Page 144 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Now put yourself, if you can, in Papa DeSolo's position. It was a vast amount of money
and land which the DeSolos had accumulated, and all of it, all of it, stood jeopardized if the
eldest son did not inherit it whole. Think not only of Papa DeSolo's immediate household with
his wife and three children, but also vast numbers of people in his employ: servants, stablemen,
tanners, buyers, sellers, insurers, traders on the High Seas, and so on and so on. Perhaps several
hundred or people were dependent upon him and him alone. It was unthinkable, at the end of
centuries of financial planning and machinations to have it all come collapsing down because
their firstborn was unable to stipulate on his own behalf.

Not unwilling. Unable. Aurelio would have enjoyed running the tanning empire his
forefathers had built. It would have given him great pleasure to tend to the empire during the
day, then work on his watercolors and fantastical sketchings in the evening. That seemed a
natural, pleasant balance for him. So Aurelio had tried, how he had tried, for his own sake, for
his family's sake, to learn how to speak. But no one knew how to teach him. He saw their
tongues moving, their throats squeezing and releasing, and he imitated them as best he could.
But when he saw them grimace and put their hands over their ears, he knew he must be making
something unpleasant for them, though he couldn't figure out what.

It had taken Aurelio several years before he realized he wasn't like everyone else. As a
young child, he picked up reading quickly and effortlessly and soon he was able to write, in fact,
in letters far far prettier than any of the other children in his classrooms. But though his letters
were pretty, the rattling he made with his throat apparently either frightened or disturbed
everyone around him. So he stopped trying to make sounds. He turned to paper to try to
“speak” with people, practicing his letters, then his drawing, before and after his classes with
growing intensity, trying harder and harder to be understood through his artwork and less and
less through his physical voice.

So imagine how panicked Papa DeSolo was, that his entire fortune would be lost all on
account of a single lonesome deaf child. His imperfect, broken deaf child. His grotesque child
who was going to ruin everything for his entire family.

The next in line was a girl named Omella, but because she was a female, she didn't count.
Her existence wasn't an issue for the family inheritance. The law stated that the oldest male heir
would inherit, and that was clearly that.

Next in line, with Aurelio quietly out of the family record books, would be eighteen-year-
old Tomaso DeSolo, ready to inherit the entire two hundred year old fortune. Tomaso could hear
perfectly well, and was more than ready to stipulate for himself, three years hence, on his
twenty-first birthday.

Papa DeSolo felt he had been given no choice but to disinherit Aurelio. He saw that he
must literally disown Aurelio, disavow his very existence, so that Tomaso would de facto
become the “first born male” and inherit the family's holdings. Papa DeSolo gave Aurelio a
year's worth of living expenses and told him never to come back again.

Aurelio knew he himself had three years, that is, until Tomaso's birthday, to do what no
deaf man in all of Italy had ever done: learn to speak.

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