On Earth as It Is in Heaven Read online

  “So that’s that: I’m bettin’ on this fine trifecta: Pirollo, Little Frenchman, and Abracadabra. A fabulous combination. Let’s go on home now.”

  “Aren’t you going to watch the race, Uncle?”

  “Why on earth would I wanna waste my time watching the race?”

  “You made a bet.”

  “Davidù, get this into your head once and for all: once you’ve gone and made your bet, it’s none of your business no more. It’s even written in the Holy Scriptures: first you size things up, then you lay your bet, and after that, to hell with it.”

  The calm detachment with which my uncle had made his bet. That’s what I was thinking about on the piazza, in the sweaty aftermath of lunch, while we subjected Gerruso to a firing squad of slaps and smacks.

  Nino Pullara had issued the order: “Let’s play neck-slap; Gerruso, you’re it.”

  That pathetic loser, unaware that the game was nothing more than a pretext to beat him up, started over to the wall without a word. He dragged his feet as he walked. An inexorable march. He knew he was headed toward certain pain, but he was so stubbornly determined to be part of our gang that his sense of personal dignity had long ago lost its battle against his resignation. Why didn’t Gerruso just look for other friends, friends who were as fat and worthless as he was? Why did he accept all this misery? I felt not a scrap of pity for him. He was a weakling. Weaklings deserve no respect.

  Gerruso reached the wall, covered his eyes with his right hand, wedged his left hand under his armpit, and held it open, flat. He was ready to play the game. But Pullara had decided to twist the rules. Even if Gerruso did guess who’d slapped him, we’d say he was wrong, he’d have to turn back around, and he’d get another smack on the back of his neck and then another and another, over and over again.

  The goal wasn’t to play.

  The goal was to slaughter him.

  The first slap was thrown by Danilo Dominici.

  Gerruso took it, suppressing a groan of pain, then turned and looked hard at us.

  “Danilo Dominici.”

  “No.”

  Pullara had answered for the rest of us.

  Gerruso wasn’t cheating.

  Pullara was.

  Lele Tranchina took a running start and slapped with every muscle in his body. Gerruso throttled a cry of hurt deep in his throat. He turned around, without looking at anyone in particular.

  “Tranchina.”

  “No.”

  Gerruso turned back to the wall without a word. He was a weakling. He deserved all the pain in the world.

  I spat on the palm of one hand and rubbed it into the other, the way they did in the movies I’d watched at the theater with Umbertino, who would say after every killing: “Finally a movie the way they oughtta be made, not one of those French pieces of garbage for people who are sick of living. Look at that beautiful explosion! Now this is art.”

  The truth is, Gerruso, you were born for French movies.

  I hit him with such extreme violence that I even surprised myself. The slap didn’t erupt into the ringing sound of a smack; instead it was muffled at impact by his entire body into a single, cavernous moan.

  Gerruso looked at me instantly, ignoring everyone else.

  “Pullara.”

  Why, Gerruso? Why? What possible reason could you have for being such a loser? You’d guessed who it was that time, too; you should have said my name; that’s not how the game is played.

  “Wrong!”

  Drops of saliva sprayed out of Pullara’s mouth. His pupils gleamed with fire. He would be the next one to deliver a neck-slap—it was obvious.

  “Turn around, you dumb baby. Now I’ll bet we make you cry.”

  Pullara didn’t state the challenge with detachment; he was ferociously committed. He was hopping in the air, waving his hand to warm it up. Once again he broke the rules, bringing his clenched fist down straight onto Gerruso’s ear. Gerruso bent over like a snapped twig. Pullara burst into an animal howl, one finger pointing straight up at the sky. Gerruso stood back up, both arms dangling at his sides.

  “Pullara,” he said.

  His eyes hadn’t wept a single tear.

  As I walked home, a powerful white Vespa roared past, cutting across my path. Two men, both wearing full-face helmets. I saw myself reflected in the visors. My expression was relaxed, even though both hands had leaped to cover my mouth. It was an instinctive movement. The body bent over in anticipation of danger, warning the senses to react. In Palermo, the defensive crouch is an art handed down from one generation to the next. It becomes more refined as you grow in the city’s womb. It was the helmets that made me crouch. No one wore helmets in the city, especially in that heat. Grandma said that heat waves made people lose their minds.

  “Have you ever wondered why people kill each other over a parking space in the summer? It’s the heat.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  “Not in the slightest, light of my life, nothing can happen to me, I don’t even have a driver’s license.”

  Uncle Umbertino was already waiting out front.

  He was bouncing on his toes.

  “You’re late, I’ve already been standing here for a hell of a long time, two minutes at the very least.”

  “We were all smacking the fool out of Gerruso.”

  “Who’s Gerruso?”

  “Just a kid.”

  “You rough him up good, so he felt it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, there’s always some good reason to beat the fool out of a body. But listen, there’s been all kinda uproar in this neighborhood: engines roaring and screeching tires, more’n I’m used to.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “How the fuck do I know, I’m no mechanic.”

  “Isn’t Mamma home yet?”

  “Do you think for one second that if your mother was upstairs, I’d be waiting here in the middle of the street in all this heat?”

  “But don’t you have your own keys to our apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why didn’t you use them?”

  “For two reasons. First of all, I wanted to make sure you had your keys, like you oughtta.”

  “Here they are.”

  “Make sure you don’t lose them.”

  “What’s the second reason?”

  “I left the keys to your house at my house, absurd, ain’t it? Now, let’s go to the barbershop.”

  “But I don’t want to get my hair cut, Mamma cuts my hair for me.”

  “Davidù, what the hell do I care about your hair, you’ll come to the barbershop with me because I’m asking you, nice and polite, to come with me. Now get moving, because I’m already sick and tired of waiting.”

  There was a sign in red paint on the front of the barbershop.

  TONY: SHAVE and HAIRCUT

  Inside, sitting in the revolving chair, was an old man, his face coated in white foam. Standing next to him, straight razor in hand, was the barber, Tony.

  “Is there much of a wait?” my uncle asked.

  “This shave, haircut for the gentleman, then you.”

  “Do you have a horse-racing sheet?”

  “What do you think? Would it be a barbershop without it? Right over there.”

  Umbertino took a seat, began reading intently about the ponies. I sat down next to him, on a red chair that creaked all over. In the stack of newspapers, a glossy magazine. On the cover, it said ADULTS ONLY. The pages were wrinkled and torn.

  “So you’re telling the truth, Tony?” the old man asked the barber. It seemed as if the foam was talking.

  Every movement of Tony’s body spoke eloquently of his sincere concern.

  “I swear it’s true, he was a certified genuine faggot.”

  “But didn’t you notice at first that he was queer?”

  “Now to look at him, he looked normal, an upstanding citizen, I even talked to him about the game, you understand? We talked ’bout soccer together, that’
s what I’m telling you.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Exactly.”

  The customer whose turn came before ours was sitting to my left. He had curly hair and a bristly mustache. He felt called upon to break into the conversation at this point in the story.

  “But Tony, are you sure he didn’t infect you?”

  “Right! That’s exactly the problem. This momosexuality is one hell of a disease.”

  “The worst thing there is,” the customer with the mustache agreed.

  “No laughing matter, that’s for sure,” the barber reiterated.

  Finally Umbertino’s voice. He spoke without lowering the racing sheet.

  “I hear that them as get infected wind up taking it straight up the ass.”

  The whole shop burst into laughter.

  “Shit, I done picked the wrong trifecta yesterday, oh well, what the hell,” my uncle observed without a hint of irritation.

  Now that Tony had had a laugh, he seemed more relaxed. He began using the straight razor on the old man’s face.

  “Listen, you all want to know how I found out he was gay? I swear it’s God’s own truth, on my mother’s sainted head: he told me himself. He said: Now, friend, I happen to like men.”

  “No!” exclaimed the customer with the mustache.

  “Yes.”

  “This world is going to hell.”

  “Right.”

  “They’re the curse of all creation,” murmured the old man, but gently, because if he moved his jaw too much he might get a new crease in his face. A straight razor doesn’t take indignation into account.

  “But wait, it gets even worse. Then I realized that this monster had gone and offered me a drink from his bottle of beer. The selfsame bottle he’d been drinking from all this time with his diseased mouth, I mean.”

  “So then whaddya do, Tony?” the old man asked with vivid concern.

  The barber faltered for a moment. He squinted, raised the razor, and decided to go ahead and confide in his little audience.

  “From that infected bottle of his, I had gone and taken a drink.”

  “Fuck! Disaster.”

  “Fuck is right.”

  “Infection!” said the old man, in a shrill voice.

  The straight razor hovered in midair, a warning.

  “Listen, I’m gonna tell you the truth, I was terrified. That momo-sexuality of his might have infected me, an oral infection straight from the bottle. I was terrified.”

  “So what did you do, Tony?”

  “What do you think? First things first: I broke that bottle right over his head, that piece-of-shit queer.”

  “Good work, Tony!”

  The old man’s voice had regained confidence; breaking bottles over the heads of faggots is the behavior of true men.

  “I thought I was ’bout to lose my mind.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I had to do something to cure myself, immediately. So I thought it over and . . .”

  Tony looked around, as if he were taking care to shield the information from prying ears. He pronounced each syllable solemnly.

  “. . . and I realized that I had to get cured, sooner than right this second, and so . . .”

  Each person in the barbershop listened with a heightened intensity. Tony filled his lungs to give greater emphasis to the rest of the story: the old man’s ears craned in the direction of the barber’s mouth to capture the words of revelation at the earliest possible moment; the customer with the mustache stood up and began tapping his foot to an irregular beat. Only Uncle Umbertino remained unruffled. He read his racing sheet and blithely ignored everything and everyone. A burning curiosity to learn whether and how poor Tony had recovered from this momosexuality swept over me, just as it had all the others. I lowered my magazine.

  Tony kept his eyes fixed elsewhere, staring out the shop window.

  “I.”

  He reckoned the time needed for his words to clarify. Each time he sensed that the tension had become unbearable, he deigned to dole out another word or two.

  “Done.”

  The old man’s neck craned tautly; the mustachioed customer’s foot trembled.

  “Went to see.”

  Tony watched us. When the silence had grown deafening, he laid down his ace.

  “Pina.”

  “The whore?” the old man and the man with the mustache cried in chorus.

  “Yes.”

  “The whore in Vicolo Marotta?” they sang out in unison.

  “Yes.”

  “One has the bedroom filled with mirrors?” they drove home the point.

  “Yes.”

  At last Uncle Umbertino folded up his racing sheet and laid it on the pile with the others. Tony had one more spectator now. Flattered, he went on with renewed zeal.

  “‘Pina,’ I told her, ‘I gotta make love now, right this second, or else I’m in danger of catching a bad case of momosexuality, and that right there’s a fate worse than death, iddnit?’”

  “Blessed words of truth,” the old man decreed.

  “Luckily, I thought of the perfect remedy: get me a good fuck right then and there and get cured of that disgusting mess. These fucking queers, they all just need to be killed.”

  “Blessed words of truth,” the old man seconded. Apparently, by the time you come to the end of your life, you’re so tired that you have the same thoughts over and over again and you just go on repeating them.

  “Boys, I look her straight in the eye and, ’fore we started to fucking, I said something to her that I never say to a whore: ‘Pina, go rinse out your mouth, ’cause that’s where I gotta kiss you, it’s out the mouth that a disease can get going, you get me? I took a drink of beer from the same bottle as that faggot, come on, hurry up.’ And Pina did things right, boys, she rinsed her mouth, nice and clean, even used toothpaste, and the minute she came back I shoved seven feet of tongue down her throat, fuck, I’d never even kissed my wife that deep.”

  “And then?”

  It was Umbertino who spoke. He’d gotten to his feet without my noticing. I never saw him move.

  “And then, seeing as I’m a gentleman, I can’t exactly go into details, let’s just say that I cured myself by fucking her like heaven above, and I needn’t say another word to you men of the world.”

  Tony the barber was chuckling complacently, unaware of something that had become clear to everyone else. My uncle was there, in his shop, because of what had happened, the subject of Tony’s story. He moved toward Tony soundlessly, light-footed in a way that no one would have expected from a man of his bulk. Leaping, little steps, quick and silent. When he loomed up in front of him, Tony vanished, hidden from view by his shoulders.

  “Listen up and listen good, you dickhead, I’ll tell you exactly how the story ends: you tripped, you fell, and shitty luck that you were having, you broke your arm. Or you broke your leg. Take your pick.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  A second later, Tony was on his knees, keening in pain. My uncle’s right hand was crushing the fingers of his left hand.

  “Tony, it’s either you can’t understand, or you won’t understand, which is worse. You tripped and fell, now take your pick: an arm or a leg.”

  Tony was sobbing. The old man and the mustachioed customer said nothing and did nothing, it was all they could do just to breathe.

  Umbertino raised his left fist.

  “Uncle.”

  My voice was calm.

  Tony managed to mumble a single word: “Stop.”

  “But when Pina told you to stop, whaddya do, Tony, did you stop?”

  He snapped Tony’s left forearm with a single motion: his left hand grabbed Tony’s elbow, his right hand grabbed Tony’s wrist, he twisted both hands, crack.

  “Now you remember, Tony, you tripped and fell, uh-huh? You broke your arm. Someone call this boy an ambulance. Davidù, let’s get out of here. This place stinks of shit.”

  I was so overwhelmed t
hat I forgot to leave the magazine. I didn’t know a forearm could snap like that.

  “You didn’t see nothin’, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Swear to it.”

  “I swear.”

  “What’s that you’re holding?”

  “A magazine, it was in the barbershop.”

  My uncle leafed through it carefully.

  “Good boy, nice stuff you read; just don’t let your mother catch you.”

  “Why not?”

  “What do you mean, why not? It’s a dirty magazine, if your mother catches you, she’ll yell. Listen, here’s what we do, I’ll hold on to it, and when you wanna look at it, you just come see me, we good?”

  Without waiting for my reply, he folded it in half and stuck it in his back pocket.

  “Uncle, who’s Pina?”

  “She’s a sort of friend of mine.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well, let’s just say she’s cooked me dinner, once or twice.”

  “She a good cook?”

  “Not as good as she used to be.”

  The street was cordoned off by a line of police cars.

  “Another killing?” Umbertino asked an officer. The policeman lowered his head without saying a word.

  I spoke to my uncle under my breath. I didn’t want a cop to hear what I was saying to him.

  “Why’d you take me with you to see the barber?”

  In his face, not even a speck of joy.

  “You were the only one that could stop me.”

  “From doing what?”

  “You want a delicious ice cream?”

  “Yessss!”

  I ordered a cone, with pistachio and mulberry gelato.

  “You heard him,” Umbertino told the ice cream man. “A nice big ice cream cone with pistachio, mulberry, and whipped cream. Lots of whipped cream.”

  “But Uncle, I don’t want any whipped cream.”

  “It isn’t for you.”

  He devoured the whipped cream in a single bite.