Lost Words (17 page)

“Go where? I wouldn't know how to choose . . . Italy is so big! To think that going from my hometown to Milan takes eleven hours on the train! And it takes just as long to go back . . . Then there's Sicily, Sardinia . . . But I'm not interested in vacations or trips. All I ever wanted to do was retire to my own home, close the door, and not see anyone. Like now . . .”

She had suddenly become more beautiful, the way she used to be. Even my father noticed. I hadn't heard their mattress springs squeak that way in months.

*.

Click click click click click
. . .
Click click click click click . . .
Hunt and peck . . .
Click click click click click click . . . Ding! . . . Click click click click click . . .
The letters fell on the sheet of paper like drops of rain, the page wrote itself.
Ding! . . . Ding! . . . Ding! . . .

I decided to knock. The sound of the typewriter came to a stop.

“Come in . . .” said the youthful voice of the Professor.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open.

“My mother would like to invite you to lunch,” I said from the doorway.

From where I stood, the interior seemed to have changed. The Professor was seated at a desk that hadn't been there before and a new light, the light of summer, shone on every surface.

He stood up from the desk and came toward me.

“How kind of you. I'm happy to accept . . .”

In the elevator he kept looking at me, but he didn't say a word.

My mother, certain that the Professor would accept the invitation, had already set the table for three. She had taken out the blue linen tablecloth and the tall glasses. Her lips were red with lipstick.

“Professor Foschi! Welcome! Do come in!”

“Would you please stop calling me Professor! My name is Ippolito . . .”

She poured him a glass of wine.

“But I thought you were one. With those boxes and boxes of books you brought! Well, I hardly know what to call you . . . if I can't call you a ‘co-owner,' or a ‘professor.'”

“Actually I did teach, once upon a time . . .” he admitted, with a bashful smile. “Where should I sit?”

“Wherever you like . . . there, in my husband's place. And what did you teach?”

“A little bit of everything, but mostly English.”

“Just like the Maestra . . .so, you are a Professor! Why deny it? You're always denying the obvious. You're the owner of an apartment and you say you're not an owner. You taught and you say you're not a professor. Make people respect you, you've got every right! Others wouldn't think twice about flaunting their titles, with ‘contractor' or ‘accountant' engraved on their name plates . . .”

She was referring to Caselli and Dell'Uomo. The Professor nodded.

“They can write whatever they want on their name plates, if that's what matters to them. I don't care about titles. I think they're a form of insecurity. Even at school, when I used to teach, the kids would call me by my name, Ippolito . . .”

“But that's not right,” my mother protested, while piling his plate high with rice salad. “You need some distance. Otherwise the kids take advantage and lose respect . . .”

“That's not true. My kids always respected me. Respect is a question of feeling, not of titles . . . What difference does a title make if we don't associate it with what our feelings dictate to us? Otherwise it's just a sound, a lie . . . I don't need lies. We already hear enough of them from politicians, don't you think?”

Lies! Lies! Lies!
as the Maestra used to say.

“Can we please not talk about politics? I already hear enough about it from my husband! In my opinion, you, Ippolito, think people are better than they actually are. You don't know how awful they can be, from the moment they're born. They tease you, disobey you, treat you like a servant . . . Listen to me, I know a thing or two about it. People are cruel!”

“You're exaggerating! . . . sometimes they're cruel, but only sometimes . . . Children know right from wrong—if we're honest with them. If they don't learn from their parents, they can learn somewhere else . . . At school, on the street, from anyone. We can't give up hope . . .”

My mother placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Ippolito, you're talking like a priest!”

He fidgeted in his chair. “You really need to label me, don't you? And now you're calling me a priest?”

“You're not offended, I hope?”

“A little,” he said, ironically. “I have a hard time putting up with priests . . .”

“So I was wrong to think you were a good person . . . you're better off the way you are! Every good deed is punished. Take me, for example.”

“Are you a good person?” he asked.

My mother was speechless. How dare he! Of course she was good! Wasn't she feeding him? If she hadn't been good, would she have spent the whole morning slicing hot dogs, opening cans of peas, and boiling rice? Couldn't the professor see for himself?

“I think I am,” she replied. “I don't hurt anyone. I'm good. Absolutely. And others take advantage of me . . .”

“What others?”

“What do you mean ‘What others'? The tenants, the folks who have turned into co-owners. They think I'm their servant . . .”

“And who lets them think that?”

“Don't look at me!”

“Are you sure you're not imagining things? That it's not one of your fears?”

My mother was starting to fret. So was I. The Professor was enjoying twisting things around too much.

“Why should I be afraid? And of what? I'm not ashamed of who I am!”

“You're confusing things. Fear is one thing. Shame is another. So let's settle this by saying you're a very proud woman . . .”

I recognized the Maestra in his love of making distinctions. It was an annoying argument, but I liked it.

“Yes, you're right. I am
proud
,” she conceded.

Thanks to that adjective, which sounded almost like a compliment, her good mood was restored. To celebrate she poured a little red wine into her own glass.

“Why isn't Chino at the seaside like all the other children his age?” the Professor asked, suddenly shifting the conversation to me.

“Where would I send him? I don't have any family.”

“There are summer camps.”

“Please. The camps are for poor children whose mothers don't want them around. Or for the handicapped kids from the asylum! Luckily my son is healthy and intelligent. And I enjoy having him home with me. We get along great, don't we? . . . Luca is used to staying in Milan. He keeps his mother company. By the way, his name isn't Chino. His real name is Luca. That's what the Maestra always called him. So it's about time that the rest of us called him Luca, too. By now he's almost a man . . .”

“Would you mind telling me who this Maestra is?”

“Your mother—Miss Lynd!”

The Professor turned his head toward me, giving me a severe look.

“Did you know the . . . Maestra?”

“Did he ever!” my mother responded for me. “He went upstairs to see her every afternoon. If I'd let him, he would've stayed there overnight!”

“She taught me English,” I explained.

“Do you know English?!”

“So-so . . .”

“Don't be so modest! Tell the Professor how many words you know! He was so crazy about English! Day and night with his notebook open. Sometimes he'd even start speaking English with me, didn't you, Chino? Do you remember?”

“How many words do you know?” the Professor asked me.

“Five thousand,” I said.

He swallowed his last gulp of wine. “Then you're just the person I need, Luca.”

*.

I helped with the unpacking this time, too. I took out lamps, musical scores, fans, pitchers, cups, clocks, dozens and dozens of useless, bizarre objects that spoke of distant places and times, of long-gone days and occupations. And papers! A sheet of paper here, a card there, a little notebook. Those big boxes contained the last splinters of the glorious wreck!

How often I'd imagined what the Maestra's dictionary might look like. Here was imagination transformed into reality, the coveted second chance . . . No, it was not lost, as she had wanted me to believe and—who knows!—maybe she herself believed. Her son had taken the trouble to rescue it! And I, by some twist of fortune—if my name really meant what the Maestra had wanted it to mean—found myself helping him in the final phase of the rescue.

I shook with emotion: that fundamental part of the Maestra had arrived, through countless roads, all the way here, to the sadness of Via Icaro, where I lived, and now, finally, at the end of its adventure, it was revealed to me.

Ippolito couldn't imagine how happy I was, and I didn't feel right in telling him about it. I pretended not to know the meaning of those yellowed pieces of paper, whose story, for that matter, he hadn't even bothered to explain to me. In that final phase of his venture, I was a simple assistant, an extra: the triumph belonged to him, and to him alone, the true son . . .

Sitting in his living room, near the window, I started dictating. The definitions were written very clearly. Most of them were the work of copyists, but many had been written by the Maestra herself. Through my lips passed, one syllable at a time, some of the definitions that my second mother had conceived in a long-forgotten time, when she was in love with humankind and still fooled herself into thinking she could help humanity grow through certain definitions . . .

Some of the most beautiful lines from English and American literature passed through my hands: descriptions, portraits of real or imagined people, thoughts, examples . . . Every page was struck through with lines of various lengths, crossing out entire passages. Because of space limitations, the dictionary required short citations, only a few crumbs of the best bread of writers, as if literature was forbidden from entering into the world of everyday language, and could only glimpse it through the bars of a deletion.

I enunciated out loud, like a teacher to a pupil, and the fun of dictating brought forth a pride that I had never felt, not even when the Maestra had paid me her first compliments. But there was a huge difference between the Maestra and Ippolito: she treated me like a child, he like a man. A compliment from the Maestra was an award; the trust of Ippolito a recognition.

*.

We would work all morning, and at one o'clock go downstairs for lunch. Unlike the Maestra, Ippolito ate heartily. He never refused a second helping. During lunch he liked asking my mother about her work, her interests, her opinions. And although the Professor never eased up his argumentative or teasing tone, she would answer cheerfully. Someone was finally taking her seriously and listening to her.

She was curious about his life, too, and she, too, had a lot of questions for him, but the Professor had an exceptional talent for always changing the subject to something else. He didn't enjoy talking about himself, just like the Maestra. My mother tried anyway. We learned that he had stopped teaching a few years earlier, choosing to retire early so he could dedicate himself wholly to the dictionary. We also learned that he was fifty years old . . . My mother was amazed he was already so
old
—the exact word she used—and she immediately tried to make amends, saying that he still looked like a youth: he had all his hair, no signs of a belly, he moved with agility, dressed like a boy. She added that age didn't matter—and, in fact, her husband was much older than her, too. Finally, after many questions that skirted the subject, she managed to ask him the one closest to her heart: “Ippolito, were you ever married?”

He didn't answer. Without explanation, he dropped onto his plate the slice of watermelon into which he had been biting—leaving a pattern in the rind not unlike the decorative motif of a wood inlay—and stood up from the table. My mother felt awful. She stood up, too.

“Where are you going? . . . Don't you want a coffee?” she proposed, in an attempt to salvage the situation.

“No thank you. It's time for me to get back to my Olivetti typewriter.
Mille grazie
, I'll return the favor . . .”

My mother came to the conclusion that the Professor had gotten burned when he was young. He was too good—women weren't interested in men like him, so considerate and understanding . . . And they didn't deserve him! With women, especially certain kinds of women, you need to take the upper hand . . . Women are witches!

She'd finally stopped acting like her life was over. The Vignolas' apartment, the building, her husband—all was forgotten. With just a touch of make-up, she hid the last vestiges of disappointment, highlighting her charming and open facial features, and kept her hair gathered in a bun, exposing her pretty neck to the light of day. Rather than her usual faded cotton T-shirt, she put on a colorful sleeveless top that emphasized her breasts and hips, and on her finger she wore her diamond. I became aware of her beauty and even found myself worrying about her, as if she were a delicate flower that would fall apart at the first breeze.

Nor did my mother's sudden transformation escape the notice of Ippolito. He noticed her diamond, too. How could he not, when she was always waving it under his nose?

“I hope you don't think that it's fake?” she teased.

“Of course I don't. You're so mean! Is it a present from your husband?”

“It's a gift I made to
myself
! I'm still paying for it . . . My husband doesn't appreciate certain things. In the evening, before he comes home, I have to take it off and hide it in the closet. Otherwise all hell will break loose.”

“You're kidding . . .”

“That's the way husbands are. What can we do? Paride has no love for the things I care about. In his opinion I just want to imitate the signore. I know, I'm not a signora. I'm a working woman. But why shouldn't I have a ring, too? I work hard morning, noon, and night, I keep my household running—why, I keep a whole five-story building running! I don't even go on vacation! I have the right to indulge myself every now and then, don't I? But you understand certain things. I've never had anything. Look how shiny it is! Do you like it?”