And he got me raging drunk that night.
It was my father who introduced me to my first love. Paul Ricco was forty-one, and he had a wife and two children, one not far behind me in school. But, unlike Signor Bruno, Paul Ricco was handsome and strong; his was a body that I could wrap myself around and disappear into. I thought him the most virile man I had ever seen. His skin was hard, his face was long and thin, and his legs were thick and hairy. I have no photograph of him, so I am reliant on memory. His stubby cock was dark and his foreskin was long and rubbery. He had a mole on his left shoulder, a gold front tooth. He smoked Benson and Hedges cigarettes and drank Melbourne Bitter. And at one point I would have done anything for Paul Ricco. I would have cut off my sex and become a girl if he’d asked me to.
My father and Paul were friendly with a man, Tassio, and his wife, Athina, who owned an emporium on High Street that sold doilies, manchester and bric-a-brac for weddings. The shelves were dusty and the shop always smelt of cigarettes. My sister swore that she had seen a rat run across the dirty wooden floor and she and my mother refused to walk into it from that day on. Tassio and Athina lived a few blocks south from us and on Sundays Dad would take Sophie and me to play with Tassio’s kids. We’d play cricket or footy or Monopoly or Twister while in the garage a group of men were involved in secret work. I spied on them once. Through a gap in the filthy louvres, I watched the men dismantle clocks. The clocks had large faces and baroque plastic casings which were moulded and painted to resemble red wood. The men were removing small packages from the body of the clocks, screwing back the faces, screwing back the casings, drinking wine, smoking and laughing. It must have been summer. Paul was sitting on a stool, his back to me, a tight white Bonds singlet stretched across his back. I noticed the shock of dark hair coming from beneath his wet armpits. My father, who was sitting across from Paul, looked up and spied my enraptured face.
—What are you looking at, you devil?
Paul had turned. He was smiling. I still dream that smile.
For three years we were lovers. Paul worked as a market wholesaler, and he often smelt of fresh vegetables and ripe fruit. We fucked in the back of his van, which he would park by the river. He gambled with the Greeks in a little coffee shop in Victoria Street, and often I would meet him there. Did they know, these other migrant tough men, cigarettes always hanging from their lips, their stares cold and impenetrable but their actions often generous, did they know about Paul and me? I would sit at the edge of the table, reading, and when one of the men got up to leave, if he had won, he would buy me a cola, or give me some cash, or stroke the back of my head and in Greek or Italian or broken English, he’d say, Such a nice kid. They must have known, these men, who worked in factories and smelt of tobacco and grease, they must have known what was going on between myself and Paul. But they never asked and they never assumed a liberty with me. In fact, they treated me with great affection, as if I were a nephew, as if I belonged to a family of men, as if by extending friendship to me in the coffee shop they could make up for their wives never letting my family cross the doorway into their homes. My father knew so many of these men. He drank with them, gambled with them, probably went whoring with them. But our family was rarely invited over to their houses for lunch or dinner, or to celebrate weddings and baptisms. When their women would come across us on the street, their faces would tighten. Cold, disapproving, contemptuous. They must have known, these men.
For three years we were lovers and for three years Paul attempted to knock out of me all the manners and values Signor Bruno had instilled in me. He wanted me to toughen up, he thought the English inflections I tried to place onto my accent were foolish and dangerous. Be a man, he warned me. I tried. But Jesus, none of it was easy. In the coffee shop he would flinch at any sign of effeminacy, but when I was in his arms, lying belly down on the towels in the van, smelling the rich gross pong of the oranges or the peaches as he fucked me, he would caress me softly, whisper in Italian and call me his bella ragazza. After the sex, refusing to look at me while I cleaned myself up, he would ask me about the football and I would try as best I could to reply enthusiastically. I would have done anything for Paul Ricco.
He dropped me at sixteen, when hair began to sprout from my chest, when I started to regularly shave. It had become habit that he would park the van close to one of the soccer ovals near school and we would meet there. For a week I heard nothing from him. I visited the coffee shop and found him gambling. As always, I grabbed a chair, took out a book and began reading. He had not even looked at me when I came in and the other men too refused to catch my eye. He lost a hand at poker and threw the cards down on the table.
—Fangoulo, he yelled, do we have to put up with this little bastard reading all the time? He’s putting me off my game.
Tassio dropped a five-dollar note in my hand.
—Pay for your coffee and go, he said to me, don’t come back. None of the others looked at me. Paul ignored me. Silently I put my book in my bag, placed the chair where I found it, paid for my coffees, and handed Tassio back the five-dollar note. He refused it but I insisted he take it. I would not be paid for. Without looking at Paul Ricco, I left.
—You’re too old for him now, Signor Bruno explained. You are losing your boyish charm.
I had dropped Mr Parlovecchio as soon as Paul had come into my life. Don’t hang around with that pederast, Paul ordered me, he will corrupt you. I refused to see the old man, refused to go back to his house. Truthfully, I did not think of him once all the time I was with Paul. I dumped him as brutally as Paul had got rid of me. But as soon as I myself was rejected I ran to the old man and he welcomed me back. He poured me a wine, got me drunk, and then, sliding to his knees, he tried to take my flaccid cock into his mouth. I kicked at him. I could not bear sex with the corrupt old faggot after being with Paul. He did not argue with me, did not anger. Instead, holding his silk handkerchief to his split lip, he rose and went into his bedroom. He returned with books.
—I was hoping you would come back, he said, his voice shaking. I have these books for you. There was Stendhal, and there was Flaubert and a cheap dog-eared copy of Joyce’s Dubliners. I did not want his books: stories of spoilt aristocrats and bourgeois weaklings. I wanted stories about men with broad shoulders, men who worked and smoked and fucked and knew nothing of the salons and ballrooms of an ancient Europe.
But I dutifully accepted the books Signor Bruno had put aside for me, and then I ran to the creek and cried. I cried so much that I was sure I heard my soul tearing.
—Did he fuck you?
—Yes.
—Did it hurt?
—Yes.
—And you loved him?
—Yes.
Colin had his arms around me. I closed my eyes and could still smell Paul Ricco, smell the sweat of him, the tang of citrus in the van. I can remember the small scar on his left arm and how it felt rough on my tongue when I licked it. If I closed my eyes tight it was as if I could recall the sensation of him above me, breathing heavily on my face, recall the wet of his lips, could remember him calling me his pretty girl. Bella ragazza.
I opened my eyes wide from a dream and I was in the hotel room in Brindisi. Paul Ricco was not above me. I had been dreaming of him. But it was as if there was someone hovering above me in the dingy smelly room. I could feel a breath on my lips, faint and moist. I had been dreaming it was Paul Ricco’s kiss. I opened my eyes. I was alone in the room and all I could hear was the sound of a man moaning from somewhere down the hall.
—You must go to Venice, Signor Bruno always said to me. Signor Bruno was from Veneto and he told me how as a young teenager he would borrow his oldest brother’s wedding ring and travel on the back of a cart into the city of Venice. With the wedding ring on his finger he was no longer a poor peasant boy but a man of the world. He would wander into coffee shops, roll a newspaper across the table and while pretending to read the news he would listen in to conversations about music, politics and ar
t.
—I first heard jazz in Venice, he told me. Isaac, you must go to Venice.
I remember it was raining hard, that it had been a wet and awful winter, and I was anxious to return home where my mother had baked a cake and my family were waiting to celebrate my birthday. My school jumper was clinging to me and smelling of damp and tobacco. I was still miserable and missing Paul. Signor Parlovecchio handed me a box wrapped in gold-tinted paper and tied with a red ribbon. I opened it. It was my first camera, a Pentax, bulky and black.
That spring I was still miserable. But I had begun to take photographs.
The woman came over with a coffee. Well, Signor Bruno Parlovecchio, I finally made it. I am in Venice. But the music on the radio was Arabic, not jazz, and the skies above me were dark and low and Venetians were crowding the bar watching soccer beamed in from a satellite above. The city felt cramped and small. There was a crack of lightning and then thunder rumbled and a surge of harsh rain began to fall. The woman turned on a switch and electric light illuminated the cafe.
—You’ve picked an awful week to be in Venice, the woman said to me, smiling, as she headed back to the bar. Her husband was cleaning glasses by the sink and increased the volume on the radio to drown out the clattering sound of the rain. A young woman wearing a leather coat rushed in, dripping wet. Behind her shuffled a stooping old man in a long black coat; the rain had plastered his still-thick brush of white hair across his skull. He hung his soaked coat on a hook near the doorway, took a seat across from me, unfolded a large handkerchief and wiped his face and neck dry. When he finished, he clicked his fingers. There was nothing supercilious in his seemingly arrogant gesture. In fact, the woman at the bar looked up at him and responded by smiling and saying something polite to him in Arabic. He nodded, also with a smile. Something in his obvious happiness—he took a newspaper from his pocket, he was smiling as he rubbed his hands together for warmth—reminded me of Signor Bruno. This man was content to be here, in the Café Beirut, in Venice, awaiting his coffee and his opportunity to read the paper. I was aware for the first time of something that I had no chance of perceiving in my cruelly indifferent adolescence: that every day of his life, Signor Bruno must have missed Venice. And that Signor Bruno Parlovecchio was not an aristocrat. If he had been, he would had never needed to leave Venice.
—It’s a spooky place.
Colin was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me pack. He was still in his dark blue overalls, and our cat Stanley was sitting on his lap. Colin was holding my airline ticket.
—How long did you stay there? I asked.
He laughed loudly.
—Fuck, mate, Venice costs the bloody earth. The whole bloody north of Italy does. I was there for a few hours, then I took the train back out. He stroked underneath Stanley’s black and white chin. I couldn’t afford Venice, he said.
I stopped packing and sat next to him, lifted the sleeve of his t-shirt and traced my finger along the lines of the fading swastika. Stanley lifted his head, circled once, twice on Colin’s lap, then jumped onto me and promptly fell asleep. I leaned my head on Colin’s shoulder.
—Did you wear long sleeves in Europe, I asked him, even though it was summer?
—All through fucking Europe, mate. All through fucking Europe in the fucking heat.
—Did you feel guilty? You should feel fucking guilty.
He stood up then.
—I’ll take a shower. He kissed me on the lips, then tussled a moment with the cat. Did that Mister Old Talk tell you about the ghetto in Venice?
I shook my head.
—I bet he didn’t. He told you about art and music and bloody jazz, told you about Harry’s Bar, but he didn’t talk about the ghetto, did he?
Across the canal from the Café Beirut there is an old yellowing building. A carved stone doorway leads into a small square. I will drink my coffee, I will settle my bill, and I will walk across into the Jews’ Venice.
In the Café Beirut the fluorescent lights were flickering and outside the rain was still falling. The old man was smoking a cigarette. I noticed that the bold black headlines across his newspaper were in the Hebrew script. The woman brought him a small glass filled with thick, dark spirit. Then suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the rain stopped, the clouds parted and light filled the world outside. The electric lights were switched off again and through the glass I could see that the bridge across the narrow canal was glistening. Across from me the old man downed his burnt amber liquid in one, two swift gulps. The woman refilled his glass. I threw the envelope of photographs into my bag and paid for my drinks. Across the bridge I stooped to enter through the low narrow gate and walked into the world’s first ghetto.
The wet cobbled stones and the dark brick walls sparkled in the sun. In the far corner was a small shop with Hebrew script on the awning. Against one wall, plastered posters announced political meetings and the tour of Blur. On the far wall was a sculptured relief. I walked over to examine the spidery steel structure. Embossed human forms, shadowy and elongated, looked despairingly down at me. The metallic mural showed the shipping of the Jews to the death camps in the Second World War. In Italian, in English and in Hebrew, a memorial plaque gave written testament to the scene. I closed my eyes and attempted to muster compassion. Or grief. Or shame. Anything, some damn emotion.
I felt nothing. I began to take my photographs. I took photo after photo of the stricken figures, of the plaque, of the wet stones. I took close-ups of the posters: the one word, Blur, the hammer and sickle, the rotund face of the Prime Minister. I took shot after shot of the shop awning, clicked every individual letter. I took a shot of a puddle and took a shot of the sky above. Even as I was shooting I knew what I would do with these photographs. I would have them printed on large white canvases and exhibited in a vast gallery space. I would attempt to replicate the ghetto, and hope to move people in a way that I found I could not be moved at the site. I exhausted my supply of film, and walked back to the memorial, trying one last time to feel remorse or guilt, shame or humility, but instead there was the warm sun on my skin, the murmuring of rainwater in the drains, and I could not stop myself from smiling.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again, the old man from the Café Beirut was beside me, watching me. He was wearing his long black coat. Then silently he raised a finger to his pursed lips and with his other hand motioned me to follow him. I watched him walk away, drunk and clumsy in his movements. Turning around, he frowned on seeing that I had not followed him. He violently waved his hand at me and I decided to follow. He was old, pissed and not at all threatening. He led me through the square and into a large dank corridor flooded by the rain. The man snorted in anger, then grabbed a long plank sitting upright against the wall and splashed it onto the ground. We stepped along the plank; I was holding onto the old man, to ensure that he did not fall. Then he led me through the corridor, out to an alley: I could hear water splashing against the side of a canal. He pointed to the alley wall. A black swastika was scrawled in thick brushstrokes on a peeling whitewashed wall. He pointed at my camera. He wanted me to take the photograph.
I shot the photograph. He took me through the ghetto, all the while pointing at graffiti and wordlessly commanding me to take photographs of it. It was mostly swastikas, the menacing crossed arms sprayed in aerosol on an awning outside a bakery, daubed quickly on the bricks underneath the street sign to the ghetto. But he pointed out other signs to me as well. Forza Italia, always painted in black, USA Out. A crude sketch of the three interlocking fasces of the old fascist party. He led me his dance until we were again inside the square of the ghetto.
Suddenly the old man gave a deep sigh and staggered. I took his arm and led him to the bridge. He took a cigarette case from his pocket. He offered me one as well and we smoked together on the bridge. A mangy white cat leapt off a roof and turned and screeched at us. Below us, an empty rowboat bobbed in the water.
—Are you alright, sir?
&n
bsp; The old man ignored me and looked out into the water. His eyes were forlorn and I could smell the alcohol. I looked around, back towards the ghetto, and I tried to imagine what this man might have seen. His insistence on me photographing the crude symbols of continuing racism had touched me. This desperate need to confirm the relevance of history made me melancholy. He was living, he was alive. He moved me. He was a last, dying connection between life and the grotesque sculptural reliefs on the Holocaust Memorial. He, at last, he moved me.
I asked him again, Are you alright, sir? He touched my sleeve, threw his cigarette in the canal, and beckoned me.
He was surprisingly quick for someone old and frail and drunk as he made his way through twisting alleys. We reached a narrow street of tall imposing apartments and I followed him through a low corridor. We climbed a staircase to the third level. At the top of the stairs I turned and looked down at the old city on the water. I could see spires and golden crucifixes. I walked through a heavy wooden door into the old man’s apartment.
It was tiny. The room we stood in was cluttered with furniture and its walls were covered by prints of pyramids and fauns, of old temples and grinning gods: the whole of the ancient world covered the walls. The space was crammed with books: heaped against a small statue of the Sphinx, teetering in piles to the ceiling, covering the small coffee table in the middle of the room. A book lay open on the arm of the old sofa. He took me through into a small back room that served as both kitchen and bathroom, the two rooms divided by a stained yellow sheet. There were books lying on the tiny table in the kitchen, and on two small chairs. He threw the books on the floor and indicated that I should take a seat. A small window was open to the sour sea breeze, and from it I could glimpse the scalloped red tiles of the rooftops of Venice. The old man disappeared and I glanced at the spines of the books around me.