Marco Archetti

Jet lag

I knew nothing about it. As usually happens.

I was away. I’d been away for eight days inclusive of multicolour aperitifs

on terraces set on fire by all the various colour tones of the tropical

sunset, shining beast, wild burst of flame.

In other words, I get off the plane and I don’t feel I’ve arrived at all. Rather,

I’m split right in two and still elsewhere.

I collect my luggage and I’m talking to this guy Patrizio who’d been sitting

next to me – great name and a whacking great watch – and we were just

saying, bloody hell, those women from the Republic of Dignified Poverty,

you know what I mean.

He was still wearing, and so was I for that matter, the tourist village cap,

the one from the last night, which had been a theme evening, and the

theme had been crazy hats.

So I was talking about women with This Patrizio guy, when from under the

brim of my cap, the crazy one, who do I see but my brother-in-law Cinzio

coming panting towards me holding a blue jacket and saying, “bloody hell

you’re impossible to find now come here get this jacket on and get into

the car grandma’s funeral is in an hour”?

First thing: the grandmother was mine. Not his. I’ve always hated this

habit of misappropriating relatives that people tend to have with wealthy

acquired relations (although I already hated Cinzio before that).

Second thing: is that the way to address someone who, as I said, was

still split right in half? Caught in a flash and taken away, uprooted from

the elsewhere I had been for eight days inclusive of smiles in the village

discotheque. Crazy hats and tips to all those girls that, as That Patrizio

had said, weren’t exactly black, and were beautiful precisely because they

were like blacks who’d stopped just that instant before being completely

black.

“Take off that ridiculous hat,” was the only thing Cinzio had said before

adding a final “you drive, I’m whacked,” and loading me into a Panda

stuffed with relatives all dressed in black. All of them. Apart from me,

of course, who knew nothing about it and had a dark oversized jacket

kindly offered at the airport by Cinzio, the welcoming committee, and,

underneath, a big white T-shirt saying Bienvenidos; the writing strung

between two palm trees with, nearby, two swaying, brown but fairly lightbrown,

local beauties, not exactly black because they had stopped just

that instant before becoming unappealing to Patrizio.

 

It was one of those unpredictable, continental spring days. Days that

offer exceptional opportunities for discussion about the imprecision of

the universe as regards proper seasons and the fallibility of one’s own

judgement about the right clothing to wear.

Barometric minimums and maximums danced silently over our heads,

chased one another across our destinies and flew over our wretched

circumstances, giving rise to incandescent nerves of lightning from heat

or storm, abundant downpours and unexpected sunny inventions.

When we arrived the funeral had just finished and we were heading for the

cemetery.

I was driving slowly behind the hearse in somewhat gelid silence. Sitting

behind, fellow lodgers in a Panda whose engine cut out regularly and that

was bursting at the seams, my father (gaze spread out of the window),

my mother (not particularly grieving but in full wrinkle camouflage), aunt

Fulvia (tiny and out of it, too much space between her upper lip and nose,

the usual horse-like air and sulk. She’d been like that for years, set in her

equine simile), Cinzio (who was staring into the void and saying no to the

void in a highly oppressive manner, his hair in wings from the desperation

that radiated right down to his scalp) and, next to me, aunt Rosa (a

sombre galleon of chains, earrings and pendants).

 

I wasn’t feeling comfortable at all.

As it was, I had this burden of being elsewhere pursuing me and I couldn’t

shrug it off. Then, as if that weren’t enough, we had arrived at the funeral

desperately late. By the time we had got out of the car they were loading

the coffin into the hearse.

I was surrounded by a galaxy of aunts, uncles and grandparents who had

greeted me with seeming participation but who were actually suspicious

and rather detached. But then I was detached too, a geographic disaster

in actual fact, a bit here and a bit there, a bit on the plane and a bit on the

terrace.

(I particularly remember aunt Caterina and aunt Miriam, pale desperation

and bloated desperation. Aunt Erminia too, one sob after another, a glut

of funeral mawkishness.)

They were all dressed in dark clothes and lined up for the crying

competition. It was all a blowing out and breathing in through tissues; all

a huge contraction of lungs and stomachs; all this jolting sufferance; and

then black, black, grey, at most brown, but dark. All in all, everyone was

colour-rhymed with everyone else, black with black and grey with grey,

and I thought: oh God, what am I doing here? This isn’t the place for me,

all this similarity, these messages and this uniformity.

I thought: this precision in the text, me excluded.

 

Luckily we had got back into the car almost immediately. On the way to

the cemetery, seated next to me, aunt Rosa. And on the seat right next to

me the most crushing violation of the principle of non-contradiction was

taking place.

Despite the floral grace of her name, aunt Rosa was starting to stink.

 

It was the smell that made me lose my head.

The sun had really come out and, for an instant, there I was back in

elsewhere; the salty perfumed skin of Daymi-almost-black. And there I

was, telling her I was a famous singer but only in Italy. And I had started

singing a Tozzi song she didn’t know, while a real and violently wonderful

sun had been drawing a semicircle of flames on the horizon.

It was pretty hot, aunt Rosa was wearing a lot of clothes, layers of

jumpers, plus those hormone problems we all knew about.

All of a sudden, an appalling, unbridled stench started to fill the car.

Unbelievable to think that smell came from a living person.

The only advantage was the fact that my father’s play-acting acquired

a more Beckett-like feel, face more alienated, eyes ever vaguer beyond

the still waters of the window which, like everyone else, he didn’t dare to

open for fear of offending her.

Everyone pretended nothing was wrong; everyone, but I could see their

feelings. It only took a glance in the rear-view mirror. I could see the effort.

And despite it all, all five were absorbed and contained. It was summed

up on their faces, in their appropriate mono-expressions.

At a certain point my head started spinning, making me feel like a blender,

and the ingredients in the blender were the Republic of Dignified Poverty

and its calming version of terrace plus girl I was singing Tozzi to. Then

grandma in the coffin, the sun, Patrizio and his little watch, I who was

back but I wasn’t. And I felt removed, cerebrally detached from myself. In

other words I must have got distracted. I don’t remember now what I was

thinking but I know what it led to – a torrent of insults – when I changed

down to second gear, indicated left and turned the radio on as I overtook

the hearse.

 

We reached the cemetery with Cinzio darting looks of hatred at me every

time I caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. Everyone was relieved to be

able to abandon the stinking car.

As he got out of the car Cinzio said: “You idiot”.

My father kept quiet because opening his mouth might have altered the

colour he’d managed with great effort to achieve on his face - a dark blue

that really suited him, very smart: seven plus.

My mother seemed indifferent and frozen, a freeze-frame.

Aunt Fulvia was completely unaware of anything and was neighing

meaningless little laughs.

 

We waited in the open space in front of the cemetery while everyone

arrived.

The cars stopped on the gravel in a silent murmur. Doors opened and

the various branches of our family tree got out; the Bisighelli family in

its entirety, divided equally into three parts: furniture maker branch,

underpants factory branch, have-nots branch.

First the rich branches.

Out of a long, wide BMW came the jewels of the underpants factory

branch - three, four, five asexual androids decked out in their finery,

designer hats budding on their heads.

Then the furniture factory branch; well clipped the ones that had come

from Abruzzo - clean shaven, monsoons of aftershave, and a frisson of

the special occasion that ran right through them all. Less formal the ones

from Umbria.

Then came the have-nots, the only ones I could claim had a vague liking

for me.

(At one point I had been struck by a hedgerow of middle-aged women, all

with identical frizzy, rough hairstyles.)

 

Every so often someone looked at me. I didn’t know whether it was

because I’d overtaken the hearse or because of the way I was dressed,

but I thought perhaps they saw the elsewhere I couldn’t shake off and

which kept itself closely wrapped around me. Perhaps it was coming out

of my eyes. Perhaps my gaze burned like the sun on that terrace. Perhaps

I was being accompanied by a Tozzi soundtrack that only I couldn’t hear.

Or who knows what else.

All I know is I felt uncomfortable.

Then we all went into the cemetery, including two little kids with squints. I

didn’t know who they were but they had said hello to me. One of the two

only had a slight squint, but you couldn’t pretend you didn’t notice the

other because his eye was wobbling in its socket, almost completely free

of gravity.

A few people murmured, a few made comments. I didn’t know whether it

was about me and my Bienvenidos T-shirt or my grandma’s death.

For a moment I thought about making a run for it. It wouldn’t have been

hard to escape the general attention, free myself of the jacket that was

making me sweat because the sun had come out, even if it was already

going down now.

While I was pondering the idea, walking as if on glass and using only

the outside part of my feet, my cousin Alecsia came over to me, saying:

“Marco, I am sorry,” as if it weren’t her grandmother too, and the grief

was only mine.

I nodded silently – what do you answer to “I’m sorry”? “Thank you”? –

then I noticed that she was smartly dressed in dark clothes too. She, who

was always dressed in rags like a circus clown and spent her time with

her gothic friends sitting on the steps of something, statues, abandoned

theatres, deconsecrated churches. Now she was normalised, uniformed

and matching, part of the anguished parade of aunts and relatives. Here

she is, I thought, as she stood before me in her dark grey suit, with her

new mentality, completely forgetful of the beads of saliva she used to spit

as she pronounced her hostile ‘p’s – capital, property owners, proletarian

oppression – and the days when not washing your hair was a political

stance and black roots a question of principle.

 

It was all up and down, hills and mounds.

Burials by era, probably. Every era with its own level.

I remember thinking that the cemetery reminded me of Lisbon (but I had

to stop thinking about that, otherwise my mind would get trapped in

another elsewhere, and that was all I needed).

A serious problem arose while a priest – dressed in black too, at which

point I realised there was a conspiracy against me – was grinding out Our

Fathers, Ave Marias and Glorias as if they were a task to free himself of as

fast as possible.

I noticed slightly late, having drifted back into myself. Or rather

having drifted away, far away, very, very far, to my elsewhere, to my

collection of elsewheres. But when I did realise I could only freeze with

embarrassment.

To cut it short: grandma had no intention of going into the burial cell.

Dismay and uncertainty spread among those present.

“The burial must go on,” Cinzio said after a while, loosening his tie as the

cemetery staff kept trying to angle the coffin and check whether there

was something in the cell that was blocking my grandmother’s entrance

into paradise.

My aunts were all atremble, aunt Erminia refused to watch, aunt Fulvia

was neighing again and had exploded into a hysterical laugh. I was

saddled with the job of taking her away – helpless with laughter – putting

her back in the Panda and locking her in.

My mother would have taken notes if she could, to tell her friend Nunzia

in explicit detail. Nunzia didn’t have a great mind but when she picked up

the scent of gossip down the phone, she didn’t miss a trick.

When I got back from my jailer’s task – my aunt had allowed herself to

be bolted into the car with what can only be described as post-comic

resignation as the laughter had suddenly sapped her strength – I found

myself faced with the sight of Cinzio on his knees with his jacket off,

scraping a planer along the side of the coffin, and my father, still fully

dressed, helping him.

The cemetery staff had pitched in. They had got hold of more planers,

and, turning to all the others who were idling, had said “anyone who

wants can come and do some planing too, ladies excluded”.

One of them was sweating away with a chisel. His strokes were followed

by the ominous sound of cracks opening in wood but he continued

obliviously.

In short, there was a great levelling and hammering, jackets hanging on

the trees, a chirping of aunts, drenched foreheads – my father managed,

despite the effort, not to lose the same expression he had had on his face

for the past two hours – and Cinzio, crouched on his heels with his arms

going back and forth, worked the short refrain of his carpenter’s plane.

Then, under the blows, the coffin did what it shouldn’t have done. It

suddenly went out of control: a well-placed blow of the hammer helped

along by a particularly forceful swipe of the plane by Cinzio sent it

bouncing up in the air and skidding away at a pace. The funerary torpedo

shot off towards the nearby slope, rolled into the ditch and grandma slid

like a ghost out of an opening in the side of the coffin.

Added to this was the sound of the Panda’s horn which started to blare

uncontrolledly: aunt Fulvia had regained her strength and had no intention

of missing the show.

At that moment Cinzio turned to me - I hadn’t noticed him immediately

because I’d been flying off towards the Republic of Dignified Poverty and

he was many miles away - and went “psss!”. When I looked at him he

hissed: “Are you a fool, or what? Can’t you hear the horn? Go and get her,

kill her, do what you want but get her to stop.”

I said yes as he raced towards the slope and disappeared up to his waist.

What was I supposed to do?

I left him there, sleeves rolled up and the rain starting to fall as he pulled

grandma up by the armpits from the gravely river bed.

 

When I got to the car I could see that aunt Fulvia had obviously had a fit

of hysteria because the inside rear-view mirror of the Panda had been

ripped off, the seat belt had come unrolled and she was lying in a state of

confusion on the back seat with the flap of her skirt gaping open.

There in the open space I turned back towards the cemetery and my head

brought the blender back, and in the blender there was Patrizio and his

little watch, the terrace and the girl who thought I was Umberto Tozzi,

the airplane and my grandma who wasn’t ready to go for ever yet, my

relatives and their ultimate carpentry. In short, a complete mess.

I got into the car, turned the key in the ignition and, to the sound of

neighing by aunt Fulvia, the horse-aunt with too much space between her

upper lip and her nose, I slid the car into first and we soared off.