Erri De Luca - Me, You

From the other table came the humming of a song. Caia stiffened and looked far off, above the heads. When that song ended, another began, a kind of march. Daniele became aware of Caia, of her tenseness, and asked her something. He had barely touched her when she sprang to her feet and began shouting in German at the people sitting at the next table. Her voice was clear and sharp, and rose above their singing. Daniele and the others fell silent in astonishment at the peal of her voice assaulting strangers. They did not understand what was happening. Daniele turned to see at whom Caia was shouting. They went on singing but were listening, and a few of them stopped. All of them were looking at her. She was aflame, a fire no one had ever seen before or understood. Her outburst ended in a shriek, a wounded rage that must have contained some terrible insult because at the other table the chorus stopped dead and they began shouting, and one of them got up amid a clatter of chairs. Still lacking any understanding of what was going on, Daniele jumped up, knocking over his chair, and grabbed one of them. He moved instinctively, accurately, and tackled him, knocking him to the ground. I fell on the second one who was about to intervene, taking him by surprise from the side and rolling him over the table. It turned into a free-for-all. From either side people tried to break it up, the owner came running, as did people in the street. It didn’t last more than a minute; more noise than punches. Caia remained riveted to her final shriek, rigid, absent from the ruckus. During the confusion the other group wound up near the exit and began to leave the place. Our group got busy straightening up. Daniele explained that the Germans had insulted us, so the owner did not call the police, seeing that we were decent kids, good clients. In the end, nothing happened.

Caia gave no reply to those who asked her what those insults were. She kept her eyes closed. Someone had already started to tease her, saying that of all the ideas for how to spend the rest of the evening, this was one no one had thought of and they could make the rounds of the pizzerias with this new gimmick. Daniele adjusted his shirt. His knuckles were scraped from the first punch and everybody told him he had done the right thing, and he went over to Caia, who finally loosened up and smiled at him. She said nothing, but took him by the arm and led him outside. The beach — they were all going to the beach to make a bonfire, and they would have to look for me to ask for the guitar, for I was no longer there.

I was invaded by a rage I had never felt before, a whiff of heat in my nostrils, a wrath that had made me explode with Daniele in the melee and that had not subsided. It was growing stronger and filling me. Caia’s scream had inflamed my nerves, like a whiplash to my spinal cord, more the strike of a snake than a man. Never was I so quick to act. I did something perfectly serene and awful: I followed the Germans. I followed them from a distance. In my ears I heard the buzzing of flowering, as when insects swarm on a tree in bloom.

They stopped at a bar and drank for an hour, without singing. I waited for them and followed them all the way to a pensione outside the center of town. I didn’t know why I was doing that, I was obeying the whiff of heat but without tension, careful not to be seen. I turned around and rejoined the group on the beach. They were in a circle singing, facing the fire, already hoarse. For the first time they took notice of me. Someone had told Daniele that I too had thrown myself into the melee. They greeted me with a genuine welcome and one of them said that the team was now complete and they could go pick a fight at some bar. Caia had regained her cheerfulness, and was singing. She invited me to sit beside her. When they started to sing a new song she said, talking directly to me, “You were brave to defend me. No one has protected me in a long time, and I am grateful to you for having done so. In one part of my anger there was the reassurance that you were there. They were singing the anthem of the SS, you don’t know it, I do. I heard it for the first time when the first Germans arrived and my father was carrying me in his arms and holding me tight. I did not hear it again during my childhood. I can’t tell you I’m sorry for what happened because I’m happy it happened.”

The music covered her words. Daniele was singing his most popular song, strumming chords with his skinned knuckle. Ignited by her eyes on me, I replied calmly, “I don’t know what you shouted, but your voice seemed to come from a height, from a place far above our heads. In a kind of hallucination I saw you standing in a burning house, shouting at the sky, not at the earth. All I did was follow Daniele, who jumped up to defend you.”

“I saw, but what you’re saying isn’t so. You got up first and pushed the one who was coming at me, then Daniele got involved.”

The sequence of a brawl always has more than one version, so I don’t know whether her memory was more accurate than mine. I happened to add, while the others were singing the refrain, “Chaiele, I have been ready for this for a long time. I have been waiting all my life for the chance to protect you.”

When you stood up, I watched you at first, saw you get angry, and without understanding why, I obeyed you by getting angry too. When you spoke German to those people, I was already at your disposal. You were speaking to them but with my body in between. You were talking and I was ready to throw myself at them. These things I couldn’t tell you.

“I never knew how my father died, but tonight I peeked into a room of the past. It may have been you who showed me how he died, jumping up to protect his wife the way you did with me. I saw many things tonight and I was afraid for you. I still am.”

I unconsciously rubbed my nose with the back of my index finger and hastily stopped. I said to myself, “No, no,” and Caia understood “Nu, nu,” an interjection in the language of her family.

“Nu, nu … you know that too, you, mine.”

“Oi , Chaiele, we will not see each other again.”

“Nu, Tateh , we will see each other again and again, without this boy who served us as a bridge and who bent like a bow over the span of our ages.”

The music of the circle of voices droned on even though Daniele had stopped playing. What remained was the center, a bush of embers reflected on the hands, in the eyes. Somebody fell asleep, the others talked in twos and threes, Caia and Daniele. They were going to leave together for the city, then he would take her to the train station. I left them. For once I said good night to all of them, one by one, shaking hands, exchanging a kiss or two. Some were leaving the next day, Daniele and Caia soon after. In a few days I would be left alone. I went to the pensione where the Germans were. It was late, everything was quiet, the street empty.

I looked at the little garden behind the gate. In front there was a car with a German license plate. I wondered how to hurt them and a host of ideas came, stupid ones and criminal ones, all jumbled together, and I eliminated them one by one for want of means. I stayed there about twenty minutes and no one passed by to shatter the dark with a flashlight. Few streets on the island were illuminated. I went home and fell asleep, placidly mulling over the most horrendous thoughts that had ever entered my head.

I did not hear Daniele come home.

In the morning I found a note: “Wake me, I’m coming fishing with you.” It was hard to rouse him from a sleep that doubtless had scarcely begun. He got up grunting, panting from the effort of trying to understand that it was dawn, that we were going fishing, and that it was he who had asked me to come along. We started off barefoot on stone damp with dew. He was coming because he had to tell me, couldn’t wait: “You knew that Caia is Jewish?” I replied with a curt no, the way you discard in a game when it’s not the right suit. “She told me last night, or rather tonight, that is, just a little while ago, since I came to bed at three o’clock. That’s why she got mad at those Germans. They were singing Nazi anthems. I’d never seen her so tense, so fierce. I really liked seeing her standing there all alone against that table of Germans. I thought they were insulting us and she was defending us, then I heard the noise behind me and I found myself grappling with one of them. I learned later that you threw yourself on one of those animals. Only tonight talking with her did I understand why that uproar broke out. I knew nothing about Caia. It seems she lost her parents during the war.”