MARIA MAKES a maccheroni frittata. I set the table. Papa sits down stiffly on the edge of a chair. His hands are on his knees. This way they can keep still. He’s leaning over his legs a little. Teardrops break away from his nose and drop straight to the floor. Maria turns the frittata out onto his plate directly from the skillet, saying, “It’s ready.” Papa moves his chair in and quietly eats his whole portion. Maria sees the empty plate and fills it again without asking him. He finishes it. The more he chews the more the muscles in his face, his eyes, and his brow start to move again. Maria says that the shopkeepers raise their prices at Christmas and take advantage of people who want to make a good impression once a year. “We have to do the shopping in mid-August.” The only thing Papa pays attention to is his plate. He cleans it with a piece of bread. Then he stands up and says he’s got to go to the porters’ cooperative to start working again. He tells me to buy a flask of wine, leaves me three hundred liras. Maria clears the table, washes up, puts things away. Maria does things quietly, proving that she knows how to run a kitchen and that even with a sad life you have to keep busy. At least that way there’s no dirt, which would be one more offense. Instead everything’s in order, even with tears in your eyes.
THE AFTERNOON is free. I tell Maria that we should go to Mergellina, where there’s a pier that stretches into the sea. At its far end is a lighthouse and a reef, where you can be outdoors without the city around you. I want to go there because the houses, the streets, everything stops, and suddenly Naples is gone. The open sea and the crashing of the waves conceal it. All you have to do is walk down the pier. Maria puts on her coat. Her scarf is already hanging on the door. Her readiness soothes my bones. On the promenade I buy her a pork-fat-and-pepper tarallo. The wind carries away our warmth. We get it back by walking quickly. Not many people dare to take the walk. American soldiers in rubber shoes hurry by. The aircraft carrier in the bay is the only ship that doesn’t move on the choppy sea spiked with whitecaps. Maria looks at the American soldiers and says, “They’re a beautiful race but they’re always running, running for nothing, for no reason. We Neapolitans have to be thrown out of our homes by an earthquake before we start running.” Maria, why don’t we run, too? “Noooo,” she says, and with her arm she pulls me back into step with her.
AT THE Mergellina pier the riggings on the sailing ships are whistling. The dogs are scared. They hide under the fishermen’s boats in dry dock. The two of us are the only ones to go out on the pier that juts into the middle of the dark sea. The boulders of the breakwater throw water in the air, the waves crash, stop short, and split apart by the bucketful. The boomerang underneath my jacket trembles in the forceful air, pressing its electricity against me. I’d like to throw it against the sea, the north wind, the aircraft carrier, and everything that moves, but not at my mother, no, she can no longer move. Stand still, all of you, stop in your tracks for a minute: if only I had a sliver of voice in my throat to make myself heard, a voice that the wind could spread over the city and make it stand still for a minute. Maria holds my arm tight. I don’t slip away from her, don’t remove the knot of my fist from the handle of the boomerang. At the end of the pier the lighthouse is the farthest point from the city, which seems to have come to a stop. I’m pleased to see it quiet for a minute. A few lights flicker from the island across the bay, from the towns on the coast. Naples’s shoulders are protected from the wind and you can’t hear a thing. I swallow big gulps of sea air. Maria says, “Let’s go back.”
PAPA RETURNS home for supper. He sees the wine and before pouring himself some to drink he tries to explain, in Italian, “As long as she was alive I guarded her life, I snatched her away from death day and night.” He drinks it down and says sharply, “Mò nun pozzo fa’ niente cchiù.” Now there’s nothing more I can do. Maria nods her head. I’m just happy that he’s searching for peace. He stayed with Mama till her last breath, and didn’t want to go one step farther, not even to the cemetery. He pours himself another glass, asks if we’re drinking, too. Maria says yes, I say no. She sips a couple of drops from the glass to taste it. Papa tells her, “That’s not a sip, it’s a breath. You’re teasing the wine that way.” Maria makes up for it by draining the glass with a flick of her wrist. We eat slowly, you can hear noises from the other homes. Papa drinks, passes his hand over his face, rubs his forehead. “Thanks for the supper.” He gets up, says good night. In bed we lie close to each other but don’t embrace. She says that her blood is running but it’s not a cut, it’s a change that women go through. She drank the wine to get her blood back. Before falling asleep, she says the precious words, “I care for you.” As usual I don’t know what to say in return.
MASTER ERRICO and Rafaniello said good-bye to each other when I wasn’t there. It’s the last day of the year. Tomorrow’s a holiday, so today we have to work hard. We put all of the rough wood for the upcoming jobs through the planer. We make a lot of noise but today the neighborhood doesn’t pay us any mind. No one sticks their head into the shop to ask Master Errico if he can keep it down, if he can do it later, because someone in the house that night didn’t get any sleep, “nun ha potuto azzecca’ uocchio.” In an alley you try to run the machines at a time that doesn’t disturb anyone. Today everyone’s busy getting ready for the holiday so they don’t mind the screeching of the blades that shave millimeters off the boards and splinter them into sawdust. Master Errico double-checks the squaring, corrects it, divides the finished boards by their grain. He grumbles about the lumberjack, who didn’t cut the lumber during the right phase of the moon and now the wood is weak and bleeding resin. Master Errico tells me that Rafaniello is leaving, he got himself a ticket to sail to the Holy Land because he’s a worshiper of Jerusalem. People don’t get their shoes fixed in Montedidio anymore, he says, nowadays they buy them new or they’re given to them by the mayor at election time, one before and one after the vote. I forget everything, think of work, and bury myself in sawdust. The boomerang is on my chest, beating against my heart. We don’t even stop for lunch. We stop at four o’clock, when evening has already fallen. We wish each other a Happy New Year. Master Errico gives me double pay. “You earned it, kid, be well.” Do you shoot a gun at midnight? I ask him. No, he says. He stands on the balcony, smokes a Tuscan cigar, and watches other people’s fireworks. He likes the Roman candles. “Don Ciccio sets off the best Roman candles in Montedidio.”
I SHAKE the sawdust off my clothes, beating myself like a rug. The boomerang bumps against my ribs and rustles like the wings beneath Rafaniello’s jacket. I think of him. Tonight the flight of the boomerang will accompany him. At home my writing reaches the end of the scroll. A few more turns and nothing more will be left. I have to hold the scroll open, since the written part pulls it closed. I sharpen my pencil and wait for Maria, who’s gone out. She comes back out of breath. She went up to her place to clean up and to get a change of clothes. The landlord was waiting for her at the door and threw himself on her right in the middle of the staircase. She didn’t shout. She kicked him in the shins and got away. “If you had been there you would have thrown him down the stairs,” she says. She’s agitated, frightened. He was holding her tight with his hands and his breath stank. He’s out of his mind, but she defended herself. My thoughts become dark, my nerves frayed, wound tight from the boomerang. They want to shove and slap everyone in sight. Maria, nun succere n’ata vota. It won’t happen again. These grim words come out in my Neapolitan voice. I show my ugly side. It’s the first time, so I don’t know what kind of a face I’ve just made, because Maria takes it in her hands and says, “Don’t act like that. Forget about it. It’s over already. It was nothing, I shouldn’t even have told you.” She looks for my eyes and I don’t know where I put them because she tells me, “Look at me, look me in the face,” and moves my face until I let go of the dark thoughts, look at her, take her wrists, and give myself two slaps in the face with them, clenching my teeth. She gets scared and hugs me and now yes, now it’s all over.
IT WON’T happen again, I tell her, but not in Neapolitan. I tell her quietly so she’ll calm down. Today I’ve learned something about myself, something sad in the middle of my good luck at being with Maria. Not everything is good about my body growing. Something evil grows up alongside it. Alongside myself, alongside the strength of my arms to free the boomerang, grows a bitter force capable of violence. A sulfur pond has started boiling inside my head, making my thinking evil. Is this what men suddenly become? Someone makes a bad move, you blow your stack, and out comes the evil blood. Papa comes home. Maria asks him if tonight he’d like pizza, we’ll go get some at Dirty Gigino’s, who makes the best pizza in the neighborhood. Right away he says yes, a pizza margherita. Same thing for us. So we lay the tablecloth on the marble table in the kitchen. When we come back we’ll eat it while it’s still hot. He’s tired. Today he worked in the bottom of the hold without a break, something the older workers don’t do. He sits down with the newspaper on his knee. The lightbulb is twenty watts. He tries to read, straining his eyes.
THEN WE go out, saying see you later. He doesn’t answer. He reads, moving his lips to follow the words. Maria and I know how to read better than him. It’s not fair. We, the late-comers, who had the luxury to study, we know more than a strong adult man who made sure his whole life that we didn’t want for the basics and who was always respectful to his wife. I close the door behind us, letting Maria out first. I feel honored by my father, who has to move his lips to read. Marì, we have to buy the best pizza in Naples. “We wouldn’t go out for less. At the very least the best in Naples, then we’ll see if it isn’t the best in the world.” Maria, I tell her, I care for you. “Those are my words. You have to use your own,” she answers, leaving me looking stupid once again.
DIRTY GIGINO is making pizza for all of Naples. There’s a crowd in front of his store. It’s cold and he’s standing there in his undershirt slapping the dough around and spinning it absentmindedly. He calls out to the crowd, “Song ‘e ppizze ‘e sott ‘o Vesuvio, nc’è scurruta ‘a lava ‘e ll’uoglio.” He’s saying that there’s as much oil on his pizza as there is lava running down the slopes of Vesuvius. This way people don’t mind waiting as much, because they work up an appetite from Don Gigino’s exaggerated words. They call him dirty—‘o fetente—because he has a beard and sometimes you find dark hairs in your pizza. He wears a beard because his face is scarred. I stand off to the side on the sidewalk. Maria goes up to the counter and lets her voice be heard good and loud: “Don Gigì, three of your pizza margheritas ’cause we want to cheer ourselves up,” she shouts out in the midst of the crowd, letting loose her fresh, flirtatious side. “Nenne’, i’ m’arricreo quanno te veco.” I cheer up whenever I see you, Don Gigino responds from the counter, with his dark beard, eyes, and hair, dusted in flour like an anchovy. He rushes us ahead of the others, handing us three pizzas, one on top of the other, with wax paper in between. He shouts for everybody to hear, “Facite passa’ annanze ‘a cchiù bella guagliona ‘e Montedidio!” Make way for the most beautiful girl in Montedidio! and Maria makes her way through the crowd and takes the pizzas from the hands of Don Gigino, who even tells her she can pay for them another time. “Cheste m’e ppave ll’anno che vene.” Maria, walking tall and brash from the honor, comes to me, puts her arm in mine, and we walk up to Montedidio with people’s eyes on our backs. It’s so important to be two, a man and a woman, in this city. He who’s alone is less than one.
ON THE street firecrackers are going off and people are rushing home to get ready for the party. The pizzas are smoking in Maria’s hands. Her footsteps sound like wood. I realize she’s wearing high-heeled shoes. It’s just that I saw Maria was taller and didn’t look at her shoes. At first I thought that she grew quickly from one day to the next. Now I see the heels, but I still know anyway that she’s taller, even without them. We race forward. Quickly we find ourselves high atop Montedidio, where we can look at the stars face-to-face. Don Gigino sees us and lets us pass in front of all his customers, because he sees us running, growing and running. Maria is taller. Her figure has shot up from a girl’s to a woman’s, everyone who sees her notices. I don’t say a thing. Whatever she does is fine with me.
AT HOME Papa’s asleep with the newspaper on his legs. I take it away, he wakes up, looks around himself in a daze, passes a hand over his face, and says, “I thought I was at your mother’s bedside.” Maria doesn’t give him time to think about it. “Supper’s on the table,” she calls, clattering the plates. I take my jacket off, set the boomerang on the table. “You’ve still got it? So you liked it. I’d forgotten,” and while he cuts himself a slice of the juiciest pizza in Naples and maybe in the world, he asks me whether it flies. “Like pizza in the hands of Don Gigino,” Maria answers, but he’s already chewing and has forgotten. I tell him how Don Gigino served us before all the other people who were waiting. “He used to do the same for us. Don Gigino likes seeing married couples,” he remembers, without thinking. He drinks a glass of wine, pours one for Maria, says that he’s not going to stay up until midnight. He cracks a walnut, crushing it in his hand, chews it with relish. Mama liked almonds, there aren’t any, I didn’t buy them. At the table you need a little mourning.
HE TOOK a colleague’s shift. Tomorrow he’s going in for another guy, who’s staying home on New Year’s Day. He wants to work and wear himself out. He says he’s really happy to come home to a hot meal. He gets up, says good night, and then at the kitchen door turns around and says, “Thanks for the pizza.” Maria smiles at him and my eyesight gets blurry. I swallow, turn around, pick up the boomerang, and squeeze it to calm down. Everything is moving too fast, I can’t manage to keep up, everything changes from one hour to the next. He said, “thank you” for so little, even though the life he knew is over, and outside they’re setting off fireworks, making one year new and throwing out the old one, and with all his heart he’s still inside the years that have passed, that are thrown out, they’re all mixed together. I start clearing the table. Maria washes the dishes and outside the merrymaking grows. For one night the city imitates Vesuvius expelling fire and flame. We turn the light out, look out at the other windows, look down on the street.
ON MY chest the boomerang beats against the pulsing of my blood. Maria places her ear between my shoulder and neck and repeats softly, “Boom, boom, your heart’s even racing when you’re still. Inside your chest a rascal is throwing stones against a wall.” I close my good eye. The balconies and lighted windows across the way recede even more, becoming street lamps in the dark. Boom, boom, to live you have to have a pulse, to fly, to break away from the earth, to ascend the sky on air, a strong pulse. “Boom, boom, boom,” Maria continues. Her voice draws blood to my stomach, saliva to my mouth. Maria, I tell her, at midnight I’m going up to the washbasins. I’m going to throw the boomerang. “I’m coming with you.” Rafaniello will fly and all the spirits will come to see him off. Our spirits are curious. They’ll want to brush against a flying shoemaker. Spirits don’t know how to fly. They can only create a little breeze. Firecrackers are going off on the street. Maria doesn’t hear what my dark voice is saying. She’s thinking of her blood. “The wine was good for me. It’s the first time I’ve had it, it’s good. I liked the way he poured it. He held the heavy flask steady and made it come out very slowly.”
MARIA’S BEAUTIFUL with the blood she’s losing, the wine that’s replacing it, her black hair tickling my neck and her mouth that goes boom, boom, opening and closing with her kisses. To imitate the sound of my heart she blows kisses to the dark. We stay at the window; in the meantime the frenzy of fireworks rises, people in Montedidio are setting off firecrackers everywhere. The blasts even come from far away, from the marina. Rafaniello is in his storeroom, warming his wings. I tell Maria it’s time to go up. We pull away from the window, the boomerang shifts from my rib to my heart. Let’s go up, Marì. She slips under my arm, carelessly, lost in thought. The stairs echo with the ruckus, a gust of little drafts circles
, celebrates, and tickles us, blowing their chilly New Year’s greetings into our ears. They’re fond of us, and I of them. Maybe even Mama made it in time to come, although spirits stay close to their bodies at first, keeping them company. Only later do they separate. The landlord’s door is open. Inside it’s dark. Maria holds me tighter.
ABOVE THE terrace colored lights spread across the sky. They’re shooting off rockets from rooftops and balconies, and it’s not even midnight. I try to warm up my arms for the throw, they’re ready, don’t need a warm-up, the boomerang’s force belongs to me. I want to put enough into it to break my arm off. Which one? Right or left? Left, the side of my good eye, which I’ll keep closed. I gaze up at the curtain of stars, looking for the one that I saw above the volcano. I spot it, it trembles more than the others. I point it out to Maria with the tip of the boomerang. It’s in the east. I’m going to throw in that direction. Maria goes to the bulwark, leans on it with her elbows to see far away, she hears and doesn’t hear. It must be the wine, the exhaustion, the blood. Rafaniello arrives, his wings are under a blanket, they don’t fit into his jacket anymore. Don Rafaniè, how are you? He doesn’t answer. He hugs me with the warmth of his feathers and tells me softly, “Blib ghezìnt, be good,” then slips his shoes off. Don Rafaniè, do you see that star, you and the boomerang will pass right under it, it’ll blaze the path for you between the fireworks. Maria stands still, looking out, she doesn’t turn around. All at once it is midnight, Naples is ablaze, shooting, breaking, throwing stuff into the street, you can’t hear a single voice, everything is a burst of energy that shoots into the air, above the earth, against the walls. I squeeze the wooden handle in my hand.