Lost Words (22 page)

“Signora Dell'Uomo is right. We need to stop this before it's too late,” said Signora Rovigo, also leaping to her feet.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” intoned Signora Zarchi, indignant, “don't mind me, but I'll be leaving now. Pardon my saying so, but, honestly, I find this meeting ridiculous. Nothing but gratuitous alarmism.” Without uttering another word, she walked out, leaving a cloud of rosewater perfume in her wake.

Dell'Uomo looked at the others and shrugged her shoulders. Terzoli tried to whisper something into Paolini's ear, but everyone could hear it. “Zarchi only talks that way because she's of the same ilk.”

“Let's hear what the doorwoman has to say?” Vezzali proposed. “Elvira, you know the Professor well. You had lunch together in the loge every day this summer, it would seem. Your son, I have heard, spent long hours at his house . . . Doing
what
exactly?”

My mother roused herself from a kind of daze. “I know the Professor well enough to consider him a fine person,” she affirmed, with one hand over her heart. “My son, it's true, spent a lot of time with him this summer, and I can assure you that nothing bad happened to him.”

“Are you sure?” Vezzali insinuated.

“Of course I'm sure! My son was helping the Professor write an English dictionary. The Professor is a lexic . . . a lexic . . .”—the word wouldn't come to her, and I whispered it but she didn't hear—“what I mean to say is, he writes dictionaries. You think he doesn't work, but you're wrong. He works very hard! He's always hunched over the typewriter, do you understand? Can't you hear the typing through his door? He
defines words
!”

The chairwoman wasted no time commenting on this piece of information. “And your son acted as his assistant, no less? How is it possible that a Professor comes to choose a boy as an assistant? The whole thing sounds like a setup! Don't you think that maybe the Professor took advantage of your son's innocence? We all know how certain things go: the older person wins the trust of the younger one through some kind of reward and then, when he asks for something in exchange, the younger one can't say no.”

“I wouldn't even dream of it!” my mother responded. “Do you think I would leave my son in the hands of a maniac?”

“I'm not saying that you knew . . .”

“I repeat: the Professor is a good, honest man. There's not many good people like him left in the world. He doesn't even see the evil around him! He would never do anything bad . . . He is . . . a genius! None of you understand. If he seems strange, it's because his mind is occupied with his own thoughts, with Latin, with
English. He knows lots of poems by heart. All of literature . . .”

“You hear what the doorwoman's got to say?” the seamstress laughed. “You can't expect her to betray her little Professor. Why don't we ask her how much money she socked away from their little lunches?”

“What? How dare you!” my mother snapped. “My money I earn myself, off the sweat of my brow.”

Dell'Uomo asked her to calm down, but she could not be contained. “You invited me here to cover me with shit!”

“Nice way to express yourself,” said Terzoli, scandalized.

A hubbub filled the room. No one had ever seen my mother like this, not even me.

“Silence! Silence!” Dell'Uomo repeated.

My mother looked at her, eyes ablaze. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves. You think you're so high and mighty because you bought yourselves a hole in the wall, but you're nothing but derelicts! I would never want to be like you. You're cruel! You wouldn't hesitate to lock up Jesus Christ himself. Keep away from me! You're the ones who are perverts, not people like the Professor!”

Paolini pointed her index finger at her. “Watch your mouth!”

“We're not going to let her get away with this,” thundered Rovigo, “write everything down in the minutes.”

My mother was beside herself. “You're nothing but a gang of bullies! Dirty liars! You should be ashamed of yourselves!”

“You sold your soul to the devil!” cried the seamstress. “You'd do anything for money!”

“You ugly cow!” my mother retorted. And she hurled herself at the woman. If Vezzali's husband hadn't stopped her, the seamstress would've lost a few teeth in the melee.

“And the rest of you have nothing to say?” my mother asked the others, who were observing passively, as if they were at the movies. “You let them insult me like that without saying a word? Cowards!”

She was right. No one said anything.

“Let's hear what the son has to say,” Paolini proposed out of the blue. Those few words were enough to restore the silence.

“Good idea. Let's hear what the doorwoman's son has to say,” Vezzali seconded her.

I stood up and turned in their direction. They were hideous, each of them, even the meeker ones—a rush of ill feelings had left a grotesque frown on their faces. I started to say that the Professor and I were friends, that . . . my tears kept me from continuing. I still felt as if I were in his hallway, waiting for his voice to call me back . . .

“You see? What did I tell you!” Vezzali exulted.

*.

The smell of smoke forced the tenants on the fourth and fifth floors to rush out of their apartments.

Terzoli, who had more foresight than the others, brought with her a full battery of belongings. The only baggage that Signor Biondo carried was his wife, hanging onto his neck, who, in the commotion, looked like a sack of potatoes. He reminded me of Aeneas fleeing Troy with Anchises on his shoulders.

“Over there, Signor Biondo,” my mother instructed him. “You can lay her on my bed.”

The fire truck parked by the fountain. A team raced up the stairs with the water pump and evacuated the lower floors, where the residents continued to ignore what was happening above them. A group of men stood in the lobby to prevent more people from coming in.

My mother switched off the central electricity and went down to the cellar to turn off the gas before the whole building exploded. Flames came through the three windows in waves, sharp in the darkness of the winter afternoon. Everyone was staring at them from the center of the courtyard. Men and women, tall and short: shocked, silent, as if observing the apparition of a miraculous star. Everyone, except the Professor, who had decided not to come back home that evening.

The fire was out in a few minutes.

“Damn him, anyhow!” shouted Dell'Uomo, returning to the lobby with a gaggle of her followers. “A few more minutes and our apartments would have gone up in smoke, too!”

The sound of the firemen putting out the blaze echoed through the stairwell.

“Damn him!” repeated Terzoli. “You can smell it all the way down here. For Pete's sake! What are those guys up to now? I'm afraid they're going to break into my living room with their axes!”

And Vezzali. “He's going to have to pay for us to stay in a hotel!”

And Rovigo. “But the water damages the walls! I don't want any leak.”

And Paolini. “We'll have to change everything, from top to bottom, apartments and stairs. Luckily the building's insured. By the way, Elvira, have your already notified the manager?”

And Vezzali. “But for Foschi's apartment, the condominium mustn't pay a penny! Make sure you tell Aldrovanti, Elvira.
NOT A PENNY
!”

They blamed the whole business on the Professor, the only one who had lost everything. No one was thinking, no one dared to talk about revenge, not even the ones who, only two days earlier, at the notorious meeting, had possessed the courage to laugh. Not even Zarchi, who certainly didn't believe the Professor was guilty of anything, much less the fire. To avoid stoking their anger, she only said that everyone would have to keep their windows open for a few days and the smell would disappear.

“Brilliant,” Dell'Uomo attacked her, “all we need now is pneumonia!”

“Pneumonia would be a blessing!” her husband intervened. “All this smoke causes cancer!”

Once they had finished ranting, they went upstairs and quickly rounded up articles of clothing, and to the beat of carefully-staged coughing, migrated en masse toward the homes of friends and relatives. The only thing left in front of number 15 was our car and the car of the Professor.

The firemen finished carrying out the debris.

“You weren't able to save anything?” my mother asked the chief.

“What is it we were supposed to save, signora?” he replied ironically.

*.

Before Christmas the tenants had another meeting. The result of the vote was announced in a letter from the manager, sent by certified mail.

This is to inform you that the residents of Via Icaro 15, at their meeting of December 10, 1973, have decided to abolish doorman service for budgetary reasons. The rooms should be vacated by March 31, 1974. You are being offered the possibility to remain in the apartment with your family for a monthly rent of fifty thousand liras.

They were taking away both her job and her home, punishing her in the most vile manner possible. Yet she, the doorwoman, was not upset. A veil of relief had been spread over her tired soul. Finally she would be leaving that place. Finally she could turn her back on those people—it was an honor to be kicked out!

My father, instead, found the situation humiliating and dishonorable. He asked his trade union for help but, finding there was little they could do, said he was ready to pay rent. My mother, scandalized, called him crazy and threatened to ask for a divorce.

“If only you had let me buy an apartment when I wanted to,” she threw in his face, although now she was glad she hadn't bought a home in that vipers' nest.

On December 24, in the late afternoon, there was a knock on the door. I was studying the subjunctive mode in ancient Greek. My mother was watching television. We weren't expecting anyone.

“Who is it?” I asked.

Silence.

“Who is it?” my mother repeated.

More silence.

She got up and peeked through the shutters.

“What are you doing there like a mummy? Come in, come in!”

He was almost unrecognizable. He had turned older, uglier—years seemed to have passed since the fire. Even before he sat down, she told him we were being evicted.

“How is that possible? I'm so sorry!”

“Don't be sorry, Professor! I'm happy. They wanted to punish me, too. They never forgave me for being your friend. I'm the one who is sorry for you—I should've opposed them more staunchly. But who would've believed those witches could go so far?”

“Where will you live?”

“I'm sure we'll find a place somewhere. I'm not worried. I'm not worried about anything anymore. What's the point? . . . We're going to apply for public housing, then we'll see. I've set aside some money. Maybe one day my husband will resign himself to the idea of getting a mortgage.”

I was still angry with Ippolito. I'd forgiven him for abandoning me—I understood that to keep his distance from my mother, he also had to keep his distance from me—but I couldn't forgive him for the loss of the dictionary. He was the one who was really responsible for its destruction. The fire had been set by his blindness, by his stupid ideals . . . Since that night I hadn't been able to stop thinking of all the words that had been lost, words that would never again return. Never again. So much of my life had gone up in smoke along with them. The scene was still playing out in my mind: the seamstress and Vezzali vandalizing the apartment while Dell'Uomo stood look-out on the landing. And the seamstress who dumped all his papers on the ground and lit the match . . . And then, in a flurry, each of them racing home.

“Listen, Elvira,” the Professor resumed in a deep voice, reaching his hand out to the cup of coffee being offered to him, “I wanted to propose something . . . I don't think you need to apply for public housing. Who knows how long it would take? . . . Why not take my house?”

My mother gave him a severe look.

“Really. Please accept it,” he insisted, “I won't be coming back here.”

“What are you talking about?” she said defensively, like the time he'd given her the pearl necklace. “I couldn't possibly . . . don't you realize?”

She took the sponge and wiped down the surface of the gas stove.

“I'll sell it to you!” he proposed, with a melancholic enthusiasm. “Didn't you say that you wanted to buy a house? I'll give it to you for half of what I paid. It's not a lot of money . . . and with what you have left you can fix it up the way you want. There's a lot of damage.”

“I couldn't. I mean it,” she repeated.

“Pay me when you can! Please, say yes . . .”

“You are too kind, but really, I couldn't. I can't live in a place where they did this to us. Professor, do you realize what they did to you? . . . You are a true gentleman. . . You're a
genius
. I knew it the first time I met you—even though all of your arguments tried my patience. I told those witches, but look at how they treated you instead! You didn't deserve it—that's for sure . . . And I wasn't strong enough to help you when we still had a chance . . .”

Succumbing to tenderness, which restored the color in her cheeks and the spark in her eyes, she wasn't worried that my father might return or that I was there in the room, hearing and seeing everything.

“You are a true gentleman, Ippolito,” she repeated, unable to find another way to express what she had been feeling in her heart for too long. “I mean it. I admire you so much, Professor . . . I don't know what I wouldn't do for you . . . You did notice, didn't you? Everyone else did . . .”

He shook his head, disconsolate.

“Please stop, don't say that, Elvira. You need to be happy with your life, with your husband, with your son.”