The position of the man—upside down, head below, hanging by one foot in a porch, with his free leg folded back at the knee and his arms bound behind his back—at first naturally evokes ideas of gravitation and of the torture that conflict with it can inflict on man.
There’s something stronger than pain, and it’s habit.
They say you don’t get used to pain, but it’s not true: everyone gets used to pain, to inflicting it, to enduring it in an invisible and anesthetizing daily dilution. In the Fera family, who lived in Piazza San Filippo in Reggio Calabria, pain and horror were the air of every day, but Nicola, at eleven, didn’t know it: simply, he’d never breathed a different one.
On Sunday, December 27, 1908, after dinner, his mother brought the Torrone di Bagnara to the table. The mixture of honey, egg white, cocoa, and toasted almonds smelled of Christmas celebrations. Outside the windows the carriages were silent, and darkness had descended to end an unexpectedly warm winter day. Maria Fera leaned over her son and, putting her hands on the plate, broke off an outsize piece of torrone.
“I know, it’s never enough for you,” she screeched, brushing the disheveled blond hair off her forehead; then, grinding her teeth, she began watching him obsessively. “You like torrone so much, I’ll have to take it away from you,” she insisted. The child was afraid that the candy would stick to his molars and his palate, but, submissive to the voice of his mother the sentinel, he broke it into pieces and chewed as slowly as he could. There was a rule he knew well: whatever he wanted, his mother would claim that he wanted the opposite; he could only go along with her and hope, every time, that it would end soon. The more Nicola obeyed, the more insatiable Maria appeared; the more compliant he was, the more capricious she became. It was always like that, for everything, from school to meals: it was mother’s love, the only love the child had experienced, a feeling that took possession of all time and space. Ever since Maria had been blessed with a son, she had devoted her life to him, and never stopped repeating: Don’t be ungrateful or Jesus will be disappointed.
Her husband, Vincenzo, on the other hand, concerned with making money in trade, occupied the space and time outside the house, in the city and the entire world. At Christmastime, he and Nicola had spent some hours walking, admiring the windows on Corso Garibaldi and then going on to the Marina, to the market, to buy sugar and raisins. They also went to the Carmelite convent, and to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, to see the crèche and ask God’s forgiveness and indulgence, without ever specifying for what, in fact being careful not to look each other in the face when they uttered the word “sin.” In the view of the people of Reggio, you couldn’t ask for a better family: the father with his well-groomed mustache, perfectly pressed overcoat, and the inevitable walking stick capped by the head of an ivory Great Dane, and behind him his son, a skinny boy in short pants, gaze fixed on the ground, straight brown hair falling over pale skin, against which dark eyes and long, girlish lashes stood out. A perfect harmony, an excellent upbringing: lucky, that Fera, he’d been smart to take a Venetian wife, even if some, finding her scrawny and slightly deformed, had called her a witch. No, she was certainly a good mother, solicitous and attentive, anyway—not even the children of the nobility grew up as polite as Nicolino. All of Reggio thought so, but, if the gossips could have heard the silence between Vincenzo and Nicola, they would have found not two relatives but two strangers, faithful to the duty to make an appearance on holidays. Maria held the monopoly on relations and feelings in the family, hers the power, hers the allotment of affections. As for Vincenzo, the curtains, the porcelain, and the obligation to pay the servants belonged to him: in the family he was the owner of everything and the commander of nothing.
In recent years Vincenzo’s bergamot had become the most famous in all of Italy. Nicola, a subscriber to the children’s Sunday weekly Giornalino della Domenica, had become used to seeing his own surname appear in the advertisement at the end of every episode of the adventures of the Cadetti di Guascogna—Cadets of Gascony—where a dark, long-haired lady with a sensuous mouth clutched a vial of Fera perfume. (The anonymous woman was named Giulia, and she had been his nurse, although she was so heavily made up on those pages she seemed another person.) His father always said that men bought two bottles of perfume, one for their wife and one for their mistress, and if they had daughters the purchases multiplied: from Brescia to Palermo, from the Po to the Simeto, in the streets, at the receptions, at the theater, all the women of Italy smelled of Reggio Calabria. Vincenzo Fera could boast of that success, for from a field of femminello lemons he had created the perfect essence. He had had the idea as a young man and had made money quickly, then, after snubbing the daughters of the local elite and their dowries, he had gone to the Veneto to take a wife from one of his wealthiest clients, to be sure of establishing the sales in that area. In order not to make a mistake, not to marry a woman who would bring troubles or betrayal, he had taken the ugliest creature of that lineage: at nineteen Maria already had the same sickly, snarling aspect she had in December of 1908. The blonde with the demonic expression, daughter of landowners, had left Verona and her country house in the neighborhood of San Bonifacio to go as a bride to Reggio Calabria, not much interested in love but imbued with the desire to assert herself over men ever since she’d beaten her older brothers with sticks stolen from the woodpile. Marrying a merchant who was ugly, hunchbacked, and twenty years older meant immediately becoming sovereign of the house and the entire Strait, and no one in the vicinity was surprised to see her leave, pursuing that promise. Meanwhile Vincenzo, until then busy by day expanding his business and by night enjoying himself in the brothels, had found the right woman: a scrawny harridan with the eyes of an owl. No one would have touched her.
The family originated in a contract, and so it functioned, with an exclusive mixture of formal agreements, perversions, and complicity. The story of the meeting between Mamma and Papa had been repeated to Nicola like a fable. Over time it had become a legend romantically scented with bergamot, a love that had to strive to be blessed by a birth, because there were no children at first. “That’s why your mother loves you so much. See how fortunate you are? Others don’t have anyone who protects them the way I protect you,” Maria whispered to him at night. When she spoke in an artificially high voice, she twisted her mouth, so that every attempt to clothe herself in sweetness was grotesque. Gracelessness was an ineradicable part of her, and her accent gave her voice the nature of a storm, with thunderclaps and cataclysms and valleys and stillnesses within which her son couldn’t move but only let himself be buffeted by the winds.
The evening of December 27th, Nicola went on chewing torrone as if he were swallowing poison with every bite, while Vincenzo, a stranger to everything that concerned his wife and son, lighted a cigarette and slumped back in his chair, stretching his legs, satisfied. That day, too, he had been a good father. The curtain would come down on Sunday, and not only that, the Christmas week would be over: the following day the child would go back to school, at least until the new year, and for him work would begin again, with the inspections for the first consignments of 1909, which for bergamot were forecast to increase. Again.
Maria’s eyes didn’t leave her son even for a moment. With one finger Nicola picked up the last few almonds from his plate, and, finally, when nothing remained of the torrone, he looked up for permission from his mother, and at a nod went to his father to kiss his hand. The tobacco that saturated Vincenzo’s knuckles mingled with the taste of honey. Nicola lowered his head, bowed to both parents, left the room, entered the garden, went along the path among the plants, and arrived at his trapdoor.
The squeaking of the door as it opened broke the silence of the night.
As Nicola set off down the stairs it seemed to him that Maria was still staring at him; her gaze was a goad in his back, chasing the child down, farther and farther down, step by step, between damp walls, toward every night’s destiny: the bier set up for him in the cellar.
Descending the stairs was a nightly ceremony, a journey to the center of the Earth, down to the last step, where Nicola stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. As soon as he could discern the contours of the bier, he made his way into his personal cave and sat on the floor to take off his shoes and his clothes. Barefoot, he went to the basin to wash his feet and hands. He was comfortable in the darkness, in the repetition, in the fantasy of sleeping among the mice, in the ritualization of fear. An animal slid along the wall, maybe a reptile, maybe an insect. Better not to think about it and climb to safety on the high bed his parents had thought up for him. Nicola washed in the darkness, making more noise than necessary and splashing to keep the monsters away with the lapping sound. The cold water gave him goosebumps, and he shivered uncontrollably. He put the basin back and settled himself on the bier, where he covered himself up to his chin. His father’s invisible face, smoke puffing from his half-closed mouth, and his mother’s, eyes bulging, nailed him where he was, laid to rest with no possibility of resurrection.
Alone, without a light, he stared at the ceiling and began to wait.
Maria’s will was the power that ruled his days. It was the devil who suggested escape, and he had to restrain him, repent, be ashamed of the desire for flight and mortify the instinct. Jesus, make me more obedient in the new year, he asked, make me love my mother as she deserves. Yet he couldn’t help thinking how sweet it would be, in that prisonlike darkness, to have a window, to let in the innocent air of evening rather than the damp oxygen of an underground hiding place. There was a comforting pile of copies of the Giornalino della Domenica at the foot of the funeral monument that was his bed; besides the serial stories, he enjoyed the letters from other children, which made him like all the children in Italy, and he would have liked to read at night, too, to feel them close down there, but no, it was impossible, the night was the night, with its inviolable rules. So Nicola sighed, thinking that the two opposing forces fighting within him, devotion and bewilderment, might kill him. Near the magazines were the remains of a feast of Talmone chocolate from the night before, to please his mamma: the poor didn’t have any, Maria pointed out, while his every desire could be fulfilled. How lucky, no? Nicola ran his tongue over the residue of honey between his teeth. Chocolate and torrone were the dream of children all over the world and he would never be without them.
Then the voice of Maria arrived.
“Here he is, my sweetheart, how good he is, and how he loves his mamma.”
The words advanced along with the sound of her footsteps; Nicola huddled under the covers.
“My little one who wants to stay with his mamma forever, because he knows that otherwise she would die of grief.”
The darkness was filled with the scent of bergamot: Maria’s dress was impregnated with it, like the curtains, the tablecloths, and every fabric in the house.
“Tonight, too, Mamma’s taking care of you, so you won’t be stolen by devils or bad women: you know how many there are around; bad, childless women who want the children of others, the handsomest. I have to stay alert, because no one is handsomer than you.”
Now Maria was next to the bed, leaning over him, her mouth stretched toward his ear.
“But you mustn’t worry, the Madonna and I are protecting you—we won’t let anyone steal you. The Madonna will help me, and you’ll stay here with your parents.”
Maria took the holy ropes out of her pockets. The first memory of his life stood out clearly in his mind, as it did every night, among countless lacking outlines: his mother grabbing pieces of rope from the hands of the men pulling the Vara, the cart dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, in Messina, while he and his father waited in the crowd until the procession ended. The fame of the mid-August procession, in which a cart carries a Madonna who ascends to heaven among dozens of little angels, had convinced Maria Fera that she had to cross the Strait with her family, join the Messinese procession, and, like the other faithful, seize the ropes that pulled the cart from one part of the city to the other. It was said that they had miraculous properties, that they healed the sick, granted wishes.
Nicola stretched his arms above his head, moving his body as far down as possible toward the foot of the bed. Maria took a rope, wound it three times around her son’s slender wrists, and gave a tug. A grimace escaped Nicola. Maria caught it in the darkness and quivered with satisfaction.
“No, no, sweetheart, it doesn’t really hurt, it keeps away evil.” Nicola squeezed his eyelids again and waited for the second rope. Maria leaned over, just above his belly button, pulled down the covers, and immediately the child’s body was soaked by the damp air. His mother passed the rope over his stomach and tied it to a leg of the bier. Finally, with the third, she bound his ankles.
“You emptied your bladder, right? You won’t wet your bed anymore?”
Nicola nodded his head and Maria pulled up the covers.
He had to sleep in the cellar and not upstairs in the light-filled room with the toys; at least, if the devil came looking for him, he wouldn’t find him. He had to be bound because if the devil did find him he wouldn’t be able to carry him off. He had to spend the night in a coffin because the devil would be deceived, taking him for dead, and would go and look for other children in other houses. This Maria had explained to him countless times, and Nicola could only respect such scrupulous protection. You know how much I wanted you, she repeated, and again: you didn’t want to come, the devil didn’t want you to be born, but finally, because I prayed and prayed to the Madonna, you arrived and I deserved my prize.
“Tomorrow morning Mamma will come and wake you early so we can go to school. You’re not afraid, right?”
Nicola was about to speak when the voice of Maria became a whisper.
“I prayed to the Madonna for you, and she’ll stay with you all night. The devil won’t come, and if he does he won’t be able to do anything to you.”
She said something more as she was leaving, but Nicola heard only “my love, my love,” and at last he closed his eyes and made an effort to give himself up to sleep.