Me. It’s me that can’t get it together.
I try, but I can’t get it together. I simply cannot.
It no use: I can’t do it.
They say ‘sugaman’, so I’m told: that’s what they say, in the Parma dialect, for someone who’s no good for anything.
A ‘sugaman’, a towel1. Precisely.
I sat down and stared at it, the towel. With empathy I stared at it. With such symbiotic empathy that I almost fell into it. The merger didn’t take place. So I was able to give a fair judgment, keeping my distance. Shit, I said, at least that’s a useful object. Try being without one. Where are you going to dry your hands, without one? On your trousers: but that doesn’t work, and it doesn’t look very smart. Where are you going to dry your hair, without one? on your trousers? But that doesn’t work, and it doesn’t look very smart. Where can you dry off after a shower, without one? On your trousers? Give it up – that’s bullshit and we know it. So, a towel is useful, you can bet on that. I’m the one that’s no good for anything. Unless it’s to be a topic for discussion. No: discussion no! So I’m no good for a single fucking thing.
Have you ever had the feeling that wherever you walk you’re stepping on shit and there’s someone around ready to look at you in disgust and say, what a stink! and to ask if it’s coming from you? while all the time with an air of nonchalance and a livid face you’re frantically rubbing the sole of your shoe on a blade of grass fantastically surrounded by more shit that you hadn’t noticed until from its original white your shoe turned brown?
That’s exactly what happened to me.
I even paid for it. But that’s a detail. Not such a small detail if you have a temporary contract that might not be renewed and that earns you 900 euros a month to cover the mortgage for a princely dwelling and have enough left over to live on for you and your son.
The princely dwelling and the custody of my son I asked for and I like them, too, I’m proud to show them off to the world, so what I am moaning about? Because I’m the one that can’t get it together, with 900 euros a month I can’t make it.
I could live off my writing and painting. Pity that publishers pay 200 euros for a novel, and the gallery owners take a 50% cut. And you’re happy at that: after all, you don’t always manage to publish or to sell. I almost never do. So I’m probably stepping on shit when I write or paint, too.
’Sugaman’, a person who’s no good for anything. If I actually have understood the meaning of the word, because usually people who are good for nothing don’t understand much, either. And in fact I didn’t understand much of the discussion, and I said so in public: “Sorry, but I didn’t really understand very much.”
Actually, I did understand something: that I’d stepped on a piece of shit and some people had realized and were ready to tell me so.
But let’s start from the beginning. It’s life, sweetheart.
I don’t go dancing, I stay with my son. We wake up on Saturday morning and I take him to his grandmother’s. He’s crying, he says I want to go to Reggio Emilia with mummy. I’m all wrapped up in my role and I leave him in tears in the doorway. Mummy is a writer, a second generation writer, who’s going to a meeting of writers, first generation Italian. But the racial difference isn’t noticeable, we’re all of us writers. I myself am so fair and so little the migrant that I wear the
definition of second generation immigrant like someone else’s clothes. I should pin my father’s photo on my jacket, like war veterans did with their medals, to give myself credibility.
My son begs me: stay with me or take me with you. I have to go. I need my own space. I can’t only be a mum, I’m a woman as well. They’ve told me, too: have you seen those perfect mothers, all house and family, that turn around and murder their children? Here the gap between killer and egoist looms large. Not that you have a large range of choice: do you prefer eternal death or temporary abandonment? Let me give you some advice: never take drastic, irreversible decisions. Especially if you’re three years old. It’s better that I go to Reggio Emilia and you stay with grandma.
Modena, Parma, Reggio: a song by CCCP runs through my head, filling me with a strange sort of enthusiasm. It’s not strange, it’s senseless, but this I’ll find out later on.
Modena, Parma, Reggio: it’s wonderful!
It’s damned cold in Reggio. And then, I’m shy, I’d forgotten about that. I go into the cinema, I sit in the last row. No one on my left, on my right the corridor. I see everything, I can only be seen by the speaker, who’s facing away from the stage, so I can leave whenever I want.
They’re talking about technical things: layout, graphics, internet. I don’t understand any of it, obviously.
They make proposals: why don’t we make a feature column of the worst acknowledgments? For example, have you read Viola Chandra’s? Viola Chandra isn’t by any chance here with us?
Is there anything more cowardly than hiding behind a pseudonym?
I put up my hand. Probably the others are wondering: what’s that person doing? And then they answer: well, it’s her right hand. The right hand is for jerks. I’ve put up my right hand. Yes, that’s me.
Shy I am, a coward I’m not. I’m not even a sugaman: I am good for something: to illustrate the worst acknowledgments that have ever been written.
“Here we are, Viola Chandra’s thanks at the end of ‘Media chiara e noccioline’ are a genuine collection of hypocrisy and unintentional comedy”. And he reads them, all of them. “Iaia Caputo who believed in this work”2: ha, ha, ha: for the rhyme. “Davide and love and travel”: ha, ha, ha: for the exaltation. “Erri De Luca who I never thought would read me”: ha, ha, ha: for the exploitation of celebrity. But what’s so funny? Where’s the hypocrisy?
Then he adds: ha, ha, ha: for the ‘climax’.3
Oh, shit: what the hell is ‘climax’?
I can’t even ask, now they really would have a good reason to laugh. Ha, ha, ha: a writer who doesn’t even know what the climax is. A second generation immigrant writer, no less. So you don’t know Italian? Yes, but not everything. Weren’t you born in Italy? Yes, of course, but I haven’t understood everything: the Italian, especially. So why do you write then? It comes naturally, and not always. But I’ve probably stepped on some shit, let me clean my shoes.
Anyway, is there ‘climax’ in Italian?
I stammer some disconnected phrases -- the acknowledgments, well yes. It’s just that I never thought I’d publish that book and when it did happen I wanted to thank all the people who had read the manuscript and commented on it. They’d believed in it: like Iaia Caputo, it’s not my fault if her surname finishes with Uto. And you all, have you read ‘Uto’? That’s right, it’s by Andrea De Carlo. When at a presentation of one of my books, which they’d even paid me for, I said that I read Fabio Volo I saw the two little old ladies in the first row twisting around on their chairs. I was afraid they’d need an ambulance.
But someone should explain to me and my mother, who bought 399 out of the 400 copies that were sold, how come the latest wound up in the hands of an acknowledgment critic?
Cigarette break.
I smoke one, huddling into myself. Then the organizer, who holds the reigns of the meeting, asks me - now we’re supposed to read and comment on the story you sent in: do you feel up to it?
Of course, why not? I go back inside.
“So, now, we’re going to read a story by Viola Chandra, alias Gabriella Kuruvilla”.
“Ies, ai em the protagonista”.
“Do you want to read it?”
“No, thanks”. As if to say: I’m the one who isn’t up to it. But if you are, go right ahead.
“The title of the story is ‘Buccinasco isn’t Corsico’”.
“Uh, no, it’s called ‘Dance-hall’.
“And it takes place in a disco”.
“Uh, no, in an occupied social centre”.
“The exhaust pipes from the cars evacuate directly into my house”.
Discussion on the use of the verb ‘evacuate’. Oh crap, I must have stepped on another piece of shit...
“When I heard the word ‘evacuate’ I felt my skin crawl, it sounded like the Arpa speaking”.
Isn’t the harp4 a musical instrument? Maybe he’s paying me a compliment?
No, he’s shaken by the use of a scientific term in a literary context. Sensitive guy!
“And the whole story revolves around a paper hanky, and this guy wants to masturbate and he can’t get it up. But what misery! why do we need this misery?”.
“Because I wanted to recount the life of immigrants in Italy without being ironic or flippant, for what it really often is: pure misery”.
I have to confess: a friend rings me up, I ask how are you? she answers, just fine thanks, and I feel like hanging up then and there. Call me back when you feel like shit, is what I want to tell her. I really can’t deal with happiness. I can’t even stand the perennial smile on the face of my son’s father’s new partner. But do you do heavy drugs or have you got Bell’s palsy, is what I’d like to say to her. It’s ok by me even if it’s that your cat died, just as long as you’re sobbing when you tell me. So, there is misery. Are you miserable? Ah, that makes me feel better”.
“But why did you want to tell about the life of immigrants in Italy?”.
“Because I am the daughter of an immigrant”.
“Really, you’d never guess”.
I knew I should have pinned a photo of my father on my jacket. Or at least had a session with the sunlamp.
I’m back home, I look at my shoes, what a stink!
My neighbour comes out and rings my bell. I open the door: “Excuse me, but is it you who stepped on shit?”
How the hell did she realize?
That’s life, sweetheart.
1 Ndt: ‘sugaman’, a dialectical variant of Italian ‘asciugamano’.
2 Ndt: in Italian the surname ‘Caputo’ rhymes with ‘creduto’ (believed).
3 Ndt: the following passage plays on the fact that in Italian the word ‘climax’ is a specialized rhetorical term and not in common use.
4 Ndt: ‘Arpa’ (Agencia regionale per la protezione dell’ambiente – Regional environmental proctection agency) is the same as the Italian for harp.