I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) Read online

“In your mouth,” I say.

  He replies by waving his index finger back and forth like a metronome.

  “They didn’t knock out a tooth, did they?”

  “No, no.”

  “What about your head? Did you get hit in the head?”

  “No, no.”

  I stand up. At this point, I drink my coffee.

  “Who was it this time?”

  He shrugs.

  “Can’t you tell me anything?”

  “On the subway. There were three of them. But two of them didn’t do anything. In fact, they pulled him off me.”

  I sigh, dispirited.

  “Listen, let me take you to the hospital.”

  “No, come on, it’s not worth the hassle. Then you have to file a police report and everything. It would just be a waste of time, I couldn’t even identify them.”

  I feel hollow. For an instant, just a single fleeting instant, I consider the possibility of exercising patria potestas in its most ancient and antiquated form.

  Then I resign myself to the facts, and finish my coffee.

  It’s been a while (oh, let’s say six months or so) since Alfredo developed this new fixation with juvenile delinquency. The phenomenon fascinates him, it intrigues him the way a person could be intrigued by heart failure, antipersonnel mines, or white sharks. In the sense that he wants to learn more about it, study it, find out how it functions. So he wanders the city in search of youngsters his age who violate the law, and when he finds them he approaches them, strikes up a conversation and asks them how they spend their days, what they think about, what they hope to achieve, and so on. If he could, I think he’d infiltrate their ranks.

  The surprising thing is that, even though he’s skinny and small and clearly harmless, he isn’t afraid of them in the least. If he crosses paths with four or five hooligans in the street while they molest a young girl, for instance, or just as they’re about to snatch a purse, steal a moped, or hold up a married couple, it’s a sure thing that he’ll change course and follow them until he finds an opportunity to approach them and strike up a conversation with them.

  Sometimes it works out for him. And he manages to record documentary material of a certain value. Some time ago, for instance, he let me hear a cassette he’d made (he goes everywhere with his trusty tape recorder in his pocket, like a journalist). He managed to approach the leader of a group of pedestrian-slapppers (the thugs who slap people in the street, but not for money, in fact for no discernable reason at all) and asked him to describe what they did on an average Saturday night.

  Aside from the question of how much of what they said was true (because it was blindingly obvious that a lot of it was completely made up), what really made your jaw drop was the complete indifference that rang in their voices, like an accent running through their horrifyingly simple thoughts. Me—this guy—that guy—money—life—death—pussy—balls—freedom—prison. Teenagers who were as hardened as old men.

  In this kind of situation, you have to admit it, Alfredo behaves like a complete professional. He listens to the most bloodcurdling details without a hint of surprise. As if he were expecting it, right? Then he asks questions that leave the subjects of his interviews absolutely speechless. Truly brilliant questions, like: “But have you managed to put aside a little bit of money?” or else: “Do you think the girls are having a good time while you rape them?”

  In other words, when it goes right, he puts together some documentary audio that you have to respect. Stuff for which the most highly credentialed experts in the sector really ought to go out and buy him cigarettes, as far as I’m concerned.

  There are other times, though, when it doesn’t go right at all, and that’s when they beat him with varying levels of determination, depending on whether they have something to do afterward.

  But I have to say that, given how persistent and reckless Alfredo is, he doesn’t get beat up that often, truth be told. In six months he’s been beaten up three times, including last night, or actually two-and-a-half times, because the time before this one, a police squad car happened to drive by and the thugs cut and ran almost before they got started.

  According to Alf, this unusual batting record is due to the fact that when you get up close, nothing is ever as bad as people say it is. Which is a good answer, I know. But I think it’s his lack of fear that works as his bodyguard. If you’re not afraid of something, then that something learns to avoid you, because it understands that it can only do you so much harm, and with all the harmable people there are around, there’s no point in wasting time on someone who’s not likely to appreciate it.

  So in our family we’re trying to come to terms with something that might be described as an anthropological interest—I wonder if you can guess who came up with that terminology. It all started the day that Nives (that’s who came up with the terminology) took Alfredo with her to a conference on juvenile deviance, applying the principle that it does kids good every so often to participate in events of this sort, because “even if they don’t think they’ve understood anything, something still sticks in their mind” (which is just a wheelbarrel to transport your balls back home, if you ask me).

  In any case, at this conference—after the opening statements from the various prominent officials who express their gratitude, offer their wishes for a productive session, and then are obliged to leave the premises by a variety of prior commitments—a famous sociologist delivered his report, and Alfredo was hypnotized by the sociologist’s opinions about the importance of comprehending the malaise of adolescents—that is, comprehending it for real, in the etymological sense of the term, by getting your hands dirty and putting yourself on the line as a volunteer for knowledge. He used this exact expression: “volunteers for knowledge.” I wasn’t there but I’ll bet you anything you care to name that those were his exact words because for a good solid month after that fucking conference, Alf made sure he stitched “volunteers for knowledge” practically into every sentence that passed his lips. In that particular period, I’m not exaggerating, talking, for Alf, had become nothing more than a pretext for saying “volunteers for knowledge.”

  In my opinion, leaving aside the famous sociologist’s entire presentation, it was this isolated phrase that tipped him over the edge into complete idiocy. Because, if you really pay attention, people tip over the edge into complete idiocy over the tiniest things, and not because they fall victim of who knows what refined perfidy.

  At the same time, even though I have pretty clear opinions on the subject, I also realize that when you’re dealing with a son in the throes of complete degeneration into idiocy, you can’t exactly start off with such a drastic line of argumentation.

  There’s one thing I know for sure: that if that day Nives, instead of taking Alf along with her to the double-damned conference on juvenile deviance, if she’d sent him out to play soccer, or even left him all afternoon glued to his super-miserable Playstation, right now he wouldn’t be sitting in my kitchen holding a bag of ice to the side of his head.

  In any case, as I think is already pretty obvious, Alfredo has already decided, though he’s only sixteen, that he wants to be a journalist.

  From a certain point of view, I’m glad that he already has such clear plans for his future. From a certain point of view. Because from another point of view—that is, the one from which I’m looking at a bruise that covers half of his face—I’d have to rule out all other points of view.

  What are you going to say to a teenager with a fixation of this kind? “Don’t go around getting your ass kicked, or I’ll kick your ass?”

  How do I deal with this problem? Poorly, very poorly. With a sense of guilt that’s aggravated by the fact that, because of my marital and family situation, I’m naturally inclined to consider my separation as the source of all our suffering. And the worst part is that it strikes me that I’m the only one who feels any guilt. Because Nives, in contrast, treats the whole matter with a professional detachment that destabili
zes me. She acts like a psychologist with our son, in other words.

  She says that Alfredo feels an authentic cultural interest, all the more noteworthy because it came to him spontaneously.

  She says that if we make an effort to accept this interest of his instead of opposing it, we have some hope that he might become indifferent (to that interest).

  She says a few other things, but I can’t remember them right now.

  “Just think,” she explained to me the last time, “Alfredo is doing something strange, unique, and risky, something none of his friends would do. That makes it irreplaceable for him. You and I have nothing as exciting to offer him as an alternative.”

  She says—I just remembered—that, despite the risks to which it exposes him, this need our son feels to use his body to understand the world makes him a body endowed with an experimental intelligence (those are Nives’s italics).

  Which, all things considered, might even be true. It’s just that whenever Nives issues these fine diagnoses, first of all, it twists my balls into a knot because it always seems that she’s just issuing them for herself and not for anyone else, I don’t know if I convey the idea; and second, if you ask me, when you’re talking about your own children, anybody who can lay such a clear-cut, impeccable line of reasoning is nothing but an idiot. You can’t be clear-cut and impeccable with your children. Because it’s a well known fact that children were created precisely to contradict any and all principles. And if you use your own son as an underpinning for a principle, it really does mean that you haven’t understood a single god-damned thing.

  I’ve always turned up my nose—truth be told—at the idea of principles as a basis for action, even leaving aside my role as a parent. I remember perfectly well the moment that it first happened. I must have been ten years old or so. One evening my father’s brother, a self-centered individual with a completely unjustified but extremely elevated opinion of himself—and no one in the family seems to know where he got such an opinion—told my mother that he didn’t want his son (my cousin) eating pre-packaged ice cream treats. At that point I broke in to ask him why. And he replied: “On principle.” Just like that, flatly. Whereupon I asked just what principle that might be. And he said again: “On principle.” As if he’d said: “God exists.” Exactly, precisely the same. Whereupon I told him that maybe he hadn’t understood the question. And he told me that I had absolutely no right to dare to insinuate that he was the kind of person who misunderstood questions.

  If at the age of ten I had understood the meaning of the verb “to insinuate,” I would probably have replied to him that no, I had by no means insinuated that he had failed to understand the question, I had stated it, clearly, outright.

  That very evening I decided that a principle, inasmuch as it is a conceptual motive upon which a doctrine or a science or even simply a reasoning is based (definition taken from the 1979 Devoto-Oli dictionary, Euroclub, Milan, pg. 884), was simply a cheap rhetorical contrivance employed by people who have no other arguments to employ. In fact, I still think so, if for no other reason than that the idea of a principle was so appealing to my idiot uncle.

  So that’s the way it is, as far as Alf is concerned.

  “I’m guessing you don’t want to go to school today, right?” I ask Alfredo.

  He pulls the ice pack off his face, he licks his swollen lip.

  A stab of pain right here, in the arm, like a myocardial infarction under way, when your son licks his swollen lip.

  “I don’t feel up to it, Dad.”

  I can already see them, his classmates, sort of pitying him and sort of mocking him. Truth be told, I would have gone to school if I were in his shoes, because in cases like this the girls take turns comforting you and you get rides from people who wouldn’t normally even take you under consideration.

  Just look at the things that go through my head.

  “You know you don’t have to talk me into it. I wouldn’t think for a second of sending you to school.”

  He smiles, reassured.

  “Why didn’t you go home?”

  Meaning Nives’s home, which used to be my home too, until just a short while ago.

  Yes, I know, it’s a bastard question, it’s sort of like asking: “Who do you love more, Mommy or Daddy?” But if I don’t take advantage of these situations, just bear with me.

  “I just didn’t,” he says.

  Head up, shoulders straight, like a gentleman.

  But I’m disgustingly pleased at the idea that he chose to come to my house.

  “Listen, let me ask you something, but I want you to tell me the truth. Are you sure you haven’t banged your head or anything like that? Don’t give me the runaround, because if you have we need to get you a CT scan.”

  “No, no, it was just a couple of punches, not even straight on, they just grazed me, I swear.”

  “Okay. Listen, I have to go into the courthouse, I’ve got a case. You stay here and wait for me. Let me give Totonno a call though and ask him to drop by and take a look at you, okay?”

  Totonno, that is Antonio Rossi, is our public health general practitioner. He’s a lifelong friend of mine. One of those people who, when you’re on the verge of a breakdown, you don’t even have to tell him what’s wrong and he’s already fixing you up.

  “Okay.”

  I touch his forehead. It’s cool.

  So I go and get ready for work. Alf gets comfortable on the Klippan sofa and turns the other tv on, with the sound down very low. He puts his feet on a stool that I keep there for the purpose. He wedges a cushion behind his head and hugs another to his belly (classic pose of self-consolation). I call Totonno, who assures me he’ll swing by before lunch. Before I leave I ask Alf if he needs anything. He doesn’t need anything. So I tell him that I’m leaving and later that day we’ll have lunch together. Whereupon he asks me if I can call Nives to let her know that he won’t be coming home but will be staying at my house. I say okay and head downstairs.

  On the street, the thought of Alfredo, safe and sound, waiting for me at home, serves as a kind of morphine. All things considered, it’s not bad to be able to keep the people you love in a cage, if you understand what I’m trying to say here.

  YOU COULD FEEL IT IN THE AIR

  (THAT I WAS GOING TO BECOME FAMOUS)

  I stop outside the main entrance of the courthouse to call Alagia, since inside my cell phone doesn’t hit on all four cylinders.

  “Vincè. What’s up.”

  I snort through my nose in irritation. You work yourself blind to teach your kids manners, then one day they invent caller ID and in just a few weeks they wipe out the efforts of a lifetime.

  “Good morning to you, eh. Where are you, at the university?”

  You can hear noises in the background that sounds vaguely like a party.

  “Eh.”

  “Listen, I need to talk to you, is there some way I can see you today?”

  “When, today?”

  “No, at midnight the day after tomorrow. I told you I need to talk to you—bear with me.”

  “Is it really that urgent?”

  “Sweet Jesus, Ala’, what do I have to do to have a conversation with you in person, file a request in triplicate?”

  These are the small things that remind you of your status as a separated father. They say that happiness consists of small things. That goes double for unhappiness.

  “But what’s happened, something with Mamma?”

  Not yet, I think to myself.

  “I dunno. Alfredo.”

  There’s a brief pause. I can clearly hear the voices of a group of kids talking, not far from Alagia. First one says: “Whatshisname, you know, the professor who looks like a flea market version of Umberto Eco, has invited the students in his course to a reading of his book of poetry at the Feltrinelli book store.” Another one says: “Are you going?”; and the first one replies: “Of course, I’m going to have take a final exam with that miserable hobo”; “Ah, okay,” cut
s in a girl’s voice, then she adds: “Ask him to sign the book, with a dedication, that way he’ll remember your name.”

  “Okay, listen,” says Alagia, “I have three classes today, I’ll be here all day long. Why don’t you catch up with me at the cafeteria and we can eat lunch together?”

  At the cafeteria? I’d already planned on a nice lunch with Alfredo. I wanted to buy country bread, prosciutto, Vannulo mozzarella nuggets, all that stuff he loves.

  “At the cafeteria? At the cafeteria. Okay. Fine. I’ll come meet you at the cafeteria. I can do that. All right. I’ll see you there. At the cafeteria.”

  A reflective pause.

  “Oh, Vincè.”

  “Eh,” I reply.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Am I okay? Of course I am, why?”

  “What do I know, it’s just that you said like five times: ‘At the cafeteria, yes, at the cafeteria.’”

  “No, it’s just that I was thinking about how to . . . oh, Christ, but what a pain in the ass you are, Ala’.”

  She laughs, idiot that she is.

  “Okay, I’ll expect you about two o’clock,” she says, clearly making a tremendous effort to finish the sentence.

  “Eh. And you just go on laughing,” I say. But I’m laughing too, truth be told.

  “At . . . o’clock . . . pffst . . . ”

  “Hold the phone closer,” I say. But the only result is that she laughs again.

  So we go on like that, until one of the two of us, and by now I can’t even remember whether it was her or me, finally hangs up first.

  I immediately call home to tell Alfredo that I won’t be back for lunch. I ask him what he’s doing, how he feels, how his bruise, his lip, his leg are coming along. I fire a volley of questions at him.

  He snickers and replies: “Like Wolverine.” Which is the name of one of the X-Men, the one with the bone-claw sabers that project from his knuckles, who also has the power to heal his own wounds (Alf was only referring to the power of self-healing his wounds). In practical terms, if he’s shot with a bazooka, or stabbed with a red-hot spear, or if he bangs his head against the wall at 225 mph, you can see the injury retract­ing all by itself, like an octopus retreating into its underwater cavern. One minute it’s there, the next minute it’s gone. It’s called “healing factor,” I think.