1
MAMA SLEEPS a lot. From one day to the next she comes down with jaundice. She’s as yellow as old garlic. I dip my bread in cold milk. I’m not allowed to turn on the gas. Papa’s gone off to get medicine. He has to look all over Naples before he can find a pharmacy that’s open at ten o’clock at night. I keep the boomerang near the kitchen table. It’s always with me, or on me. At work I keep it under my jacket. New things are on the way. Rafaniello, Maria, the strength I’m getting at the washbasins. The boomerang comes from the sea. It has to fly. In the meantime it’s building the muscles of a kid who still smells like an ink pot at school. He’s been working since June with a carpenter and he writes down the new happenings in his life with a pencil on a scroll of paper given to him by the Montedidio print shop, left over from a big reel of newsprint. I turn the scroll and can already see things written down from the past, things that roll up before my eyes.
8
MASTER ERRICO sings. When he works hard he starts up with a song and doesn’t stop. He consumes it. Rafaniello sings, too, but silently, inside his throat. He doesn’t move his lips much and is holding a dozen shoe tacks for soles in the corner of his mouth. I can hear him even over the voice of Master Errico, which gets louder as the day gets longer and stops at noon, lunchtime, when the room is lit by a ray of sun that splits it in two. The sawdust rises in the air to meet the visiting light.
Rafaniello sings nice, even when the buzz saw or planing machine is going. I can always tell if he’s singing or not. What songs do you know, Don Rafaniè? I ask. He used to know a lot of them; now he only sings one. I was taught not to ask too many questions and to keep my curiosity to myself. He lets a little silence go by, enough for me to ask a second question, then he answers. He says that he only sings one song, and just a few verses. The words are a good-luck wish for building a kind of house where you pray. A church, I say. No, a house where you read, you study, and you say a prayer. Rafaniello smiles, he wants to end our conversation. The day is a morsel, and there are plenty of shoes to fix.
MASTER ERRICO squints because of the dust, because of the risk of getting a splinter in his eye. He’s got crow’s-feet from the strain of closing them. Rafaniello’s eyes are moist. He dries them with the back of his hand. He’s started to confide in me. Don Rafaniè, you look like you’re crying. “It’s the air in here,” he says. “It’s the glue. It’s Montedidio wringing out my eyes.” And he dries them. He says that all eyes need tears to see. Otherwise they get like fish eyes, which don’t see anything once they’re out of the water, and they dry up, blinded. Tears are what allow us to see. They come without being forced by crying. I nod yes with my head and feel two teardrops pinching at the top of my nose, trying to come out. They’re tickling me to make me cry. I turn around quick, blow my nose into my hands, throw the snot down on the ground into the sawdust, sweep it up. I have to force myself because I’m ashamed and I throw in a bit of Neapolitan, which always comes in handy. “Che chiagne a ffà?” I tell myself. What’re you crying for? I spit on the ground but the two teardrops well up anyway. Master Errico notices. “Guagliò to scorre la parpétola.” Kid, your eyelids are leaking. He tells me to come out of the back of the workshop. He sends me out to get a half jar of axle grease at Don Liborio’s print shop. On the street I can see more clearly. The fruit peels, the gills of the fish, the swordfish split in two, the tin plate of a beggar who stands up all day long and doesn’t sit down because the passersby are standing, and they hate to see panhandlers getting too comfortable on the ground. Rafaniello’s right. All it takes is two teardrops to clear your eyesight.
9
DON LIBORIO gives me the grease and tries to goose me, to grab my piscitiello. I can’t do anything about it. There’s not much he can do anyway. I’m strong and can slip out of his grip in a snap. He’s heavy, slow, and tries to goose all the guys. He chuckles more like a dove than a man. He runs the print shop by himself. None of the guys wants to get near him. People know, but they mind their own business, and Don Liborio is someone who does good deeds. He paid for the wedding gown of an orphan who had no dowry. And people say that no one ever died from getting goosed. “Quanno è pé vizio, nun é peccato.” No harm done when it’s done out of habit. That’s how they see it. Master Errico sends me there because he knows Don Liborio will give me the grease. But he tells me, “Come back quickly, don’t be wasting time with him.” So I come back quickly. Don Liborio’s got a habit of grabbing guys’ crotches. That’s what turns him on. He gave me the scroll of newsprint that I’m writing on. Walking along, I lose the effect of the teardrops. Everything looks dirty. I hold the boomerang close to my chest. Who knows what Don Liborio would have felt if I had stuck it down my pants. That night, at home, it’s quiet. Mama is sleeping. I eat a little bread dipped in milk. We don’t cook without her. Papa chews on some bread, oil, and tomato. I say good night and climb up the stairs to practice and to take the clothes off the line.
MARIA COMES upstairs, too. We sit down under the bare clotheslines. I’m all sweaty and the boomerang is hot from all the air it’s sliced. Maria touches me. She doesn’t say anything. She touches me, first around my body and then over my trousers. I don’t know how to make any moves. I just look. She grabs me in one place and I have trouble keeping my eyes open. I want to close them, to breathe deep, but I force myself not to give in. I keep them open so that I can at least reciprocate with my eyes, since I don’t know how to do anything else. It’s dark. I look at her serious face. She moves her hand around on the same spot. I don’t understand what’s happening down there. She doesn’t look at me. I don’t take my eyes off her face. I don’t look to see where she’s touching me. She’s stroking something that’s mine. It’s not the same piscitiello that Don Liborio touched. It’s in the same place, but it’s some other flesh that’s grown out of me to meet the strokes she’s making with her smooth hands. Then Maria isn’t looking at her hand anymore. She’s looking at me looking at her, and slowly, slowly she starts to smile, and when I see her smile, I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach, a coughing inside my flesh, a fling of the boomerang that’s slipped out of my hands and emptied me.