by Anna Banti
“Yes, you told me.”
“He lives in Urbino.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know what goes on in the head of a farmer who has no political conscience.”
“Your father is your father. You have to love him.”
“Don’t be an idiot. My father is a poor farmer and should be for the revolution. Instead he is a conservative – more conservative than the men he works for. Do you understand? He is a stupid egotist who doesn’t think of anything but money.”
“But he is your father.”
“Who cares!”
“A father is a father. And that’s that.”
“Fathers and mothers are our sickness. We must destroy them.”
“What happened?”
“My father found out I live with you and wants to lock me up in an insane asylum.”
“Why?”
“Rather than consider me ‘abnormal’ as he says, he prefers to pass me off as crazy.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Yes, he came this morning while you were gone.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that he is ashamed of me. That in his town they say I’m abnormal, and he explained that I was crazy instead. And that he’ll have me shut up in an asylum.”
“But how?”
“He has a policeman friend who can help him.”
“But you aren’t crazy. Who would believe it?”
“My father is stubborn.”
We didn’t talk about it any more. Her father didn’t come back to our house and after three months I thought there was no more danger.
One morning I go out to work as usual. I close myself up in the cubical. I have a series of bills to check and work all morning with the calculator. It is Saturday. At a quarter to twelve I see the workers lined up at the window of the cashier to get their pay. I wait to see the mongoloid girl, but she isn’t there. Her envelope is collected by a blond girl who says she is her cousin.
At twelve I close the drawers, cover the machine with a black cloth and go home. The bus is so full that I can’t get off at my stop; bodies form a wall in front of the door and before I can reach it the conductor has driven off again. And so I have to go a way on foot and when I get there it is already one o’clock.
No one is home. I think that Maria has gone to buy something. I wait until two-thirty, the time when I have to go back to the office. But Maria doesn’t return.
I run to the office. I work until seven and then go home. No Maria.
Two days later I learn she has been taken to the insane asylum. I go to find her. She is more pale and worried than usual.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll get out soon. Everyone knows I’m sane.”
“When will you get out?”
“Soon. But what makes me mad isn’t the doctors.”
“What, then?”
“The patients.”
“Why?”
“They are allowed to do just what they want. They don’t protest, they don’t argue, they don’t organize. They’re like you, tied to things. They live for soup, for meat, for television.”
“They are sick.”
“No. They are objects.”
“They are sick.”
“They have relinquished judgment, like you.”
“When will you get out?”
“Soon.”
But I can’t talk to her long. The nurse comes to lock the door. Only at that moment do I realize that there is a very strong odor in that room, a wild odor, and I choke with disgust.
A week later I return to visit her. They tell me she has gone away. I’m happy and get ready to go back home when a fat blond girl comes up to tell me that Maria has killed herself.
Immediately after she bursts into a gloomy, stupid laugh. I don’t know whether to believe her or not. Then, when the sister takes her by the wrist and drags her away screaming, I know that it’s true.
Translated by Martha King
* * *
The Kiss in the Sea
by
Milena Milani
On Sunday we went to the Excelsior.
We went there late, it was past one o’clock, and it was extremely hot. I was nervous because my dress was sticking to me. Tommaso couldn’t take his jacket off because in the back, high up, he had a burn in his pants. He’d leaned up against a table and come in contact with a lighted cigarette set the wrong way round in an ashtray. Now his pants had a small round hole in them and the light blue of his underwear showed through.
I had teased him: “You’re in blue like a suckling babe,” I had said to him, laughing.
But Tommaso’s face darkened, his eyes were impenetrable. He didn’t give me the satisfaction of an answer. On the motorboat that was taking us to the sea and afterwards on the tram, he was silent. I had watched Venice receding, vanishing in a light haze, and as always, the sight of her tugged at my heart.
I pretended to be cheerful.
The passing days upset me. I continually masked my emotion with gestures and words but inside me there was a strange uneasiness. I identified with the city, like her I was full of mystery while appearing transparent.
When we reached the beach, the silence between us got heavy. Tommaso undressed hurriedly, before me, and when I came out of the cabana, I didn’t see him. He had already gone toward the shore.
It was the first Sunday of summer, and the very first Sunday at the beach. We never know what we’ll be doing because we don’t plan anything, not work, nor vacations. We live from day to day. Our companions are the provisional, the unforeseen. It could be that this is the cause of my discomfort. But Tommaso isn’t even aware of it, because I have never talked about it to him.
I didn’t say anything that Sunday, either. The sand was scorching hot, the water was tepid.
We took a platform boat to go off shore in search of some cool air. I was rowing and Tommaso was stretched out in front of me with his arms spread-eagle. Being blond, his skin was very fair since we hadn’t been to the beach at all yet this year. His hair wasn’t bleached out like other years. I wasn’t tanned either but was thinking that outside on a day like today we would certainly turn dark.
So I said to Tommaso: “We’ll get tanned today,” but he curtly replied that it was no longer fashionable.
I rowed very slowly, following an imaginary line perpendicular to the beach, but more often I pulled harder with my right and the boat went crooked. Farther out some people were trying to water-ski and taking great falls, then a girl in a red bathing suit took off and triumphantly succeeded, going at a mad pace behind the motorboat. I didn’t envy them at all and continued rowing slowly and rather distractedly. My eyes kept falling often upon Tommaso, so relaxed, or upon the beach cabanas and the dike in the background.
It was wonderful that it was Sunday and that Tommaso had so many hours to spend with me, though he really wasn’t with me because he said not one word, nor did he look at me, nor smile. He stayed stretched out without making any movement. I got bored and told him I was fed up: “You come row now,” I added. “I don’t feel like it anymore.”
But he didn’t get up and didn’t even answer, so I kept heading out to sea. As we went, his wife came to mind and I thought about his children. In fury I said to myself that I would leave him. After all, the world is full of men. Tommaso already had his life all organized, that’s why he was always so vague and imprecise with me. You could count the days we spent together on the fingers of one hand.
Finally I stopped, let the oars drop and quickly lay down, trying not to think anymore. At that point the boat sank lower in the water and Tommaso sat up, enraged because his back had got wet.
“Well, la-di-dah!” I said. “We’re at the beach, aren’t we? How could I know that the boat was already full of water?”
“You’re the heavy one,” he answered unkindly. “You must weigh a ton.”
“And you must weigh two,” I answered back. “You are truly obes
e.”
It wasn’t true at all. Tommaso is not fat, and I don’t weigh a ton. We were saying that just to hurt each other. In fact, this time Tommaso was wounded and immediately became nicer.
“Do you really mean it?” he asked.
Since I was smiling ironically, he kept on: “Maybe I really am fat? I weighed myself a few days ago and I thought I’d lost.”
“Oh, no,” I replied. “You haven’t lost weight at all. Look.” I pointed to the folds on his stomach. Then, wickedly, I kept on: “You eat too much at home. Who knows what food they prepare for you.”
He didn’t get the insinuation. Instead he replied: “You are in the same shape I’m in. Inevitably, since all we do is sit.”
So I took a deep breath and tightened my stomach muscles. My abdomen went flat. I held it for a few seconds then relaxed. Right afterwards I went for a dip, swimming slowly around the boat, enjoying the coolness of the water on my skin. Off shore, the water wasn’t hot like it was near the beach and it really cooled you off. It was limpid and a pale green color.
“Come in for a swim,” I exclaimed. “It’s wonderful.”
“I don’t feel like it,” said Tommaso, but he turned around to watch me swim.
I was now thinking about the mess we’d gotten ourselves into. He’s in a double bind, to his family and to me. Any decisions were far off in the future so we both avoided broaching the subject. I looked at the sky for a moment and hoped that help might come to me from those high regions.
Everything was still – the air, the heat, life itself and even time passing. So I took a mouthful of water and moved up to the boat. I squirted the water on Tommaso and he was extremely annoyed, yelling at me to cut out the pranks. I’d become rather light-hearted by now and had no intention of stopping. I squirted him again and he was forced to dive in.
Wisely I’d taken my distance, fearing his re-action and that game he likes where he puts a hand on my head and pushes me under to drink salt water. When I come up all dazed, he pushes me under again and again, until I can’t take anymore and I promise not to play any more tricks on him. But this time Tommaso doesn’t come after me in the water nor does he try to punish me. Turning on his side, he heads out with a kind of old-fashioned stroke.
His escape stirred my affection for him. I thought how he was a man and I still a girl. There were years of difference between us. Could Tommaso leave everything in order to be with me? And did I have the right to ask him to do that? Or was I to wait until he made the decision on his own? I abandoned those thoughts and hollered: “Hey, Tommaso! Don’t go too far out. It’s dangerous.”
He didn’t reply, nor did he look back, so I tried to swim out to him. In that instant I felt like his slave. But when I finally got close, I grabbed one of his feet and squeezed hard. Tommaso gave a scream of rage and I laughed till water filled my mouth.
“Listen, Tommaso,” I said in a conciliatory tone. “Today is Sunday and we’re at the beach. Let’s not fight over these dumb things.”
“Dumb things? You hurt my foot!”
“I hurt you on purpose because you were going away and didn’t answer when I called you.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“There, you see, you’re the same old liar. How could you not hear if I was shouting?” And I was thinking of the lies men tell, the daily falsehoods of us all, men and women, involved in love affairs.
“What were you shouting?” he asked, fully obedient to the pre-established ritual.
“I was shouting that it was dangerous, because I was afraid,” I answered in my role as victim and, so saying, I moved closer to him. I put my arms around his neck, consigned myself to my sweet executioner.
“You’ll sink me,” objected Tommaso. “Do you want me to drown?”
“Certainly not,” I said and put my salty mouth to his. Tommaso didn’t move so I kissed him again.
Translated by Barbara Dow Nucci
* * *
My Mother Wore Pink
by
Milena Milani
My mother, dressed in pink, was sitting close to me in the water-taxi. Out of the corner of my eye, so as not to upset her, I watched her. I observed her profile, her white-gloved hands resting on her knees. Her delicate skin, typical of blondes, had acquired a uniform gold tone, a few freckles sprinkled here and there which added to her prettiness.
Her face, under the brim of the rough straw hat, stayed turned to one side. Even without wanting to, I was guessing the thoughts that passed through her mind.
People got on and off at the various stops, and the boat headed for the open sea, gradually speeding up. From the open door came the wind and even the smell of the sea.
My mother was quiet and, turning her profile toward me slightly, she sometimes hinted at a smile, her lip turning up in a wrinkle to the left. Then she quickly regained her outward appearance of impassivity.
I was taken up with my usual nervousness, which manifests itself first in something precise and perceptible, right down in my throat or in my stomach. It’s a kind of secret gnawing, which I can do nothing about. I almost cannot think since my brain goes fossilized on one position.
This time the position was my mother, her body next to mine.
She wasn’t aware of my distress, if distress in me is ever visible (many times I’ve been told that I hide my thoughts very well). She was almost provoking me with her very impassivity. I’d even say she was irritating me.
She was completely in the dark about what I was feeling. She wasn’t trying at all to understand. Quite the opposite, she was almost completely absorbed in obstinately watching the glass door nearby. I knew very well that by now her eyes had so observed it that every last detail of it had been assimilated. That door didn’t interest me one bit.
All the same, in solidarity, I began to look at it and I noticed that it was made of light wood, almost yellow, recently polished. The glass panes were punctuated with black spots here and there.
“They haven’t washed them,” I was forced to say and I said these words clearly enough that my mother answered: “It’s the flies.”
“In this season?” I continued.
“I guess there are some around here,” replied my mother. In truth she wasn’t very convinced because we have lived around here for a long time.
I didn’t say anything else nor did my mother.
Our trip seemed to reabsorb the attention of us both, but I don’t remember now exactly what we looked at. The water was violently thrust aside by the bow and a little of it fell on us through the open window. Just a few drops and they wet my dress. Not even my nervous gesture disturbed my mother. She only said, without getting upset: “It was just a little water.”
Right afterwards, though, her mouth contracted and her hands in their white gloves moved about, cutting the air.
“May I ask why you are moving about so?” I asked. But she didn’t give me any answer and this time her hands went back to her knees and stayed there forsakenly.
I began to stare at them and I deliberately said to myself: “Move you hands, I order you to move your hands.” Issuing a command like that gave me a strange pleasure.
I worked this form of will in vain, however. After looking at me with sadness in her eyes, almost as if she understood what I was saying, she remained motionless, and I became sorrowful with her.
Translated by Barbara Dow Nucci
* * *
Ice Cream
by
Milena Milani
There were days when I would buy myself a half-pint of ice cream and I couldn’t wait to get home so I could eat it. I would always choose strawberry and lemon, deceiving myself that they weren’t fattening since it was fruit. The flavors I liked very much – cream, cocoa, vanilla – I deliberately passed up after looking at them one last time and reading the ingredients, the warnings and all the rest on the packaging.
When I fished greedily around in the big freezer compartments where the containers of ice cream we
re (there were many different brands and even pint-size cartons), the frost, which formed around them in tiny white slivers and often contracted into whimsical ornaments, became a bizarre fire which shot up to my heart. Absurdly I flamed up like an adolescent and furtively looked around me to see if anyone had noticed.
People were passing by and lingering in the vast supermarket. There were many foreigners, mostly Germans, elderly women with short white socks in plastic sandals, skirts gathered at the waist, stiff hair. I hated those tourists, they made me furious. They were strong with evident muscles, large hands. The men wore colored and patterned Bermuda shorts, jerseys over chests whose pectorals were like those of horses or draught mules who had reached the Dolomites.
I was, in fact, in the mountains, and they invaded the valley, all over the place with those guttural voices which sometimes drove me crazy with rage. I would have thrown them into their cars and forced them to leave quickly. But then I read the newspapers and watched TV and I said to myself that one must tolerate them.
The balance of payments needed their currency, those bank notes, those coins. I, too, dealt in currency. I paid money to buy that ice cream, not a great sum, mind you. For one thousand eight hundred lire I took home those two hundred and fifty grams of afternoon ardor.
I went out around six pm on certain dark days when the desire for the carton (that round box of cardboard with its cover that I removed hurriedly, licking the inside of it so as to not leave one bit of that burning cold) made me absurdly nervous and restless. I moved fast along the street, almost running and without looking at anyone. From the house to the supermarket I went through Concordia Park, taking a private road with a sign that said “No Trespassing” but that no one obeyed.
As I left my condominium, my eyes rested for a moment, almost against my will, on a large green meadow there to the left, at the bottom of which there were many trees. Here and there, in the shade or sun, were lawn chairs, cots with foam rubber mattresses, slides for children, and swings. I could glimpse semi-nude bodies, I could hear laughter and voices, but it was as if in a dream, because I was propelled by a strange anxiety. I felt even sick, I was losing my breath. I wanted the ice cream, as I would have wanted a man, to devour. Afterwards my mouth was left bitter, with a taste of ashes.
