Lost Words (12 page)

She was dismissing me earlier than usual. I walked the short distance from the chair to the door, reluctantly picking up my notebooks and the preregistration form. The Maestra held the door handle and added: “Tomorrow there's no need for you to come, Luca. Maybe it would be better if we suspended our afternoon lessons for the time being. It won't hurt you to study by yourself. By now you know what to do. I need my rest. Why the long face? Don't tell me you're offended?” She didn't have a very cheerful expression, either. Speaking to me this way seemed to pain her. “Chin up . . . no one has died. Come on! Look at me . . .”

My heart stopped. All the bliss of the previous months evaporated in an instant. I cast a final glance around the room where I had spent the happiest hours of my life and then I shuffled outside with the first teardrops welling up in my eyes.

“Luca,” she called to me.

I didn't listen. Why should I? She didn't want me anymore.

*.

Huddled in a corner of the bedroom, I repeated to myself that the Maestra had abandoned me, that she was tired of me . . . I had been deceived. The Maestra had played with my feelings—I was just one of her experiments . . . The intercom rang. My mother, who was rinsing the vegetables in the sink, shouted at me, “Chino, answer it . . . it's the Maestra . . . What else does she want? For Pete's sake! You just left three minutes ago!”

She had to take the call herself. “Yes, thank you, Miss Lynd, that'll be fine. Alright. We'll keep your advice in mind.”

Hearing my mother enter the room, I stood up and went to the window, turning my back to her. “The Maestra wants us to stop calling you Chino at home. She says that your name is Luca, ‘
the child of luck
' . . . she must be losing her marbles, that one! . . .” My mother was shocked. So was I—shocked by the Maestra's determination, until the end, to make sure I became the person I was meant to be. I said nothing. I stared out at the horizon. Any wisp of fog had cleared, and the rows of poplar trees were swaying in the breeze.

During supper I burst into tears.

“Would you mind telling me what's come over you?” my mother asked. “Are you tired? . . . The Maestra is putting too much pressure on you! Enough of all that English now! You'll learn it when you're older! Just look what it's doing to you . . . Come now, sweetheart, tell me what's wrong? If something's bothering you, you have to tell your mother. Did the Maestra do something to you? . . . Did you know,” she added, turning to my father, “that she called me on the intercom just to tell me that from now on we should start calling our son Luca instead of Chino? Who does she think she is? First she demands that we send him to the Lyceum. Now she expects us to give him another name . . . If she wanted a son so much, why didn't she have one herself?”

“But she's right,” my father said, “the boy's name is Luca. Let's try calling him that. Maybe then he'll stop whining like such a sissy . . .” He noticed the steak still sitting on my plate, untouched. “Come on, eat!” he ordered me.

“Don't insist!” my mother scolded him. “He'll eat. Don't insist or you'll only make the situation worse.” She turned to me: “And you—tomorrow afternoon you stay home. Understood? You're wearing yourself out . . . I'm not letting you go up there anymore! And if that woman sticks her nose into things that are none of her business, then I won't send you to the Lyceum, either!”

I got up from the table and said that I was going to walk up and down the stairs to clear my head. I made it up to the fifth floor, counting every step. I headed toward the Maestra's door and started crying again. I could see my reflection in the surface of the polished wood. I hoped the Maestra would hear my sobs, open the door, invite me in and console me, and at one point, yes, I thought I could feel her presence on the other side of the door—a slight sound. She must have noticed something, yes, now she was coming to open up for me . . . I was ready to fall to her feet, to beg her to keep me with her forever . . . but the door remained closed.

Still in tears, I went down one flight of stairs and looked out from the balcony next to the trash chute. The stench of garbage invaded my nostrils. A white car parked at the foot of the hill and turned its headlights off. In the courtyard the cat was clinging to the sycamore tree, assailed by two claimants. The swallows glided through the sky, catching insects. Paolini and Cavallo had just come through the gate. Riccardo was sitting with his legs crossed on the bench facing the fountain, and next to him was a blonde girl, partly concealed by the wisteria leaves. They were holding each other's hands. I stood there scrutinizing them and, without realizing it, slowly calmed down. The last teardrops dried on my cheeks and turned cold. I was suddenly filled with a kind of serenity, a reassuring melancholy. In my mind's eye I climbed an endless staircase that spiraled up to the stratosphere and I reached the highest floor of the tallest building in the world, like one of those amazing new skyscrapers in New York, the Twin Towers, that I had seen on television recently, and I leapt and let my body float down.

III

T
he main door slammed with its unmistakable metallic clank. We both looked up, me from my Latin book, she from the pair of overalls she was mending. The moment they appeared behind the door, we knew. Right before standing up my Mom gave me a meaningful glance. The day had arrived. I was reminded of the words in the Gospel: “
Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum
—Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word.” She opened the glass door and greeted them calmly. With an almost imperceptible hand gesture she ordered me to leave.

“Good work, Elvira,” came the compliments of the ingegnere, ignoring her hello, “I can see you keep this building so clean you could eat off the floor.”

Although she hadn't been forewarned of their visit, the lobby and the loge were sparkling. Finally all her diligence, all that cleaning, was going to pay off. Good work, Elvira. The landlord was there to give her the recognition she was due!

She invited him to have a seat but he preferred to remain standing next to the table. He was very tall with an easy elegance. You could imagine that a trusted servant had prepared him and, after the last stroke of the brush, had approved the image of the master. Even I, through the keyhole, could perceive the sobriety of his posture, which, combined with the undeniable superiority of his rank, lent him a unique appeal.

My mother uttered humbly, “I do my best, Sir.”

For fear of looking like an idiot in front of the manager, she displayed the scars on her wrists: “Every day, every morning, even at the cost of my health . . .”

“You don't have an easy job,” Ingegner Spinelli acknowledged. “It takes a lot of physical strength. But you're a young and energetic woman, I can see that—strong-willed, resilient, the kind of woman only the South can produce! We're lucky to have you here . . .”

“Elvira is precious,” the manager interjected. Next to the tall and debonair landlord, she looked like a midget.

My mother—out of both surprise and a reflexive gratitude—could barely hold back her tears. The ingegnere paid no mind to the doorwoman's show of emotion and without further ado extracted a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket, unfolding it on the table.

“My dear Elvira,” he said in a serious tone, signifying the start of a new era. “On this piece of paper you will find, in alphabetical order, the names of the tenants at Via Icaro 15. Can you see? Biondo, Bortolon, Caselli, Cavallo, D'Antonio, Dell'Uomo, Di Lorenzo, Lojacano, Lynd . . . Next to each name is written the price of the apartment. Two-bedroom apartments always cost three million more than one-bedrooms, and the prices increase from one floor to the next. Basically, the two-bedrooms on the fifth floor are the most expensive ones in the building.”

He spoke without any preamble, without any explanation, as if he knew the long wait was over. The truth was—I realized all too clearly—he couldn't care less about explaining things to my mother.

“The variations in price, however,” he specified, “are not so appreciable. You, Elvira, within a week, need to let me know which tenants would like to buy their apartments, and after that, when I know who doesn't want to buy, I'll advertise that their apartments are for sale.”

My mother's eyes twinkled. Perfect! At the end of the week she, the doorwoman, would step in, and upon returning the paper with the signatures, she would declare, “I will buy the Vignolas' apartment.” From the restlessness of her fingers, constantly rubbing the scars on her wrists, I knew that she was tempted to reserve the apartment right away. But she refrained, afraid to voice her wish publicly for the first time, to ward off bad luck, or simply to avoid provoking the manager's brutality. She limited herself to saying, “So, have you really decided to sell Via Icaro 15?”

And he, confidentially: “Yes, Elvira, I don't want to leave behind any problems for my nephew . . . buildings are nothing but trouble . . . money pits . . . A furnace to change,walls to reinforce, and a thousand other things . . . Not to mention the estate tax . . .”

My mother brought out the gold-rimmed shot glasses and poured a thimbleful of grappa for everyone. “None for me, thank you,” said the engineer. The manager declined with a hand gesture—she did not say “Thank you.” The grappa sat there, filling the air with its aroma.

As soon as Ingegner Spinelli and Signora Aldrovanti left, my mother grabbed the piece of paper. With her index finger she went over the names and figures over and over again, up and down, but she couldn't find what she was looking for: “Where the heck did he put the price?”

She sat down to catch her breath and then tried to pour the grappa from the glasses back into the bottle, spilling a most of it. Then she wiped down the table with a wet rag and studied the sheet of paper again.

“
SIX MILLION LIRAS
!”

She almost fell off her chair. Flabbergasted, she clutched the top of the stove and repeated, almost losing her voice, “
SIX MILLION LIRAS
! . . . Where am I going to find that kind of money? What an increase! At the other buildings on Via Icaro the one-bedrooms were going for five! I don't have six million. It was all I could do to come up with four and a half . . .”

“What a fool I am!” she suddenly brightened. “But of course! I'll ask for a discount from the ingegnere! A million more, a million less, what will it matter to him, with all the money he's got? And what should it matter to his heir? He won't even notice. The ingegnere would never refuse me. You heard how nice he was earlier . . . Now there's a man with a heart, not like that iceberg Aldrovanti . . .”

She was smiling, reassured.

“What if dad is against it?” I ventured.

She didn't lose her smile. “Your father . . .” she whispered, lost in thought.

Indeed. When should she break the news to him? . . . Right away or toward the end of the week, after everyone had let their intentions be known? No, best to do it right away. She had to speak with him that very night and come right out with it: “The ingegnere dropped by . . .” And my father would exclaim, “The ingegnere? What did he want?” And she: “Can you guess . . .” And he: “He's putting the building up for sale . . .” And then? . . . My father would realize that if he opposed her, she would go berserk and give him the silent treatment. And she wouldn't let up. She would only say, “At last I'm going to buy a house, too. For twenty years I've been working myself to the bone . . .”

*.

My father came home from work later than usual. He washed his hands, turned on the TV, and sat down at the table without even glancing at the newspaper. My mother let him eat in peace. Then, before serving him coffee, in a forced voice, as if she were speaking with a stranger, she said that Ingegner Spinelli had dropped by. Dad didn't lose his cool. He was too busy listening to the TV, or at least pretending to.

“Did you hear me? The landlord dropped by . . .” she tried again, already worked up, standing in front of the gas stove.

“The landlord?” he echoed her mechanically. “What did he want?” He wasn't at all interested in listening to her reply. He started inveighing against Nixon: “The Americans are going to destroy us all, sooner or later. Fascists! They're not republicans! They're fascists!”

“What do you mean, ‘What did he want?' Can't you figure it out?”

“What do I know? He never comes by . . .” he mumbled, chewing on a tough piece of steak.

“He brought the sheet of paper with the price list . . . He's selling! Do you get it? We're going to become a condominium!”

The use of the first person plural instantly distracted my father's attention from the Americans on the news.

“What you mean is
they
are going to become a condominium,” he corrected her.

“What, you don't think we're as good as everyone else?” she sputtered. “We're going to buy, too, my dear, you'll see!”

“Elvira, let's not start with this again! I don't want to buy any apartment . . . I've already told you a thousand times. And where do you think we're going to get the money to do it?”

“We've got the money, you know that perfectly well! I've been saving up for years. We
have
it!”

“Not on your life. I told you.
NO
! Not another word . . .”

“We don't need a mortgage. We can pay for everything with cash!”

“And where are you going to get the money for the fees? And for the utility and phone bills?” He stared at her with hostility. “You make it sound so easy! As if it was just a question of paying for the house! What about the lawyer? Damn whoever invented them! . . . Then there's the whole plumbing system that has to be repaired . . . And once you start fixing things there's no end to it—painting the walls, the doors, the windows . . .”

“We can paint them ourselves! I could paint a whole building if I put my mind to it . . .”

“And the furniture? We don't have any furniture. It all costs money, you know! What, you don't believe me?”

“At first we'll only buy the necessities. This stove is still good . . .”

My father moved from his chair to the armchair, where a tabloid magazine was waiting for him on the armrest. “Do me a favor!” he snorted, scanning the front page with an exaggerated eye movement. “I can already hear you: over here we need an end table, over there a nice sofa. And then you'll want a cabinet for all your little knickknacks and a new set of dishes and crystal glasses . . . curtains for the bedroom . . . an electric vacuum cleaner . . .”—he shook his head while my mother struggled to swallow, as if she were before a judge with the power to sentence her to death—“We can't afford it. Why can't you understand this? Remember where we came from . . . you're not born to be a signora!”

“And who said I have to be a signora? Do you think I want to spend all day doing nothing? I'll keep working. I'll start working for another family . . . They'll be plenty of money to pay the bills!”

My father let her keep fantasizing, with a scornful look on his face. He didn't know how to stop her. Then, after a deep sigh, just when it seemed he was more open to discussion, he suddenly shouted: “Mother of God, When I say no I mean no!” To emphasize the inflexibility of his reply, he stood up and pounded his fist against the wall.

All the windows in the loge started to shake, so my mother thought it best to drop the matter for the moment. But she brought it up again in bed, with renewed energy. No matter how resolved he was to dissuade her, he very quickly ran out of reasons. “What if, after we've bought it, the Vignolas don't want to leave anymore?” He was playing his last card. “What are we going to do with an occupied apartment?”

“First of all,” she explained in a soothing voice, convinced that she had finally broken his resistance, “they're definitely leaving—they've always said they would. In a little while she's having a baby and they need another room for the child. They even want a second child . . .”

“But at first they could keep the cradle in their room . . .”

“Certainly, at first . . . and in the meantime we'll be collecting the money from the rent. It'll be no loss. I could stay in the loge for another year if I knew that I had a house waiting for me . . .”

My dad sighed, seemingly defeated. “Won't we have to get a lawyer to evict them? Lawyers cost an arm and a leg . . .”

“Relax . . . let me take care of it. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

*.

At six o'clock she was by the stove preparing breakfast. To make sure none of the tenants got away, she opened the loge fifteen minutes early. The first person to run into her was Paolini, who always left very early, even before my father.

“Signor Paolini! Do you have a minute? The landlord is selling . . .” she started to explain, almost stuttering, “and if you want to buy your apartment, well, have a look here, we'll need your signature . . .”

She handed him the sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen. Paolini gave a skeptical look at the list of all the families in the complex next to a row of numbers with six zeros.

“He's selling?! . . . He can be my guest. I've got to go to work . . .”

“Talk to your wife . . . You've got one week, if you want to buy . . .”

He was already running toward the gate.

“Don't get so worked up, Elvira,” my father teased her, while he was splashing aftershave on his face. “You'd think you were getting a commission!”

I didn't go to school that day.

She showed the paper to the passing tenants, while I mopped the landings, polished the brass carpet rods, and sorted the mail into the mailboxes.

In the morning, no one she approached said they were interested in buying.

“If you want,” I proposed, while we were having lunch, “I can bring the sheet up to the Maestra . . . Otherwise, who knows when you'll see her . . .”

I missed her more and more: time passed and she hadn't come looking for me. In my ears I could still hear the last time she called out to me: “Luca . . .” I still regretted not answering her, not going straight back to her.

“Oh, alright . . .” she consented, turning red in a fit of jealousy. “But you'll never hear the end of it if . . .”

I didn't let her finish.

I climbed the stairs two at a time. When I got to her door I hesitated. Was she waiting for me? Would she rejoice the way she used to every time I came to see her unexpectedly?

She had turned into a shadow of herself, the shadow of a shadow. Her face was of a glacial pallor. Her forehead had widened. Her withered and stooped body was awash in clothes that were too big. Her dignity remained intact, but she had taken on a wounded, macabre appearance.