Subtitles & Other Stories

By Domenico Capilongo

From celebrated Toronto poet, Domenico Capilongo, comes a collection of powerful and humorous stories inspired by love: the love of family and tradition, the passion shared between two people when love is found, and the impact felt when it is misunderstood and lost. These stories travel the globe from Toronto to Vancouver, WWII Sicily, Rome, Japan, Thailand, and even the gardens of Paris. Capilongo succeeds in capturing the beat of relationships in their many stages of complicated development. His debut short fiction collection shows the keen eye of a writer who is not afraid to reveal the inner workings of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781550716559

Domenico Capilongo

Domenico Capilongo lives in Toronto and teaches high school creative writing. His award winning short stories and poems have appeared in several national and international literary magazines. His first book of poetry, I thought elvis was Italian, was short-listed for the 2010 F.G. Bressani Literary Prize. His book of jazz-inspired poetry, hold the note, was long-listed for the 2011 ReLit Award.

Book preview

Domenico Capilongo

Subtitles and Other Stories

FIRST FICTIONS SERIES 4

GUERNICA

TORONTO • BUFFALO • BERKELEY • LANCASTER (U.K.) 2012

you turn the page & i am here

– bpNichol, from Waiting

Contents

Rocky 

Saying Good-Bye 

Subtitles 

Giovanni 

Chickens 

Santina 

Zio 

Nina 

Arrivederci 

Kaori 

I Got Your Nose! 

La Habana Vieja 

Lost Page from a Novel 

My Medical Condition 

Underwear 

The Drinking Game 

Memoria 

Merope 

Thespians 

The Post 

The Bike Ride 

Amy 

Transaction 

This is My Park 

To Tell You 

Rocky

I used to pull my hair out, in the corner of my room near Danforth Avenue. My parents’ voices seeped under the door like smoke. My scalp stinging, eyes half-open, the room spun into a blur. I became a planet floating over Sesame Street sheets and Fisher Price play sets.

My mother screamed, finding me asleep, blood and hair on my pillow. She thought I was cursed. She thought Il diavolo was inside me. She talked once to our priest. He told her to take me to a doctor.

I was born with bushy eyebrows. My baby pictures scare me. I look like some kind of Muppet alien. My father wanted to shave them off, embarrassed of what his brothers would say. I grew into them, eventually. Once my hair came in, it was a field of curls; a mop-top that seemed so inviting to men who never stopped patting me on the head and giving it a good rub, or to ladies who would always say: What a cute little boy. Look at his beautiful hair!

Dr. Donato smelled like salami. My mother kept fixing my shirt in the examining room. Her long coat, big red leather boots, the smell of sweet flowery perfume tickling my nose.

Isn’t he too skinny? I worry about the shape of his back. And I find blood and hair on his pillow. I think he’s pulling his hair out. Is this normal?

Mittens. I had to wear winter mittens to bed. It was summer and my dreams were full of snow. In the morning, I’d wake up looking for a Christmas tree. The mittens didn’t work. I caught my mother crying on the phone to her sister: Something is wrong with my son, pulling his hair like he’s lost his mind.

One day, one of our old neighbours came over and put a red cloth on my head, took one of my mother’s best pasta bowls, and balanced it on me like a crown. She filled it with water and started pouring drops of oil into it. She spoke in whispers of spiralling ‘s’ sounds. She was always dressed in long black dresses. I could never understand what she said. She had hair on her nose and crooked feet. It was scary, but my mother seemed happy – until the pulling started again.

My father had had enough. It was his turn to solve the problem. One night before falling asleep I saw him enter my room, his shirt thick with the smell of cigarettes and cars that he fixed. He had a great big bag with him. The dark of my room made him look like Santa’s shadow. He took off my winter mittens and pulled out two big red boxing gloves from his sack, like the ones I’d seen fighters wear on TV. He laced them onto my tiny hands and suddenly – I was a prizefighter. He looked down at me, smiled and told me everything was going to be all right.

He told me about Rocky Marciano. That night, my dreams were full of boxing. "Rocky Marciano was Italiano, my father told me, in his undershirt, fists as big as watermelons punching the air over my head. The toughest fighter of all time. He never gave up, Marciano. You too, okay? You are my piccolo Rocky. He pinched my cheek and rubbed my head. I didn’t mind it so much when he did it. My bedtime stories started to consist of Marciano fights. My father tried hard not to swear. He had the shortest arms of any heavyweight champion ever. Marciano never lost a fight, eh? Forty-nine fights never lost one. The best. He was the best!"

Before my father would come up to my room, my mother used to read me fairy tales or tell me stories about Italy. She would always give me one kiss on the forehead and tell me not to listen too much to all that boxing talk. She hated the gloves. In the morning, she was the one who woke me up and had the job of untying them and washing me up. She became my reluctant corner man.

This went on for a couple of weeks until one day, my friend, Yanni, who lived next door, built a fort in his backyard. It was the greatest. His father worked for a company that made cardboard boxes. It was a labyrinth of tunnels that would open up to little cave-like rooms. Yanni and his brother had the biggest ones. They made a small one at the end for me. I brought my flashlight and sleeping bag. We were going to have the first of many sleepovers. At the bottom of my bag, I hid my gloves and, as I settled into my boxed bedroom, I laced them on. By that point I had learned how to tie one on with my teeth.

I was fighting Muhammad Ali. It was the tenth round, and I had him up against the ropes. My parents were in my corner; my dad screaming so loud the veins in his neck looked as though they were going to pop. My mother was covering her eyes in fear. My left eye was almost shut from Ali’s lightning jab. I had him on the ropes, his hands dropping to block the body shots I was throwing. His head was wide open ...

I woke up staring at my cardboard ceiling. I had to pee. I crawled out of the fort. I could see my breath in the night air. I started to cry because I felt lost. I couldn’t undo my pants with the boxing gloves on. I ran through the yard and across to my house.

I ran up the steps crying. I started banging on the screen door throwing my best combinations. A police cruiser drove by my house. I started screaming louder, bouncing around in my Spiderman pyjamas and big red boxing gloves. I could feel the night air cold against the back of my neck and the wood of the porch scraping my bare feet. The police car did a U-turn and stopped. I punched the door harder as the tears filled my face. The officer stepped out of his car. His hair was the brightest yellow I had ever seen. Hey there, kid. My name is Officer Calvin. Are you all right?

The porch light came on. My mother’s head popped out from the drapes of our living room window, her hair in pink rollers. My dad opened the door in his undershirt and brown leather house slippers. I rushed past him, pee running slowly down my leg.

Saying Good-Bye

I’m eight years old and my father has just told me his father is dead. It’s Saturday morning and he’s brought me hiking on Mt. Seymour. We stop the car at one of the lookout points to enjoy the view. From here we can see all of Vancouver and my father is pointing out Lion’s Gate Bridge and Stanley Park. He brings out his new camera and takes a picture with the city behind me and the sun in my eyes. We get back into the car and drive to the beginning of the first trail.

The sun is trickling through the umbrella pine trees and down to the blankets of ferns that grow all around us. The trail is winding and roots run across it like veins. I look to my left and notice a fallen tree lying on the forest floor with a smaller tree growing from its rotten body. I follow my father, who tells me to breathe deeply through my nose and exhale through my mouth. He’s found two walking sticks and gives me the smaller one.

We reach a rest area, he tells me to sit on a patch of grass and eat the snacks we brought. He looks nervous eating his granola bar, taking small squirrel bites. He’s started to grow a beard and his face is always so prickly every time he kisses me goodnight. He stops eating and crouches down looking at me with his big brown eyes. He tells me he must go to Italy tomorrow for il nonno’s funeral. I was named after my nonno. He tells me he won’t be gone long and not to worry. I don’t remember my nonno so I’m not really sad but I think my father is. I finish my granola bar and push the wrapper deep into my front pocket.

"Papà, what happens when we die? Where do we go?"

He doesn’t answer right away. He’s looking in the distance. He seems to be making calculations like he does right before he builds something.

He turns to me and crouches down. His face is so big. Whenever he comes this close I notice that his nose is slightly crooked. He gives me a hug and tells me to get up so we can finish our hike because mom will have supper waiting.

"Papà, what happens when we die?" He stops and looks at me again.

"Well, bello, the Bible tells us that if we follow God’s commandments and Jesus’ life we will go to heaven." And then he continues walking.

"But papà where do we go? What happens to us? Well, you see if we are good we will go to heaven, which is a very beautiful place, if we are bad we go to a terrible place called hell."

He puts his arms around me and to me he’s a giant. "O.K. bello, I want you to close your eyes and take a deep breath . . . What do you hear?"

Um . . . I can hear the birds and the wind . . . I can feel the sun on my face and the ground under my feet . . . I can hear the squirrels in the forest and I can smell the green plants. I open my eyes and stare up at him to see if I was right.

"Bello, don’t worry about death now. What’s really important is to feel everything around us and to respect every living thing."

I smile and hold my father’s hand as we continue walking.

***

Fifteen years old and I can’t fall asleep. It’s been years since the walks with my father. I stare up into the whiteness of the ceiling and if I stare long enough I hope it will crumble and fall over me, burying me into a deep dream. Tonight the ceiling becomes a movie screen twisted out from my imagination. Half asleep, my mind runs away on me.

I’m in a funeral home dressed in my double-breasted suit. I enter the visiting room, which is covered in wall-to-wall flowers and wreaths. There’s someone screaming and wailing but I don’t know who. The room is painted grey and the chandelier is turned down low. Chairs set out in rows like a theatre take up most of the space. People dressed in black shuffle nervously in their seats. I can’t see any of their faces. They’re only a wave of darkness. To the left, there is a line-up to visit the coffin, open in the front of the room, but I can’t see who has died. The coffin’s covered in red roses and the petals are falling in pools on the floor. Each person steps up to the coffin, kneels, says a prayer and then rises to offer their condolences to the family.

As I near the coffin, the screaming grows louder. I look down at my feet and for some reason I’m wearing running shoes with my suit. I feel embarrassed because I know my mother will be angry.

What will our relatives think if my son is wearing running shoes? I try to hide one foot over the other. I’m sweating. It’s my turn to step up to the coffin. I can feel people watching me. I can feel them looking at my shoes. I kneel, bowing my head, and mumbling through my childhood prayers. I look up slowly to see who has died and it takes me a few moments before I recognize the face. It’s my nonno. His face is pale and grey like in the black and white photographs that hang in my house.

My father told me that I spent a lot of time with him but I don’t remember. My heart is beating and my hands are shaking. Why has my imagination brought me here? I stand up and look at the crowd. My father is in the front row. His eyes are sad but for some reason he can’t see me. His sisters beside him are silent. My mother is sitting with him too and she’s crying big funeral tears that roll down her face into her white lace handkerchief. My grandmother is screaming and wailing, her body shaking and convulsing.

Why! Why have you left me?

I get up from my bed and step into the living room. It’s dark and I’m walking with my eyes closed. I know where every piece of furniture is. My bones ache, the muscles are tired and call out for sleep but I can’t relax. I open my eyes and look out the large window that overlooks our street. The asphalt reflects the moon like a lake. In my red boxer shorts, I’m frozen with my hair messy and sticking straight up. I’ve been standing here for a long time.

***

My father loves listening to opera while driving. Sometimes on Sundays he takes me to the cemetery. As we enter the gates, he lifts his hand and gives the sign of peace. Ever since I was a boy, he would do this, passing cemeteries or funeral processions but I never asked him about it. I turn to him and lower Pavarotti’s voice.

"Papà, why do you give