Bella Mia

(2003)

PREFACE

In the small hours of the 6th April 2009 an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude on the Richter scale struck Italy, with the city of L’Aquila in the central Abruzzo region at its epicentre. The tremor lasted for 20 seconds. Italy has a long history of earthquakes: in 1703 L’Aquila was decimated by a major tremor that killed 5,000 people. In April 2009, more than 300 died, over 1,500 were injured and around 65,000 had to leave their homes. It was the deadliest earthquake in Italy since 1980, when more than 2,500 people were killed near Naples.

Despite months of foreshocks leading up to April 2009, many in L’Aquila had chosen to stay in their homes after receiving assurances from the Italian National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks. Laws had been introduced after the 1980 catastrophe, obliging construction to be carried out according to anti-earthquake standards, with politics and corruption often blamed for the poor enforcement of these laws.

This story takes place in the aftermath of the 2009 earthquake, when the homeless have been housed in temporary accommodation while awaiting reconstruction, some in prefabs known as M.A.P. (Modulo Abitativo Provvisorio, Temporary Residential Unit, also used as classrooms in schools), others in the C.A.S.E. (Complessi Antisismici Sostenibili ed Ecocompatibili – Sustainable and eco-compatible earthquake-proof housing complexes). Other temporary buildings mentioned in the text are M.U.S.P. (Modulo ad Uso Scolastico Provvisorio – Temporary School Modules).

The C.A.S.E. project consists of 185 buildings in 19 locations, a total of 4,500 flats housing over 15,000 people. The blocks of furnished flats, over two or three storeys, were built on earthquake-proof ‘platforms’, resting on pillars designed to isolate the buildings from the ground in the event of another earthquake. The acronym spells the Italian word for ‘homes’.

1

He sits in his place, a shaggy head hanging over the bowl. The steam from the soup enlarges the pores of his spotty skin and curls the long, thin hairs sprouting aimlessly, not yet planning to become a beard. From the noise of his cutlery you’d think he’s working hard, but he eats very little. He pushes his food around for a long time, but the spoon going to his mouth is almost empty. He avoids our eyes, he knows that we are looking at him and counting the calories ingested and those left on the plate.

He chews on his own silence.

I can’t quite love this boy, not completely. Tall, skinny, a body made of broken lines, with no curves, an unexpected fragility in the outline of his legs just under the knee. His grandmother still treats him like a little boy; as for me, I don’t know how to approach him. He’s an adolescent, he seems younger sometimes.

I felt an easy tenderness for him when he was a little boy with dark curls and a heart-shaped little mouth; he had plenty of the grace needed by the young to ensure the preservation of the species, back then. I would bombard him with kisses on those weary afternoons he was left with me. He used to smell like a puppy, now he leaves a trail of stale armpit and unwashed hair sometimes, as he goes by without a sound. With his T-shirt off, he’s a landscape of protruding ribs on one side, and vertebrae on the other. He stoops, in the posture of someone who has just stopped, with his belly, a ball kicked hard at him. I don’t always recognise him at a distance, from the back. He has grown so quickly.

We find ourselves around this reconstructed table that belongs to none of us. We all used to have our own: the widowed grandmother in her village house, me in the centre of town, and him, with his mother, not far away. The two of them had been back a year and a half, when it happened. Now we’re together, the three of us alone in the flat we have been assigned. He is ours, my nephew, my mother’s grandson.

We didn’t need the earthquake, we already had our own tribulations. But my sister had been happy to come back with her son. An acceptable compromise, she used to say. She had found her way back to old places, suspended friendships, a slower pace of life. It had quickly softened the separation.

On Sunday afternoons in winter we’d find each other having coffee at our mother’s place, sitting under the low-hanging light in the dining room. She spoiled us, a little chocolate materialising, as if by chance, next to the steaming cup. Later there would be a bowl of fruit peeled by invisible hands, and the excuse of having to pick up the laundry from the line in the yard to facilitate confidences between the two of us.

When he was not out with friends he’d come along, headphones on. He’d leave us on the outside. He does the same some mornings now, if he misses the bus and I drive him in. He turns the music pouring into his ears into a barbed-wire fence between me and him. At those times perhaps he feels more vulnerable, more careful of protecting his distance. He holds himself inside his coat, pulls up the collar, uses the cloth as a barrier and makes himself unreachable. He looks stubbornly out of the window, or at the hem of his trousers and his shoes. He holds on so tight to avoid being thrown against me on a right turn, that his knuckles go white. When we turn the other way, he flattens himself against the glass, his face and shoulder facing out. Only his sharp corners are visible to me – his thigh, his elbow – should I be thrown off against him. When we get to school I barely hear his goodbye, but he closes the car door with unexpected consideration.

A few days ago we met outside the front door to the block, him carrying his backpack and me, heavy bags of shopping. He was ahead by a few steps, mumbled a hint of a greeting and left the door open for me before heading upstairs. But then, having dropped his burden on our landing, he came downstairs again to help, taking the potatoes and the mineral water pack hanging from my index finger, which was already turning blue. I thanked him, but there was no reply.

2

God helped my mother from the start, he came to her with the power of his voice to give meaning to her torment. He also gave her the courage to look for someone to print the funeral notices, the madness of having them posted in two or three spots in the accessible ring around the historic centre. Her daughter must not do without anything, in her death.

Some days I would drive past them and feel shame at seeing her plastered on the grey cement. One night I stopped, I tried the corner of a poster with a fingernail, but it was stuck fast, it didn’t want to come off. I gave up almost at once. With my open hand I stroked the name, vowels and consonants. She had been my sister.

They fall apart ever so slowly, those posters. The shine from the glue goes first, then the ink starts to fade, and a little corner of the paper comes off at the top. Rain and wind work on that breach, insinuating themselves between wall and paper, until it starts to come off and folds onto itself, hiding the text. One morning they were gone.

My mother invokes him, her God, and is consoled. I, in my raw unbelief, imagine recognising him here on Earth and dragging him, by that blue mantle Sunday school children draw for him in their exercise books, through a guided tour of the disaster’s ruins. She prays with measured fervour, for the dead one and the living. Our boy is quite gentle with his grandmother, he even looks at her, and lifts the corners of his mouth in an attempt to smile when she talks to him.

In the morning we leave together – he goes to school, I go to work, the other one tidies up then takes the bus to the cemetery. She takes a rather large bag containing all she deems necessary to tend to the graves, a cleaning product and a microfibre cloth. She buys flowers from the stall by the entrance, blowing half her pension on those. Every day is All Souls’ Day for her. She performs the same meticulous gestures: throws away the old gerbera daisies, which are actually still fresh, and replaces them with new ones of a different colour, arranging them in the vase with soft fingers to show the bunch at its best. She polishes the white stone, the smile in the photo she chose herself. At almost regular intervals, she turns helplessly towards our neighbour, collapsed further down the row over the marble enclosing her own daughter.

The little girl was six on the night of the earthquake. My father is in another section – there was no space next to him. My mother neglects him a little, the recent bereavement has set him aside in her heart. She can tolerate a few days’ dust on his portrait, the flower heads are allowed to droop and bend to gravity before they are replaced.

I go with her some Sundays. I stand aside while she works. At times I feel a sort of nausea and have to walk away. If the range and speed of her movements exceed a certain level, I feel seasick. I never say anything, taking a few steps back is enough. I leave her to her usual occupation, she needs it. Only at the beginning I protested weakly, about the posters, the photo on the headstone. She walks out of the gate as if satisfied, and stops a few minutes with the florist. They’ve become friends over time.

‘I should get some pink gerberas tomorrow morning; shall I keep a bunch for you?’

‘Yes, it’s been a while since you had some, how come?’

‘I don’t know, who knows anything with these suppliers. But tomorrow, it’s almost certain, I’ll keep some for you.’

‘In that case I’ll take a few more, and replace my husband’s flowers too, his are nearly wilted.’

‘There’s a discount if you buy two. Are you going shopping now? In this cold?’

Yes, she usually goes to the market on weekdays. Seasonal fruit and vegetables for us, those from the farmers, and then off home to make lunch. She takes the eleven-thirty bus; there are no more after that.

She has got used to the flat, she uses it for what it’s for. At the start, the whiff of new was unbearable for her too. In the space of a month she managed to impregnate it with the delicate scents of healthy cooking. When we came, more than two years ago, we already knew we would find a bottle of bubbly in the fridge, from the government. The first thing I did was to open the bottle, without shaking it, rotating the cork slowly between my thumb and index finger to stop it popping. Then I drained it into the sink, holding it by the neck right down over the plug-hole. Once the pipe had guzzled it all, I dumped the bottle in the rubbish bin. My mother looked over respectfully, following me with her eyes.

Some of the older people from platforms four and five try to cultivate the unpaved ground around the C.A.S.E. They plant their seeds at the right time, get some allotments going. There are a few, one after the other, towards the road, precise rectangles. At harvest time, the old-age pensioners get downstairs more or less at the same time, they talk among their tomato plants, comment on the weather and show their neighbour from across the landing where parasites have attacked the skin of the fruit. I watch them on Sunday mornings, the cruellest day of the week, while smoking a cigarette at the window. They’re so slow, standing among the vegetables in the light mist rising from the broken soil. On the stairs I spy the colours of the vegetables in their baskets, while they walk up to hand them to their wives. I’m surprised at their loyalty to the treacherous earth.

In autumn they methodically sweep up dead leaves, even when the wind spitefully blows them off right away to scratch the concreted square with their crumpled edges. They know the difference between useful and pointless actions, and alternate them in the constant effort to fill the time. When it snows they use light, wide-bladed shovels, the plastic ones you get now. They breathe out steam clouds as they work, the cold air stilling the tangle of wrinkles carved on faces reddened by cardiovascular disease.

My mother won’t waste her green thumbs on this place – we’ll leave anyway, she says, and she would be sorry to leave God’s gift behind, that’s what she calls it. So for us it’s only geraniums on the balcony in summer, nothing more. We can take those with us. She dispenses daily water to them, tucks the soil back in or removes dried bits. They only give off their scent when touched.

She does not want to get used to this temporary accommodation. I see her measure out her contact with the neighbours so as not to get too close. But she does speak with reserved and compassionate consideration to the woman who has survived her little girl, when she occasionally lifts her head from the abyss.

The flat has three rooms: I gave mine to Marco when he came to stay with us two years ago, Mum and I share the other. She keeps it neat and clean, but displays the detachment of someone who waits with surreal patience to repair the house back in the village. It’s a strange dream for someone no longer young; she says she owes it to dad, that his family had lived there for generations and he had refurbished the house himself, before getting married. I remind her warily that dad has been gone a long time, he doesn’t know about the earthquake, and he won’t know about a possible Reconstruction. What’s that got to do with it? He sees everything from up there, she answers sternly, with the look she gave me when I told her I would not be confirmed. After a while she sits down, and as she half-closes her eyes she opens the old front door oiled by hand with a cloth. She steps into the vaguely musty smell of the tiny entrance hall and places her foot on the first step of the steep staircase leading up to where the voices of us twins echo shrilly, Olivia’s happier and sharper. We were all alive, then.

3

I come across one of the squads patrolling the