36

ROOTS

My father Raffaele was born in 1885. He was a Calabrese peasant who emigrated to the north. He arrived in Turin in about 1910.

He was a policeman. One lasting memory I have—I don’t know how, it must have been a phrase I heard in the house later—is that some evenings Papa “era di cinta” (“had perimeter duty”). I heard it as “incinta” (pregnant) and didn’t understand it at all. It meant he was on duty outside the jail. I practically never knew him. I didn’t have time; he died of pulmonitis (like my sister later) when I was barely sixteen months old.

My mother, Rosa, was fifteen years younger than him and came from Pinerolo. She was a seamstress.

My sister Liliana was an office employee.

My aunt Angiolina was a factory worker.

I was born at home, at 10 Via Germanasca, in Borgo San Paolo. Working-class homes. The homes of people who worked hard from morning to evening. Who had a hard time just keeping going. And they called me Gianteresio to keep both grandparents happy: grandpa Giovanni and grandma Teresa.

I was always out in the street, and I liked being there. I knew a ton of people. My earliest memories are of a coal and charcoal merchant, Signor Viarisio, with whom I spent a lot of time. Because he had his store out in the open, with containers that I turned into boats.

And then, a man who was always alone, on the ground floor of the house where we lived.

And my uncle’s tobacco shop.

I remember the streets as the streets were then. I remember that before I was five, when I started going to school, I used to go with my mother to do the shopping.

Those are my origins. Roots in the south. An immigrant father. Dignified poverty. I, a child half-orphaned.