Chapter 10
In origin it had been a swamp, and it had carried on this characteristic, like a genetic imprint, even in subsequent times, when sumptuous villas were built turning it into a deluxe seaside resort. Stage of the contradictions of a people, the waterfront of Mondello was the example of a city thousand faces. Residence of the city elite on one side, meeting place of the so-called tasciume of Palermo on the other.
«What does "tasciume" mean?» Giuliana, who is attentively listening to Vito’s explanations, wants to know.
«Tascio, in Palermo, means various things; tascia is a person with a vulgar attitude, one who speaks a vulgar dialect, a person of the so-called hoi polloi. Tascio is an ugly piece of clothes, and in general all that is out of fashion. In English you would say "it’s out", in Palermo you say "it’s tascio".»
In Mondello, in the summer, the tascio was a well defined physical type. It was the man in sea slippers, walking bare-chested, exhibiting without modesty the gigantic roundness of his feeble abdomen falling on a swimsuit disproportionately small in comparison with the volume of his body, with a side bulging because of the wallet boxed between the lycra and the soft flesh. Tascio was the head of the household in a low-necked top, knee-high shorts and clogs on his feet, who held in his hand a "coppo di scaccio" and walked chewing and sputtering peels of seed, leaving behind him a wake of shells of peanuts and pistachios here and there. At his side, his wife, tascia herself, with the picked remains of red enamel on the uncared fingers of hands and feet, hair tied with a cheap rubber band, a too generous body contained by cheap clothes, shouting without grace slurred words in a thick dialect to their children.
They were those people that the elite looked upon with disgust from behind the liberty-style glass walls of their villas; the same that crowded the beach, using the changing rooms of the beach like studio apartments with every comfort. They settled chairs and tables and stayed at the beach until late in the evening, eating and playing briscola or scopa, equipped with music, lights and field stoves. At a little distance from them, warm-light spotlights aimed at a yucca or a giant bird-of-paradise flower created dreamy atmospheres in the ornamental gardens of the villas of the rich people. And the owners, sitting until late at night around a table, surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke, their ashtray overfilled of cigarette butts, played a hand of poker or bridge after another, nibbling pastries or tasting minuscule portions of lemon or melon slush in refined crystal cups. The most solitary, pulling a face for the vulgar confusion coming from the beach, spent meditative evenings in their terrace, a few meter above the people, sipping cold limoncino in the company of a good reading.
When the beach was converted in a furnished area, the number of changing rooms decreased, and the high price of the daily lease of bunks and beach umbrellas introduced a selective mechanism of economic type. The tasciume decreased accordingly, leaving the area to the bourgeois of Palermo.
«Do you think it was right to deprive the people of a place where to go to the beach?» Vito asks me while we walk on the wood gangway that goes along the shore from an extremity to the other, «does it seem a democratic solution to you?»
«Vito, those changing rooms were a botch. They defaced the landscape, covering the sight of the sea, and also, people used them improperly», I say, resurfacing from the mountain of ice cream that drips from every part of my cone.
«What you say is true, but they could have tried to educate people, instead of sending them away by increasing prices. The few free stretches left proposed the same decline, compressed in a very small surface. A treatment like those reserved to beasts, that for sure doesn't help to evolve.»
We stop to look at the sea in a silent pause that favours reflections. The warm but intense wind coming from the sea ripples the waves, that form white shapes folding on themselves, similar to big fishes swimming at the surface. The beach is a composed and multicoloured carpet of cloths and beach backpacks. The access to the beach is still free in this period of the year. From June, bunks and beach umbrellas will occupy a large part of the beach, leaving only a narrow stretch of water’s edge for free bathing. The wind carries an intense scent of coconut that mixes with the essences of the several bottles of suntan lotion that go from hand to hand between bathers. Few risk a hasty bath, the girls come out of the water teeth-chattering, their arms close to their chests and their skin wrinkled. They run to envelope themselves in their towels, covered in sand but hot.
Dads race after their children who, wearing shirt and diaper, pursue balls close to the shore. Mothers, sitting backer, offer their faces to the sun with their eyes closed, and enjoy a moment of relax.
The gaze is lost along the gulf of Mondello, unchanged naturalistic enchantment, to which now the attention of the man that exalts and completes the enchantment – like the frame does for a picture – is added. There is no trace of carelessness.
«At the end of the day you can be sure that there won't be any evidence of the passage of us all», Vito says, fighting against the wind to light his third cigarette.
«How did it happen?» I ask him while he keeps turning one way and the other to shelter the flame from the most intense gusts.
«What?» he asks, now giving the back to the sea and greedily inhaling as if it were his first nicotine of the day.
«How did they learn to care?»
Vito puffs two fast mouthfuls, then slowly breathes, letting the smoke vanish straight in front of him.
«Like with everything else. Sanctions, sanctions, more sanctions. A strong inspection action, true inspection. No eyes closed in front of irregularities. Who was wrong had to pay. The imposition is not very democratic, but it’s pretty effective to defeat certain rooted behaviours.»
Teresa is telling our children that Mondello was a benchmark for us when we were young.
«We met at the beach, to play volleyball, or more often to do nothing.»
«In Palermo», Vito intervenes, «we say cazzeggiare».
«What does it mean?» Marco asks.
«It means doing nothing in particular, meeting, wasting time, chatting a bit, smoking a cigarette, things like these.»
«The things you always do with your friends», Marco intervenes, turned to his sister, who feigns a kick in his direction.
«Mind your business, idiot.»
«Don’t feel embarrassed, Giuliana. All young people do that, it belongs to adolescence. It is physiological. The difference is that in Palermo this adolescent stage and the consequent cazzeggio can go on for a longer time than everywhere else. We are like this, and nobody could ever impose us changes in this.»
We slowly go toward the main square of Mondello. The eyes find comfort anywhere they rest. For those who live where greyness and cold are dominant elements of a lot of winter days, and the sea is but a distant memory, bathing in the intensity of nature is like entering the truth of life. It is rediscovering to be part of nature itself, regulated by rhythms and principles that often contrast with the laws of civil society, where the time granted to our more primitive essence is more and more limited. It is the same enchantment felt in front of a waterfall, of the limitless panorama of a green valley, or of a little river that disappears in the thick of a wood... it’s rediscovering the deepest belonging, a moment in which you feel in peace with yourself and with the others.
«I know that you are a good diver», Vito says, putting an arm around the shoulders of Marco who, as usual, stayed a few steps behind the group.
«Well, I get by», he replies, looking at his feet, then toward the horizon, never at Vito’s face.
«I see that you have a sportsman physique. Beautiful wide shoulders, narrow waist, you are a nice boy. Your father has never been the athletic kind. How did this passion come to you?»
«I started with swimming, then a friend of mine proposed me diving, he had been training for a while. I went to see him and I liked it... I decided to try and then... it went fine.»
«I know that you also won some im
portant competitions. But how much training does it take to reach such levels? I imagine it is also a sacrifice.»
«For me it wasn’t. I mean... if you like it, if you do it with passion, even if it is fatiguing you still want to do your best. The goal you set drives you.»
«This boy is clever», Vito says to Teresa, who is next to them.
Their conversation is natural, something that is missing between my son and me. I struggle to find the questions, and he struggles to give me the answers, we mumble words trying to get away in a hurry from the mutual embarrassment.
When does it happen that a part of you becomes a stranger? When does it happen that a stranger becomes a part of you? I miss naturalness. I know how to relate with my patients, but I don't know how to establish a relationship with my son. He’s right, though. It is the goal you set that drives you.
«What is your next goal then?» Vito goes on, «I imagine you will reach the national competitions.»
«No more, by now.... no, no more.»
There is regret in his voice, no trace of the hostility or the annoyance that emerge when I try to talk to him about it.
«Why not? Let's not surrender without trying. You don’t seem a yielding boy to me.»
«It’s not that, it’s that...» a brief hesitation, then the words come out calm, controlled, in a low voice, and I can no longer hear them. The rest of the conversation becomes intimate.
Teresa and Giuliana are close to me. Teresa is talking about the warmth, about the people, she fills the air of nonstop words. Giuliana is at the phone; she laughs and updates her friend.
Marco and Vito pass us when we stop at a newspaper booth to buy postcards. They are discussing intensely. Vito talks with his whole body, his hands move masses of air. Marco talks excitedly too. He seems to have started a fast comparison to defend his ideas, or maybe to barricade himself behind walls that Vito, in turn, is trying to dismantle with those hands of his that break the air.
«It seems that Vito succeeded in making our son loosen up», Teresa remarks while, with the bunch of postcards in her hand, she is rummaging in her bag in search of a pen.
«It seems so», I repeat without enthusiasm.
«So, any end-of-the-day comment?» Vito requests before dismissing us, when the sun is set by now and the light is slowly diminishing, leaving room to a clear evening sky.
«Very satisfied... and worn-out», Teresa says.
The children have already gone up to our room. Giuliana had several SMS to answer to, and e-mails to check. Marco wanted to make some research on internet with his iPad.
«I have to agree with you, you know», I tell Vito, who looks at me with a triumphant expression, «a change was necessary».
«You know what I love the most of this city?» Vito asks us while we are sipping the last coffee of the day at the cafe at the sixteenth floor, «the avant-garde».
«The avant-garde?» my wife repeats.
«We have always been a step beyond, without even realizing it, naturally. At school they taught us that Sicily in time has always been an object of interest for her favourable geographical position and blah blah blah. Its history is a composition of all the histories of the peoples who inhabited, lived, dominated it over time. Each of them left something, and the general history of this land would be incomplete if we didn't keep that into account. You would say that this made a no-man’s land of it, I say instead that it is an everybody’s land. And this is what I mean when I speak of avant-garde. It anticipated cosmopolitanism, the multiculturalism, heterogeneity. It’s not its defect but its very essence.»
I wonder why I can't see the facts in the same way that Vito does. He has always been in love with his land, brave defender in front of any irrationality, any shameful evidence. He always believed in this, and time seems to have rewarded such unconditioned faithfulness. I look at him: his dignified face is turned to the heavens, his chest is large, proud to inhale all of the air of the city, his eyes are bright, his hair shines under the artificial lights of Palermo. I see my picture reflected in the glass wall behind him and see myself opaque. I miss the shine of his eyes, his own proud luminescence.
I live in a marvellous city, but as a guest. My feet are not sunk in Parisian ground to provide me with roots. They are just touching the hard asphalt. I am a half-withered plant without roots that survives in a protected environment, my hospital. Vito’s feet are deeply sunk into Sicilian ground, his body fully sprayed by its sap, kissed by the sun, fed by the proud belonging. I think about when we raced barefooted on the beach; our feet sinking in the warm sand that wedged between toe and toe. I’ve had roots too.
I find again a memory of quite a long time ago. One Saturday in January, a temperature everything but winter-like in the eternal spring of Torre, interrupted only by some rare and brief incursions of winter. There was no school that day and dad didn't need any help in the chemist, therefore mom had decided to bring me at the beach to play. I was a rather delicate child, easily affected by bronchial infections. Influence had brought Christmas holidays away, leaving my already slender face shrunken, my eyes dug by deep dark bags. The paediatrician had recommended sea air. The exposure to the sun, besides, would have attenuated my pallor, and altogether revived my sickly expression.
With us there were Vito and his mother Lina. We had brought the ball to play football on the sand. The shore was nearly deserted; only a couple of elderly people walking arm in arm, and a solitary mother pushing a baby carriage. Near the shore four fishing reeds, well lined up and distanced from one another, the fishermen gathered in a knot, chatting and waiting to check the baits. Us children raced to the beach, with our pants rolled up to the knees, our hands holding our caps over our heads so they didn't fly away.
We plunged into the sand with a leap, and it immediately insinuated in our shoes, even in our socks. We were already kicking penalties in a virtual goal drawn on thin air – whose borders varied depending on our convenience – while our mothers, several meters behind, chatted and watched over us from afar.
Vito contested my third goal, sustaining that I had hit the intersection of the goal posts, but I was very stubborn and I didn't want to listen to reason. While we were animatedly discussing, we heard the voices of our mothers calling us. We thought that it was because of the quarrel, so we reassured them that all was fine, but they insisted. We started toward them. My mother had pulled out her camera. She had brought it to take some photos of us, but it was not toward us that the lens was aimed when she started taking them. I asked her for explanations. She called our attention on what surrounded us. When you’re six you don't notice some things, you just care about your desire to play. Only then, driven by her words, I acknowledged the desolating spectacle. We had been playing in the middle of an open-air dump. Plastic bottles, glass shards, torn pouches from which garbage and an endless number of cigarette stubs came out, scattered everywhere. Mom cursed against the boys who held parties on the beach in the evening, but she didn't even save the fishermen. Neither they showed any respect for that shore that served as the background of their pastime.
Us children insisted for keeping playing, it seemed unfair to us having to stop for something that wasn’t our fault. But our mothers insisted that it was dangerous, because we could cut ourselves with some glass shard, or worse sting us with an infected syringe. Vito and I wondered why ill people went to make themselves injections right on the beach.
Vito raced high and low with open arms, slaloming among the plastic bottles shed here and there. Lina kept telling him to come back to the sidewalk, already with a small bottle of hand-disinfectant gel in hand; but he kept running and touching. He came back toward us waving a coloured cardboard sheet. It was a Scratch&Win card, one of those that promise to improve your life in a few minutes and never actually do that. With the difficult lilt of who is just learning to read, Vito spelled the words written in block letters on the back of the ticket: «Li-te, no, li-ve, live br... br... Mom, how do you read this?»
r /> «Bril, you read it bril», Lina helped him patiently.
«Bril-ian-tly. Live brilliantly, live brilliantly», Vito kept repeating triumphantly, like someone who just succeeded in an extraordinary enterprise.
Back home, my mother wrote an open letter to the citizens to report the state of decline reached. She sent it to the Mayor and to the local newspaper, attaching the photo. It was published. My father hung the clipping of the newspaper in the chemist, in a place where it would be visible to everyone. It contained the hard comments of my mother about a citizenry without dignity and civic sense. In the photo, in the foreground, a conspicuous heap of garbage stood out, behind which, timidly, a strip of sea appeared. On that heap of indecency, Vito and I, smiling, were holding the edges of the Scratch&Win card, with the "Live brilliantly" clearly visible.
That newspaper clipping remained for a long time on the wall of the chemist, just like the garbage in the beach.