LITMIR.BIZ

      2

      I started talking when I was three years old. Small talk has never been one of my strengths. If someone I didn’t know said something to me I would answer yes, no, I don’t know. And if they insisted, I would answer with whatever they wanted to hear me say.

      Once you’ve thought something, what need is there to say it aloud?

      ‘Lorenzo, you’re like a cactus: you grow without bothering anyone, you just need a drop of water and a bit of light,’ an old nanny from Caserta used to say to me.

      My parents used to bring over au pairs for me to play with. But I preferred playing on my own. I would close the door and imagine that my room was a cube that floated through space.

      My problems started at primary school.

      I have very few memories of that period. I remember my teachers’ names, the hydrangeas in the schoolyard, the metal containers full of steaming hot maccheroni in the canteen. And the others.

      The others were anyone who wasn’t my mum, my father and Grandma Laura.

      If the others didn’t leave me alone, if they pushed me too far, the blood would rise up through my legs, flood my stomach and spread out to the tips of my hands, and then I would clench my fists and lash out.

      When I pushed Giampolo Tinari off the wall and he fell on his head on the cement and had to get stitches in his forehead, they called home.

      In the staff room, my teacher told my mother: ‘He looks like he’s at the station waiting for the train to take him home. He doesn’t annoy anyone, but if any of his classmates tease him he starts shouting, turns red and starts throwing whatever he can get his hands on.’ The teacher had studied the floor, embarrassed. ‘Sometimes he is frightening. I don’t know . . . I would recommend you . . .’

      My mother took me to see Professor Masburger. ‘You’ll see. He helps a lot of kids.’

      ‘But how long do I have to go for?’

      ‘Three quarters of an hour. Twice a week. What do you say?’

      ‘Yeah, that’s not too much,’ I told her.

      If my mother thought I’d end up being like the others that was fine with me. Everyone had to think that I was normal, Mum included.

      Nihal would take me. A fat secretary wearing a caramel perfume would lead me into a mouldy-smelling room with a low ceiling. The window faced a grey wall. On the hazelnut-coloured walls hung old black and white photos of Rome.

      ‘But does everyone who has problems lie there?’ I asked Professor Masburger, as he pointed towards a faded brocade couch.

      ‘Of course. Everyone. This way you can talk more freely.’

      Perfect. I would pretend to be a normal kid with problems. It wouldn’t take much to trick him. I knew exactly how the others reasoned, what they liked and what they wished for. And if what I knew wasn’t enough, that couch I was lying on would transfer to me, like a warm body transfers heat to a cold body, the thoughts of the kids that had lain there before me.

      And so I told him all about a different Lorenzo. A Lorenzo who was embarrassed to talk to the others but who wanted to be like them. I liked pretending that I loved the others.

      A few weeks after I began the therapy I heard my parents whispering in the living room. I went into the study. I took a few volumes from the bookshelves and put my ear up against the wall.

      ‘So what’s wrong with him?’ Father was saying.

      ‘He said that he has a narcissistic personality disorder.’

      ‘What does that mean?’

      ‘He says that Lorenzo is unable to feel empathy for others. For him everything that’s outside his circle of affections doesn’t exist, has no effect on him. He believes he is special and only people as special as him can understand him.’

      ‘You want to know what I think? That this Masburger is a dickhead. I have never seen any boy as affectionate as our son.’

      ‘That’s true, but only with us, Francesco. Lorenzo thinks that we’re the special people and he considers everyone else to be inferior.’

      ‘He’s a snob? Is that what the professor is trying to tell us?’

      ‘He said that he has an inflated sense of self-importance.’

      My father burst into laughter. ‘Thank goodness. Just think if he had a low sense of self-importance. That’s enough, take him away from that worthless idiot before he fills up our son’s brain with nonsense for good. Lorenzo is a normal child.’

      ‘Lorenzo is a normal child,’ I repeated to myself.

      Little by little I worked out how I should act at school. I had to keep to myself, but not too much, otherwise I stuck out.

      I was like a sardine in a school of sardines. I camouflaged myself like a stick insect on dry branches. And I learned to control my anger. I imagined that I had a tank in my stomach, and when it filled up I emptied it out through my feet and the anger ended up in the ground and penetrated into the world’s guts and was burned up by the eternal flames.

      Now nobody bothered me.

      For middle school I was sent to St Joseph’s, an English school filled with the children of diplomats, of foreign artists who had fallen in love with Italy, of managers from the US and of wealthy Italians who could afford the fees. Everyone was out of place there. They all spoke different languages and looked like they were just passing through. The girls kept to themselves and the guys played football on the big field opposite the school. I fitted in well.

      But my parents weren’t satisfied. I had to have friends.

      Football was a stupid game, everyone running around after a ball, but that’s what everyone else liked. If I learned to play, I was home free. I would have some friends.

      I found the courage and put myself in goal, where nobody ever wanted to play. I realised that defending it from enemy attacks wasn’t all that bad. There was this one guy, Angelo Stangoni, who was unstoppable whenever he got the ball. He would shoot like a lightning bolt to the goal and kick really hard. One day a defender knocked him down with a kick. Penalty. I lined myself up in the middle of the goal. He took a run up.

      I am not a man, I said to myself, I am a nyuzzo, a hideous but incredibly agile animal produced in an Umbrian laboratory that has just one purpose

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