Nicola Gardini - Lost Words

“What you mean is they are going to become a condominium,” he corrected her.

“What, you don’t think we’re as good as everyone else?” she sputtered. “We’re going to buy, too, my dear, you’ll see!”

“Elvira, let’s not start with this again! I don’t want to buy any apartment… I’ve already told you a thousand times. And where do you think we’re going to get the money to do it?”

“We’ve got the money, you know that perfectly well! I’ve been saving up for years. We have it!”

“Not on your life. I told you. NO! Not another word…”

“We don’t need a mortgage. We can pay for everything with cash!”

“And where are you going to get the money for the fees? And for the utility and phone bills?” He stared at her with hostility. “You make it sound so easy! As if it was just a question of paying for the house! What about the lawyer? Damn whoever invented them!.. Then there’s the whole plumbing system that has to be repaired… And once you start fixing things there’s no end to it — painting the walls, the doors, the windows…”

“We can paint them ourselves! I could paint a whole building if I put my mind to it…”

“And the furniture? We don’t have any furniture. It all costs money, you know! What, you don’t believe me?”

“At first we’ll only buy the necessities. This stove is still good…”

My father moved from his chair to the armchair, where a tabloid magazine was waiting for him on the armrest. “Do me a favor!” he snorted, scanning the front page with an exaggerated eye movement. “I can already hear you: over here we need an end table, over there a nice sofa. And then you’ll want a cabinet for all your little knickknacks and a new set of dishes and crystal glasses… curtains for the bedroom… an electric vacuum cleaner…”—he shook his head while my mother struggled to swallow, as if she were before a judge with the power to sentence her to death—“We can’t afford it. Why can’t you understand this? Remember where we came from… you’re not born to be a signora!”

“And who said I have to be a signora? Do you think I want to spend all day doing nothing? I’ll keep working. I’ll start working for another family… They’ll be plenty of money to pay the bills!”

My father let her keep fantasizing, with a scornful look on his face. He didn’t know how to stop her. Then, after a deep sigh, just when it seemed he was more open to discussion, he suddenly shouted: “Mother of God, When I say no I mean no!” To emphasize the inflexibility of his reply, he stood up and pounded his fist against the wall.

All the windows in the loge started to shake, so my mother thought it best to drop the matter for the moment. But she brought it up again in bed, with renewed energy. No matter how resolved he was to dissuade her, he very quickly ran out of reasons. “What if, after we’ve bought it, the Vignolas don’t want to leave anymore?” He was playing his last card. “What are we going to do with an occupied apartment?”

“First of all,” she explained in a soothing voice, convinced that she had finally broken his resistance, “they’re definitely leaving — they’ve always said they would. In a little while she’s having a baby and they need another room for the child. They even want a second child…”

“But at first they could keep the cradle in their room…”

“Certainly, at first… and in the meantime we’ll be collecting the money from the rent. It’ll be no loss. I could stay in the loge for another year if I knew that I had a house waiting for me…”

My dad sighed, seemingly defeated. “Won’t we have to get a lawyer to evict them? Lawyers cost an arm and a leg…”

“Relax… let me take care of it. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

*.

At six o’clock she was by the stove preparing breakfast. To make sure none of the tenants got away, she opened the loge fifteen minutes early. The first person to run into her was Paolini, who always left very early, even before my father.

“Signor Paolini! Do you have a minute? The landlord is selling…” she started to explain, almost stuttering, “and if you want to buy your apartment, well, have a look here, we’ll need your signature…”

She handed him the sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen. Paolini gave a skeptical look at the list of all the families in the complex next to a row of numbers with six zeros.

“He’s selling?!.. He can be my guest. I’ve got to go to work…”

“Talk to your wife… You’ve got one week, if you want to buy…”

He was already running toward the gate.

“Don’t get so worked up, Elvira,” my father teased her, while he was splashing aftershave on his face. “You’d think you were getting a commission!”

I didn’t go to school that day.

She showed the paper to the passing tenants, while I mopped the landings, polished the brass carpet rods, and sorted the mail into the mailboxes.

In the morning, no one she approached said they were interested in buying.

“If you want,” I proposed, while we were having lunch, “I can bring the sheet up to the Maestra… Otherwise, who knows when you’ll see her…”

I missed her more and more: time passed and she hadn’t come looking for me. In my ears I could still hear the last time she called out to me: “Luca…” I still regretted not answering her, not going straight back to her.

“Oh, alright…” she consented, turning red in a fit of jealousy. “But you’ll never hear the end of it if…”

I didn’t let her finish.

I climbed the stairs two at a time. When I got to her door I hesitated. Was she waiting for me? Would she rejoice the way she used to every time I came to see her unexpectedly?

She had turned into a shadow of herself, the shadow of a shadow. Her face was of a glacial pallor. Her forehead had widened. Her withered and stooped body was awash in clothes that were too big. Her dignity remained intact, but she had taken on a wounded, macabre appearance.

She appeared neither surprised nor happy to see me. Her eyes looked in another direction, and not only because she was slightly cross-eyed. Every trace of nostalgia drained from my heart. The only thing I felt was a great desire to run away.

“I came up to tell you that the landlord is selling…” I whispered.

She closed one eye and leaned her head toward her left shoulder. I reworded my message: the building was being put up for sale, and the tenants could buy their apartments. If she was interested in hers, she should put her signature on this piece of paper…

Even after my long explanation she did not emit a sound. She moved a hand in the direction of the paper, in slow motion, as if to say she didn’t want to hear about it, that I should take it away. And she closed the door. Or rather, she withdrew into the shadows, like an image which, having emerged from the depths of a black sea, sinks back into it.

I was turning around to go back home when, from the other side of the wall, I heard an echo of laughter — the bitter laughter of the Maestra.

By suppertime my mother had only managed to get two signatures: the signature of Signorina Terzoli and of Signora Vezzali. There had been no sight or sound of the Vignolas. We left my father on guard duty, so to speak — since he was comfortably seated in his armchair, with his legs spread out, reading the newspaper — and went upstairs to the second floor.

Signor Vignola opened the door and immediately told us that his wife was in bed — she had started to feel some suspicious pains. He hadn’t gone to the office that day out of fear that something might happen to her (which is why we hadn’t seen him coming or going). My mother had no comment. During the day she had perfected the best formula and she was there to recite it.