into my life must then go wrong. It’s not just this now, but in everything in my life there have been forces which brought me fortune and those which came to take it away, leaving everything as it had been before. Like as in the Luchino Visconti’s Leopard changing everything, to actually change nothing. It’s like someone holding you, half drowning in the water. Not actually pushing you under, but not helping you out either. Does that make any sense?

As you can see I’m feeling down tonight. All I can do is ignore this, get on with the prototype and rush to sell the patent. And then it’s up to them to decide if we are dealing with products which are the same, or just similar. I’ve tired you out enough; I’m going to go to bed now too. What with going to the sea and the gym and everything I’m absolutely wrecked. Hugs, Rosario Xx”

Part 6

Two years earlier, when Rosario was 45, when his father was still alive and he traveled freely, he would often visit his friend Rosy, in Catania. Rosy was beautiful, with a small frame, long, black hair and a porcelain doll face. To top it all she was really nice too. One day she had just been on one of her regular visits to an old fortune teller:

“Why don’t you come?”
“I don’t think so, I don’t believe in it.”
“So what’s the harm? Let’s go.” And they went. The old woman’s house was on a street in the older

part of the city. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and when Rosario entered the little flat, there were already quite a few people sitting in what appeared to be some sort of waiting room. In the middle of the room there was an oblong table and the people were arranged around it.

They waited for about half an hour before a man accompanied them into a side room. The room was slightly dim and the walls decorated with flowery wallpaper. The ceilings were covered with exquisite frescoes, a sure sign that the house originally belonged to nobility. On the left, there was a balcony with French windows. The room was joined to another, larger room via a tall, antique doorway and since this was only partially closed, Rosario could see period furniture. The ‘old woman’ was a lady in her sixties sitting in an armchair next to a table. She had badlycombed grey hair and spoke in a low voice. She invited them to do the same. She had long, slender hands and a ring on her right hand and a wedding ring on her left. She was dressed soberly and over her legs she had a wool blanket. It was cold around that time.

“So who’s going to go first?”
“Me,” said Rosy. “If that’s OK with you?”
“It’s all the same to me. What is it that you wanted to know, bella?”

“I want to know if I’m going to find a job and how things are going to go with my boyfriend.”
“What’s your name, bella and what’s your birth date?”
“Rosy Randazzo, the 5th of October, 1975.”
“Ah, Libra...cut the deck, bella.”
Rosy did as she was asked and then slowly did everything else the old lady asked. Finally, she ruled:
“Listen, bella, you will find a job but it won’t be for very long, you’re going to have to suffer a while longer... but then you will marry and have two beautiful baby boys.”
Rosy asked for more information about the job, and the woman answered that everything would go according to her wishes. Then she looked at Rosario and invited him to take the seat opposite her.
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” answered Rosario. “Whatever, I’ve never had a Tarot reading before.”
“Name and birth-date?”
“Rosario Mollica, 5th of February, 1954.”
“Oh an Aquarius, very good! Cut the deck and take five with your left hand.” Rosario did so.
“Listen dear, are you married?”
“No!” and he looked over at Rosy.
“You haven’t had a brilliant life so far. You’ve lived; or rather you’ve survived in mediocrity. You’ve always worked and earned money, but never the jackpot. Take another three cards with your left hand and don’t cross your legs. Fine...Unfortunately, things will go on like this for a short while but then everything will change.”
“What do you mean by a ‘while’?”
“Well nothing is going to happen until you are fortyseven, apart from a death in the family and then, in the second half of that year, you’ll meet the woman of your life and marry her. You will finally have good luck and great wealth...Up until that point I can see nothing very interesting.
“I’d say something was a bit off,” said Rosario. “And what is that, dear?”
“Ahem, well...I like men not women, so I don’t think it would be possible for me to fall in love with or marry a woman.”
“Oh my God! I wouldn’t say. Anyway it being a woman was just a detail...it might be that you fall for a man and go and live with him. Who knows?”
“Who knows!” retorted Rosario. They paid and left.