roberto alajmo – cuore di madre

by natale tedesco

Published by Mondadori in 2003, Cuore di madre is the fifth novel written by Roberto Alajmo. It is the most demanding under the inventive aspect even if, so as to fully understand his referential talent as a reporter, as well as his gift for the ironic and the grotesque, one must remember Notizia del disastro (Garzanti, 2001 and winner of the Mondello Prize) and Le scarpe di Polifemo (Feltrinelli, 1998); and one must not forget his curious beginnings with Repertorio dei pazzi della città di Palermo (Garzanti,1994), Almanacco delle morti presunte (Edizioni della Battaglia,1997).

The representation and story of a tragedy, Cuore di madre is a really strong drama of a complex semantic depth. In relation to this one can find an homologous formalisation. What I mean is that this drama is told with extraordinary stylistic practice, less ostentatious than strenuous (and only because of this does it avoid the referentiality of common realism, of crime news).

We are in the presence of a novel told in the present tense: from the first to the last page the tense used is the present, and this brings even the smallest part of the story, every action, into the foreground. In cinema slang one could call it a continuous, inexhaustible zoom of close-ups: like a line of uninterrupted, but blocked sequences. One should also note the use of references to the television processes. Obviously this use of the present tense is conducted through brief sentences, almost unipropositional phrases. This is useful to the obsessive climate which implements the tragedy, a tragedy without emphasis or melodramatic tones. The obsession is obtained by the cold-heartedness that introduces grotesqueness into the drama. It is, however, a frozen grotesqueness, detached from an impassive observation, which doesn’t seem to give rise to emotions or sentiments.

The character of Cosimo Tumminia, the protagonist of the story, who has the fame of being a jinx, is in accordance with this role: he seems humble, he is thin and sad; but other characteristics (He is isolated. He is quiet) serve to make him the character who becomes an accomplice of secrets and improbable kidnappers, bringing him to commit a crime, he provokes a homicide which is as indescribable as it is paradoxical for the way in which is it carried out. The event which will disturb his existence made of routines, happens with the simplicity of the facts and actions that compose his everyday humble life: “Today he has to leave a little earlier because they are bringing him the child which he must hide”.

One can begin to comprehend the sentiments, and the emotions which provoke them, thanks to allusions and suspicions which cause misunderstandings. A gesture that wishes to be full of affection, kindness and willingness, is transformed into its opposite. This is the case when Cosimo visits his little hostage, when he wants to “caress him on the head so a to make him stay calm, a way of entering into contact with him”, but this only gives rise to the child shouting and expressing fear. The “reassuring message” which he wants to transmit to the child is misunderstood. Thus the difficulty that Cosimo meets when he tries to interact with others is better illustrated and also, indirectly, his sufferance due to this incapacity without, however, demonstrating to others that he is aware of this intrinsic suffering. In such situations it is the character who talks about himself, expressing thoughts and sentiments, but the author also illuminates and explains, penetrating within. Having started from an external focalisation of the narrative prospective, the storyteller participates in the internal process lived by the character.

The story seems to close in on the private aspect, one could say it is walled into the surroundings, into small spaces which, in crucial moments, become closed and suffocating. Fragments of a lesser life, behaviour, culinary customs which are typical of the Palermo area: cauliflower, pasta with sea sardines, a way of preparing a dish without its main ingredient, something that happens due to lack of money, intestinal sufferance or because in certain times of the year one cannot fish sardines. We find lexical and phonetic use, morphological “errors”, dialect and slang: “I want to see how you get by without your penzion…”, “In concluzion, I hope we like the pasta.”, “I let him get some fresh air. Poor kid, all this time indoors”. This kind of phraseology is conducted very well, it give effective results in the conversation with the camper, the casual client and, above all, in the verbal fights with the mother, a dialogue which makes one think of theatrical absurdities in true Beckett style. Perhaps even more in Pinter style is an ambiguously scripted dialogue which is intentionally inadequate.

In truth, these microcosm’s are not that far from larger social environments. On the contrary, this focal microcosmic point is a mirror image of that environment. This makes the relationship between private and public, between society and nature, seem appropriate and happy. Solitude and desolation in the town’s square, desolation and solitude in the isolated house on the outskirts. I believe that it is an alliance which makes use of various interrelationships. The action, especially in the final part of the story, is carried out in a room inside the house in which the crime is consumed, in accordance with the times and rhythms with which they are carried out on the TV screen. One must not forget that we are in an almost archaic world, certainly backward, an immobile world where the television set introduces an upsetting note of modernity with its communicating authority. If the television doesn’t speak of the child, then one can doubt the fact that the kidnapping has actually taken place. Television certifies reality: certain facts are true if it is the television that talks about them. The action on television acts as a countermelody to the conception of the assassination, with the distressing surprise being that it is the mother who actually carries out the crime. This is the most original invention in Alajmo’s novel because he confines the young Cosimo within his own cowardly unhappiness and makes him another victim of the sordid and amoral society in which he drags out his existence. Useful for the creation of a tragedy, in a climate which is fatuous but not for this reason any less terrifying, is the attention given to the meteorological conditions followed by listening to the weather forecasts on the radio. In reality, the cultural climate between the grotesque and the tragic seems to have its origin in the natural habitat of the summer heat that oppresses Calcara, the town where an exhausted Cosimo lives.

The season has begun which, in Calcara, is always the same. There is no hope that tomorrow’s weather will be different from today’s or yesterday’s: it is, it has been and always will be hot. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, from May to September: Hot. Sometimes very hot. From May onwards, in fact, Cosimo moves the chair on which he passes most of his day, slightly more inside the workshop, looking for more shade and, always searching for more shade, he moves it continuously throughout the day. As he does so, he looks at the time, in this way he has the exact perception of how the days become longer or shorter. That which at this time, a few days ago, was a small space for relief, just inside the door, is now in full sunlight. Cosimo moves the chair and speaks to himself, seeing as there is no one else to talk to: “This sun …” For the time being, this year has gone all too well, not even one day of sirocco. Cosimo fears above all the arrival of the sirocco wind. (p.37)

For an extract like this, it is easy to immediately think of the impending arrival of the sun in Straniero by Camus. However the interjection “This sun” declares vulgarisation, in other words the intention to give a lower tone to the literary model. In truth, however, the stressing of the details of the developments of a hot day, the exploration and the declaration of the sensations that a hot day can provoke, reveal a procedure, a minimalist narration which refer above all to the poetry of the insignificant, of the antiphrasis formalisation of the insignificant, according to Brancati. From this great author, Alajmo reproduces the antiphrasis technique which refers to important events or facts, which talks of the devious power of the mafia, without ever naming it directly. A squalid life of routine, made even more sad by necessity and poverty, without depth even if clouded by crime, assumes the value of counter-expression, of an obligatory situation, of the abuse of power in the general drama of the Italian society and, in particular, that of Sicily:

Of course, since the fathers pension has finished things have not gone well. Over the last few months, even worse. That’s the reason for his accepting to keep the child. He had no choice. He’s not happy to run the risk he runs, he who has practically never run a risk in his life. Apart from the fact that if they ask certain things of you, they already know that you will consent. (p.29)

Again one thinks of Albert Camus when trying to find the non existent real motive for the assassination, the absurdity of a world dominated by nonsense. Here Alajmo, with his minimalist tones which do not foresee any kind of revolution, once again brings out the absolute moral indifference in which his characters are confined. The low key with which the author manifests this confinement is all his: while he tries out the homicide, the attention given to the cooking of the courgettes; after the burial of the poor child, the wait for his mothers possible reproach for his intention to drink cold water directly from the fridge. The material bond with the mother explains Cosimo’s infantilism and with which “mother’s heart” (translation of the title of the novel) she substitutes herself to her son so as to carry out the crime.

This absurdly providential woman underlines the tragic humour of the story which, not by chance, is placed in the centre of the Sicilian island: it is, in fact, a paradoxical representation of the myth of the Mediterranean mother. In this sense, more than to the great antique myths, reference is made to the recent traditional island literature which, from Brancati to Sciascia, tells of the oppressing, overwhelming Sicilian mothers inclined toward the protection, as to the absorption of their children.

December 2004