What Hell Is Not Read online

  I remember the time we spoke about sex. Yes, at school and with a priest.

  ‘It’s not the body that contains the soul but the opposite. Think of a caress and a smile. Could a hand caress someone and the eyes smile without a soul inside?’

  After a break when we were all supposed to think about our own expressions of affection, he added: ‘And if we send our souls into exile, our bodies become orphans and our expressions of affection become mere masks.’

  He read all kinds of newspapers, liberal, conservative, and everything in between. He always started off with the local news. He never shied away from reality. And he never avoided stories that could make others uncomfortable. He brought the world into the classroom and he never excluded anything the way other teachers did.

  He had a courage that I have rarely seen in other adults.

  I can see everything again with the same extreme clarity that you get from keeping your finger pressed on the contrast button on the remote control. Who loved this neighborhood and this city more than Don Pino? His heart had no bounds. He hugged and transformed every person he met.

  I won’t leave you alone. This is what you asked me. No, I won’t leave you alone.

  Take away love and you will have hell, you used to say to me, Don Pino.

  Give love and you will have what hell is not.

  Love is protecting life from death. Every type of death. A litany of your sayings comes to mind now that you are gone.

  Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me.

  Then something happens that no one could have foreseen.

  The children all squeeze in around Don Pino’s body.

  Totò begins suddenly in the silence. He starts reciting lines from the play, one after another.

  Without any masks, without any costumes. Because there is no longer any need for them.

  All they want is for Don Pino to be the only audience member, on the day that the show debuts.

  Ganelon’s sword is no match

  For the brave Little Orlando’s skill.

  Strength without smarts is the catch,

  Defeat the brave child it never will.

  He and his friends a plan will hatch,

  With Pipino’s help they’re stronger still.

  So get yourselves ready for any surprise:

  Who will lose and who will take the prize?

  Don Pino’s smiling face seems to approve. And it shows that happiness doesn’t lie in lengthening your life but in expanding it.

  Chapter 36

  Maria finds him there. Francesco won’t let go of Don Pino’s body. He’s standing with his hands wrapped around the edge of the coffin, as if, from one moment to the next, his friend would wake up.

  ‘I think this is some kind of joke.’

  Maria doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Can’t you see that he’s smiling?’

  Maria shakes her head. Only then does the child throw himself into her arms as he starts to sob uncontrollably.

  ‘He’s coming back. I know he will. He has to come back.’

  Maria caresses him and holds him close to her chest. She looks at Don Pino’s face and can hear his voice over the telephone. His last telephone call and the last request of a man condemned to death were both for her. His last wish.

  Francesco suddenly breaks away from his mother. He takes an envelope out of his pocket and offers it to her. It says ‘For Maria’ on it.

  ‘Who gave this to you?’

  ‘I don’t know him. A grownup with curly hair. He told me to give it to you.’

  That envelope resembles an unexpected will and testament.

  She can’t contain the pain. She cries and laughs at the same time. She squeezes her son even more tightly, as if she were giving birth again.

  She shows him the other mother that she can feel growing inside.

  The only tile of the mosaic that’s missing is Dario. He didn’t rush here with the others. He ran away and hid at the abandoned construction site. That’s where he stores his wings. Don Pino is now gone and he needs to try to reach him. Nothing will hold him any longer in the maze.

  He won’t be hitting the streets tonight. He’s never going back to the maze again. He leans over the roof. People like to toss dogs off that roof. He’s put on his wings, which he patiently built with kite paper, just like Don Pino and Lucia taught him. The sheets are colored and well-assembled, with just the right amount of glue. He closes his eyes and he feels so light in the wind of the night that he could go anywhere.

  He just needs to learn how to master the movements and he needs to stay far enough away from the sun at dawn. The sea stretches out before him, even though he can only see a few whitecaps. The weight of his body disappears into the darkness. No one hears him fly away.

  It’s still nighttime and Riccardo is throwing rocks at dogs when he comes upon Dario’s broken body. He starts crying because he knows that he helped show him the way to heaven. The dogs bark at his rocks. He had no idea that evil could multiply itself so fast.

  The silence of the earth seems to meld with the silence of the sky. The mystery of the city and the sea combine with the mystery of the stars. I’m standing before an infertile sea. But suddenly, as if someone had mowed me down, I kneel on the salty beach. My land. I can feel something sink inside of me. It’s a clear and almost tangible sensation. The sea wets my knees and feet. It would like to wash me away like a sandcastle that you build during the daytime. The pain is so strong that I am tempted not to offer any resistance. But I promised I wouldn’t leave him alone. My mouth and face are covered in sand: This is my land, no matter what the taste. Petrarch was wrong. In life, there are certain dreams that last forever.

  The little girl sits silently looking out over the sea. It seems compact and motionless. She watches it from the empty arches of her refuge. Now that she knows how to swim, she is less afraid of it. The sea is still there, as if nothing had happened, and the stars shine furiously. Who knows where Doll has gone? Then, suddenly, she gets up and starts walking. Nothing and no one can stop her. There is nothing and there is no one who awaits her in this port.

  Chapter 37

  The newspapers talk about the priest. Fifty-six years old. Thirty-three years in the clergy, three in Brancaccio. Those are the figures released by the local press.

  ‘These are the type of murders that give you satisfaction,’ says the one who is driving.

  ‘If you ask me, we should have kept this quiet,’ answers the other one.

  ‘He had it coming,’ the first one reassures him.

  ‘Stop for a second. I need to take a leak,’ says Nuccio, interrupting them.

  The car stops in the middle of the countryside.

  Nuccio walks through the burned stubble as the evening forces the sun to slow its fix on people and on things.

  ‘Let’s do some grilling tonight.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ says Nuccio without turning around.

  ‘We need to get the meat.’

  ‘What meat should we get?’

  ‘Mutton.’

  ‘Where should we get it?’ asks Nuccio.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘What do you mean, here?’ He zips up his pants and turns around. He doesn’t understand.

  The other one points a gun at him.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  And he fires. The countryside swallows up the sound.

  Nuccio keels over, landing on the ground. He tries to crawl through his own urine.

  He has a helpless look on his face, like a child who doesn’t know why he’s being punished by his father.

  ‘This will teach you not to take advantage of the orders you are given. Maria’s money. Skimming your protection money. The daughter of the furniture store guy. You haven’t learned what it means to follow orders. We are not punks who do things like this.’

  He grabs Nuccio by the hair and lifts up his head.

  ‘What’s that you’
re saying? I can’t hear you! Speak up!’

  The boy tries to say something but he’s unable to comply with this order after his head is blown into a thousand pieces by another shot fired just an inch or so from his face.

  ‘Die!’ growls the one who’s doing the shooting.

  They burn the body sufficiently, put it in a bag, and leave it in the trunk. This time, Nuccio will follow his orders to a tee.

  Totò has a straw in his hand and he’s waving it in the silent air of the kitchen.

  His mother starts laughing when she walks in.

  ‘Sweetheart, have you lost your mind?’

  ‘I’m conducting, Mom,’ answers the boy.

  ‘Conducting what?’

  ‘A concert.’

  ‘A concert with no instruments?’

  ‘Can’t you see them?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘What are you saying? They’re all there. Strings, percussion . . .’

  ‘I can’t hear them.’

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t hear them? Now the woodwinds come in.’

  He cues them with a wave of his hand.

  ‘You’re making all of this up.’

  ‘No. It’s a concert in honor of Don Pino.’

  ‘I know it’s very sad, Totò. But Don Pino isn’t with us anymore.’

  ‘But he’s right here listening. And he’s smiling.’

  ‘They killed Don Pino. Who’s going to be the referee at our soccer games now?’

  ‘What referee?’

  ‘He used to let us play soccer and he would be the referee.’

  ‘Referees are losers and cops.’

  ‘Not him. He was good at it.’

  ‘Someone else will take his place. How hard can it be to be a referee?’

  ‘But where will we find someone who doesn’t cheat?’

  ‘You can still play even if you don’t have a referee.’

  ‘Why did they kill him, Dad? Was he bad?’

  ‘There are no good people in this city.’

  ‘But he seemed like he was a good person.’

  The Hunter doesn’t answer. He has seen plenty of dead people in his lifetime. But the deadest of all is the boy that he used to be.

  Giuseppe comes into the room with his head held low. He sees me and Manfredi. I wouldn’t have been able to make it here without my brother today. After everything that has happened, I need to stay away from Brancaccio for a while, even though I did go to the funeral with my family. My father said that I should tell this story someday. And I promised him that I would.

  Giuseppe’s eyes are filled with tears. He sits down, crumpled over himself and sobbing. He has the copy of Pinocchio that Don Pino gave him and he hugs it like it was his friend’s arm.

  Manfredi is standing in the corner and doesn’t say anything.

  ‘What am I supposed to do now?’

  ‘I’ll come and see you if you want. I promised Don Pino that I wouldn’t leave him alone.’

  ‘What does that have to do with me?’

  ‘Aren’t you kind of his son?’

  Giuseppe dries his face and eyes by rubbing them on his arm. He nods.

  I’m really all that’s left of him, even though I am the Federico who likes to say the word though.

  Hamil walks along the Cala, the seaside promenade. The sea frightens him.

  As the poet from his land says: I do not ride the sea because it frightens me / with its perils / I am mud and it is water / and mud dissolves in water.

  On this day, life seems like the sea and he feels made of mud. He no longer has his friend at his side and he no longer has anyone to whom he can tell the stories of his land.

  A carriage with a couple of tourists heads down the street. A gray horse is pulling it along with a lazy coachman at the reins. It reminds him how stories can save the listener from desperation and how those who know how to tell stories mustn’t ever lose the fire that drives them to tell those stories.

  Lucia rings Serena’s intercom fruitlessly. The blinds at her father’s store are lowered. Sometimes it happens that things disappear into the sea without leaving a trace. With the same desperate abandon, Serena turned back around for the last time from the stairs to the airplane and she looked out over the blue expanse. She no longer has an anchor to keep her in that city, nor does she have the strength to face it. Never again. Never again.

  The school principal looks at the schedule that has been formulated expressly for Don Pino. The boxes with the name ‘Puglisi’ written in them hurt more than a cemetery headstone.

  Once he happened to see a flock of wild birds fly over a cage filled with birds of the same species. The birds had been raised in captivity and had never learned to fly. Fearful but seduced by the sight of the other birds, the caged birds tried to flap their wings like the birds they saw. They were restless and full of hope. But they were also uncertain of their surroundings and their possibilities. It was with the same grace that that man, with wings unfurled, passed over lives that were sometimes in cages. And when he would do so, it would generate restlessness and hope.

  They were counting on his teaching load. And the principal knows that he won’t be able to find a substitute: The kids in those classes will become orphans.

  Lucia and I walk the streets in silence, as if the funeral procession had never ended after the funeral. It’s a sort of ritual of reconciliation with what has happened. We sit under the protection of the Genie of Palermo in the middle of the pathways and geometric spaces on the grounds of Villa Giulia.

  ‘I miss him.’

  ‘I miss him, too. But we can’t allow the pain to ruin everything. We’ll do what people do in the country. We’ll build a wall around the citrus trees so that the hot wind can’t burn them.’

  ‘I’m scared that I won’t be strong enough.’

  ‘We’ll try, together. I promised him I would.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He asked me to take care of you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘I promised him I would.’

  We sit there in silence and stare at this sky streaked with clouds and wounded by the flight of a seagull or two. The shell shape of the port opens up like a hug. The light seems to be coming out of things instead of being poised upon them. And the shadows are all part of the masterpiece, which would not be there otherwise. There is no such thing as a painting made only from light.

  ‘I wrote a poem for you.’

  ‘Read it to me.’

  I open a sheet of paper with my best handwriting and I begin to read. You can hear a little bit of shyness in my voice.

  Where are you when I need my soul sewn

  Silently?

  Girl full of light,

  Can you mend a boy

  Made of wind?

  I search for your name,

  Though you don’t have one.

  I found you where darkness

  Seemed endless,

  Between the waves of stormy seas

  You emerged, like a seed

  That arrives from afar.

  Small like a caress

  It settles on virgin land

  To bear its fruit.

  I am that land,

  Your name is not a dream.

  ‘You’re worse than an octopus.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You squirt ink when you need to defend yourself. You’d be lost without words.’

  ‘It’s true. But those are my five words, plus yours. That makes ten words to make us.’

  I look at her and I realize that I must have a comical expression on my face because she lets out a little laugh, like a wave splashing.

  She touches my face with her fingers.

  ‘Well, I like you as an octopus.’

  Lucia puts her ear on my chest in silence.

  Everybody thinks that life is what’s supposed to make you happy. But I have realized something: All you need is courage to be happy. To embrace the sky and the earth in your heart, you need quite a
bit of it. But I also know that that courage is somehow inside of me, like a seed that is small at first and then becomes a tree with big, strong branches, limbs that can provide shade and safety. It’s capable of being wounded and taking in the seasons. Of dying every winter and budding every spring, summing up its life and death in rings that grow wider and wider as they unite sky and earth.

  I gently touch her lips and our shared longing subsides for a moment as it unites our breath.

  Chapter 38

  From his balcony, Mimmo the policeman watches the crowd that has gathered in Piazza Anita Garibaldi. It’s a faint image of the funeral winding its way through the astonished streets of Brancaccio. It is a fearful sight for those who know something but say nothing and for those who don’t know anything and still say nothing.

  He’s a cop with a pot belly but his head is as sharp as Detective Columbo’s. And like Columbo, he smokes incessantly. His mind spins around and around like a top.

  Two contradictory things happened.

  The body of a boy, burned and nearly unidentifiable, was found that morning at dawn a block from the piazza where the execution occurred. In Mafia code, this means that he was the person who committed the murder. Priests aren’t murdered. The Mafia doesn’t murder them.

  Actually, the Mafia likes to keep things clean. The dots begin to connect: The stolen bag, the robbery, and the .32 Automatic point to someone with little experience.

  They haven’t been able to identify the boy. His face and body were too burned. It was probably a stereo and car thief who didn’t live in Brancaccio. Or it could have been a drug addict. And so it was this low-level criminal who killed Don Pino.

  But Mimmo isn’t buying it. Around here, dissimulation is a fine art. The message is clear: Where there is no government, the Mafia will run things. Once again, people can feel safe. The Mafia feeds on the neighborhood and it provides the neighborhood with food. Just like God. Actually, better than God, because God makes you work too hard for your daily bread.

  Then something else happened that definitively convinced him that the boy’s execution was a decoy. The funeral procession went down Via San Ciro. On the door of a framing shop on that street, someone posted a photo of a fat, smiling man sitting at a table during a family gathering. In the confusion of the funeral, no one bothered to look at it carefully. But it was a photo of Totò Riina together with a noted family from Brancaccio. Order has been restored. And its patron saint, from the sanctuary of his prison cell, is being shown in the streets of the neighborhood.