PAPA CAME home to change his shirt and found Maria there. She told him that she was there to straighten up the house and give me a hand. He thanked her, got a change of clothes for Mama, and left. He came by the shop to see me and didn’t say a word about Maria. His eyes were glazed from fatigue. I don’t ask, he doesn’t say. His alliance with her is tighter and I’m not included. My alliance with Maria shuts us off from the world, too. Change happens, but especially to us. Who else has a face as crumpled as Papa’s? Who else has a hump that’s sprouting wings? Who else has a body ready to throw a boomerang? And now, of all times, Maria has broken away from an old man’s filthy hands and been held by my hands, smoothed by sawdust, on the highest rooftop in Montedidio. When the fishnet gets closer to shore it starts to weigh less and can be pulled in more quickly. The same thing is happening to us. Even the scroll is winding up more quickly, drawn in by the weight of what’s already been written.
I TAKE Rafaniello with me to the rooftop where the washbasins are. He hobbles up the stairs. He doesn’t know how to walk. He leans over the bulwark, looking south and east. He opens the whites of his eyes, making the green circle pop out. It’s not long now before we’ll be saying good-bye. I ask him what he’s thinking. It’s noontime on Christmas. Everyone’s at home. We’re the only ones outside and the sea air is shining. Staring out without looking at me, he says, “We have a proverb that says, ‘This is the sky and this is the earth,’ to indicate two opposite points. Up here they’re close together.” You’re right, Don Rafaniè, if you jump off the top of Montedidio you’re already in the sky. “It’ll take a few jumps and a big push. When you fly in your dreams you’re weightless. You don’t have to convince your strength to keep you up high. But when you add in the wings and the body, you have to be prepared to climb the air. You need something powerful to blast you away from Earth. I’m a shoemaker, a sándler, they used to say in my hometown. I fix shoes, I know feet, I know how they’re supported, how they manage to balance the whole body towering over them. I know how useful the arches are, the hardness of the heel, the spring inside the anklebone that accompanies long jumps, wide jumps, high jumps. I know the suffering of the feet and the pleasure of being able to stand on any kind of surface, even a tightrope. Once I made a pair of buckskin shoes for a tightrope walker in the circus. Here in Naples I’ve learned that feet know how to sail. I’ve repaired shoes for sailors who have to withstand the rising and falling pendulum of the sea. Feet brought me as far as Montedidio, they saved me. My people say that the wolf’s got something to eat thanks to its feet, not its teeth. I even have a hump that weighs down on me, so what is such an earthbound creature doing, flapping his wings in the sky below the stars?”
I WRITE his words to hear them again, not to remember them. I close my good eye, and while I write on the scroll in a crooked scrawl the voice of Rafaniello rustles again, together with the rustling of the spirits. “Wings are good for an angel, heavy for a man. The only thing a man needs to fly is prayer. Prayer climbs above clouds and rain, ceilings and trees. To fly is a prayer. I was crooked, a bent nail, twisted toward the earth. But another force turns me around and pushes me upward. Now I have wings, but to fly you have to be born from an egg and not from a womb, hatched in a tree, not on the ground.” He leans over the bulwark, his wings beating against his jacket, I can’t help but reach out to stop him. When I touch him he turns around and steps back down. His whole face is smiling but not his eyes. They are the eyes of a bird, motionless, lost in the middle of his face. Underneath my jacket the boomerang grows warm. I pat it approvingly.
AS WE go downstairs the sound of smashing plates comes from the landlord’s apartment. Rafaniello stops and without knowing who lives in the house says, “This man is drunk on his own blood.” Is that the curse of the dog, Don Rafaniè? He says yes and a cold jolt passes through my kidneys. I was the one who pushed him away from the roof toward the stairs. I struck him with open hands. I drove him away, I deserve to feel a chill in my back. I climb down the stairs after Rafaniello while the sound of smashing plates continues. Maria’s at my house wearing an apron. She’s waiting for me to return. She’s preparing a sauce with onions. Her eyes are swimming in tears. She laughs. Don Ciccio the caretaker knocks on the door. We show him into the kitchen. He sits down with us and starts to speak. “Your families are falling apart and you two have gotten together. You’re still children but you’re doing the right thing. You have to help yourself. Here in Naples you grow up quickly.”
DON CICCIO speaks softly, with his hands together on the table and his beret on his head, even indoors. “I’ve known you and Maria since you were in diapers, I know what you’ve been through.” Maria stares at him, breathing hard through her nose, a sign of anger. “Marì, if at home there’s no one to protect you and they get you in trouble instead, then no one can help you. The same thing happened in my family. It was wartime, there wasn’t enough to eat, my little sister went up to that apartment and put bread on our table. Marì, don’t look at me like that. Don’t get all worked up if I tell you that I know what you went through. Now you have this boy here. A good boy, hardworking, he respects his elders, even confides in that foreign shoemaker, Don Rafaniello the hunchback, with that hump on his back as big as he is. You’re right to be together. But do the right thing. Don’t rush, you can’t get married or live in the same house yet. Start off by getting engaged. Let other people know your intentions, otherwise you’ll cause a scandal and your parents will have to step in. Even if right now they don’t know you’re alive, when people start talking they’ll turn against you. I’m telling you this because I like you and you’re doing the right thing, Marì, I’m glad that you’re not going up to that apartment anymore.” Don Ciccio said the last words with a catch in his throat and his face turned red.
IN SPRING I was still a child and now I’m in the middle of things I can’t understand. Don Ciccio is right. Here you have to grow up quickly, and I do, I run. Rafaniello, Maria, the boomerang, I chase after them, in the meantime the scroll is winding up, all written, and I’m not going to Don Liborio to look for another leftover roll. Maria is seated across from Don Ciccio and doesn’t say a thing. In the pot the sauce is simmering on a low flame. She takes my hand from under the table and puts it on the napkin together with hers. I look at her but she looks at Don Ciccio. “Now you tell me, Don Ciccio, m’o ddicite mò?” Maria jumps from Italian to Neapolitan, which leaps from her mouth with the force of a slap. The shorter Neapolitan is, the more razor-sharp it gets. Don Ciccio swallows in silence. Maria enters back into the fold of Italian. “Don Ciccio, would you like to eat with us? A plate of spaghetti?” Don Ciccio stands, thanks her. He has to go back downstairs to his office. “Be careful. I spoke to you like a father, since there’s no fathers around here anymore.” Maria turns back to the stove. I accompany Don Ciccio to the door, shake his hand, and thank him for his interest. “Be careful, kid, be careful,” he says, and fixes his hat as he descends the stairs.