The Ice-Cream Makers (10 page)

My mother stared at the tabletop, ashamed.

‘Who's Betty?'

‘The love of my life.'

‘But you're married to Anita.'

‘I'd swap her any day.'

It was his rotten character, the elixir that had started fermenting, the bubbles giving off stench and filth.

‘Has he been forgetful lately?' the doctor asked my mother. ‘Has he been asking the same question several times a day, by any chance?'

‘Hello,' my father butted in. ‘I'm right here.' He waved at the doctor.

‘He's had some trouble thinking of certain words recently,' my mother replied. ‘For instance, when he can't think of “doormat” he'll say “that thing in the hallway, next to the shoes, that
thing
. What d'you call that bloody thing?”'

‘Typical.'

‘I haven't got Alzheimer's!' my father shouted. ‘I'm in love!'

‘One of the symptoms of the disease is a change in personality.' It wasn't clear who the doctor was addressing, but perhaps he wasn't entirely sure himself.

‘He's changed a lot,' my mother confirmed.

‘In the early stages most patients deny there's anything wrong with them.'

‘I deny that!'

‘What are the other symptoms? What can family members expect?'

‘Progressive symptoms include long-term memory loss.'

Something crossed my mother's mind. ‘Fausto Olivo pulls his underpants over his head.'

‘That's known as apraxia,' the doctor explained. ‘What it means is that the patient no longer knows how to perform certain familiar movements.'

‘I wear my underpants the usual way, around my bum,' my father said. ‘And when I go out, I put on a hat.'

‘The rate at which Alzheimer's progresses varies from patient to patient.'

‘In Fausto's case it all happened really fast.'

‘Would you like me to put a bag of potatoes on my head?' my father asked. ‘Would that satisfy you? Can I please you with a couple of kilos of potatoes on top of my head?'

The doctor didn't respond, but looked at Beppi with growing astonishment. My mother stared at the tabletop again.

‘Fine! I'll put a five-kilo bag of waxy spuds on my head and sing the national anthem.' He got up from the table and walked over to the hallway, to the storeroom. A door was opened and closed again. Then my father re-entered the kitchen with a bag of onions on his head.

‘There we have it,' the doctor said.

My mother nodded.

But after my father had sung the Italian national anthem in its entirety, he said quite calmly, ‘Anita, we're out of potatoes. Will you add them to the shopping list?'

There was a moment's silence in the kitchen. I can conjure up the silence as well as the smell of the lasagne in the oven. It's not my imagination, but a memory come to life. As children, me and my brother would often sneak into the kitchen to stare at the lasagne through the oven window. It was better than watching television.

‘This Betty,' the doctor said after some time. ‘What kind of woman is she? Does she live around here?'

‘She's a German hammer-thrower.'

‘I see.'

‘Her arms are incredibly muscular.'

‘I'm sure they are.'

‘I'd like to kiss them.'

‘Beppi!' said my mother.

‘She won bronze at the Olympics. For a moment it looked as if Zhang Wenxiu was going to walk away with third place, but luckily it wasn't to be.'

‘Who?'

‘A bloated old meatball from China.'

‘My husband isn't keen on the Chinese,' my mother explained.

‘There are too many Chinese.'

‘Beppi!'

The doctor looked from my mother to my father. ‘I think I'd better be going,' he said then.

‘Aren't you going to examine him?'

A cup was shifted, the clock's minute hand moved. My mother glanced at the oven, where the lasagne was being kept warm.

‘Feel free to look in my ears,' my father offered. ‘Or should I stick out my tongue?' It goes without saying that my father stuck out his tongue at once. And sat like that for quite some time. Until the doctor lifted his bag onto the table and took out a case.

‘All fine,' he said after the briefest of examinations.

‘I don't have Alzheimer's?'

‘No.'

‘No other diseases, either?'

‘No.'

‘Do you mind if I go back to the basement then?'

‘We're about to eat,' my mother said.

‘What are you doing in the basement?' the doctor asked.

‘I'm making a present for Betty.'

My mother shook her head. ‘He's got a screw loose, that one,' she said.

‘I'm making a hammer,' my father said proudly. ‘A hammer in the shape of a heart.'

The woman behind the desk checks my documents. She asks if I want an aisle or a window seat. I always opt for the aisle. Every centimetre of extra space on a plane eases the pain of being a passenger. Then she hands me back my passport, accompanied by a smile. At small airports there's always a chance that the woman who checks you in will also tear your boarding pass at the gate, but more often than not you'll never see her again.

Once through security I lose track of the poets. Maybe they're buying something for the homefront, for those who stayed behind. If so, they're spoilt for choice. The area between the metal detectors and the gate is one large shopping mall. It's hard not to walk into a trap. Everything is aimed at luring you into a transaction. Giant billboards show you how beautiful life can be with a Breitling watch or a new phone; young women in tight black skirts chase you with bottles of perfume at the ready. The information boards at some airports no longer feature gate numbers, only the amount of shopping time
till boarding.

Amid all of these people, all of these carrier bags, and all of these products, I sit with a book of poetry in my hands. It may look strange, but it doesn't feel awkward. Nowhere do I feel more at home than at an airport. I love the impersonal voice calling out passengers' names, the screens with myriad destinations, the flow of people coming and going — a recurring tide that swells and then suddenly ebbs again. Four hundred passengers disappearing down the silvery nose of a Boeing 747. A ribbon of tourists, businesspeople, and other travellers emerging from a jet bridge, looking around and getting their bearings before heading to the baggage carousels. You can tell right away who the infrequent fliers are and who have more than a hundred thousand kilometres under their belt, for whom arrival at an airport is like a homecoming.

Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris was once home to an Iranian man: Mehran Karimi Nasseri. He had no documents and was unable to return to his home country. The French court ruled that he had entered the airport legally and therefore couldn't be deported, and yet he was refused permission to enter France. For eighteen years he camped out on a red bench in Terminal 1, not far from the Paris Bye Bye bar. This is where he slept, this is where he ate, this is where he read the newspapers left for him by passengers, and this is where he became something of a celebrity, not to mention older.

Waiting for a plane back to Amsterdam, I sometimes fantasise about such a life. Lost among suitcases, in a space where neither temperature nor humidity ever change. Imagine the plane never taking off, imagine not being allowed to board … ‘I'm sitting here, waiting,' Nasseri would tell people who asked him what he was doing. But he never told them what for. Maybe he no longer knew. Eventually he had gone bald at the crown, with wild tufts of hair sticking out from either side of his head. Four of his teeth were missing.

There's one problem with airports: the bookshops rarely sell poetry, with the possible exception of anthologies on certain themes, or the Four Seasons published by Everyman's Library. Anthologies — you wouldn't believe how many there are. On jazz, on the blues, on the sea, on love. On dogs, on birds, on mourning, on gardens.

It's not the kind of poetry I want to read. It's the poetry everybody knows. I want to discover poems, pilfer them if possible, from mysterious, unworldly figures — a shaman from an Indian tribe, a lonesome farmer in Siberia. In the hope they know something I don't. Their language is unrefined and independent of any movement.

Last year I was invited to attend an award ceremony in Beijing. The prize being awarded was for a national poetry competition that had received more than seventy thousand entries. They had been written by factory hands, cooks, and shop assistants. The whole country had been encouraged to take part. The jury had counted on the pyramid model, with the broad base leading to the one brilliant poem at the top. The poem that says it all. A top five had been compiled, but there was no number one, no overall winner.

The search continues. From airport to airport, from festival to prize-giving, from metropolis to village in the Gobi Desert, where eagles trace slow circles overhead.

The Fraudster Marco Polo and the Invention of the Ice-Cream Cone

My father spent his whole life dreaming of things that don't exist. In summer, at the ice-cream parlour, he used to fantasise about contraptions that could change the world, or at least make many people's lives a little easier. In winter, he used to retreat into the basement to work on his ideas among the pillar drills and the sanders. He actually came up with a few inventions: a keyhole attachment that makes it easier to locate the lock's keyway in the dark; a shoehorn with a long handle so you don't have to bend down; and an extendable egg cup that doubles as a mug. But there was either no interest or else the inventions were already in the shops.

He was furious when he found out that the giant shoehorn was already available. ‘They've stolen my idea.'

‘Who are “they”?'

‘The Chinese!'

The Chinese came in for a lot of blame, at home in Italy but also at the ice-cream parlour in Rotterdam. According to my mother, it was all down to an old Chinese man who had taken a seat outside Venezia one summer's day. We were still small at the time and would forget just about everything we heard. I certainly don't remember the argument that is said to have taken place that sunny day.

The man pointed to the text above the red-and-white striped awning:
Venezia Ice-Cream Parlour
,
authentic Italian ice-cream
. ‘You do know that ice-cream is a Chinese invention?' he asked my father.

‘No.'

‘When Marco Polo returned from China in 1296, he brought back ice-cream recipes.'

‘That's the first I've heard of it.'

‘It's true,' he said. ‘It's in all the history books. Study them and you can reach but one conclusion: the Chinese invented ice-cream.'

My father burst out laughing. ‘Ice-cream a Chinese invention?' he uttered. ‘That's the funniest thing I've heard in years.'

‘It's true, it really is,' the man said. ‘Marco Polo spent more than twenty years in China and when he returned he introduced ice-cream to Europe.'

‘Rice,' my father said. ‘Not ice!'

‘No, no,
ice
.'

‘Rice and duck,' my father said. ‘Rice and chicken, rice and turkey.'

‘Peach-flavoured ice-cream, caramel ice-cream, vanilla ice-cream.'

‘We've got all those.'

‘Thanks to Marco Polo, thanks to the Chinese.'

‘Did they invent the pizza too?' my father wanted to know.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Did the Chinese invent the margherita pizza too? Did Marco Polo arrive in Venice with a square box? Was he really a pizza delivery boy?'

‘You're making fun of me.'

‘You're making fun of my family, of our tradition. I got up at six o'clock this morning to make ice-cream according to my grandfather's recipe. He used to harvest snow up in the mountains back in the day.'

‘Marco Polo got there first.'

‘Would you like to order anything?'

‘Do you have raspberry ice-cream?'

‘We've got authentic Italian raspberry ice-cream.'

The old man shook his head. ‘It's Chinese originally,' he said.

‘Would you like me to put that on the sign outside?'

‘It would be appropriate.'

‘Do you know what would be appropriate? A ban on Chinese customers in this ice-cream parlour!'

‘That's discrimination.'

My father wrung his hands. ‘Would you like a cone or a cup?'

‘I'd like a cone with raspberry ice-cream.'

My father went inside and passed the order to my mother, who took her
spatola
and scooped raspberry ice-cream out of the tub sitting between the chocolate ice-cream and the lemon sorbet. I can still picture the layout, and remember which flavours are next to, above, or below one another. Except my brother has since changed everything and added new flavours.