I call my mother and tell her that I’m not coming to Easter lunch. I won’t be eating the delicacies she and my Patin Ruthi have been preparing for the past week. She won’t be able to show me off in front of the tribe of relatives, or get the usual compliments on how beautiful and clever her daughter is, but such a shame she never married (I’m greatly relieved they now say “never” when they used to say “not yet”—turning forty brought with it that achievement).
“I must go away,” I say to her, “it’s something urgent.”
I’ve never missed a festive meal with her. Therefore, this exception can only be something important. As a matter of fact she doesn’t demand an explanation. She simply asks, “Do I know him?”
Does she have any doubts that this urgency might not be connected with a man? No, none whatsoever.
I look at the glaciers in the distance, or at least at what global warming has left of them.
“You might do,” I say, and she doesn’t persist.
It’s impossible to find a plane to Calabria the day before Easter. I call all the airlines, and then the airports of Bolzano, Verona, Venice, Milan, Munich, Innsbruck and Brescia. I try for hours on the Internet. Nothing. The first seat on a flight to Reggio Calabria is in three days’ time, after Easter Monday. That could be too late for Vito. There’s just one other option: a sleeper train to Roma Termini, and from there another train to Calabria. It will take a long time. Italy is a long country. And so, here I am on the local train that’s taking me to Fortezza/Franzenfeste. High up at the other end of the carriage, there’s a poster of the Deutsches Kultur-und Familienamt, the local government’s family and culture department for the German-speaking population—strictly distinct and separate from its Italian counterpart. It’s publicizing training courses for adults in the Bolzano area. There’s a picture of a man in blue overalls sitting in what we imagine is his workshop. He must be a mechanic, an electrician or a welder. With his large worker’s hands and the expression of an attentive child, he’s folding a pink sheet of paper carefully and turning it into a delicate origami.
There’s a caption at the bottom of the picture: Wer Lebt, Lernt. Those who live, learn.
Did I ever think about Vito while I was growing up? I’m not sure. He exited our lives so suddenly. So unexpectedly, at least for me. Not for my mother, of course, but no one explained anything to me. Vito left just when I was thinking that he would now always be part of my world, and we of his. I was his daughter now, and Gerda Huber his woman. He was there. Then, suddenly, he was gone.
No, I haven’t thought of Vito very much.
Fortezza/Franzenfeste is so narrow! The steep slopes of Val d’Isarco come so close together here that they barely leave room for the bottom of the valley, which they enclose like a bite. I always wonder how anyone can live here. What could the railroad men Mussolini brought here from Rovigo, Caserta, Bisceglie, Sulmona have thought when they saw that this valley is so narrow that to see the sky you don’t just have to look up but also bend your neck back? Rumor has it, when the Nazis were fleeing to Brenner, they hid the gold stolen from Italians in the dark fortress the town is named after, and, every so often, someone starts shifting a few stones and digging beneath the bastions. I suspect it’s just a legend invented to give a meaning, however absurd, to such a claustrophobic place.
I’d better have dinner here. The connection to Bolzano is over an hour away.
The pizza restaurant next to the station doesn’t seem to have updated its menu for twenty years: Knödel, Wiener Schnitzel, steak, salad, spaghetti with tomato or meat sauce. There’s nothing else. The pizzas, though, include the Hawaiian, with pineapple, and the Treasure Hunt (Schatzsuche): cherry tomatoes, anchovies and olives stuffed with capers. Could they be the treasure?
As I eat a cutlet that’s not particularly tender, I look around. In the bar mirror opposite my table I can see my head against the light. I immediately look away, startled. High up among the bottles of liquor no one ever orders, I’ve seen three of those damned targets. I really hate them.
They’re hand-painted wooden circles. At the center of two of them there’s a capercaillie holding a coat of arms in its beak, while on the third one there’s a pheasant. High up on the edge there’s a different date on each: 9/8/84, 12/5/88, 3/10/93. And three names: Kurt, Moritz, Lara. Dates of birth and names, just like those my uncle had written on the target dedicated to the newborn Ulli. Here too there are tiny holes in the center, in the picture of the animal. The owner of this restaurant is obviously a hunter, just like Peter, and like him, he and his friends celebrated his becoming a father by shooting (my God, shooting!) at the names of the newborn children. But he was a better shot than my uncle, or perhaps he had drunk less: because instead of the picture in the middle, Peter hit his own son’s name.
The last time I saw it—that horrid target even Ulli had always hated—it was being lowered with him into his grave. It was easy to believe that being such a bad shot, his father, the uncle Peter I never knew, had riddled with bullets not just his son’s name, but also his life. Yes, I remember it now. That day I missed Vito terribly. The day Ulli’s coffin was lowered into the grave.
“We’ve lost a friend, a wonderful person,” someone said to me. I was so angry I clenched my fists in my coat pockets. I hadn’t lost anyone! I hadn’t gone to the supermarket with Ulli and suddenly turned around and not found him like it happens with children. I hadn’t put him in a drawer and then couldn’t remember which one. I hadn’t left him on the bench like a newspaper or my cellphone. Or in somebody’s house, like an umbrella. Or on the train, like a suitcase. I hadn’t lost Ulli. Ulli had killed himself. And there were many people there who could have spared him a few reasons to do it. My anger rose and dropped like a wave, then all I felt was great tiredness. That’s when I missed Vito.
I felt the need to rest my head on his shoulder—on his belly, in fact, because even though Vito wasn’t tall, the last time I’d seen him I was a little girl—his little girl. That’s how I remembered him at that moment: strong arms wrapped around my chest from behind, me barely leaning my head back and brushing his breastbone with the back of my neck, reclining against him with all my weight, certain that he would support me. Standing by Ulli’s grave, I suddenly felt such an explosion of longing for Vito that for an instant it even covered the pain I felt for the death of my cousin, my playmate and confidant, more than my brother, my friend, perhaps my one and only love.
That was the moment when Lukas, the old sacristan, started his astounding speech. And only from Vito would I have accepted to hear, later: you see, Ulli didn’t die in vain. Except that Vito wasn’t there at the cemetery.
It’s time to pay my bill and go. The train from Innsbruck that will take me to Bolzano is about to arrive.