Nicola Gardini - Lost Words

“I barely noticed the move,” she started to tell my father at supper. “Every time someone else moved I had to clean for days and days after, fixing tears in the runners, rubbing out scratches on the walls and in the elevator, skid marks on the floor… Do you remember Signor Puxeddu, Paride? What a mess! He was moving back to Sardinia because Milan made him sick to his stomach. You were still little, Chino… Well, the morning that he finally moved out — I still hadn’t opened the loge — he left this huge turd in the middle of the lobby! I slipped on it and almost killed myself!.. But those two negroes swept everything up, dusted the walls, and wiped them down. They could teach the people who live here a thing or two about manners! And they weren’t bad-looking! On the contrary. Two handsome young men — tall, well-built. And the arms on them!..”

“Negroes are big down there, too…” my father muttered under his breath.

She continued to extol the polite manners of the Professor and his movers. She talked and talked more than she had in months.

*.

“You can hear the water fountain…”

“Yes…”

“And the streetcar, too… Listen, Professor Foschi. It’s so peaceful! Another coffee?”

“No thank you.”

“It seems ridiculous to keep the loge open in this wasteland… What’s the difference between a weekday like today and a holiday like the Feast of the Assumption?… None! But the rules say that the loge can only be closed on the fifteenth — fine, keep it open, for heaven’s sake. The burglars won’t even have to trouble themselves by sneaking over the gate and climbing up to the balconies by the trash chute… Free entry!”

“So you should close, Signora Elvira…”

She placed her hand over her mouth, as if she had just heard a dirty word.

“Close!..”

“Who’d stop you from doing it? Besides you and your family I’m the only one here… Right?”

“The Biondos are also here, on the fourth floor. She’s been paralyzed for years. At some point she came down with a strange illness, I don’t know what it was… a rare disease…”

The Professor lowered his gaze. He wasn’t interested in gossip.

“So call Signor Biondo and ask him if he would mind if the loge was closed for a few days.”

“Basically it’s about security.”

“Security?”

“Yes, of course. There’ve been a few burglaries here. They wanted to break into the loge one night. What a scare! And they almost succeeded. But my husband chased them away. Every now and then he rises to the occasion… And the burglars had already robbed two apartments at 18 Via Icaro.”

“I never lock my door…”

“Not even at night?”

“No, not even at night. If someone has evil intentions, one way or another they’ll find a way in. Someone who wants to ransack your apartment is obviously not going to check whether your doors are locked. So there’s no difference between a closed and an open door. The difference lies in the intentions of the person outside. And what can we do about the intentions of other people?”

His argument was too subtle for my mother.

“So, with your authorization, I’m going to call Signor Biondo and tell him that I’m thinking of closing.”

“With my authorization ?”

“Yes. Did I say something wrong?”

“Well. You did get one thing right. I have no authority…”

“Yes, you do, you represent the condominium.”

The Professor’s face darkened. “Signora, who do you think I am?”

My mother didn’t know where to turn. She took a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. “Alright. Please, not another word. It would be much easier to stay open.”

“Signora,” he pressed on, determined to be completely clear. “I don’t represent anyone . I can barely represent myself. And that word, ‘condominium,’ please stop using it, at least with me. It makes my skin crawl… The last thing I wanted to say is that you don’t need my permission. Go ahead, take the day off, leave…”

The last part of the speech almost sounded sweet.

“If it were up to me, I’d already be an apartment owner ,” my mother said, slightly reassured. “Be that as it may, if you don’t mind, I’ve never found the word so awful. There are words that are worse. ‘Doorwoman,’ for instance. Do you think it’s been nice for me all these years to hear myself called a doorwoman ? People can’t say that word without adding a little venom. I wish they’d call me an apartment owner… Did you know that before your arrival I was about to buy myself a home? I really wanted to leave, you can’t imagine how badly. But in a family, in the end, it’s the husband who decides.”

“I’m sorry,” the Professor said.

That was all. He didn’t ask a single question. The private affairs of other people made him feel uncomfortable.

“You keep telling me to leave…” my mother resumed, forcing herself to sound cheerful and friendly, “but why aren’t you going anywhere?”

“I have to work. I have to finish something that I’ve been dragging out for a long time. Otherwise, of course I’d go away.”

“Go where? I wouldn’t know how to choose… Italy is so big! To think that going from my hometown to Milan takes eleven hours on the train! And it takes just as long to go back… Then there’s Sicily, Sardinia… But I’m not interested in vacations or trips. All I ever wanted to do was retire to my own home, close the door, and not see anyone. Like now…”

She had suddenly become more beautiful, the way she used to be. Even my father noticed. I hadn’t heard their mattress springs squeak that way in months.

*.

Click click click click click … Click click click click click… Hunt and peck… Click click click click click click… Ding!.. Click click click click click… The letters fell on the sheet of paper like drops of rain, the page wrote itself. Ding!.. Ding!.. Ding!..

I decided to knock. The sound of the typewriter came to a stop.

“Come in…” said the youthful voice of the Professor.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open.

“My mother would like to invite you to lunch,” I said from the doorway.

From where I stood, the interior seemed to have changed. The Professor was seated at a desk that hadn’t been there before and a new light, the light of summer, shone on every surface.

He stood up from the desk and came toward me.

“How kind of you. I’m happy to accept…”

In the elevator he kept looking at me, but he didn’t say a word.

My mother, certain that the Professor would accept the invitation, had already set the table for three. She had taken out the blue linen tablecloth and the tall glasses. Her lips were red with lipstick.

“Professor Foschi! Welcome! Do come in!”

“Would you please stop calling me Professor! My name is Ippolito…”

She poured him a glass of wine.

“But I thought you were one. With those boxes and boxes of books you brought! Well, I hardly know what to call you… if I can’t call you a ‘co-owner,’ or a ‘professor.’”

“Actually I did teach, once upon a time…” he admitted, with a bashful smile. “Where should I sit?”

“Wherever you like… there, in my husband’s place. And what did you teach?”

“A little bit of everything, but mostly English.”

“Just like the Maestra…so, you are a Professor! Why deny it? You’re always denying the obvious. You’re the owner of an apartment and you say you’re not an owner. You taught and you say you’re not a professor. Make people respect you, you’ve got every right! Others wouldn’t think twice about flaunting their titles, with ‘contractor’ or ‘accountant’ engraved on their name plates…”