"Finally!" thought Giannino Auriemma as he set off happily and at a good pace towards the public gardens, a faded green stamp where the elderly of the neighborhood had carved out their own space, equipped little by little with a table and a few chairs. Between a game of tressette, sometimes even quarrelsome, and a "do you remember?" they pulled the lunch hour or the start of the news without being too much of a hindrance to the family.
An overwhelming bronchitis, nailing him to his home, with the only company of a stubborn cough, had forced him to desert the park for fifteen days.
But Giannino didn't complain. Thanks be to God, apart from a few minor ailments, he didn't have major health problems.
The weekly visit to Dr. Elia's surgery, the health insurance doctor, was a consolidated habit, also a way to have a chat with other mostly elderly patients like him who complained of prostate or cataract problems. The doctor took his blood pressure, listened to it, made him say thirty-three, reassured him and dismissed him with a friendly pat on the cheek.
No, Giannino didn't complain. He had seen vigorous and well-built workmates, who would have been suicidal to come to blows, now pushed in a wheelchair by the pity of a relative, or by the need for a non-EU citizen. Someone hadn't even made it to the boarding house. No, not poteva complain and not where you go.
"There is always someone who is worse off than you" his mother had told him, many, many years ago, when he was a child with transparent eyes and capricious hair. All his life he had kept those words in mind and for this he had been a happy man.
Certainly he had imagined his old age very differently: he would have liked to have beside him, in the years in which steps and vision become uncertain, his wife, son and many grandchildren to whom he would have told of when, from the bottom of the assembly line, he he quietly raised a song that gradually grew in intensity as an emotion crossed the whole supply chain and the workers sang so as not to go crazy. But Lucia, his Lucia, had annoyed him – the only one in so many years of marriage – by suddenly taking leave of this life on a windy April day, and as for his son she had a job and a family at a thousand kilometres.
But that good boy didn't fail to call him every Friday evening after nine and a couple of times a year he came to visit him together with the bride with the color of the ear of wheat.
She had recently given him great news: a baby was on the way and that Friday Giannino had shed tears of joy and pride with Lucia's photograph in his hands. "You would have been a grandmother, old girl."
The important thing is to get back into the bagget.
He had heard these words, repeated as a refrain, during a television broadcast that never failed to follow in the early afternoon. A useful program, dedicated to consumers, in which many good tips were lavished for shopping as cheaply as possible.
The sentence had struck him so much that in order not to forget it he had written it.
The small screen was the only luxury he could indulge in since he retired: seven hundred euros a month, this was his lot after forty years in the factory, a third spent on the assembly line.
The important thing is to get back into the bagget.
The advice kept coming back to his mind like certain nursery rhymes that are memorized in childhood and never leave us, or those little tunes that every now and then, inexorably, return to our lips.
The important thing is to get back into the bagget.
Now he had to get to the bottom of this story, understand the precise meaning of these words, and who if not Don Filippo could enlighten him?
Filippo was a former workmate of his, also retired. Former trade unionist and literate across the board. Expert in labor issues and profound connoisseur of the human soul. Communist of those who eat children. He possessed the rare virtue of explaining the most complex things in such an elementary way as to make himself understood even by the simple.
Giannino knew where to find him. When Don Filippo gave pills of wisdom to the gardens, the audience increased dramatically: even the nannies with prams stopped to listen to him, fascinated by his story-telling ability.
«The eggplant is native to Asia. Its fruits are large, purplish, cylindrical in shape with bitter internal pulp.
That day to the wise teacher had been asked what a thesis is.
«As everyone knows, there are different qualities of aubergines, some take the name of the region they come from, for example the Sicilian ones. And there are many, many ways to enjoy them: mushrooms, roasted, slippered, in oil, browned and fried. They make their figure among the appetizers and in the caponata. By themselves, they make a sober pasta dish a delicacy. Garnished with chocolate and candied fruit they become the most exotic of desserts. But allow me, friends, allow me to pay homage to that divine dish, the true food of the gods, which is eggplant parmigiana.»
And here Don Filippo stopped and made a half bow to pay his respects to an invisible Parmigiana. He resumed, aware that he had the public in his grip: «Surely you are wondering what aubergines have to do with a degree thesis. I'll get to the point: doing a degree thesis on a specific topic means researching and then writing everything related to that topic. If someone asks you to do a degree thesis, for example on the aubergine, you should talk about the characteristics of the plant, its leaves, where it is grown, the time of sowing, how many varieties are known, its flowers, its fruits, what kind of food they give and the qualities of this food. In short, everything there is to say about the aubergine. From A to Z."
Don Filippo's swirling gaze scanned the attentive faces of the spectators. He had hit the spot.
Giannino, who hadn't missed a single word, approached and asked the question that was close to his heart. The meaning of that catchphrase: "The important thing is to get back into the bagget”.
Don Filippo repeated the phrase a couple of times looking beyond the interlocutor in search of one of his withering metaphors. After a while, he attacked: "Suppose, Giannino, you want to make yourself a dress. Of course you go to the tailor and what does the tailor do first?'
«He lets me choose the fabric and takes my measurements» answered Giannino promptly.
"Very good. He takes your measurements because the dress has to fit you perfectly. It's your dress, you have to wear it and you alone have to fit in it, right? And it doesn't have to be wide or narrow. Now yours bagget [Don Filippo even knew a few words of English] is none other than your pension, which you must return to as in the famous dress. Nothing must advance, nothing must be lacking». She fell silent and searched Giannino with her eyes to make sure he understood.
Giannino had been jumping through hoops to get back into his dress for ages!
That holy soul of Lucia had always used the cup system. She divided her husband's salary in the china service displayed in the crystal cabinet: a cup for the landlord, another for the bills, yet another for food, and so on.
The service was for six and was advancing.
Since he was left alone, Giannino had abandoned porcelain while continuing to divide up his retirement scientifically. He put aside the money for rent and fixed expenses in the top drawer of the chest of drawers between socks and handkerchiefs and already two-thirds was gone. He divided the remaining sum into four or five - according to the number of weeks - equal parts and with each pile, very small indeed, he had to meet any need for the relative seven days.
Twice a week she did some shopping: day full it was the one in which he bought something extraordinary, for example sugar or detergent, day empty when he bought only bread and milk.
Sometimes, thanks to promotional offers or special discounts, he even managed to spend less than budgeted and then invested the surplus in scratch cards. Having set aside the lottery counter which had become too expensive, he liked to try his luck scraping off the golden patina of the colored coupons that reminded him of the pinball tables of when he was a boy. He had been a champion at bouncing the ball between the half-red, half-blue iron men.
This is how the pensioner Giannino Auriemma lived sensibly, who always remembered his mother's teachings.
You won!
The letters emerged from under the painted layer forming the magical phrase.
"I won?" Giannino wondered as he turned the lucky slip in his hands. “What have I won?” He didn't know that you had to uncover another box to know the prize. She scratched off the newsstand for him and informed him: «You have won three thousand euros! Compliments!".
"Three thousand euros? Three millions! No! He remembered to double down: that's nearly six million! What confusion!" Giannino had never won anything, he had always lived off his work. Him cashing out six million without doing anything upset him.
That night Giannino dreamed of America.
He dreamed of bridges fluttering like butterflies and majestic blocks of glass and metal launched towards the sky, so bright as to mirror each other.
He dreamed of a torch lit at the entrance to a golden door.
He dreamed of rivers of milk and lakes of sugar.
He dreamed of endless expanses of wheat and spinach plantations, he dreamed of herds grazing the blue grass and galloping white thoroughbreds.
He dreamed of abundance.
He dreamed of pregnant Lucia and of himself as a young man caressing her belly.
Suddenly he found himself on a steel ribbon, which was flowing very fast, together with all the workers who were dancing. There was also the chief of personnel and the administrative secretary who was used for an advance on pay, when one really couldn't make ends meet. And the warehouseman who didn't release spare parts if you didn't give him the piece to be replaced. The department head, the head of the purchasing office, Filippo, the trade unionists, all pirouetting happily on the carpet that was spinning at supersonic speed.
They danced, sang, laughed. They seemed to be having a blast. There was gypsy music, an air of celebration that had never, really never been seen in the factory.
Giannino set out in search of Lucia.
It wasn't easy to find her in that revelry, the ribbon was very narrow and she fell at breakneck speed, yet none of the dancers slipped.
Finally he caught sight of his bayadera whirling in the arms of an overseer. She was about to go towards her when she heard her call.
A faint little voice, a breath from the tail of the walkway that penetrated the music and reached him. Giannino felt suffocated by happiness: he knew who that voice belonged to.
It existed. It was flesh of his flesh, a drop of light in a black hole, in a very distant galaxy.
He awoke filled with a sense of omnipotence, as if drunk or madly in love. Softly closing his eyes she tried to fall asleep again, but that melodious whisper was gone.
The unexpected win posed a crucial problem for Giannino: the investment of the thirty one-hundred-euro bills which he had immediately arranged to place among his clothes in the top drawer of the chest of drawers. A thousand ideas came to mind, but he dismissed them one by one.
The cruise. It was the newsagent who suggested it to him. Silver cruises, formula for pensioners: seven days in the Mediterranean at highly discounted prices. “You know how nice it is to watch the seagulls fly, to contemplate the sunset on the sea alone” thought Giannino. How sad! No, no cruise or travel for the elderly, rather he would have given a gift to his son and grandson who was about to be born. But not money, not that, they could think he had won the Enalotto.
A gift, would send a gift.
He found himself wanting nothing for himself, nothing that could be bought. That wad of bills lounging in the dresser was only complicating his life. He was busting all of it bagget.
But he did one thing: he slipped out a hundred dollar bill, bought a bag of pastries, a few bottles and went to the gardens, where his friends welcomed him as Scrooge McDuck.
Lady luck is anarchist. She recognizes no order, no authority. She goes wherever he wants while ignoring the rules.
The occasion was too tempting for Don Filippo not to improvise a sermon on luck. «Statistically, as a rule, it prefers the already well-off, for this reason the rich get richer and richer, said Marx.»
Naturally Giannino also wanted to participate Dr. Elia of his lucky star. And the following Tuesday he went to the surgery where, however, he didn't find his doctor friend, but a young female doctor who replaced him.
At first, Giannino was tempted to leave because he was afraid to talk about the money he had won and his ailments with a woman who could have been his niece: but then he decided to stay because it was whispered in the waiting room that she was really "good", the doctor.
"How severe and how beautiful she is," he thought as the doctor in a skirt examined him professionally, asking him many questions.
When the check was over, the bespectacled doctor filled out a long prescription and handed it to him: «Mr. Auriemma…».
«Giannino, Doctor.»
«Mr. Giannino, some tests need to be done. She suffers from chronic bronchitis and it strains her heart. »
«Doctor, these days my heart is scrambled because I felt a strong emotion: do you know what happened to me?» Shyly, stumbling over her words, she told of the Scratch and Win and the prize.
The woman smiled and was even younger.
"It's a good thing. But don't forget to do the analyzes I've prescribed and bring me the results. Listen to me."
Maybe the doctor in glasses was really good: Giannino's time was just about to run out. After a few days, one morning when the crisp air anticipated autumn, pensioner Giannino Auriemma's heart stopped suddenly while he was shaving. And the last thing the man – who always liked to be clean-shaven like a bishop – saw was the grimace of his soaped face reflected in the bathroom mirror.
A first-class funeral ordered the son who, alone, arrived from the icy city in which he lived. He had been a modest man, he was his father, unpretentious but not a poor man and deserved a more than dignified funeral. The young man had once happened to attend the funeral of a very wealthy gentleman. In the villa, where very elegant women in mourning and distinguished men in dark suits were gathered, thousands and thousands of euros in the form of lilies, roses, orchids, a very sad municipal cart had arrived to collect the body.
Giannino traveled in a pearl gray Mercedes. The carriage of respect, the one for the crowns, was not necessary: all his life he had enjoyed the esteem of others. The companions' bundles of flowers colored the walnut coffin. The son, wearing dark glasses, keeping his emotion at bay, took his place next to the uniformed driver.
When it was all over, he wrote - without removing his glasses - a check including a tip for the undertaker.
Now he just had to return the key to the landlord, pick up his briefcase and go to the airport. She had her flight in three hours.
While waiting for the owner, among his father's belongings, he rediscovered the familiar smells, the clean essence of his mother. He pulled out of a frame the sepia-toned photo of his parents on a happy day.
He would introduce them to his son.
He didn't want to take anything away, as things would have been misplaced elsewhere. Perhaps the small apartment would have been rented to another pensioner or to a poor person and the furniture too, like a treasure for the new tenant: there is always someone who is worse off.
However, his father's watch – an old steel Seiko – he had worn on his wrist, had seemed to him the best witness.
But why was the good man with the key late? He would have made him miss the plane! Impatiently he walked the length and breadth of the few honest square meters.
After yet another about-face, he noticed the veneered chest of drawers which, against the white wall, loomed over the simple furnishings. The first puller wasn't aligned with the others, it was half open.
The man grabbed both handles to bring it closer, he realized that it was blocked, it was necessary to extract it completely to channel it on the guides. He pulled hard, perhaps too much because he was almost pushed back by the drawer which completely jumped out of its slot, revealing the pensioner's embarrassed underwear.
Half hidden between sweaters and woolen underpants, the green banknotes tightened by an elastic band. One two three… Giannino's son didn't believe what he saw as he slipped the one hundred euro bills between his fingers. Never, never would he have imagined that his father could have savings!
Surprise turned to amazement when he discovered that curiously the nest egg was equal to the amount of the check he had just written for the funeral home. The bizarre coincidence left him motionless, dazed. He felt an urgent and impossible need to talk to his parent.
A warm gust of wind enveloped him with familiarity.
Now Giannino Auriemma was really happy: light, relieved of all useless ballast, finally free, he went to meet Lucia to invite her to dance.
Maria Rosaria Pugliese began with Patients sget married (Robin Edizioni, 2010): the novel was ranked third in the 2011 Domenico Rea Prize, was a finalist in the Premio Giovane Holden in the same year and a semi-finalist in the What Women Write competition organized by Mondadori. The author contributed to the anthology The throat (Giulio Perrone Editore, 2008), at Encyclopedia of Writers inonexistent(Boopen LED, 2009; II ed. Homo Scrivens, 2012). He has published stories on the web, some awarded. She loves to travel. She is an avid reader of Hispanic fiction. For goWare, in 2014, she released the collection Carretera. Fourteen stories along the way.
