The voice had come in a weary breath from the bedroom. I looked in, but couldn’t see anything. Then something moved on the bed. Squinting, I made out a red-faced mass beneath a white sheet transparent with sweat. Actually, it wasn’t a sheet, but a huge blouse designed to look smart in spite of its size, with embroidery along the bottom and flowered braid on the collar. There was a blonde head on the pillow with a beautiful face trapped in a crimson mass of flesh too large to be considered a neck, above a body made up of disjointed slabs furrowed with deep, winding folds. The sight took my breath away. It took me a while to distinguish breasts of supernatural volume from arms so heavy they could barely move. Her stomach undulated with rolls of fat cascading onto her sides, and her elephantine legs rested on cushions like two marble columns. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that human bodies of that size could exist. It wasn’t so much a woman’s body as a phenomenal heap of flesh that covered almost the entire mattress, a mass of flabbiness scarlet with the heat, threatening to spread through the room in a gelatinous stream.
This was Gino’s mother, so monumentally obese, so suffocated by her own weight that she had difficulty breathing.
‘Sei Gino?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Dove eri finito, angelo mio?’
‘You know perfectly well, Mother. I was at the garage.’
‘Hai mangiato?’
‘Yes, Mother, I’ve eaten.’
A silence, then his mother’s voice returned, calm now. ‘Chi è il ragazzo con te?’
‘This is Turambo, the son of Taos … of Madame Taos.’
She tried to turn towards us, but succeeded only in setting in motion an avalanche of shudders that went through her body like wavelets on the surface of a pond.
‘Digli di avvicinarsi, così posso vederlo più da vicino.’
Gino pushed me towards the bed.
His mother stared at me with her blue eyes. She had lovely dimples on her cheeks, and her smile was touchingly gentle. ‘Come a little closer.’
Embarrassed, I did as she said.
She tried to raise her hand to my face, but her arm remained stuck in the mass of flesh. ‘You look like a good boy, Turambo.’
I said nothing. I was still in a state of shock.
‘Your mother takes care of me like a sister … Gino has told me a lot about you. I think the two of you are going to get along well. Come closer still, right next to me.’
Gino noticed my growing unease and came to my rescue, grabbing me by the wrist. ‘I’m taking him to my room, Mother. I have things to show him.’
‘Povero figlio, ha solo stracci addosso. Devi sicuramente avere degli abiti che non indossi più, Gino. Daglieli.’
‘That’s what I was planning to do, Mother.’
Gino led me to his room. There was a bed that could be taken apart, a table with a chair in a corner, a little wardrobe that was falling to pieces, and that was all. The walls were peeling and there were greenish stains on the cracked ceiling crossed by beams. It was a sad room, with a broken window looking out onto the façade of a repulsively ugly building.
‘What language does your mother speak?’ I asked Gino.
‘Italian.’
‘Is that a Berber language?’
‘No. Italy’s a country on the other side of the sea, not far from France.’
‘Aren’t you Algerian?’
‘Oh, yes. My father was born here. So were his parents. His ancestors had been here for centuries. My mother’s from Florence. She met my father on a liner. They got married and my mother followed him here. She speaks Arabic and French, but when she and I are together we speak Italian. So that I don’t lose the language of my uncles, you know? Italians are very proud of their origins. They’re quite temperamental.’
What he was trying to explain was beyond me. All I knew of the world was what everyday life and its vileness showed me. When I was small, standing on a rock in the hills above Turambo, I’d thought the horizon was a precipice, that the earth stopped at its feet, and that there was nothing beyond it.
Gino opened the wardrobe and took a packet of photographs from a drawer. He selected one to show me. The photograph, taken on a terrace overlooking the sea, showed a woman laughing, her siren-like body held snugly in a pretty bathing suit. She was as beautiful as the actresses you saw on posters outside cinemas.
‘Who is she?’
Gino gave a sullen pout. His eyes glistened as he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘The lady rising like dough in the next room.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I swear to you it’s my mother in the photograph. She used to turn heads in the street. She was offered a part in a film, but my father didn’t want an actress in his house. He said you never know when an actress is being sincere and when she’s acting. A real macho man, my father, from what I’ve been told. He left us to fight in the war in Europe. I don’t remember him very well. He died in the trenches, gassed. My mother went mad when she found out. She even had to be committed. When she recovered her senses, she started putting on weight. She hasn’t stopped since. She’s been prescribed all kinds of treatments, but neither the hospital doctors nor the Arab healers have been able to control her obesity.’
I took the photograph from his hands to get a better look at it. ‘How beautiful she was!’
‘She still is. Did you see her face? It’s like an angel’s. It’s the only part of her body that’s been spared. As if to save her soul.’
‘To save her soul?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m talking this way. When I see what’s become of her, I say all sorts of nonsense. She can’t even sit up any more. She weighs as much as a cow on the scales. And a cow doesn’t need anybody to help it relieve itself.’
‘Don’t talk like that about your mother.’
‘I don’t blame her. But I can’t help it, it makes me bitter. My mother’s a generous woman. She’s never harmed anybody. She gives her money away and expects nothing in return. People have often robbed her, but not once has she held it against them. She’s even turned a blind eye when she’s caught them red-handed. It isn’t fair, that’s all. I don’t think she deserves to end up like this.’
He took the photograph from me and put it away in a cardboard box.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and looked at me warily. Then he cleared his throat to summon up courage and said, ‘I have a few shirts, one or two sweaters, and a pair of trousers I don’t wear any more. Would you be offended if I gave them to you? I’d be very happy to. I don’t want you to take it badly. I’d really like it if you said yes.’
There was a mixture of sadness and fear in his eyes. He was awaiting my reaction as if it were a verdict.
‘My bottom is almost showing through the seat of my trousers,’ I said.
He gave a little laugh and, relieved, started rummaging through the shelves, throwing me a quick glance to make sure I wasn’t offended.
Later, several years later, I asked him why he’d been so defensive when he was only trying to help a friend. Gino replied that it was because Arabs were sensitive and had a sense of honour so excessive they would be suspicious even of a good deed.
Returning home that day, proud of my bundle of almost new clothes, I surprised Mekki and my mother talking about my father. They fell silent when they saw me come in. Their faces were twisted with anger. My mother seemed on the point of imploding. Her face was trembling with indignation and there were tears in her eyes. I asked what was going on. Mekki told me it was none of my business and shut the door of his room in my face. I listened carefully, hoping to catch a few scraps of their conversation, but neither my uncle nor my mother carried on speaking. I shrugged my shoulders and went to the other room to try on the clothes Gino had given me.