of “Giovinezza.”
“What can happen once can happen again,” Guido Livio told his brothers. A theory of life which didn’t prepare him for the death of his wife two weeks later, aboard ship and some years before Sanger discovered the molecular structure of insulin. Imagine this poor great grandmama who preferred her dolce with less not more and was bringing to the new world (almost) big talk of nuts and fruit, dying from a lack of sweetness in her blood. To which her husband declared, “How dare. . ! Not true!” and put the ship’s doctor on his tail for suggesting. . . .”Fix!” he demanded, but some things on a long journey are unfixable (as certain fetuses can attest), and though he felt steeped in political assuredness, and the confidence of a man who’d weathered ducismo, it made no difference.
Absence of reason: her husband (stamped ALIEN PERSON momentarily) followed her soon enough after arrival, soured by the sea journey and finding in the heat of this new place not enough air to sustain life.
“All this breathing space,” Guido Livio declared, “and yet . . !”
(A phrase which echoes in eighteen year old Tito as the dunnytruck makes its way along Chukta Ridge, revealing itself above the estate which will become the exclusive suburb of Vale on Vale, a slooshing coming from behind and the clatter of the wooden pan seats)
Tito Livio more or less an orphan of emigration—but quickly picked up by The Brotherhood of St.Endymion, who saw in a boy who had mastered English speaking so quickly, an opportunity to show charity at work. And so, at age eight, Tito Livio discovered magnanimity as one family after another lined up to take him in, promising contractually to raise him from one birthday to the next. Twelve months a piece, so that a relay of mamapapas was set in motion, a fabricated pre-cast of households and one year ambitions, and he was brought up from crew-cut to curly-top, after which a wage from the Department of Sanitation provided him with a room on The Corso, behind Leacon’s News Agency and two terraces down from Abner Zimmerman’s Fun Pier. And why, you want to know, did they clamber for a child who was not, after all, a new born babe, not a bundle in swaddle with formula like Christmas on his lips and frequent windy grins or inclined to grab fingers and tug cutely for all his might? Who woke up now and then in the evenings and wandered about the unfamiliar homes with almond eyes like a barn owl, peeking in on mamapapa and other family members besides, and curling himself up in the welcome rug as if the draught beneath the door provided him with some sustenance or elevation or the door offered consolation. Why? Why? . . . Because Hey-ho! of his size. They were attracted to him because of his measurements. Tito Livio was no bigger than a chimp.
(Ugh, heave-ho! the near-blind Mr. Beckett shouts from the driver’s seat, and out scrambles his boy to retrieve the pans)
A wind up. A clockwork. A model. The Titoman was small’s small. Not that this matters. These were the years of minuscule men proving fittest (Leaky, after all, discovering Nutcracker Man who was the size of Atlas and dead for 600,000 years because of it). All parts under-exaggerated. Eyes prying on the fineness of fingers. Feet: “Are they bound, do you think, in the evenings?” “And that hair! Don’t he look just like Golly!” What Bibbidi Trymelow feared in his shortness, and compensated by insisting his mikes be set dangerously low on their stands, Tito Livio recommended. That is: minutiae, the microcosmic proportions of the human physiognomy.
All the more reason for the young mamapapas of the estates to be attracted to him—collecting, as they were already, everything tiny and intricate from Kelloggs Corn Flakes, swap cards of boxing Sugar Ray and Mr. Floyd Patterson (cut down to size), madly saving penny to the pound. And to praise him up: “At your age!’ ‘What an achievement!”
“Tsh Tsh, such a strong one!” says Mr. Beckett in an uncharacteristic display of sociability. “And works so hard too, bphhf! Never seen one who puts his back arrgghh! into it.” Nosing for Christmas bonuses, while just beyond Chukta Ridge the crew of Metropolitan Water, Sewage and Drainage are drilling through sandstone for the pipes of the main line to the treatment works at North Head. . . .”Driving all the way to Barrenjoey Lighthouse, Tito, and for what? Pffff!” says Mr. Beckett. Slim pickings. The Tito-man offering amaretti now, which are refused on account of Mr. Beckett having teeth that are yellowed like a draught horse’s and letting go, and they turn back with their half load, down along the peninsula, the green water of Pittwater on the right, the blue sea on the left and the sun just reaching its afternoon peak.
Some years later I would raise questions about his early career and find in Tito Livio an affection inexplicable. How he admired the old man for the way he conducted his business and that he modeled himself in many ways on the old man’s attitudes. Origins speaking volumes. Mr. Beckett continuing in this field long after others had closed down or moved into the burgeoning work of extraction for the tanners, rubber-molders and oil refiners setting up along the Parramatta River. But the old man knew his market and sold his services on complete obliviousness to the downside of human waste. After Tito Livio moved on he went through half a dozen boys until deciding he’d be better off doing the job himself. None of the others showing any aptitude for the work. Complaining of the stench. The weight. The opportunities for disease. But Mr. Beckett, who could not properly see or hear them, decided quite simply that they didn’t understand the true nature of the job.
. . . And now the dunny truck rolls into the yard, backs up and tips out its load. Tito Livio bids Mr. Beckett good night (because, though it is the hottest time of the day and the sweat rolls off them both like molten pinballs, the old man is heading for his shed to bunk down until evening, when he will wake, eat and get ready for work) and now the Titoman is on his way also, along The Corso. Ferries are arriving from Circular Quay and heading out to Taronga where they berth at the hippopotamus house and their passengers climb their way uphill through peccary, wombat, hyena, jackal, native cat and wildebeest to the kiosk and plastic souveniry. On The Esplanade: twelve dozen illegally parked Holden cars, their owners lying down on the sand which glitters with zinc and zircon. Ahead now: the newly launched Charismatic Church of the diocese of South Steyne. Former makeshift Nissen of South Seas soldiers in advanced stages of recovery. Known in the parlance as “Strawberry Street” just for this reason: the red badges of (perhaps) Mercurochrome, of (could it be?) blood splotted on issue whites. Home to the beach mission of the Charismatics which periodically has risen up behind the banner of King George’s cross and tramped over roadway, paved walk and white sand to the edge of the sea, blessing Christmas Day approaching and the true meaning of the yuletide, being charismatic with lifesavers, muscle-builders, hot-dog johnnies, towel thieves, perverts, ice-cream vends, surfers, skip-boarders and coconut-oilers spread-eagle. Tito Livio, stoked to have finished work but judging (rightly) in Mr. Beckett’s demeanor that the trade in excrement is getting tougher. From inside the place a song which (trained ear cocked) I know to be “Blessed Are The Meek” sung in the way of choirs with upward tones too small and downward tones too large. Polyphonic. Imbalanced. And Tito Livio reaches the church noticeboard and pauses. It is large plain board and set behind glass and the sea-breeze, being what it is, has fogged the glass with salt and gives the appearance that clouds are reflected or, naturally, that it’s steamed up. Tito Livio wipes the sweat from his eyes, wonders at what he might do to improve Mr. Beckett’s business and (ho-hum been toting sloshing pans all night) begins to read. For a young man who has learnt to speak a new language so perfectly it is a strangely faltered reading. Red lips open and close. Almond eyes sweep back and forth. Brow becomes furrowed. It soon becomes apparent that he has a unique technique. That the lines appear to move for him in distinct and Zowie! foreign ways. When he turns his head a little . . . this way . . . and now that . . . it’s as if he’s reading perhaps with his ear or orifices invisible set somewhere above his temples. Now this way . . . now that. And he has traveled maybe one paragraph. But not downward in the traditional manner. Across. Diagonally! Now three words from elsewhere. Now another from the other side. Tito Livio reading with a dyslexic’s attention to arrangement and space. Counterposing one part of document with another. Reading by color and shape. Following an ambitious course across, down, in reverse. But that’s not all! The more he reads the more he begins to grow. His chest is starting to puff
