Chapter 15
In the school year 2016, the fifth E of the Galileo Galilei high in Palermo was composed by eighteen young people about to graduate, crushed by the folly of the events of historical importance that were ripening together with them. In the classroom, Vito and I occupied the exact centre of the three by three line up of desks, right behind Teresa and Anna. They sat at the first desk, central row, the proper place for those who didn't fear the confrontation with the teachers. To their right there were Maria and Carlotta, personifications of Perfidy and Falsehood, generous dispensers of fake compliments and smiles, behind which they concealed a depth contempt for the whole world. Vito and I, who lent ourselves to their miserable theatricality, reciprocated their blandishments with likewise simpering attitudes that fed their disgust. They didn't spare anyone, especially not teachers, to whom they reserved smiles soaked with fake flattery and true compassion. Mario and Giovanni, from the desk behind, launched on their long dark hair little paper balls, moistened with spit, creating blowpipes with their chewed pens. Mario, the perfectionist, adorned their heads with the pointillism technique, while Giovanni, who was coarser, threw blindly bursts of little balls, sometimes shooting with two or more pens at the same time. To them, that was that the moment of the greatest participation to school life. They spent the rest sleeping with their head on the desk, warming up their seats, as the math teacher always said.
Behind them, at the last desk, Matteo and Giorgio, the absolutely less ordinary subjects of the class. The former lived in a dimension more hallucinated than real, made of a ghostly night-time world smelling of drug and violence, rivers of alcohol and cars launched at full speed to break the silence of the city outskirts. He told us of his night-time bravados without emotion, throwing on those who listened a restlessness from which he instead seemed to be sheltered. If for us his world was difficult to understand, it was entirely inaccessible for adults. His parents pretended not to notice anything, in order to spare themselves from the embarrassment and the horror deriving from the dissoluteness of their son. In the classroom, his only role was that of paper supplier for the blowpipes of Mario and Giovanni. Sometimes however he enjoyed making embarrassing raids during lessons with ambiguous and inopportune questions, to which the teachers answered with scowls of reproach and pity.
Giorgio’s face is one of those I remember less well than others, because in the classroom he was a transparent figure of the kind that leave no traces in other people's memory. Yet I recognize him immediately as soon as Teresa and I set foot in the "Garden of the orange trees", the restaurant that Anna has chosen for the school reunion. He has the same low hairline on his forehead, the same thick eyebrows, almost about to form a single strip of grizzled carpet above two small mouse-like eyes. He still wears thick eyeglasses – disproportionate in comparison to his small and dug face – that confer him the appearance of a horrendous caricature. He is hesitating at the door of the restaurant, where a maid is taking his jacket. He was an obsessive teenager, full of tics and strange rituals. He didn't allow anybody to touch his things. His hands were continually bedewed of disinfectant gel in order to neutralize potential viruses and bacteria after every contact with other people. A coughing or a sneeze were all it took to stiffen him for a whole day, tormented by the thought that he would be the victim of a contamination. "This way you infect me, this way you contaminate me", he kept repeating nervously, staring at the guilty with two small black dots like the eyes of a malevolent and suspicious ghost.
He keeps his right arm extended forward, his jacket suspended between thumb and forefinger to avoid any possible hand contact during the delivery. Nevertheless, the fact that he accepted to leave one of his pieces of clothing in a common wardrobe is a sign of improvement.
«Giorgio.»
The sound slips out of my lips more like an incredulous exclamation than a real call. But he hears it and turns to look at me. Instinctively I reach out to shake his hand, but I interrupt my gesture halfway, embarrassed, not knowing how far I can push it. He looks at my palm extended toward him. I feel that I am all contained there, in that potentially threatening hand, ready to engulf his, to attach the worst on it. He hesitates, maybe he is prepared to the fact that tonight some contact will be inevitable. He hints at a smile and allows his hand to slip on mine with a fleeting, inconsistent touch. I feel like I brushed a soap bubble.
«Paolo Manfredi!»
He is almost smiling, then he looks up over my shoulder, he intercepts Teresa, to whom he grants a wider smile but without contacts.
«You two are still together! What a pleasure to see you again!»
He half-bows, displaying an exaggeratedly respectful and formal attitude. Teresa asks him a few question to which he answers with a rigid smile, his eyes fixed on the room full of people to be faced, of hands to be shaken, hugs to be shunned. Who knows if the others still remember the coordinates to move in his minefield.
A tall and thin woman in a dark uniform, with an oval face on which a bright lipstick stands out, anticipates my words asking us whether we belong to the group of Mrs. Marino. I nod while she looks for our surnames on her list and checks them with a firm stroke of a red biro. She invites us to follow her in the room booked by our group, from which I hear the voice of Anna come. I walk beside the spindle shank, Teresa behind me, Giorgio at a certain distance from her, with his head lowered in a reverent pose. Beyond the arc that leads to the area reserved to us, Anna is moving in the middle of the gathering like a perfect guest in her welcoming lunch room. She intercepts our arrival and calls the general attention on us.
«Guys, look who has arrived. Paolo and Teresa are here.»
Giorgio is behind the spindle shank and he stays there, invisible by the rest.
The room is cosy and pleasant. A long table goes from one extremity to the other. It seems decorated for a ceremony, with bouquets of fresh flowers methodically placed at a mathematical distance from one another. The walls, upholstered in clear stone to which showy pieces of unmistakable Caltagirone artisanship are suspended, make the place intimate.
Several eyes are aimed on our side of the room. Eyes from my remote past, dug in their contours but still recognizable. They widen in double smiles for me and for my wife, relieving Giorgio from the impact with the crowd, leaving him the possibility, mimetic animal that he is, to meld with the background.
A multiplication of kisses, hugs, smiles and pleasantries, in which we pleasantly lose for several minutes, and at every recognition a piece of an old dusty puzzle clicks back into its place, completed again by memory without effort. Mario almost lost his hair completely, but in exchange for it he now sports two thick moustaches over his flat lips and his teeth ruined by smoke. His hug engulfs me in the smell of just-smoked tobacco.
Claudia and Giulia, from the desk on my left, look like they just came out from an old school photo. They greet me with their spontaneous joy, coordinated in gestures and in words.
«We never lost sight of each other in all these years», they say to Teresa. «We got married in the same period, our daughters have a few months difference, and naturally they are close friends, just like us».
I would never have been able to imagine a different destiny for them, who always believed in their indivisibility and showed that in life you can choose a dress and keep it on without getting tired of it, wearing it every day with the same freshness and elegance of the first time.
A face that I can hardly recognize appears strongly in front of me, taking the thunder from the two inseparable. A blazing red mouth on a face heavily coloured with rouge and eye shadow, framed by a modern and juvenile French bob.
«Do you recognize me?» she asks me, winking with malice, quivering in the certainty of surprising me.
If for some the key of happiness consists in being true to themselves for their whole life, for others it’s the exact opposite, and jumping from one dress to the other is the spring that pushes them toward their personal goals. The woman I have in
front of me was a fragile and insecure girl, a timid who resisted to any and all solicitations. She had only one friend in the class, Daniela, who sat at her same desk, with whom she lived as if in a protected niche. She liked to look at the world from afar, behind the glass of a window, inside the television screen, in the novels and in poetries, never live, never in the front line. But even though her external wrap is not recognizable at all, her sweet voice survived, trapped in an aggressive wrapping.
«Serenella, you really are a little girl», I tell her.
«Serenella!» she puffs in a forced smile. «I haven’t been called like that in a lifetime. It’s a memory that belongs to the past, now I am just Serena», she tells me while disentangling an earring – with an ostentatiously twee gesture – from the straightened lock that repeatedly slips on her face.
«But how is it possible? I would never have recognized you, I mean, you are so, so...» Teresa storms in, repeatedly looking at her from head to toe with incredulity and hidden amusement.
«I have adapted to the times, dear. Timidity is not suitable for an international city like this, where you meet people from the whole world.»
«What is your job?» we ask her almost in a chorus.
With her hand she keeps tormenting the earring, but now it is just a mannerism.
«I am the manager of the principal Gallery of Modern art of Palermo. I manage a Foundation that collaborates with international organizations for the promotion and the diffusion of local figurative arts. Practically, besides shows of great art masterpieces, I deal with emergent artists, I find talents, I organize artistic demonstrations of import.»
She says all this in a single breath without looking at us in the eyes, looking up, with a half-mouth smile like in the interpretation of a seasoned actress.
While we are amusedly listening to her, Vito storms in the room and, today like in the past, grabs the spotlight. To say the truth, his never was really grabbing; rather we always pointed the spotlight on him because of his natural and inimitable charisma. Like a star, he enjoys his triumphal entry, among kisses and pleasantries, winks and blinks. What surprises me more is the naturalness with which he also hugs Giorgio, who had succeeded in camouflaging himself in the crowd until now, closed in a niche on the background. I expect to see him wriggle out of that hug, petrified and terrorized, and for an instant the others exchange incredulous worried glances. Instead Giorgio comes out of it unharmed, even softened for a fraction of a second, almost humanized by that contact. Then I can’t help but wonder whether he has willingly chosen to remain for his whole life petrified, waiting for someone braver than the others to thaw him with a warm touch of genuine humanity while us, who believed to be healthier than him, were satisfied by whatever gesture, every contact, even the meaningless ones – that are always much more than true ones – without expecting for them to mean anything. We took what was there without selectivity, without giving the right importance to things.
The presence of Vito loosened every reserve on the evening and put in circle an uninhibited and pleasant atmosphere.
There are damp eyes and running noses around me. Teresa is one of them. Closed in her white sheath dress, her hair unusually gathered on her nape, she has a refined and minimalist look, and still today she is the most beautiful, just like she was at school. She looks at me, shaking her head in resignation, and tells me, «You know I get carried away.»
I smile and I don't say anything, while looking at her with a teasing expression, even if inside of me I envy her ability to feel and to express, to be inside everything she does. Without hiding herself.
Daniela, who wasn’t a beautiful girl, now is a mature woman with an intriguing look. She too seems to have lost Serena’s reservation, but not the sense of measure. She rather seems a dark lady cast into an austere black suit on which a thread of pearls stands out. I ear Teresa repeat several times the story of our unexpected meeting in Paris, at a medicine conference, me as a chairman, her as a reporter. She likes to tell this story, especially to see the amazement on other people's face for that precise plan of the destiny that wanted us at all cost together. And she generally says not to be prone to fatalism.
Vito is impeccably dressed in a blue suit similar to mine. Seeing him elegantly dressed for the first time in my life gives me a sense of the time that passed, and with it of the passages that I missed.
«You weren’t expecting this?» he tells me, turning around to make me look at him from every angle.
«You said that you would never become a suit and tie guy», I mock him.
«Yeah, then life put its hand in it.»
He lays a hand on my left shoulder and leaves it there to anchor me to this room, to this moment, as if to dispel the possibility that I decide all of a sudden to levitate and disappear for who knows how long. I am here my friend, and there is no other place in which I would rather be tonight.
«You made my mother happy», he tells me fleetingly, between a greeting and another, and his vibrating voice allows his melancholy for that old bird who is about to fly away to unreachable places to slip. Before I can tell him anything, he’s already in the middle of another group, exchanging pleasantries.
Perfidy and Falsehood are exactly like they were once, they’re just no longer a couple, and walk each on her own. I perceive a certain acrimony between them, obviously hidden under layers of fake benevolence and gratification. From what they tell me, I understand that life gave them what they had been looking for. High-ranked husbands with prestigious jobs who introduced them to the most yearned social gatherings of the city, where only those who possess their weapons and their designer clothes are able to manoeuvre without embarrassment.
«We are almost all here», Anna announces with a triumphal tone, «we are waiting only for Salvatore. As I already anticipated to some of you, tonight there won’t be Matteo – because of the serious conditions of his mother – Chiara, whom I wasn’t able to find, and Vincenzo – who lives in Dublino and told me without any embarrassment that he couldn’t care less of this pathetic reunion, but wished for us to enjoy it a lot!»
«The usual impudent», the former Serenella remarks.
«What about Antonella? Antonella di Bartolo isn’t here either, what happened to her?»
They all turn to look at me, including my wife, who shakes her head because she is sure that she informed me.
«She died five years ago», Giorgio says, resurfaced from the mimetic wall but with the usual rigid posture «... a tumour in the pancreas. I saw her. She was rigid and cold, so cold...» and he shrugs as if to find shelter from the cold that the memory alone evokes in him deeply under his skin.
Vito tries to break the sadness that wavers over our heads and, with one of his gimmicks, shelters us from the thought that death has already insinuated our generation.
«I propose a toast to the two girls without which this evening would never have happened, Anna and Teresa.»
He lifts a glass of aperitif in the middle of the room, waiting for the noisy tinkling of our glasses.
«I am really happy to meet my old class again, except for the teachers obviously! As you see, in spite of the changes, and so many things have changed in these years, there is always the chance to recover our past, if we keep looking for it... if we don’t want to forget it!»
He looks at me, reaching out with his glass. Mine reaches it, and with it all of my participation.
We finally sit at the table, between chatters, laughter and chairs heavily dragged on the floor. Noises that combine into a noisy mixture that tastes so much like an ordinary day at school. Although almost elderly, together we still produce the same adolescent-like symphony.
Anna is sitting at the head of the table, Teresa to her right, I immediately after. Vito is right in front of me, between Giorgio and Claudia. Anna tells us of how thrilling was the whole job of searching for our schoolmates, and especially to discover that the desire to meet was shared by most of them. While the chatters multiply, the last r
epatriate storms in the room. In my memory he is a sturdy boy, with a ruddy face and smooth chestnut hair, glued on his head like Marco’s silicon swimming caps. He was extremely timid and embarrassed, both with classmates and with the teachers, because of his heavy rustic accent and his rather poor and coarse speech capabilities. He was a typical country boy, born and grown in a small town of the hinterland of Palermo. His father, a farmer son of farmers, had prepared him for agricultural life since he was a child, and so he deemed useless to educate him more than what was needed to read and count. His mother, instead, believed that her son had the abilities to deserve something better than the fatiguing agricultural life, therefore she pushed him to commit to study, also comforted by the favourable judgments expressed by his teachers. They thought that Salvatore was a very capable boy, although strongly inhibited by the pressing aspirations of his father. So, crushed between opposite expectations, Salvatore came to school every day, with his shoulder down and an uncertain walk, afraid to disappoint both his mother, who had done so much to send him to high school, and his father, who saw in him the heir of the small firm founded with so much sacrifice and hard job. None of his parents ever asked what their son wanted for himself, and probably even he avoided wondering about it. For one like me who, on the contrary, was even exceedingly favoured, the condition of Salvatore was unbearable. I was bothered rather than pitied by him.
The fifty-year-old man who enters the room is not even the shade of Salvatore. He is a solid body, well-standing on the floor, straight-backed in his grey suit with a garish yellow tie that goes down along his showy chest. He has a cordial and uninhibited attitude. He widens his short arms in a virtual hug to everyone, almost as if he wanted to hold all of us at the same time. He smiles with his eyes, with his mouth, with his nose and his ears and with every single facial muscle, in an expression that tastes of sincerity. We find ourselves all standing again to welcome him.
«Sorry for being late», he says to Anna, kissing her hand with a reverent gesture, an old gallantry out of fashion for centuries by now.
Vito hugs him first, they pat each other’s back.
«I was afraid I would not make it. I travelled from Catania at full speed to arrive on time», Salvatore says, sitting in the only seat left, between the perfidious and the false. Those who were free to choose avoided it.
Salvatore sits down, looking up with an expression that says "Thanks everybody, you really are good friends", while the two look at him up and down as if he were an unknown animal. He lets their sharp eyes run over him, and turns now to one of them now to the other, smiling and saying, «Am I all right? I washed myself and shaved. I don't know why, but I knew that, being the last to arrive, I would get an uncomfortable chair!»
Both answer with a perfectly synchronized smile of self-importance, and with the same simultaneity they turn to look at other tablemates.
«You know that I would personally come to pick you up if you hadn’t come», Vito tells him from the other side of the table.
Unlike me, he always felt liking and compassion for Salvatore. At school he protected him from those who made fun of him, as if he were his big brother. He felt close to him in their unfair destiny of having a wrong father, in Salvatore's case for his excessive dominance, in Vito’s for his total absence. He believed that it was up to Salvatore’s classmates to help him gain awareness of his absurd situation. Rather than picking on him, in his opinion, we should have helped him to get his life back. He always incited him to think with his own mind, not to be satisfied to marry other people's opinions. He encouraged him to trust his own abilities, so that his life could be the result of his own choices and not of plans imposed by his father. Salvatore listened to him in silence, his already ruddy cheeks becoming red and hot, his eyes didn’t dare go up to much. He nodded and shook his head at the same time, because even though he wanted to follow Vito’s advices, he didn't believe he could be capable of so much audacity. I wonder to what degree his transformation is due to Vito’s tenacity?
«You know that we would not begin without you, you are the half-secret ingredient of the evening», Anna whispers to him.
Teresa and I exchange an interrogative glance, because we perceive that many others, besides Vito and Anna, share a special gratification for the presence of Salvatore, which reason, that escapes us completely, is certainly not connected to his popularity at school.
But things are clarified during the evening, while the waiters parade carrying trays of appetizers of the purest Sicilian tradition, immersed in a scenic design obtained with eccentric and sophisticated cuts of orange peels and slices.
«Maybe not everyone knows that this restaurant owes a lot of its popularity not only to the ability of the chef of proposing in the best way the tastes of the old Sicilian gastronomic tradition, but also to the inimitable creativeness with which he has been able to embellish many of such dishes with an equally typical Mediterranean ingredient, orange. And not everybody knows that it’s Salvatore who supplies oranges to this place, as well as many other of the best restaurants in the city. He became a big entrepreneur in the agricultural field.»
«Come on, come on, don’t exaggerate», he downsizes himself.
«Don’t be shy», Anna retorts, «many of you remember Salvatore like the timid good-natured boy who hardly spoke for fear of being wrong, who stood always a step behind others, thinking that that was his place. But he was a boy full of qualities, and life, fortunately, sometimes rewards those who deserve it. In his case, there was a happy match of ability and fortune, and the result leaves no doubts.»
«It’s true, I have been really lucky. Let’s say that I, or rather my oranges, were in the right place at the right time.»
Pushed by Vito, Salvatore tells a story that sounds unbelievable.
«In the general chaos that fell on us when Sicily was sold, not knowing what would happen in the years to come, I clung to the only thing I knew more than everything else, the country. The unbelievable fact was that my father, who had always insisted that I followed his footsteps, instead started pushing me to leave Sicily, fearing that the Arabs intended to turn Sicilians into subjects. He wanted to protect me, as after all he had done when he pushed me in spite of myself toward country life, because that was the only way he knew to guarantee a future to me. But that time, for the first time, I took my decision and refused to go. I thought that under whatever form of government, Italian, Arab or of who knows what, people would keep eating, so agriculture would always be needed. My father’s firm was small, because he had always been satisfied with the bare necessities for the survival of the family, but I wanted to do more. My mother let me sell a small plot she had inherited from her parents. I didn't get much because it was the period in which the Arabs came and bought for next to nothing a large quantity of ruins to turn them into prestigious abodes, but it was enough for a good investment.»
«Get to the outstanding part, tell us about the sheikh», Perfidy-Maria, sat to his right, interrupts him. She is at the same time a mask of curiosity and disgust, but also of so much envy.
«Calm down girl», Vito interrupts, «this story deserves to be listened to in its entirety, it’s not boring... like ours...» and he winks irreverently.
«But no, Vito, actually she’s right. There’s only a part of this story that everyone wants to know about, nobody otherwise would listen to the anonymous story of Salvatore the peasant. It’s absolutely normal... and it’s fine to me.»
He smiles with the strength of who is no longer afraid of the judgment of others, because today he is proud of himself.
«So, to make a long story short, I increased the production of vegetables and expanded the citrus grove, and since I had some contacts in Palermo with restaurant owners, I started to supply some of the restaurants of the city. Then the unimaginable happened...»
The silence of the room is broken only by the tinkling of the dishes, while everyone’s curious eyes are glued to the bright face of the unusual narrator, who ne
ver, at the times of high school, succeeded in arousing so much interest in this same audience speaking about himself.
«A yacht moored for a few days in Palermo harbour. It was one of the many ultra-multimillionaires sheikhs who came to buy houses and cheap plots, to build the dreamlike attractions that you can see around here now. He landed with all of his entourage to visit the city. It was a very warm day and suddenly one of the old rich men felt about to faint. Chance made it happen right in front of a kiosk I supply with oranges and lemons, for Palermo-style fresh juices. They had him drink a freshly-made orange juice. The sheikh liked it, he wanted more. You know how these extra-multimillionaires are! They don't limit themselves to buying a glass of juice. If they like it, they buy the whole kiosk, if not the whole district where the kiosk is and all the plots where the oranges with which the juice is made are grown. Approximately it went like this. He wanted fresh oranges for every day in which he would stay in Palermo. When the manager of the kiosk contacted me, I almost had a stroke. I personally went to deliver the load every morning, selecting with my hands the best fruits. When would I have again a chance to go on a boat like that? But these rich people not only have refined tastes, above all they have a good sense of smell, and they know how to smell business. He got this idea of assuring for himself the production of this special quality of oranges. Because the emirates are known all over the world for their inestimable wealth, for their artificial luxury, for thousand other things, but certainly not for genuine products. He wanted to speak to me about his offer. He wanted to produce juices of Sicilian oranges to be exported to foreign countries. In no time he had bought a lot of land for a small price, taking advantage of the exodus of the Sicilians, terrorized by the Arabic invasion. I don't how what it was, but the sheikh must have liked me, or trusted me, because in my field I know what to do. So he entrusted me with the direct management of the whole production. In short, from a simple farmer I became a manager. Today I am the biggest oranges producer of the whole Sicily, on behalf of the sheikh, of course. He owns a boundless expanse of land on the whole Sicilian territory, and I am the direct responsible of the whole production. I earn well and I feel like a little sheikh myself! We export in the whole Europe. I bet that those of you who live abroad put my oranges on their table. It’s the most demanded quality on all markets. It became a D.O.C. brand.»
«In Paris it never happened to me to find fruit of Sicilian origin», Teresa says. «I would have certainly bought it.»
«On the contrary, I am sure that right in Paris you have eaten more than everyone else... but you don't know.»
«But it’s not possible!» Serena says, «it’s mandatory to specify the origin of the products».
«Calm down, calm own. What if I say "oranges of Dubai"?»
Teresa’s eyes widen.
«You? You produce the oranges of Dubai? They are practically everywhere in our markets. They are fabulous but... why of Dubai, if you cultivate them here?»
«This, dear Teresa, is the black mark of the story.»
In a story narrated by many voices, like in an orchestra in perfect harmony, Salvatore, Vito, the inseparable Claudia and Giulia, and finally even Giorgio, who have lived all stages of the Arabic conquest, tell us the rest.
«All of us always said that Sicily was a land rich in resources. Those were the commonplaces of our grandparents and our parents. Growing up we made them our crescendo... we could make a living from tourism, fishing, agriculture, Sicily is a rich land with a thousand resources... all potentialities that were never fully developed, but always sketched in a context that was substantially immovable. Whose was the guilt?»
«The factors were many, and complex», Giorgio adds, «from the most obvious ones, like mafia, to the underground ones like the political manoeuvres aimed to avoid creating conditions of growth.»
«Sure!» Vito exclaims, «because growing you learn to think with your mind, to see things with your own eyes, while staying small you are dependent on other people's decisions».
«The Arabs», Giulia adds, «bought things, not people. They purchased houses and lands, historical and artistic assets, but they didn't want to subdue the population to a regime. For them it was important that we too grew, so that the improvement project for Sicily didn't remain a mere external action. They were interested in educating us, to make us able to produce wealth that would give profit to them and comfort to us.»
«Naturally all of this had a price, and us Sicilians are still divided about the assessment of such cost», Salvatore says, «for some it was equitable, for others excessive. The oranges of Dubai are an example of it, or better they are the perfect synthesis of what the arrival of the Arabs involved for Sicily. They are entirely produced here, but all over the world they are known under the brand of an Arabic company. No one, abroad, knows that they are a Sicilian product. To increase their value adequately, we have lost their paternity, as happened after all for many other assets of our land».
Vito interrupts the words of Salvatore to say that this aspect shouldn’t frighten us. He believes that what is happening now belongs to the cycles of history, and that nothing is immutable. Arabs have already been in Sicily for around two hundred years, but then they went away and another phase, that is another domination, started.
«In my opinion», Vito says, «this chapter too is destined to end at some point, but we should hope that this will not happen for the arrival of a new owner, but because we will have been able to take back what belongs to us, and returned to be the only legitimate owners of our Sicily. But this time we will have to be able to make it work on our own, and the oranges of Dubai will finally be known all over the world as Sicilian oranges».
«But we won't be Italian again!» Giovanni says. Until now he has been silent behind his moustaches, listening.
«And who thinks of doing that? I don't believe that any of us would want to», Vito remarks with conviction. Many of us nod.
«Italy doesn't exist anymore by now. It’s a ghost, a reality that nobody notices. The sale of Sicily wasn’t a big trauma only for us. The whole Country was affected, perhaps more than us, because while here, even though with a thousand difficulties, a phase of slow rebirth started, the rest of the Italian territory suffered a progressive crumbling, both in the political and administrative, but especially civic, sense. The south was completely forgotten», Claudia comments.
«It went exactly this way. After the sale, even though many debts of the Country were repaid, the relative economic stability didn’t do anything for the strong instability that was created in the fabric of society. The North brought its separatist push – that had already been fervent for years in the project of the creation of an independent Padania – to the extreme. Today they talk about the possibility of selling Sardinia, and from Rome down it’s all a forgotten territory, while all the political and economic interests have been rerouted to the north. Italy wasn’t able to regain credibility on the international front even after the partial economic improvement, also because it wasn’t able of investments and innovations that put it again on the run on the European racetrack. The political world, deeply marked by the corruption, by the prevalence of the personal interest of a few people over the collective good, lost consistence and credibility in front of the electors, especially, as well as the external observers. Of the historical Italy, the one of the great literates, of the men of art and talent, of the heroes of the unification, there’s nothing left but a weak memory. Corruption brought the Country to disrepair», Vito concludes bitterly.
«I believe that there will be better times, but this will happen when the honest people will stop waiting for the solutions to fall from heaven and will start searching for them», Salvatore says.
«Guys, you know what I say?» This time is Anna to lighten the conversation. «I think that, however things have gone, in the end we all succeeded, and this is what matters. For someone it was harder or more painful than for others, but nobody came out of it defeated, because anyway
Sicilians always know how to get by... we know the expedient to go on. I toast to all of us who, anywhere and in any situation, are and will always be true Sicilians.»
A swarm of glasses flies up from the table, together with a chorus of more or less convinced voices singing the praises of the everlasting Sicilians.
The conversation breaks in many small ramifications. Everyone has something to say about themselves, there isn’t enough time for all. The nero d’Avola quaffs the discussions, accompanying the dishes of our best tradition. To find again the forgotten origins there is nothing more immediate than a trip in the heart of one’s own gastronomic tradition. It’s a privileged access to home.
«Homemade maccheroncini with swordfish and mint», says the waiter, serving the still steamy pasta from a tray of white porcelain.
The scent already brings me far away... it’s Sunday morning and there’s my mother in the kitchen at an early time, frying eggplants and zucchini and sprinkling white wine on diced swordfish meat. With experienced hands she governs several recipes at once, so there she is stuffing boned sardines – known in the Sicilian cuisine as “sarde a beccafico” – with small quantities of bread crumbs flavoured with oil, tomato, raisins and pine nuts. I smell the scent of frying batter that envelopes in a bark crisp broccolis and thistles with anchovies, and I see my father sipping coffee, perfectly at ease in the room saturated with odours and frying food, foretasting the satisfaction that awaits him at lunch. There is also the little boy that I was who is taking advantage of a distraction of mom to taste the seasoning of the steamy pasta in the saucepan.
Now, while I am tasting the happy combination of fish, vegetables and mint that goes down with difficulty in my throat tightened by emotion, I feel that I have definitely understood, like never before, what remembering the past means. The memory is not only in the mind, it is a global experience of every single part of the body. It’s engraved on the skin, in the eyes, in the oesophagus, even in my partying stomach that finds again tastes buried in its personal gastric memory. As a child I loved caponata, the strong taste of green olives and capers in the bittersweet of eggplants. My mother cooked it in Boston too, even in Paris, but who knows why, it never seemed to have the same taste. "It is the quality of the olives", my father used to say. To him there was always something missing for that dish to be perfect as it had been in the past. But I think that it was only homesickness.
After the parade of the second dishes, when we are all gastronomically satisfied, Anna announces that there will be a pause before the dessert.
«We have a theme to develop, as you all know.»
In turn, everyone shows their contributions. Claudia and Giulia go first. They brought a notebook that belonged to both, a kind of secret diary written by two people, full of photos and friendly confidences they told to each other. Giulia reads an excerpt. She pronounces the words of a fifteen-year-old girl full of dreams, genuinely impassioned, yet sufficiently insecure, convinced of the strength of friendship, determined never to betray the pact of loyalty shared with her dreams mate. Words that move for their simplicity as well as for the bitterness they leave behind every time that life proves them wrong. Luckily Giulia and Claudia haven’t felt too many disappointments, because a large part of their expectations have been realized, in particular those concerning the duration of their bond.
Serena shows to everyone a small puppet that she kept attached to her backpack.
«It’s the only object survived from my past of timid girl. Everything else ended in the bin. In truth I don't feel any nostalgia of the way I was, neither of the way in which I lived my teenager life. Nostalgia for me consists in wishing to relive that period in a completely different way, but unfortunately this can’t be done!»
In turn, other nostalgic memories parade. Most people show the classic school photo, the one with the classmates on two rows, one down on the ground and the other behind standing, with the teachers on the external sides, closing the group. Faces immortalized forever in unnatural smiles, signatures and dedications on the back of the photo, with the promises to be friends forever, to remember, to love, then... see you.
Carlotta "the falsehood" brought her collection of essays and smugly displays them in front of everyone, because for her nostalgia is a soliloquy concerning herself rather than a sharing of memories. The same goes for Maria "the perfidy", who waves a report card full of high marks and a lot of presumption.
«I kept this», Anna says in her turn, showing a parchment we had given her for the last birthday celebrated together. It was a praise to her qualities as friend and classmate, as well as untiring organizer, official comforter, trusted confidante and heart of gold of the year... a real tribute to a special person that was impossible not to love.
She shows it with pride, knowing that she has been our reference point in the years of high school, satisfied that she confirmed this role over time, succeeding in gathering us once more after so many years.
«I am a classic nostalgic, I miss practically everything of the past. I missed you, even the ones with which I had a less meaningful relationship, because you were all part of my life for a long period. Guys, we shared so much that it is impossible to set you aside in a remote corner of memory. The more time passes, the more I feel nostalgia for that period. I loved you so much, and from you I received so much affection. I am already thinking about how much I will miss you tomorrow, now that I have seen you again. I hope that this evening will not be the only occasion, and that there may be more like this.»
Teresa, sat between me and her, hugs her and picks up the nostalgic thread we are all pursuing. She says that she doesn't have any object to show, neither photos nor old notebooks, because Anna is the object of her nostalgia. It is her that she missed more than everything in these years.
«Despite the promise of not losing sight of each other, and even though we both believed it with all our hearts, life reserved us too many solicitations to which we had to answer with absolute priority, not leaving us the chance to turn and look back. Nevertheless, the unbelievable thing for me was that, even though we didn't hear, neither we had news one of the other, I always felt her comforting presence close to me. Because if a person is really inside you, she is there even when you don't see her, when you don't hear her voice and you don't touch her hand. She is there and that’s it, those are feelings you feel deep within.»
Then, to Anna, «Meeting you again confirmed this certainty of mine, because it was like starting from where we had been interrupted. Looking around I see faces I recognize, eyes, voices, smiles, but they are the faces of an old photo that doesn't belong to what I am now. They are a chapter of my most ancient history. You have not remained trapped in that photo, you have silently walked close to me and I thank you for having been there».
Anna is as purple as Teresa, so excited as not to be able to say anything. She can only look at her with gratitude. Two brave women able to tell each other words of affection and to feel emotions without shame in a world in which women no longer blush.
Vito teases me.
«Doctor, what have you brought us?»
All eyes converge on me, and I can no longer hope to postpone my moment. I don't have anything physical to show, which would have allowed me to get rid of my solo more easily. But, in lack of anything else, I will have to use words, I, who am like my son when it comes to expressing feelings.
«When Anna told me about the theme of the evening, I immediately started making calculations to understand how much paying the supper to all of you was going to cost me. But then I understood that maybe the price was too high and that I’d better do my homework.»
Too many eyes aimed at me smile and wait.
«I am used to speak to different audiences, where I don't feel embarrassment like now, simply because there I don’t have to talk about myself.»
I make a pause, I garner my thoughts.
«If you had asked me a few days ago, before this trip, I would not have known what I felt
nostalgia for, because I am the kind of person who is very rooted to his present, who doesn't often stop to look behind. Once I left Sicily, I closed a chapter of my life, or rather I did worse than that... I completely deleted it, as if it were a shame to remember that I belonged to a reality that had suffered the shame of denial. In doing this, I tried to deeply cut my roots, striving to feel myself rooted somewhere else... without ever really succeeding. I built myself certainties that allowed me to live leaving no room for doubts or afterthoughts, and I got by well enough. And then... then Teresa brought me here and my whole picture fell head over heels», they laugh again, «because as soon as I got on the flight to Palermo, I felt swept off my feet in every way. Each step I took since I arrived was an indescribable upsetting. All of a sudden I found again what I had striven for a long time to delete, having to deal with the fact that, in the meantime, a lot of things have been deleted for real by the events. Seeing again the places and the people, rediscovering them in spite of changes, comparing myself with the reality I had contributed to deny with my sense of shame... it was hard... beautifully hard... really beautifully. I felt relieved, because when you try to delete something that deeply belongs to you, it clings onto you like a boulder until you accept to store it in its right place and in the right way inside you. Now I know what my nostalgia is... I feel nostalgia not only of the past in itself, but especially of not having felt it for all the years I was away. It would be beautiful to be able to go back to live the separation in a different way, allowing myself to feel, rather than striving to forget. Maybe this would have given me more in life as man, as a doctor and as a father».
I feel Teresa’s hand on my leg and the eyes of everybody still on me. I sustain them with the strength of awareness. Vito looks at me with the gratification of who knew that I would have reached these conclusions.
«For someone who didn't want to speak, I’d say you dwelled long enough, doctor», he tells me smiling, letting a general smile break the emotion, sheltering me from my weakness, «I believe it is the right time for my nostalgic corner that, no offense meant, is less tedious than yours, Paolo».
He leaves the room to come back after a few instants with a guitar in hand.
«Who remembers the song of Gianna Nannini that I always played?»
«Of course!» Claudia exclaims, «it was the only one you could play decently. Aside from it, you scratched the guitar!»
Everybody laughs as she looks at him with benevolence, because she remembers well, like everyone else here, the extraordinary predisposition of our old classmate for music.
Vito’s eyes meet ours before resting on the instrument. His fingers brush the strings, his face is concentrated and focused on the first chords that wave in the wood box and from there bounce in the room. Breathing slowly, he blows the first words on us, who begin to run after them as they go into a myriad of memories.
Sometimes I surprise myself, a little I invent you, a little you give yourself...
It was the first song he had learned how to play and he repeated it endlessly.
... Sometimes I lose the thread. Maybe you’re not there...
While the present stays trapped in the chairs, under the weight of our carcasses, we are lightly lifted above ourselves, greeting from above those tired bodies that don't belong to us in this moment, running after our old semblances, when we were light and elusive, like these notes in the air.
... flower of water lily, you last but an instant...
I see Mario and Giovanni pricking with their well-sharpened pencils the shoulders of Maria and Carlotta – who jump from their chairs as if they had been stung by a bee – and a beardless Vito without wrinkles who enjoys composing embarrassing rhymes on them and recites them in the middle of a knot of classmates, who composedly laugh when they pass by. There is the ruddy and embarrassed Salvatore who sweats beyond measure while the English teacher tries in vain to sweeten his pronunciation. I see Giorgio standing close to the clothes-stand, his arms rigidly along his sides, his face paralyzed in an expression that seems like a sadistic giggle toward nothingness, while Matteo engraves skulls and crossbones and crosses with a penknife on the smooth surface of his desk. Anna and Teresa are there too, of course, competing to answer the questions of the teachers, polite and zealous. Antonella di Bartolo is there too, and fancies about a happy destiny like the ones she reads about in the love romances together with a timid but authentic Serenella, softly impassioned to her dream world.
And above all there’s all of us on the beach, around Vito who is playing just like now, but thirty years younger, while we sing, in a rough draft of the strong and scratchy voice of the legendary Gianna.
... Love who gave nothing to the world When your look comes It will be the pain of a crescendo It will be like looking inside myself...
Teresa holds my hand and sings passionately, striving to reach those too high notes. Bandaged in her white dress, in her eyes shining with emotion, her skin propped by the movie of our life together.
... Love who gave nothing to the world When this dawn explodes It will be the end of every star It will be like falling down...
There’s an incomprehensible expression on Giorgio’s face. For once I would like to see the world through the filter of his representation of it. He inhales the music without singing, but something tells me that he too is pervaded by something that warms up the cold.
... Sometimes I suspend myself Leaf to the wind I come to you Sometimes I think about you You move all of my borders...
We shared experiences that slowly led us toward what we are now. It is on the same limbs that we walked to arrive here, on the same ones we will proceed further in our trip.
... Love, how beautiful is it to give yourself to the world When this dawn explodes I will live in the fire of a star. To leave the Earth with you...
When the music ends, the room is saturated of all our memories.
«Keep playing, Vito», Salvatore exhorts him, and he, as if he had been waiting just for this, crosses a repertoire of memories going as far as the more ancient Sicilian tradition, to that ciuriciuri that was a common baggage in which our ancestors sunk their roots.
With the arrival on the table of the best of Sicilian confectionery, the happy company exhausts its baggage of old melodies.
«I believe that the time of nostalgia is finished, and that that of gluttony has begun», Anna announces. She has gone back sitting at the head of the table, from where she had directed the organization, perfect to the last detail, for the whole evening.
«I bet that you missed these!», she says to me and to Teresa, who is already tasting a portion of chocolate setteveli.
«You don't know how much! But in these days I believe I have overcompensated. A long diet waits for me back home!»
Salvatore prompts me to taste a cannoli. I accept with reticence, because I already ate beyond measure and because I already expect the disappointment for a taste that is not the same anymore, like old uncle Gino said. But I am wrong.
Some hours have passed from when we entered the restaurant, yet I don't feel like ending this evening yet. There is a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere to which I don't want to renounce yet. While the first people leave, for some of us a spontaneous understanding is born, a tacit accord to stay, to prolong this evening endlessly, or at least until we will feel ready to go back each to their own present. Perfidy and Falsehood have been the first to go, quickly followed by Giovanni, who has been a shadow all through the dinner.
«He’s living a difficult period with his older son. It seems he’s on drugs. Of course he wasn’t him to tell me, but a common acquaintance who is also a gossip lover», Anna explains.
One after the other we hugged and greeted human shells who quickly disappeared in the night, we promised not to lose sight of one another, to set a sort of yearly meeting, although we knew that we will hardly be able to keep faith with such intention. We patiently waited for the group to thin out, until it allowed the survival of a narrower co
mpany with which to share the last hours of this endless evening. To my surprise, at one a.m. we are more than I would have imagined. There are, of course, Vito and Anna, with whom passing the time has never been difficult, there is Salvatore, inexhaustible reserve of jokes and anecdotes about the Arabs in Sicily, but what surprises me more is the perseverance of Giorgio. His small eyes sparkle in the faint light while we are walking through a quiet alley, not far from the "Garden of the orange trees". It is a different twinkling from that of school times.
«He’s not the person he seems», Vito says. Like me, he can hardly walk straight along the pedestrian route.
From the windows of a famous jewellery, precious jewels sparkle to the warm light of the lampposts. Anna and Teresa stand there to look at a pair of earrings adorned with rubies and diamonds, laughing at the time passed since the last time they went shopping together in Palermo, when they stopped to look at jeans and sport shoes. It seems that they wants to recover tonight all the missed meetings, satisfying themselves with peering at shop windows in a faint light in the warm and fascinating atmosphere of a Palermo immersed in the silence and the quiet that it misses in the day, when the roads swarm of people and cars dart at full speed. Us men follow them a few meter behind, leaving them to their intimate complicity, looking for such a reserved space for us. Vito is next to Giorgio; they talk in a low voice. Giorgio seems very animated. Salvatore asks me about Paris.
«I have been there once», he says, «I would like to bring my wife there.»
I tell him that I wait for him as soon as possible and that a trip with your family is oxygen for those who, like us, work too much.
The group gathers again in front of the glimmering windows of Swarovsky.
«Guys, maybe it’s time to go home», Salvatore says. Even though unwillingly, Anna and Teresa nod, letting tiredness take the upper hand.
«It was a marvellous evening», my wife says to her friend, «I can’t yet believe that we succeeded. I think that it was a beautiful occasion to tidy up things that were still hanging for some of us. It was necessary, as well as pleasant».
Unexpectedly Giorgio steps forward, bringing himself in the middle of the group.
«There is still a thing.»
We all look at him, curiously.
«I haven’t developed my theme about nostalgia yet.»
Anna looks at him in amazement, excusing herself for such forgetfulness.
«I am sorry I didn’t notice, but why didn’t you say immediately? It was my fault, Giorgio, I should have made sure that everyone had had their chance to speak.»
«No, you are not responsible at all, Anna. Earlier I didn't feel like saying anything, and it was a relief for me that nobody noticed. However I have something to say to you, and according to Vito this is the right time. Nevertheless... I made up my mind too late, and it’s time to go to bed. Maybe next time, if there will be another time...»
Vito interrupts him, «I think that no one will mind staying to listen to you. Isn’t it so guys?» and he looks at us, expecting an unanimous answer.
One by one we take back in our hands the thread of nostalgic memories, ready to follow it wherever it will lead us. Giorgio’s small eyes look at us from behind the thick glasses with an expression of relief.
«I know what everybody always thought of me. They said that I was mentally ill or a kind of retard because I behaved in strange ways. Actually I never felt entirely normal, because I didn't really like many of the things that are generally fine to others. So I relaxed in the image that all had of me. It was my justification for everything. Even today I can't do without it, because there aren’t just disadvantages in being considered different. I don't regret being as I am, I don't think, like Serenella, that I would like to go back and relive a part of my life, or even all of it, in a different way. Everyone has his peculiarities and we should never be ashamed of what we are, because we betray ourselves by forcing us to be different. What I would like to do is letting you know the reasons for my weirdness.»
He pauses and swallows with effort. There are tension and embarrassment on his face. Vito is next to him, I see suffering in the look he turns on him.
«I haven’t always been like you have known me. I was a child like many others for some time, but then... something happened that changed everything.»
He pauses again, and again his throat bobbles up and down with difficulty. He looks down, his right hand tormentingly searches the pocket of his jacket, perhaps looking for courage.
«When I was nine, my fatherly grandfather hurt me. Do you understand what I mean...? It was terrible, I was just a child, but the worse thing was that my parents didn’t believe me. My father harshly beat me because I had offended his father. My mother, who knew the heavy hand of my father, told me to let it go not to enrage him again. They hurt me even more than my grandfather. It happened two more times, then luckily he suffered a heart attack and died, the bastard. While my father was crying, my face petrified in the same mocking grin I had seen on the face of my grandfather when nobody had wanted to believe my accusations.»
Giorgio passes his hand in his hair, then brings it to his mouth, and for the first time he looks up at us who, speechless, seem hardened inside and out, wearing the same appearance that has been his for a lifetime.
«I felt relief for his death, and anger at the same time, because he had gotten away with it and I would never have the occasion to make him pay for what he had done to me. I wanted to talk about it with my mother, hoping that at least she would believe me, that she could help me to put that monster to shame. But she said that by then he was dead and that I had to forget, that it was up to God to punish him, if what I said was true. Do you realize the absurdity? If you can’t even trust your parents, who can you trust then? I started to distrust everybody, I closed in myself and only that way I felt safe, because holding people at distance sheltered me from more sufferings. Growing up, I started to feel ashamed of what had happened to me. I feared that the other boys could discover it and make fun of me. Also because my mother, once, had told me that grandfather was a good person, and that maybe I had provoked him.»
Anna puffs, rising both hands to her face.
«Your mother should have protected you, that’s the job of a mother. It must have been terrible, you were just a child.»
«It took one lifetime, and the help of a therapist, to fix things inside me and start making distinctions between people. Because we aren’t all equal, fortunately. I am telling you all this because my therapist says that I have to start to recover my good relationships. For too long I kept everyone at a safe distance, condemning myself to loneliness. In truth, I didn't feel entirely isolated, because I was satisfied with fantasized relationships that gave me the illusion to be in company. What I am trying to say is that, although I never let you realize it, you were the company in my mind. I imagined to be friend with Vito and Paolo, playing football with you, to be the desk-mate of Salvatore, who seemed to me absolutely the most sincere and harmless person that could be imagined. And then I liked the way in which Anna and Teresa related with everybody. You were polite, sincere, ready to take the defences of your classmates, to help who was in need. Of those years, I miss Vito’s spontaneous congeniality, Anna’s generosity, Teresa’s purity, Paolo’s intelligence and the genuineness of Salvatore, your ability to be honest, of not being able to betray. I would have liked to be able to accept the hand that you sometimes tried to extend to me. I silently rejected you, making myself impenetrable, but only because I didn't find the courage to let you enter my world, neither to follow you in yours. This evening I came in the hope to be able to tell you all this, and I am happy I succeeded.»
We separate with long, silent hugs. No word would measure up to the emotion between us. We don't know if we will meet again, but in this moment we all want to believe we will. Giorgio demolished many barriers, but he’s not yet ready to lose himself, even for an instant, in a hug. He reaches out and shakes our hands one by one. Th
is time I don't have the feeling of closing mine on a puff of air, but I feel fingers and bones, blood and warmth. Giorgio is in that hand, with all of the humanity he can grant himself, and I am there too, finally feeling ready to go back home.