“I’d like to disappear every now and again, but down south we don’t have fog yet.”
Derna rings the doorbell with a name on it.
“What does it say?” I ask.
“Benvenuti,” she answers.
“Did they write it to welcome us?” I ask.
“No! It’s my brother-in-law’s name,” she answers, trying not to laugh.
A boy with shoulder-length brown hair opens the door. His eyes are bright blue and he has a little gap between his two front teeth. He gives Derna a hug and then turns and does the same to me.
“You’re the kid that came on the train. I’ve never been on a train. What’s it like?”
“Crowded,” I say.
“That jacket isn’t yours. My brother wore it last winter,” another boy says as he runs toward us along the corridor. He’s the same height as me and his eyes are black.
“Mine, yours . . . what’s the difference? It belongs to the person that needs it,” a tall, thin man with a reddish mustache and blue eyes scolds. “Rosa, you’re not bringing up our boy as a Fascist, I hope.”
“Well done, boys. That was a nice way to welcome this poor child, who’s already been through enough in his life,” the wife says, carrying a baby. She gestures that I should follow her into the living room.
“We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I’m Rosa, Derna’s cousin; the joker over there with the mustache is Alcide, and these are our three boys: Rivo, who’s ten, Luzio, who’s turning seven, and Nario, who isn’t even one yet.
Their names are hard to understand, and they have to repeat them three times before I learn them. Where I come from, we have names like Giuseppe, Salvatore, Mimmo, Annunziata, or Linuccia. And then we have nicknames like Zandragliona, Pachiochia, Capajanca, Naso ’e Cane . . . after a while nobody remembers what their real names are. Take Capa ’e Fierro, for example. If you asked me what his first and last names were, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea.
Up here, it’s different. Their father says he invented the names himself. They’re not in the calendar of saints because, for one thing, he doesn’t believe in saints. He believes in calendars, he says, but not in God. He says that he chose these names because he is a revolutionary, and when he calls his three kids together it spells Rivo-Luzio-Nario! When he says this, he looks at me, waiting. I look back and realize he’s expecting a reaction from me. Then he starts laughing out loud on his own, his mustache twitching. In the street where I live, nobody has a mustache, except Pachiochia but she’s not a man, so she doesn’t count. To please him, I start laughing too, though I don’t get what the big joke is. I’m just pretending, and I hope he doesn’t notice.
Derna says she’s going to work, and she’ll pick me up this evening. Rosa’s husband leaves too. He has to go to an important person’s house. It’s a rich family, and all the kids study music at the Conservatory, which is why he’s going to tune their piano. As soon as I hear the word Conservatory, I blurt out: “I went to the Conservatory, too, when I was back home in the south!”
Alcide looks at me, his mustache suddenly still and serious.
“What instrument do you play, then?”
I feel my face blushing a hot red.
“No instrument, Don Alcide. I used to go to the Conservatory . . . from the outside. To listen to the music. I’ve never been inside. I used to wait for my friend there. . . . She really did play an instrument. I mean, she played in the Conservatory. Her name’s Carolina, and she says I have a musical ear.”
He looks at me, stroking his mustache.
“Do you know the notes?”
I say I do.
“All seven?” he asks.
I recite all seven of them, from do to ti. Carolina taught me. He looks happy and puts a hand on my shoulder. He says that sometimes after school I can come with him to the piano shop.
“Will I be allowed to touch the keys?” I ask.
“None of my children have shown any interest in music. Lucky you arrived, right, Rosa?”
Luzio scowls at me as if to say, “Look what’s just arrived fresh on our doorstep.”
“If you’re a good little helper, I’ll give you some pocket money,” the boy’s father says.
“I’ve been getting pocket money for over a year,” Rivo boasts. “I work in the cow pen and give the cows water.”
“And you stink of cow shit,” his younger brother teases.
“We all work here, to each his own,” their father says.
“Don Alcide,” I say, “I used to go and collect rags with my friend Tommasino, but I’m much happier working with pianos. At least I won’t be getting a bald patch on my head.”
The man tugs at his reddish mustache and then holds out his hand.
“Agreed, then? I’ve found an assistant. But you need to stop calling me Don. I’m not a priest, you know!”
Luzio snickers.
“Whatever you wish,” I say. “So . . . what should I call you?”
“You can call me Babbo,” he answers brusquely.
Luzio stops snickering, and I am just as shocked.
16
“BYE, BABBO, SEE YOU THIS EVENING!”
Rivo walks to the door with his father and gives him a kiss. Luzio takes a marble out of his pocket and rolls it down the corridor. I wave bye-bye without saying a word. I can’t bring myself to call him Babbo. I’ve been told this is how people here say “Dad” but to me it feels like a joke. On my street there was this big fat man and every time we bumped into him, Tommasino and I would chant: “Babbasòne, babbasò, you look just like a rum baba!” Alcide doesn’t look like a babà, so how am I supposed to call him Babbo? Anyhow, he’s not even my father.
Rosa has to go out to pick dandelion leaves in the field. Rivo fetches a pail of water for the cows. He says they have a vegetable plot, too, and a few animals, though there are only a few hens left, and he also says that he’s learning to milk the cows, but that you need to do it delicately. Rivo knows so many things and he wants to explain them all to me at the same time. Water, fertilizer, the milk that comes out of the cows, the cheese they make out of the milk that comes out of the cows.
The animals are not just theirs; they keep them together with other families, and they all contribute their work. They eat some of what they produce and take the rest to market. I wanted to tell him that I went to the market, too, with Tommasino to sell sewer rats, but Rivo isn’t listening. He starts talking again, pulling on his boots and donning his jacket to go work outside with the animals.
He asks me if I want to come. I don’t answer. Pachiochia was right, I’m thinking, they brought us up north to put us to work.
“Rivo, you’ll drive him crazy with your chitter-chatter. Leave him alone for a while. He needs to get used to us slowly. He’s just arrived! You see, Amerigo, this boy is made of quicksilver.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he can’t stay still or quiet for a second.”
“I get it. Like when Mamma says I was sent by God to punish her.”
Rivo bursts out laughing, and so do I. Luzio doesn’t even smile. He goes on playing with the marble. Rosa picks us some shoes full of mud and opens the door.