To the Wedding

15

Jean Ferrero found the pizzeria by chance because he took a wrong turning in the petrol-town of Cortemaggiore and it was the crowd of men laughing by the door who attracted his attention when he was asking his way for Cremona. Inside there’s a long table down the middle of the eating saloon, and thirty or more men are sitting at it. The walls are in white tiles. He has found a small table near the ovens, from where he can keep an eye on his bike in the street.

Luciano, the pizzaiolo, works in his vest. Most of the men eating are also bare-shouldered. Jean Ferrero has hung his helmet, jacket, gloves, shirt on a hat stand. Some of the men have the newspaper hats of building workers on their heads, others wear red and yellow peaked caps with the names of petrol companies printed on them. Like this, the gathering looks like a party. Every day each of them at the big table takes the same place and so everyone knows his neighbour’s sore points and how much or how little wine or water to pour for him. It’s the younger ones who do the pouring. The older ones explain what’s happening in the world.

Luciano is pummelling an armful of dough like a trainer punches his boxer to tease him. At one moment he leans over the counter covered with flour, away from the ovens, to shout at Jean: In a pizzeria without laughter the ovens cook badly — no doubt you’ve heard that!

One waitress, Elisa, serves all the men. Jean observes the confidence with which she carries the plates and carafes, and the skill with which she avoids their fondling and grasping hands. She is about the same age as Ninon.

Who ordered the Siciliana?

Here Lisetta, it’s for Otello, here.

Why are you so serious today, Lisetta, didn’t you sleep well?

Did he keep you awake all night, Lisetta?

And the Quattro Stagioni, she sings out, who ordered the Quattro Stagioni?

Elisa’s wrists are thin like Ninon’s, too.

Lisetta! Give us a smile and some more water!

I started with a mule, interrupts Federico, today my dump is the largest in Lombardy. Fifteen hectares of scrap. I can’t sleep and I’m thinking about Gino, so I walk around my stacks and they give off a kind of peace. It comes from their stillness. Every precious thing I’ve brought here was once manufactured for movement, for turning, as they say. (Laughter) Now each one is still, so still, surrounded by hundreds and thousands of almost identical ones who are still. It must be below freezing. In some of the stacks the metals are talking. I’m not hard of hearing yet. They zing in the cold, icy air. If I stop walking and listen, they zing out whole sentences. In below-zero temperatures metals sometimes do this. Just as on stifling summer nights the thinner metals chirp with accumulated heat, like cicadas. I’m already explaining to you, Counsel, so you’ll be fully prepared for defending me. I’m explaining to you how I made up my mind. Very calmly, Counsel. The sounds my stacks are making don’t disturb the stillness of the night.

And their wisdom isn’t violent. This is why I come back to the office at peace with myself and sure, sure of what has to be done tomorrow. She’ll be spared a lot of suffering, she’s condemned anyway. And like this Gino will be saved. When they put me on trial, I’ll lay out, with your help, Counsel, the whole godforsaken situation and every father in the country will support me. The Scrap Man of Asola will be called a national hero. But I’m doing it for their sakes, both of them. Which gun would be best? I’m wondering about my Beretta 921 which I bought off a Sardinian lawyer. Perhaps you even know him, Counsel? Agostino, he was called. He said he bought it to protect himself in Cagliari. Lawyers need guns there, and he sold it to me with a box of ammunition.

You’re my daily happiness, says one of the men in newspaper hats, to Elisa.

You want to pay now? Elisa asks Jean Ferrero, who is staring like a deaf man into the open oven from which Luciano has just slid out another pizza.

I got too close, Gino, I saw the pain in her eyes, so much pain there was no room for more. Then she started to laugh and I couldn’t do it. I drank my coffee and left. I couldn’t do it.

You want to pay now? Elisa asks Jean Ferrero a second time.

See that heap of spark plugs there? Big enough to fill a railway truck. In principle, Gino, their porcelain can be recycled. Everything has to be sorted out. Putting the same things together, separating like from unlike. It’s what I’ve done all my life. People mix up everything. They throw everything away in the same place. That’s how they make trash. There’s no such thing as trash. Trash is the confusion we make throwing things out.

You can’t give her up, you tell me. You want to, but you can’t. That’s already trash, Gino. You don’t want to give her up and you know very well you could. She has told you to leave her many times. There’s nobody who would say a word if you left her. There’s no future for you. There’s more future for those radiators there than for you and her. Anyway leave is the wrong word. To leave you have to share a front door and you’ve never lived in the same place together. There’s no question of leaving. It’s a question of not going further, of stopping. And you, you want to go further. I don’t ask why. Any more than I ask why there’s a metal called tungsten. Tungsten exists. (Laughter)

So does love. In your case, love’s as heavy as tungsten. You want to give this Frenchwoman everything you can. Then separate things out. You love her. She’s going to die. So are we all. She’s going to die soon. Then be quick. You can’t have children, you can’t risk passing that abomination on to another generation.

The ancients believed that metals were engendered underground, all of them, engendered by the coupling of mercury with sulphur. Use a capote, Gino, and marry her. You’ll be marrying a woman, not a virus. Scrap isn’t trash, Gino. Marry her.