Me and You (2 page)

She shook her head. ‘No, I will worry.’

With my arm round the skis, the bag with the ski boots in my hand and the backpack on my shoulders I watched my mother do a U-turn. I waved and waited until the BMW had
disappeared over the bridge.

I headed up Viale Mazzini. I went past the RAI building. About a metre before reaching via Col di Lana I slowed down. My heart beat faster. I had a bitter taste in my mouth like I’d been
licking copper wire. All the stuff I was carrying made me clumsy. I felt like I was in a sauna inside my goose down jacket.

When I came to the intersection, I poked my head round the corner. At the end of the street, parked in front of a modern-style church, was a big Mercedes SUV. I could see Alessia Roncato, her
mother, the Sumerian and Oscar Tommasi stuffing their luggage into the car boot. A Volvo with a pair of skis on the roof rack pulled up next to the SUV and Richard Dobosz got out and ran over to
the others. Soon Dobosz’s father also got out.

I drew back behind the wall. I put the skis down, unzipped my jacket and took another look around the corner.

Now Alessia’s mother and Dobosz’s father were tying the skis to the roof rack. The Sumerian was hopping from side to side pretending to take a shot at Dobosz. Alessia and Oscar
Tommasi were talking on their mobiles.

It took them ages to get ready. Alessia’s mother kept getting angry with her daughter for not lending a hand; the Sumerian climbed up onto the car roof to check the skis.

And eventually they left.

I felt like an idiot as I rode the tram, with my skis and ski boots, squashed in between office clerks in ties and suits, mums and kids heading off to school. If I closed my
eyes it felt like I was on the cable car. With Alessia, Oscar Tommasi, Dobosz and the Sumerian. I could smell the lip balm, the suntan lotion. We would have got off the cable car, pushing each
other and laughing, talking loudly regardless of the people around us, like all those people my mother and father call yobs. I would have said funny things and have made them all laugh while they
put their skis on. I would have done impressions of people, cracked jokes. But I was never able to say funny things in public. You have to be very confident to make jokes in public.

‘Life is sad without a sense of humour,’ I said.

‘Amen,’ answered a lady standing next to me.

My father had said this thing about a sense of humour after my cousin Vittorio had thrown a cowpat at me during a walk in the country. I was so angry I grabbed a huge rock and threw it at a
tree, while that retard rolled on the ground with laughter. Even my father and mother had laughed.

I loaded the skis on to my shoulders and got off the tram.

I looked at my watch. Seven fifty.

Too early to go back home. I was sure to run into Dad as he left for work.

I headed towards Villa Borghese, to the valley near the zoo where dogs are allowed to run off the lead. I sat down on a bench, pulled a bottle of Coke out of my backpack and took a sip.

My mobile began ringing in my pocket.

I waited a moment before answering.

‘Mum . . .’

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you on your way?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there much traffic?’

A Dalmatian careered past me. ‘A bit . . .’

‘Can you put Alessia’s mum on?’

I lowered my voice. ‘She can’t talk right now. She’s driving.’

‘Well, I’ll speak to her this evening then, so I can thank her.’

The Dalmatian had begun barking at its owner because it wanted her to throw it a stick.

I put my hand over the phone and ran towards the street.

‘All right.’

‘Bye.’

‘All right, Mum, bye . . . Hey, where are you? What are you doing?’

‘Nothing. I’m in bed. I wanted to sleep a little more.’

‘When are you going out?’

‘I’ll go and see your grandma later.’

‘And Dad?’

‘He’s just left.’

‘Ah . . . okay then.’

‘Bye.’

Perfect.

There he was, the Silver Monkey, sweeping up the leaves. That’s what I called Franchino, our building’s doorman. He looked exactly like a kind of monkey that lives
in the Congo. He had a round head covered with a strip of silver hair. This band began at the nape of his neck and curled up over his ears and down his jawline until it joined up on his chin. A
single dark eyebrow crossed his forehead. Even the way he walked was strange. He moved forward hunched over, with his long arms swaying, the palms of his hands facing forwards and his head
bobbing.

He was from Soverato, in Calabria, where his family lived. But he had worked in our building since forever. I thought he was nice. My mother and my father said that he was over-familiar with
them.

Now the problem was how to get into the building without him seeing me.

The Silver Monkey moved very slowly and it took him a lifetime to sweep the courtyard. Hiding behind a truck parked on the other side of the street I pulled out my mobile and dialled his home
number. The phone in his basement flat began ringing. It took the Silver Monkey ages to hear it. At last he dumped the broom and loped towards the entrance. I watched him disappear down the
stairs.

I grabbed the skis and boots and crossed the street. I just missed being hit by a Ka, which began honking at me. Behind it, other drivers had slammed on their brakes and were yelling
insults.

Gritting my teeth, as the skis kept slipping and the backpack cut into my shoulders, I turned off my mobile and walked through the gates. I passed by the moss-covered fountain where the goldfish
live and the English-style lawn with the marble benches you weren’t allowed to sit on. My mother’s car was parked next to the shelter near the main door, under the palm tree she had
saved from the red palm weevil.

Praying that I wouldn’t run into anyone on their way out of the building I slipped into the foyer, ran along the red carpet past the lift and dived down the stairs which led to the
cellars.

When I made it downstairs I was out of breath. Patting my way along the wall I found the light switch. Two long, faded striplights came on, illuminating a narrow, windowless corridor. Along one
side ran pipes, along the other, closed doors. Standing in front of the third door, I stuck my hand in my pocket, pulled out a long key and turned it in the lock.

The door opened onto a large, rectangular room. Up high, two small windows veiled with dust let in a sliver of light which fell on furniture covered with sheets, on boxes full of books,
saucepans and clothes, on termite-ridden window frames, on tables and wooden doors, on lime-crusted sinks and stacks of upholstered chairs. Stuff was piled up everywhere I looked. A flowery blue
settee. A heap of mildewed mattresses. A collection of moth-eaten
Reader’s Digests
. Old records. Crooked lampshades. A cast iron bedhead. Rugs rolled up in newspapers. A big ceramic
bulldog with a broken paw.

A Fifties household amassed in a cellar.

But over on one side was a mattress with blankets and a pillow. Neatly set out on top of a coffee table were ten tins of corned beef, twenty of tuna, three bags of sliced bread, six jars of
vegetables in oil, twelve bottles each of Ferrarelle sparkling water, fruit juice and Coke, a jar of Nutella, two tubes of mayonnaise, biscuits, snacks and two bars of milk chocolate. A small
television sat on a chest, along with my PlayStation, three Stephen King novels and a couple of Marvel comics.

I locked the door.

This would be my ski week.

2

I started talking when I was three years old. Small talk has never been one of my strengths. If someone I didn’t know said something to me I would answer yes, no, I
don’t know. And if they insisted, I would answer with whatever they wanted to hear me say.

Once you’ve thought something, what need is there to say it aloud?

‘Lorenzo, you’re like a cactus: you grow without bothering anyone, you just need a drop of water and a bit of light,’ an old nanny from Caserta used to say to me.

My parents used to bring over au pairs for me to play with. But I preferred playing on my own. I would close the door and imagine that my room was a cube that floated through space.

My problems started at primary school.

I have very few memories of that period. I remember my teachers’ names, the hydrangeas in the schoolyard, the metal containers full of steaming hot maccheroni in the canteen. And the
others.

The others were anyone who wasn’t my mum, my father and Grandma Laura.

If the others didn’t leave me alone, if they pushed me too far, the blood would rise up through my legs, flood my stomach and spread out to the tips of my hands, and then I would clench my
fists and lash out.

When I pushed Giampolo Tinari off the wall and he fell on his head on the cement and had to get stitches in his forehead, they called home.

In the staff room, my teacher told my mother: ‘He looks like he’s at the station waiting for the train to take him home. He doesn’t annoy anyone, but if any of his classmates
tease him he starts shouting, turns red and starts throwing whatever he can get his hands on.’ The teacher had studied the floor, embarrassed. ‘Sometimes he is frightening. I
don’t know . . . I would recommend you . . .’

My mother took me to see Professor Masburger. ‘You’ll see. He helps a lot of kids.’

‘But how long do I have to go for?’

‘Three quarters of an hour. Twice a week. What do you say?’

‘Yeah, that’s not too much,’ I told her.

If my mother thought I’d end up being like the others that was fine with me. Everyone had to think that I was normal, Mum included.

Nihal would take me. A fat secretary wearing a caramel perfume would lead me into a mouldy-smelling room with a low ceiling. The window faced a grey wall. On the hazelnut-coloured walls hung old
black and white photos of Rome.

‘But does everyone who has problems lie there?’ I asked Professor Masburger, as he pointed towards a faded brocade couch.

‘Of course. Everyone. This way you can talk more freely.’

Perfect. I would pretend to be a normal kid with problems. It wouldn’t take much to trick him. I knew exactly how the others reasoned, what they liked and what they wished for. And if what
I knew wasn’t enough, that couch I was lying on would transfer to me, like a warm body transfers heat to a cold body, the thoughts of the kids that had lain there before me.

And so I told him all about a different Lorenzo. A Lorenzo who was embarrassed to talk to the others but who wanted to be like them. I liked pretending that I loved the others.

A few weeks after I began the therapy I heard my parents whispering in the living room. I went into the study. I took a few volumes from the bookshelves and put my ear up against the wall.

‘So what’s wrong with him?’ Father was saying.

‘He said that he has a narcissistic personality disorder.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He says that Lorenzo is unable to feel empathy for others. For him everything that’s outside his circle of affections doesn’t exist, has no effect on him. He believes he is
special and only people as special as him can understand him.’

‘You want to know what I think? That this Masburger is a dickhead. I have never seen any boy as affectionate as our son.’

‘That’s true, but only with us, Francesco. Lorenzo thinks that we’re the special people and he considers everyone else to be inferior.’

‘He’s a snob? Is that what the professor is trying to tell us?’

‘He said that he has an inflated sense of self-importance.’

My father burst into laughter. ‘Thank goodness. Just think if he had a low sense of self-importance. That’s enough, take him away from that worthless idiot before he fills up our
son’s brain with nonsense for good. Lorenzo is a normal child.’

‘Lorenzo is a normal child,’ I repeated to myself.

Little by little I worked out how I should act at school. I had to keep to myself, but not too much, otherwise I stuck out.

I was like a sardine in a school of sardines. I camouflaged myself like a stick insect on dry branches. And I learned to control my anger. I imagined that I had a tank in my stomach, and when it
filled up I emptied it out through my feet and the anger ended up in the ground and penetrated into the world’s guts and was burned up by the eternal flames.

Now nobody bothered me.

For middle school I was sent to St Joseph’s, an English school filled with the children of diplomats, of foreign artists who had fallen in love with Italy, of managers from the US and of
wealthy Italians who could afford the fees. Everyone was out of place there. They all spoke different languages and looked like they were just passing through. The girls kept to themselves and the
guys played football on the big field opposite the school. I fitted in well.

But my parents weren’t satisfied. I had to have friends.

Football was a stupid game, everyone running around after a ball, but that’s what everyone else liked. If I learned to play, I was home free. I would have some friends.

I found the courage and put myself in goal, where nobody ever wanted to play. I realised that defending it from enemy attacks wasn’t all that bad. There was this one guy, Angelo Stangoni,
who was unstoppable whenever he got the ball. He would shoot like a lightning bolt to the goal and kick really hard. One day a defender knocked him down with a kick. Penalty. I lined myself up in
the middle of the goal. He took a run up.

I am not a man, I said to myself, I am a nyuzzo, a hideous but incredibly agile animal produced in an Umbrian laboratory that has just one purpose in life: to defend the earth from a mortal
meteorite.

Stangoni kicked hard, straight down the line, and I flew like only a nyuzzo can, stretching out my arms. And the ball was there in my hands. I saved it.

I remember how all my team-mates hugged me and it was nice because they thought I was one of them.

They put me on the team. Suddenly I had schoolmates who called me at home. My mother would answer and she was happy to be able to say: ‘Lorenzo, it’s for you.’