THE LAMP MANUFACTURER

by Edoardo Zunica

My uncle, born Emilio Ischitano, was an adventurous fellow and had recently turned 30. In that scorching summer of the 1970s, like every summer, he was spending much of his vacation alone. In those very days an event happened that would change his life.
Besides being an adventurous man, he was a loner. The classic person many would call a sea dog; only, instead of going to sea, he liked to go to beaches. But not the kind of beach where bathers huddle desperately looking for a patch of land in which to wedge their towel, between a whimpering child and a snoring old man, his belly swollen like a ripe watermelon. Not that in Calabria, on the Tyrrhenian coast, in the 1970s, it was so common to encounter such bathers. My uncle, however, did not want to see any. He liked deserted, desolate, wild beaches. If a little defaced (but not too much), all the better.
One day he had opted to hike to a cove that could only be reached by rappelling down a cliff with his bare hands. Reaching beaches on foot, in recent times, was out of the question. The more impervious the path became to human passage, the better it was for Emilio Ischitano. Imagine what consideration he might have had for people who reached the beaches on their private yachts.
I disgust them, those!” he would indignantly claim whenever he saw one. And again, Puh!, was the cry he would emit shortly after generating a lump of phlegm, which with British elegance he would hurl as far away as possible while, punctually, a rivulet of that same phlegm would stick to his lips and trickle down to his shaved chin until, timely, he would intervene with his fingers to clean it off.
That afternoon, the Mediterranean mugginess was in top form: it was manifesting itself in its wettest, stickiest version and making the sand as scorching as the heart of a volcano. The sun, meanwhile, loomed sternly over everything. To say the day was unlivable would be a mild understatement.
Nevertheless, my uncle was fine. So much so that he was fine! Not only did the heat not bother him, but Emilio, in that pungent heat, even managed to achieve a placid state of nirvana that few other things were able to assure him in life. It seemed that the more the weather conditions imposed a survival challenge, the more he took to it.
In any case, even he needed to dive into the sea. Not so much for refreshment; but, rather, out of a visceral need to become symbiotic with salt water. He needed it, and he loved it.
He loved to snorkel, and like a sea raptor he would swim for hours at the top of the water, ready to hurl himself down to catch an octopus with his bare hands or retrieve shells and other treasures lying on the seabed.
And so it was that day, on the sea bed, he spotted an unusual object.
That thing, however undefined and seemingly mundane, exuded fascination. It would be unfair to label that charm as irresistible, as Emilio did not even know what it was. Therefore, we will not go that far, but we will have no problem calling it, at the very least, magnetic.
Emilio Ischitano took a breath and dived: his silhouette, elegant and tapered, slipped into the blue. He swam about ten meters, grabbed the wreck and with the little remaining breath in his lungs brought it back to the surface: it was a curious irregular slab, composed of a material difficult to identify. The slab, three or four fingers thick, had the color and grain of stone, but to the eye its irregularities, resembled those of a piece of wood.
After taking it to the beach, he gave it time to dry, so as to facilitate its inspection at a later time. So he did, and the investigation produced the following verdict: stu cosu è proprio nu cazz’i piezz’i lignu!
A rather bizarre wood, though, since, instead of floating, it lay on the seabed, not even if it were lead from World War II.
Let’s try it, Emilio said to himself resolutely. And so, without much thought, he hurled the object into the sea, close to the shore, to observe its behavior in contact with the water.
What the fuck was I thinking!” she thought as soon as she saw him sink.
Quickly, he rushed to save the slab with breathless effort. Once he brought it back to shore, he remained in contemplation of it for at least a couple of minutes, only the sound of its heavy breathing and the gentle crashing of water on the shoreline breaking the silence of that afternoon.
Emilio was horrified at the mere thought of the boorish end the object might have come to if it had been left there alone, at the mercy of events.
Whatever it was, that plate had in it something indispensable. At the time, Emilio Ischitano was still unable to understand what it was; perhaps he would never fully understand it.
In the following days, intrigued by the incident and especially by the nature of the material in that wreck, my uncle asked an archaeologist friend of his to inspect the object. He did not mention, however, the detail of the flotation, deeming it too confidential information to share with others.
His friend’s investigations revealed not only that it was, just as he had assumed, a piece of wood; but also that that piece of wood had most likely belonged to a seventeenth-century ship that had sunk in those parts. It is very difficult to put into words the feeling of exclusiveness that spread through him, colonizing every inch of his soul.
For long years my uncle hid the wreck inside a trunk that no one was ever aware of. At the mere idea that others might touch or, even, look at his jewel without his consent, he was horrified. A shiver of disgust ran down his entire spine until it pricked his cerebellum with annoying electric jolts. It was an antique and should be treated as such. It was not to be desecrated. Only occasionally would he open the trunk and allow himself a few seconds of contemplation. Then, immediately, he would close it.
For years the piece stayed there and my uncle did nothing with it.
Later, however, he changed his mind.
After retirement, Emilio Ischitano collapsed into a deep state of depression. He had an enormous amount of free time, without having the slightest idea how to occupy it. This caused him great discomfort, a sense of bewilderment and inapprehension of his own life that he did not know how to resolve.
Thank goodness, he had always been a man with a strong sense of manual dexterity and a keen creative spirit, so he invented a hobby of his own: he began making lamps.
He would go to the flea market and pick out pieces. He would buy antiques and assemble them into lamps of the most extravagant and twisted shapes. He worked night and day, so much so that he even managed to turn the hobby into a trade. Friends and relatives would commission him to make lamps, which he then resold at insignificant prices, not at all proportionate to their beauty and the hours of work spent.
Of the money nun minni frica nu cazzu, he would repeat every time someone reminded him of the value of his artifacts. I would build them anyway, even if no one wanted to take them.
Within a few years, his popularity as a lamp craftsman grew, and with it the customers-often prestigious ones-who increasingly bought his works at ridiculous prices.
One summer I happened upon his villa in Calabria with my girlfriend. Enthusiastic about our presence, my uncle began to proudly show us his creatures.
This is a lamp I made by putting together pieces of an old chandelier. You see, the two ends are mirrored. They represent the eternal struggle of (of who knows what struggle you
were imagining under the influence of who knows how many reeds, I thought). Do you see this one instead? A glass tube filled with marbles, stretching upward. It represents tension toward divinity. This other one changes color every 3 seconds going through all shades of the rainbow. And so on with another dozen lamps, in front of our fascinated eyes.
Lamp after lamp, curiosity grew. Suddenly, Emilio Ischitano froze. He remained silent for a few seconds. Then, in the tone of someone who has stopped talking about earthly matters and has landed in the territory of the otherworldly, he resumed: whatever, but if I show you the one I have in the room upstairs… You can’t even imagine the story behind it.
We climbed the stairs of the ancient house, and entered the room. In a corner, hidden from the prying eyes of anyone who happened to be in there, a strange object lay undisturbed. The light from the street lamp, penetrating through the window, shrouded it with a faint yellow beam, illuminating only its irregular contours.
When my uncle turned on the general light in the room, we were confronted with an inanimate creature that gave off a solemn yet sinister charm; elegant and, at the same time, suspicious; worn by the centuries and at the same time able to spread an aura of eternity. It was an irregular slab set on a small marble pedestal and decorated with trinkets of the most varied shapes.
What material do you think it is made of? My uncle immediately questioned us, with the ironic smugness of someone who knows better.
Stone, we answered with certainty. After all, the object, solid and compact to the eye, had opaque reflections similar to those of rough marble. At the same time, however, it was dark, so it was not clear what it was made of. In any case, I am willing to swear that anyone without uncertainty would have said stone.
No, my dears. This is wood, he replied, satisfied with misleading us as planned by his question.
And so he told us about the unusual finding of the wooden slab at the bottom of the sea that took place that summer so many years before. After that, stimulated once again by our curious attitude, he attacked with the detailed explanation of how at some point he had decided to transform it.
For years I left it in a chest of drawers. I treated it as if it were the most precious thing, but without knowing what to do with it. I knew that sooner or later I would give it life; it was only a matter of time. One day I pulled it out of its hiding place and began to caress it by running it through my hands and arms. Then I thought of the sea, its place of origin. So, on one of the two faces I attached a glass cruet, turquoise like the seabed where I found it. After that, I told myself that without sunlight I wouldn’t find anything at all. So on the other face I attached this light bulb.
I interrupted him: uncle, is the bulb inside a trumpet? It looks like a miniature trumpet.
That’s right, replied my uncle satisfied with the interest, it is a small trumpet I had purchased years ago. So its light can illuminate the wood like a melody. As you can see, though, it doesn’t just illuminate the wood.
Indeed, I replied. What are these? Pointing to clusters of ivory spheres clinging to the plate that were right in the direction of the light, which was off at that moment.
Pearls. Emilio replied. Without a body pulsing with desire I would never have seen her on the bottom and gone all the way down to get her. I like to think that pearls are life. I had plenty of them, so even on the other side I found a way to fit them in, illuminating them with this other bulb. He said so, pointing to the second light embedded in the artifact.
We stood in silence for a moment contemplating the beauty of the creature before us. A system of black cables connected to bulbs pierced the wood and with a spiraling effect emphasized the sense of sinuosity of the artifact.
How much do you sell this one for?
This is not for sale, replied my uncle very seriously. Do you know how fucking valuable this one is? He asked me as if I had suddenly become an unscrupulous vulture ready to snatch it away from him at any moment. This is worth nu sacc’i sordi. But I don’t give a shit about making a profit. This one stays here.
Sorry, I replied. I didn’t want to hurt your sensitivity. I understand that you don’t want to sell it. It fits.
No you’re right, sorry. I got a little worked up. I just care about it very much. A year ago a musician from Naples came by. A friend of friends. He spent a couple of weeks here and when he found out I was making lamps, he fell in love with them. He bought me three or four of them. I tried to give him at least one, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He was so fascinated by my work that he wanted to pay top dollar for them.
This is what they deserve, he said. Not a euro less.
I felt quite uncomfortable, but there was nothing to be done.
Then, one evening, he happened to see her, my uncle said, pointing to the lamp we had been admiring until a short time before. He went out of his way to buy it. He went so far as to offer me ungodly sums of money-other than severance pay. For a moment I even thought about it. But then I said to myself, I’m old, what the fuck am I going to do with all this money? The lamp is worth much more. I’d rather keep it.
In short, I continued, there was nothing for the Neapolitan musician to do. He went home with his tail between his legs.
That’s right, that’s exactly how my uncle answered.
Then he remained silent and for an interminable minute shifted his gaze from us to the creature he had so meticulously unearthed. It was as if we were no longer inside the room. He looked intensely at the object. There was more than satisfaction in his eyes. He was enraptured, captured, trapped by it. Almost as if it was not he who had control over her, but on the contrary it was the creature he himself generated that had an influence over him.
Uncle!”, I said, awakening him from the trance-like state he had fallen into. May I ask you something? Tell me, he replied with a wary air.
Can you show us it on?
He looked at us intently, as if to understand, through our eyes, whether the request was serious or not. His gaze grew more and more shadowed. His eyes slitted. His lips stretched out in a warlike grunt. I feared a sharp, perhaps violent reaction. Then, as if by magic, he came to his senses.
I haven’t turned it on in a long time, he cut it short. I don’t have the plug, and then it’s late. Better go to bed. After locking the room door, he hurriedly headed downstairs. Then, at the limits of formal cordiality, he announced: I’m going to bed, see you tomorrow.
The following days my uncle resumed being kind and hospitable as usual, but he never mentioned the lamp again. The few times I tried to talk to him about it, he was evasive. So, after a few attempts, I decided not to press the matter. Then we left, and about that lamp, directly from him, I never heard anything more.
What happened next makes me cringe every time I think about it.
Over the next few years, Emilio Ischitano became increasingly intractable. Especially after an event that on the surface no one would ever deem significant. One day, a cat had inadvertently bumped into his favorite lamp, causing him to drop it. The lamp had not been scratched. Yet, since that day, Emilio, worried that other animals or, worse!, people might endanger the safety of his creature, had decided to retreat indoors, reducing his outings to matters strictly essential for survival.
Neighbors across the street happened to observe Emilio Ischitano’s behavior from the window.
Did you see that? said Susanna once to her husband Fernando. He’s doing it again tonight.
What?
Look: he sits and stares straight ahead. For hours he doesn’t take his eyes off. And then he looks the way he is, all straight, all stiff, looking like he has a ghost in his eyes.
What a subject, how badly he is aging. I wonder what minchia looks at all the time.
Susanna and Fernando could not guess what the destination of Emilio’s gaze was. Nevertheless, having reached this point in the story, it will not be difficult for the reader to guess.
There came a point when Emilio Ischitano decided that living in that small town had become too dangerous. Too many people. Enough, he told himself one day. I’m going away. And it was easy to decide where.
Now in his seventies, my uncle moved to a small cliff-top cottage on the Calabrian Tyrrhenian Sea that he had inherited from a distant relative. That place, despite unquestionable scenic beauty, had been empty for at least half a century. Dust and wild weeds had colonized every corner of the house. Nonetheless, Emilio Ischitano told himself: it’s the perfect place, away from everyone. No one to bother you. And so it was that Emilio abandoned forever the house in which he had lived for years.
At last I’m taking you to safety, he whispered to the lamp, stroking it gently. At last I can look at you without the eyes on you of those two jerks who spy on us every night.
Despite his venerable age and the unlivable state of the house, my uncle managed to arrange the dwelling so that it became at least decent.
One day he could no longer resist that insistent temptation he had brooded over in silence for years. He couldn’t take it anymore. Before he died, at least once, he had to do it.
He laid the creature on the table, carefully unrolled the general electrical cord and attached it to the socket being very careful not to trip over it.
The effect was heavenly. A dazzling light flooded every corner of the house with perfection and, liquid, melted into his eyes filled with awe and unable to blink for fear of missing the spectacle. The beauty was so intense that it became unbearable, so much so that Emilio was forced to pull away.
In life, there are moments when the irrational force of human creativity takes over everything. Every fragment of rationality is swept away with the effect of monsoon on the last remaining bread crumbs on the table when the cutlery and plates have already been removed. In those moments, one does not think. And, moreover, one acts badly. Hastily. Regardless of the catastrophic consequences that our gross gestures can have.
This was what happened to Emilio Ischitano. In the act of pulling the plug he did not take the care he had taken in the act of attaching it. His legs, trembling and clumsy, tripped over the cord of his marvelous creature, which, as easily as it had been placed on the table, fell to the floor.
They were interminable moments. My uncle saw his whole life spent with her – that is, the only life that mattered to him – flash before him. As the lamp, slow and solemn, plummeted to the floor, Emilio, even slower, dived to the ground in a vain attempt to save her in his arms.
There was nothing to be done. The lamp fell and, like an ancient terra cotta vase, broke into hundreds of fragments. The beads crumbled on impact until they became sand, and the glass of the cruet, similarly to the bulbs that moments before had given off an otherworldly light, shattered irreparably.
Only the wood, the last bastion of stubbornness, remained intact.
But that was not all for poor Emilio Ischitano. As the hapless man took note of the tragedy that was befalling him, a twinge in his heart, stinging and electric like a bolt of lightning violently hurled at a desert rock, struck him mercilessly, leaving him stunned on the floor, his soul now in pieces like the shards of his lamp.
The next morning a ray of autumn sunshine warmed poor Emilio’s face.
Physically he felt fine, but when he opened his eyes and realized what had happened, he knew immediately that it was an irreversible event.
There is little that can be done, he said to himself.
Resolute as usual, he had already come to a clear, final, unappealable conclusion, which in a matter of hours took him from theory to practice.
To begin with, he lifted the fragments, which were now impossible to reassemble, and after grinding them to a sandy texture with a hammer, he threw the sand into the air so that it would dissolve in the wind.
After that, came the most difficult part. His health now hung by a thread; moreover, it was inextricably linked to the fate of the wooden slab. He had suspected it for a while, but after that twinge in his heart, he had had definite confirmation.
Pain for her meant pain for him. The miscalculation was thinking that grief for him also meant grief for her, that is, that the death of the man, would also mean the disappearance of the plate.
Moreover, he could not afford to leave the creature exposed to the precariousness of the world.
What they had started together, they had to finish together. What had begun in the sea had to end in the sea.
He took a thick cord, long and massive, and tied his ankle to his beloved wooden slab. Then, with the pride of a gladiator, he walked toward the cliff overhang, ready to take his final flight of love.

On cover:
Claudio Di Carlo,Light of my feet, 2002, oil on canvas