While the Shark is Sleeping (4 page)

Mamma tells Papà that if he at least learnt the eight basic steps they’d be able to make two couples in the dining room once in a while. Papà makes a kind of mocking gesture with the tip of his thumb on his nose and then tells her seriously that the tango is not one of his things. That he only does his things and not anyone else’s.

Nonna has revealed to us that Nonno, when he was in the Navy, was the best tango dancer in the crew and being in his arms was like flying to the top of the world. But those were other tangos and there were no dejected, or nostalgic, or predatory women. There was only Nonna.

Mamma once confided to me that she’s not actually entirely sure that Jesus is God. Maybe Jesus was a wonderful creature similar to God that we would all love madly. But maybe he was only a man. That’s why she’s always very sad at Easter. And if we ask her why she’s in despair – after all Jesus is God and he rose again – she says she’s not so sure about that. Maybe he just died and that’s it.

She almost never goes to church. Certainly not, she says, because she thinks God doesn’t exist, or she’s annoyed at him, or she blames him for something. But she thinks that God’s indifferent to her, in the sense that she could be at church or not be at church and for God it would be the same.

Once I asked my love if he thought God exists.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I hope not for his sake. Otherwise he must be stupid, or worse. A God like he’s shown himself to be doesn’t deserve anything from us.’

‘Maybe we’re the ones who don’t deserve anything.’

‘All the worse for him, for making us out of piss and shit.’

‘What about all the wonderful things and people that exist?’

‘You’re the one who sees them that way. I look around and I just see stinking pieces of shit.’

Mamma’s garden isn’t exactly a garden, it’s the sunny paved area that is the roof of our building. They were going to build another apartment there, but the contractor went bankrupt just after the war, and nothing was done with it. The residents of the building put television antennas up there and in the old days we’d all hang our washing out there. When no one used it for drying any more it became a space where everyone put the things they’d cleared out of their homes, things they no longer needed but didn’t want to throw out. A kind of rubbish tip, except that from up there you can enjoy the view of Palazzo Boyle, the Bastione di San Remy with its palms swaying in the wind, and further up still, the Torre dell’Elefante. To the south, on the other hand, you can see the sea, the ships, and even the mountains of Capoterra, which are our last horizon.

Day after day Mamma has tried to give it dignity. The things that people had cleared out have taken on new colours and new roles. It took years and years to learn that up there, where the sirocco blows too strongly, myrtle and mastic can grow, and under the bench even violets can survive, and roses might seem fragile but actually they defy the scorching sun and the mistral, provided they have a wall at their back. Years and years of respect for the times of the day and consideration of the phases of the moon. With all Mamma’s sweetness and patience that junk room up there became a paradise of delights. A dream of happiness and beauty that, for all our sakes, she protects from the violence and disorder of the world, and that makes us richer. I’ve noticed that the people who live in the building never fail to take their visitors up there for a look around, to amaze them, to overcome the frustration of living in such a humble place. Even down on the street people sometimes stop with their nose in the air to admire the wisteria that cascades right down to the front door of the building.

Not that Mamma’s flowers never get sick or die. Many have given in to the domineering wind, or to the boiling hot temperatures, or to the seagull and pigeon poo. Mamma has a cry about it, but then she plants something else in the empty pots. And so it’s been ever since we were little. The days of ivy, the days of dog-roses, those of bougainvillea: the terrace has its history.

Thin though she is, she goes up the stairs with bags of dirt and the new cuttings or seeds and she works up there for hours and hours and comes down exhausted from all the effort, but that little piece of the world is so naturally beautiful that it seems to have created itself. A gift for everybody.

Nonna has taken a dislike to that terrace, she gets angry because she reckons it’s pointless Mamma working on it, on something that’s not even hers. If she really worked and there were two salaries in the family we could buy a new house. You bet you can pay off a mortgage with an extra salary.

Nonna’s right, but how I love going up to look at the ships framed by garlands of perfumed flowers, arriving or departing these waters to the sound of Debussy’s
Clair de lune
, which my brother’s preparing for his piano exam.

And how sad it is when you realise a plant is struggling but isn’t going to make it, and Mamma’s dejected and Zia wants to give a kick up the arse to the wisteria, or the jasmine, and to all the plants that want to die on us.

‘Today you have to be really tough, you have to be a black woman. You have to put on this dress made of coarse fabric that I’ve brought for you. See how low-cut it is and how it shows off your tits. I like your heavy tits, they contrast with your childlike torso. You’ll show me your breasts exploding out of the neckline. You’ll pull up your skirt. But my hands will be tied and I won’t be able to touch you. You have to be cruel: only after receiving a hundred lashes will I receive the prize of screwing you.’

For him the planet is full of shit. ‘That great bastard of a . . .’ ‘That piece of shit . . .’

But notwithstanding his vision of a completely rotten world, he never makes me sad. He’s special that way. I’m closed up in a room with the door barred and it’s as if I was out in the open air. Maybe because I know that if I follow the instructions, the rules, he won’t leave me. And if one day I’m able to sit down at the table and eat his excrement, then he swears to me he’ll want me even when I’m old. Forever.

When I’m able to have him over to the house – because Mamma’s going all around town for hours and hours in search of panoramas and then she phones me to go and get her on my Vespa – he even gives me instructions on how to cook. Something I really really like is the idea of fanning out spaghetti in the cooking pot – then you move it towards the centre and that way it doesn’t stick.

Or sometimes we go to his work. We go down dark corridors with science fiction warning lights and the beeping of robots. We reach his room and lock ourselves in. Complete darkness. ‘Kneel down and take it in your mouth.’

That’s enough tango. Since Zia’s boyfriend stopped coming, all Mamma does is put his waltzes and
milongas
on over and over and cry as she does the ironing.

Zia was left with a look on her face that reminded me of when seals are beaten to death by hunters, down at Cape Horn. I can smell the blood. And the chill.

You think that if you went to Cape Horn and sat on the edge of a cliff and saw the two oceans doing battle, your life would be completely different. But actually I reckon everything’s the same the world over.

Nonna says that God exists, the real one. And then there’s another God: my father’s God.

Papà and Nonna disapprove of each other. Nonna says she could never stand people who don’t take care of their own family and insist on saving the world. Zia, in these situations, defends Papà and tells Nonna that Goebbels was an affectionate father and husband but he was a Nazi criminal, and the same with lots of Mafiosi, whereas we know all about what Gandhi did, yet he abandoned his wife.

Nonna asks Mamma, ‘Was your husband there?’ and the answer is always no.

Then she says to Papà, ‘Don’t you ever ask yourself what people think? Your wife, your children, they’re always on their own. People will think you’re invented!’

‘What people?’ my father replies. ‘Who are these people? Does anyone ever phone me up and say, “Hello, I’m People, how are you?”’

With Papà, not even Nonna can help smiling, and she grumbles that he really is good at twisting people’s words.

Then she goes to my brother and tells him that, if he wanted to, he could change Papà, that lots of sons have managed to turn uninterested, distant men into loving fathers. One boy, the grandson of a friend of hers, got his separated parents to make up. ‘Papà, come back home!’ he’d tearfully implore. So you can imagine what a lad my brother’s age could do, talking to him man to man he’d have all the persuasive power to convince our father to go to meetings, to make an appearance once in a while when we have friends around, to take his family on a trip somewhere nice instead of always going alone to some poor, stinking, godforsaken place.

The upshot of this is that when Nonna says she’s come to see us to talk about important matters, my brother holes up in his room to play the piano and if we knock he yells, ‘Not now, this is a difficult bit!’

But when my father is around, you really know he’s around. He plays lively songs on the guitar putting different words to the music, so one time he sang ‘I am easy’, but making up rude lyrics and someone fell off their chair laughing. The guests are entertained and they leave considering him a great friend, but then they come back next time and he’s not there.

It’s left to the rest of us Sevilla Mendozas to play host. But Mamma says it’s just not the same and if Papà’s not around it’s better not to organise anything at all. And since he’s never around, the choice is always not to organise anything at all.

There’s only one man about whom I’ve never heard Zia use expressions like ‘a kick up the arse’ or ‘Who does he think he is?’ – Mauro De Cortes. And I’ve come to see that Mauro is like the sea, and like the sea he’s just there, naturally and simply. Clear and calm, if it’s clear and calm, and – equally simply – stormy if it’s stormy. If you wish to swim, or look from a distance, or if you couldn’t care less, that’s your business. He accepts you, but can just as easily do without you.

He’s everything we lack: naturalness and inner strength.

In the world of Mauro De Cortes, it makes sense to grow flowers or learn to make little sweets. And above all, one can hope.

Leaving aside all the boyfriends, Zia’s life is sad. Sometimes she comes to see us with her defences down. She doesn’t criticise anything Mamma’s cooked and she says, ‘I haven’t eaten since the last time I found someone to eat with. I don’t know how many days it’s been.’

When she leaves she’s a little bit happier and she says to Mamma, ‘Thank you.’

But maybe Zia’s new boyfriend is the right one. When we invited him over for lunch, he took her hand at the table and let everyone see that they’re together, whereas Doctor Salevsky never so much as touched her in our presence. He’s nice and he goes running so now Zia goes running too, early in the morning. Because, she says, regardless of what Papà thinks, the logic is that politicians go with politicians, sailors with sailors, dancers with dancers; like on Noah’s Ark, you go in pairs and otherwise she wouldn’t be able to pair up with anybody. None of us has come out and said it, but I’m sure the common feeling is that this time, God is willing. But Papà says it’s obvious that something’s not right with Zia, since she can’t stay with her lovers for more than an hour or two, and after sex, some pleasant chat and some remarks about world events, she feels it’s time to leave, or else they make it clear to her that she can’t stay any longer.

Every day Mamma says the rosary for her and checks the position of the stars. I’ve learnt that Saturn is the most dangerous, if it’s in opposition all you can do is pray. But I get the impression that Mamma thinks not even God can do anything about this planet, because it, too, is part of Creation and God leaves it to do its own thing.

Every day, before going out with her boyfriend, Zia phones for an update on the astrological situation and to check that Mamma is at the ready, rosary in hand, as she heads out.

A little while ago I walked a short way with Mauro De Cortes and noticed that he walks under all the ladders and doesn’t worry about black cats; nor does he touch himself down there when a hearse goes by. I know he’d happily use yellow pegs to hang out his washing. At one point he talked to me about a problem he had and he wasn’t sure how it’d work out and I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell Mamma and Zia to say the rosary for you, or to check the stars.’

He looked at me, half amused, half frightened: ‘Stop there, for heaven’s sake! I do everything alone, including praying!’

‘And what about Saturn?’ I asked him. ‘What’ll you do if it’s bad?’

‘I’ll shoot it down!’ And he looked up into the sky, aiming an imaginary rifle.

Zia confided to me that she’s slept with him even when she’s been seeing other boyfriends and that it was beautiful. And the thing that struck her more than anything else was that Mauro’s lovemaking was just like everything else he does: natural and strong. After lighting a cigarette he looks at you all over and you feel shivers of desire. And to get aroused he doesn’t need any of that fancy lingerie; he undresses you completely without even looking at your new things. Or else he leaves all your clothes on and just lifts them up before taking you.

If I was to be born again and beforehand they gave me the chance to choose who I was to marry and have children and spend my life with, I too would definitely choose Mauro De Cortes.

It’s not that he’s so very handsome or charming or intelligent or anything like that, it’s just that God did a better job with him than with anyone else I know and I think he must give his Creator great satisfaction. Not because he does anything amazing, since Mauro works in a boring office from eight-thirty to five, has a plate of pasta for lunch at the canteen, goes home and spends ages finding a parking spot and it’s already seven in the evening. In the course of the day, I reckon he gives God satisfaction in the following way: he’s told me, for instance, that in the morning he never goes straight to the office, he goes to Calamosca. He parks his car and runs along the avenue that leads to the beach. When he gets there, if it’s winter it’s just growing light, and if it’s summer the sea is already sparkling and there’s always a perfect silence. Then Mauro goes to the bar at the hotel there, has a cappuccino with some pastries straight out of the oven, listens to the news and the weather forecast on the radio, and then after that he starts work; it’s boring, but he considers it useful, like any work that doesn’t involve robbing, or killing, or ruining the environment. Or alternatively, if he decides to skip breakfast, he can run to the end of the coastline down towards the left, beneath the Devil’s Seat. That’s where the fish farm is, and he can enjoy a Ligurian panorama, because agaves flower along the ridges and the sea is clear but bottle green and with big rocks that form an underwater mountain landscape inhabited by big shoals of fish.