God's Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

about being good and doing your job while outside a low sun comes and goes in an instant. Evening falls and you’re still coopedup in the shop. You saw the sun go by and didn’t have a chance to greet it. Sing, Rafaniello says, thoughts need to be released, to find a way out. I nod in agreement, but not even broken breath comes out of my mouth. If I were outside, then maybe a song would break out, but only my eyes can go outside. The door is open. The sea breeze carries the smell of the docks all the way up here. I feel like I’m smelling my father’s jacket, grease and salt, tar and rust. I forget my melancholy. Rather than sing, rather than sigh, I breathe in through my nose the sea air and the wind. The cries of the olive vendor come closer. I think of my father inside the hold of some ship and maybe he, too, feels like coming up for air. He deserves it more than I do. This is my first encounter with sadness.
     
     
    I N SUMMER my mother used to take me outside the gate, where we waited for his shift to end. You neverknew whether he would get out on time or have to stay and put in more hours. I’d be right outside, looking at the people on the Beverello pier getting on the white ferryboats of the Naples port authority. They were on their way to the islands, getting on and off board in straw hats. There was always someone who’d been scorched by the sun. Mama would laugh at how much they looked like tomatoes. “Sbarcano ‘e pummarole.” The tomatoes are landing! She never went sunbathing, never went to the beach. I’ve still never gotten on a ferryboat, but if I do I sure won’t wear a straw hat. We would wait for Papa, and when he came out, fresh and clean with his hair slicked back, in his good jacket and a white shirt buttoned up to the collar, we were the best-looking family on the promenade. We would walk as far as Mergellina, passing by the Santa Lucia neighborhood. He would buy me a tarallo from Castellamare. Mama would give him her arm. I would be on his other side holding his open hand. People stepped aside so as not to disturbour formation. In Naples they respect families. When the paths of two families cross they say hello.
     
     
    P APA IS as tall as the wardrobe and just fits under the doorjamb. On the street he cuts quite a figure beside other men. Mama is tall, too, with dark black hair. She’s skinny. In her face you can see her nerves. When a sudden gesture seizes her she’s dangerous. She snaps like a spring, breaking the things around her. She bends her fork while she’s eating if a thought makes her cross. I stopped giving her my hand when we went for walks. Sometimes she’d be lost in her thoughts and squeeze it so hard I would cry. Papa says she’s stronger than him. On the promenade I don’t think any child was prouder than me. Even in front of the sailing clubs where thegentlemen with the money go, in the shadow of my two giants I felt like I had a fortune that no one could match.
     
     
    W E USED to walk along the promenade by the Villa Comunale when the shoreline fishermen were hauling in the big net. There were six men to an end, all tugging together. The oldest one kept time, shouting heave-ho. The rope snaked from shoulder to shoulder, dragging the sea into land. The net came closer, wide and slow, while the two lines piled up in loops on the street. When the net came in, the fish sparkled, their whiteness leaping, flapping their tails by the hundreds, the net unloaded on dry land the pile of life stolen from the waves. Papa would say, “Behold the flames of the sea.” The smell of the waterfront was our perfume. In the peace-fulness of a summer day, when the sun was down, we’dstand there wordlessly, close to each other. We used to do it until last year. Until last year I was still a child.
     
     
    T HE SMELL of the port has risen all the way to our alley, and I forget my sadness. Master Errico saw how far away I looked and told me to drink some octopus broth. “Te magne