“THE YEAR OF OUR LOVE” by Caterina Bonvicini

In the summer of 2021, I have discovered the Italian writer Caterina Bonvicini. Her book was sold in a bookshop in Los Angeles.

The same summer but another month, I discovered the Canadien writer with Indian origins, Rupi Kaur. Her book was sold in a bookshop in Firenze, Italy.
Both books were translated into English.

And this is one definition of globalization for me, and I am happy with this.

<<Every day we went off to nursery school together, and Olivia’s grandfather would swing by to pick us up in his armoured, bulletproof car.
The drive to nursery school was an adventure.
First of all her grandfather drove us in person, and he was one fast driver. Then because there was a bullet hole in the windshield of his armour-plated Fiat Ritmo, with a spidery array of cracks radiating out across the glass.

“–Gianni, who shot you?”

We weren’t allowed to call him Nonno. He said that the word made him feel old.
In 1979 he was sixty-one years old, still an attractive man who delighted in casting his smoldering spell in all direction. He’d take his granddaughter to nursery school with the same devotion he spent waylaying and seducing women.

“–You always ask the same question, what a pain. I’ve told you before, these aren’t stories for little kids.”

There was a pistol in the car’s glove compartment.
There it lay, tucked in amidst the registration and insurance, next to a ballpoint pen and a glasses case.
We’d see it anytime he reached to get something out.

“–You are not to touch it, ever,” he’d say. “It’s a real gun. It’s a Beretta.”

There we’d sit, breathless, never taking our eyes off the dashboard for so much as a second.
And we’d reel off a string of stupid questions, always the same ones. For instance, we’d ask what would happen if the glove compartment popped open by accident and the pistol fell out–who knows, because he would have to slam on the brakes.

“–Not a thing,” Gianni would reply, “the safety is on.”

When we pulled up in front of the nursery school gates, the excitement subsided.
All the other children would leap toward the driver’s seat, wedging themselves between the front seats, to hug their mother or father goodbye, practically sprawled atop the stick shift.
Not us. Because there was that Beretta in the glove compartment.
We’d open the door, get out carefully, and walk around, cautiously.

“–Ciao, Gianni.” And then we’d plant a kiss on his face.>>

Publisher: OTHER PRESS, New York, 2021