THE NEW HOUSE

As soon as they married they settled in Cosenza, where Gillette had my father based. My mother was expecting her first child — in the 1960s nobody knew the sex in advance, and nobody was willing to gamble on the tests available. Then Gillette approved my father’s transfer to Reggio Calabria, my mother’s own city, and the joke went round the house: what a tragedy if the birth certificate said Cosenza — what would the relatives think?

They found an apartment two hundred meters from my grandparents’ house, on the assumption my mother, only seventeen, would have family support nearby. Life played a different game. My sister Teresa was born in January 1964, a girl, and almost no relatives visited — such was a southern Italian city where the only resource that mattered was believed to be men. Thirteen months later I arrived, February 1965, and the Three Wise Men appeared from Cosenza and every surrounding village. The male heir. My father was an energetic man; in the following eight years, ten more children could easily have appeared, but there were abortions instead — my mother preferred the credit card to condoms, which my father claimed destabilized him.

One afternoon at the hairdresser, my mother learned the landlady’s son was marrying and they’d need the apartment back. She came home and delivered a simple equation to my father: within seven days, buy a new house, we’re leaving. He earned 750,000 lire a month, but my mother had a shop, and one phone call to my grandfather made money materialize. The broker showed my father a rough, unfinished apartment for exactly seven million lire — exactly what was in his account, not one lira more or less. He bought it. Internal walls. Nothing else. No doors, no windows, no bathroom. My mother wanted to kill him. He laughed: I am Frega. By May 1973 we’ll be living in the new house.

In March 1973, two more Fregas arrived — twins. Years later my father would say: but I got out in time, how the hell did they get in? I always gave the same answer while everyone laughed: the problem is never getting in, Dad, that part is easy — the problem is getting out in time. He never borrowed from a bank; friends extended credit and he never broke his word. On 30 May 1973 we moved in — my father and I handled most of it ourselves, and at eight years old I hauled a washing machine up three floors alone. We were finally in our own home. Nobody would ever throw us out. At least that was the theory. Years later my parents died and one of my brothers took possession of everything. But that’s another story. Bye Dad.

THE ORIGIN
01 Men’s Gillette, Story · 02 The Name Nobody Expects · 03 Calabria (South Italy) · 04 The New House · 05 The Boy Who Learned To Smile · 06 The House Of Unfinished Sentences · 07 Borrowed Faces