Remembering Light and Stone

by Deirdre Madden

  ‘We’ll be together for a family Christmas here, and then Pietro and I are going to the Seychelles for ten days.’ She twiddled at the heavy jewellery on her fingers, but didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the thought of the holidays.

  I told Franca about this later that day, when she called up to see me. She was impressed with the gift, and very amused by the news about the holiday. ‘She must have caught up with him at last then. The whole of S. Giorgio knows that Pietro’s been sleeping with Silvia – you know that woman who owns the perfume shop in Via Cavour? Except for you, Fabiola must be the only person who didn’t know about it.’ Franca was always highly amused by my shortcomings as a gossip, at my slowness to pick up on the crises and scandals that were happening all around me, and my lack of slick delight when I did find out. Even though I didn’t much care for Fabiola, I wasn’t amused to hear that Pietro had cheated on her, and that most of the village was laughing at her.

  ‘I suppose he’ll be trying to make it up to her all over Christmas‚’ Franca speculated. ‘She’ll do well. Imagine going to the Seychelles for New Year. Still, if she’d been smart, she could have done even better for herself. Do you know Pietro’s brother Riccardo?’ I did. He was also in business in the area, and often called into the factory where I worked. I had done odd bits of translating for him. He was as stupid as he was rich, and he was very rich.

  ‘A few years ago,’ Franca said, ‘his wife Marisa found out that he was having an affair with his secretary. She made such a scene – packed up and went back to her mother’s house, taking their little girl with her. Riccardo worships that child. He couldn’t believe what was happening. She told him she’d divorce him, and then wouldn’t let him see her or the child, or speak to either of them, not even by phone, for over a week. He was distracted. I’ll tell you, she really made him crawl. He bought her a mink jacket, promised to take her to Paris, gave her a diamond brooch worth a mint. She eventually agreed to go back to him, but told him that if it happened again, that was it. The funny part was, she’d been having an affair with someone else while he was busy with the secretary, and she only blew the whistle on him out of spite, because her lover had ditched her and gone back to his own wife. I know that she’s had at least one other lover since then, but Riccardo’s such an idiot that he never found out. And after the last time, he got such a fright about the possibility of losing his daughter that now he hardly dares look at another woman, much less get into bed with one.’ There were few things Franca enjoyed more than such a tale as this.

  ‘Fat chance of something like that happening to me,’ she added, more in regret, seemingly, than in pride. ‘Who’d run off with Davide, with his pot-belly and his bald head and his nonsense? And even if they did, and he wanted to make up for it afterwards, where would all the money for the treats come from, eh? Who breaks their back six days a week selling pasta and cheese, anyway? Who has all the good ideas about how to run the shop better? I’d like to see Davide try to make it up to me for cheating on me by buying me a present with the money I’d earned in the first place!’

  Every year Fabiola and Pietro had a Christmas party at their house, and every year I was invited. I didn’t want to go, but I felt that this time I had to: I hadn’t been there the preceding year, and also I felt a sort of obligation, because of my working for Pietro. There was pragmatism in it too. I knew that there would be local business people there, and that perhaps a bit of freelance translating might come from it, and so I went along.

  The first problem was trying to find a suitable gift for Fabiola. That was always a difficulty and a source of resentment to me. I couldn’t afford to give her an expensive present, and Fabiola wasn’t interested in anything but the best. The idea that it was the thought that counted would have struck her as a very odd notion. The first year I was in S. Giorgio, when I didn’t know her very well and I had very little money, I gave her a standard-sized pannettone for Christmas. In the shop where I bought it, they stuck a big red bow on the box for me, and I thought it looked like a reasonable thing to give someone – well, I’d have been quite contented if someone had given it to me. When I went to Fabiola’s house, I gave her the cake as soon as I went through the door. She didn’t actually utter the words ‘Thank you,’ but whipped the box out of sight, gave a little smile, and led me into the drawing room. She made no reference to it, but there was no failing to notice the massive pannettone, at least four times the size of the one I had brought, sitting on a small table. It looked like a house altar dedicated to some male fertility god.

  There was such a difference between Fabiola and Franca in this regard. Franca still got a childish thrill even out of the smallest and most simple gift. Her imagination was still alive, while Fabiola’s had been dulled by wealth. I remember when we were growing up in Ireland, how much I used to look forward to all the special food – not just the turkey and the pudding, but the boxes of chocolates and even the fruit my father would buy for us on Christmas Eve: the grapes, and the big soft wet pears. I never wanted to lose my sense of occasion. I had a bottle of Calvados I was hoarding until Ted arrived for Christmas. I used to take it out of the cupboard and look at it, and then put it away again. It was salutary to look at people like Fabiola, Pietro and their friends, because it was as if they had rubbed the magic lantern, and been given all the riches they wished for, but they were afraid to admit, sitting in the middle of this plenty, that it had failed to make them happy.

  I did feel very sorry for Fabiola the night of the party. As soon as she opened the door to me, I could see how nervous she was. She was more heavily made up than usual, and was wearing a short skirt of black quilted satin, together with a sort of spangly blouse. I remembered the bit of gossip Franca had told me, and I realized why Fabiola looked so fraught. She must have been aware that the situation between herself and Pietro was by now a topic of speculation and gossip all over town. Fabiola’s happiness came not from her wealth and beauty, but from the admiration and envy her wealth and beauty evoked in other people. In the same way, she wasn’t unhappy now because Pietro had gone off with another woman, but because she knew that people were talking and laughing about it. There was no one she could trust, not even these ‘friends’ whom she had invited to her home, and who now arrived with gifts of champagne, and were so sweetly greeted, so fondly kissed, and so deeply feared.

  Pietro took my coat in the hall. He also looked tense and miserable, as he had done all week at work. Fabiola kept calling him ‘Darling’ – ‘Give Aisling a drink, Darling,’ ‘Darling, will you introduce Aisling to everybody.’ At the start of the evening it sounded merely phoney to me, but by the end of the night her tone had changed, to one of deep sarcasm.

  It wasn’t a very big party – five couples and me. The only guest I recognized was Pietro’s brother Riccardo, who introduced me to his wife, Marisa. She looked me over from head to toe with one brief, cold glance, and she obviously didn’t think much of what she saw. They were sitting beside a couple who told me they lived in Bologna. Pietro said that I was from Ireland, and the usual question followed: Is there still fighting in Ireland? I said that there was, but not as much as in Sicily and Calabria. I also explained that the violence was only in a small part of Ireland, and not in the area where I came from.

  ‘And can you tell me please,’ said the man from Bologna, ‘who is fighting in Ireland? Is it English fighting Irish or Catholics fighting Protestants?’

  People always ask me this and I hate it when they do, because there’s no simple answer, and they’re not interested in a complicated one, in fact they’re usually not interested in the answer at all. I could see how pleased the man was that he had been able to ask such an informed and incisive question. He didn’t really care who was killing whom or why. People ask you about Ireland who you know would be hard pressed to pick it out on a map, who could easily confuse it with Spitzbergen. Not long after I came to Italy Franca remarked to me one day, ‘I suppose you’re a very good skier.’ I couldn
’t for the life of me understand what put that idea in her head. I must admit that there have been times when I’ve been asked about the situation in Ireland and just to avoid the long tedious explanations that might follow I’ve spiked their conversational guns by opening my eyes wide and saying, ‘Fighting? In Ireland? Why not at all, there’s no trouble in Ireland.’ I knew anyway that for the rest of the night they would forget about Ireland and my being from it, and would ask me, ‘And do you have this sort of food in England?’ ‘And do you have this particular custom in England at Christmas?’

  Over dinner, everybody was keen to try out their old broken fragments of school English, asking me if what they said was correct, asking me for the English words for all the things on the table: the cloth, the knives, the plates. Fabiola, who prided herself on her inability to cook, had brought in the caterers. Usually meals in the house were made by a housekeeper, who came every day to cook and bake and clean, while Fabiola was still asleep in bed, or out shopping, or down in the factory, sitting in Pietro’s office complaining to him. Before I left the house, Franca had said, ‘You’ll either get oysters or bruschetta,’ that is, either a very sophisticated menu, or simple peasant fare. Fabiola had opted for the latter, which had become very fashionable. The grander the dinner, the more likely you were to find polenta and sausage on your fine bone-china plate. All Fabiola’s guests rose to the occasion, and cooed with delight, as though they were sated with caviare, and it was a rare treat for them to eat such ordinary food.

  Fabiola didn’t eat anything at all. She served herself tiny portions and then pushed them around her plate with a fork. She had once told me about being at a dinner, and at the end of the night, one of the men in the group had said to her, ‘How do you do it, Fabiola? At the end of an evening when everyone else looks tired, you look just as stunningly beautiful as you did when you arrived.’ ‘And I’ll tell you what the secret is, Aisling,’ she had said to me proudly. ‘When I go out to dinner, I never, ever eat. It ruins your make-up, especially your lipstick. I pretend to, of course, but I never eat a single thing.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t ask this while we’re eating,’ Riccardo said, ‘but did anyone see the programme on television the other night about people who eat insects?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the woman from Bologna delightedly. ‘Wasn’t it horrible!’

  ‘It was all about these people, I don’t remember where, Africa or Australia or somewhere, and they eat insects. All sorts, even grubs and things like that, I could hardly believe it.’ Marisa stared at her husband with contempt. She was the only one who took no part in the ensuing animated conversation. Maybe it’s because I’m not married and have no desire ever to be so that I have a morbid fascination with married couples. I look at them and I wonder what brought them together, what keeps them together. I suppose it’s a bit like the way people who’ve never had any contact with Catholicism look at nuns and wonder how they live the life they do. One thing I always notice with married people is how much they need other married couples to bolster them up, to reinforce their way of life. They seem to depend on that, and to see people who aren’t married as a sort of a threat, so they pretend to pity them. The man from Bologna was talking about his wife as if she weren’t there. The topic of conversation had moved on to children.

  ‘My wife wants a baby,’ he said loudly. ‘I keep telling her it’s too much trouble. We were able to come here tonight, and we’ll be going ski-ing early in the New Year. Do you think we could do all that if we had a baby? Children are far too much trouble, they take up too much of your time and energy. Still, never let it be said that I’ve denied my wife anything. We’ve been trying for a year now, seems like maybe she can’t have them. I think it’s just as well, but I suppose we’ll keep trying for a while longer.’ He didn’t seem to see that his wife was folding and unfolding her napkin in an obsessive way, nor that her head was bent lower and lower as he went on talking. What I found even more surprising was that no one else seemed to think that there was anything unusual in what the man said. His wife suddenly lifted her head, and looked at him with pure hatred. No one noticed that either.

  ‘I think you’re quite right,’ said another woman. ‘It spoils your figure when you have children, and you wouldn’t believe how much time they take up, and how they change things in your life. Do you know, I have a friend who has three children. Three little children! How they manage I simply don’t know.’

  I was struck that night by the sheer indestructibility of the bourgeois. For a moment I saw the whole scene as it would have been a hundred years ago, saw us all sitting there in frock-coats and long stiff dresses, and it didn’t seem at all incongruous – myself there as the foreigner, the governess, the poor relation; the same snobbery, the same ugly, expensive possessions and stupid fashions, the same seeming manners thinly masking vulgarity and mental crudeness. I thought it was extraordinary how easily it could have been the distant past. It was as if down here in the provinces they didn’t know that there had been two world wars, that things were different now. They were like a lost tribe, and I felt that they would have been devastated if they moved beyond the little confines of their world, would have found it impossible to cope if they had not been bolstered up by each other, and by their money.

  It was a joyless evening. Fabiola was palpably unhappy. When the meal was over and we had moved away from the table, she came over and sat down beside me. I said the dinner had been very good, and she smiled briefly and shrugged. She asked me again what I was doing for Christmas and New Year, and as I told her, I could see that she wasn’t listening. Her eyes wandered uneasily over the room, as if she couldn’t understand what all these people were doing in her house, or who they were. The couple from Bologna had ended up sitting beside each other on a yellow sofa. He was dragging on a cigarette, and they barely spoke to each other. When she did say anything, he lifted his head impatiently, and answered her shortly.

  When I came home from the party, I went into the bathroom, and I saw someone there I didn’t recognize. Then I realized that it was me, reflected in the mirror. I went back into the sitting room and kicked off my shoes. Then I started to cry, because it had been such a miserable evening that to come home from it and weep seemed inevitable. I was quite certain that at that very moment the woman from Bologna was also in tears, and that Fabiola was standing in her fitted kitchen, surrounded by the wreckage of dinner and bawling like a child. To know this was little consolation to me. I had compromised myself by going there. I had pretended to like those people and to be nice to them for my own ends, when I really had nothing but contempt for them. What had I expected? It served me right that I was crying now.

  I went to bed hoping that I would feel better the next morning, but I slept badly, dreamt wildly, and woke up feeling worse than I had done in a long time. I went to Adolfo’s for breakfast, but that didn’t help me either, for once, it made it worse. There was a woman in front of me with a little boy. He was about three years old, and he wanted a sandwich.

  ‘Tomato and cheese? What about one with tomato and cheese?’ said the child’s mother, while Adolfo rummaged through the pile of sandwiches with a pair of tongs to find a suitable one. Having done so, he offered it to the child, but the little boy jerked his head away, and did not take the sandwich. He wailed loudly and horribly, and then hit the glass front of the counter with the flat of his hand. ‘I don’t think he wants tomato and cheese,’ said Adolfo, calmly replacing the sandwich. ‘What about ham and cheese, then?’ said the mother to the little boy, and Adolfo started to rummage again. I felt my temper move slowly towards boiling point. It was all I could do not to grab the little boy and shake him till his teeth rattled, all I could do not to scream to the mother, ‘He’s only three, for Christ’s sake! There are kids starving in the world, give him any sort of God-forsaken sandwich, and let him learn to be grateful for what he has. If he’s as spoiled as this now, what’ll he be like when he grows up?’

  And then I thought
: He’ll probably be like Adolfo, whose second sandwich had been accepted, Adolfo who was smiling beatifically and reaching up to get a fancy chocolate out of a jar to give to the little boy. He wouldn’t be like me, now sullenly mumbling my order for coffee and cake. While I was drinking my cappuccino, I remembered what my grandmother always used to say: ‘Other people’s children are easy reared.’ I could never make up my mind. I hated the way I had been brought up, and I knew it had done me terrible harm. Yet when I saw the Italian children being spoiled and cosseted, I used to think instinctively that they needed a taste of stronger medicine, that a clip on the ear would do them a power of good. Then I would remember what that had done to me, and I’d be confused. I suppose the best course was somewhere between the two, and I was glad that I didn’t have kids, and didn’t have to try to find that right balance.

  I had tried to send particularly appealing presents to Jimmy’s kids that year. Usually I just sent them sweets, but this time I had wanted to give them something more. I had been amazed at how difficult this had turned out to be. At first I thought I would send them something to wear, and then I realized that I didn’t know their sizes, and I didn’t want to risk sending things that wouldn’t fit. I also remembered that I had hated getting clothes as a present when I was small. When I was Sinead’s age, I had wanted a child-sized umbrella, but of course that didn’t mean that she would want one, and in any case, it would be too awkward a shape to wrap and post. I ended up sending Michael a teddy bear, and Sinead a doll with a china face. It had taken me a whole evening to wrap and pack the doll in such a way that I felt sure it would arrive in Dublin still in one piece. The toys cost me a bomb, but it was my last resort. I had no other ideas, and if I waited any longer, they would never arrive in time for Christmas.