Lost Words Read online

  We went down the last flight of stairs, covered with ugly gray tiles. There the temperature rose because the burner was near and it was noisy. My father stood fearlessly in front of the bulky furnace. Swift and efficient, he showed me a black lever, next to the main thermostat, which was easy to make out against the body of the burner.

  “Like this . . .”

  All you had to do was turn it. In that very second, the sound of the flames quieted down. Now it was a whisper, a voice that had lost its terrible power.

  A decision had been made: from now on turning off the furnace would be added to the list of my evening chores. I was thirteen, after all.

  *.

  “HE DOES IT ON PURPOSE! HE DRAGS HIS FEET! AND THEN HIS WIFE, WITH HER DAMN HIGH HEELS, ADDS INSULT TO INJURY!”

  Vignola’s voice over the intercom was so loud that my father and I could hear it from across the table, ten feet away. My mother wrinkled her nose. She hadn’t even finished chewing her food.

  “Malfitano told me to tell you, Signor Vignola, that if you have anything to say to him, you have to say it to his face. He doesn’t want to hear about it from me.”

  “AH! SO THAT’S WHAT HE WANTS! WELL THEN TELL HIM, PLEASE, THAT IF HE FORCES ME TO GO UPSTAIRS I DON’T KNOW WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN. THIS COULD GET UGLY!”

  “Calm down. Signor Vignola. These walls are made of paper.” And after giving me a complicit look, she pointed a finger at the ceiling, indicating that we could hear both him and his wife peeing in the toilet and even worse, fooling around in bed. “We learn to live with each other . . .”

  Vignola was beside himself. In the background there was a high-pitched chatter, the shrill voice of his wife egging him on.

  My mother was having trouble swallowing her food.

  “What a mess! We have to do something. Do you remember that guy, here in Milan, who shot his neighbor because she used to vacuum all night?”

  “If you ask me they can all go kill each other,” my father cut her off. “They’re nothing but a bunch of Christian Democrats anyway!”

  “What are you talking about? Don’t you realize we’re stuck in the middle of this? We can’t pretend nothing is happening! Vignola is going crazy!”

  “Shut up already, I’m trying to listen to the news.”

  The IRA had planted another bomb.

  “Now that’s what I call killing each other,” my father commented with a crooked smile.

  The intercom buzzed again.

  “DO YOU HEAR THEM? DO YOU HEAR THEM?” Vignola shouted, “THEY’RE TRYING TO DRIVE ME CRAZY!”

  “Yes, I can hear them,” my mother admitted, almost in tears. “What are they doing? Are they moving furniture around?”

  “DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW OR I’M CALLING THE COPS!”

  My father went out to lock the gate and change the trash bags. My mother put the dishes in the sink to soak. In a daze, she stared at an invisible horizon that blended into the powerful gush of the faucet. Then, while I was getting ready to go out for my usual evening chores, she told me:

  “Chino, can you please stop by the Malfitanos’ and tell them that the whole building is complaining.”

  I went up to the second floor. From the Malfitanos’ apartment you could hear the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor and the scraping of metal. A shadow broke away from a corner of the landing and came toward me. For a second I thought I was going to scream. It was Vignola gnawing on his fists. He stared at me, his eyes popping out of his face, begging for help and vowing revenge. We both stood there listening. The noise was endless . . . Fearing the feverish stare of Vignola more than the wrath of the Malfitanos, I rang the bell. The noise stopped immediately and the door opened. The first thing I saw was the parrot, perched on Malfitano’s shoulder.

  “Our father who art in heaven . . .” the bird recited.

  Malfitano appeared to be disappointed. Obviously he was expecting to find Vignola at the door.

  “Our father who art in heaven . . .”

  His wife, in the background, was pushing a big checked sofa toward the back of the corridor and sweating profusely. “Who is it?”

  “The doorwoman’s son,” he replied.

  “Our father who art in heaven . . .” the parrot continued.

  Malfitano stuck a finger in its beak and the bird started to chew on it. Then it focused on his right ear. It pecked at the inside of his auricle methodically, scrupulously cleaning the inside of his ear. The lady of the house, blue in the face from her efforts, collapsed onto the sofa. From what I could see in the doorway, the living room was in complete disarray: the chairs were upside down, the table out of place, the Magritte posters askew.

  “Tell your mother we’re done for the night,” the woman gasped.

  Convinced I had done my duty, I headed for the upper floors. Vignola was standing and waiting. From the balcony I could see that he had lit a cigarette and was smiling like an idiot, triumphant.

  On the fifth floor I looked for the door to Petillo’s apartment and stood there for a while, filled with a strange and wonderful sense of expectation.

  *.

  A beam of light penetrated my closed eyelids—it forced them open and I could see an arm moving just above my head, wriggling its way through a hole in the glass. (Now that everyone had stopped worrying about them . . .) I got up, careful not to make any noise, and ran to the bedroom. My father and mother were still sleeping. The glowing clock-face said that it was one o’clock in the morning. I shook my parents. They both immediately noticed the stream of light bouncing between the floor and the ceiling. My father leapt to his feet and ran into the other room. My mother held me. “Quiet, hush,” she whispered in my ear.

  Without wasting a second, my father grabbed a ceramic vase and slammed it against the arm. A shout rang out and the flashlight fell to the ground. My mother rushed to the kitchen. He kept squeezing the vase, which hadn’t even cracked, as if he wanted to strangle it. We heard someone running down the driveway. My mother rolled up the blinds and saw two men rushing through the gate, but she couldn’t recognize them in the nighttime mist. A moment later you could hear the sound of a car taking the road through the fields.

  For once, my father was not so sure of himself.

  “What if they have a gun?”

  My mother tried to calm him down, but she, too, was upset, and she, too, was afraid that the thieves would come back soon for their revenge. She pushed the armchair against the door, but it was only as tall as the doorknob, leaving the hole in the glass uncovered. She leaned the table-top against the window, leaving two legs sticking out. Then she put the coffee pot on the fire.

  “What are you doing? Call Cavallo’s husband on the intercom,” Dad ordered her. “He’s big. Call everyone before the burglars come back. Wake everyone up, for Christ’s sake! Those guys will be back with reinforcements and all hell will break loose!”

  “You’re crazy! I’m not calling anyone. You want a revolution? Let’s call the police, instead.”

  Dad didn’t want to have anything to do with the police—the only thing they were good for, as far as he was concerned, was killing innocent bystanders.

  “You’ll see, first they’ll beat me up then they’ll throw you in jail.”

  After a long wait, during which the criminals had all the time in the world to take their revenge on us, a squad car finally arrived. First, the cops requisitioned the burglar’s flashlight, which had rolled under the table and was stuck between the foot of a chair and the stove. One cop stayed outside to inspect the lock on the gate and reconstruct the movements of the thieves. The other, an older man, sat comfortably on my bed, and told my dad, in a mocking tone: “You’re a brave man.”

  My Dad, standing by the window, shrugged his shoulders.

  “What was I supposed to do? Welcome them in? Hand my son over to them?”

/>   “You’re lucky they ran away. One time there was a burglar who started shooting at a tenant who caught him in the act . . . Play the hero and you’ll end up with a bullet in the head!”

  “Maybe they learned from you . . .”

  The policeman didn’t take the bait—he gulped down his coffee.

  Although my dad couldn’t provide any information that would help identify the criminals—the dialect they spoke, the accent they used, or the clothes they wore—it was determined that they must have been gypsies.

  “Well, what did they want from us?” Mom asked. “What were they looking for in a doorman’s loge? We’ve got nothing worth stealing.”

  But she was thinking about the checkbook and the pocket change—my pocket change!—that she kept hidden in the toolbox.

  “The usual things you find in any loge,” the policeman explained laconically. “The keys to all the apartments.”

  Everyone’s eyes turned toward the white wooden cabinet on the wall above my bed, next to the circuit breakers.

  Before leaving, the policeman advised us to replace the window as soon as possible and also to reinforce the door.

  “Will they be back?” Mom asked.

  “What do you want me to say, signora? Let’s hope not . . .”

  To avoid a fight, my father withdrew to the bedroom.

  “What an asshole,” he repeated, “like all policemen.”

  We waited for daybreak in front of the glass door, staring into the hole. Between one coffee and another my parents decided not to tell anyone what had happened. The demands for protection would only increase—and what more could we do?

  “We have to move away from here as soon as possible,” was Mom’s suggestion.

  At seven Dad left for the factory as usual. One hour later, without taking her eyes off the door, Mom called the building manager and told her what had happened. Signora Aldrovanti made no comment. She didn’t say she was worried or that she was sorry. Luckily the break-in had taken place at night, or the doorwoman would have had to put up with all kinds of criticism. But given the circumstances, no one could blame her for anything.

  “I don’t feel safe anymore, Signora Aldrovanti,” she whined. “Our boy actually sleeps in the front room of the loge. He was the one who gave the alarm, imagine how much courage that took. Another couple of inches and the intruder’s arm would have touched his face . . . The very thought makes me . . .”

  Aldrovanti was not one to let herself be swayed by emotions. What did we expect? For her to hire a bodyguard? For someone else to do our job? . . .

  My mother allowed herself to say that she wanted the door and the window reinforced—it was the least they could do, just like the other doormen on Via Icaro already had. The manager said we were free to reinforce whatever we wanted, but under no circumstances would the building reimburse us. The glass would be covered by the insurance, but everything else would have to be paid for by the doorwoman. One final and very important matter: since it was being vacated, Petillo’s apartment needed cleaning from top to bottom. Miss Lynd deserved to be welcomed with the utmost regard.

  The glass was replaced that very afternoon; the carpenter came the next day. He took the measurements and promised to deliver—within ten days—two dark wooden accordion boards, one for the glass in the door, the other for the glass in the window. He also convinced my mother that the door had to be protected with two iron bars. The metalsmith also came immediately to install the four wall-braces that would support the iron bars (but the bars wouldn’t be ready for at least two weeks)—the loge took on the appearance of a jail cell.

  Now it was my father’s turn to sleep on the fold-out bed. Call it sleep! He spent most of the night on his feet, in front of the glass door. He would pull back the curtains to look out at the deserted lobby. Then he would get back in bed. The main door would slam. He would stand up and start spying again. From the bedroom, my mother could see the light. “Paride, go back to bed!” she would say in a muffled voice. But he ignored her. Someone was standing still in front of the elevator. Who was it? Then he would call for her help. “Christ, Elvira, come and see! How am I supposed to know everyone? Who signed the contract, Mary Mother of God, me or you?”

  *.

  My mother’s gestures started to become maniacal, betraying a nervous haste that tore objects from her hands or led her to use excessive force. She had gotten clumsy and careless—she, of all people, who usually handled everything so easily and skillfully. Now whenever she served dinner she’d spill food on the table. If a meatball fell on the floor, she’d pick it up. But at the sight of the stained marble she’d go nuts. “Look! Look at this mess!” she’d yell, as if it were my fault. And before getting out a rag and scrub brush, she would slap me across the face without realizing it. She slammed doors, caught her dress on the chairs, tripped on invisible obstacles. Every day she broke something: a glass, a cup, an ashtray . . . In the kitchen, while she was using the knife, she cut her fingers and, more often than not, while she was eating, she would bump against the iron braces, which stuck out of the walls like giant teeth (I called them “fangs”). Her arms were always covered with bruises.

  The trash chute got blocked up. Someone, to spare themselves the effort of going downstairs to the trash room, shoved a box or a fruit crate into it. Lately this was happening a little too often.

  “May whoever it is drop dead,” Mom swore. “Stay here.”

  She got the broom and went upstairs to take a look. After a few minutes I recognized the sound of her heels, which came at me faster and faster from one landing to the next, ta ta ta ta ta tatatatatatatatatatatata, like a summer rain, the first timid drops suddenly turning into a cloudburst. Tapping from below with the broomstick, she managed to remove the blockage stuck halfway up the trash chute.

  When she came back from the trash room, I almost fainted—a wounded phantom appeared before me. The smell of blood forced me to turn away and close my eyes. Along with the blockage, a glass bottle had come down. I was sure my mother would bleed to death. She washed herself, removed a glass shard with her eyebrow tweezers, and I helped her bandage up her wrists. Then she asked me to wipe up the red spots that had dripped on the floor—which ran from the door to the windows to the bathroom sink.

  My father returned from work, and since the blood kept seeping through the gauze, he accompanied her to the emergency room. I stayed behind to stand guard.

  Signorina Terzoli came by to ask for a pint of milk. She always needed something. My mother was right to say that some people mistook the loge for a deli.

  “My mother’s not here,” I said boldly. “She had to go to the hospital. Someone threw a bottle down the chute.”

  “Oh my goodness! . . . Who’s going to clean the landings now?”

  I didn’t give her a drop of milk. I told her we were all out. The old crone looked me up and down with irritation, and for a second I was afraid she was going to search our fridge.

  “Listen, Chino,” she went on to say with a sweeter tone, “is it true that Miss Lynd is a relative of Liz Taylor? That’s what they say . . . What do you know about the lady? Have you met her?”

  I was unable to satisfy her curiosity. And even if I could’ve, I wouldn’t have said a thing to her.

  *.

  The sight of Elvira bandaged up to her elbows unleashed a thousand exclamations from the signore. For once they expressed some pity, but only because they shuddered at the thought of a shard of glass getting stuck in their own flesh. My mother, who thought any one of them might be the culprit, sighed: “I don’t know who did this to me, but I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes right now!” They ignored her all the same. They had already lost interest, distracted by the rumor that Petillo would be moving out soon and certain Miss Lynd would be taking his place. No one knew where she was from. Some suggested that she was arriving straight from Paris. Others ventured
that she was Australian. Vezzali claimed that she had been the wife of an ambassador, but the others believed she had been married five or six times, like Liz Taylor—who she supposedly resembled—and had lived off her husband, until he lost all his money gambling or on younger mistresses. Terzoli kept insisting that she was related to Liz Taylor.

  My mother cursed them, each and every one, because in her condition she could no longer work, like ironing for the signore in the buildings next door, or crocheting a blanket for Dell’Uomo’s relative. The accident was going to cost her dearly. “You, my dear lady, owe me X amount for all the hours I was forced to sit around idly . . .” She would take her frustrations out on me, as if she were speaking directly with one of the signore: “And you, what do you think? You have to reimburse me, my dears! Do you take me for a fool? Well you’re dead wrong. If I can’t buy a house for myself on your account, then I’ll kill you with my bare hands—I swear I will!”

  One night, on his way back from the auto repair shop, Riccardo, the Lojacono’s son, stopped by our loge.

  “I heard about the accident, Signora Elvira. I’m so sorry.”

  Mother never imagined that the boy, who had been such a rascal when he was little, could ever have spoken to her that way, and with gratitude, she told him that he had become a fine young man, that holding down a job was good for him. Riccardo blushed, because the compliment had come from a woman who was still quite pretty, but also because, in all probability (the suspicion came to me immediately), he considered them undeserved. He, too, by coincidence, had a bandage on his wrist. To break free from my mother’s insistent stare, he explained that a few days earlier a steel pipe had fallen on his arm . . . Only a sap like my mother would’ve believed it. After he left she exclaimed, “What beautiful blue eyes.”

  *.

  Signora Aldrovanti refused to pay for damages: my mother had gotten hurt, but it was her own fault—she knew there were certain risks in the trash room, she should’ve been more careful, the way a good doorwoman is expected to be. You have to pay for your mistakes. Next time she should wear safety gloves. “And if next time the glass ends up in my eyes?” mother protested to me. “What am I supposed to do? Put on a ski mask before I enter the trash room?”