I think of scribbling a note for Sean, then change my mind. I will have to call him later and speak to him.
“I’ve left the apartment for good, not only because I feel deceived by you, but because I don’t love you enough to want to work out the differences between us. Our marriage would be as much a marriage of convenience for me as it would be for you. I don’t know where I’ll spend the night, but it won’t be here, nor will it be at my mother’s. I’ll have to find a place of my own, as I hope you’ll find the life that is meant for you.”
But what I wanted most of all was to write this ending:
“I find Angie at the hospital next to Lucia’s bed, caressing her mother’s brow. Lucia wakes up and smiles. The three of us walk out to meet an elegant, tall man with dreamy eyes who takes Lucia by the arm. Angie waves at me and follows them toward their new home.”
The image evaporates as I drive away in my yellow Pinto, in silent unrest, my head filled with unread and unwritten books.
The yearly autumn show of brilliant colours is at its peak, and the tree-lined street is more luminous than ever. I realize I will have to complete the mandala, if only to salvage what is left of this sunny Sunday afternoon.
EPILOGUE. ROME, JUNE 2016
SOMEONE ONCE TOLD ME it would take at least five years to write a novel; mine has taken fifty plus. Not that I have spent the best part of half a century isolated from the world, weaving the proverbial web of tales. This novel has grown in spurts and has been shaped by the innumerable starts and finishes of life, with long pauses in between.
Why did I take this long to complete this novel? The most plausible excuse is that life does get in the way of artistic pursuits—work, marriage, children, an aging mother, deaths—layer upon layer of life to manage and comprehend. But ultimately, I must admit that it has been my stubborn nature, my need to finish what I set out to do, at whatever cost, that kept me from bringing this story to a close. Above all, I was determined to find a fitting ending that would justify the arduous journeys of my characters. But time and time again, as I managed to patch up one fractured circle, another snapped open beyond repair. “Lavoru e pazzi,” my mother would have said, so finally, with her death, followed by other painful deaths, I had to concede that what we lose, we lose for good. No passage comes without loss.
Well over thirty years after the events that made me confront who I was and where I came from, I immersed myself again in the memories of the past. First, I put order to the village tales of my childhood and contained them in a short novel. Next, I returned to the place where it all started, searching for comfort and reconnection with the spirit of loved ones I have since lost.
After a prolonged absence, I found Mulirena both unchanged and foreign. I walked the familiar streets and alleys. I recognized only a few old people. They stared at me blankly for a while until they captured my name and family’s affiliation. Otherwise, no one took notice of me, except for a smiling young girl, sitting on the parapet above the Funtanella, eating fries from a McDonald’s bag. She asked me, in perfect Italian, if I needed assistance. I gave her my family’s name and asked for hers.
“They call me the marocchina,” she answered.
Her parents, immigrants from Morocco, run a small convenience store in town. The village has a website; all the young people have Facebook pages, and everyone carries a cell phone. Young men, however, are still complaining about not being able to earn a living in the village, while farmers import field hands from Morocco.
The Italian TV talk shows carry never-ending debates on the problems of illegal refugees and their integration, while videos of migrants in capsized vessels, arms waving frantically in the distance waiting to be rescued, play in the background.
We’ve reached the new millennium, landed on the moon, circled Saturn, found water on Mars, yet people are still risking their lives in overcrowded boats in their desperate search for a safe harbour and a chance at a job.
The story of immigration never ends.
On my return trip, I vacationed in Rome for a few days, at a hotel booked online, curiously named Ping Pong Hotel. Isn’t it magical how, in writing, the most incongruous places and events coalesce in our imagination and suddenly help us find the links that make perfect sense to us? It is on this trip that I finally found the closure to the story I set out to write in 1980, but couldn’t finish because the perfect ending evaded me.
At Stazione Termini, I took the two-tiered bus that loops around the city and permits tourists to get off and on at will. I secured the best spot in front of the upper deck to take an eyeful of the Eternal City. I circled the whole city once and then started the loop again and got off at St. Peter’s Square.
It occurred to me as I approached the Basilica, from Via della Riconciliazione, that St. Peter’s Square is a misnomer. It isn’t a square at all, but an enormous circular gathering place—a broken circle with a wide opening—that allows in and spurts out millions of people each year, of as many colours, languages, nationalities, and creeds as there are people on earth. I felt good being part of that huge circular hug, and lucky that I understood several of the languages I heard. The mish-mash of people and tongues produced a sense of familiarity, and I felt at ease, as though this was where I belonged. The North Africans faces, the Asian ones, the Slavs, the Latinos, didn’t look foreign to me at all. After all, I have had the fortune of living in Canada for so long.
Have I come full circle?
If I have, it is not how I had envisioned the outcome. Maybe the closing of the circle is an unrealizable chimera for our days, or, maybe, its importance has been highly overrated.
Questions will always remain. Lucia remains lost to us, the sacrificial lamb of our nomadic adventures; the only act of defiance left is to plug the void with written words. Here was the ending I was looking for.
And a new beginning….
—Caterina Anastasia
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As this novel is closely connected to my first book, The Girls of Piazza D’Amore, both drafts having being conceived and written during my studies at Concordia University, I owe my gratitude to the same writing instructors, and other friends I acknowledged at the publication of the first novel. I would like to single out again my thesis supervisor at Concordia University, Terry Byrnes.
In the long stretch of time it took to bring this second novel to light, many colleagues and friends—too many to mention—offered advice and encouragement. I thank you all. But this novel would not have found its rightful home without the enthusiastic reception of Luciana Ricciutelli of Inanna Publications, who believed in the book and has helped me polish it with great patience and skill.
I would not have been able to keep up the dream without the emotional support and love of my family. My late husband, Robert, encouraged all my endeavours. My brother Vincenzo, Vince to many of us, was my biggest fan and my strongest tie to that other life we left behind as children, and that inspired parts of this book. My memories were also his. I thank my nieces Felica, Nina, their spouses and children for having kept our family traditions alive. To my sons and their life partners, David and Melissa, Anthony and Valerie, thank you for just being here and now. Robbie and Kate, you are the future. Thank you for bringing joy and laughter to my life.
Photo: Anthony J. Branco
Connie Guzzo-McParland has a BA in Italian Literature and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Concordia University. Upon graduation from the Master’s program, she received the David McKeen Award for creative writing for her thesis-novel, Girotondo. In 2005, an excerpt from this novel, “On the Way to Halifax,” translated into Italian, won second prize at the ninth edition of the Premio Letterario Cosseria in Cosseria, Italy. Her novel, The Girls of Piazza d’Amore, published in 2013, was shortlisted for the Concordia First Novel Award by the Quebec Writer’s Federation. Since 2010 she is Co-director and President of Guernica Editions. She li
ves in Montreal
The Women of Saturn Page 35
