God's Mountain (8 page)

P
APA INFORMS
me that on Christmas night he’ll be in the hospital with Mama. This disease is something between them. My job is to take care of the house and wait. I’m waiting. For the flight of the boomerang. For it to break away after my shoulders have gone through the motions of throwing it and go hurtling off into the darkness, for it to smack against the stars, against what Maria calls the lid and I call the fishnet. I feel strong enough to throw it into the clouds. The boomerang is getting lighter, getting ready. It won’t be long now. In the meantime Rafaniello is looking more like a bird. He’s getting thin, the bones are poking through the skin of his face. Don Rafaniè, you’ve got to eat. Bread, oil, garlic, and onion aren’t enough. The trip is long and you’re traveling in winter. The other birds have already come and gone. I know, he replies. In his hometown in September he saw the storks join together in the sky to go to Africa. They pass near Jerusalem. “Inside my
head the eye of a stork is breaking through to show me the way.” When’s it going to be? I ask. “When the wood of the Ark of the Covenant flies, that is what the angel told me. I’m keeping myself ready for the night of the end of the year. The Neapolitans throw old things out the window. Without realizing it, one of them’s going to throw out a piece of the Ark.” Then he adds, in a birdlike voice, “He’ll throw it out because the Ark no longer holds the tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments.” He’s right, I think. That night no one will notice Rafaniello’s flight.

I’
M STANDING
there holding the broom, lost in thought, when Master Errico comes in early and says, “You’re already here? What, you like the job?” Yes, I say, I eat with Don Rafaniello. Master Errico remembers that at home I haven’t got anyone and invites me to his house for
lunch to have some hot food. “Tomorrow I’m getting braided mozzarella from Agerola; have you ever tried it, kid? It’s special. Agerola’s high up. The cows there eat poplar leaves. Poplar leaves are what gives the cheese the bitter taste that makes it so special. Do you want to come?” I thank him, but things are all right the way they are. I’m happy to stay in the workshop at lunchtime. “Suit yourself, I’m not going to tell you where to vote,” he says. Master Errico lights his half-smoked cigar and starts up the bench saw. The most he and Rafaniello do is exchange greetings, but they do it properly, purposefully. They respect each other. “Don Rafaniello’s made shoes for all Montedidio. Before, everyone used to go barefoot.” “And you gave me wood to keep warm and a place to sleep. Without you I would have gotten lost in the alleyways by the port.” “With that mop of red hair on your head you couldn’t get lost in
‘na sporta ‘e purtualle,
” in a basketful of oranges, I translate for him.

A
T THE
workshop Master Errico reads in the newspaper about the man who’s nicknamed The Jinx. One day out of desperation he decides to throw himself from a window and ends up falling on top of some unlucky guy who was passing by that very spot. The passerby dies, and The Jinx breaks two ribs. “Check out the numbers, kid,” he says. “You should play them on the lottery.” In the meantime he goes over to rub the red horn hanging in the doorway to the workshop. Rafaniello mumbles a spell in his language and spits on the ground. We never let superstition into the house. Papa says it’s for women. Mama says it’s a bunch of nonsense and that men are more obsessed by it than women. Master Errico says we’re alive by accident and scrape along by hiding from God. All it takes is one dirty look and we’re done for. Around here no one would ever say “Lucky you” to someone else. People would immediately call
you a jinx if something bad happened to the other guy. A man twists his ankle and blames it on the person who wished him good luck. Rafaniello says that in his hometown they say
“anóre”
for evil eye. He remembers that his mother was beautiful. They even paid her compliments when she was pregnant, and she kept them for herself, she didn’t do anything to exercise the bad luck they bring. That’s why her son was born a hunchback. At home they scolded her. If she had only said
“cananóre,”
her son would have been born healthy. Nothing causes more damage than an envious eye, Master Errico says.

D
ON
L
IBORIO
is scared of good-luck wishes, too. For the mid-August holidays he closes his print shop and goes up to the Matese mountains to breathe the air. While loading his suitcase into the taxi on his way to the bus, he runs into Don Ferdinando, the undertaker, who
sends him customers for death notices and is also a good friend. He sees the suitcase and says, “Don Libò, have a good trip,” and Don Liborio answers, “Thanks, but I’m not leaving, I just arrived,” and takes his suitcase out of the taxi and goes back home. He left the next day instead. He told the story to Master Errico, who noticed that the print shop was open that evening and wondered why he was still in the city. “What else could I do? How was I supposed to leave with the greetings of the gravedigger?” Then Master Errico put aside the newspaper and ended the talk with a carpenter’s spell. “Saint Joseph,
passace ‘a chianozza
”—pass over this talk with a planer.

I
TOLD
Rafaniello about Maria and the landlord. He stayed quiet for a while, then closed his eyes tight and said, “May you share the fate of the dog who licks the
rasp.” His voice was as cold as the north wind. I felt a shiver in my kidneys. What are you saying Don Rafaniè? “A curse,” he answered, but with his own voice again. “I’m saying it, but it’s not mine. It comes through me, into the open. Your story has been heard. That man has been struck by a pellet of hail.” There are many things I don’t understand, including the part about the dog. Don Rafaniè, is it bad that curse about the dog? “It’s bad. The dog licking the rasp is licking his own blood, but his liking for blood is greater than the pain, so he keeps licking till he bleeds to death.” Night has fallen. It’s time to close up. I’ve finished my cleaning so I give Rafaniello a hand straightening out his bench. The sound of bones comes from his hump. He looks up, pushing back the bag with the wings. His round green eyes search the sky for a spot to climb. The city rises upward in walls and balconies. There is no sky overhead. But he finds a way to get his bearings even in this canyon. His head has the same compass as a stork. I roll the gates down and we say good night. He says it’s
nice to have wings, but it’s nicer to have good hands for work.

M
ASTER
E
RRICO
sets the alley spinning with his voice. He’s furious. He’s showing his ugly side. A workman was fixing a cornice on a top-floor balcony. All at once there was a crash in the alley. Master Errico ran out and saw the rubble. He started screaming at the workman that downstairs there were children, people. The guy answered that he had work to do, so Master Errico let his animal out and shouted,
“Scinne!”
Get down here! Get down here and go home while you’ve still got legs to walk on. Otherwise I’ll come up and break them. He said it in Neapolitan so loud that the whole alley quieted down. The workman saw that the day was taking a turn for the worse and came down. Everyone was looking out the windows and doors and Master Errico stood in
the middle of the alley. I came out to sweep up the rubble. “Stand back,” he said. “That guy’s got to do it.” Things were getting serious. “Don’t pay attention to him, Mast’Errì, don’t get all worked up, let the boy do it.” The voice of Don Liborio the typographer calmed Master Errico down. “Come on, let’s have a coffee.” He took his arm and led him up the street. I swept up the rubble and the workman was able to leave.

T
HE WOMEN
were talking, saying that he had done the right thing. The women in Naples are always egging on the men. The oldest one said that Master Errico was a real kingpin, and during the September uprising against the Germans he got the whole block together to drive them out of Naples. Another woman said that when there’s someone like Master Errico on the block the
criminals are nowhere to be found. The women talked, so I learned about past events. Back in those days my father was at the port defending his job. The people of Naples went wild. They took to the streets yelling,
“ Iatevenne!”
—get out of here! and they used guns to show the Germans to the door. Some even lost their lives. So this afternoon I asked Master Errico about it. He answered that everyone had come out that day—Don Liborio, Don Ciccio the doorman, the women, the street urchins, the city’s whole motley crew. “The Germans were tearing everything apart, dropping bombs on houses. In the end they wanted to take all of the young men to Germany to work for them. Anyone who didn’t report was shot. The only ones on the streets were old people and women. We wanted to drive them out. We didn’t want to hide anymore. The Americans showed no signs of entering Naples. They were waiting. So we got sick of waiting.”

I
WANTED
to hear more. After I pestered him for a while with questions, he continued. Master Errico was in the right mood. “Even Father Petrella the priest got involved. During the bombardments he had learned to say mass quickly, fifteen minutes at most. The practice has stayed with him, which is why they call him Father Fast. Once an air-raid siren went off after Communion, just as he was finishing the service. Rather than say the usual,
‘Ite, missa est,’
he said,
‘Fùìte!’
—make a run for it—‘
missa est!’
He was the first to run like a hare, blessing the shelter while he was running and holding up his cassock, the landlord close on his heels, followed by retired General De’Frunillis. During the September uprising even Don Petrella came into the line of fire, not to hurt the Germans but to bring us comfort. He gave absolution to those who were dying from gunshot wounds,
including a German soldier. The whole neighborhood came out. When it was over, I said, ‘Now this city is mine.’ ” Rafaniello listened with tears in his eyes.

P
APA SPOKE
with me. They’ve got some hope for Mama. Sitting down to coffee at six in the morning while the block is silent and dark, he lays it out for me. This year there will be no Christmas. “The only thing I care about is her, and she is leaning on me with all the strength she has left. She’s weak, but not her hands. She squeezes tight. She even broke a glass and cut herself. We’re fighting this one together. We don’t want to put you in the middle. It’s between us, going back to when we went to the air-raid shelters during the bombings and swore that we would never be apart, bombs or no bombs. No one could separate us. When a
bomb exploded nearby, the blast made her throw up. I held her head and she vomited between my feet. I was happy that our love could do even this. We were engaged back then and even closer than newlyweds. The war allowed us to be the way we are. If she leaves, I’ll be like a doorknob without a door.” He forced himself to use Italian. He wanted to speak with me. He made me feel important. I didn’t say anything. I looked him right in the face. It was a small thing, to stay right in front of him and listen as well as I could, keeping my eyes on him and not moving. Then he let out what he was thinking. “All three of us will get back together, as if nothing happened, we’ll go back to having our Sundays. Do you remember the Solfatara Volcano?” It was time to go. That’s where he stopped. He got up and rinsed his cup out in the sink. It was the first time he’d done it. He splashed some water on himself, dried off, and smiled at me.