Erri De Luca - God's Mountain

THE OLD man is a goner. He’s got the curse of the dog that licks the rasp. I saw him crying, Maria. “I saw him crying, too, between my legs.” We gather up the blanket, leave the roof, shut out the wind behind our backs. She says, “You’ve gotten rid of him forever.” Away from the open air her voice rings out harshly in the stairwell. On Christmas Eve, she says, we’ll stay together at your house and have our own party without any adults, just us two allies. All right, I say, with my pay from Mast’Errico I’ll buy the capon and the potatoes. “I’ll make cookies and get all dressed up.” I open her door with the keys, go downstairs, pass in front of the landlord’s apartment. My hands are still burning. I notice a button that got caught in my sleeve and drop it on the ground in front of his door.

WHILE MASTER Errico is counting out my week’s pay in my hand, he asks if my mother is feeling better, if she’ll be home for Christmas. I shake my head no. “So, you won’t be having eel?” No, Master Errico, eel’s too difficult. It even slithers away after it’s been cut. I’m buying capon. I ask him if he’s going fishing tomorrow. “Depends on the weather.” Then Rafaniello tells me to never ask a fisherman whether he’s going out. They guard their plans jealously. If they talk about them it brings bad luck. It’s only afterward that they talk about the fish they caught. Rafaniello knows Neapolitan. He says it resembles his native language. To him Italian’s like a piece of fabric, a garment draped over the naked body of dialect. He adds, “Italian is a language without saliva. But Neapolitan’s got spit in its mouth that helps you stick your words together. Stuck with spit: for the sole of a shoe it’s no good, but it makes a good glue for dialect. In my language we say the same thing: zigheclèpt mit shpàiecz; glued with spit.” He makes me repeat it so I can write it on the scroll. I ask him what he’s doing on Christmas Eve. He’s not doing anything. He’s not a Christian. I invite him over. I tell him I’ll cook capon, without saying a thing about Maria. He thanks me, his smile wrinkling his skinny face. The fresh green of his eyes sparkles among his red freckles. His smile breaks to respond to the invitation by saying no.

I CLOSE the workshop an hour early, a little before the stores close, and go out to look for capon at the butcher’s and potatoes at the vegetable pushcart. “All of Naples is in the street,” says the washerwoman, leaning out the window of her ground-floor apartment. She brought in the clothes on the line. The crowd was banging into them, getting them dirty. “Simme assaie, nuie simme tropp’assaie.” Too many of us, way too many of us, says De Rogatis, the music teacher, waiting in line outside the fish shop for them to wrap his live eel. “I want to pick my own,” one woman protests to the fishmonger. “They’re all the same, ma’am,” he shouts back, holding the slithering thing by its head. A woman drove down the alley in a car and hit Don Gaetano the tailor, who was sitting on a stool on the curb, mending a pair of trousers by the light of the street lamp to save on electricity. She ran into him and the stool, sending them rolling down the street. There were shouts, the woman fainted, everyone rushed over to give her a hand. Don Gaetano was left on the ground, in a daze. He still didn’t know what had hit him and kept asking, “What happened?” In this crowd you don’t feel the cold. It’s better than a coat. At the door Donna Speranza the caretaker is the first to greet me, “Merry Christmas, kid.” An even better one to you, Donna Speranza, I answer, and show her the beautiful capon I bought.

I ENTER the house. A cold so still and silent you want to jump into bed. I sprinkle salt and pepper on the capon and put it in the oven with the potatoes. A blast of heat. In the kitchen I can hear the radio from the house across the way. On Via Santa Maria della Neve an elderly woman went out in the street and threw into the air all the coins she had collected from panhandling. A crowd gathered and the police intervened. The blood of Saint Andrew of Avellino liquefied. Far from Naples, in America, they made a young man president. The Russians sent a dog up in a rocket. The Americans sent a monkey instead. I turn off the lights and look outside. It’s Christmas. Rooms are lit and families are sitting down at the table. On the table I’ve set places for the boomerang, the capon, and Maria with her cookies. In the past year I never dreamed of asking so much. It happened by itself, without my wishing it. My grown-up body, Maria’s mouth, Rafaniello’s wings. So much abundance arrived without asking, except for Christmas. With the lights out I feel the spirits caressing my neck. They move about better in the dark. I use the light of the street lamp to write, leaning against the railing of the balcony. The sound of my pencil on paper captures the noises of the day.

WHEN SHE knocks on the door I put away my scroll and turn on the lights. In she comes, wearing a red dress, perfume, and carrying cookies fresh from the oven. “Tonight we’re going to make love,” she says, “facimmo ammore.” I’ve cooked capon, I tell her, with new potatoes. She lets her nose lead her to the kitchen and pushes me in the same direction. The room is dark. Maria places her arms around me from behind. She holds me tight, doesn’t turn me around. She plants kisses on the back of my neck, the same spot where you grab a puppy, she tickles me, I hold in my laughter. Then she kisses my throat. It tickles inside. The scent of her perfume enters my nostrils. It smells like a Christmas tree, stronger than the smell of the capon in the oven. My mouth waters. I’m embarrassed that while she’s kissing me all over my body I’m standing there swallowing and don’t even have an appetite. Where is the water in my mouth coming from? Maria holds me from behind and moves her hands up and down my sides. She moves them from my face to my throat, to my chest, and lower, where I don’t dare to look. I keep swallowing, hoping she won’t notice. She’s breathing heavily, squeezing, unleashing her beautiful force on my body, laying the freshness of her hands on the hardened muscles that grow tense as they wait to respond to her.

SHE SAYS, “You’re so strong.” She keeps her arms around me and rubs her face against my back. Then she turns me around and presses me up against the wall. I bang into a skillet that’s hanging there; she laughs, pushes me. Now I can embrace her, too. She’s washed her hair. It falls on my face, like fresh clothes on the line, dark and loose. Her hands hold my face and press kisses against my open mouth. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I try to break away from her a little and I place them on her breasts. Then I rub her. She gets warm and then just like that we take off our clothes and are naked on the kitchen floor and I have just enough time to turn the oven off so the capon won’t burn. Maria leads, I follow. She positions me on top of her where she wants me, and I realize that I don’t know where my piscitiello is. She’s got it and is rubbing it between her legs. I can’t reach it. I let her lead me. She lifts me up and lowers me, making a wave. I open my eyes and see her closed eyes below me, her mouth open, her dark hair scattered all around and the wave tosses, and I try to stay balanced, what an effort it takes to squeeze and hold, this is what beauty must be, then I feel a bolt unleashed from the top of my body, as if the boomerang were rushing out of my piscitiello, an “oof” of amazement comes out of me, she grabs my back even tighter and gives off soft short breaths into my ear and I make movements that don’t belong to me.