Born Twice (Vintage International) (7 page)

“Absolutely,” I say.

I’m using words that are not my own. It happens when people get the worst of you. It’s usually a bad sign, for all parties involved.

“You’ll see—your son will have everything he needs. He’ll be surrounded by friends. I guarantee it.”

“I’m very grateful to you.”

“Oh, please.” He sighs. “We’ve got to help each other out. I do something for you, you do something for me. Isn’t that the way it works?”

“Absolutely,” I say again.

Here it comes. I knew it had to come to this, I just didn’t know when or how. The whole conversation has been gravitating toward this point.

“Come to think of it . . . there
is
something I wanted to ask you,” he says quickly. “May I?” He looks up at me with some reservation, as if he too were surprised.

“Of course.”

“You might know that I’m something of a dilettante poet. I say ‘dilettante’ and you know exactly what I mean: no grand ambitions, especially at my age. It might have been different when I was younger, but now . . .”

It occurs to me that dilettantes are the only ones to use that word. And perhaps it’s only right to call them that since that’s how they consider themselves.

“I’ve never had any high literary ambitions; I’ll leave that to the professional intelligentsia.”

I detect in his tone something aggressive and condescending, masked with indifference, typical among dilettantes toward those who are not.

“I’ve had my fair share of prizes: Il Gabbiano D’Oro, Il Premio Radici, all small-town things but then again I’m small-town too. Still, it’s a pleasure to receive them.”

“I know what you mean,” I say animatedly. “They’re the fairest prizes around these days.”

“You’re right about that!” he exclaims, eyes bright with fury. “Outside of all those literary games!”

I nod soberly. There are certain things you have to say about literary prizes, just as there are for weddings and funerals.

“That’s where the real experts are—the real readers!” he adds. “Not the publishing elite!”

I can well imagine his tirade against editors. And theirs against him.

“In any case, I’ve accumulated quite a small capital of poems. Nothing remunerative, though.” He smiles. “Still, I can’t complain. Poetry is like women: all time gained, not lost. Don’t you agree?”

I nod vaguely. It doesn’t really matter if I agree or disagree. It matters that I communicate.

“That’s right,” he continues. “I can tell you agree with me.” He sighs. “I’d like to publish a book of my poems, a collection, as they say. To give to my friends. They’re the ones who keep insisting that I do it.”

A common theme among dilettantes: the circle of friends who insist on publication. It may even be true. Nondilettantes (I’ll refrain from using the high-risk term “professionals”) usually have friends who prudently advise them
not
to publish.

“Then I’d send the book on to a more important prize. But I don’t want to self-publish it. I want a good editor and a good publishing company. What do you think?”

“It sounds fair,” I reply calmly, yet worried.

“Look! Here it is!” he says, with some degree of surprise, opening the top drawer of his desk. “I brought the manuscript with me to the office so I could have a look at it now and then during the day. You wouldn’t know it, but I’m my very worst critic.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“I make corrections constantly. I’m never satisfied. I’m never sure if le mot juste, as the French used to say, is the right one. But I try!” He pulls a thick sheaf of papers held together with an elastic cord and protected by two sheets of red plastic out of the drawer. “Aren’t you curious to see it?” he asks, placing it on the desk.

He passes it to me with the same rapid gesture with which a merchant passes goods across the counter to a client.

I pick it up with fake delicacy. It’s called
One on One.

“I’m not sure I’m the right person to judge it,” I say, looking at him straight in the eye. “I’ve never been professionally involved with contemporary poetry.”

“So? You have to be a professional?” he replies boldly. “You have all the qualifications to know whether it’s poetry or not. Don’t you have a Laurea degree in Letters, like me?”

“Yes, but it takes more than that to know if it’s poetry.” I pause to take a breath. “You have to know what to compare it to, what’s being written nowadays; you have to have the broad picture. I just wanted to warn you.”

“Oh, you’re so difficult!” He laughs, closing the drawer. “You talk about judgment as if it were universal. You’re not going to decide for posterity!” He brings his bad leg closer to the desk and thrusts the packet at me. “I just want to know what you think. I want to know if my poems say something to you. A long time ago I asked some experts whether I should continue writing or give up. They never answered me, so I never quit. It’d be a little late now, don’t you think?”

He’s shifted into the local dialect. I envy him. It helps him transform life into a joke. It helps connect an individual to a community. It removes the burden from him and transfers it to me.

“Now don’t get all flustered,” he adds. “I’m not asking you to make an investment, just a little effort.”

“Why, sure!” I react with false vivacity. “I’d be pleased to do it. No trouble at all.”

He raises his hand in front of his face as if to protect himself from being hit.

“Hold on. It doesn’t end there.”

I knew it. He’s one of those people to whom you are always in debt.

“After you’ve read it,” he says calmly, nodding toward the sheaf of poems in my hands, “and only after you’re convinced”—he makes it seem like he’s giving me a choice when actually he’s taking one away—“then there’s something else you can do for me.”

“Sure,” I say in resignation and with impudence. “What?”

“Can’t you guess?”

I think about it quickly. Write a preface? No, I’ve never published anything. Make a selection of his poems? No, he’s already done that. Pay an entry fee to some expensive prize? No, he’s ruled those out.

“Your father-in-law. He’s a lawyer, isn’t he? He specializes in editorial contracts, doesn’t he?” he asks calmly.

“How did you know?”

“I too have my sources,” he says with a smile.

“Yes, but what can he do?”

“A lot,” he says firmly. “He’s in touch with the chief editors at the best publishing companies. A word from him is everything.”

No autocrat ever had as much power as the one who ignores all limits.

“He doesn’t have to say much. It’s enough that he shows— how can I put it?—a special kind of interest. However,” he says, raising his hand to make his point, “he really has to be interested. He has to believe in it. I don’t want just a bland letter of recommendation.”

He wants what they obtain.

“But you see”—I try to distance him—“my father-in-law doesn’t know much about contemporary poetry either. He stopped at D’Annunzio.”

“Not a bad place to stop,” he says. “Anyway, for the rest, there’s you.”

“But there’s another reason,” I insist. “He doesn’t have the power that you believe he has. He might be able to get you read, but he can’t get you published.”

“Now, slow down,” he says patiently, as if he has to explain something to one of his students. “You’ve heard of the Mafia, haven’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t the literary world a kind of Mafia?”

“Not all of it.”

“A large part of it, though.”

“A part, perhaps. But first you have to be involved in it. If you are, they know that if you receive something, you’ll give something back and if you don’t receive, then you’ll get back at them.” I’m quickly discovering a theory behind the Mafia that has never been clearer. “But my father-in-law isn’t involved. They wouldn’t even consider him.”

“You mean they don’t listen to him?”

“No, they listen to him but they’re not afraid of him. That’s the difference.”

He follows what I’m saying with a bowed head, confused and let down. Surely he’s weighing his alternatives. I know how arrogant and persevering those who oppose the system of recommendations can be, only to celebrate it under a different name.

He raises his head and looks at me. “You’re saying he’d have a problem with a small book of poems?”

I have to stop him now or heavier threats will follow. “Perhaps someone else in his position would do it,” I say, “but not him.”

“He’s an upright kind of guy.”

“That’s right.”

“One of those men who breaks into a thousand pieces if you so much as touch him.”

I laugh. “He’s old-fashioned,” I explain. “He stays within his territory, where he has authority.”

“Authority! Now there’s a strong word!” he exclaims. “Who do you think has authority in the world of poetry?”

“I don’t know. A critic, maybe? An expert?”

He looks at me challengingly. “You don’t, though. You’re just a teacher. You never studied poetry.”

We’re getting to the point I feared, where irony turns into bitterness. “You’re right,” I say with a weak smile. “I’m not an expert. And especially not in your eyes.”

“Why? ‘No man is a prophet in his own country’?”

“That too,” I say, letting myself be comforted by the quotation, which I usually find a consolation both in real situations and imaginary ones.

“But really, how do you consider yourself?” he insists.

“As one who earns too little for what he does.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” I reply. “If you’re interested in culture but can’t earn a living from it, you’ve got to be a little crazy. At the very most, you gain respect. On the other hand, if you earn well from it, it’s all about career.”

“It’s all about money,” he exclaims brightly. I can’t tell whether he approves or disapproves. “Nothing else matters.”

He’s silent for a minute. He’s thinking. He can’t be happy about the turn in our conversation.

“Still!” he exclaims with cruel vivacity. “He wouldn’t say no to a favor, not with all the bad luck you’ve had.”

“He’s been affected by it too,” I reply, pretending not to have noticed the brutal way he spoke. We mentally correct other people’s comments in order for the dialogue to continue. “Actually, he considers me partially responsible.”

“Why?” he asks incredulously.

“You’re always involved in what happens to you, at least somehow,” I reply. “Especially if it’s at someone else’s expense.”

It’s true, but I’m exaggerating. And he notices.

“Are you sure about that?” he asks.

“I think I know him well enough,” I say, trying to undermine him.

“I think I’m getting to know you,” he says ominously. “And I can’t tell if you’re acting or if you’re really like that.”

“Really like what?”

“So cautious. You move so carefully!” With his hands he mimes the movements of a very slow animal, a bear or a sloth. “You’ll never get anything done like that,” he continues. “You have to make things happen in life!”

“I agree.”

“You have to throw yourself at things,” he repeats. “If you don’t take risks you’ll never learn your own limits.”

“I think I know mine.”

“Only too well!” he says. “You’re overly scrupulous. You have too many doubts. If I were you, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“I can believe that,” I reply.

I like my double-edged answers. They lend themselves to being interpreted in both ways, positive and negative, the positive one by the interlocutor and the negative one by me. But this time he picks up immediately on the negative one.

“Yes, but don’t think it only affects me!” he goes on to say. “After all, we’re in the same boat.”

More than an assertion, it’s a threat.

“And if the helmsman makes a mistake,” he says testily, “he’s not the only one who’ll sink. You’ll go down too.”

“I see,” I reply, even though I don’t really understand where this boat’s going.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asks.

“Yes, but what exactly are you alluding to?”

“I’m alluding to us!” he says. “To your problem! Which has now become my own. Because I’ve chosen to take it on board.”

“And I’m very grateful to you, I told you.”

“Oh, yes, grateful,” he murmurs, as if the adjective weren’t enough. “You know how things happen in schools. I have to interpret the laws,” he says, thumping his chest. “I have to do things that I don’t have the right to do,” he says, repeating the gesture.

“What exactly are you talking about?” I ask. A shiver runs through me.

“Limiting the number of students in the class! Otherwise Signorina Bauer will refuse to have a handicapped student in her classroom.” He pauses, then adds, “I just don’t know if I’ll be able to manage it. I’m really not sure I can.”

“Now, hold on just a minute,” I say, and in my mind I’m thinking,
The bastard!
“You can’t tell me this now!”