In the old denominations, lira pound peseta, you could sense the physical weight of money, a bag full of coins that was untied and reknotted. “Disburse,” related to “purse,” now there’s a word with heft.
THE BOURGEOIS FAMILY is destined by its very essence to crumble and collapse. Both its mission and its pride consist in withstanding time and the impulses of disintegration, in proving solid and protective, internally as well as to the eyes of strangers, while at the same time its nature is to fall apart: an organism that battles against the very disease that is inscribed in its genetic code. Little by little, it loses elasticity, it turns rigid, and while to the untutored eye it appears more stubborn and refractory, in reality it has become fragile, delicate: it has begun to disintegrate. The death agony may feature accents and episodes that are variously heroic or ridiculous, heartbreaking or grotesque, and the course of the illness may be so slow that it is not perceived at all and is taken for complete health and silently handed down to the following generation, so that the children of a highly respected family, when it comes their time to set up housekeeping, engender ramshackle, disastrous relationships. The children who were brought up wearing white kneesocks and pageboy haircuts, with a wise mother who regulated the flow of dirty clothing with a sorcerer’s touch, well, those very same children are the ones who so often turn out to be misfits, who reject wholesale the model of happiness offered them by their parents, or else ape that model in a pathetic fashion.
4
TODAY, July 3, 2008, someone called me up to ask if I wished to be the subject of a literary quiz on the radio: my name was supposed to be the “right answer,” the listeners would be given hints concerning my books, over the course of the broadcast, at first vague but increasingly revealing. I declined the offer. The official reason is that I dislike culture quizzes, and that’s true, I’m not fond of them.
The real reason, though, is that I was afraid I might not be recognized. Maybe no one would guess.
I’d like it if my reputation as a writer were sufficiently great that I could hope to have a street named after me in my city, just a little, out-of-the-way street, as long as it’s not one of those streets newly built on the outskirts, no, I’d like it if my name on the corner replaced another name, for example, that a street should be renamed Via Edoardo Albinati that is currently Via Nino Oxilia, a small cross street of Viale Parioli in Rome, where my grandmother bought socks on the market stands and would give them to me after repackaging them in wrappers from Schostal, the well-known linen and underwear shop on Via del Corso. In fact, she had the drawers of her credenza full of bags and packages from Schostal and other shops such as Frette or Caccetta, neatly folded and stacked away, the hallmark of a generation that, in a gift, cared at least as much about the container as the content. I discovered the fact one Christmas, when the socks that she had given me turned out to be far too big, and I told my grandmother, “It doesn’t matter,” that I’d just go by Schostal and exchange them, but she insisted on taking back the gift package, “Let me go, I’ll be glad to go . . .,” “Don’t worry about it, Grandma, all the way over to Via del Corso . . . give them to me, come on, I’ll take care of it,” but she wouldn’t relinquish the package, “What’s got into you, I told you that I’d go myself!” she was losing her temper until she was finally forced to confess.
“It’s just that, well, you see . . . they’re not from Schostal.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re just not.”
She let go of the bag. And then she told the truth, which for someone like my grandmother really must have been quite a comedown. Good manners require that the truth should always be concealed. Inside I was laughing, proud of her contrivance. Devilish old woman. Certainly, the notion of a certain Turin-based/Parioli-inflicted respectability that she had chosen to defend with the trick of the bag from Schostal had been spoiled by the revelation (just think: the market stands on Via Oxilia! The ones that these days are run by the Sinhalese, indeed, they’re long gone, the market has closed down, all that survives are the remainders shops selling DVDs), but in and of itself it was perfect, indeed, that scheme delighted her. Since she was hardly made of money, to save money on the purchase, and then trick it out so decorously, adding nothing more than a glittering shell, the lovely gold-appliquéd bags from the shops in the center of town, and all just to obtain . . . that hint of distinction.
Something formally impeccable.
Moreover, the socks weren’t badly made at all. I still have them in my drawer, immense, beige, like size 11s.
NINO OXILIA DIED at the Battle of Caporetto, before he even turned thirty. He’d written plays and made movies when the film industry was just getting started. In his soldier’s rucksack he had some poetry, later published in a book that came out posthumously, Gli orti. He was considered a genius. Well, I could have a marker with my name there, for a hundred years or so, roughly as long as Oxilia, and then I could be replaced by another notable.
EVEN THOUGH WE TEND to think of the wealthy residents of Parioli and the QT as rich moneybags, for the most part they were simply dignified specimens of the middle class.
It is true that they had an affection that verged on a morbid obsession for good labels and trademarks, but an equally strong fondness for counterfeits, which allow you to save 50 percent on the price.
IN ANY FAMILY, trouble is caused to an equal extent by that which is said and that which is left unstated. It is said that it takes three generations to “make” a psychosis. At my house, the second of the two errors was committed: thanks to a stubborn and actually admirable practice of discretion, understatement, and shame taken to a sovereign and almost mystical measure of indifference toward all dramas, one’s own and those of others, a vocation for self-control that could be broken only by some unexpected accident, like a condom breaking during sex, very powerful cases of maladjustment developed . . . But all family novels are necessarily neurotic, and equally neurotic is anyone who assembles one making use of an album compiled of lists of the good and the bad and the mediocre, the dramatic, “money shot” scenes, and the need for meaning so typical of those who believe it is right there, within reach.
THE BOURGEOIS FAMILY was once composed not only of blood relatives but also messenger boys, chauffeurs, clothing pressers, and housekeepers. Perhaps the household serving women represented the family even more essentially than did their employers—the essence of its continuity.
My mother used to go out to the small towns and villages to find her housekeepers. Once she went all the way to Sardinia and returned home with not one but two young Sardinian women, diminutive and dark-complected, practically identical, Saveria and Filomena, known as Mena—I think they were probably sisters—who beat me silly when they discovered I had ogled them secretly through the keyhole while they were taking their bath together, in one of those small tubs with a step/bench so you could wash yourself while seated, and yet they were so tiny that they both fit in together, one of them sitting on the step. I don’t know what mistake I committed, how I was found out, maybe I coughed. How I wished that keyhole were bigger! I couldn’t see much, but I did see enough to learn how women were made, their bushes of hair, and they had three each, therefore three black tufts dripping water while Saveria and Mena took turns swiveling to allow themselves to be sprayed down, in front and back, one of them gripping the hand-held showerhead, and the other soaping up her bushes, moving her shower sponge from one tuft to the next, scrubbing hard as if she were determined to tear them out, uproot them. I still don’t know how they were able to hear me breathing with all that splashing water.
AT HOME, fully entitled members of my family lived ate slept and worked until that title was revoked by dismissal. Aside from performing household tasks, the presence of the domestic staff also helped to establish an image of decorum and prestige: for example, a cook, a presser, a chauffeur.
For that same reason, we had a married couple in our service for only a couple of
months. It became clear almost immediately that the man of the couple was superfluous, he had nothing to do in the house, much less outside, since my father had no need of a driver and the school was right around the corner, so there was no need to pick us up or take us there. The few times I saw this handsome gentleman with his head of white hair waiting for me outside the gate at SLM, with a deferential demeanor, I was so ashamed that I asked my parents please not to send him again.
(THE REASON A PRIORI for household service staff: the low cost of labor. The reason a posteriori: the multiplicity of family jobs performed.)
I REMEMBER that in the conversations of well-to-do women, their favorite topic was their household staff. For those who can still afford to have them today, that hasn’t changed. Certain matrons, chatting with their girlfriends, amuse themselves by depicting their servants with all there is about them of the curious or the ridiculous, or they even speak of them as if they were their worst enemies, living under the same roof by some sort of tragic mishap. Others, instead, are exaggeratedly fond of their maid, whom they love to describe as a “pearl,” their “salvation,” a “blessed hand,” seriously “irreplaceable,” and they are so possessive of them that no one had better dream of trying to “poach them” or “steal them away”—as if they were a necklace or a pair of earrings.
When I was a child and I listened to them chatter, I imagined that the most terrible job in the world had to be the “changing of the armoires,” which was what they called the seasonal rotation of the wardrobes. It was an operation run like a military campaign. And I wondered: Why is the queen in chess the most powerful piece? And if so, then why do you win the game by checkmating that good-for-nothing, that half-handicapped king? Why is the queen the very emblem of sovereignty, and yet she does not rule?
Italy was a distinctly singular form of matriarchy where the women counted for little or nothing outside the home.
The other favorite topic of conversation, and the purpose for which so much chitchat, often malicious, intertwined, was the painstaking and detailed social classification of neighbors and acquaintances, carried out by reviewing such indicators as language, attire, education, children, homes. This patient work of description and cataloguing, befitting an eighteenth-century botanist at work on the vegetation of a newly discovered tropical island, proved however aleatory, provisional, because unlike biological species, social roles underwent continual and sometimes very rapid modifications, and the point of the diagram where single individuals were placed, along with families and groups, had to be updated, drawing on an ever-changing harvest of data, the collection of which could never be considered complete: news, gossip, secrets that were no longer secrets at all, insinuations, indiscretions, revelations.
ONE’S GOOD NAME, anonymity, gossip, and distinction: it was between these four corners that the generations-long game played out within good families. The adults did everything they could to maintain a low profile, to drown their own personalities, often quite strong, in the professions they practiced, their family role, the specific decorum of the class they belonged to—a decorum, in fact, that consisted of an obstinate discretion around the sources of their own prosperity, their income and their assets, which manifested itself in the form of cars and houses and villas and travel, but never ostentatious, never shown off, in fact, quite the opposite, almost concealing them, so to speak, hiding them in the shadows or dim light. Hence came the popularity of certain vacation spots where the lovely residences were almost invisible, built as they were in the thick of the forests and pine groves, allowing the wealth of those who lived there to be guessed at while in fact hiding it; contrariwise, in the young people, the passionate desire to distinguish themselves would be capable of coming up with the most improbable exploits.
THE CULMINATING MOMENT of family life is the evening meal. It remains the principal and often the only occasion on which the members of the family see one another. In situations where the custom of eating together disappears, due to differences in needs or disinterest or reciprocal annoyance, when adducing schedules that fail to meet by twenty minutes or half an hour family members hasten to wolf down their food, perhaps not even sitting down, eating with their hands, in the kitchen, on the living room side table, barricaded in their bedrooms and curled up on their beds, anything in order to avoid embarrassing community sittings, then the family only really exists at a formal level, strictly on paper, they all live together like students in a group house. The duration of the meal is inversely proportional to the solidity of the ties between those who eat that meal together. Haste is the worst indicator. Everything else, everything else can perfectly well be done all along, in a separate setting, you wash and bathe alone, you make phone calls, study, smoke, and watch TV alone, people even talk to themselves when they’re alone—but eating is something you should do together. Why? Because that’s the way it is, and that’s that. It’s the fundamental ritual of cohesion: you exchange information, you comment on the events of the day, you talk about plans and projects and decisions that must be made, you announce news of greater and lesser importance, you crack jokes and make the others laugh, or you arouse their curiosity or make them angry, you discuss the fate of the baby bird that fell out of its nest and how if it doesn’t eat by nightfall it’s bound to die, there, in the Stan Smith shoebox lined with cotton padding—all this while you all sate your hunger. This is the place and the time (for the most part, residual time) where parents can perform some minimum educational task. The proof of the pedagogic function that the family meal serves is this: in my day, since my frustrated parents (that is, my mother) were unable to focus that function on important topics, they sidetracked it onto the formal aspects of eating at the table, hands washed, elbows pressed to your sides, not drinking in the midst of chewing, and please, no belching. A secondary but tangible objective—that of etiquette. The scolding about our awkwardness at the table, in fact, struck us as somehow less subjective, though every bit as boring for us—the targets—than the usual abstract tirades about values such as honesty, sincerity, and personal hygiene (each of which were, as I have mentioned, always, for my mother, “the first thing”). As a further confirmation of this function of the shared meal, we have the embarrassing comportment of kids nowadays who slurp and chomp and slouch, indications that their parents have abdicated so much as a dusting of education and upbringing concerning formalities, a crucial surrogate of education concerning matters more substantial.
But why? Was it because, aware that they had received an upbringing consisting of hypocritical formalities, they chose not to replicate that approach with their own children, out of either a love of sincerity or mere laziness? In other words: if I can’t straightforwardly teach my son or my daughter what is right and good (in part because at age forty, I still have no idea, or I’m not as certain of it as I might once have been . . .), what’s the point of telling them that you never raise your glass to your lips before wiping your mouth with your napkin?
In any case, when we were little (but not even all that little), my brother and I never ate at the same table with our parents, but at a low side table, sitting on two small plastic chairs.
THE MURDERERS WHOSE CRIME I’m now preparing to write about also went home to dinner with their parents. To keep them from worrying. In the pauses between inflicting torture on their victims, they ate lunch while watching TV. At least, one of them did. I could no longer say in which Russian novel (perhaps The Golovlyov Family?) the household rules include having the samovar “always on the boil,” and the members of the family “putting their knees under the table five times a day”—or perhaps even more, seeing the sheer number of snacks, early dinners, tidbits, and dishes they consumed, a never-ending munching of cucumbers and spreading of butter. It goes without saying that a family so deeply united and unshakable in their customs with respect to meals would fall apart—a fate that seems inevitable for any and all families in novels. The group that appears on stage in the first act will have bro
ken apart by the time the curtain falls on the third act, that’s the narrative law. Let me say it again: every family novel is the story of a neurosis. The desperate yearning for meaning, so typical of novels, triumphs in the conclusions that we draw about our past, providing a fantastic alibi for anything that has happened but also for the things that have yet to happen; after all, literature is a life insurance policy that allows us to give up the effort to build a different kind of life, to build another me, another self that is better or more courageous, what good would it do if I had literature to serve as a substitute, novels, ah, novels, daydreams, “fantasy” worlds (how much ink has been spilled in celebration of “fantasy,” a virtue more or less nonexistent in any person of real worth), and this or that character can do a perfectly fine job of taking my place from now on, why certainly, I’ll send him on in my place, he’ll do fine, and I can simply step out of view. And so we shape and we fix the fleeting and foolish mask of character, “my” character, an accumulation of banalities held together in a chronology. It is said that literature magnifies life, enlarges it, multiplying the number of paths you can follow in your fantasies, in your imagination, as if it were possible to add to our own lives the lives of all the characters read about in books, until they form a sort of tribe of ghosts capable of anything, of standing in for everything . . .
The Catholic School Page 55
