What Hell Is Not Page 11

  He knows that only children go to heaven. Children, or those who become children once again. But not because they are good. He wasn’t a good child either. He never wanted to go to Mass. He preferred playing and beating up other boys. And he loved to pull girls’ braids. He tortured lizards and swiped apples from the fruit stand just like other kids. Children only know how to receive. And the ones who inhabit heaven are those who know how to receive love from their parents like a child. They always have a place inside themselves where they can escape. A place where that love goes to live and cannot be chased away.

  Don Pino knows that he must protect that place within every child, that piece of goodness that explodes like a seed. If that piece of soul remains intact, it can save that child. It’s small at first, very small. Then it becomes roots, branches, trunks, leaves, flowers, and fruit.

  In Brancaccio too many children are seeds in the darkness.

  Seeds that grow in reverse. There is no space for dreams, beauty, or imagination. Too many of them are destined to die before living out their lives. Too many of them will die before they can begin to reach out toward happiness.

  One of these is Giuseppe.

  Don Pino remembers everything about that thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy, who he had surprised as he was trying to break into a car parked not far from his own.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What the fuck is it to you?’

  ‘That car belongs to a friend of mine.’

  ‘Too bad for him.’

  ‘Leave that stereo alone.’

  ‘And if I don’t? What are you going to do? Call the cops? A priest who’s friends with the cops? You’re probably a cop, too!’

  ‘Leave it alone. What do you get out of stealing a stereo, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t get anything out of it. But if I sell it, I get to eat.’

  ‘Leave it alone.’

  ‘Are you planning to tell my father? Are you planning to come over to give me the belt?’

  ‘I’ll give you money to eat. How long does it take you to break into a car and get the stereo?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘You’d be great on the job with hands like that. My father was a cobbler and I used to help him repair shoes. You’d be great at it.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a cock-sucking cobbler.’

  ‘He was just a cobbler.’

  ‘I’m not interested in getting a job.’

  ‘Well, what do you want to do then?’

  ‘Whatever my father tells me to do.’

  ‘And what if I were to visit your father?’

  ‘He’d kill me. I’m never supposed to talk to cops. Ever.’

  ‘Why don’t you come give me a hand with the nativity scene? I could use someone with hands like yours.’

  ‘I don’t go to church.’

  ‘You don’t have to come to church. You just need to come give me a hand with the nativity. A hand with the wood houses, the Styrofoam, the soldering iron . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Would you just come and see?’

  ‘How much does it pay?’

  ‘The same that you get for the car stereo.’

  ‘It’s not worth the time. I’m better off doing this.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be hurting anyone either.’

  ‘That’s his problem. If he has a car, it means he has enough money to scrounge himself up another stereo.’

  The owner of the car showed up and the boy ran away, without the stereo. As he fled, he blurted out a blasphemy against God and an insult for Don Pino who in turn yelled back with a challenge: ‘The nativity will be waiting for you! We’ll see if you can handle it.’

  Giuseppe showed up at the church but was very careful not to let anyone see him who might tell his father.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to see if this was for real.’

  ‘But didn’t you tell me to bugger off?’

  ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘There are certain things that you shouldn’t joke about. What’s your name?’

  ‘Giuseppe.’

  ‘Okay. But before we build the nativity scene, an apology is in order.’

  ‘Apologize to who? To you?’

  ‘No. To God.’

  ‘Why? Are you God?’

  ‘No, I’m not. But you said something awful to him. And you need to tell him you’re sorry.’

  ‘Why should I? Do you think that God can hear us? How could he? It’s not like he has ears.’

  ‘How do you know he doesn’t have ears? Just look here,’ said Don Pino as he pointed to his own ears.

  ‘But those are your ears.’

  ‘That’s exactly right. But my ears serve God and that’s why they are so big. That’s what God does. He asks people to lend him their ears, eyes, hands . . .’

  ‘You’re still a cop, even if you’re God’s cop.’

  ‘For example, if you use you’re hands to build the nativity, your hands will become God’s hands.’

  ‘That is if I build it. Okay?’

  ‘You have to try. And you’ll see what you’re capable of. When God uses part of us, we do divine work. We are like brushes in the hands of a great painter.’

  ‘Like a painter who paints walls? I’m not going to be a loser like that.’

  ‘Look at your hands. You could make God come down from the heavens with those hands.’

  Giuseppe looked at his hands but they were the same as ever. But he decided to give it a try.

  And the 1992 nativity scene was the most beautiful one that had ever been built in San Gaetano. The boy even revealed that he wanted to become a woodworker when he grew up: A carpenter.

  ‘Jesus was a carpenter. And it was his father who taught him. His father was called Giuseppe, just like you.’

  ‘Jesus who?’

  ‘Jesus, the one in the nativity that you built. The son of God.’

  ‘Wow! If he was Jesus, he wouldn’t have to work!’

  ‘He did it for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘To help you understand that God likes carpenters.’

  Giuseppe’s eyes seemed to light up.

  He was like one of those blades of grass, thought Don Pino, that appear in the cracks in the cement. That’s the way all the children are in Brancaccio. They are initiated into hell by organizing duels to the death between stray dogs, strangling cats or merely torturing them and offering them up to those same attack dogs for their dinner. Then, of course, there’s drugs, violence, prostitution . . .

  The light turns to darkness and is then substituted by the rage of those who crave destruction yet know not why, the rage of those who learn to dominate before they learn to love, the rage of those who don’t realize that love adds something to life and that hate takes something from it. But hate is much easier and immediate. It’s a sort of anesthesia that shuts out life and light. Many of them are sexually abused by older kids and they quickly learn how to submit. And the dominated no longer know how to love because they no longer know how to be loved. When Falcone was killed, the children yelled: ‘Hurray for the Mafia! The Mafia has won!’

  Don Pino had begun to prepare Giuseppe for his First Communion. But when he started to teach him the Ten Commandments, Giuseppe told him he couldn’t do it. He could never follow the seventh: Thou shalt not steal.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if I come home empty-handed, my father gives me the belt.’

  Giuseppe ended up in Palermo’s youth detention center: Malaspina.

  He is going to visit Giuseppe today. The Malaspina detention center is a fortress full of renegade kids located in a nice neighborhood at the end of Notarbartolo Street. He’s planning to bring him a present, too. But first he wants to call Federico to see how he’s doing.

  ‘I’m doing okay. My lip is better. How are you?’

  ‘I can’t complain. Listen, I’m planning to be in your neighborhood later today.’


  ‘What for?

  ‘I’m going to Malaspina to see Giuseppe.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘He’s a kid that ended up there because he stole something. I know him well.’

  ‘How is it that you remember everyone so well?’

  ‘Come on. Don’t you remember all the people who you love? It doesn’t take much.’

  ‘I guess so. I really made a mess at home, Don Pino.’

  ‘We can talk about it if you want. Come with me to visit Giuseppe and you can tell me about it on the way. And that way we can have a proper goodbye. It was all a bit confusing the other day.’

  ‘Okay, sure. But will they let me into the prison?’

  ‘Bring your identity card but don’t bring anything else with you. As long as you are with me, it shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Chapter 24

  The rhetorical figure that best describes me is the oxymoron. It’s the rhetorical figure that belongs to the crazies, the people who say one thing and then do another. Peace eludes me, yet I don’t have the means to wage war. But I would like to go to war.

  The Malaspina detention center is a stone’s throw from my house. You can even see a bit of it from the top floors of our building. Let’s just call it the architectural incarnation of desolation. I’ve passed by it literally hundreds of times and I have seen mothers waiting to get in, fathers with a sense of guilt sculpted into their faces, and children laughing as they wait to visit their brothers behind bars as if it were some sort of game.

  We go inside and I don’t say a word. I’m afraid that I will be locked up in prison. Don Pino smiles at me and gives me a pat on the shoulder. A series of iron doors opens before me, slowly, one after another. And as each one opens, the feeling of oppression grows. The cells fan out from the atrium. It makes me think of the Rota Fortunae, the ancient wheel of fortune, and the blindfolded Fortuna who spins it. The color of the humidity-streaked walls is anonymous. There is a vestibule on one side with a statue of the Virgin Mary. It has so many black spots on it that you’d think it had been struck by the plague from St Rosalia’s time, when she saved Palermo from the disease. The light enters the space aslant, as if it had fallen there by chance.

  We are accompanied by a prison guard who shows us the way. The cells overflow with forgotten, tired bodies and they remind me of gaps in the links of a fence. We don’t realize how much we have until we lose it or until we meet someone who has lost it. This happened to me once when I met my friend’s sister. She had Down’s syndrome. On that day, I realized that I couldn’t take anything for granted: My racing mind, my responsive body, my hands that can underline a line in a poem. Now I feel that same sense of estrangement, as if I could see myself from outside my body: Pain dislocated.

  And so for the first time in my life, after seventeen years lived in a row, I realize that I am free. This morning, I got out of bed but I could have chosen not to. I took a shower but I could have chosen not to. I decided to go out but I could have chosen not to. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I had everything. And it was all inside of me.

  We are led into a small room just a few meters wide. There’s a table with two chairs. A boy is seated in one of the chairs. When I see boys like him, I switch to the other side of the street, especially since that time they stole the Swatch I’d saved up for. It took me forever to save enough money for it. The boy jumps to his feet like a spring and he rushes to hug Don Pino.

  ‘Don Pino! Wow! You came all this way to see me?’

  ‘Of course, Giuseppe. Did you think that I would just leave you here?’

  I stand next to the cracked wall.

  ‘This is Federico, my student.’

  I move toward him and offer him my hand. He shakes it with a smile that immediately melts my prejudice. Giuseppe has big brown eyes. Beyond the color, they don’t look much different from mine. I could be Giuseppe. The only difference is that he was born in Brancaccio and I was born in Notarbartolo. If the roll of destiny’s dice had been different, maybe I would be here in the Malaspina detention center.

  ‘I brought you a book.’

  Don Pino takes a dog-eared copy of Pinocchio out of his bag.

  ‘It’s the story of a carpenter and his son. I think you’re going to like it.’

  ‘But I barely know how to read.’

  ‘Well, this is how you will learn, silly!’

  Giuseppe takes the book and slowly leafs through its pages.

  ‘Wow! It’s got so many words!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Too many words!’

  ‘First read it. And then you can decide if it has too many words. Besides, what else do you have to do?’

  Giuseppe continues to leaf through the book and every once in a while he reads a word out loud.

  ‘Puppet . . . fairy . . . log. Wow! It’s full of hard words. Who’s going to explain it all to me?’

  ‘Make a list of the words you don’t understand and the next time I come visit you, I’ll explain them to you.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘You’re the first person who’s visited me here. Not even my mother has come to visit me.’

  ‘When you get out, will you come help me again?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He squints his eyes as he says this, so as not to let the tears fall.

  Then all of sudden he explodes like a coiled spring that’s been instantaneously relieved of its weight: He starts yelling as he latches onto the priest like an octopus onto a rock.

  ‘Get me out of here, Father, I’m begging you. Get me out of here. Otherwise they’ll do it to me again.’

  ‘Do what?’

  Two guards rush in and grab him. Paralyzed by fear, I can’t even move my hands. It takes both of the guards to peel him away from Don Pino.

  ‘I’ll be back again soon, Giuseppe. Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.’

  Giuseppe gives up and swallows his desperation.

  We step out into the dense morning light. I’ve never felt the air like this since the day I began to breathe. You never really notice the air. You just take it to be one of life’s certainties. But when air is in short supply, you start to get a sense of what it feels like. It’s solid and tactile.

  Don Pino doesn’t say a word. His arms are scratched from Giuseppe’s fingernails. And in his eyes you can see other signs of pain, other wounds.

  ‘Are you okay, Don Pino?’

  ‘My friend Hamil is an Arab. And he always tells me stories about the land where he comes from. There’s one in particular that I really like.’

  Two men are walking on a beach and a storm has washed up a carpet of starfish onto the sand. It’s like an inverted starry sky. The sun is mercilessly burning them up and the starfish slowly become more and more contorted before becoming entirely crystalized.

  Every so often, one of them bends over to pick them up and throw them back into the sea. There are thousands and thousands of them.

  The other one is in a rush to get back home and he says to the other: ‘What are you doing? Are you going to throw all of them back into the sea? You’ll never be able to throw them all back. It would take you a week. Are you crazy?’

  The other one shows him the starfish that he has in his hand and before he tosses it back into the water, he responds: ‘Do you think this starfish would say I’m crazy?’

  ‘That man’s definitely crazy.’

  ‘When you fall in love, you’ll sing at the top of your lungs and laugh as you walk down the street. And people will say that you should be committed.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘That crazy people are those who know how to love. You can always love. This is heaven. As long as you still have your capacity to love, Federico, you will always be able to do something for someone else. Hell is losing your freedom to love.’

  We say goodbye with a hug. He thanks me for tagging along and he apolo
gizes for a visit that wasn’t exactly pleasant.

  ‘Have a good trip.’

  ‘Thanks, and good luck picking up all those starfish!’

  He smiles as he gets back into his car.

  This time, it’s not just my lip that is busted. My soul is broken as well. It hurts a lot worse than my lip because your soul hurts all over when it’s broken.

  Chapter 25

  ‘You’re short a lot of money.’

  ‘I don’t have it. You have to wait. Things haven’t been going so well.’

  ‘I’ve already been waiting for two months. The time for patience is over.’

  Nuccio stares at the small emaciated man, who keeps his eyes low and twists his fingers to keep them occupied.

  ‘Well, that means that you just have to give me a little gift. Your daughter. What’s her name? Serena! What a beautiful name! Serena. It reminds me of being out on the water in a boat.’

  The man is silent and clenches his jaw. And then he blurts out: ‘If you touch her, I’ll kill you!’

  ‘You’ll do what?’

  Nuccio yells in his face, spraying him with a barrage of ‘you’ll do what?’ and pressing his pistol deeper and deeper into his cheek. It leaves a purple circle on his face as beads of sweat slowly drip down the side of his head at the sight of the gun’s barrel. The weapon has a piece of lead set aside especially for a piece of his flesh.

  ‘You’ll do fucking what?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing . . . just wait and I’ll give you everything you want. Just give me a week.’

  ‘See? You’re not so dumb after all. But if you don’t have the money in a week, first I’m going to fuck your daughter and then I’ll make a bonfire out of your furniture and then this gun is going to go bang bang right in the middle of your thick skull!’

  When Nuccio leaves, the man tumbles into a chair and dangles there.

  He looks about his little furniture shop, ‘Home Sweet Home.’ There’s the photo of Elvira, who’s no longer around, and there’s the photo of his daughter who’s in her first year studying at the university to be an architect. He would do anything for her. She’s the only dream he has left. But now he wishes he had never brought her into this cruel world.