Nicola Gardini - Lost Words

The telephone woke me up with a start.

“Who’s calling at this hour?” my mother grumbled.

I set my feet on the floor and went looking for my slippers. Once again my father had kicked them toward the fridge as he walked by. Then I flipped my cot back inside its cabinet. With her mouth hanging open and one hand on her forehead, my mother listened to the voice on the other end of the line. The clean-up bucket was still on the doorstep, half in, half out.

I made it to the window just in time to catch two policemen hopping into the squad car and taking off to the home for the severely disabled. It was another gray fall day, and the cat, lying in the middle of the courtyard, was wiping her paw over her face, as she did whenever there was a threat of rain. A patch of fog floated over from the pile of rubble across the street.

“How am I going to deal with the tenants now?” my mother said as she hung up. “I need this like I need a hole in the head…”

She started mopping the lobby, going at the marble floor with enough energy to carve grooves into it. When she came back inside to change the water, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut a minute longer.

“Mom, it’s September 21 today…”

“Oh sweetheart, forgive me,” she chirped. “Of course it’s September 21. Thirteen years ago, at this very hour, you came into the world, my little bundle of joy! Happy Birthday, honey! Your father wanted to wish you a happy birthday, too, but I told him to let you sleep in today.”

She fumbled around in the pocket of her smock and pulled out a crumpled piece of ash-colored paper. A one-thousand-lira note.

“Here,” she said firmly, in a voice that stressed her magnanimity.

And it was indeed a magnanimous gesture, but I barely got a peek at the thousand-lira banknote. Like her presents on birthdays past, the money was quickly deposited in the toolbox, to which she alone had the key.

“Now be a good boy and drink your milk — there’s the bread. Dip it in the milk if it’s too stale.”

By early afternoon even the tenants at 15 Via Icaro knew that during the night burglars had broken into two apartments in the building next door. The victims were still away on vacation — the Biaginis and Signor Quarone, the contractor. In the lobby shrieking clusters of women gathered, fretting that their homes would be next. There was no escape. Once the robbers had you in their sights, it was only a matter of time…

I observed them through the glass door: they kept engaging and interrupting each other, giving each other impatient little shoves as if they were fighting. The truth was that they were terrified. I had never seen them like this. Because this time it was a question of money.

“We can’t tolerate this violence!” thundered Signora Dell’Uomo, indignantly. “Burglary is rape!”

Although embarrassed by the comparison, Signorina Terzoli nodded her agreement. Signora Mellone, never at a loss for words, repeated to anyone who would listen: “At Signor Quarone’s they went through every closet and every drawer. Then they fried themselves up some eggs as if they had all the time in the world. They even left a banana peel on the kitchen table!”

Dell’Uomo acted stunned, even irritated, that she hadn’t been the first to ferret out every detail. Not a woman to be outdone, she came up with her own version of the facts: “Well I heard it was a crust of bread,” and added, “besides, who told them to stay away on vacation till the end of September anyways?”

“If they break into my place, they won’t find a damn thing…” Signora Vezzali boasted. “I don’t keep checks or cash in my house. I always keep my money with me, right here.” She patted the secret pocket sewn into the inside of her skirt. “If they want my money, they’re going to have to take me first — and that would make it kidnapping… do you think it’d still be worth it for them?”

“Not for all the money in the world,” my mother muttered between her teeth, standing a few feet away. “What would they want with an old bat like you?”

Signora Zarchi, ever irreverent, laughed her head off at all the drama. She wasn’t afraid of thieves: “There’s no such thing as thieves! In the end we’re all thieves, aren’t we?”

“Speak for yourself, Signora Zarchi,” was Dell’Uomo’s swift rebuke. “I’ve never taken anything from anyone. My conscience is clean, I don’t know about yours…”

She and Vezzali traded malicious looks.

“Ladies, ladies…” my mother tried to calm them down. “Ladies!” But her pleas were useless. They, the signore , were too worked up to hear her, too intent on playing the victim. They ignored her with unvarnished contempt, as if she, the doorwoman, were immune to such dangers by virtue of her occupation: to put it bluntly, a doorwoman, by definition, was not a signora . But was that enough to make them signore? Hardly. On Via Icaro no one had ever laid their eyes on a real signora. Respectable people kept their distance. Well, there were always a few exceptions, of course. Men, by and large. According to my mother, men were a hundred times better than women. Not always, of course, but often.

“Take someone like Pasquale Petillo, that nice tall bachelor: as good as gold, and he never gives anyone any trouble. Naturally Dell’Uomo can’t stand him. She says she’s seen him bringing black women home. So what — who cares? Aren’t black women just the same as other women? What a shame he decided to move back home to Calabria… God help us!”

Word was already out that another signora would be moving in to take over Signor Petillo’s apartment, a woman who lived alone… Maybe she’d be an old maid like Terzoli or the younger Mantegazza… she had a surname that was either American or German: Lynd. Now mind you, it’s Lynd with a “y,” as the building manager had emphasized when, in an unusual phone call, she’d announced the arrival of a “fine, upstanding” person.

“But of course,” my mother had quipped, “all the fine, upstanding people are dying to make Via Icaro their home address!”

*.

They demanded around-the-clock surveillance. The doorwoman was not to be away from her post or distracted for a single instant. If something required her to be away from her post, like taking out the trash, then her son should fill in for her and guard the lobby and the front staircase. After nine o’clock at night, the front door had to be double-checked to make sure it was actually locked (sometimes the humidity made the lock stick). And the gate had to be equipped with a spring mechanism (some careless people were in the habit of leaving it open)… Oh, and we also had to make sure that the large windows between floors were closed and that their chains were tightly latched. Mellone and some of the other women actually expected us to start announcing their husbands’ arrivals.

“Poor me,” my mother complained. “The last thing we needed was for everyone to be worried about burglars! When is that damn landlord going to make up his mind to sell 15 Icaro?… Take a deep breath, Elvira. Just hold on a little while longer and you’ll be an owner, too. Oh, Chino — can you imagine? I won’t have to say Good Morning and Good Evening to anyone! Once I close my door, it’ll stay closed. I won’t have to worry about another living creature!”