Erri De Luca - God's Mountain

I WRITE his words to hear them again, not to remember them. I close my good eye, and while I write on the scroll in a crooked scrawl the voice of Rafaniello rustles again, together with the rustling of the spirits. “Wings are good for an angel, heavy for a man. The only thing a man needs to fly is prayer. Prayer climbs above clouds and rain, ceilings and trees. To fly is a prayer. I was crooked, a bent nail, twisted toward the earth. But another force turns me around and pushes me upward. Now I have wings, but to fly you have to be born from an egg and not from a womb, hatched in a tree, not on the ground.” He leans over the bulwark, his wings beating against his jacket, I can’t help but reach out to stop him. When I touch him he turns around and steps back down. His whole face is smiling but not his eyes. They are the eyes of a bird, motionless, lost in the middle of his face. Underneath my jacket the boomerang grows warm. I pat it approvingly.

AS WE go downstairs the sound of smashing plates comes from the landlord’s apartment. Rafaniello stops and without knowing who lives in the house says, “This man is drunk on his own blood.” Is that the curse of the dog, Don Rafaniè? He says yes and a cold jolt passes through my kidneys. I was the one who pushed him away from the roof toward the stairs. I struck him with open hands. I drove him away, I deserve to feel a chill in my back. I climb down the stairs after Rafaniello while the sound of smashing plates continues. Maria’s at my house wearing an apron. She’s waiting for me to return. She’s preparing a sauce with onions. Her eyes are swimming in tears. She laughs. Don Ciccio the caretaker knocks on the door. We show him into the kitchen. He sits down with us and starts to speak. “Your families are falling apart and you two have gotten together. You’re still children but you’re doing the right thing. You have to help yourself. Here in Naples you grow up quickly.”

DON CICCIO speaks softly, with his hands together on the table and his beret on his head, even indoors. “I’ve known you and Maria since you were in diapers, I know what you’ve been through.” Maria stares at him, breathing hard through her nose, a sign of anger. “Marì, if at home there’s no one to protect you and they get you in trouble instead, then no one can help you. The same thing happened in my family. It was wartime, there wasn’t enough to eat, my little sister went up to that apartment and put bread on our table. Marì, don’t look at me like that. Don’t get all worked up if I tell you that I know what you went through. Now you have this boy here. A good boy, hardworking, he respects his elders, even confides in that foreign shoemaker, Don Rafaniello the hunchback, with that hump on his back as big as he is. You’re right to be together. But do the right thing. Don’t rush, you can’t get married or live in the same house yet. Start off by getting engaged. Let other people know your intentions, otherwise you’ll cause a scandal and your parents will have to step in. Even if right now they don’t know you’re alive, when people start talking they’ll turn against you. I’m telling you this because I like you and you’re doing the right thing, Marì, I’m glad that you’re not going up to that apartment anymore.” Don Ciccio said the last words with a catch in his throat and his face turned red.

IN SPRING I was still a child and now I’m in the middle of things I can’t understand. Don Ciccio is right. Here you have to grow up quickly, and I do, I run. Rafaniello, Maria, the boomerang, I chase after them, in the meantime the scroll is winding up, all written, and I’m not going to Don Liborio to look for another leftover roll. Maria is seated across from Don Ciccio and doesn’t say a thing. In the pot the sauce is simmering on a low flame. She takes my hand from under the table and puts it on the napkin together with hers. I look at her but she looks at Don Ciccio. “Now you tell me, Don Ciccio, m’o ddicite mò ?” Maria jumps from Italian to Neapolitan, which leaps from her mouth with the force of a slap. The shorter Neapolitan is, the more razor-sharp it gets. Don Ciccio swallows in silence. Maria enters back into the fold of Italian. “Don Ciccio, would you like to eat with us? A plate of spaghetti?” Don Ciccio stands, thanks her. He has to go back downstairs to his office. “Be careful. I spoke to you like a father, since there’s no fathers around here anymore.” Maria turns back to the stove. I accompany Don Ciccio to the door, shake his hand, and thank him for his interest. “Be careful, kid, be careful,” he says, and fixes his hat as he descends the stairs.

IN THE kitchen Maria says that no one should come between us. I tell her about the broken plates. “Obviously he’s got too many.” Marì, he’s gone crazy. “No, he’s just jumping the gun. You’re not supposed to break your old things until the end of the year. He’s breaking them now. He’s the landlord, isn’t he? The owner of the whole building. What are a few plates to him?” She pours sauce over the drained pasta. We sit down and eat beside each other. Our legs touch. I know that she’s right. No one should come between us.

IN THE workshop Rafaniello finishes the last pair of shoes. He can’t sit still at his bench. He raises his head, looks around the room, his eyes alarmed, and becomes even more birdlike, left behind by the ones that migrated. He won’t be coming down to the shop anymore. On the night of the thirty-first we’ll meet up by the washbasins, we’ve agreed. He asks me how the boomerang is. It’s always with me, Don Rafaniè, I keep it ready to fly. He jerks his neck toward the door. I turn around just as Master Errico comes in. “ ’A ricciola guagliò, this morning I caught a sea bass in the waters off Santa Lucia. It was still dark. I was trawling a loose fishing line and she caught me, she caught me, tugging so hard she cut my hand,” and he showed me the bloody red cut. “I gave her some slack so I wouldn’t break the hook, which was tiny. I let her wear herself out, and when she was tired I brought her in a little at a time, and when she was right up alongside the boat I lifted her up with the harpoon. Three kilos! Three kilos, kid! The sun was just breaking over the sea and the bass was shinier than the dawn. I’ll be eating fish for a week. I’ll leave the sarago alone until the New Year. This morning I’m going to cook the head. It’s this big,” and he measures it with his hands. Between his two palms he leaves enough space for a soccer ball.

I COMPLIMENT him. You’re a specialist, Master Errico, a fishing cabinet maker. He likes that I call him a cabinet maker, but he shrugs it off. “I’m just a carpenter who likes to fish. Nothing special about that. You want to hear something special? Papele the sailor, the one who walks around with the basket of fish that he catches fresh every morning, well, one beautiful day during the war he went out to sea and came back with chickens. That’s right, he was fishing for chicken! He went up to his customers with a basket full of chickens. ‘Papè, did you change jobs?’ they asked. ‘No, signùri, I go out to sea every day.’ Truth is that the Americans had arrived days after our uprising and ordered a halt to all fishing because of the danger of German mines in the bay. Papele went out with his boat anyway. He went right up under the American ships and they threw chickens into the sea that they’d been keeping under ice. That’s how Papele became a chicken fisherman.”

MASTER ERRICO’S in a good mood. He’s doesn’t say hello to Rafaniello right away, but then he says he’s going to send a slice of sea bass his way. “Look at how the wardrobe has dried. It’s all set.” We screw in the hardware, handles, keyholes, and hinges. With the milling machine he prepares the slot for the lock. I bring the piece close to the machine. My good eye is careful, I keep my bad eye half closed so it can rest. We’ll deliver the wardrobe after New Year’s. While we’re working I ask him about Don Ciccio, whether he was a good man, too. “Good and brave. He was just a kid during the war and he helped the resistance fighters in secret. He ran errands for them during the bombardments, when no one was on the streets. I never saw him come down to the air-raid shelters.” I also ask him whether he remembers Don Ciccio’s sister. “What do you know about Don Ciccio’s sister, kid?” Not much, Master Errico, I only know what he told me, that she ran errands. “Her errand was to go to the landlord, a married man who was free with his hands. She was a girl, a beautiful little girl.” He lights his half cigar, meaning he has nothing more to say.