Nicola Gardini - Lost Words

At midnight we opened the bottle from the landlord and drank a toast to the New Year. My father gave me a kiss on the cheek and drew my mother toward him. She broke away from his embrace impatiently, raising the glass to an audience that only she could see. “Happy New Year! Auguri! Happy 1973! The time has finally come for us to buy a house, too! Happy New Year! Viva the new house! Viva 1973!”

My father didn’t have the courage to contradict her, so he stroked her hair tenderly. And she continued, rebelliously, “Happy New Year! Viva 1973! Viva the new house!”

*.

After the holidays Miss Lynd also gave us an envelope. We really weren’t expecting it, and inside was a ten-thousand-lira note, compensation for all the help my mother had given her. At the sight of the money, my mother was puzzled. The gift cheered her up — it was cash, after all — but she was also a little offended. She would have preferred to keep the Maestra in her debt. “No one’s going to buy me,” she said.

She had become jealous. She realized that the Maestra was transforming me. I had stopped watching television and my nose was always in a book. I spoke in a strange way and often used words that to her were unknown, incomprehensible, even foreign… She appreciated the change in me, since it came from the time I was spending with an exceptional person, but she also disapproved, since it had made us grow apart. Her problems and dreams no longer interested me. I had stopped participating in her long vigil for the sale of the building, and, sharing her hopes that we would soon be taking over the Vignolas’ one-bedroom apartment. I had already found a new home. It was on the fifth floor of the building, not the first. And it was filled with books. And English was the language spoken there.

The money had to be returned. But thinking long and hard about the matter, she decided to keep it, since the purchase of a home remained an absolute priority. On the intercom she thanked the Maestra and said that, to reciprocate, besides the usual weekly cleaning, she would start ironing her linens. The Maestra told her there was no need. She didn’t iron anything, much less the linens. Ironing was a waste of time. All one had to do was hang them out properly while they were still wet.

“Thank goodness not everyone thinks like your Maestra,” my mother said, “how in the world would I make a living otherwise!”

The following Sunday, when she went upstairs to clean, the Maestra sent her away. Thank you, she said, but she would no longer be requiring her services.

*.

Once school started, my English lessons would also resume. My mother could no longer use the holidays as an excuse to keep me from going upstairs. I returned to the fifth floor with renewed enthusiasm. Every day I collected dozens of unknown words and definitions, copying them into my notebook, which slowly filled up with my handwriting. At night, before turning out the light, I would reread the words to memorize them, but also in an effort to go beyond the threshold of sleep and beyond the pleasure I had felt in the afternoon.

In a passage from my textbook we came across the word God . Having ascertained that I knew the meaning, the Maestra asked me to define it. It was customary for me to give her either a description or a synonym (although, according to the Maestra, there were no true synonyms — were there perfect equivalents for life, time, air, flower …?). An example would be even better. But never, ever, should I provide a translation. Dumbfounded, I sat there in silence. Happier than if I’d given her an answer, she took my silence for the indisputable proof that God did not exist.

“ Very good! One can hardly expect to define such a ridiculous term. Every language has a certain number of such words: meaningless words that belong to the realm of religion. Of course, if you look it up in a bilingual dictionary, you find Dio . So what? There are languages in which the concept of divinity is completely absent. In Hebrew — the language of the people of God! — the word exists, but you’re not supposed to utter it… An old friend of mine considered God to be ‘the shortest and ugliest of our mono-syllables.’ For me it means something only if you read it backward…”

I knew the Maestra was critical of priests, but I overlooked the possibility that she might actually be an atheist. I was used to my mother’s form of religion, the religion of women who speak to God with the same candor they use to haggle over the price of vegetables at the market. I was convinced that all the mothers of the world — because, in the end, Miss Lynd was a mother, too — shared the same God, an invisible being, creator of heaven and earth, to whom they turned to pray for help. He was also my God. Every night, since childhood, I would say my prayers to him before falling asleep. For years and years I had asked him to give my mother enough money to buy the Vignolas’ apartment, and lately I also thanked him in my prayers for bringing the Maestra into my life.

“ Poor Luca , you obviously believe in God, right?” she surmised, “and in the poor Blessed Mother… the Immaculate Conception… the Resurrection of the Son…” She shook her head, disconsolate. I didn’t know what to say. I knew my mother would be very unhappy if she could see me so unprepared to defend the faith. “It’s not your fault, caro Luca, ” she persisted. “At school they don’t teach you to read the dictionary, but they do teach you that God, with a capital G, is great and good and merciful, that things happen because it is the will of God… Your son gets sick and dies, but it is all part of His divine plan. Populations are slaughtered by the millions, yet even this is part of His divine plan. It’s so complex! Such PERFECTION! Everything fits into His divine plan: wars, fascism, concentration camps, famine, disease, social injustice, unemployment, fratricide, the exploitation of children! Yesterday I went to the young people at the Home for the Disabled to wish them a Happy New Year. Have you ever been there?… You should go! It would force you to realize the unimaginable sophistication of the divine plan: bodies without arms, heads with one eye, tongues that are ten inches long, giant skulls, no ears, no legs, no torso! One patient is dragging himself around, another is slithering, and yet another is jumping like a grasshopper. Many of them don’t move at all, and only scrunch up their faces. As for words, no one knows how to speak. They make sounds, yes, and they’re very good at it! Shrieks, moans, gasps, gurgling, whinnying, hiccupping. What a concert! What a show! The joyous beauty of the divine plan ! Why not? Let us give thanks to God for all this! Whom else — seeing that there’s no one to thank?… God is no one ! When will people wake up and realize this?” Her indignation propelled her from her armchair, back and forth across the small room, which swelled with her spirit, expanded into a cosmic stage. “God is a beautiful fairy tale. God can do everything. For children he’s a kind of wizard, a witch doctor! He moves mountains, resuscitates the dead… is there anything your God can’t do?” She heaved a sigh and her sarcasm gave way to melancholy. “I have never been a believer. I have always been strange, ever since I was little. And unhappy — a very unhappy girl! Was it because I didn’t have God in my life? I don’t think so. People don’t know what to do with someone like me. I’ve often ended up alone because of my ideas, and I’m not talking about voluntary solitude — that’s another matter, which I’ve allowed to grow inside me like a garden. In Latin there’s a good word for it, secretum . Did they teach you that in school?… I’m talking about another kind of solitude, the kind you don’t choose, the kind that threatens to turn your garden into a desert. I’m talking about abandonment… And one day you will abandon me, too — won’t you, my sweet Luca? If you abandon me, I’ll understand… I’m crazy!”