Chapter 11
This morning we visit the largest masjid of the city.
It’s our first time in a mosque. It strikes me for its majesty, the solidity of an imposing volume surmounted by clear domes, laying elegantly on a white square. It is the time of the noon prayer, and from the minaret a recorded voice calls forth the believers, while white cloths lightly wave to inform the most distant ones as well, that the call of the muezzin can't reach. An orderly and silent crowd prepares for the solemnity of the prayer, all set in front of the mirahb, the niche that marks the direction toward the Mecca. Teresa tells me in a low voice that believers are called to prayer five times a day, no less, that they have to follow a precise ritual, and that no good Moslem can back out of such everyday ritual. I find fascinating that the scheduling of the prayer follows the path of the sun, inserting in a natural, almost cosmic rhythm. I think about how tight the relationship between nature and religion is, about the mysterious laws that unavoidably tie the one to the other.
Vito has told me of when the first great mosque was built in Palermo. His words resound in my mind, bouncing among the walls of this sacred place where the air is soaked by the pleasant feeling of beauty. He said wise words, right words.
«I am not bothered at all by the fact that there is a mosque a few steps from a church», he said, «it is beautiful to think that everyone has a place where to go, a place where they can feel at peace with themselves and with others, or where they can find peace, if they lost it. It makes me believe in the idea of freedom. It’s an example of it.»
He is right. Everyone has the right to have a gym for the soul. A place where to feed it, where to uplift it together with other people, whatever the place is, provided that it is shared. According to him there are universal values that belong to the deeper human essence. Each religion tries to inscribe them in its own patrimony, marking its belonging, but they belong to humankind, not to this or that creed. It’s up to everyone of us to find the place where we will cultivate them, always together with others.
Every time that I visited a church I have done that watching it with the eyes of a tourist or an estimator of art, looking at the architecture, the details, the artistic refinements. Yet today I feel for the first time a different kind of interest. Because, beyond beauty, that is still the first aspect of this place that captures me, my attention is all for those men and those women gathered in prayer, for the strength of the sharing, but also of subordination. There is an extraordinary power in every form of cult, able to upholster obedience in devotion, and however, like Vito says, it is right that everyone has the chance to freely partake of it.
After the mosque, a tour among the ultramodern architectures of which the city is rich awaits us. The big investors indulged themselves in realizing fanciful constructions, pushed to the extreme of experimentalism. Some frankly appear useless to me, but nevertheless interesting to see. The thing I deem more unbelievable than the constructions themselves is the fact that no one thinks about defacing them. I remember buildings and monuments dirtied or damaged immediately after they had been restructured, sign of a deep disrespect, as well as a lack of interest for the patrimony of the city. As Vito said, sanctions and rigid inspections educated the people, but I wonder why we have to reduce ourselves to be tamed by punitive and repressive methods rather than growing in a free culture characterized by conscious respect and care.
Even this morning the world seems to have arranged a meeting here, where people of the most disparate nationalities walk, looking amazed at the grandeur of a progress that almost feels miraculous. And us in the middle of them, losing ourselves among skyscrapers, bright towers, floating museums and artificial islets a few meters from the coast, entirely artificial reconstructions of small floating heavens of the distant oceans.
When we go back to the hotel we are exhausted, but the images of this avant-garde Palermo, like Vito would say, shine in our eyes, illuminating inexpressible emotions.
Giuliana is enraptured. Who knows how many telephone top-up she will use for the daily report to her friends. She fills the elevator with her words, her enthusiastic comments in a convulsive bilingualism of which she is not even aware. She praises the Fantastic Palermo, and her contagious enthusiasm illuminates the faces of the four elderly Germans who are sharing with us the climb to the nineteenth floor. They unwillingly leave us, as if they wanted to make the overflowing emotion that the words of my daughter – although incomprehensible for them – spread in the air, involving the bystanders, to persist. It’s a ray of sun in their daily greyness, the freshness of a too distant, unreachable adolescence. But she doesn't know. Teresa listens to her story and nods, adding details to the details. As usual theirs is a perfect agreement of which everyone else is but a spectator. Marco, on the other hand, is hermetic but grants himself small openings of enthusiasm. The day cast over him a controlled good mood, without excesses. I tried to watch him discreetly, knowing well that he can’t stand unauthorized intrusions beyond his surrounding walls. He seemed to me unreadable as usual, yet less compressed, less airtight. But there is so much distance between him and me, and my point of observation is still very distant.
Giuliana warns her brother that she will occupy the bathroom for at least a hour.
«I have to take a shower and wash my hair. So you’d better find yourself something to do.»
Marco shrugs, resigning to the long wait without replying. I already know that I will undergo the same fate with Teresa, therefore I propose him to share with me the hours of antechamber that are waiting for us.
«What if we went for a walk, just me and you?»
He looks at me questioningly, certainly surprised by my unusual outburst.
«Sounds like a good idea to me», Teresa urges us, «after all we’ll be busy for some time. You know what we’ll do? Giuliana and I want to go shopping after lunch, so if you want to sneak off...»
He hesitates.
«Come on», his mother pushes him, «I believe that you would get bored with us».
Marco shrugs. An “OK” mumbled with gritted teeth comes out by a faint crack of his mouth. Unreadable. Maybe it’s what he wants, he simply wasn’t able to say no.
Teresa looks at me with approval, she stamps us a kiss on the forehead, then disappears behind the door, leaving us alone in the long, silent corridor.
The twenty-five floors down, as fast as the elevator is, seem very long this time. Only a few minutes ago we were in this same place, but in a totally different atmosphere. I miss the loud voice of Giuliana that booms saturating the space, accelerating the time.
We get in the car and depart without a destination. I feel tired and I want to take a shower. But the list of priorities imposes other choices.
«Is it fine if we listen to some music?» I ask him.
«Sure.»
«Where you would like to go?
«I don't know. You decide.»
«OK.»
Side by side, without words, maybe due to the tiredness, or more likely to embarrassment. Lost in the sight of the landscape, we bounce to the other the burden of breaking the silence. When you have been silent too long, where do you start from?
Teresa’s reproaches, her admonitory eyes, come back to my mind. "When do you think it will be the right time to start talking with your son?"
For me it never was. I imagined that he should be the one to make a signal to me. But then I was too distracted to notice it every time that it came.
The car goes fast beyond an intersection, leaving behind a semaphore that is turning to red and a queue of cars.
«I would like you to come to a place with me», I say, turning to look for his eyes.
He looks at me in the eyes, he slips beyond, even more inside. But it’s a second, no one of us is accustomed, no one is ready.
He looks at his right, toward the sea. I lost him again. Why did I never hug him when I could?
On the radio there is another of those promiscuous voices that the chi
ldren like so much, not even this time I will ask whether it is a man or a woman.
«Do you want to listen to this song?»
«Fine.»
I raise the volume. I don't like it, but it will entertain us. For some minutes we don't have to make any effort. The voice of the sat-nav enters the music, mixing without false notes in an unintentional and pathetic duet.
Marco fell asleep. His head hangs to the rhythm of the irregularities of the asphalt, in a movement that also seems amalgamated to the music. When he wakes up again we are in a peripheral area.
«Sorry, I dozed off.»
«Never mind. Sleep some more if you want, there is some way to go.»
«Where is it that we’re going?»
«Back to Torre.»
Marco closes his eyes; after a few minutes his breath is deep again.
He wakes up while I am parking, his eyes still full of sleep, his hair without order, his green and blue striped shirt glued to his sweaty back. We start without a word. Have we ever walked together, before today?
I feel more embarrassed than at a first date. There are no filters between us, neither his mother nor Giuliana, nor an algebraic equation to be resolved. There’s us and our cowardly silences. In a sense I count on his cowardice, hope that he will lack the courage to accuse me, to rub my face in my mistakes.
Is it too late to justify myself, to make up? I know about his life mostly through the stories of my wife. I lived it second-hand, always a few hours or a few days later. I feel that he is expecting something from me now, but I, cowardly, keep walking in silence, hoping that for him it’s enough. Coming back here, where I’ve been a boy his same age, a beloved child, a child who had a father, as well as a mother, makes me feel guilty. I would like to apologize, but I don't know how to do it.
Unexpectedly it is him to break the ice.
«Have you already seen your house?»
«Yes, I have seen it. It is a little different, but recognizable.»
«What effect did it have on you?»
«It’s strange, you know. In all these years I thought about it so many times, yet, now that I’m here, I feel a great distance. It doesn't have on me the effect I imagined.»
«That is, you don't care?»
«That’s not what I mean. Perhaps I spent so much time trying to forget my past life in this place, that I ended up freezing emotions.»
«I thought you had a good life in Torre.»
«Maybe that’s exactly why, when I left, I tried to turn the page.»
«Not to feel nostalgia?»
«I believe so. I loved this place so much, in spite of its contradictions, in spite of the so many wrong things that were there. I was only a little boy and this was my home. I lived a happy life here, yet I felt the need to deny that it had been so.»
«And this made you feel better? I mean, is denying enough?»
«It was what I believed before setting foot again in Palermo.»
Marco’s face darkens.
«But, you said it, this is no longer the world in which you grew up, you are a stranger now, it doesn't belong to you anymore.»
«Sure, I live well in Paris, but it was stupid to try and deny this part of my life. It’s like trying to delete a piece of myself. It’s wrong.»
«But doing that prevented you from feeling bad all this time.»
«Because I had a goal to reach, and at that time it had priority over everything.»
I would like to tell him not to freeze his passion for diving for fear of suffering.
To our left, the cries of a group of girls capture Marco’s attention. Beyond the hedges surrounding the garden of a luxurious villa, a slender little boy, standing on the tip of a springboard, enjoys the cheers of his friends on the edge of the swimming pool, who are inciting him to execute a dive. Even though we don't understand their words, the situation is clear enough. The girls clap their hands, he shows ribs and little muscles while the other boys, a little aside, are waiting for their turn for exhibiting.
Marco shakes his head and walks on, right when the guy disappears in the water in the applauses and laughter of his friends.
«Idiots», he comments between clenched teeth.
«You should show them what a dive is!»
«I am not an exhibitionist, Dad.»
«You want to make me believe that you never dived only to make a girl admire you?»
«You do your job to exhibit, Dad?»
I had been wondering how much time it would take before he launched the first attack. It finally arrived.
«I only wanted to say that...»
«That you can exploit what you can do to show off. I know that you think like this.»
«What do you mean?»
We cross the road, we enter a pedestrian alley where shops for tourist follow one another, alternating with cafes and restaurants. Marco stops in front of the shop windows, but it’s as if his eyes don’t stop on anything of what is in front of him. I simply believe he’s trying to distance them from mine. I insist on the question.
«What does it mean that I think like this?»
«I was just saying for the sake of it. Why you take it so wrong, Dad?»
«Because I believe that you meant to tell me more than that, so do it without beating about the bush.»
«Can we drink something? I am dying of thirst.»
We stop at the first cafe. In front of a fresh coke and a red cocktail we keep moving embarrassedly around our minefield. We are sitting on two metal stools in front of the counter. The irregularities of the floor make the stool unstable under the weight of my body.
«You believe that in life you must become someone, because otherwise it is as if you never existed.»
He turns the glass around in his hands while he is pronouncing these words, he never looks up once.
«We were just talking about a dive, Marco, that's all, just a dive.»
«Yes, but I know how you think. You believe that I was wrong leaving competitions, because I lost my occasion to become someone... and you... you have lost yours to say that you have a son who wins medals.»
«But what are you saying?»
Arms folded around his stomach, eyes pointed anywhere except on me, Marco tries in any way to increase the distance between us.
«I’m saying that you love to be a protagonist. And you think that us too, being your children, must reason like that. With Giuliana you partly succeeded, because she is an ambitious person and she wants to gratify you. Instead I am a disappointment, because I abandoned the sport that, probably, was the only thing in which I could have been able to rise from the ranks. That’s why you hold it against me.»
Now it’s my turn to turn the glass in my hands while I am attacking the salted biscuits one after another.
«But I don't hold anything against you. Why do you think so?»
«Maybe you expected me to want to follow in your footsteps and study medicine. But I’m not interested in it, and I don't believe that I will ever be. This what disappoints you.»
«Everyone has his road, Marco.»
«This is right for everyone else, Dad, but not for the children of doctor Manfredi, who is in turn son of a doctor. For us the road is already decided.»
«I demanded none of this.»
«There are so many ways to convey some messages, also without expressly telling them, Dad. You never had time for me, but you found the way to make me understand that I must not disappoint you.»
«And isn’t it what all parents want from their children?»
«Sure. A son must not disappoint his father, but the contrary is not true as well, is it?»
His eyes are hard and impenetrable. It’s a mask of ancient hate, patiently preserved, and at the same time of satisfaction, because he knows that he succeeded in hitting my self-respect, rubbing my face in my faults as a father.
«I have been a son too, before being a father. An inadequate father. Oh, and I was skilled too in making my parents feel guilty for s
ome fault. I tried to say or do something that would provoke in them that same sense of disappointment that they had elicited in me.»
I let the words float for some instant between us before continuing.
«When someone makes you feel bad, hurting them in turn is the way to return your suffering to them. But it’s not a true consolation, especially when you need closeness, not to create further distance. I have been wrong with you, Marco, I admit it. I have made so many mistakes in the most important relationships of my life. I haven’t given you enough, but I never taught you to be an exhibitionist, neither I think I am one. Hurt me if it makes you feel better, but do it for the mistakes I really made.»
Marco’s face is all red. From the pocket of his blue Bermuda shorts, he pulls out a pair of sunglasses. Another barrier between us, but I understand him, we are too unprotected, too vulnerable now.
Trying to keep in check his voice, broken by the emotion, he tells me, «I spent so much time being angry with you, envying my friends who have normal fathers, who spend some time together with them. You didn’t exist for me. I felt like an orphan, Dad.»
He keeps his fists clenched on his thighs. I don't know if he is angrier because of my behaviour or for the fact that he let out so much emotion. He is as proud as me, he doesn't love to show his vulnerability.
I would like to jump down from the unsteady stool and hug my son, get emotional with him, postponing to another time the rationality of words. But we are in a cafe, he is fifteen years old, I am almost fifty, and it is not so that it works between us. It would only be an embarrassing sentimentalism. The time for actions like this is long gone. So I take my wallet, I calmly pull out a banknote, I leave it on the table and I stand up.
«Let’s go.»
He follows me. We hide in the crowd, one next to the other, busy making our way among people in a narrower and more crowded part of the alley, sheltered one from the other. The cries of three little boys running after one another cover the gasping breath of my son, full of emotion and anger. While the crowd hides me, I try to rearrange my thoughts, to insert them in the correct words.
«I lived all my life studying and working. It’s my passion, but now I start thinking that it was also a hideaway. I sheltered there, I still do. But in these last days, away from the life that I built myself in all these years, it seems to me that I can see things from another perspective. I am trying to call myself into question... I would like to make up for many mistakes, but for some it’s too late... I won’t have a second chance. For others, instead, there is still a chance. I hope to have one with you too.»
«...»
«I am happy of the time we are spending together. Even though I gave you but a little, you felt like giving your time to me, coming to this trip. I haven’t deserved it. I would have liked to be a father like mine, but I haven’t been able to. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry... I haven’t been up to my father.»
Marco’s breath becomes more regular. He has a sanguine complexion. but there is less tension on his face. He sniffles two or three times, rubs his nose with the back of his right hand, then clears his throat.
«I’m not so sure anymore of what I said before, you know.»
«...»
I look at him with an interrogative expression, waiting for him to explain.
«Do you remember the evening when they run over that boy?»
I nod. The bloodied and petrified face of Hussuf peers out between us.
«I felt so stupid. I always thought that your main goal was showing off at every occasion. Even in the airplane, you immediately jumped up when they were looking for a doctor on board. It seemed to me that you were taking advantage of yet one more occasion to make everybody know who you are and how good you are. But when I saw that boy on the ground... I mean, I was paralyzed by fear, I didn't know what to do. My brain squirted out of my head, I completely lost control. You, instead, were there, clear headed, and you knew how to act to help him, not to show yourself off. You didn’t hesitate to touch him, dirty, full of blood... I saw how he looked at you. He was terrorized, but he trusted you. As if he understood you at first sight, while I, your son, haven’t understood anything. Maybe I judged you too hurriedly.»
I stop, I look for his eyes behind the dark lenses.
«With him I was a physician, Marco, and that’s what I do better. With you I would have had to do more. If till now you saw in me a cynic exhibitionist, it means I gave you some reason to.»
I no longer find anger in his eyes, but a depth regret, the same that he is reading in me now. We look at each other again, and this time we do that without masks, with bare faces, and what we see is the desolation of failure, because whatever will happen from now on cannot fill what already went lost.
We start walking again. My house is a few meters from here. Words shortened the distance between us, but the open crack let down an avalanche. It is never pleasant to admit one’s own mistakes. There would be thousand more things to say, situations to analyze, but not everything at once. So it is me to change subject.
«Here we are. This is Piazza Vittoria, and that is my house, the crib of my happy childhood.»
I tell him anecdotes of my life within those walls, episodes in which perhaps I describe myself more awkward and clumsy than I really was. But to hell the too heavy image of a model individual since childhood. We laugh like father and son, in a great agreement, sheltering from the hits we blew just a few minutes ago. We sit on a bench and from there we look at the square, almost empty at three p.m..
«What about a sandwich? We haven’t even eaten.»
«Fine. I have a bit of an headache.»
He looks at me.
«So do I. But we will be better soon.»
I smile and I pat his naked thigh. It is the maximum of intimacy remaining to a would-be father with a son who is by now a teenager.
«Wait here.»
I slip in the cafe in front of my old house. A girl takes my order and disappears behind the counter.
After a few minutes I go back to Marco with two grilled sandwiches, a coke and a bottle of fresh water. Marco greedily bites his sandwich, a bit after another like a dog with a bone. With his mouth full, he looks up at the terrace of my old house, where the younger of the two women I had already seen is peering out. Her raven-black hair gathered in a chignon, a sleeveless shirt, naked arms folded up with the elbows laying on the windowsill, her head in her hands in a dreamy expression.
Marco looks at her for a long time. He swallows the last bit of bread, then gulps down a long sip of coke from the can. A convulsive gobble accompanies the drink along his oesophagus.
«She looks like granny.»
I nod.
«Do you ever think about her?»
«Sure. And you?»
«I no longer remember her well, you know. At times I try to focus on her face, but I can't. It’s the face in photos, not a real memory, to me.»
«She loved you. She would have been a happy grandmother.»
«I remember a thing, about her, you know? It’s a vague memory. She’s at our house, handing me a gift, but I don't see her face. I open the package and inside there is a radio-controlled red car. It’s still in my room, Mom told me that it was granny to give it to me, the last time she visited us, before the illness...»
«Yes, I remember that too.»