The Night I Became A Real Man
translated by Tom Di Salvo

(continued)

“I’m sorry, I’d be glad to do it, no problem...” I said with immense relief.

“I’ll call my father to come and get me...”

I was embarrassed now. I felt I was abandoning her, that I had to do something. Besides, her mom and dad were rather on in age.

“Wait. You don’t want to call your house in the middle of the night and force your dad to come get you. Wait a few minutes; you won’t be so frightened, you’ll see. I’m no longer afraid. After all, if you don’t get back behind the wheel now you run the risk of never driving again, shock must be confronted head on...”

I went to her and tried to hug her, and she dove into my arms and started sobbing:

“I was so afraid...”

“I know, I know...”

Then, lifting her face like a puppy, she said:

“What if you drove and spent the night at my house and I could bring you back in the morning?”

I felt that horrible sensation again, two great talons gripping my heart and driving it to the middle of my belly; I was trapped and I knew it. I looked at her and wanted to tell her that I would have wanted to but unfortunately I had an appointment at dawn next morning ­ but I couldn’t be such a coward, that’s something else I knew. I looked around, the rain was beating on the brightly lit puddles, on the shiny street, on the closed gas stations and on the little boats moored at the bank of the Salso Canal (the filthiest creek in the world, a basin greasy with huge, grey rats and reeking of all the pismires of Marghera) and Martha looked at me imploringly and I held her in my arms, terrorized, while normal people slept serenely in their little brick houses, deaf to the drumming of my heart and the miaowing of the cats that made up the sound track of my nocturnal nightmare ­ so I surrendered and whispered: “okay.”

I got in the car with the enthusiasm of the condemned man walking to the gallows, and my brain was already flashing me images of the world beyond, where I was already begging Martha’s forgiveness for having caused her to drown with me in the Salso Canal, just before our bodies had been devoured by rats.

Left foot on the clutch, I thought; right foot, lightly on the gas.

My heart was beating like a thousand drummers. As I turned the key, an electric current tingled through my chest. The street was still empty and sopping wet and it went on raining. Oh God, at least let the rain stop, I prayed.

Martha pushed a lever and the windshield wiper came on. The clutch ground threateningly as I shifted into reverse: “it always grinds like that,” Martha said. I released the clutch with surgical precision and slowly pressed on the gas pedal ­ too slowly, as it turned out, and the motor died. “It always dies,” Martha said. I wondered whether she could hear the screeching of my nerves, or whether she had guessed that my bladder was about to burst with fear. “Fuck” I said to myself, “fuck!” It’s always been a word I could count on for courage. I turned the key again, stepped on the gas, and the car roared, it moved, a weight was lifted from my chest, my limbs loosened up, my blood started flowing again, a drop of urine stained my boxers and I tightened the muscles of my groin. The car slipped off the sidewalk just as two headlights in the distance again froze my heart, blood and limbs: I jammed both feet into the brake pedal and in the fraction of a thousandth of a second I remembered the clutch and realized that the motor would die, and so I slammed my left foot down on the clutch and ­ a miracle ­ with the growl of a lion not quite decided whether to attack or crouch, the motor kept running.

The oncoming car took a very long time to pass us. It was a blue Skoda all banged up and harmless looking, and as mindless as a manatee. I looked at it with scorn and some relief and awkwardly justified my hesitation:

“I know it was a mile away, I had plenty of time to cross, but considering what’s happened, you know, I’m taking it slowly...”

She laughed and seemed reassured:

“Oh, don’t tell me, I can’t thank you enough, you must have nerves of steel to drive after what just happened.”

You’ll never know, my dear!

The car moved with a certain French finesse. The lion seemed to have been tamed. I was able to return to my lane and thought it about time I shifted into second ­ mentally I went over what I had to do with the help of a few choice obscenities to keep my courage up. I felt a drop of sweat roll down my forehead as I pushed in the clutch pedal and pulled back firmly, but without malice, on the shift knob ­ by God it worked, yes, I was in second gear, the car was rolling forward and my chest again relaxed and I could not stifle a sigh of relief.

“Everything okay?”, I asked Martha, fishing for a compliment.

“Great.” And I think she smiled, even though I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road.

Now it was time to shift into third, the lion had begun to roar, but the stop light leading to Via Sansovino forced me to stop before turning left, and that’s when something terrifying happened: there was another car behind us. I saw its headlights, cold, cynical, suspicious headlights, scrutinizing my ineptness. I was sweating and dreading the moment I would wet my pants. A car behind me had always been the thing I feared most; I felt I was being judged, that the horn would sound any minute. When I looked in the rear view mirror I always saw a sneering, angry face. But my daddy had always said to never mind the other drivers, don’t pay attention to them even if they blow their horns. “Take no heed of them, but look and go your way.” He could never resist throwing in a good quote.

I paid no attention to them; at least I pretended not to, but fate had laid an ambush for me. I’d done everything properly: I had kept the motor running while the light was red; I’d quickly taken off when it was green; but, just then, from the opposite direction, two jaguar eyes opened in the night and I understood immediately that I was dealing with a dangerous animal, certainly not the old Skoda of a while ago. But this too was far-off. I was sure it was miles away. Only an imbecile would stop and wait for it: the guy behind me would have honked his horn and unmasked my timid soul; or he might rear-end me like the little woman in the VW bug. And so I went and turned, by God, I floored the accelerator and the car gave a squeal of joy as it made the curve and gently returned to its lane like a triumphal chariot. And in the euphoria of it all I quickly shifted into second and then even into third gear. And we were riding, yes, riding, and I was tempted to look at Martha to see whether she was hearing the thumping of my heart, whether she was looking in astonishment at my audacity, whether she expected me to be that kind of driver...

But Martha said nothing and I calmed down; I realized how idiotic it was to get all excited ­ there was still a long road ahead of us.

In Viale San Marco, my neighborhood, I got it into fourth gear and my heart was singing like a tenor: my God, why is there no one here to see this?

I was extremely focused.

Martha said:

“I still don’t understand how I took that curve so fast ­ how stupid of me!”

“Naw, come on.”

“It must have been the whiskey. You shouldn’t have let me drink like that.”

“Naw, really.”

“No, I’m just joking you know. I need to joke about it to get over it. I should really say how sorry I am. I hope you’ll forgive me; I just don’t know how to thank you and ...”

At any other time her words and the hand I suddenly felt on my right thigh, because of her fright, the gratitude and certainly not from malice, would have awakened my most horny thoughts ­ but just then I was deaf to them, and her well-meaning hand on my thigh was merely an awkward sensation on my leg, whose every muscle was concentrating on doing its duty. Luckily, she soon took it away and, increasingly full of self-confidence, I felt that the car was letting itself be tamed and that it had left the overpass behind, driven by me, dammit, as I continued to shift gears without a hitch. I was as if hypnotized, ecstatic. I was beginning to feel happy inside almost to the point of bursting.

“Do you always drive so hunched up over the wheel?” Martha asked.

“What?” And I turned my head to look at her. I swear I did. I noticed that I could take my eyes off the road and look at her, and what a marvelous thing it was that I was driving ­ yes, I was driving just like other human beings, who knew how to drive and simultaneously carry on a pleasant conversation with their companions.

I was so excited by this new discovery that I turned four times towards her as I pronounced the following phrase:

No ­ it’s that ­ with the rain ­ I ­ can’t see very well.” Just like an epileptic.

We took the Terraglio, the wide road that leads to the fields and ends in Treviso. It’s considered extremely dangerous because of the considerable number of imbeciles who drag there only to crash and take with them dozens of innocent and casual passers-by, especially during weekends after dark. I felt another squirt of urine warm again an area of my boxers at the thought, and a cold shudder stopped my heart for an instant: but I was bound to make it, by God, I would make it and ignore the others, as my father advised.

On the Terraglio, which bordered the black countryside smelling of wet leaves, I did meet with a lot of other vehicles. Their headlights slammed into my face as I kept a respectful distance from a little black car that could hardly be made out in the dark, while in the rear-view mirror I kept an eye on a pair of headlights that were not threatening or condemning, and were content keep their place.

Yes, I was driving, driving wisely and calibrating my foot pressure on the gas so as not to be considered a Saturday night nuisance or tie up traffic like an old snail, and as my nerves relaxed and my heartbeat slowed to normal, my bladder found relief at last ­ for the first time I felt I was a man.

I had never felt that way before and it was a terrific sensation. My gestures took on more determination; my look was virile, and a full grown heart beat within my breast.

But I was celebrating victory too soon.

All of a sudden, as weeping willows leaned in from the sides of the road, while the rain had completely stopped and Martha had turned off the windshield wipers and everything was going swimmingly, I was forced to slow down by a tractor that planted itself in front of me with its mousy red lights and a total absence of an inferiority complex. At first I thought nothing of it and followed behind it with all the patience and good will in the world; in fact, that little man with the straw hat astride that slow-moving contraption reminded me of an unruffled maharajah seated on the back of a peacefully plodding elephant right out of Kipling’s Jungle Book, fables that were distant in space and time, with their flavor of mystery and indolence, knowing nothing of automobiles, frenzied activity and car horns. But Martha could contain herself no longer:

“Will you look at him, he shouldn’t be driving at night ­ he must be drunk!”

“Well...”

“Dear God, it can’t all be happening to us tonight, go ahead and pass him when you have a chance.”

“Pass him? But I’ve got an undivided median line.”

And in fact the undivided line was very reassuring; it seemed to settle the matter and I was grateful for it.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never passed with an undivided line?”

“Well?”

“Now, now, there’s no one coming, pass him!

“But... give me a break Martha, the place is full of troopers on nights like these...”

Her voice became strident and got on my nerves:

“Yeah, but look behind you, traffic’s backing up and they’ll start honking any minute!”

“At me!?”

“At you, at you, don’t you think they’re waiting for you to pass him?”

I looked in the rear view mirror. The headlights of the little black car had been joined in a line stretching back a ways by pairs of others and others still. It was true; there was a line and they were all waiting for me to make my move. The road was now dark and narrow and only one car could pass at a time. It was up to me; no one was coming from the other direction, damnation, and I felt my temples pulsing and my heart galloping like a crazy horse on a beach as I began to slide over to the center line:

“What are you doing, not around a curve!”

“Calm down, I was only looking, relax, I know how to drive!”

She felt humiliated.

“Sorry...”

“It’s nothing.”

The blast of a car horn, probably from the traitorous little black car, was like a spear thrust through my chest, and in the rear view mirror I saw a phalanx of headlights stretching into the distance, all waiting for a move on my part. The man with the straw hat, stationary as a statue, continued to drive his tractor at a glacial pace in the dark and misty night; under that straw hat he seemed a demigod come down to put me to the test, while the dark, powerful forms of trees were sneering giants betting against me. I looked at the straight stretch of road before me, drifted to the left, crossed the dividing line and pulled up even with the tractor ­ but I was going so slowly, pianissimo by God, and at that instant there appeared before me two headlights like the flaming eyes of a dragon and I felt a large kitchen knife splitting my belly open. I realized that I was in fifth gear and that my father had always told me always to pass in third or second gear. I downshifted into third and the car gave a terrific roar ­ for a moment I had the impression that the maharajah looked at me approvingly as I put him behind me. I got back into my lane, the dragon still a mile away: I had passed the tractor.

Martha’s mom and dad were elderly. He was doubtlessly a wizard; and she, a good witch. Tall and extremely thin, his nose ended in a strawberry. She was petite but plump and her smile was a slice of watermelon. They had woken up and greeted us all anxious and astonished, but also caring and attentive, as if they already knew ­ it must have been the crystal ball ­ and the four of us all sat on a wonderful green, pink and wine colored sofa, in a crescent around the fireplace. Fright painted their faces as they heard our account of what had happened, followed by relief and thanksgiving to God (they could have been thanking Beelzebub), and the lady witch made us chamomile tea while the wizard lit his pipe, and thanked me repeatedly for my sang-froid and kindness.

A cold sensation ran up and down my spine and my heart was thrashing about like a poor fish just pulled from the water. But now my nerves slowly unwound; the fish ceased its mortal struggle, all the muscles in my body slackened their hold, and a celestial bliss descended and enveloped them completely. I shifted into fourth without even thinking about it. Martha’s silence gave me to understand that I had done something perfectly normal, but inside I realized that I had slain the dragon, killed the giants and silenced the demigod. One after the other, the cars behind me also passed the tractor and got in line behind me. Now I no longer feared them or their condemnation: let them be good enough to follow me if they wanted to, and if they wanted to pass because I was going too slow for their taste, let them sound their horns: “Take no heed of them but look and go your way.”

In no time at all we reached the dark lane that led to Martha’s house. In the headlights, it was yellow and full of stones. It looked like a magic road leading to a fabulous adventure. Then I turned into the unpaved driveway and with amazing nonchalance I parked in front of Martha’s farmhouse. I would have loved to stay there all night long ­ a night whose colors and odors were now familiar to me, where the crickets were singing my praises, where the rustling of the wet vegetation would lull me to sleep as I watched the ambergris sky and imagined the mysterious fauna of the woods, owls, wolves, elves and fairies, all giving a party in my honor.

The aromas of the straw and the manure were ambrosia to me. I got out of the car, wrapped my arm around Martha’s waist, and we entered the little castle like its king and queen.

I just loved those two old geezers. I loved the world and life itself. I loved that house of fable with its fabric sunflowers pinned to the walls, its blue distilling tubes on the pantry shelf, its white gauze curtains and its spiral staircase leading to the upstairs bedrooms. I loved the spattering of the rain in the night, the fresh aroma from the outside ­ I even loved Martha.

It was already 4:00 a.m. and I suddenly thought of how my parents would be worried at not seeing me come home, so I asked to make a phone call. The call dragged my folks out of bed and they were marvelously afraid. My mother cried:

“Thank heaven, I thought you might have had a car accident.”

“Oh, that’s what happened all right, that’s what happened!”

Martha led me to the guest room. We climbed the spiral staircase and entered a room painted vermilion, and in a corner a little bed covered with stuffed toys: bears, crocodiles, even a little grey pig made of cloth. I’ve always found stuffed toys unbearable, but here I felt an oceanic feeling of tenderness.

Martha thanked me again and hugged me platonically.

I hugged her back with a laugh: “what for, what for!?”

And so we parted.

I looked out the window, a kind of hole excavated in the turret of a castle. Below in the enfolding darkness, faintly lit by the candles in the living room that continued to burn, I caught a glimpse of a dark wooden table and some chairs covered in purple cloth, where the good wizard and his witch wife probably drank wine under the mild sun of springtime and dined with their gnome friends during hot summer evenings. A little beyond, I could make out the chicken house, and in front of it what must have been the original barn, where the young wizard used to milk the cows and assist at the birth of calves, before definitely giving himself over to alchemy. A large peach tree shaded the old barn, with its surrounding rose and berry bushes, fruit trees and flower beds and rabbit hutches and beehives and troughs for the pigs ­ all this I made out with difficulty, buoyed by a sense of well-being, by the peace that filled my soul. But now the light of dawn was turning the sky into a gray, white and rosy mattress that was helping me to see farther off: there, beyond the little gate, there stood my car, the car that had popped my cherry, that had made a man of me among men! How beautiful it was and how nicely I had parked it!

There was the blessed countryside stretching before me in the fragrant dawn: the thick rustling woods with its lakes, and then the fields, the orderly vineyards, the rows of tomatoes, the well plowed furrows of red earth. And beyond that the road, the road I now belonged to, no longer an enemy, the road where cars passed one another, and among these there would also be mine.

 

The night that had initiated me to manhood was almost over. It came to an end quickly, like every thing of beauty. It was six a.m. A rooster crowed and I smiled, because later I would take my father’s Honda Civic and I’d ask him to come for a ride; he’d say: “ah, what wonder is this!” and I’d smile from ear to ear. Now I slipped under the linen sheets and the red and yellow blanket, and hugged the little fabric pig and fell asleep.