Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Frank Iodice

without a job I’d do nothing but lose pieces of my dignity, one at a time l ike patches of consumed skin that won’t grow back. Don Vito showed me the area in which he worked. He was in charge of antique books. “I prefer them,” he said, “at least you’re sure to read interesting stuff, now they publ ish any kind of rubbish, contemporary writing would piss me off if I had to deal with it, I don’t have the patience to dig through trash cans of shit this high to discover the pearls of l iterature hidden at the bottom.” The si lence typical of places of study, interrupted only by some educated sneezes, conferred a greater intimacy on our chat. From the courtyard you could hear the muffled sounds of visitors seeking information from the lady trapped in the cubicle at the entrance. There are those who have to spend eight hours straight in a cubicle to earn a l iving, I said to myself. “So, when do you want to leave?” the priest asked, just l ike that, cold, without introducing the subject of their projects or showing me some picture of the place where they were bui lding the l ibrary. Photographs always help break the ice, even when you visit relatives, the first thing you do is pul l out the fami ly album—this is l ittle Vito when he was two years old, and this is him again, at two and a half, with his l ittle cousin, Genoveffa Pal ladino, the daughter of our cousins who emigrated to Germany, and here they are again pretending to eat the same

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