Other People's Fathers by Romana Petri

Luigi's father...

didn't even wait to hear the noise of the toy fort falling off the table and smashing itself into a thousand pieces on the floor, but anticipated the fall and punched his son in the face. This was the summer of '73 and Luigi was eight years old. In the world of his perceptions what happened was the great capitulation, because the man who had hit him wasn't just any man, he was his father.

Already passionately fond of animals, Luigi had read in one of his school books that in every species the father generates life and the mother protects it. That day things had got a bit too far out of kilter, because his father had all but despatched him to another world, and his mother had done nothing to prevent it.

But such serious considerations only struck him later, as did the failure to help, because despite the initial loss of consciousness and the many shorter fainting-fits that followed over the next two days, he was not taken to hospital nor was a doctor called.

At the time he could not, naturally, have known what was going on around him, he would learn that later when the meaning of the words revealed the significance of all the arguments and all the broken sentences he had heard, and only then would he put two and two together.

At the time he felt nothing but a crushing sense of guilt, and with that came an immeasurable increase of his love, because if he deserved to be punished so severely, then the wrong he had done must have been truly terrible, and if in spite of this they continued to keep him with them and look after him, they must be saints worthy of adoration.

He often saw his mother cry and lose her temper, his father prowl around the house with a face of thunder for days on end until the explosion came when anything that got in his way would be sent flying, be it an object or his own son.

He took his first big step one afternoon when he was nearly eleven and was alone in the house watching a film. In it, a woman said to a man, I don't know if you're two-timing me or not, but the thought is driving me insane and if I'm to be driven insane I'll make sure you are too. A week later they went to visit his grandmother. A widow of many years' standing and very wise, she lived outside the town in a beautiful apartment with great luminous windows overlooking the sea. She had no sympathy for her foolish daughter or for the son in law who she thought was a big-mouth, a good for nothing, Ôall smoke and no roast'. They were obliged to visit her because she would never visit them, finding one excuse after another, and when they tried to insist she would refuse flatly. I'm fine where I am, I have my own way of life and my own thoughts for company.

After lunch that day, when his parents had gone for a walk to the quayside, Luigi went for a nap with his grandmother, and curled up beside her, leaning his chin against her chest and looking up at her, he asked, Granny, what does two-timing and driving me insane mean? Grandmother, who knew perfectly well what was going on and all the ins and outs of the situation, replied, Nothing that concerns you. Things that happen when life still itches. Nothing that applies to you and me, we're well out of it. Unable to make head or tail of this reply, Luigi said, Either you explain, or I shall start screaming at the top of my voice.

They got up immediately. Come on, let's go to the kitchen. We're not in the mood to sleep, anyway, said Grandmother. To hell with high blood pressure, I'm going to make myself a strong coffee, and to hell with those two nincompoops as well. Now listen, two-timing means when two people are married and one of them fails to keep the promises made to the priest and takes up with another companion, and being driven insane means to lose one's head, be out of one's mind. On the journey home, Luigi tried to recall what he had overheard his parents saying, and by reconstructing the sentences word by word, concluded that his father was the one who was doing the two-timing, his mother the one who was being driven insane. In the lift, looking his father up and down, he asked, What gave you the idea of two-timing my mother? Between the second and third floors he collected a punch in the face that made his nose bleed and knocked it out of shape.

The period that ensued was extremely stormy and had little or nothing to do with reality. As men always insist on the truth and say they cannot live without it, the family was locked into an insoluble state of turmoil. And it could not be otherwise, because when a man is not two-timing his wife but is believed to be doing so, and when a woman is not being two-timed but believes that she has been from the beginning, things go round and round in ever-decreasing circles from which there is no way out.

It was a house of the obsessed, and Luigi, the son, was targeted as if his body were the repository of his father's unproved innocence.

At the age of fifteen he asked himself a new question. If she makes him suffer and he has done absolutely nothing wrong, why am I made a punchbag? He became obsessed with this conundrum, which plagued him so persistently that he could no longer think clearly, because when one should keep clear of a situation but is willy-nilly involved, the spirit performs strange acrobatics and can injure itself without knowing how to bind its wounds. Luigi was certainly not old enough to find convincing answers to his questions, answers such as, She's an attractive woman and he loves her very much, so if he knocked her about she would certainly be less attractive and he would desire her less, confirming her conviction of his unfaithfulness. Or, They love each other very much but they're starting to grow old and this is the twisted way they choose to keep the great passion alive.

He truly grasped the situation at the age of twenty, when, returning home before he was expected, he heard them making love and exchanging words that were insulting and exciting at the same time. So this was the weird way they made love! And all this time he had assumed them to be unhappy, always unhappy! This was the little game for which he had been made a punchball most of his life.

He bided his time. It arrived one Saturday afternoon at the supermarket. She was shouting insults at him as she wheeled the trolley in his wake, and he was walking ahead very slowly, choosing goods almost at random, now a tin of fruit now a packet of biscuits. They landed in the trolley one on top of the other, sometimes with a metallic boing, sometimes with a cardboard thud. She was beside herself, virulent to the point of yelling, I'd like to cut your throat and stuff first salt and then vinegar down it!

This was the moment, he could never hope for a better one. He sidled up to his father. Papa, shall we get some fizzy drinks, too? Shall we? What do you say, Papa, shall we get some? Papa! The fist was raised, but this time he was ready for it. Luigi ducked and the punch sailed past him carrying his father with it and stretching him on the ground. Luigi was on him in a bound, and set about him with such gusto in front of the frozen-food cabinets that if five assistants had not arrived in time to haul him off by force, when even though his limbs were restrained he continued to butt him furiously with his head, if it hadn't been for them he'd have returned every blow ever received and killed him.