Erri De Luca: God's Mountain

“I DO this to the landlord,” she says. Do what? It bothers me to hear the name of the landlord, the most annoying person I know. He asks the tenants, “When will you pay me,” when other people can hear. “When will you pay me?” he says real loud, to embarrass them.

“What I did for you I do for him,” Maria says. I hold my tongue so I won’t say anything stupid. “Tonight I wanted to touch a clean body, look at a face that looks back at me, that respects me. Now you’re my boyfriend and I won’t let the landlord touch me anymore. I won’t do anything for him, not even if he throws us out of the building.” Is that what he said, that he would throw you out? “No, that’s what my mother says, because we’ve got debts. People come around to our house to ask us to pay up.” I keep quiet, even if I don’t understand everything. I can see that Maria is happy to stay with me up by the washbasins. She even likes the boomerang. She acts like she’s going to throw it, gets a shock, and shrieks with joy and amazement. How can I play with it when it’s so heavy? It can’t be heavy, I tell her, it’s made for flying. “Are you going to make it fly?” Yes, I tell her. She asks when; I still don’t know. “When you do, can I come, too?” I don’t answer. The boomerang isn’t a toy. It’s a big secret. When it flies it’ll break away from my arm, in a farewell to all the muscles it helped build. It’ll make a lot of noise. It might hit someone; they’ll look for the culprit. Who does the boomerang belong to? And they’ll come up here on top of Montedidio and I’ll answer that it was me, I was the one who threw the boomerang. I keep these thoughts to myself. Maria can’t know them. She takes my head in her hands, places it on her breast. I feel the swelling of her flesh pushing her breath out and the tough beating of her heart. It sounds like someone knocking on the door, and I want to answer, Come in.

MARIA BREATHES deeply. My head rises and falls on her breast. She says that now it’s all right, that now she’s doing what makes men happy, but she’s doing it for me. This way it’s nice. Not like the nasty old body of the landlord, moving on top of her. Maria’s body shivers, shudders, as if she’s shaking out a tablecloth. She opens her eyes. I see her face turn sad. So I take the boomerang, place it so that its tips are pointing down, and pull my lips into a frown with two fingers, in a caricature of her face. Then I turn the boomerang around so that its tips are up. It turns into a smile and I smile, too. Maria comes behind us, the boomerang and me. Her mouth widens and opens her face. She embraces my head. When she loosens her arms from around me, she leaves.

RAFANIELLO RUBS his hump against the wall. It’s itching him. He works quickly. He has to finish repairing the shoes of the poor. Winter begins in August, is what we say. Shoes make a big difference to your health. They come to him with worn-out, unmatched clogs. He fixes them and recommends that they wash their feet. Shoes last longer when your feet are clean. It’s all right to wash them in the sea. There aren’t many fountains in Naples. Rafaniello doesn’t mind the smell of rotten leather, sores, or blackened feet. His nose must be sainted. But Master Errico can’t stand the stench, so he’s always making him move the bag of shoes from one corner to another. I help Rafaniello, but I have to hold my breath when I throw the bag over my shoulders.

He huddles over his work. His red freckles are brighter when his green eyes are calm. He tells me that at night his wing bones squeak inside his hump. They’re trying to move and they hurt. It’s starting.

ACCORDING TO his calculations there are two thousand kilometers of flight from Naples to Jerusalem. You think you can fly that far over the sea? He doesn’t answer me. You have to build yourself up. You should eat like migratory birds do before they leave. Then I think to myself, without telling him, that if everything goes well he’ll make it to Castellamare di Stabia, on the other side of the Bay. They’ll mistake him for a vulture, shoot him, and stuff him with straw. What an awful thought. No, no. Rafaniello will circle the world on fresh wings, he can make it, as long as he eats something more hearty. Beat yourself a couple of eggs. With a little sugar they’d even give me the energy to fly. Rafaniello looks at me with his wide green eyes. “From the way the wings are moving they must be huge.” We go back to work, him with nails in his mouth, me with the broom. I clean up his area, and when I’m behind him I hear a crunching of bone in his hump and think of the boomerang. It’s itching to fly, too. I’ll have to introduce them. He told me the secret of his hump and I still haven’t confided in him.

WHERE HE lives, in a room that used to be a closet, there’s no electricity. At night he lights a candle. He sets it on a chair. He says that it has to be low because light wants to rise. He also says that the candle illuminates the dark; it doesn’t drive it out. From the flame, the glass of wine in the window absorbs the light, the oil shines, the bread becomes fragrant. What else do you eat? I ask. Onion, he says. When it’s nice and close to the candle, you feel like kissing it rather than cutting it. Then he adds oregano. The salt sparkles when he drops a pinch from his fingertips onto the plate. While he’s telling me about these ordinary things I realize that I’ve never seen them by candlelight before. They look even tastier, more nutritious. They’ll be enough for him to fly to Jerusalem. Then he says that the room gets bigger when there’s just one flame. Shadows move along the wall and keep him company. He says that in winter the candle also heats the room. Late in the evening I write down these things about Rafaniello and then I turn off the light. Mama and Papa don’t like candles. They had to use them during the war.

MAMA HAS been taken to the hospital. The house doesn’t make a sound, nothing moves. I can’t stay there. I wash the floor and grind a little coffee for Papa just to make some noise of my own. Now I’m allowed to turn on the gas. I cook some pasta, so he’ll find it ready when he comes home. I have the key to the door, too. All I had to do was make it to thirteen and right away I’m one of the men. I’ve lost every last bit of childishness I had. Even my voice. Now my breathing is hoarse. I rattle my voice around in my throat, but it doesn’t come out sounding nice. It’s buried under the ashes of my earlier voice. I try to clear my throat, but nothing. A sleepy voice comes out, like someone who just woke up and is saying their first words of the day. I’m always hoarse.

My hands are changing more than the rest of me. Now they can hold on tight, they’re wide enough to grip the boomerang. The wood’s losing weight. I deliver it to my arms, my fists, my fingers. I don’t have a target. I don’t have to hit something. I have the open air, the warm air scented with soap flakes. Some autumn night when it’s cooler and the houses close their windows, I’ll make the throw. I won’t even see an inch of flight, but every night I get ready, a hundred times each arm.

IN THE dark Maria comes up to the washbasins. She doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t tempt my piscitiello away from my body. She told the landlord she’d had enough. He took it badly and threatened eviction. Maria’s parents owe him back rent. Maria spat at his feet and left. She plucked up her courage. Just became a woman and already she knows disgust. I’ve had it with this game, she said, of him calling her princess, dressing her in the clothes of his dead wife, putting precious things on her, and then touching her and asking her to touch him back. Now she doesn’t want it anymore because I’m here. I’m here. It makes me feel important. Till now my being around or not didn’t make a bit of difference. Maria says that I’m here. Before you know it, I’ll realize that I’m here, too. I wonder whether I couldn’t have realized this by myself. I guess not. I guess it takes another person to tell you.