Can the Gods Cry? Read online

  “We’re going to meet a comrade from Potere Operaio Linea Rossa.”

  “Who the hell are they?” I raise an eyebrow and feel as though I’m going to be put upon.

  “A split from Potere Operaio. We look on it as a positive move. A move in our direction. They’re still a little spontaneist.”

  He spoke as though I had joined the Revolutionary Communist Groups after a careful study of all the programmes and dogmas of all the many, many left-wing organisations we have here, while in fact it was all due to a drinking bout at the bar on the corner opposite the Red Garter nightclub where I occasionally worked. That was when I first met Pino and Patrizia. My sympathies were already in that direction. I was ripe and they plucked me from the tree. Now they are telling me what to do.

  I went to a disciplined school. I know how to take orders. I get up and am ready to go. Pino starts to brief me but it’s not what interests me. Each sentence is unnecessarily oblique and seems to call for that Italian idiom: “We’re four cats,” meaning “What does all this matter, when we’re few in number and barely have the resources to put out a badly typed and rather dogmatic leaflet each month.” Still, it’s a chance to stretch my legs. We cross Florence with a purposeful step, two revolutionaries pushing hard against the columns on which capitalism rests. We go through the centre of the city, the tourist area, past the Duomo which always delights and along the central drag where shoppers struggle with bags worth more than I earn in several weeks – months perhaps. Just before the station we take a left and come to a very plain, post-war block of flats. Pino presses a bell and after a long wait and extended clatter as a receiver is lifted, we hear an uninviting voice through the intercom, “Chi è?” – Who is it?

  “Pino.”

  “Who?”

  “Pino Matozzo.”

  “Never heard of you.”

  “Sì,” Pino’s humiliation can be clearly heard in that one syllable, “you know – the Revolutionary Communist Groups.”

  “Of course, come in by all means,” the voice does not do cordiality. The lock mechanism clicks and Pino pushes the door open. The dusty stairs made of metal railings and graniglia, as they call the heavy slabs of stone and marble chips in cement smoothed to a marble finish, could be found anywhere, but the sense of premature decay is unexpected. When we get to the apartment, the door is open but there is no one at it.

  Pino is now rattled. He steps through the door uncertain that he has got the right one. “Anyone in?” he shouts foolishly.

  “Sure. I’m in here.”

  “Here” is a spartan room, even by the standards of the circles I move in. It is large and contains just a wooden box and a dilapidated sofa, whose torn red fabric is covered with dark stains. There’s no disorderly pile of left-wing newspapers, no poster of one or other member of the communist pantheon, no books at all, no flyers for radical theatre. From the sound of his aggressive voice, I was expecting a burly youth; what I find is a delicate little man of at least thirty. His ageing white skin contrasts with the dark hair of his wispy beard. He seems to blink at us, but I also feel that this is someone who knows his business, someone who, in spite of appearances, could eat us both for breakfast. Where the hell did Pino find him?

  He motions us to sit down on the sofa and with surprising, even disconcerting agility, sweeps the box close to the sofa so that he can sit down and eyeball us from a distance of no more than three feet. I can see his unpleasant pasty skin and am surprised that so much sickliness can harbour so much energy. He is unaware that he is rotting away. His breath is acrid and his teeth blackened with neglect. As he speaks, you sense his intelligence and also that this intelligence has no flexibility, no humour, no other mood beyond his outrage at oppressive regimes. Here is fanaticism that should never be given power, and fortunately for us there is little chance of that happening. In other times, perhaps… I wish that I had stayed with Chabod, who writes a lot of sense, even if I don’t agree with every dot and comma. And he knows how to argue against himself.

  Pino and the man, who for me still has no name, embark upon a kind of dance in which they methodically expound their various positions on just about everything. Pino is defensive. I want to go. He probably does too, but he is manful in his struggle to hold the pass. Apart from regretting Chabod, I am now thinking about lunch. This is going on a long time, and Pino is much more amusing over a glass of wine and a plate of spaghetti. The last time we went to the absurdly cheap trattoria just round the corner from where he lives, he accused the owner of watering down the wine. She, of course, went into a fury.

  “Who do think you are?” she cried…

  “Someone who can taste watered-down wine,” he replied, while they were both ignored by her other regulars – council workers, mechanics, students and the transvestite prostitute looking very feminine in the men’s clothing she wears during the day; at night she looks absurdly masculine as she marches up and down the road outside Pino’s flat in a short dress.

  That dispute turned out to be easier to resolve than the one that suddenly breaks out between the two comrades. Pino’s tact and lack of it are not able to smooth this one over. It starts with Pino – on whose authority I do not know – offering the man and his comrades the chance to become part of the Revolutionary Communist Groups.

  “What are talking about? Are you mad?” the man stands up. He is furious and at last some colour has come to his face. “You have to fuse with us.”

  “But we’re an international organisation with thousands of members.”

  “On the whole, your organisation is run by jerks. Your Florentine branch should combine with us.”

  “There’s been a misunderstanding,” Pino remonstrates, also climbing to his feet, which is a relief and I follow suit.

  “There sure has. You’ve been wasting my time,” the man says, and I try to think what he might be doing if he weren’t here talking to us. But I fail.

  Pino has sensibly decided to shift towards the door. He senses that the man is unpredictable and the situation could turn nasty.

  It does. The man produces a huge flick-knife which he triggers to produce an equally terrifying blade. He waves it in front of our noses as we slowly back off. “Such a pair of make-pretendy revolutionaries. You people just get in the way. I could slice you up but you’d make a terrible mess, and someone would have to clear it up. Get going!” He makes a final, slightly less aggressive sweep of his knife, which presumably means, “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

  We run for the door and leap down the stairs with hands on the rail. “The man’s crazy!” Pino shouts. State the obvious, I think, but the man’s right about one thing: we are a pair of make-pretendy revolutionaries.

  I go to the tavola calda bearing a caffé corretto sambuca for Aras. This is his favourite drink: an espresso coffee with a measure of anise-flavoured spirit. He drinks it in a single gulp and looks busy. I turn to go. “Wait, wait!” he cries.

  He takes some money, gives the change and dismisses his customers as if they were disorderly schoolchildren. “I’m joining the army,” he says.

  “But you’re not Italian,” I object.

  “The Algerian army,” he laughs. “I’m joining a volunteer regiment for the next war against Israel. My mind is made up.”

  “You’re leaving?” I was shocked

  “I want to give you my job.”

  Today, I meet the boss who is sitting in the main restaurant. He only needs to check me out briefly. “He’s okay,” he says to Aras, and Aras takes me into the tavola calda to show me what the job entails. All very straightforward until the end, when I remember that he hasn’t given me any prices.

  When I ask, Aras looks put out – as though it’s an act of insensitivity on my part to bring up such a question. I should be able to work it out, he appears to be implying by his reticence.

  “Prices, well you know. How would you do it?”

  “Prices. Just give me the prices. It can’t be that difficult.”


  Aras sighs, checks the door and starts to explain, “Listen, this is how I do it. It works and the till is full at the end of the evening. That’s what counts and the boss is happy. So, as I say, this is what I do, but you can do what you want. It’s quite simple really.”

  By this time I’m getting a little restless. Why doesn’t he come to the point? I’m a Scot, I believe in directness.

  “The thing is,” he continues, “this tavola calda in the middle of the tourist area and the smart shops gets all sorts of customers – particularly tourists in a hurry, so we have to cater for each situation – we have to adjust to … You get it?”

  “No, I don’t. What are the prices, Aras? It can’t be that difficult.”

  “Okay, okay, let me explain: if the customer is an American tourist, you make him pay a lot. If he’s a European tourist, he pays a little less. If he’s Italian middle class, still less. If he’s Italian working class, you charge him a pittance. And as for Gypsies, …”

  “Yes, the Gypsies.”

  “Well, I don’t make them pay anything. They’re very sensible: there’s never more than five of them at a time and they’re different people every lunchtime and every evening. They sort it out amongst themselves. As I say, that’s how I do it…”

  “And that’s how I’ll do it too,” I say suddenly understanding the brilliance of the whole system. “Does the boss know?”

  He shrugs, “As long as the cash desk is full, he’s happy. So you have to keep the customers happy. At lunchtime, it’s mainly tourists and in the evening, it’s mainly Italians.”

  It works like a dream. It took a little getting used to, and I soon learnt just how far you can squeeze an American tourist. Thirty-five thousand lira, that’s the sum the boss wants to see in the till when he comes in to check it at the end of the evening. I never quite make it, but I probably don’t have Aras’s charm and ability to gather in a clientele. The first time the Gypsies came, they looked worried to see my face in place of Aras’s. They nearly made straight for the door, but decided to order small dishes and went to the stools to eat their food quietly. When they asked for the bill and I told them it was free, relief spread across their faces. As they left, one of the two women in the group turned to look at me, as though she wanted to memorise my face. Hers was not an expression of gratitude or, for that matter, of hostility. It was a glance across a void, between two worlds that never meet. It chilled my heart. How can human beings become so divided? It seemed to me then that no amount of human solidarity can bridge the centuries of distrust: however tough my life is – and I have chosen to make it tough – theirs is tougher, much tougher.

  The hours are long. Fourteen hours a day. The money is pretty miserable, but not lower than the going rate, perhaps marginally higher. The boss is a reasonable man by the standards of an unreasonable world. And the customers are fun. Most fun of all is the bricklayer Giuseppe; you can hear his voice while he is still walking under the portici leading to the other side of the vast square. The sound is muffled by the tunnel-like colonnade and when he turns into the square the volume increases and bizarrely you can hear exactly what he is saying from inside the tavola calda. Normally, when someone speaks as loudly as Giuseppe in Scotland, they are up for a fight, but he just wants to talk, argue and occasionally sing; I was once threatened by a Neapolitan and he spoke in a very cool, quiet voice. Truly, all types exist everywhere, but they express their similarities so differently.

  Giuseppe, however, does not want to fight. Such a thing would be unimaginable; like a cardinal in full regalia wearing boxing gloves, it would be amusing, surreal. This is in spite of his size and his hammer fists that dance and plead in tune with his stories, his jokes and his lengthy outpourings of ideas, anxieties and slightly simulated outrage at the evils and injustices that surround us.

  Usually I make him pay in accordance with the dictates of Aras’s social tariff, but sometimes he performs so well that I shrug my shoulders as if to say, “Why the stupid question?” I stare at him and smile, “Tomorrow will do; you can pay tomorrow.” Already I am beginning to talk as though I were the owner of this tavola calda, and I understand how Aras’s system is not only an act of generosity, but also a means to turn oneself from a passive employee into a free agent who judges, decides and implements a personal moral code. It is an act of emancipation. And I wish that I could take the credit for it.

  “But I have the money,” he usually protests, but his complaint is postiche like many of his mannerisms, or so they appear to a Northern European like myself. He is not a Gypsy who has learnt how to accept humiliation without harm to personal dignity. He has to push away humiliation, albeit very weakly. The right to live without humiliation gives rise to arrogance, something Giuseppe lacks completely. That absolute right is the prerogative of the rich and powerful; all the rest of us have to compromise to some degree. Somewhere out in the city there will be a sunless room with a malfunctioning shower, a rete and a stinking mattress. For that discomfort he will pay part of his meagre wages, which probably also subvent relations back in Naples. He is clearly a man alone because, if not, he would hardly work so hard to amuse and ingratiate himself with the shifting, motley population of my tavola calda.

  “Tomorrow will be fine,” I reassure him, and with a smile and perhaps a hearty clap on my back that has all the excessive emphasis of his speech, he is off before I can change my mind. It is that easy to make some people momentarily happy – but then Giuseppe is nearly always above or only just below the happiness level.

  Now my hours are so long, the meeting is breaking up when I arrive at the sede. No doubt they have covered the usual territory: the imminent collapse of the prevailing economic system, the joys of a partisan’s life in the mountains, and the niceties of the transitional programme. My arrival causes Eugenio to call the meeting to order. “’ompagni, I forgot to tell you: we have a particular subject for discussion next week. It has been suggested by comrade Lochrie.”

  “What is it, Garry?” some of them ask unenthusiastically.

  “The redistribution of wealth,” I say brightly, but they look like a class that has just been set its homework. And I think to myself, Aras is the one who should introduce this subject; he has done more to redistribute wealth on a tiny scale than this lot will be able to do in their entire lifetimes, but he is on a ship to Algiers because he wants to fight in a distant land he has never seen and probably never will.

  I Am Not My Body

  (with apologies to William Makepeace Thackeray and to the readers for retaining his Pumpernickels and silly surnames)

  Maeve King has the sad face of a spaniel, as her slightly swollen jowls sag under a hidden weight. Her body too appears unequal to the struggle against gravity. Her head and slim shoulders are the point of a triangle whose base is her wide hips, standing on the other smaller and inverted triangle of her heavy thighs running down her short legs to her dainty feet. And you, my reader, have already dismissed her – have you not? – in spite of all your “political correctness”. You would never call her a “dumpling”, “hefty” or, good heavens, a “lump of lard”, but with all the delicacy of your class – you are middle class, aren’t you? we are all middle class now that the Thatcherites in both parties have declared the working class no longer to exist – you might suggest a better diet and the odd workout at the gym. There is no real excuse for being fat. Obesity is an optional condition, we are told. Surely we can all make the effort? Why were we put into this world, if not to look after our bodies – to ensure their enduring attraction and longevity, no matter how many pots and potions it takes, how many trainers and track suits always shiny new and how many days lost in sweaty activities we detest or in thumbing through glossy mags in search of the latest advice.

  You think she looks a fool and cannot keep on top of life. Well then, you’ve made the same mistake as many others. Take another look. Maeve’s piercing eyes express a real intelligence and energy. Those who believe success to be a
ssociated with such virtues most likely fail to notice them, because of Maeve’s timidity and reticence. That was Ms King when she started to teach German literature at Southdown University, an oasis of learning, tolerance, good manners and the occasional sit-in, situated in a pleasant, affluent but rather uncultured county. She did not work out, it’s true, but she did work (the foolish girl). Her young colleagues in the department were two ambitious men with Scottish names and pronounced English regional accents: Harvey McBride and Cameron Murray. McBride was permanently outraged over many things big and small: from the lack of appreciation afforded some minor women writers of Pumpernickel in the eighteenth century to the lack of appreciation afforded himself after having made his discovery of them. Indeed his outrage in a world of wars and starvation appears to have pivoted around a peculiar mismatch between the objects he most appreciated and those appreciated by almost everybody, who stubbornly persisted in their ignorance after he had produced more than three kilos of learned articles. Nevertheless the head of department was happy enough with the research points.

  McBride was also considerably aggrieved that the human generality failed to appreciate his selfless parenting: when the train pulled into the university station one morning and he had to button up the coats on his small herd of toddlers, he lectured the impatient students who wanted to get off and did so by addressing his prodigious progeny in the following terms: “You see these people, they’re always in a hurry; no time for anyone but themselves. But we don’t have to be rushed. No one can make us rush. No one. You might well ask why they’re in such a hurry. Their classes? I don’t think so.” The guard was now moving down the platform and slamming any unclosed doors as he went. The surprisingly numerous offspring for so young a man stared at their father uncomprehendingly, but the students understood well enough. In part they felt impatient and in part resigned to going on to the next station, where they would have to take a train back in the opposite direction. The departure whistle was surely imminent and the whole scene had something theatrical about it. All things considered, this was more amusing than the average morning journey to their studies. But McBride had not finished: “These lads and lassies are going to be straight off to their various coffee shops to loll around and talk indescribable rubbish to each other.” Now he was becoming abusive and his rhetoric was strangely old-mannish for someone who had only just completed his first score and ten. The students were becoming more restless. Some were heading back up the carriage to the other door, some were eyeing the door he was blocking as though they were about to rush it, and some were just enjoying the spectacle.