‘Professor’.
As we sat down, he whispered ‘They’re going to think you’re my latest conquest.’
I wanted to say, ‘Since when do you care about what other people think?’ But I kept my mouth shut.
On the wall behind him, a drunk in an oil painting gave me the eye. There was an empty bottle on his table, his cap sat on his head at a jaunty angle, and two tears were running down his cheeks. In the painting beside it, an enormous orange sun shone down on two horses standing muzzle to muzzle and hoof to hoof, whether for rivalry or love was not clear. After all, my father would have said, they’re the same thing.
‘You should order the
brodetto con la polenta
,’ he suggested.
‘No, I’d rather have the fried calamari.’
While we waited, they brought us some antipasti and a bottle of white wine. It was the first time I’d ever seen him eat. I figured he’d treat his food, like everything else, with sovereign detachment; to my great surprise, however, he devoured everything greedily, with lowered head and swift fingers, as though he’d been fasting for a while.
Until then, he’d never asked me to tell him anything about myself and my life. Seeing him bent over his plate, I felt a well-grounded suspicion that it would have made no difference if I had been a mannequin or a cardboard cutout; things would have been exactly the same. But I wanted to know some things about him, and so, during our long wait for the main course, I interrogated him on the subject of his family.
His mother came from the island of Rhodes, and his father, Bruno Ancona, was a rug dealer. Actually, he’d graduated from the university with a degree in Business Economics, but then he’d inherited the rug business from his father-in-law. Faced with the choice between working for an insurance company and travelling all over the East, looking for the best pieces, he opted for the rugs. They lived in Venice, where my father was born in 1932.
Shortly before the Racial Laws were enacted in 1938, Bruno Ancona and his family, along with a chest full of rugs, boarded a ship bound for Brazil. Bruno’s wife, Massimo’s mother, had opposed this move with all her might; the meetings of her canasta club were regular and well-attended, all the ladies were still playing, and there was no reason for alarm.
They were Italians. Italians like everyone else.
Throughout the entire crossing, Bruno had to put up with his wife’s complaining. ‘You’ve got too much imagination,’ she kept telling him. ‘Your imagination’s dragging us down to ruin.’
Her torment continued uninterrupted even after they reached São Paolo. Everything was too much for her; the city was too damp, too hot, too dirty, too poor, too full of blacks, and what was worse, there was no one to play canasta with. She held out for two more years, and then she got sick and died.
‘A stupid woman, on the whole’ was my father’s comment. ‘Very beautiful, with olive skin and eyes like burning coals, but stupid.’
Bruno, on the other hand, wasn’t stupid at all; a year after becoming a widower, he got married again. His new wife was a dark-skinned Brazilian beauty, who produced a string of coloured kids.
After the war, Massimo had asked his father for his inheritance and returned to Europe. He’d never seen nor heard from him again; he didn’t even know whether he was dead or alive.
‘That’s not important, either,’ he concluded, avidly sucking the claw of some crustacean. ‘The past can’t be changed, and the future doesn’t belong to us. What really exists is the present. The moment, and nothing else, is what’s important.’
When I went back to Trieste that evening, the odour of fried food accompanied me all the way home. I was tired and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I had to take a shower first. I was afraid that dreary smell would get inside me somehow and mingle with my sadness.
9
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, I didn’t go to visit him.
His speeches had
As we sat down, he whispered ‘They’re going to think you’re my latest conquest.’
I wanted to say, ‘Since when do you care about what other people think?’ But I kept my mouth shut.
On the wall behind him, a drunk in an oil painting gave me the eye. There was an empty bottle on his table, his cap sat on his head at a jaunty angle, and two tears were running down his cheeks. In the painting beside it, an enormous orange sun shone down on two horses standing muzzle to muzzle and hoof to hoof, whether for rivalry or love was not clear. After all, my father would have said, they’re the same thing.
‘You should order the
brodetto con la polenta
,’ he suggested.
‘No, I’d rather have the fried calamari.’
While we waited, they brought us some antipasti and a bottle of white wine. It was the first time I’d ever seen him eat. I figured he’d treat his food, like everything else, with sovereign detachment; to my great surprise, however, he devoured everything greedily, with lowered head and swift fingers, as though he’d been fasting for a while.
Until then, he’d never asked me to tell him anything about myself and my life. Seeing him bent over his plate, I felt a well-grounded suspicion that it would have made no difference if I had been a mannequin or a cardboard cutout; things would have been exactly the same. But I wanted to know some things about him, and so, during our long wait for the main course, I interrogated him on the subject of his family.
His mother came from the island of Rhodes, and his father, Bruno Ancona, was a rug dealer. Actually, he’d graduated from the university with a degree in Business Economics, but then he’d inherited the rug business from his father-in-law. Faced with the choice between working for an insurance company and travelling all over the East, looking for the best pieces, he opted for the rugs. They lived in Venice, where my father was born in 1932.
Shortly before the Racial Laws were enacted in 1938, Bruno Ancona and his family, along with a chest full of rugs, boarded a ship bound for Brazil. Bruno’s wife, Massimo’s mother, had opposed this move with all her might; the meetings of her canasta club were regular and well-attended, all the ladies were still playing, and there was no reason for alarm.
They were Italians. Italians like everyone else.
Throughout the entire crossing, Bruno had to put up with his wife’s complaining. ‘You’ve got too much imagination,’ she kept telling him. ‘Your imagination’s dragging us down to ruin.’
Her torment continued uninterrupted even after they reached São Paolo. Everything was too much for her; the city was too damp, too hot, too dirty, too poor, too full of blacks, and what was worse, there was no one to play canasta with. She held out for two more years, and then she got sick and died.
‘A stupid woman, on the whole’ was my father’s comment. ‘Very beautiful, with olive skin and eyes like burning coals, but stupid.’
Bruno, on the other hand, wasn’t stupid at all; a year after becoming a widower, he got married again. His new wife was a dark-skinned Brazilian beauty, who produced a string of coloured kids.
After the war, Massimo had asked his father for his inheritance and returned to Europe. He’d never seen nor heard from him again; he didn’t even know whether he was dead or alive.
‘That’s not important, either,’ he concluded, avidly sucking the claw of some crustacean. ‘The past can’t be changed, and the future doesn’t belong to us. What really exists is the present. The moment, and nothing else, is what’s important.’
When I went back to Trieste that evening, the odour of fried food accompanied me all the way home. I was tired and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I had to take a shower first. I was afraid that dreary smell would get inside me somehow and mingle with my sadness.
9
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, I didn’t go to visit him.
His speeches had
Similar Books
