God's Mountain Read Free Page B

a while, then I pry her fingers from my hair. She walks away, turns around, and says, “Come back this time tomorrow. I want to tell you a secret.” I stay there by myself. The night air is refreshing near the washbasins rinsed clean with soap flakes. This is where the mothers wash the dirty clothes and their children’s cuts. I take the clothes off the line and go downstairs.

 
    M ASTER E RRICO sings. When he works hard he starts up with a song and doesn’t stop. He consumes it. Rafaniello sings, too, but silently, inside his throat. He doesn’t move his lips much and is holding a dozen shoe tacks for soles in the corner of his mouth. I can hear him even over the voice of Master Errico, which gets louder as the day gets longer and stops at noon, lunchtime, when the room is lit by a ray of sun that splits it in two. The sawdust rises in the air to meet the visiting light.
    Rafaniello sings nice, even when the buzz saw or planing machine is going. I can always tell if he’s singing or not. What songs do you know, Don Rafaniè? I ask. He used to know a lot of them; now he only sings one. I was taught not to ask too many questions and to keep my curiosity to myself. He lets a little silence go by, enough for me to ask a second question, then he answers. He says that he only sings one song, and just a few verses. The words are a good-luck wish forbuilding a kind of house where you pray. A church, I say. No, a house where you read, you study, and you say a prayer. Rafaniello smiles, he wants to end our conversation. The day is a morsel, and there are plenty of shoes to fix.
     
     
    M ASTER E RRICO squints because of the dust, because of the risk of getting a splinter in his eye. He’s got crow’s-feet from the strain of closing them. Rafaniello’s eyes are moist. He dries them with the back of his hand. He’s started to confide in me. Don Rafaniè, you look like you’re crying. “It’s the air in here,” he says. “It’s the glue. It’s Montedidio wringing out my eyes.” And he dries them. He says that all eyes need tears to see. Otherwise they get like fish eyes, which don’t see anything once they’re out of the water, and they dry up, blinded. Tears are what allow us to see. They comewithout being forced by crying. I nod yes with my head and feel two teardrops pinching at the top of my nose, trying to come out. They’re tickling me to make me cry. I turn around quick, blow my nose into my hands, throw the snot down on the ground into the sawdust, sweep it up. I have to force myself because I’m ashamed and I throw in a bit of Neapolitan, which always comes in handy. “Che chiagne a ffà?” I tell myself. What’re you crying for? I spit on the ground but the two teardrops well up anyway. Master Errico notices. “Guagliò to scorre la parpétola.” Kid, your eyelids are leaking. He tells me to come out of the back of the workshop. He sends me out to get a half jar of axle grease at Don Liborio’s print shop. On the street I can see more clearly. The fruit peels, the gills of the fish, the swordfish split in two, the tin plate of a beggar who stands up all day long and doesn’t sit down because the passersby are standing, and they hate to see panhandlers getting too comfortable on the ground. Rafaniello’s right. All it takes is two teardrops to clear your eyesight.

 
    D ON L IBORIO gives me the grease and tries to goose me, to grab my piscitiello . I can’t do anything about it. There’s not much he can do anyway. I’m strong and can slip out of his grip in a snap. He’s heavy, slow, and tries to goose all the guys. He chuckles more like a dove than a man. He runs the print shop by himself. None of the guys wants to get near him. People know, but they mind their own business, and Don Liborio is someone who does good deeds. He paid for the wedding gown of an orphan who had no dowry. And people say that no one ever died from getting goosed. “Quanno è pé vizio, nun é peccato.” No harm