God's Mountain Read Free Page A

a dream, but I stay quiet. I only know how to float on the air. He does the serious stuff with the wings. Then Master Errico comes back. I throw out the rough boards but the splinters don’t hurt me anymore. My skin’s gotten as tough as leather. Rafaniello’s stories pump my bones full of air and make me cheerful, as cheerful as a flier. In the evening by the washbasins my arms want to fly away with the boomerang. I check my thrust and holding it back makes my new muscles stronger, shaping them like a slingshot.

 
    M ASTER E RRICO says that fishermen don’t know how to swim. Swimming’s for vacationers who jump in the waves for fun and lie in rows under the sun. The sun is only good for people who lie there without moving. For someone who carries the sun around on his back from early morning to night, the sun is a sack of coal. Like Rafaniello’s hump, I think. I think but I don’t say. I’m just a shop boy. I can’t go around saying what I think to my boss. And if I keep my mouth shut he keeps telling stories and the day goes by faster. Fishermen go to sea in a motorboat or a rowboat and don’t even get their faces wet. They wear berets on their heads that don’t come off in the wind. The old men at the docks smell like tobacco and sweat, not salt. On Sundays they all come out in white shirts. There’s not much fish in the bay. To catch some they have to stay in a boat all day. I’d like to learn more about the sea. I don’t know it. I see it but I don’t know it. Master Errico likestalking to me. His last assistant got sick of listening to him. He’d keep on talking, but “a day is a morsel,” he sighs. To end the conversation he says that sea salt is as bitter as sweat, and neither is any good for pasta.
     
     
    F ROM THE darkness by the washbasins Maria emerges. Her thirteen years are more mature than mine. She’s already got a grown-up body. Three inches below the bangs of her short black hair is her mouth, which is fast with words. I can almost see the words spouting from her fat lips. Her smile opens up her face from ear to ear. Maria knows how to move like a woman. I stand in front of her and my stomach feels empty. I’m hungry for bread, to take a bite out of her slice of bread and butter. She offers me some. I say no. She’s discovered that I practice with the boomerang. She’s curious. She hears me climbing the stairs, passing by her door. Shecomes closer. The evening is warm and scented with chocolate, oregano, and cinnamon. I sniff at the air. It’s French perfume, she says, rolling the r s in her throat.
     
     
    I T ’ S DARK . I grip the wood of the boomerang and show it to her. Maria knows what it is, knows what it can do. “But you don’t let it fly. Why don’t you throw it?” I’d lose it. “It’s no good if it doesn’t fly.” I don’t know how to answer her. I come up here to get myself ready for a single throw. One night my arm will be strong and I won’t be able to stop and then the boomerang will fly. I think for a while and say, You keep canaries on your balcony and don’t let them fly. I keep my boomerang locked up, too. “But they sing,” Maria says. The boomerang whistles, I say, and make her place her ear close so she can hear the sound of the wind being sliced by my throw. Don’t be scared. She laughs. She opensthe hand that I have tight around the boomerang and touches my fingers. I gulp. The boomerang’s in her hands now. Wow, I can’t believe how heavy it is, she says, and gives it back to me. Heavy? It’s a wooden wing, how can it be heavy? She insists that it’s heavy and that it burns, too. She knows why I’m practicing, she touches my shoulders. “You’ve gotten strong since you started to work.” I lower my eyes. Maria takes the hair hanging over my forehead and pulls it up. “Look at me when I talk to you.” It’s dark and Maria’s getting bold with me. She’s a little taller and her breasts are already sticking out. I stand still for