Nicola Gardini - Lost Words

“Come, come, Signora Armanda,” my mother soothed her, “sit there, that’s good, in the corner… There you won’t bother anyone. Now no one will find anything to say… In the meantime I’ll put a nice pot of coffee on the stove… Chino, come here and twist on the top of the coffee maker. I’ve got no strength left in my hands… How are you? Did your cough finally go away?”

The old woman emitted a long sigh. She was wracked with pain, she said. Everything hurt: her legs, her shoulders, her head. She couldn’t go to the bathroom, couldn’t sleep, her diabetes was getting worse… And now she couldn’t digest anything. All she could eat for lunch was a small plate of pasta, a grilled beefsteak, and an apple. Mom raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Well, then. You certainly won’t die from starvation.” She nodded at me and I went into the bedroom.

I pulled the curtains aside and looked out the window. The sun had become colorless and no longer hurt the eyes. It stood still in the middle of the sky, hovering over the desolation of Via Icaro like a worn-out coin. The leaves were shriveled on the cement of the courtyard: swept by the wind, they would swirl about, stop, and start racing again as if they had a will of their own. The branches on the sycamore trees had whittled down to a few naked stubs. Only the rows of thorn bushes remained unchanged, as red now as in summer, like blood against the pale white of the air and the grounds. Without the foliage, whose shadows created tremulous wandering shapes during the fair months, the courtyard looked bigger, as gray as the sky looming over it from every side. No one played out there this time of year. Only Rita continued to come down despite the cold. I could see her jumping up and down to keep warm, speaking to someone, either aliens or the cat, holding a bunch of yellow leaves.

Signora Mantegazza’s voice carried all the way to the bedroom — she was defending the Milanese dialect: “Who speaks it anymore? Only old people like me. The younger generations might understand it — but can they speak it? Forget about it. The only ones who speak dialect in Milan anymore are those southern bumpkins. They speak their own dialect, which is garbage. Arabic. They’ve taken over the city. Animals… Abyssinians!”

Southerners, to her, were all thieves, liars, and lazy bums. All the post offices were run by them. Who knows why — and they were always on sick leave! Poor Milan! Everything had changed! Even during the war Milan had been beautiful. And then there was Him. A god! In 1937 they had their picture taken together. It seemed impossible that there had ever been a man like him, who filled you with strength and hope. And order!

“Long live the Duce! Long live the Duce!” she shouted in a frenzy.

She tried to stand but fell back down in the chair like a sack of potatoes, huffing and puffing. Mom patted her hand and rearranged the clump of hair on the nape of her neck, reinserting the comb that had fallen on the floor. The old woman’s face was aflame, flushed by the renewed surge of energy, but her body, unequal to her passion, shook with empty tremors. All the while she kept grumbling that nowadays the world was going to hell in a hand basket. No one wanted to work. Young people were a disgrace! They all belonged in reform school, maybe there they’d learn some manners. Or better yet, to war with them — no better school than that! We needed another war. Without war no one learned anything. You didn’t know whether it was the parents’ fault or the teachers’. Back in her day — ah, those were the days — if you didn’t do what you were told, you got a good kick in the pants. But today’s parents and teachers were always explaining how and why to children. What is the world coming to? Children are supposed to obey orders without demanding explanations!

“Chino!” my mother called. “Go outside. You need to rake the leaves, sweetheart…”

*.

Rita said it was fun to rake. We were in front of the fountain with the gold fish, where the remaining dry leaves had crumbled to dust. “Would you like to be a fish?” she asked.

“Of course,” I replied, because right then I hated everything — the leaves, the cold, and especially nasty old Mantegazza.

I stared enviously at the motionless school of fish, gaudy against the green muck on the bottom of the pool.

“Not me,” said Rita, “I’d want to be a bird, because birds live in the sky, like astronauts.”

Pietro and Matteo came by. They told us they had just been to the home of the disabled to steal cookies from the spastics.

“If you don’t believe us, look,” said Pietro.

Both boys opened their jacket pockets wide to show us the loot.

“What the hell are you two doing?” asked Matteo, kicking at the rake and the bag.

“Nothing,” said Rita, “we were playing rake the leaves…”

“I know a better game!” suggested Pietro with a malicious smile. “You ask me a question and I answer. If I don’t tell the truth, I have to pay a penalty.”

“Fun!” Rita exclaimed.

“Yes, lots of fun,” Matteo confirmed.

He told us the rules: for every wrong answer, you had to remove one piece of clothing. The first one to be bare-chested was the loser.

Rita, the fool, said it was okay with her. She was already laughing at the thought of seeing the two of them with their teeth chattering from the cold.

I said I didn’t want to play, hoping that would convince them to drop the idea and leave us alone.

“Who asked you, anyway?” Matteo sneered.

We went behind the building, where no one ever went and hardly anyone looked out the window.

“Rita,” Matteo began, “answer the question, true or false. Do I like pussy?”

“True!” she said with a hand over her mouth.

“Are you stupid or what?” Matteo shouted at her. “What makes you think I would like that stinky hole you’ve got between your legs? Wrong. Take off your coat…”

Rita quietly obeyed.

Pietro didn’t want to be outdone by his friend.

“In your opinion… is it true or false… true or false… that… you’d like to take it in your mouth?”

“Take what?”

Pietro squeezed his crotch.

“My banana!”

Flailing her arms, Rita shouted, “False! False! No, no!”

“Wrong!” Pietro decided. “You’re dying to suck it. To suck both of us…”

Rita shook her curls with a dismayed expression that filled me with anguish.

“No, it’s not true, I swear it’s not…” she tried to defend herself.

“Never tell a lie!” Matteo interrupted, “or you’ll end up in hell. Better to take it in your mouth than to tell a lie…”

“Exactly,” Pietro confirmed. “Now take off your sweater!”

The other boy repeated the order.

I mustered up my courage and tried to stop them: “Stop torturing her…”

Pietro shook his fist under my nose.

“Well look at that… the little doorboy has spoken!”

He took the plastic sack, turned it upside down, and scattered all the leaves we had raked.

“If you don’t like the game,” Matteo added, “then scram. No one asked you to stay.”

Pietro petted the peach fuzz that was starting to grow on his upper lip.

“I think he has a nice little pussy between his legs, too… That’s why he doesn’t want to play…”

Matteo burst out laughing and Rita copied him.

“You do, don’t you!” Pietro pressed on.

He tried to strike my testicles with the back of his hand. I managed to dodge him and I retreated a few feet away. Rita was shivering from the cold. Pietro kept teasing her.

“What nice little tits!”

Matteo reached out to grab her. She shielded herself and asked them to stop, but they jumped on top of her. I tried to get between them but Pietro — who was stronger than me — shoved me aside. Although she was thrashing and screaming like an animal, they managed to take her pants off, too. Then Matteo, from behind, pulled off her T-shirt.