He walks slowly in front of me like a solitary explorer lost in the silence of this room. The khaki-coloured sack he always carries with him swings from side to side like a bag full of a small part of him: a book, a notebook, a pen and his harmonica case.
He plays. He does this every Saturday morning at the end of the Italian lesson:
“Music helps me let my life story out of the armour of the silence of solitude”. He says these words with a melancholy expression, while his lips are slightly open in a half-smile that does not belie his naturally sunny disposition.
Mauricio is a bass player, but his electric guitar was too bulky for the luggage of an immigrant, so eight months ago he stuffed his mouth harmonica into his khaki sack so that he could bring with him at least a little bit of Brazilian music when he left for Italy.
In his moments of melancholy he lets his harmonica slide slowly over his lips and blows into the tiny holes with such great intensity that the power of the notes of the Brazilian national anthem manages to keep him balanced, like an acrobat on a wire swinging between two continents.
His name is Mauricio Cavalca Tavares. Until a few months ago he lived with his family in the south of Brazil in Guarantigueta, a small town on the road running from San Paolo to Rio de Janeiro. Cavalca is the Italian surname of his maternal grandfather, while Tavares is the name of Brazilian origin of the paternal branch of the family. Since 2007 he has had Italian citizenship, but by the law of this country he is called Mauricio De Silva Tavares. He has only foreign surnames, the names of his Brazilian family.
He opens his eyes, like two shining bulbs, and speaks to me with the brightness that he gives to his ringing words:
“Here it is as though I were another person in name and in fact. I am only an immigrant, travelling to regain possession of my roots and to learn who I am”.
Mauricio is spasmodically searching for a new life because he needs to feel accepted by the society that has admitted him among its citizens by law. When he talks about his enterprise, the desire for belonging and the wish for involvement come together with overwhelming force:
“I started my search as soon as I got my double citizenship”.
For two years his new identity has been stamped on his Italian passport below the photo of a serious, polite man. Next to a name that is different from the one on his Brazilian passport, the Italian state officially recognizes his right to live a life that he has never lived and scarcely imagined.
“I want to experience the land I've only heard my old aunts and uncles tell about, but in my own time”.
The slow time of an immigrant follows the rhythm of a perennial state of waiting. You have to wait for work, wait for your school degree to be recognized, let time pass so that your driver's license can be adjusted, wait on line in the post office to get official permission to stay. It is a slow, hard road, a journey necessary so that you can consider yourself completely Italian, because we discover ourselves as a person only by mirroring ourselves in others.
“Some days I feel tired, with the whole burden of this adventure weighing on my shoulders like a boulder. It seems that no one is able to understand how important it is for me of being here, now.”
It's hard to face daily life:
“I go to eat at the Caritas, I work when I find a bit of something to do; anything to feel useful.”
When he can, Mauricio stays alone in his rented room, which he shares with three other Brazilians in the centre of the city.
He often rents old Italian films and watches them with English captions, wrapped in the muffled quiet of the night. Then the next day he watches them again in Italian. This he does to barricade himself behind emotion.
"During these months I've often felt the need for emotions to overcome loneliness and the sense of uselessness. Some cold, foggy nights a glass of wine has kept me company. I swallowed it slowly in one sip so hot that it burned in my throat”.
Mauricio belongs to the fifth generation of a family of Italian immigrants. In 1865 his grandfather Paolo asked king Vittorio Emanuele the Third for permission to expatriate. With his whole family he left Bagnolo San Vito in the province of Mantua for a new life.
Today Mauricio is a thirty-six-year-old man with a degree in biology, who has done all sorts of work in Brazil: teacher, city clerk, nurseryman, hotel-keeper. He left for Italy this year in June because he felt like an orphan of his country and he wanted it back, he wanted to be able to call it his own. He wanted to be recognized and to recognize himself in the Italians he would meet. He dreamed of meeting another Signore Cavalca, an Italian, and telling him his Brazilian history.
“Just think how wonderful it would be if I were to meet a relative of mine from Mantua. I've seen doorbells with my surname and I'd have like to ring them, but I never found the nerve”.
With the same impetuous emotion as a child who can't keep a secret, Mauricio whispers: “Can I tell you something lovely?”
When I nod yes, his words start to flow like a river in flood:
“On Monday I was in the library to go online, you know?”
I'm amazed and listen anxiously to hear what will follow: “And what happened?”
“It's incredible... On the list for booking a computer, right under my name there was another Cavalca. I was so excited that I couldn't move and stayed there to wait.”
“Then what?!”
“At half past three a woman of about sixty sat down at the computer. I watched her without letting myself be seen.”
“What was she like?”
“You won't believe it, but she looked a bit like my mother. She was a good-looking woman.”
“Did she notice you? ”
“No, I was watching her from where she couldn't see me”.
I imagined him leaning over the red chair next to the woman as he slowly moved his face between his hands with his elbows leaning on the table so he wouldn't be too obvious.
“And what was she doing?”
“I couldn't believe it! She took out a bunch of memos in small writing on little pieces of paper and laid them all down on the desk”.
I thought: “I do that, too! I keep all my memo notes in my wallet”.
“Maybe she was really a distant cousin of yours”, I say to him, convinced that we were watching a scene in a film. He looks a bit glum as he continues the story:
“At five to four the librarian behind the lending counter whispered: Mrs. Cavalca? Here's the book you were looking for”.
“And what did you do? Did you get up?”
“As soon as I heard our surname pronounced in an Italian free of any trace of foreign accent, I turned around with a jerk. I saw the two women talking, and shortly after Mrs. Cavalca put the book in her suede handbag hanging from the chair near me, put on a dark coat, picked up her belongings and left”.
In that instant I thought: “I want to talk to her!” and I followed her.
“And did you manage to say anything to her?”
“When I came out, she had disappeared. I waited for her at the main door, but in vain. Then I heard the sound of a car and at the same time I saw a door on the side of the building being pulled to -- I was in front of that door as it closed”.
Mauricio has gone, too -- he left Italy a few weeks ago. He won a competition to teach in a state school in his native town. Since last April he'd been an Italian citizen only by law: in reality, he was an immigrant in a foreign land, because in Italy the diversity of an exotic name is hailed with applause only on the soccer field.