Happiness, as Such

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Non avemo ni canones

  Ni tanks ni aviones

  Ay Carmelà!

  She asked him if he still sang Ay Carmelà! when he painted and he seemed surprisingly moved. He said that no, he didn’t sing anymore, the new paintings took too much effort. He painted while balancing on a ladder, and he sweated so much he had to change his shirt every two hours. He seemed suddenly anxious to be liberated from the Irish woman. He told her that it was getting dark and that she should go home. He wasn’t able to walk her because he had a dinner engagement. The Irish woman hailed a taxi. He spoke sharply to her about always taking too many taxis even though she came from the remote Irish countryside where there were no taxis, just fog, peat, and sheep. He took Angelica under the arm and walked her and the child home to Via dei Banchi Vecchi. On the way there, he started complaining. He was alone. His butler was a fool who used to work in a car repair shop. No one ever visited him. He practically never saw the twins who’d gotten fat recently, they were only fourteen years old and weighed fifty-­eight kilos each. One hundred and sixteen kilos all together, he said, it was too much. He almost never saw Viola, who, to make matters worse, he could barely stand because she had no sense of irony. She and her husband were shacked up in his parents’ house. So many people under one roof — in-laws, uncles, aunts, grandchildren. It was a commune. All those relatively insignificant people. Pharmacists! Not that he had a problem with pharmacies, he’d said, ducking into a drugstore to buy some Alka-Seltzer for the great pain he had “right here” he said, pointing to the middle of his chest, a dull pain, maybe that old ulcer — his aged and faithful life companion. He’d barely seen Michele recently, which tropinubled him. He’d agreed it was the right thing when Michele moved out to live on his own, but it was sad. When he spoke of Michele his voice softened, as if beaten — it didn’t have that grating quality. But Michele was always with that Osvaldo man now. He couldn’t quite understand what kind of person Osvaldo was. Obviously he was very nice. Polite. Unobtrusive. Michele dragged him around everywhere, even to Via San Sabastianello when he came over to do his laundry. Likely he needed Osvaldo to give him a lift in the car. Michele didn’t have a car anymore. He’d lost his license after hitting that old nun. She died but it wasn’t Michele’s fault. Not entirely Michele’s fault. He had only just learned how to drive and was speeding because he was going to his mother’s who needed him because she was depressed. She was always depressed. Their mother, he said, lowering his voice to a husky whisper, couldn’t stand to be alone and in her infinite stupidity hadn’t known that Cavalieri had been planning for some time to leave her. She was naive. At forty-four years old, she had the mentality of a teenage girl. Forty-two, said Angelica, she’s turning forty-three soon. Her father made a brisk calculation on his fingers. She is more naive than the twins, he said. And worse, the twins aren’t disingenuous. They’re cool and calculating — like two wolves. Either way Cavaliere had never impressed him much. He never, never ever seemed nice. His sloped shoulders and long white fingers, his hair in ringlets. From the side he looked like a hawk. Her father said he could always recognize a hawk. When they reached Angelica’s front door, he said he didn’t feel like coming up because he didn’t care much for her husband Oreste — he’s pedantic. Sanctimonious. Her father didn’t kiss Angelica or the little girl, but he chucked the girl under her chin and squeezed Angelica’s arm. He encouraged her to come to the opening the next day. The show was going to be a “big deal.” He left. Angelica missed the opening because she went to a conference in Naples with her husband. After that day, she only saw her father again two or three times. He was sick in bed and her mother was there. He didn’t say anything to her. One time he was on the phone. Another time he was feeling unwell and just gestured in her direction, distracted and disgusted.

  Angelica climbed six flights up to the studio. She turned on the light as she entered. There was a bed in the middle of the room, the sheets and blankets in disarray. Angelica recognized her mother’s beautiful blankets. Mother loved buying nice blankets, warm and lightweight, soft with velvet trim, lovely pale colors. The floor was cluttered with empty bottles, newspapers, and paintings. She glanced at the paintings — vultures, owls, abandoned houses. The dirty laundry was by the window, along with a pair of wadded up jeans, a tea kettle, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and a plate of oranges. The wood stove was in the center of the room. It was large and round, with a green enamel door in a delicate ornamental design that looked like lace. Angelica reached an arm into the stove and fished out a bundle wrapped in an old frayed towel. She tossed it into the tote bag. She also took the laundry and the oranges. She left the workshop and walked for a while in the damp, foggy morning, turning up her jacket collar to shield her mouth. She dropped off the dirty clothes at a nearby laundromat, called Fast Wash. She had to wait at the counter while they counted the clothes one by one. Then she got back in her car. She drove slowly through traffic to the Lungotevere Ripa. She climbed down the stairs leading to the river bank. She threw the bundle into the river. A child asked her what she’d thrown into the river. She told him they were rotten oranges.

  “Non avemo ni canones . . . ni tanks ni aviones” she sang as she made her way home through the traffic. All at once she realized her face was wet with tears. She laughed, sobbed, and wiped her tears away with her jacket sleeve. When she got close to her house, she bought some pork loin to poach with potatoes. She also bought two bottles of beer and a box of sugar. Then she bought a black scarf and a pair of black stockings to wear to her father’s funeral.

  5

  December 8, 1970 — London

  Dear Mamma,

  After some moments of indecision and for reasons not easily explained in a letter, I’ve decided not to return to Rome. When Osvaldo called to tell me that Papa had died, I went to find out about flights, but then I didn’t leave. I know you told everyone that I had pneumonia.

  Thank you for the clothes and money. The person who brought them, Signora Peroni’s nephew, couldn’t give me any news about you because he’d never met you but he brought news of Osvaldo and gave me back my watch that I’d given to Osvaldo to hold while I rushed to shower and then forgot to get back from him at the airport. Thank him for me. I don’t have time to write to him directly.

  I’m leaving London for Sussex. I can stay with a linguistics professor there. I’ll have to do dishes, light the stove, and walk the dogs. For the time being I’ve given up on sculpture school. I prefer dogs and dishes.

  I’m sorry I didn’t get to build cages for your rabbits. But I’ll do it when I get back. Kisses to you and my sisters.

  Michele

  6

  December 8, 1970

  Dear Michele,

  Regarding the little thing you forgot in your stove, mission accomplished. I threw it into the Tiber — it was, as you said, all rusty.

  I have not yet gone to see the girl on Via dei Prefetti. I haven’t had time. The baby has a cold. And you said I should bring her money, but I don’t have any at the moment.

  Our father was buried three days ago. I will write again as soon as I can.

  Angelica

  7

  December 12, 1970

  Dear Michele,

  I just received your short letter. I have no idea what kept you from coming back for your father’s funeral. I can’t conceive of anything that would keep a person from coming home when there’s a death in the family. I don’t understand. I have to wonder if you’ll come when I die. Yes, we told a number of family members that you were in London yesterday, sick with pneumonia.

  I’m pleased you’re going to Sussex. The air there must be very good and it makes me happy when any of you are in the countryside. Taking you on country excursions when you were little bored me to death. I thought that every extra day spent in the outdoors was good for you children. After you moved in with your father, you’d spend the entire summer in Rome, and
that drove me crazy. He didn’t like the countryside. He loved the sea. He’d send you and the maid out every morning to Ostia and said that was good enough.

  You didn’t say whether you were also going to be cooking for this professor of linguistics. Write me if you have to cook too, and I’ll send some recipes. Matilde finds recipes in newspapers and magazines and pastes them all in a giant notebook.

  Send me your phone number in Sussex, even though I’ll still have to call you from a pay phone because they haven’t put in my line yet. The pay phone is in a tavern that’s always full of people, and I’m worried I might cry if we talk. It’s not the sort of place for phone calls and crying.

  Your father’s death hit me very hard. I feel much more alone now. He didn’t support me because he didn’t care about me. Or your sisters. You were the only person he cared about. His affection for you didn’t have anything to do with you, it was an invention, something he imagined you to be. I don’t know how to explain why I feel more alone now. Maybe it was because we shared memories. Memories only he and I knew, even though we never spoke of them when we met. I realize now it didn’t matter that we didn’t talk about them. They were a presence in the hours we spent together at Cafe Canova, those oppressive, never-ending hours. They weren’t happy memories because your father and I were never happy together. Even if we had been briefly and occasionally happy, everything got sullied, ripped up, and destroyed. But people don’t love each other only for happy memories. At a certain point in life, you realize that you just love the memories.

  It might seem strange to you that I can’t go into Cafe Canova anymore. If I went there I would start sobbing like an idiot and I’m sure of one thing, I don’t want to cry in front of people.

  We had to fire your father’s butler, the one whose name I can’t remember, Federico or Enrico, and Ada took him on. Matilde was convinced that I should have hired him but I didn’t want to because he seems like a fool. Osvaldo says that Ada will teach him everything because apparently she’s a kind of genius in training butlers to become impeccable and inscrutable. I don’t know how she will make this insipid, bewildered boy impeccable, he makes me think of a boar. But Osvaldo claims that Ada’s art has no limit when it comes to molding domestics.

  Matilde and I have been going every day to Via San Sebastianello to sort through your father’s papers and make an inventory of his paintings before we put them in storage. I don’t know what to do about the furniture because neither Viola nor Angelica have room in their houses for it. It’s all big furniture and takes up a lot of space. We were thinking of selling it. Osvaldo and your father’s cousin, Lillino, came over yesterday to look at the paintings. Lillino is leaving today for Mantua and I’m delighted because I can’t stand him. Lillino has recommended hanging onto the paintings for now because there’s not much of a market for your father’s work. His most recent pieces are enormous, and to tell you the truth I think they’re dreadful. I can tell that even Osvaldo thinks they’re awful. I can tell even if he hasn’t said a word. But Lillino says they are magnificent and that the world will discover them one day and they’ll be worth a fortune. Matilde just tosses her head and purses her lips, and then expresses the utmost admiration. I get dizzy when I look at them. Why in the world did he start doing those huge, shocking paintings. I did take that old portrait of me from years ago sitting at the window of the house in Pieve di Cadore. Your father sold the house just a few months after. The painting is hanging in the living room now and I’m looking at it while writing you. Of all your father’s paintings, it’s the one most dear to me. We separated very soon after that period, the end of that summer after we got back to Rome. We were living on Corso Trieste then. You and Viola and Angelica were staying at Chianciano with Aunt Cecilia. Maybe your sisters knew what was going on but you didn’t because you were little, only six years old. I left the house on Corso Trieste one morning and never went back. I took the twins and went to my parents who were on vacation in Roccadimezzo. I got to Roccadimezzo after a train trip that I can’t even remember to describe because the twins were throwing up the entire time. My parents were there, staying in a good hotel, happy, eating well, talking walks in the fields. They weren’t expecting me at all, because I hadn’t warned them. It was late when I got to the hotel with three suitcases and the twins soaked in vomit. My parents were stunned when they saw me. I hadn’t slept in a week because of all the anguish and indecision and my face must have been a wreck. My mother had her first heart attack two months later. I’ve always thought that mother’s heart attack was caused by seeing me arrive in Roccodimezzo in the middle of the night in that state. She had a second heart attack that spring and died.

  Your father decided you would live with him. You would go with him and the girls would stay with me. He bought the place on Via San Sebastianello and moved you all in. There was that old cook who stayed on for just a few months, I can’t remember her name. Maybe you remember her. For the longest time I couldn’t set foot in that house because he wouldn’t see me. I called you and you cried over the phone. What a horrendous memory. I waited with the twins for you at Villa Borghese and that old cook wearing a monkey-fur coat would meet us there. In the early days you would scream and throw yourself to the ground when the old cook said it was time to go home, but eventually there would be a transformation and your face would grow hard and calm and you’d climb onto your scooter and leave. I can still see you moving away, upright in your little coat, in such a hurry. I had so much hatred built up toward your father, I had it in me to take a gun over to San Sebastianello and shoot him. A mother probably shouldn’t tell her son such things. It’s not instructive. But the question is, how does anyone know what instructive is, and if there’s even such a thing as an upbringing. I didn’t bring you up. I wasn’t there. How could I teach you. I just got to see you in the afternoon sometimes at Via Borghese. Your father certainly didn’t teach you anything, having gotten it into his head that you were born knowing everything. No one brought you up. And you turned out pretty oblivious. Though I’m not sure you would have been less oblivious if you’d had a better upbringing. Your sisters are maybe less oblivious than you are but they’re peculiar too, and oblivious, one of them in one respect and the other in another. I didn’t teach them anything. Or maybe I taught them something but it was the wrong thing, because sometimes I feel like a person I don’t like very much. In order to teach another person you have to have some modicum of faith in yourself, and compassion too.

  I don’t remember when or how your father and I stopped hating each other. He slapped me once in the lawyer’s office. He hit me so hard my nose bled. Lillino was there, along with the lawyer, and they had me lie on the couch while Lillino went down to the pharmacy to get me an iron supplement. Your father locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out. He gets scared around blood and felt sick. I see now that I wrote “he gets scared” in the present tense. I can’t seem to remember your father is dead. Lillino and the lawyer were banging and rattling on the bathroom door. He was very pale when he came out and his hair was matted because he’d put his head under the faucet. It makes me laugh to think about that scene now. There were so many times I wanted to talk about it with your father, to laugh with him, but our relationship fossilized. We were never able to laugh together again. I think after he slapped me he was able to stop hating me. He never wanted me to come to Via San Sebastianello but sometimes he came to Villa Borghese himself instead of sending the cook. I stopped hating him. One time at Villa Borghese we were playing Blind Fly with you on the grass and I tripped and fell and he cleaned the mud off my dress with his handkerchief. He was on his knees cleaning off the mud, I looked down at his long, black curls and I could tell that there wasn’t even a shadow of hatred between us anymore. That was a happy moment. Happiness made out of nothing, because I knew that even if my relationship with your father wasn’t about hatred anymore it was still made of something sad and cowardly. But I remember the sunse
t, beautiful pink clouds over the city, and for the first time in a long time I was almost serene, almost happy.

  I have nothing to tell you about your father’s death. Matilde and I were at the hospital the day before he died. He and Matilde chatted and then fought. He called the architect to talk about the tower. He said that he’d bought the tower primarily for you because of your great passion for the sea and that now you’d be able to spend whole summers there. You can invite all your friends because there are a ton of rooms. I know you don’t have any passion for the sea, you’re as likely to sit on the shore, fully dressed and drenched with sweat in the middle of August. But I didn’t want to contradict him so I didn’t say a word. And he kept on fantasizing about the tower. He seemed to think buying it was a stroke of genius and a great bargain, he said it was a shame I never had strokes of genius because of the house I bought, which must have been a huge mistake, tacky and expensive. I didn’t answer him. Then a group of his friends arrived down at reception but he said he was tired and didn’t want any guests. Biagioni, Casalis, Maschera, and an Irish girl I think he was dating. I sent Matilde down to talk to them. That gave me and him some time alone. He told me that I was welcome to spend the summer in the tower. But he didn’t want the twins to come because of their transistor radios, he wouldn’t get any rest in the afternoon. I told him he was being unfair to the twins. If you were to show up at the tower with a whole group of friends he wouldn’t be able to take an afternoon nap either. So he said that maybe the twins could come once in a while too. But not Viola and Angelica. Viola could go to the countryside with her in-laws, it was ugly, there were flies everywhere, but she had fun there. Angelica with her boring husband. Did she love him? Maybe she did love him. Either way, he didn’t want Oreste in his tower because there was that time Oreste said something critical about Cézanne. The imbecile. How can a frog form opinions about Cézanne. He said he was going to exercise the utmost attention and discretion about who to invite every summer. Every summer? Actually, no, all the time, because he was planning on living in the tower year-round. For example, he never wanted Matilde to come to the tower. He’d never liked her, even when they were children. He had no idea why I’d taken her in. I told him that I was lonely and needed company. I preferred Matilde to no one at all. And I feel sorry for Matilde because she doesn’t have a cent to her name. She could always sell the vineyard, your father said. I reminded him that they’d already sold the vineyard quite a while ago. They’d sold it off little by little and now there was a motel where the vineyard used to be. Then he said that it was unbearable to think of a motel standing where there had once been such a splendid vineyard. He thought it was rather unkind of me to remind him. He turned over and didn’t want to talk anymore. He wouldn’t even talk to Matilde. Then Matilde told me that the Irish girl had collapsed in tears and Biagioni and Casalis had to carry her off.