Erri De Luca - God's Mountain

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.