My maternal grandfather was the first person I lost; but then my certainty of Paradise was such that I had no doubt that he had passed away. And I didn't understand that I would never see him again. Never again.
I was maybe twelve; it was 1960, the beginning of a decade of faith in progress, of optimism, of emancipation, of motorization. But the best memory I have of my grandfather Stefano dates back about five years.
Frequently, especially during school holidays, my father accompanied me to his grandparents to spend a different day. In fact, they had a shop, the attached house and a small garden, a cat and a spotless chicken coop. All this, together with the cardboard boxes that remained from the sales and mystery novels that my uncle left around, constituted a multiple opportunity for amusement.
I remember that sometimes my uncle accompanied me to breakfast in the bar and I chose a "cassatina" which was a very small Sicilian cassata, with almond paste and pistachio a giro, ricotta cream, vanilla sponge cake under and a splendid glazed cherry in the center. That was enough for me and I didn't want anything else.
Once, and only once, it happened that my grandfather took me for a walk. As we were in the center, we walked towards Piazza Politeama, passed the theater of the same name, crossed Via Libertà and sat on a marble bench in Piazza Castelnuovo, among the flowerbeds and palm trees, looking from afar at the splendid prospect of the theater.
We were in the mid-fifties and the cars were very few and rare, the silence filled that sunny afternoon and peace seemed to hover over everything.
I don't remember what my grandfather was mumbling about, what he was talking to himself about, what he wanted to confide to a seven-year-old boy, who would keep the secret for innocence or misunderstanding. I don't know how, but suddenly my grandfather said that money was everything in life, that with them you can have everything.
I didn't remember that at school the nuns had taught me those things, but I couldn't doubt the grandfather too much, so I tried to find something, at least one, that could deny that sad affirmation in part. Maybe…
- Grandpa, you can't buy health with money ...
Grandpa looked away and turned slightly:
- It is true, but with money you can consult the best doctors and buy the best medicines, you can eat well and go on holiday in the healthiest places: with money you can take care of yourself and keep it well.
"Spiritual things cannot be bought," I thought, so I told him:
- You can't buy happiness with money ...
Again grandfather turned to me for a moment, then looked back at the distant theater and said:
- It is true, but with money you can buy a nice house, a nice car, you can make many trips, you have many friends and you can make many gifts for all the grandchildren: money, together with health, can make happiness.
My grandfather knew many things more than me, but I could not give up believing in what they had taught me, that I understood and was now part of me: I absolutely didn't believe that money could buy everything. And I kept thinking, like a small idealistic rebel.
There was indeed one thing, which certainly could not be bought, something I did not know well well, a big thing that even a small child could understand, because it was something you felt, here, in here, where you beat my little heart fast, something that sometimes gave me an emotion here, in my tummy, right under the navel, something that sometimes warmed my face and almost made me ache from headaches; something that had a big name, that sometimes gave a man and a woman long kisses on the lips ... and then the film ended.
I didn't know, I didn't understand how they tried to do it that way, I didn't understand why afterwards they said those short, short words that seemed like an eternal oath ...
I didn't know this, but two years before, I had fallen in love with cinema, just like that, but don't tell anyone, for heaven's sake, because in fact they are great things, I had fallen in love with the Nile princess.
She naturally had married a bigger one, but the next year (I was six) I had fallen in love with ... She was a young young girl, with her blond hair always uncombed; they called her the witch, but she wasn't a witch: she was good, just a little wild, but I had been in love with her. At the end of the film she was dead, but by now I knew that one day, when I grew up, maybe at thirteen, I would fall in love with a little girl destined for me. It was enough to wait.