Book 1
Beatification
Beatification
The plastic Jesus has melted.
That proud figure, meant to protect me as I ride to church every Sunday, is reduced to nothing more than layers of liquefied synthetic fibres, resembling so many folds of fat. The once majestic head slanted backwards, falling under its own weight. The colours running together in a hideous hue.
Now he’s gone.
I need the protection.
I am six years old and Saturday mornings are meant to be a relaxing time but this day, for some reason, and not by my doing, I find myself in the car with my father, Patrizio Alberti. A man I hate.
He is lofty at six-foot-two. Taller than the average Calabrese male. His face is rarely clean shaven, sporting that Italian five-o’clock shadow. A toothpick always in his mouth. An artefact from his smoking days perhaps. Rugged is the look he’s going for.
Judging from old photographs he was quite handsome as a young man, but the years, and the rage he carries inside, have taken their toll, betraying themselves through his thinning hair and furrowed brow.
My father is a man with a curse always perched on his lips and a snide remark never far behind. He embodies the old-country mentality of several generations earlier, which in turn was corrupted by modern-day viciousness intrinsic in Italian society. Smiles and handshakes are always present when my father is facing you, but once you walk away, moving beyond earshot, the disparaging remarks fly fast and furious.
“What a fool,” he’d often say. “What a jerk. Che Cornuto.”
What is at the root of his rage? There is a long list to choose from, but I know that the main reason is that in my six years of life, I have yet to utter a single word.
We have just left La Sem, our local bakery, where my father has stocked up on buns and a few Cannoli for friends who are to visit later in the day. Spending the afternoon watching a soccer match between the Italian national squad, L'Aruzzi, and their long-time rivals the Germans, I tedeschi.
As is tradition at such events, the men alternate between patriotic pride that borders on fanaticism, to the vilest hatred for the players they had cheered the week before. Pity the striker who launches the ball over the net instead of into it. Damn the goalie that fails to clear a corner-kick properly.
Loyalty for my father and his friends stretches only as far as the tip of their nose and if you disappoint them, the wrath unleashed rivals the Holy Crusade itself.
Such is my father’s Saturday, his favourite day of the week. His oasis among the desert of everyday life, where he can relax before the next morning rolls around and he faces the day he hates most of all, the church day, as he refers to it.
Why am I with him today? Even as I look back at this, after having lived a full life, I don’t know.
It isn’t customary for me to accompany my father on an outing without my mother alongside, but I find myself in the car with him. He badgered me into making the short trip, I hesitated and even fought it, but he was determined that I fulfill my part of the father and son dynamic. He had to drag me out of the house and into the car, and I kicked at it the whole way.
I relented only because I knew that my solace was in the car. I was certain my plastic Jesus would be there to help me through the ordeal. Imagine my horror when I realize that even He is gone. Am I to face the whole morning alone?
That plastic Jesus, purchased next to St. Michael’s Cathedral, from only the most reputable of church gift shops, is rendered impotent.
It was after the Christmas concert at the Cathedral, that my mother bought him for me. Which is another reason he’s so special. I picked him out myself from the rows and rows of statuettes lined up neatly on a glass table. Each one an exact copy of the next, except for the one I chose. He spoke to me. I knew he was the one, with his eyes staring right through me. I was certain of it.
And now where has he gone? The day before he was fine. I saw him as I walked past. His eyes ever staring forward, paving the way for only goodness. The icebreaker on the bow, clearing a path for me to follow.
That’s how I saw him. How I see him. The one crusader who can do no wrong. He is battling for the one true goal we all strive for. That perfection. He is mine. I need him.
I reach up to touch Him and my father pipes up, “Leave him alone! He’s finished now. Look at him? What do you need with a busted Jesus anyway? I’ll throw him out later.” His lip twitches, wavering between anger and amusement.
My father never minces words. He is as stern with me as I believe his father was with him, and his father before that. It is a matter of pride with most of the Alberti men that they never show outward sentimentality. I doubt they ever felt it inward either. His approach to fatherhood is that of a duty completed the day I was born.
“A man must make a child”, he is fond of saying. “That is the way it should be. How could he be a man otherwise? I mean it screws up the natural order of things.”
Once that child is born, it is either up to the mother, or God, to do the rest, and in Italian households the burden usually falls upon the woman. God factors in only on Sunday, certain holidays and the occasional curses.
I turn to my father and the thought of him throwing Jesus out, in any form, is abhorrent to me. I quickly snatch Him from the dashboard.
“Ahh!” I cry out in pain as the plastic mound burns into my hand. It isn’t a spoken word. More of an inflection.
“Hah!” My father has a grin on his face. “I told you not to touch him, didn’t I? So now you’re hand is burnt, what do you expect me to do about it? I’m supposed to be a doctor to you as well? I mean, sometimes you really make me think. Why do you always do what I tell you not to do?”
Why do you always tell me not to do things? I think to myself, even though I never say it out loud. I’m not afraid of my father as much as I am not willing to sit through a rebuke or lecture. If he sets his mind to it, he can drag out a scolding for hours in his own circular argument. The final result always being the same, everyone else is at fault and he is never understood. What a marvellous defence mechanism that must be. I am misunderstood, therefore I’m right.
Staying in the background whenever he gets into his moods is always the best course of action.
I often hear him whisper to his friends about his idiot son, and they nod in agreement, even though it’s not said in a derogatory fashion. On the contrary, that is my father’s customary method of speaking, as it is with most of his friends as well. Idiot is a word that freely flows in conversation. It is a blanket spread over a large expanse.
A well-known fact, according to my father, that the Italian village where he was born is full of idiots. The mayor, police chief and even the barber are idiots. Anyone deemed different is to be automatically considered as such. Just what different means is subjective, so you never know who is to be labelled the idiot.
Elderly men in their seventies with club feet or bent backs are referred to in the same manner, when only a few years earlier, when their backs were straight, they were treated as normal members of the town.
I never take it too close to heart when I hear myself referred to in such a way, because I know I must be in good company. If my father is to be believed, half the people in Italy, and a good percentage of those in Canada are idiots.
Shaking off the pain in my hand, I hold up the melted Messiah and try to make out any discernible features. I study him closely, moving over all the details I have relegated to memory.
It is those memories that form the images engrained in my mind. They are what I see when I close my eyes at night and they comfort me to sleep.
They are what I see now as night descends.
They guide me through the darkness, past the uncertainty and past the blackest of nightmares, until I reach the light that greets each morning.
This image of the plastic Messiah helped me through my early years, but is now to be forever relegated to the bastion of memory, to be replayed only when my eyes shut. With them open though, I will forever see something different.
This is what I hold in my hand.
His body is contorted, misshapen. His back now broken and twisted like a backward seven. Should I consider Him an idiot?
I want to lock up the shutters that are my eyelids and never open them again. Better I live in the world of memories, but I know that isn’t possible. I have to open them to what is real. To what is tangible.
So I study the tiny sculpture closer, trying to reconstruct Him in the manner I remember, but his current state of being is too strong. He once stood at a towering three inches tall, but is now reduced a sickly inch and a half. The muscular features have wilted, like the vine after an early frost. The determined gaze clouded by the softened plastic, as if afflicted by the severest of cataracts. All semblance of what he used to be, physically, is gone.
Hardly a specimen of normality, but he still might be able to help me through the ordeal that is a drive with my father. So I will still speak to him with the voices in my head, because I need him desperately.
And this is why.
The route home invariably presents us with the choice of several different paths, but, as before, we drive down one in particular. This thoroughfare is off limits to me, but my father takes pleasure in trolling down it, curses flying under his breath. There is absolutely no reason for us to be here.
Roselawn Avenue is lined with predominantly Neapolitan households and, even though my father dislikes many things, what he hates most is all things Napolitani.
“They’ll rob you blind, take my word for it,” he says. “They’ll cut you just to watch you bleed.”
Why he makes the decision to purposely drive down the street and not avoid it, which is always an option, reveals a great deal about my father’s character and bitterness. Better for him to take that route and vent his venom than avoid it and enjoy a stress-free morning.
With each person we pass the pantomime replays itself. He knows everyone, having studied them day after day for many years. His own father has passed down this behaviour, although his hatred was directed to those from the eastern city of Taranto. All the Alberti men have their chosen hatreds. Their biases. I wonder what mine is to be.
“I hate Naples!” He says under his breath before flashing a smile and waving at the people walking the street.
“I hate their wine.” Smile and wave. “I hate their fish, their tomatoes.” Flash those teeth. “I hate their fritto misto, their Zuppa Inglese and zucchini. I hate their mountains with those winding roads. I hate that damn volcano. I hate the people and the pizza”. He looks at me, making certain to emphasize the point. “I hate the pizza most of all.”
What usually follows the wave of displeasure is an Old Italian curse so steeped in dialect that its true meaning is forever secret to me. I never do discover from where his hatred stems. He simply refers to them as the northern bastards.
In Italian politics and social circles you can never be northern or southern enough. The demarcation line is always Rome and on either pole of the ancient city, the hatred grows exponentially the further you move up or down the peninsula. Therefore it is possible for a resident of Venice to burn with hatred for those northerners from Udine. Campobasso always did hate Assisi.
Sicily inevitably bears the brunt of it, but in turn, the Sicilians are expert at hating all things relating to the mainland.
As we turn off Roselawn, my father lets out a relieved sigh. “I hate driving down that street.” We waste ten minutes of driving time, but his psyche is placated for yet another week. The people of Roselawn Avenue, safe in their unawareness, never comprehend the heavy layer of hatred that hangs over their street, like some low-lying smog. And they are the better for it.
My hand still stings from the heat. I should have realized He would be hot to the touch. It is the hottest day of the summer, which will turn out to be the hottest summer of the decade. Many deities melted that day.
To add to the misery, my father owns a black Chevrolet with dark interior. A car he purchased in a fit of youthful exuberance, but is now cursing every hot day that comes along. His dislike of air conditioning doesn’t help the situation either.
“I saved a thousand dollars not getting air”, he justifies. “The faster I go, the more air conditioning we get.” He never tires of the joke, even though everyone around him have. The fact that driving in Toronto curses you to a life of rarely moving beyond thirty kilometres an hour for more than a sixty second spurt means nothing to the wisdom my father clings to.
He looks over to me with concern. Actually it is a look of consternation, and I have seen it many times before. What usually follows is a deep sigh and a rubbing of his ever-thinning hair. It is a sign to me, like the plumes of smoke from a volcano before an eruption or the silence of dogs before the earthquake hits. I know he is displeased with me.
He looks my way for an extended pause and keeps rubbing at his hair, words perched on his lips but not able to complete the thought. I can always count on my father to leave a sentence unfulfilled.
He is a fan of starting something, but can never finish it. Even at six-years-old that bothers me. What a waste of words to leave a thought disconnected. Better to remain silent is my motto.
Over time I will come to realize what bothers him. My father’s friends all have children my age and we are obliged to play together, be the younger version of him and his cronies, but I’m not a willing participant. We all attend the same school and are on the same side on the tiny tots’ soccer team, but nothing else. I am a participant in physical form only.
Each Sunday before church the fathers and sons are called to one of the local Italian bars, La Paloma is the more popular, for some espresso and to watch the weekly highlighted soccer match from Italy’s Serie ‘A’. It is a smoky haze in the bar at the best of times, but on Sundays the cigarettes and cigars are liberally passed around to dangle from the lips, rest between fingers or to simply burn away on the edge of an ashtray.
Arguments develop on who is the best team, Inter of Milan or Juventus of Turin. The small contingent of Napoli fans remain quiet at the back of the bar, lest those Northern Lovers set upon them. Still, they revel, albeit silently, at the thought that theirs is the only southern team in Italy’s premiere league. All the other southerners are left to root for cities they normally despise.
All discussions are very important in the grand scheme of things as far as my father’s group is concerned. Yet, war, pestilence and hunger do not hold a candle to the importance of a soccer game. Even the sons are expected to have it out verbally on the merits of one team against the other.
I, on the other hand, am content with drinking my juice or savouring my Cassata Siciliana gelato, and to stare out the window at the passing parade of people and cars.
With each face I create a new story, and with each story I form my own special connection to the world. People I make eye contact with are important because I am instantly a part of their tale. Some smile while others go on their big city way, content to have no contact at all. Around me, enthusiastic hoops and howlers rise up with every goal, but I remain quiet.
This type of behaviour drives my father insane.
“What kind of Italian are you?” He asks. “You don’t like soccer. That’s not right?”
He says this in front of his friends, so as to aim the question at them rather than me, and for their part the friends shrug their shoulders in bewilderment, comforting my father with pats on the back. Having an idiot son is such a burden.
Whenever confronted with such questions on my lack of patriotic fervour, I simply look up at him and say nothing. I know that infuriates him even further.
I wasn’t born in Italy, and in my six years on earth I have never been to Italy. Yet I am to consider myself Italian. How could this be? Will extending that line of reasoning also make me Polish or Ethiopian, Jewish or Buddhist? I look forward to the day I choose to speak and pose the question to my father.
I also look forward to the expression on his face, because you never question your Italian heritage. Even if your ancestors haven’t stepped foot on the peninsula since the days of Garibaldi when he and his red-shirts unified the country, you are still Italian and forbidden to deny it.
You are to live within the tightly knit group of Italians, frequent schools with Italians, speak Italian and read only the news from Italy, conveniently supplied each day by papers flown in from the homeland. There are city blocks of only Italian speaking residents who never venture beyond their own street.
Hundreds and thousands of immigrants undertake the arduous journey across the ocean, only to settle in a community of fellow immigrants and close themselves off from the rest of the world. They aren’t looking for a better life, only a larger plot of land to build a fence around.
The disappointment that reality brings to these people is what leads to bitterness and divisiveness for many. They feel they have been sold a bill of goods; therefore they are due some compensation. That is the way of thinking for my father and a great deal of his generation, but not for me.
My appointed group of friends often speak of growing up and becoming just like the old man, a construction worker, which in our neighbourhood is as good as a lawyer. Maybe they want to become a tile-setter, or electrician, all very noble and acceptable professions, very Italian for the time and definitely non-deviant.
I, on the other hand, and this is what causes the true inner turmoil with my father, well I want to construct something quite unconventional for myself and I can’t understand why it troubles so many people.
To me it seems as natural as breathing. It is a thought with me as I awake each day, and stays until I fall asleep. It is a voice in my head that speaks to me everyday and I am surprised to discover not everyone feels the same.
With the pain subsiding in my hand, we turn onto St. Clarens Avenue, our street, lined with Calabrese households. The street stretches far southwards, all the way to Bloor, but the closer you approach the Italian bastion of St. Clair Avenue, the more Italianised the street becomes, and we are only a few houses down from the main thoroughfare.
My father looks at me once again, shaking his head. “How can you ask for anything if you don’t talk? You can’t use the telephone? You can’t ask for directions, you can’t order a gelato. Just what are you going to do if you don’t talk? I mean it’s not right.”
I don’t respond in any form and this eggs him on even further.
“You think I like having an idiot son? Having all the guys at La Paloma laugh at you? Laugh at me. You have to snap out of this for Christsakes. Think of what it’s doing to your mother?”
I prefer he leaves my mother out of his ramblings, but he always insists on making her a part of the discussion. Making certain everything falls squarely at her feet. She is his excuse, an alibi to relieve him of any responsibilities for his actions. If he can place the blame on her, then his hands are perpetually clean. He is never really concerned about her feelings, only how any given event impacts on him.
Let him talk, I think to myself. Our trip is almost over.
We pull into our driveway and my mother is on the front porch.
Antonella Alberti, born Roncalli, is the most beautiful woman in the world. That’s a declaration that springs from many a child, but for my mother it rings with an honesty that can never be shattered.
She hails from the southern region of Italy, but is blessed with a beauty so natural that it captures from every area of the country. She has the fresh air, rosy cheeks of the mountainous, snow-covered Piedmont region, the confidence of the Milanese, the olive oil soft skin of Tuscany, the sophistication of Rome, the down-to-earth work ethic of Naples and the Lower Peninsula and the independence of Italy’s Islands.
Her auburn hair matches her deep brown eyes, and her thin frame makes her taller than the average Calabrese woman. Her heart is as large as the stars are vast and she always has room for those she loves.
This is not an image that will be tinted by time or coloured by emotion, for my mother is loved by all. All, except for my father. Unlike him, whose years of rage have aged him prematurely, my mother is eternal.
She is standing on the porch waving goodbye to her friend, and our neighbour, Silvia Savore, who is off to yet another hospital visit with her son, Mimmi.
I glance to him, his pale face smiling back at me as their car drives off. He gives me his standard signal; thumb and forefinger of his left hand rocking back and forth. That is his way of saying hello to me. It’s our own language. Mimmi is my closet friend, and someone who changes my life in a profound way.
“That kid”, my father says of Mimmi, “always sick he is.”
The engine sputters to a stop and my father steps out of the car, barely acknowledging my mother as he rushes inside, calling out as the door closes behind him, “Don’t forget the Cannoli.”
She, in turn, smiles at me as I remain in the car, rubbing my burned hand. Hers is a smile that can soothe away any pain I may feel.
She steps to the car and leans into the window. “How was your trip, my angel?” She opens the door, holding out her hand for me to take, to make that connection with her.
My mother is a very touchy person. Not in any annoying, invade your space manner, but rather for the purest of reasons, to make a personal contact. As soon as she touches you, you are enveloped by her warmth.
She has a calming affect on people, but not everyone is privileged to feel that tenderness. It only works if you are willing to return the sincerity. She acts as a truth serum. If you are a good person at heart, then it is reflected back to you, but being cold will leave you with an empty feeling inside. She doesn’t do it intentionally; it’s something people feel whenever they come in contact with her. A form of instant karma.
I take her warm hand and climb out of the car.
“I made your favourite for lunch”, she says.
No need to say more, because I know what she is referring to. A Nutella sandwich and milk is, and always will be, my all-time favourite snack. She prepares it for me whenever I am sad or distressed in any way, and she knows that a car ride with my father is as traumatizing an event as any child can suffer.
We start towards the house, but I quickly turn to run back to the car and retrieve something very important.
As my mother and I continue to the house, I look down at the plastic Jesus in my hand and I make a decision.
I look back at that day and I’m thankful that I ventured out with my father. His tirade in the car turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because he was right, I did have to snap out of it and I knew exactly what to do next.
A few days later as we are all in class, gearing ourselves for summer break, our teacher asks us to think on a question. What do we wish to become when we grow up? A straightforward query, and one by one all the others answer. There are three architects, four doctors and three nurses, eight construction workers, one drywaller and a professional wrestler.
Odd how I remember all that to this day.
Eventually it is my turn.
Normally Miss Kardon, our teacher, bypasses me, not wanting to place me in an awkward position. She knows I don’t speak and won’t press me on it. The more questions she asks, the more the other children taunt and she isn’t about to subject me to that. I’m not a bad student; I practice my printing, I draw in class and read the stories. I just don’t speak.
Yet, she pauses in front of my desk, looking down at me and smiling, knowing that perhaps this time I am willing to answer.
“Joseph, do you have something to say?” She asks.
I will always remember how, with a simple gesture, my teacher started me down the path that has become my life. I am eternally grateful to her, and I still think of Miss Kardon as one of the smartest people I have met.
She waits patiently for me to answer, and I think of the car ride with my father and how he insisted that I speak. I realize that it isn’t that I don’t wish to speak; I am just waiting for something to say. Watch and listen is how I want to live my life. Listen and learn is the only way to succeed. Don’t ever speak unless you have something to say.
I hesitate not for a moment, knowing that the class is watching. I stand and step up to the front to face my peers. They all look at me; Joey Tucci and his enlarged Dantesque nose, Francine Carbone with her trussed up blonde hair, Stanley Chang, the only non-Italian in the class and Peppino Altamare, the meanest six-year-old in Little Italy. They wait, knowing that this will be the day.
I take a breath and speak the first words of my life.
“I want to be a saint”, I say. I am happy I said it. I am relieved to have spoken and excited about what may happen next.
There will be repercussions, though.
In the distance, across the city there comes a rumble and I can hear the distinct sound of my father rubbing nervously at his hair, and I can hear his words.
“My son, the idiot”. What more can he say.
