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  LOST WORDS

  In memory of my friend, Idolina Landolfi

  Odd that living in anger should be so pleasant! It involves a kind of heroism. If the object against which one railed yesterday should die, one would immediately set about looking for another. “What shall I complain about today? Whom shall I despise? Could that person be the monster? . . . Oh joy! I’ve found him. Come, friends, let’s tear him to pieces!”

  SILVIO PELLICO

  . . . and use words taken from dictionaries, as remote as possible from common speech.

  MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

  CONTENTS

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  I

  The telephone woke me up with a start.

  “Who’s calling at this hour?” my mother grumbled.

  I set my feet on the floor and went looking for my slippers. Once again my father had kicked them toward the fridge as he walked by. Then I flipped my cot back inside its cabinet. With her mouth hanging open and one hand on her forehead, my mother listened to the voice on the other end of the line. The clean-up bucket was still on the doorstep, half in, half out.

  I made it to the window just in time to catch two policemen hopping into the squad car and taking off to the home for the severely disabled. It was another gray fall day, and the cat, lying in the middle of the courtyard, was wiping her paw over her face, as she did whenever there was a threat of rain. A patch of fog floated over from the pile of rubble across the street.

  “How am I going to deal with the tenants now?” my mother said as she hung up. “I need this like I need a hole in the head . . .”

  She started mopping the lobby, going at the marble floor with enough energy to carve grooves into it. When she came back inside to change the water, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut a minute longer.

  “Mom, it’s September 21 today . . .”

  “Oh sweetheart, forgive me,” she chirped. “Of course it’s September 21. Thirteen years ago, at this very hour, you came into the world, my little bundle of joy! Happy Birthday, honey! Your father wanted to wish you a happy birthday, too, but I told him to let you sleep in today.”

  She fumbled around in the pocket of her smock and pulled out a crumpled piece of ash-colored paper. A one-thousand-lira note.

  “Here,” she said firmly, in a voice that stressed her magnanimity.

  And it was indeed a magnanimous gesture, but I barely got a peek at the thousand-lira banknote. Like her presents on birthdays past, the money was quickly deposited in the toolbox, to which she alone had the key.

  “Now be a good boy and drink your milk—there’s the bread. Dip it in the milk if it’s too stale.”

  By early afternoon even the tenants at 15 Via Icaro knew that during the night burglars had broken into two apartments in the building next door. The victims were still away on vacation—the Biaginis and Signor Quarone, the contractor. In the lobby shrieking clusters of women gathered, fretting that their homes would be next. There was no escape. Once the robbers had you in their sights, it was only a matter of time . . .

  I observed them through the glass door: they kept engaging and interrupting each other, giving each other impatient little shoves as if they were fighting. The truth was that they were terrified. I had never seen them like this. Because this time it was a question of money.

  “We can’t tolerate this violence!” thundered Signora Dell’Uomo, indignantly. “Burglary is rape!”

  Although embarrassed by the comparison, Signorina Terzoli nodded her agreement. Signora Mellone, never at a loss for words, repeated to anyone who would listen: “At Signor Quarone’s they went through every closet and every drawer. Then they fried themselves up some eggs as if they had all the time in the world. They even left a banana peel on the kitchen table!”

  Dell’Uomo acted stunned, even irritated, that she hadn’t been the first to ferret out every detail. Not a woman to be outdone, she came up with her own version of the facts: “Well I heard it was a crust of bread,” and added, “besides, who told them to stay away on vacation till the end of September anyways?”

  “If they break into my place, they won’t find a damn thing . . .” Signora Vezzali boasted. “I don’t keep checks or cash in my house. I always keep my money with me, right here.” She patted the secret pocket sewn into the inside of her skirt. “If they want my money, they’re going to have to take me first—and that would make it kidnapping . . . do you think it’d still be worth it for them?”

  “Not for all the money in the world,” my mother muttered between her teeth, standing a few feet away. “What would they want with an old bat like you?”

  Signora Zarchi, ever irreverent, laughed her head off at all the drama. She wasn’t afraid of thieves: “There’s no such thing as thieves! In the end we’re all thieves, aren’t we?”

  “Speak for yourself, Signora Zarchi,” was Dell’Uomo’s swift rebuke. “I’ve never taken anything from anyone. My conscience is clean, I don’t know about yours . . .”

  She and Vezzali traded malicious looks.

  “Ladies, ladies . . .” my mother tried to calm them down. “Ladies!” But her pleas were useless. They, the signore, were too worked up to hear her, too intent on playing the victim. They ignored her with unvarnished contempt, as if she, the doorwoman, were immune to such dangers by virtue of her occupation: to put it bluntly, a doorwoman, by definition, was not a signora. But was that enough to make them signore? Hardly. On Via Icaro no one had ever laid their eyes on a real signora. Respectable people kept their distance. Well, there were always a few exceptions, of course. Men, by and large. According to my mother, men were a hundred times better than women. Not always, of course, but often.

  “Take someone like Pasquale Petillo, that nice tall bachelor: as good as gold, and he never gives anyone any trouble. Naturally Dell’Uomo can’t stand him. She says she’s seen him bringing black women home. So what—who cares? Aren’t black women just the same as other women? What a shame he decided to move back home to Calabria . . . God help us!”

  Word was already out that another signora would be moving in to take over Signor Petillo’s apartment, a woman who lived alone . . . Maybe she’d be an old maid like Terzoli or the younger Mantegazza . . . she had a surname that was either American or German: Lynd. Now mind you, it’s Lynd with a “y,” as the building manager had emphasized when, in an unusual phone call, she’d announced the arrival of a “fine, upstanding” person.

  “But of course,” my mother had quipped, “all the fine, upstanding people are dying to make Via Icaro their home address!”

  *.

  They demanded around-the-clock surveillance. The doorwoman was not to be away from her post or distracted for a single instant. If something required her to be away from her post, like taking out the trash, then her son should fill in for her and guard the lobby and the front staircase. After nine o’clock at night, the front door had to be double-checked to make sure it was actually locked (sometimes the humidity made the lock stick). And the gate had to be equipped with a spring mechanism (some careless people were in the habit of leaving it open) . . . Oh, and we also had to make sure that the large windows between floors were closed and that their chains were tightly latched. Mellone and some of the other women actually expected us to start announcing their husbands’ arrivals.

  “Poor me,” my mother complained. “The last thing we needed was for everyone to be worried about burglars! When is that damn landlord going to make up his mind to sell 15 Icaro? . . . Take a deep breath, Elvira. Just hold on a little while longer and you’ll be an owner, too. Oh, Chino—can you imagine? I won’t have
to say Good Morning and Good Evening to anyone! Once I close my door, it’ll stay closed. I won’t have to worry about another living creature!”

  My father came home from work and wished me a Happy Birthday in his own way, by predicting how old I would be the coming year.

  “Next time around you’ll be fourteen, and that means no more fooling around. By the time my cousin was fourteen he was already a father himself!”

  He didn’t have a present for me. He didn’t give a damn about birthdays, not even his own. Mom was the same. She only cared about mine because it reminded her of the day she became a mother. Holidays and anniversaries didn’t mean anything to her. She thought they were a waste of money. You had to know how to manage your money, setting it aside and only using it when necessary . . .

  She told him about the burglars, forcing herself to act more upset than she really was.

  “I can’t take it anymore. I want my own home!”

  “What’s that got to do with burglars?” he objected, already sunken deep into his armchair and scanning the front page of the evening tabloid.

  “It’s got everything to do with it!” she replied. “I’m fed up with always having to follow orders . . . there’s always some new problem. Once it was the pervert jerking off by the front gate, or the time Mantegazza left the gas on, or when Terzoli mistook a giant rat for a cat and was about to start petting it. Then there’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses sneaking up the stairs . . . and the Avon ladies, who are even worse than the Jehovah’s Witnesses . . . And now burglars! Each and every time—no matter what happens—the first thing the tenants do is ask for Elvira, Elvira come here, Elvira go there . . . Don’t you get it? The burglars aren’t the issue. The issue is this job. I’m sick of it. It’s time for me to have my own home.”

  “What do you think this is? Isn’t this a home?” He said without looking up from his paper. “Here we don’t have to pay rent or electricity or phone bills. Where are you going to find another place like this? Who’s got it better than us?”

  “I’d rather pay for my own gas and electricity, thank you. This is no way to live.”

  “You have to learn to tell people to fuck off! But no, you’re always bowing and scraping. You’ve got to stop saying yes all the time! You’re a disgrace to the working class. You need to act more like me!”

  “And you’re such a fine example? . . . Good evening, Signora Paolini! . . . It’s easy for you to talk, going out early in the morning and not coming back till late! But I’ve got them staring over my shoulders all day long. They even look at what I’m eating! I choke on my food when I have to say hello to them. I don’t have enough time to go to the bathroom . . . or to finish my sentences, like now. Don’t you see?”

  She started setting the table.

  “In the next few months,” she continued, before my father could change the subject, “if I work hard, I should be able to save up another million liras! Dell’Uomo’s relative has promised to pay me fifty thousand for the wool blanket I’m crocheting for her. And there’s plenty of ironing and sewing to make some extra money . . . Good evening, Signor Vignola.”

  Rather than continue on his way, Vignola slid the window open and poked his head in.

  “It’ll only take a second, Elvira. I just wanted you to remind my upstairs neighbor that in the apartment you’re supposed to wear slippers, not leather shoes. The sound of his shoes is driving me crazy! And tell him that if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a pair of slippers, then I’ll buy them for him!”

  “Of course,” my mother agreed. “When I see Signor Malfitano I’ll let him know.”

  “No, I’d rather you called him right away!” he demanded. “And if that asshole doesn’t knock it off, tell him I’m going to call the cops.”

  My father gave the intruder a look but didn’t intervene.

  “Do you see what I have to put up with?” my mother complained after Vignola had left. “The neighbor’s bothering him so I have to be the messenger! Unbelievable! These good-for-nothings want to rob me of everything, even the air I breathe.”

  My father tried to ignore her, but couldn’t: “I’m not going to throw away my hard-earned money on those crooks selling houses. Have you taken a good look at the prices? You’ve only got two options: either sign up for public housing or go on strike. That’s what we do in the factory when we don’t like something. It’s not that we expect to become the boss or anything. But you don’t understand—first you want an apartment, and God knows what you’re going to want next. If it were up to you, every day you’d be shopping downtown at the big department stores. You can’t change where you came from. When you’re born a doorwoman, you stay a doorwoman. Can’t you get that through your head?”

  “What are you talking about? I wasn’t born a doorwoman and I’m not going to stay one. And you don’t say ‘doorwoman.’ The proper term is ‘custodian.’ ‘Doorwoman’ makes me sound like a streetwalker. A custodian is a caretaker, and that’s is exactly what I do.”

  “What a bunch of bullshit!”

  “This isn’t only about us. It’s also about Chino. What kind of a life is it for him, sleeping in the loge. You can hear everything: the front door slamming, the elevator going up and down, the voices of people coming and going, the refrigerator . . . It’s never really dark, so he wakes up tired—don’t you, Chino? It’s a sacrifice for you, too, sweetheart!”

  My father didn’t see the problem. When he was a boy he barely slept. At two in the morning he’d go out on his bike and deliver bread while bombs were dropping all around.

  “There you go again!” my mother cried. “When you don’t know what to say, you always bring up the war . . . I can’t even remember the war.”

  I’d heard it a million times before.

  “I’m off,” I said, although we still hadn’t eaten.

  My mother’s instructions followed in my wake. “Don’t forget to check that the doors to the balconies are locked. And make sure the chains are pulled. And stop by the Malfitanos’. Tell them politely that Vignola has been complaining. Politely, ok?”

  I went up to the fifth floor and started checking off the things on my list. The neon lights were working. No one had left empty bottles by the trash chute. The balcony doors were locked . . . I saved Malfitano for last. He was surprised to see me. My face turning red, I reported Signor Vignola’s complaints.

  He did not keep me waiting for a reply: “If Signor Vignola has something to say, he can tell me himself.”

  *.

  Although summer had just ended, the temperature dropped suddenly and the signore started complaining that it was too cold. They’d forgotten all about the burglars. Now they were demanding that the doorwoman turn on the heat.

  “Old hens,” my mother used to call them. “You know what hens do when you toss them a crust of bread? They run to grab it. But if you toss another crust before they’ve finished the first, they drop it and go running for the second one. And if you toss them a third piece then they do the same thing again. You could cover them in pieces of bread and they’ll always start pecking at the last one.”

  She explained to the signore that she couldn’t turn on the heat. It was too early in the season.

  “This is just the beginning of October. We need authorization. Do you want us to get fined by the city? A little patience, ladies. We’ll light the furnace this year like we do every other year . . . but please be patient. A little draft isn’t going to kill you.”

  The only one who didn’t complain about the cold was Bortolon. She had no intention of spending money on fuel—all she needed to stay warm, she was proud to boast, was her husband. Didn’t the rest of them have husbands? . . . In the meantime, she would light the oven—which was cheaper anyway—and bake a nice cake.

  To console myself from all the hen-pecking, I started to fantasize about the person who was supposed to move into the Petil
lo’s one-bedroom apartment, the woman with a “y” in her surname. Would she be different? Would she show more consideration for my mother? Or would she be just one more person tormenting her with stupid requests? Despite my mother’s forebodings—all based on experience—I imagined Miss Lynd to be kind and respectful, even if I still couldn’t picture her face or her voice . . . For me her essence was summarized in that strange surname, Lynd. Lynd, Lynd, Lynd—shimmers of music, tinkling of silver . . . All the others were coarse and ugly by comparison: Dell’Uomo, Bortolon, Mellone, Terzoli, Paolini, Mantegazza . . .

  “Momma, when is Signor Petillo moving out?” I asked impatiently.

  “What’s it to you?” she replied, surprised I would care. “Sooner or later he’ll leave, don’t worry. He’s waiting for his transfer to come through . . .”

  Having been bombarded with complaints, the building manager ordered the heating to be turned on earlier than usual this year. It had been authorized by the municipality.

  “Fine,” my mother conceded. “We’ll turn it on. The signore want heat? They can have it. Let the whole bunch of them burn alive!”

  The maintenance man came to check the furnace. He cleaned out the tank and the first fuel shipment was delivered. We turned it on and the water started boiling in the pipes, spreading warmth through the apartments. What a blessing! No more shivering. The laundry dried in a second. The older Mantegazza stopped coughing. You could lounge around the apartment in a T-shirt—even without socks, even bare-boot, since the marble floors were no longer ice-cold . . .

  After dinner my father took me to the boiler room, down a steep and narrow iron staircase outside the building. In all these years I’d never been there before—it wasn’t a place for children.

  “This is disgusting!” he complained while unlocking the gate. “That damn cat comes down here to pee . . .”

  In the basement’s dim light, we could make out a small furry shape that recoiled and leapt behind the straw broom, sheltered from the autumn wind.