We said goodbye to him in the hospital chapel. Then we went to the place he’d been staying and they brought us his suitcase, coat, and red sweater. It was all on a chair in his room. He was wearing jeans and a white cotton button-down with a tiger’s head on it. We had seen the shirt and jeans at the police station, they were bloodstained. The suitcase just had some underwear, a crumpled pack of cookies, and a train schedule. We went to see where he’d been killed. It was a narrow street with cement loading docks on both sides. At that time of day it was filled with the sounds of trucks. We were with his friend who’d been with him when he died. A Danish boy, seventeen years old. He took us to the sandwich shop where he and Michele had eaten that morning and the movie theater where they’d spent the afternoon. He had known Michele for three days. He couldn’t tell us about Michele’s other friends or who he’d been there with. So all we know about his time in that city is a boardinghouse, a sandwich shop, and a movie theater.
Write to me, send me news of you and the baby. I think about your baby now and then because Michele told me that it might have been his. I didn’t think there was a resemblance when I saw him, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Either way, I think we should care about your baby and not worry about whether or not it’s his baby, by us I mean me and my mother and sisters, and I don’t know why I feel that way, but not everything a person feels has to have an explanation, and to be perfectly honest I don’t believe that obligations should have explanations. I think we will send you money periodically. Not that money will solve anything, since you’re alone, broke, unsettled, and unreliable. But we’re all unreliable and broken somewhere inside and sometimes it seems desperately attractive to be unrooted and breathing nothing but your own solitude. That’s how people find each other, and understand.
Angelica
38
June 18, 1971 — Trapani
Dear Miss Angelica,
I am a friend of Mara’s. I’m writing you because Mara is too distraught to write you herself. Mara asked me to convey to you her condolences for the terrible misfortune that has befallen your family and I join her to convey my heartfelt condolences as well. Mara is so upset by this event that she hasn’t eaten in two days. It is understandable as your dearly departed brother Michele was the father of Paolo Michele, the sweet angel, the adorable creature, who is at this moment amusing himself out on the balcony in the playpen, along with my own angel. I am writing you now in the name of these innocent souls, to plead with you not to forget Mara, who is currently helping me with small household tasks. I don’t think I can keep her and her little angel with me here much longer. They are not a minor economic burden and even though I think of Mara like a sister, I actually do need real domestic help and Mara has too many problems to dedicate herself to housework, which requires patience, constancy, and goodwill. But neither I nor my husband have the heart to turn her out onto the street. I’m begging you to open your house to this innocent orphan of your own loved one taken too soon to heaven. I have more trouble, worries, and money problems than I can say. I did a good deed taking her in but I don’t want to deprive others of the opportunity to do their duty and their own good deed.
I send greetings and devoted esteem, faithful that my pleas will be answered.
Lillia Savio Lavia
I also might permit myself to remind you that by taking in Mara you will have the great consolation of seeing the features of your loved one mirrored in the face of her sweet angel and such consolation gives comfort, a healing balm for the unrelenting grief of prostrate hearts.
39
July 8, 1971 — Varese
Dear Angelica,
I’m in Varese now with Osvaldo’s uncle. Osvaldo will have told you that the curly-haired lady and her husband put me out onto the street. I am so grateful for the money you sent, but unfortunately, I had to give almost all of it to the curly-haired lady because she said I broke an entire set of plates and that’s actually the truth. I bumped into the table with the stroller one day when they had a dozen relatives over and all the plates went crashing to the ground.
When I found out about Michele’s death I threw myself onto the bed to cry and stayed there all day, the curly-haired lady brought me broth because she’s not mean when she’s not worrying about cleaning the house or wasting money. Then, for the love of my baby I starting living again like before, and the curly-haired lady gave me vitamin shots because I was a wreck.
I didn’t let the curly-haired lady read that letter from you, I kept all my letters hidden from her in a pair of boots, but I went into my room one day and found her standing by my dresser. She turned red and told me that she was looking for the plant sprayer and I told her that it was obvious she was going through my things and then we fought and it was the first time that we ended up screaming and yelling and I tore the sleeve off her dressing gown. We had another screaming and yelling fight the day that your wire came through but I knew there was nothing I could do and so I cashed the wire and threw the money in her face and she took it. That was just a few days before I left. Unfortunately I’ve come to understand that in my life, all my relationships fall apart eventually. I don’t know if it’s my fault or other people’s, but my relationship with the curly-haired lady fell apart, and even though I know I should be grateful to her, I can’t think of her with any affection or without getting upset.
It was very good of you to send money and I hope you’ll thank your mother as well because I think it must have come from her. If you want to send money, know that I will always take it and be grateful, but to be honest, I need you to know that I don’t think my baby is Michele’s. He doesn’t look like him. At times, he looks like my grandfather, Gustavo. But other times he looks like Oliviero, that boy who Michele was with a lot, the one who always wore that gray sweater that had two rows of little green trees running across it. I don’t know if you remember Oliviero. I went out with him three or four times. I didn’t like him at all, but it could have been him. What you said in your letter was so right, the part about me being broken and unreliable, but that you still understand me. I am so broken and unreliable, but I wanted you to know the truth because I don’t want to deceive you. I guess I’m inclined to deceive everyone else but I don’t want to deceive you. You said it so well: we don’t need reasons for what we feel we need to do or not do. There aren’t reasons. It would be a huge drag if there were reasons for everything.
I should continue my tale of disaster. The curly-haired lady and her husband went on a trip to Catania. They were supposed to be away for three days but their car broke down so they came home early and found me and one of their relations in their bed at three in the afternoon, on a Sunday.
The relation was actually his brother, and her cousin. He was eighteen. I say “was eighteen” because I haven’t seen him since. He was over for lunch when I broke all the plates. He helped me sweep up and throw the shards away. It was Sunday and I was alone in the house, because they had, as I said, already left for Catania. I was putting the babies down for their afternoon nap. It was incredibly hot. All at once Peppino was standing in front of me. He had keys to the house but I hadn’t heard the key in the lock and he frightened me. He was a tall boy with thick black hair. He’d been interested in me since the day of the broken plates. He looks a little like Oliviero. I closed the blinds in the children’s room and we went into the kitchen. He told me he was hungry and wanted pasta. I had no desire to cook so I gave him a plate of lasagna. He said that he hated cold lasagna from the restaurant because he knew how they made it, they reused frying oil from a bottle and sauce made from leftover meat scraps on people’s plates. We started gossiping about the restaurant and that led to us talking about the curly-haired lady and her husband, his brother. After all that gossiping we ended up in their bed, because my bed was tiny. I had showed it to him but he said the other bed was much better. We’d just finished having sex and were relaxing and cuddling, half asleep
in the dim light when suddenly this curly head appeared in the doorway and then the big bald head and black glasses. Peppino pulled on his pants and undershirt right away and then grabbed for his button-down, I think he must have finished dressing in the stairwell because he rushed out of there fast, leaving me alone with those two snakes. They said I had to leave right away. I answered that I should wait for the babies to wake up from their nap but then both of them woke up and started crying. I went to pack my bag and in the meantime the curly-haired lady came in and suddenly started weeping on my shoulder and said that she understood, I was young, but her husband, he didn’t understand and couldn’t get over that I’d polluted their bed with his brother, and polluted the house, and the innocent children. The curly-haired lady had put milk for the baby in a plastic bottle. I asked her for a thermos but she didn’t want to give me one because she only had one left, she’d given me her spare one when we were in the boardinghouse. But I had lost it with all my moving around. The bottle she gave me must have been dirty because the milk went bad by nightfall and I had to throw it out. I told her I was leaving town and going to Rome but I didn’t leave, I went to a bakery that I know. It was closed but I went around to ring at the back door. The baker told me I could spend the night in her house. Just one night, no longer. Then she made up a cot for me under the stairs and I set the baby up in my plastic suitcase but he got hot in there because he was used to the crib at the curly-haired lady’s house. Later that night I tracked down Peppino, calling him at the restaurant, so he came to meet me and we went for a walk and then made love in a field near the train tracks. While we were having sex I thought to myself that I didn’t care much about this Peppino because I never really liked younger men. I can only fall in love with older men who seem full of weird secrets and despair, like the pelican. But I have fun with younger men, and feel happy, and also sorry for them because they seem foolish and lost, like me, and I feel as if I’m alone but much happier. That was how it was with Michele. We had so much fun and the time we spent together was wonderful because it didn’t have anything to do with true love but made me think of when I was little, playing ball with other children on our street. I was there with Peppino and all at once I started thinking about Michele and I wanted to cry and I thought that it would be a long time before I could feel happy again, if ever, because of all the things I know and remember. But Peppino thought I was crying because the curly-haired lady threw me out and he tried to comfort me in his own way, by pretending to be a cat, which he was very good at. But I kept weeping, thinking of Michele killed on the street and I said to myself that I was going to end up dead in the night on some street corner, nowhere near my baby, and that made me think of my baby who I’d left with the baker. I told Peppino to stop being a cat because it wasn’t making me laugh anymore and then I remembered that I’d forgotten to pack my fur coat in all the chaos and it was still hanging in the curly-haired lady’s suit bag. So the next day Peppino went to get it, using his key to sneak into the house, and then he brought it to me at the bakery. He didn’t want to go back there because he was so scared of running into them on the stairway but I begged him. Eventually he agreed and he didn’t run into anyone. I sold the fur to one of the baker’s friends for four hundred thousand lire and then used that money to get myself a room in a motel. I called Osvaldo in Rome from the motel room and he said he would figure something out for me, and when he called back he said that I could go live in Varese with his uncle, an elderly gentleman who was looking for someone to sleep in his house so that he wouldn’t be alone at night. And now here I am in a beautiful house with a garden full of hydrangea. I’m bored but happy and the baby is happy. Osvaldo’s uncle is nice enough, he’s handsome, he might be gay, he wears beautiful perfumed black velvet jackets. He doesn’t do anything. He used to sell paintings and the house is full of them. But he’s basically deaf as a post and he can’t hear the baby crying at night. I have a gorgeous room with floral tapestries, it’s nothing at all like that hole where I had to sleep in Trapani, and the most perfect thing about this place is that I don’t have to do anything, except cut hydrangea for the vases and cook two soft-boiled eggs in the evening, one for the uncle and one for me. The only problem is that I might not be able to stay here because the uncle says that Ada is going to give him her maid and if she does that then he won’t need me anymore. This Ada woman is always in my business. Otherwise I would stay here forever. I think I can tolerate boredom, though I get scared here in this lonely villa. I didn’t used to be scared of anything but now I get scared and suddenly my throat tightens. I remember Michele and start thinking that I’m going to die too and that I might die here in this beautiful villa with the red carpet on the stairs and working faucets in all the bathrooms and vases of hydrangea everywhere, even in the kitchen, and pigeons cooing on the windowsill.
Mara
40
August 8, 1971
Dear Filippo,
I saw you yesterday in Piazza Spagna. I don’t think you saw me. I was with Angelica and Flora. You were alone. Angelica said you looked older. I don’t know if you look older. Your jacket was slung over your shoulders, your forehead was wrinkled the way it does when you walk. You were going to the tea room, Babington’s.
It felt very strange to see you pass by on the street and not say hello. Though honestly, we wouldn’t have had anything to say to each other. I don’t care what’s going on with you and you certainly don’t care what’s happening to me. What’s going on with you means nothing to me because I’m unhappy. You don’t care about what’s going on with me because you are happy. Either way, you and I are strangers.
I know you went to the funeral. I wasn’t there. Viola told me you had come. I know you told her you wanted to come by and visit me. You haven’t yet. And I don’t want to see you. In general, I don’t want to see anyone except for my daughters and extended family, my sister-in-law Matilde, our friend Osvaldo Ventura. I can’t say that I feel the desire for their company but if I don’t see them for a few days, I miss them. It very well may be that if you came to see me a few times I’d get used to your visits. I don’t want to get used to a presence that can’t be depended on. That rosy maiden you married wouldn’t let you come often. I would not be content with a lone, formal visit of condolence. That would do nothing for me.
It’s also possible that in the period since we last saw each other you have become entirely stupid. I should clarify the term “rosy maiden.” I’m not bitter. If I was once bitter or jealous, I have none of those feelings anymore, they’ve been decimated by the circumstances of my life.
I think of you every so often. This morning, out of the blue, I suddenly remembered the day you and I drove to Courmayeur in your car to visit Michele who was at camp. He was maybe twelve. I remember first seeing him standing there, shirtless and barefoot, in front of his tent. It made me so happy to see him like that, healthy, tan, the sprinkle of freckles, the ones he always had and then some extra ones. He used to get so pale in the city. He didn’t go out much. His father didn’t make him. The three of us had an excursion, we went to lunch in a chalet. You were nervous around Michele like you always were. You didn’t love him. He didn’t love you. You thought he was spoiled, presumptuous, capricious. He thought you were unfriendly. He never said it but it was clear to me that’s what he thought. That day, however, everything was wonderful, peaceful, not an angry word was exchanged between the two of you. We went into a store that sold souvenirs and postcards to tourists. You bought him a green hat with a chamois tail. He was happy. He shoved it right on his head, it sat crooked on his curls. He might have been spoiled but he could also be happy with so little. He started singing in the car. It was a song his father used to sing. It used to bug me because it made me think of his father, who I wasn’t getting along with at the time. But I was so happy that day and all the bitterness seemed fluffy, sweet, airy. The song went:
Non avemo ni canones
Ni tanks ni a
viones
Ay Carmelà
You knew the song and started singing along:
El terror de los fascistas
Rumba
Larumba
Larumba
là
It may seem stupid to have written you this letter in order to thank you for singing that day with Michele and for buying him a hat with a chamois tail that he wore for another two, maybe three, years. But I also wanted to ask you a favor. Do you know all the words to the song and if you do would you transcribe them and send them to me. It probably seems weird, but a person does fixate on simple and weird urges when the truth is she desires nothing.
Adriana
41
Ada and Elisabetta left for London. Osvaldo was going to fetch them from there in early September. In the meantime there were things to do at the shop. It was the twentieth of August and Angelica was going on a road trip with Oreste, the baby, and the Bettoias. Viola was staying with Adriana. The twins were going to sleepaway camp in the Dolomites.
Angelica and Viola had driven Ada and Elisabetta to the airport in Viola’s car and were on their way back. Osvaldo was following in his Fiat.
That morning Angelica and Viola had gone to a notary with Lillino and signed the deed to sell the tower to the pelican. He didn’t show up in person but sent a proxy to the notary. He was still in Chianti. He had a variety of ailments, Osvaldo said, each one more imaginary than the next and yet each as painful. He didn’t leave his villa in Chianti anymore. Ada was running the publishing house. She managed the whole thing and didn’t take a cent. But Ada couldn’t have cared less about money, Angelica explained to Viola, who was driving and keeping her eyes on the road, steady and elegant. Despite the dreadful heat, her hair was perfumed and wet, well brushed, and very shiny. She wore a white linen dress, perfectly ironed and fresh. Angelica wore jeans and a ratty shirt. She’d spent the afternoon packing suitcases. She was leaving the next day.
Happiness, as Such Page 12
