“Do you know how to get to Roberto’s house?”
“Yes, but he’s coming to meet us.”
Giuliana checked her face again, then took out of her purse a leather pouch, shook it, my aunt’s bracelet slid out onto the palm of her hand.
“Shall I wear it?” she asked.
“Why not?”
“I’m always worried. Vittoria gets angry if she doesn’t see it on my wrist. But then she’s afraid I’ll lose it, she harasses me and I get scared.”
“Be careful. Do you like it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
There was a long, embarrassed pause.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Not even Tonino told you?”
“No.”
“My father stole it from my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who at the time was very sick, to give to Vittoria’s mother.”
“Stole it? Your father, Enzo?”
“Yes, he took it secretly.”
“And Vittoria knows?”
“Of course she knows.”
“And your mother?”
“She told me.”
I thought of the photo of Enzo in the kitchen, the one in the policeman’s uniform. He watched over the two women even in death, armed with his pistol. He kept them together in the cult of his image, wife and lover. What power men have, even the most small-minded, even over courageous and violent women like my aunt. I said, unable to contain my sarcasm:
“Your father stole the bracelet from his dying mother-in-law to give it as a present to the healthy mother of his lover.”
“You got it, that’s right. There’s never been money in my house, and he was a man who liked to make a good impression on those he still didn’t know, but he didn’t hesitate to harm those whose affection he’d already won. My mother suffered a lot because of him.”
I said without thinking:
“Vittoria, too.”
But right afterward I felt the full truth, the full weight of those two words, and it seemed to me that I understood why Vittoria had that ambiguous attitude toward the bracelet. Formally she wanted it, but in substance she tended to get rid of it. Formally, it was her mother’s, but in substance it wasn’t. Formally, it was supposed to be a present for some celebration or other for his new mother-in-law, but in substance Enzo had stolen it from his old mother-in-law, who was dying. Ultimately, that piece of jewelry was the proof that my father wasn’t all wrong about his sister’s lover. And, more generally, it was evidence that the incomparable idyll recounted by my aunt must have been anything but an idyll.
Giuliana said with scorn:
“Vittoria doesn’t suffer, Giannì, Vittoria makes people suffer. For me this bracelet is a permanent sign of bad times and pain. It makes me anxious, it brings bad luck.”
“Objects aren’t guilty, I like it.”
Giuliana assumed an expression of ironic unease:
“I would have bet on it, Roberto likes it, too.”
I helped her hook it on her wrist, the train was coming into the station.
14.
I recognized Roberto even before Giuliana did, he was standing in the crowd on the platform. I raised a hand so that he would pick us out in the parade of travelers, and he immediately raised his. Giuliana hurried, dragging her suitcase, Roberto went toward her. They embraced as if they wanted to crush each other, mixing fragments of their bodies, but they exchanged only a light kiss on the mouth. Afterward he took my hand in his and thanked me for coming with Giuliana: without you, he said, who knows when we would have seen each other again. Then he took from his fiancée the big suitcase and the bag, I followed a few steps behind with my paltry suitcase.
He’s a normal person, I thought, or maybe one of his many good qualities is that he knows how to be normal. In the bar in Piazza Amedeo, and the other times I’d met him, I’d felt I was dealing with a professor of great depth who was concerned with I wasn’t sure what, exactly, but certainly complex branches of knowledge. Now I saw his hip pressed to Giuliana’s, the way he kept leaning over to kiss her, and he was an ordinary fiancé of twenty-five such as you’d see on the street, in a movie, on television.
As we were about to descend a grand pale yellow staircase he wanted to take my suitcase, too, but I prevented him with determination, and so he continued to concern himself affectionately with Giuliana. I didn’t know anything about Milan. We rode the metro for at least twenty minutes, and then it was a quarter of an hour’s walk to the house. We climbed old dark stone stairs to the fifth floor. I felt proudly silent, alone with my bag, while Giuliana was free of burdens, talkative, and finally happy in every movement.
We came to a landing where there were three doors. Roberto opened the first and led us into an apartment that I liked immediately, despite a faint odor of gas. Unlike the apartment on San Giacomo dei Capri, tidy and chained to my mother’s sense of order, here there was an impression of clean disorder. We crossed a hall with piles of books on the floor and entered a large room with unusual old furniture, a desk covered with folders, a table, a faded red couch, overflowing bookshelves, a television set sitting on a plastic cube.
Roberto, speaking mainly to me, apologized, said that even though the concierge tidied up every day, the house was structurally not very welcoming. I tried to say something ironic, I wanted to continue in the bold tone that—I was now sure—he liked. But Giuliana wouldn’t let me speak, she said: forget the concierge, I’ll take care of it, you’ll see how nice it will be, and she threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him with the same energy she had put into the meeting at the station, this time giving him a long kiss. I immediately turned away, as if looking for a place to put my suitcase; a moment later she gave me precise instructions with a proprietary air.
She knew everything about the apartment, she dragged me into a kitchen whose dull colors seemed even duller in the low-watt electric light, checking to see if there was this, or that, criticizing the concierge for some sloppiness that she quickly began to remedy. At the same time, she never stopped talking to Roberto, she talked and talked, asking him about people she called by name—Gigi, Sandro, Nina—each of whom was associated with some problem regarding university life, about which she seemed to be well informed. Once or twice Roberto said: maybe Giovanna is getting bored, I exclaimed no, and she went on talking confidently.
It was a Giuliana different from the one who until that moment I’d thought I knew. She spoke decisively, sometimes even in a peremptory tone, and from everything she said—or alluded to—it was clear that not only did he tell her in detail about his life, about his problems at work, with his research, but he attributed to her the capacity to look after him and sustain him and guide him, as if she really had the necessary skills and wisdom. In other words, Roberto gave her credit and from that credit—I seemed to understand—Giuliana surprisingly, fearlessly, drew the strength to play that part. But then a couple of times he gently, kindly objected, said to her: no, it’s not really like that. Then Giuliana broke off, blushed, became aggressive, quickly changed her opinion, trying to show him that she thought exactly as he did. At those moments I recognized her, I felt the suffering in those snags, I thought that if Roberto had abruptly let her know that she was saying one foolish thing after another, that her voice for him was like a nail scratching metal, she would fall down dead on the floor.
Naturally, I wasn’t the only one who realized that the situation was fragile. Roberto, when those little cracks appeared, pulled her to him, spoke to her sweetly, kissed her, and I again got absorbed in something that momentarily blotted them out. It was my embarrassment, I think, that made him exclaim: I bet you’re hungry, let’s go to the café downstairs, they make really good pastries. Ten minutes later, I was eating sweets, drinking coffee, beginning to feel curious about the unknown city. I said so, and Roberto
took us on a tour through the center. He knew everything about Milan and made an effort to show us the important monuments, recounting their history a little pedantically. We walked from a church to a courtyard to a square to a museum, without stopping, as if it were our last occasion to see the city before its destruction. Although Giuliana often mentioned that she hadn’t slept a wink on the train and was tired, she appeared very interested, and I don’t think she was pretending. She had a real desire to learn, added to a sort of sense of duty, as if her role as fiancée of a young professor imposed on her an always attentive gaze, an always receptive ear. I, however, felt divided. I discovered that day the pleasure of converting an unknown place to a precisely known place by adding the name and the history of that street to the name and history of that square, that building. But at the same time I recoiled in irritation. I thought back to instructive walks through Naples with my father, to his permanent display of knowledge and my role of adoring daughter. I wondered, is Roberto nothing but my father as a young man, that is, a trap? I looked at him as we ate a sandwich and drank a beer and he joked and planned a new itinerary. I looked at him as he stood apart with Giuliana, outside, under a big tree and talked about their affairs, she tense, he serene, she weeping a little, he with red ears. I looked at him as he came cheerfully toward me, his long arms raised, he had just heard about my birthday. I dismissed the thought that he was like my father, there was an enormous distance. It was I, rather, who felt I was playing the role of listening daughter, and I didn’t like that feeling, I wanted to be a woman, a beloved woman.
Our tour continued. I listened to Roberto and wondered why am I here, tailing him and Giuliana, what am I doing with them. Sometimes I lingered purposely on details of a fresco to which he hadn’t, I don’t know, given the right importance. I did it as if to upset that walk, and Giuliana turned and whispered: Giannì, what are you doing, come on, you’ll get lost. Oh, if I really could get lost, I thought at one point, leave myself somewhere, like an umbrella, and never have anything more to do with me. But if Roberto called to me, waited for me, repeated to me what he had already told Giuliana, praised two or three of my observations with remarks like: yes, it’s true, I hadn’t thought of that, then immediately I was fine and got excited. How wonderful to travel, how wonderful to know someone who knows everything, whose intelligence and looks and kindness are extraordinary, and who explains to you the value of what by yourself you wouldn’t be able to appreciate.
15.
Things became complicated when we got home in the late afternoon. Roberto found a message on the answering machine in which a cheerful female voice reminded him of an obligation he had that evening. Giuliana was tired, she heard that voice, I saw that she was really annoyed. Roberto instead reproached himself for having forgotten the date, it was a dinner fixed long ago with what he called his work group, all people Giuliana already knew. In fact, she immediately remembered them, erased disappointment from her face, and displayed great enthusiasm. But now I knew her a little, I could tell when something made her happy and when it made her anxious. That dinner was ruining her day.
“I’ll take a walk around,” I said.
“Why,” said Roberto, “you should come with us, they’re nice people, you’ll like them.”
I resisted, I really didn’t want to go. I knew that I would either be sullenly silent or become aggressive. Unexpectedly Giuliana intervened supporting me.
“She’s right,” she said, “she doesn’t know anyone, she’ll be bored.”
But he looked at me insistently, as if I were a written page whose meaning wouldn’t reveal itself. He said:
“You seem like a person who always thinks she’ll be bored but then never is.”
It was a remark whose quality surprised me. He didn’t say it casually but in the tone I had heard only once, in church: the warm, full tone of conviction that dazzled me, as if he knew more of me than I did. The equilibrium that had somehow or other lasted until that moment exploded. I really do get bored—I thought angrily—you don’t know how bored I get, you don’t know how bored I’ve been, how bored I am now. I was wrong to come here for you, I’ve only piled disorder on disorder, in spite of your kindness, your openness. And yet, just as that rage was ransacking me inside, everything changed. I wanted him to make no mistake. In some corner of my brain the idea was taking shape that Roberto had the power to clarify, and I wished that from that moment he—only he—would point out to me what I wasn’t and what I was. Giuliana almost whispered:
“She’s been too nice, let’s not make her do things she doesn’t want to.”
But I interrupted her.
“No, no, it’s O.K., I’ll come,” I said, but unenthusiastically, doing nothing to diminish the impression that I was going with them just so as not to create difficulties.
She looked bewildered and hurried off to wash her hair. While she was drying it, unhappy with the way it was turning out, while she was putting on her makeup, while she was wavering between a red dress or a brown skirt with a green shirt, while she was undecided between earrings and necklace or the bracelet, too, and questioned me, in search of reassurance, she said repeatedly: you don’t have to go, stay here since you can, I have to go, but I’d gladly stay with you, it’s all people from the university who talk, talk, talk, and you can’t imagine how full of themselves they are. That’s how she summed up what was scaring her just then, and she thought it scared me, too. But I had known that self-important babble of the cultivated since I was a child, that was all Mariano and my father and their friends ever did. Now, of course, I hated it, but it wasn’t the talk in itself that intimidated me. So I said to her: don’t worry, I’m coming as your friend, I’ll keep you company.
We were in a small restaurant where the owner, gray-haired, tall, very thin, welcomed Roberto with respectful amiability. It’s all ready, he said, indicating in a complicit tone a small room where a long table could be glimpsed, with a number of guests sitting and talking animatedly. So many people, I thought, and my shabby appearance made me uneasy; I didn’t think of myself as having charms that would smooth relationships with strangers. Also, at first glance the girls all seemed young, pretty, cultured feminine types like Angela, who knew how to shine with soft poses, silky voices. The men were a minority, two or three, contemporaries of Roberto’s or slightly older. Their gazes focused on Giuliana, beautiful, cordial, and when Roberto introduced me, their attention lasted only a few seconds, I was too frumpy.
We sat down, and I ended up a long way from Roberto and Giuliana, who had found seats next to each other. I perceived immediately that none of those young people were there for the pleasure of being together. Behind the good manners were tensions, enmities, and if they could have they would surely have spent the evening in another way. But already while Roberto was exchanging the first remarks, an atmosphere was created similar to what I had seen among the parishioners in the church in Pascone. Roberto’s body—voice, gestures, gaze—began to act as a glue, and, seeing him among those people who loved him as I did, and loved each other only because they loved him, I, too, suddenly felt part of an inevitable bonding. What a voice he had, what eyes: Roberto, now, among a lot of people, seemed much more than what he had been with Giuliana, with me, in the hours of touring Milan. He became what he had been when he addressed that remark to me (“You seem like a person who always thinks she’ll be bored but then never is”), and I had to admit that it hadn’t been a privilege of mine, he had the gift of showing others more than they were able to see.
People ate, laughed, discussed, interrupted one another. They had grand themes at heart, of which I understood very little. Today I can say only that they talked about injustice, hunger, poverty, what to do in the face of the ferocity of the unjust person who takes for himself, taking away from others, what is the right way to behave. I could sum up more or less like this the discussion that rebounded in a lightly serious way from one end of the table t
o the other. Does one resort to the law? And if the law fosters injustice? And if the law itself is injustice, if the violence of the state safeguards it? Eyes shone with tension, the always erudite words sounded sincerely passionate. They debated a lot, knowledgeably, eating and drinking, and it struck me that the girls were even more passionate than the boys. I was familiar with the argumentative voices that came from my father’s study, my sarcastic discussions with Angela, the fake passion that I sometimes displayed at school to please the teachers when they advocated sentiments that they themselves didn’t feel. Whereas those girls, who probably taught or would teach at the university, were true and combative and compassionate. They cited groups or associations that I had never heard of, some had just returned from distant countries and recounted horrors they knew through direct experience. A dark-haired young woman named Michela immediately stood out for her vibrant words, she sat right opposite Roberto, and was naturally the Michela who obsessed Giuliana. She brought up an episode of abuse that had happened maybe before her eyes, I don’t remember where, or maybe I don’t feel like remembering. It was an episode so terrible that at one point she had to stop speaking to keep from crying. Giuliana up till then had been silent, she ate listlessly, her face dulled by the weariness of the evening and the day of touring. But when Michela’s long tirade began, she dropped her fork on the plate and stared at her.
The girl—a coarse face, a bright gaze behind large eyeglasses with thin frames, very red, full lips—had begun speaking to the table but now was addressing only Roberto. It wasn’t an anomaly, they all tended to do that, they unconsciously recognized in him the role of collector of individual speeches that, synthesized by his voice, became the conviction of all. But while the others every so often remembered the listeners, Michela appeared to care only about his attention, and the more she talked, the more Giuliana—I saw—withered. It was as if her face were wasting away until it was only transparent skin, displaying in advance what it would become when illness and old age arrived to ruin it. What was crippling her at that moment? Jealousy probably. Or maybe not, Michela wasn’t doing anything that could make her jealous, no gesture, such as Angela had laid out for me, illustrating the strategy of seduction. Probably Giuliana was simply disfigured by the suffering caused by the quality of Michela’s voice, the efficacy of her phrases, the ability with which she could pose questions alternating examples with generalizations. When her face seemed to be utterly drained of life, a harsh, aggressive voice came out, with a strong dialectal coloring:
The Lying Life of Adults Page 26
