It’s not Vito but Gabriele, his son. He’s come to pick me up at the station. He loads my trolley suitcase into the trunk of his Opel Vectra and, for an instant, I picture Carlo performing the same gesture. It feels like a year, but it was only two days ago.
It’s too late to go and see Vito. The pain from the bone tumor keeps him awake at night and he manages to sleep only a little in the evening. Gabriele is now going to take me to the hotel, and I’ll go to see him in the morning. As he drives, I can’t help stealing glances at him. He also casts a furtive look at me. Caught red-handed, we burst out laughing.
Vito’s son and I are laughing together in his car.
Imagine that.
He didn’t say “Signora” or “Signorina,” we’ve immediately used our first names as something right and natural. Gabriele talks as he drives. There’s not much traffic and we’re going fast but I can see nothing of Reggio Calabria. I have eyes only for the sharp profile and crooked mouth of the man who, ever since he was born, has been able to call Vito “Daddy.”
He does know a few things about me. When he was a little over twenty, Vito told him: about the woman from up north he’d loved as a young man, and her little girl.
“And so I imagined this little girl with very blonde hair, almost white, like the children who arrive from Germany in the spring. And so you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re not a blonde?”
“I’m not German from Germany. I’m South Tyrolean.”
He looks at me. Serious, but with laughing eyes. “And that’s something completely different . . . ”
“Yes, completely different.”
He looks so much like his father. He has the same slightly crooked way of laughing: half his mouth rises, stretches and widens, while the other half remains still as though waiting for the other to finish playing around—but without any impatience.
“And what else has he told you about me?”
“That he would have liked to know that you’re happy.”
I look away.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
It’s a little restaurant in a narrow alley, but where you can smell the sea. The ricotta rissoles and the mixed fried fish taste better than anything I’ve ever eaten, perhaps it’s because I’ve not had a hot meal since Fortezza.
Gabriele is also a Carabiniere. He has two degrees, in Political Science and Law, and he speaks three languages, plus a smattering of all the languages from the places where he has been on a mission: Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq.
When he was in Kosovo, the most important thing was greeting both Serbians and Albanians in the appropriate manner, without confusing them. Never order three coffees in an Albanian café by raising your thumb, index, and middle finger, because that’s a Serbian greeting. You have to raise your index, middle, and little finger. If you make a mistake, they take it as an insult, and it’s in nobody’s interest to offend an Albanian. In Pec, he and his men raided a “girl farm.” That’s what the paramilitary called it. He doesn’t want to say what he saw inside. He arrested the camp’s boss himself and kept him under surveillance until handing him over to the emissaries of the international court. He was a middle-aged man, married, with a devoted wife and three daughters the same age as the women prisoners his soldiers were using like pieces of meat.
“It makes no sense.”
“When I hear that kind of thing, I realize we were lucky in Alto Adige”
Gabriele nods. “Yes. Very lucky.”
After coffee, I look up at him and smile. “You’re not asking me.”
“What?”
“If I feel more Italian or German.”
“Why should I? It’s as if you were to ask me if I feel more Calabrian or Italian. Or rather more Norman, Arab, Greek or Albanian.”
I look at him and wonder what it would have been like to grow up with Gabriele as a younger brother.
* * *
When we reach the hotel, Gabriele turns off the engine. He remains silent for a minute before saying, “My mother also knew about you two.”
“Your mother! How did she know?”
“It was my grandmother, she’s dead now. When they got engaged she told her: my son’s true love was another woman, he will never love you like that. But he will always respect you because he’s a good man. Take it or leave it.”
“And your mother took it.”
Gabriele nods. “It wasn’t an unhappy marriage. On the contrary.”
He drags my trolley suitcase as far as the reception desk. Before leaving, he hands me a package. It’s small, wrapped in brown paper, tied with a thin string. It’s very old and smells of musty drawers.
“My father told me to give it to you when you arrive. You can use this,” he says, handing me an old Walkman with headphones. We say goodbye with a slightly clumsy hug, like people who want to hold each other a little longer, but are too shy.