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3. On the Vaporetto Based upon the
journal of Paolo Culotta Venice, 1882 "I agree with Henry James," Tomaso grumbled, crossing his arms pompously in
a gesture that was supposed to remind Paolo that James was one of many famous
men Tomaso knew. "He called the vaporetto 'awful,' its churning steam engine an affront to the
Serenissima." Sitting next to
Tomaso in the vaporetto, Paolo wondered how to get out from under that
formidable wing without damaging it. A movement caught in the corner of his eye
made him turn to look down the hatchway to the hold used for storing baggage, where
he noticed a large black trunk's shiny lid undulating, like heat was rising
from it. Then he realized it was a black cat slinking on top of the trunk. For just
a second he thought maybe the cat had sort of formed or materialized there, but
no it must have been there all along, blending in with the trunk. Leaping now
onto the deck, walking into the covered portion of the water-bus, the cat
jolted whenever someone bent to stroke or stop it, until it reached Paolo. It
rubbed against his legs and purred. "A friend of yours?" asked Tomaso as Paolo picked up the cat and
gently placed it on his lap. "Never saw it--he lifted the cat--"ah, her, before in my life."
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17. "Perhaps she belongs on the vaporetto. The
official ratter." Paolo was rubbing
the short fur on her nose. "Poor little thing has a scar on her nose. I hope
you won the fight, micia." He put her down and gently nudged her, but she
didn't budge. She stayed by his feet, sat on his
shoes. "I would say you have a new friend, Paolo," said
Tomaso. "Trouble is, I hate cats. You will have to choose between us, amore
mio." "Don't tempt me." Paolo grinned. But as it turned out, he wasn't doing the choosing. When they got off at the
Accademia stop he assumed the cat remained on board, but on their way to the
hotel, walking on the Calle Corfù they stopped to put their bags down and rest
a moment. And there she was, sitting beside one of the bags. "She's following us," said Paolo. "You," Tomaso corrected. "She knows better than to follow me." As they picked up their bags and resumed their
walk, they thought they had lost her when she stopped at a fruit stall to be
petted by the old woman there. It wasn't until after they had crossed the Rio San
Travaso and were walking on the fondamenta toward their hotel that they saw her
again behind them, running across the bridge with her tail up. Paolo stopped,
put his bag down and squatted as she sprinted up to him. Stroking her back, he
said, "You better go home, micia. I am not your
master." "Or even your mistress. Now shoo." Tomaso did not actually kick the cat. He pushed
it away with his boot. The cat skulked away offended, screwing her back,
curling up her tail, displaying her anus. "Andiamo, my dearest Paolina, there’s the hotel. I can't wait for you to change." As they entered the courtyard, a porter came
out to help them with their luggage. After checking in, they climbed the two
flights and Tomaso generously tipped the porter for carrying their heavy bags.
Paolo’s was especially heavy, as it contained, in addition to his "normal" clothes, the negligées and frilly lingerie he
liked (and Tomaso liked him) to wear. Paolo always had to pack for two. It was
a good thing that Tomaso no longer required him to go out in public, or to wear
bustles, especially that bizarre Langtry contraption, with its metal rings
around the rear on a pivot that allowed the bustle to fold up so he could sit
down, then to spring back into place when he got up! No more metal, not even
whalebone corsets; just a lot of silk, satin, and lace.
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18. Catania region, Sicily, 1860—1883
Paolo Culotta was lucky to get out of Sicily alive. When he was eleven,
his
father was killed fighting in the squadre siciliana for Garibaldi. Domenico
Culotta died thinking he had helped the cause of breaking up the feudal estates
known as latifondi so that peasants like himself, contadini,
could own a decent patch of land. He died never suspecting that unification
would result in more power to the latifondisti, less to the poor people.
So rebellion against the northern Italian government was rampant in the
Mezzogiorno, and when the Piedmontese general Gavone marched in to butcher
whole families and burn entire villages, Paolo’s older brothers Domenico and
Vincenzo joined the guerillas in the hills,
leaving him
behind to take care of their mother and sister as well as he could.
Fortunately, when word reached the government that Gavone was torturing women
and children to obtain information concerning the whereabouts of banditi,
the general was called back, but not before several neighboring villages had
been plundered, and some of Paolo’s uncles and cousins had been decapitated,
disemboweled, burned alive. The revenge that the brigands, including his own
brothers, took on the Bersaglieri was equally savage; when Domenico came
home he showed Paolo how he had cut out a soldier's heart with three swift slashes of his machete,
and when Paolo shuddered at the way Domenico waved the weapon in the air he
laughed and spat, "povero poco Paolo."
The new unified
government instituted conscription, and contadini who had no money to
bribe anyone tended to be the first to go. Had he been drafted, Paolo would,
quite simply, have been killed, for he was, to put it mildly, no warrior. His
brothers were, but they had no desire to leave la famiglia to fight for
the very strangers who were oppressing them. So, along with their cousins and
their compari they went off once again to the hills to join the
brigands, slashing the throats of any recruiters that might approach the
village. But they were fishermen, not banditi, and when they returned
and made a good catch of anchovies they were finally able to bribe the local
officials in nearby Catania to change the recorded sex on their papers—and
Paolo’s. Domenica, Vincenza, Paolina Culotta. When the
government started noticing a disproportionate number of girls on the records,
they became suspicious and sent more recruiters. Domenico and Vincenzo went off
yet again to join the wild men in the mountains. Paolo stayed behind, of
course, glad to don a disguise. He had been punished several times in the past
for dressing in his older sister Regina's clothes, but now their mother actually
encouraged him to wear them. She was convinced it was the only way to keep him
among the living. He became her younger daughter. The draft-dodging disguise
continued through his teens. On their
return, his older brothers were too busy trying to keep the family from
starvation to concern themselves with the matter. Most of the money they made
now went to an absentee landlord, and soon their luck ran out as the anchovies
stopped running in the Gulf of Catania. Faced with no livelihood, they sold
their boat and nets, giving their mother enough money to move with Paolo and
Regina to the city, where their mother’s side of the family lived. They hated
to split up the family, but they had no choice. |
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19. Out of a fortuitous blend of faith and desperation, Vincenzo prayed to the Madonna for deliverance, and she immediately responded by sending a padrone, who seemed to appear out of nowhere one hot summer day. He represented a sugar farm in Louisiana; the plantation was offering these hapless contadini contracts for mill-labor, with steerage fare to America. They signed on, willing to become indentured workers in a land where Sicilians were already becoming land-owners, like the padrone. They were willing to live in a hut on stilts in a malaria-ridden bog just to be in a country that gave them hope—and a plan: to work hard and save their money until there was enough for their wives, children, mother, brother, and sister eventually to join them in little Sicily, on Decatur Street in the exotic city of New Orleans, where they hoped one day to become fishermen again. Not for anchovies, of course. Oysters.
When Domenico
and Vincenzo emigrated, sending their wives and children to join their mother in
Catania, she had been living there for seventeen years. Her father's family, the Brunellis, owned a successful trattoria,
living above the restaurant in what seemed to Paolo and Regina nothing less
than luxury. But he remained there only six years. When they had first arrived
in 1866, he was still "Paolina," as the fear of conscription had still been in
the air. Paolo liked the idea of disguise as much as he thrilled to the feel of
petticoats and girls' drawers. His grandfather, however, quickly put
his foot down, claiming he would rather resort to bribery than have his own
grandson live like a castratto or worse, iarrusu, tuttu
invertitu. He told his daughter that turning her son into a daughter was so
egregious a violation of la via vecchia that he truly suspected she was pazza,
driven crazy by chronic grief. Making Paolo scomunicato would defeat the
very purpose of the disguise, for he would become a man without a family, and
therefore as dead as any soldier killed in battle. And if bribery didn't keep him out of the army, his nonno was
prepared to hire the Black Hand to slit the requisite throats. Fortunately, it
didn't come to that.
Nonno Brunelli's solution to the problem of "Paolina," after he secured Paolo’s immunity from
conscription, was to send him to school so that he could eventually become a
priest, as it was obvious he would never marry. "This way," he said with utter disdain, "you can wear a cassock and pretend it is a
dress. At least you will not disgrace la famiglia." So when Paolo went to school, he went as a boy.
And he became the first in his family to read and write. He was no longer
allowed to dress as a girl. Although he never stopped wanting to, it became
impossible in his grandfather's house, for Nonno
now snored in the same room with him, to keep an eye on him—an evil eye,
thought Paolo, un malocchio. "Don't let me ever catch you that way again, hai capito?" Understanding perfectly, Paolo inwardly vowed to leave. He started saving as much money as he could from his dishwashing job in Nonno's restaurant. When he was twenty-two, after acquiring all the education he could in Catania, and faced with the fate of a religious life for which he had no fervor, Paolo finally ran away to Rome, breaking his mama's heart and earning his nonno's curse, which Regina recorded, years later, in one of her letters to him after she learned his whereabouts: Poor Paolo, Nonno says because you violated the ordine della famiglia, to him you are nothing but un saccu vacante. An empty sack. Paolo wished he had sent his grandfather a note, even though the old man could barely read. I filled the empty sack many times, Nonno, first walking the streets, then in Signora Lanzetta's bordello, where Paolina became the darling of notorious painters and poets. And then of a scholar, who took his mistress home and tutored her until she became a master of arts. Ah Nonno, that does not look like pride on your face.
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