I’M STANDING there holding the broom, lost in thought, when Master Errico comes in early and says, “You’re already here? What, you like the job?” Yes, I say, I eat with Don Rafaniello. Master Errico remembers that at home I haven’t got anyone and invites me to his house for lunch to have some hot food. “Tomorrow I’m getting braided mozzarella from Agerola; have you ever tried it, kid? It’s special. Agerola’s high up. The cows there eat poplar leaves. Poplar leaves are what gives the cheese the bitter taste that makes it so special. Do you want to come?” I thank him, but things are all right the way they are. I’m happy to stay in the workshop at lunchtime. “Suit yourself, I’m not going to tell you where to vote,” he says. Master Errico lights his half-smoked cigar and starts up the bench saw. The most he and Rafaniello do is exchange greetings, but they do it properly, purposefully. They respect each other. “Don Rafaniello’s made shoes for all Montedidio. Before, everyone used to go barefoot.” “And you gave me wood to keep warm and a place to sleep. Without you I would have gotten lost in the alleyways by the port.” “With that mop of red hair on your head you couldn’t get lost in ‘na sporta ‘e purtualle,” in a basketful of oranges, I translate for him.
AT THE workshop Master Errico reads in the newspaper about the man who’s nicknamed The Jinx. One day out of desperation he decides to throw himself from a window and ends up falling on top of some unlucky guy who was passing by that very spot. The passerby dies, and The Jinx breaks two ribs. “Check out the numbers, kid,” he says. “You should play them on the lottery.” In the meantime he goes over to rub the red horn hanging in the doorway to the workshop. Rafaniello mumbles a spell in his language and spits on the ground. We never let superstition into the house. Papa says it’s for women. Mama says it’s a bunch of nonsense and that men are more obsessed by it than women. Master Errico says we’re alive by accident and scrape along by hiding from God. All it takes is one dirty look and we’re done for. Around here no one would ever say “Lucky you” to someone else. People would immediately call you a jinx if something bad happened to the other guy. A man twists his ankle and blames it on the person who wished him good luck. Rafaniello says that in his hometown they say “anóre” for evil eye. He remembers that his mother was beautiful. They even paid her compliments when she was pregnant, and she kept them for herself, she didn’t do anything to exercise the bad luck they bring. That’s why her son was born a hunchback. At home they scolded her. If she had only said “cananóre,” her son would have been born healthy. Nothing causes more damage than an envious eye, Master Errico says.
DON LIBORIO is scared of good-luck wishes, too. For the mid-August holidays he closes his print shop and goes up to the Matese mountains to breathe the air. While loading his suitcase into the taxi on his way to the bus, he runs into Don Ferdinando, the undertaker, who sends him customers for death notices and is also a good friend. He sees the suitcase and says, “Don Libò, have a good trip,” and Don Liborio answers, “Thanks, but I’m not leaving, I just arrived,” and takes his suitcase out of the taxi and goes back home. He left the next day instead. He told the story to Master Errico, who noticed that the print shop was open that evening and wondered why he was still in the city. “What else could I do? How was I supposed to leave with the greetings of the gravedigger?” Then Master Errico put aside the newspaper and ended the talk with a carpenter’s spell. “Saint Joseph, passace ‘a chianozza”—pass over this talk with a planer.
I TOLD Rafaniello about Maria and the landlord. He stayed quiet for a while, then closed his eyes tight and said, “May you share the fate of the dog who licks the rasp.” His voice was as cold as the north wind. I felt a shiver in my kidneys. What are you saying Don Rafaniè? “A curse,” he answered, but with his own voice again. “I’m saying it, but it’s not mine. It comes through me, into the open. Your story has been heard. That man has been struck by a pellet of hail.” There are many things I don’t understand, including the part about the dog. Don Rafaniè, is it bad that curse about the dog? “It’s bad. The dog licking the rasp is licking his own blood, but his liking for blood is greater than the pain, so he keeps licking till he bleeds to death.” Night has fallen. It’s time to close up. I’ve finished my cleaning so I give Rafaniello a hand straightening out his bench. The sound of bones comes from his hump. He looks up, pushing back the bag with the wings. His round green eyes search the sky for a spot to climb. The city rises upward in walls and balconies. There is no sky overhead. But he finds a way to get his bearings even in this canyon. His head has the same compass as a stork. I roll the gates down and we say good night. He says it’s nice to have wings, but it’s nicer to have good hands for work.
MASTER ERRICO sets the alley spinning with his voice. He’s furious. He’s showing his ugly side. A workman was fixing a cornice on a top-floor balcony. All at once there was a crash in the alley. Master Errico ran out and saw the rubble. He started screaming at the workman that downstairs there were children, people. The guy answered that he had work to do, so Master Errico let his animal out and shouted, “Scinne!” Get down here! Get down here and go home while you’ve still got legs to walk on. Otherwise I’ll come up and break them. He said it in Neapolitan so loud that the whole alley quieted down. The workman saw that the day was taking a turn for the worse and came down. Everyone was looking out the windows and doors and Master Errico stood in the middle of the alley. I came out to sweep up the rubble. “Stand back,” he said. “That guy’s got to do it.” Things were getting serious. “Don’t pay attention to him, Mast’Errì, don’t get all worked up, let the boy do it.” The voice of Don Liborio the typographer calmed Master Errico down. “Come on, let’s have a coffee.” He took his arm and led him up the street. I swept up the rubble and the workman was able to leave.
THE WOMEN were talking, saying that he had done the right thing. The women in Naples are always egging on the men. The oldest one said that Master Errico was a real kingpin, and during the September uprising against the Germans he got the whole block together to drive them out of Naples. Another woman said that when there’s someone like Master Errico on the block the criminals are nowhere to be found. The women talked, so I learned about past events. Back in those days my father was at the port defending his job. The people of Naples went wild. They took to the streets yelling, “ Iatevenne!”—get out of here! and they used guns to show the Germans to the door. Some even lost their lives. So this afternoon I asked Master Errico about it. He answered that everyone had come out that day—Don Liborio, Don Ciccio the doorman, the women, the street urchins, the city’s whole motley crew. “The Germans were tearing everything apart, dropping bombs on houses. In the end they wanted to take all of the young men to Germany to work for them. Anyone who didn’t report was shot. The only ones on the streets were old people and women. We wanted to drive them out. We didn’t want to hide anymore. The Americans showed no signs of entering Naples. They were waiting. So we got sick of waiting.”
I WANTED to hear more. After I pestered him for a while with questions, he continued. Master Errico was in the right mood. “Even Father Petrella the priest got involved. During the bombardments he had learned to say mass quickly, fifteen minutes at most. The practice has stayed with him, which is why they call him Father Fast. Once an air-raid siren went off after Communion, just as he was finishing the service. Rather than say the usual, ‘Ite, missa est,’ he said, ‘Fùìte!’—make a run for it—‘missa est!’ He was the first to run like a hare, blessing the shelter while he was running and holding up his cassock, the landlord close on his heels, followed by retired General De’Frunillis. During the September uprising even Don Petrella came into the line of fire, not to hurt the Germans but to bring us comfort. He gave absolution to those who were dying from gunshot wounds, including a German soldier. The whole neighborhood came out. When it was over, I said, ‘Now this city is mine.’ ” Rafaniello listened with tears in his eyes.
PAPA SPOKE with me. They’ve got some hope for Mama. Sitting down to coffee at six in th
e morning while the block is silent and dark, he lays it out for me. This year there will be no Christmas. “The only thing I care about is her, and she is leaning on me with all the strength she has left. She’s weak, but not her hands. She squeezes tight. She even broke a glass and cut herself. We’re fighting this one together. We don’t want to put you in the middle. It’s between us, going back to when we went to the air-raid shelters during the bombings and swore that we would never be apart, bombs or no bombs. No one could separate us. When a bomb exploded nearby, the blast made her throw up. I held her head and she vomited between my feet. I was happy that our love could do even this. We were engaged back then and even closer than newlyweds. The war allowed us to be the way we are. If she leaves, I’ll be like a doorknob without a door.” He forced himself to use Italian. He wanted to speak with me. He made me feel important. I didn’t say anything. I looked him right in the face. It was a small thing, to stay right in front of him and listen as well as I could, keeping my eyes on him and not moving. Then he let out what he was thinking. “All three of us will get back together, as if nothing happened, we’ll go back to having our Sundays. Do you remember the Solfatara Volcano?” It was time to go. That’s where he stopped. He got up and rinsed his cup out in the sink. It was the first time he’d done it. He splashed some water on himself, dried off, and smiled at me.
HE WAS really confiding in me. He explained carefully, mustering the patience he needed to speak Italian. In his mouth it becomes a Sunday language. When he can’t find a word he turns red from the effort and I find it for him. Right away he says, “Bravo,” and repeats what I said, even if it isn’t the word he was looking for. Yes, I’m thinking of the Sunday we saw the Solfatara Volcano. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you? ‘A tieni mente?” Yes, it’s fresh in my mind. He wants to climb Vesuvius, too, on a winter Sunday when there’s snow on top. “Do you remember the snow?” he asks me sometimes, and I nod yes, and stare out into the darkness. I can see the 1956 snowstorm, the soft rain of the north, white and silent. We tell each other about it again and every winter he tells me, “This year it’s going to snow by the sea, too,” out of his desire to see it again. The port becomes clean. You can’t see the dirt, the oil, the rust. Silence grips the city. Even the streetcar forgets that it’s made of steel and passes by as quietly as a trolley bus. “Even the garbage piles, ‘e muntune ‘e munnezza, seem beautiful.” The oak trees at the Villa Comunale wear white skullcaps and I wonder: How do the blind get by without white?
PAPA LEFT with a change of clothes for Mama, wrapped up in a paper bundle under his arm. I turn the light off. I’m alone. It’s cold. I squeeze the boomerang in my hand and warm myself. Of course I remember the Solfatara Volcano in Pozzuoli, Papa. You took me there one Sunday, without Mama, who couldn’t stand the stench and doesn’t wear perfume. We took the streetcar as far as Bagnoli, then went the rest of the way on foot. It was drizzling, raindrops as fine as pinheads tickling the calm sea and the tar-mottled beach. Under the umbrella I walked at your pace. I had to rush. I didn’t pay attention to the puddles and my feet got wet. Outside the entrance the air was already heavy with sulfur. We went in, Papa, and you started reading one of the signs out loud: The solfatara is a volcanic exaltation. The right word was exhalation, but I didn’t correct you. When a volcano dies, it exhales its final warmth in green brimstone salts the same color as Rafaniello’s eyes. We arrive at the crater, which is sunken into the plain. A silent smoke rises from the crusts of earth. A pond of mud boils, bubbling on the surface. Papa closes the umbrella. The steam from the solfatara stops the rain. The only sound is of shoes touching the ground. With no city movement around me I feel a little dizzy.
I SEE a black butterfly. I read the names written below the plants near the crater: laurel, myrtle, arbutus. At one fumarole I remove my shoes and let my trousers dry. The earth is hot. It feels good on my back. A smell of burning rises from the bottom of my trousers. Too late I realize that the seat of my pants is scorched. Papa laughs, but he stops when he realizes that Mama will have to fix them. We circle the crater. I pick up green stones that are good for writing, like chalk at school. I think I still have them somewhere. If I find them I’ll bring them to Rafaniello to see if they match his eyes. On the way back Papa buys Mama a cut of musso, boiled calf’s lip. That’s how we are going to apologize for the trousers. Then we go up the hill to Montedidio. The students of the Nunziatella Military Academy pass us in their gold-buttoned uniforms, with white-handled dress swords hanging from their belts. Their clothing glares next to the shabby clothing of the crowds around them. They’re kids, a few years older than me, walking with their chests out and not looking anyone in the face. It must be awful to set yourself apart from other people that way, shunning them. At home Mama didn’t say a thing about the trousers or the musso, no scolding and no thanks. So we’re even.
RAFANIELLO’S FACE is all crumpled. He didn’t sleep. The wings broke through the shell of his hump. It cracked like an egg, without bleeding. His jacket’s gotten fuller. He says he’s managed to open the wings. They’re bigger than a stork’s. He’s decided to wait for the night of fireworks. In the meantime he’s practicing in his room at night. The fireworks in Naples used to scare him, reminding him of the turmoil of war. “This time they’ll be bidding me farewell.” I tell him that I’ve made my decision, too. I’m going to throw the boomerang the same night. The boomerang’s wings are ready, too. “How much time do we have left?” he asks. Two weeks. From my pocket I take one of the brimstones. It’s the same color as your eyes, I say. He holds it up against the light. “Fire and brimstone. It rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. Green eyes, red hair. The Heavenly Father made me look like an ember.” I wonder if his eyes are really green. What’s more, I say, they’re lit like teardrops, not brimstone. Rafaniello is getting to the bottom of his shoe pile. People have been coming by to pick them up. He’s not accepting broken ones anymore. Now everyone’s wearing shoes in Naples.
I HELP Master Errico plane some larch boards. They give off a scent of resin, a smell that clears your sinuses. Master Errico looks at the first planing and shakes his head. “We can’t use the machine,” he says. “We have to finish it by hand.” He shows me the drops of resin and says that they’re hard and would break the blade of the planing machine. Larch resin dries as hard as a rock. So I learn to move the hand planer, following Master Errico. The larch shavings are blond and not very curly. It’s like giving the wood a crew cut. At noon I realize that a feather has fallen under Rafaniello’s bench. I pick it up. It’s so light I can’t feel it in my palm. Don Rafaniè, I’m going to hold on to this to remember you by. “You’re right to say ‘hold on to’ instead of ‘keep.’ To keep is presumptuous. To hold means you realize that today it’s yours and tomorrow who knows. Hold on to the feather as a keepsake.” I think of the boomerang. I hold it tight, then I have to let it go. I take it out of my smock. Look at it, Don Rafaniè, it’s so well made that it can fly, too. We chew our bread and friarelli and stare at the boomerang. He stops eating and asks me very seriously what kind of wood it’s made from. Acacia, Don Rafaniè, a hardwood. His breath catches in his throat. He coughs loud and spits up some friarello, then he calms down and rocks back and forth in his chair, repeating, “Acacia, acacia,” with tears in his eyes, his face as red as his hair, a crunching of bones behind his back.
AS I write this on my scroll I can’t remember how to say it in Italian: did he break out in tears or did the tears break out? Who could tell at noontime? I didn’t and couldn’t understand a thing. I waited next to him without eating. I didn’t look at him. I waited. He finally managed to clear his throat and make a different sound, more like laughter, a laughter more silent than the tears that had come before. He laughed and made me laugh just to see how it cracked him up to repeat the word acacia, strangling the sound of the a and laughing, laughing hysterically, and I laugh with him, thinking that if Master Errico were to come in now and find us like this, he’d throw
a bucket of cold water over us to make us stop. Rafaniello calms down and I’m happy since the laughter gave me back my appetite. I finish my bread and friarelli in four bites. I arrange the boomerang under my jacket near the feather that fell from Rafaniello’s wings.
AT THE washbasins in December the wind gets all blustery, sweeping up the dirt on the ground, polishing the nighttime sky, drawing off the heat from the houses. The boomerang is going wild. It burns the air that will carry it on its flight. My arms can’t control it. It’s like a wing with feathers. I wind myself up to toss it two hundred times with one arm, two hundred with the other, and I don’t get tired. I’m a thrower and have to force myself to wait. There’s the dark side of the moon. Maria stares at the giant lid over Montedidio, spellbound. I’m obsessed with the sea and think all the shiny points on its surface are a school of anchovies. With my broken voice I imitate the cry of the fishmonger when he comes by with a basket on his head and a scale around his neck calling out: “ ’O ppane d’o mare”; bread of the sea. “Quiet, you’re making me think of the smell of fish,” says Maria, who can’t stand fish and would just as soon leave it in the sea. On the highest rooftop in the neighborhood she and I are keeping watch over the city. Sitting close to the ground against the bulwark, covered by the blanket, we pass the time, accomplices of the wind that mocks the television antennas and empty clotheslines. It whistles overhead, discovers our shelter, and gives us a push to bring us closer together.