I went home more displeased with myself than usual. Realizing that the girl from Milan had not only lost her life but also her name made the pillars holding up the universe, and even punctuation, crumble. I felt like an Adam who, while aspiring to build a lasting language, forgets to name one essential thing, leaving a dropped stitch in the woven fabric of language, a flaw that will gradually lead to its dissolution.
I wandered around the empty apartment—my brothers were at school, my father at work, my mother out delivering the clothes she tailored for her affluent clients—forcing myself to accept the hypothesis that although I wasn’t guilty, objectively speaking, for the early end of the girl’s mortal life, I was guilty of not being able to say: this was her name, these were her words, and thereby allow her to endure.
I peered into the kitchen in search of company, knowing I would find my grandmother there. She was ably chopping parsley with a knife.
“What was grandfather’s name?” I asked casually.
“Giuseppe.”
“Yes, I know that, but what did you call him?”
“Giuseppe.”
“I mean between the two of you, in private. Didn’t you ever use another name?”
“Peppe.”
“What else?”
“Pe’.”
“And which of those was his real name, the one you could call out right now, and he would appear, even though he died all those years ago?”
She looked at me strangely, probably scared I was teasing her. But seeing that I was serious, instead she muttered, nunniàsturià? She wanted me to make good use of my time, not waste it on her; studying was much more important than all this chitchat about Nonno’s name. But I continued to ask her about the names and nicknames they used for each other—the ones they used when they joked around, when they held each other tight—at which point she started laughing uncontrollably, a warm, gap-toothed chuckle. She replied by saying that names were for people who were alive, when you called out to the dead they never answered, her husband had never answered her even though she had called him lots of times. And it wasn’t because he was unkind. When he was alive, he always answered her when he could. He had even answered her the morning he fell off the building. Before getting out of bed to prepare his lunch tin, she had said his name, Pe’, in a whisper, and even though he was still sleepy, he turned to her and hugged her and kissed her. Kissed her, she repeated with a giggle, and she kept talking with growing amusement, which was rare for her, about what she called “the sweet stuff of life.” She told me that if my girlfriend ever called my name, I should never say not now, I’m busy, maybe later, because for her, later was always wrong. Better immediately, that very instant. And then suddenly she recalled the promise I had forced her to make when I was younger—to come back after she died and tell me what existed on the other side. Well, she’d given it some thought and there was no need to wait until she died, she could tell me right there and then, it had all become clear to her while she was chopping parsley. At that point, her laughter grew hysterical, her face turned bright red, her eyes shone brightly, and she couldn’t stop. She had realized that there was nothing after death: no God, no Virgin Mary, no saints, no hell, no purgatory, nothing. She pointed to the parsley on the chopping board, the fragments edged with their greenish liquid. This—she said—this is what comes after. She would become like that parsley, and she didn’t mind, no, actually it made her feel lighter, that’s what she would become: chopped parsley. And that’s why, she insisted, I should go call Nina right now, she’s such a pretty girl. Go on, call her, hold each other tight, ahcommebèll.