God's Mountain (14 page)
Authors: Erri De Luca,Michael Moore
A
T HOME
Papa’s asleep with the newspaper on his legs. I take it away, he wakes up, looks around himself in a daze, passes a hand over his face, and says, “I thought I was at your mother’s bedside.” Maria doesn’t give him time to think about it. “Supper’s on the table,” she calls, clattering the plates. I take my jacket off, set the boomerang on the table. “You’ve still got it? So you liked it. I’d forgotten,” and while he cuts himself a slice of the juiciest pizza in Naples and maybe in the world, he asks me whether it flies. “Like pizza in the hands of Don Gigino,” Maria answers, but he’s already chewing
and has forgotten. I tell him how Don Gigino served us before all the other people who were waiting. “He used to do the same for us. Don Gigino likes seeing married couples,” he remembers, without thinking. He drinks a glass of wine, pours one for Maria, says that he’s not going to stay up until midnight. He cracks a walnut, crushing it in his hand, chews it with relish. Mama liked almonds, there aren’t any, I didn’t buy them. At the table you need a little mourning.
H
E TOOK
a colleague’s shift. Tomorrow he’s going in for another guy, who’s staying home on New Year’s Day. He wants to work and wear himself out. He says he’s really happy to come home to a hot meal. He gets up, says good night, and then at the kitchen door turns around and says, “Thanks for the pizza.” Maria smiles at him and my eyesight gets blurry. I swallow, turn
around, pick up the boomerang, and squeeze it to calm down. Everything is moving too fast, I can’t manage to keep up, everything changes from one hour to the next. He said, “thank you” for so little, even though the life he knew is over, and outside they’re setting off fireworks, making one year new and throwing out the old one, and with all his heart he’s still inside the years that have passed, that are thrown out, they’re all mixed together. I start clearing the table. Maria washes the dishes and outside the merrymaking grows. For one night the city imitates Vesuvius expelling fire and flame. We turn the light out, look out at the other windows, look down on the street.
O
N MY
chest the boomerang beats against the pulsing of my blood. Maria places her ear between my shoulder and neck and repeats softly, “Boom, boom, your heart’s
even racing when you’re still. Inside your chest a rascal is throwing stones against a wall.” I close my good eye. The balconies and lighted windows across the way recede even more, becoming street lamps in the dark. Boom, boom, to live you have to have a pulse, to fly, to break away from the earth, to ascend the sky on air, a strong pulse. “Boom, boom, boom,” Maria continues. Her voice draws blood to my stomach, saliva to my mouth. Maria, I tell her, at midnight I’m going up to the washbasins. I’m going to throw the boomerang. “I’m coming with you.” Rafaniello will fly and all the spirits will come to see him off. Our spirits are curious. They’ll want to brush against a flying shoemaker. Spirits don’t know how to fly. They can only create a little breeze. Firecrackers are going off on the street. Maria doesn’t hear what my dark voice is saying. She’s thinking of her blood. “The wine was good for me. It’s the first time I’ve had it, it’s good. I liked the way he poured it. He held the heavy flask steady and made it come out very slowly.”
M
ARIA
’
S BEAUTIFUL
with the blood she’s losing, the wine that’s replacing it, her black hair tickling my neck and her mouth that goes boom, boom, opening and closing with her kisses. To imitate the sound of my heart she blows kisses to the dark. We stay at the window; in the meantime the frenzy of fireworks rises, people in Montedidio are setting off firecrackers everywhere. The blasts even come from far away, from the marina. Rafaniello is in his storeroom, warming his wings. I tell Maria it’s time to go up. We pull away from the window, the boomerang shifts from my rib to my heart. Let’s go up, Marì. She slips under my arm, carelessly, lost in thought. The stairs echo with the ruckus, a gust of little drafts circles, celebrates, and tickles us, blowing their chilly New Year’s greetings into our ears. They’re fond of us, and I of them. Maybe even Mama made it in time to come, although spirits stay close to their bodies at first, keeping them company. Only later do they separate.
The landlord’s door is open. Inside it’s dark. Maria holds me tighter.
A
BOVE THE
terrace colored lights spread across the sky. They’re shooting off rockets from rooftops and balconies, and it’s not even midnight. I try to warm up my arms for the throw, they’re ready, don’t need a warm-up, the boomerang’s force belongs to me. I want to put enough into it to break my arm off. Which one? Right or left? Left, the side of my good eye, which I’ll keep closed. I gaze up at the curtain of stars, looking for the one that I saw above the volcano. I spot it, it trembles more than the others. I point it out to Maria with the tip of the boomerang. It’s in the east. I’m going to throw in that direction. Maria goes to the bulwark, leans on it with her elbows to see far away, she hears and doesn’t hear. It must be the wine, the exhaustion, the
blood. Rafaniello arrives, his wings are under a blanket, they don’t fit into his jacket anymore. Don Rafaniè, how are you? He doesn’t answer. He hugs me with the warmth of his feathers and tells me softly, “
Blib ghezìnt,
be good,” then slips his shoes off. Don Rafaniè, do you see that star, you and the boomerang will pass right under it, it’ll blaze the path for you between the fireworks. Maria stands still, looking out, she doesn’t turn around. All at once it is midnight, Naples is ablaze, shooting, breaking, throwing stuff into the street, you can’t hear a single voice, everything is a burst of energy that shoots into the air, above the earth, against the walls. I squeeze the wooden handle in my hand.
I
T BURNS
in my hand. It does it deliberately. Otherwise at the last second I won’t throw it. It scalds my fingers to make me throw it. I breathe on it. This only makes
it worse. I tense up, my mouth snaps at the air, I take a deep breath, cock the boomerang back behind my shoulders, close my good eye, peer at the sky sparkling with light like an August sea shimmering with anchovies, the burning in my fingers forces the air out of my lungs, and with a crunching of bone the boomerang breaks away, its tail on fire, a thrust like never before, the wood burns, floats, flies, whips through the air, there’s nothing in my hands. Behind me bedsheets are flapping in the wind, but there are no sheets. I turn around, it’s Rafaniello, his wings spread wide, his naked feet rising above the ground, they fall back down, once, twice, the wind rises, beaten by his wings, the spirits do their part to get up under him and push, and on the third jump Rafaniello rises and follows the blazing trail of the boomerang and the din of firecrackers, whistles, sending breezes spinning across my face, a celebration, and I raise my arms for one final push farewell.
I
TOUCH
my hand. It’s stopped burning. It’s new again. On the ground are Rafaniello’s blanket, two feathers, and a pair of shoes. In the air are the fireworks, the rockets, echoing off the walls. Montedidio thunders, I open my good eye, Maria screams at a shadow, I run to the bulwark, grab the shadow by its shoulders, my arms burning with energy. I tear the shadow away from Maria and throw it away, throw it away so hard that it flies, flies from the terrace of Montedidio, flies through the deluge of old vases and plates thrown from the balconies, everything is flying from Montedidio, but not the two of us, the two of us hugging each other under Rafaniello’s blanket, Maria shaking, me coughing up a hot clot of air from my throat. It’s a voice, my voice, a donkey’s braying that rips from my lungs. I shout, and there isn’t enough room for my shout on my whole scroll of paper or even in the sky above Montedidio.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATORErri De Luca was born in Naples in 1950. He is a columnist for
Il Manifesto
and a novelist whose work has been translated into seven languages. He lives outside of Rome.
ContentsMichael Moore is a New York–based writer, translator, and teacher. His previous translations include
The Silence of the Body
by Guido Ceronetti.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com
