"Ah yes," Gisella said when the door closed again, "we were girls who worked, in those days... Other times. My aunt knew how to give orders ..."
She looked at Lina with a faint smile of pleasure. It was plain that she had chosen the role of a mother who kills herself with work to keep her daughters from soiling their hands. She wouldn't even let Lina make the coffee. She ran upstairs herself to put it on. I exchanged a word or two with the daughter—she looked at me complacently—I asked about her sister. A woman came in, ringing the bell, and Gisella shouted down the stairs: "Coming."
I had said positively that I was just passing through Turin and leaving the next day: I didn't want obligations. But Gisella didn't insist; she brought the talk back to the old lady, made me talk about her in front of her daughter: about how the old lady ruled the roost and even gave advice to other people's daughters. That's how it always turns out. With the excuse of raising her, of giving her a house and a husband, the old lady had made Gisella into her own image—and now she, Gisella, was working on her daughters. I wondered if my mother had been like that, whether it is possible to live with someone, order her around, and not leave a mark on her. I had escaped from my mother in time. Or had I? Mother had always grumbled that a man, a husband, was a poor thing, that men are not so much bad as fools—and, as you see, I had pretty well accepted her preaching. Even my great ambition, my passion to be free and self-sufficient, didn't it come from her?
Before I left, Lina began to chatter about some friend of hers at school and found the opportunity to speak badly of her, to wonder where her family found the means to send her to school. I tried to remember myself at this age, what I would have said in a case like this. But I hadn't gone to school. I hadn't drunk coffee with my mother. I was sure that Lina would talk about me behind my back to her mother just as she had talked to me about her school friend.
11
Only the hours I spent at Via Po didn't seem wasted. I had to run around looking for this and that and met various people at the hotel. By Ash Wednesday, the masons and whitewashers were finished; the most difficult work remained, the furnishings. I was on the point of taking the train and going down to discuss everything again; you can't make yourself understood on the telephone to Rome. They said: "We trust each other—do what you like," and the day after, they telegraphed me to expect a letter. The architect designing the interiors came to dinner with me at the hotel: he had come back from Rome with a portfolio full of sketches. But he was young and liked to stall around; to avoid making decisions, he would agree to anything I said; from the look of things, all our nice Rome ideas had collapsed. You had to take account of the light under the porticoes and consider the other shops in Piazza Castello and Via Po. I began to agree with Morelli: the location was impossible. It was the kind of district you no longer find in Rome, or perhaps only outside the gates. People walked in the Via Po only on Sundays.
This architect was red, stubborn, and hairy, just a boy; he was always talking about villas in the mountains; as a joke he sketched me the plan of a little glass house for winter sunbathing. He said that he lived like me, out of a suitcase, but differently from me in that I could wear whatever I made or liked, whereas only those pigs who had money—nearly always stolen—could live in his villas. I got him talking about the Turin painters, about Loris. He got excited, steamed up, said that he preferred the whitewashers. "A housepainter knows color," he said. "If he studied, a housepainter could paint frescoes or make mosaics any day. No one can understand decoration unless he begins by painting walls. As for these artists, for whom do they paint and what do they paint? They can't spread themselves. What they do serves no purpose. Would you make a dress that isn't to wear but to keep under glass?"
I told him they didn't just make pictures or statues but had also talked about putting on a play. I told him some of the names. "Oh, great!" he interrupted sarcastically. "Great. What would you say if that bunch put on a fashion show and invited Clelia Oitana to see it?"
Then we went on in this vein and concluded that only we window dressers, architects, and dressmakers were true artists. He ended, as I expected he would, by inviting me to go to the mountains to see an alpine retreat that he had planned. I asked if he didn't have something a bit more comfortable to propose. Even a building in Turin. He gave me a one-eyed look, laughing.
"My studio ..." he said.
I was sick of studios and talking. I almost preferred Becuccio and his leather bracelet. This other man was called Febo—he had signed all his drawings this way. I laughed in his face, with his own cockiness, and sent him to bed like an overly clever boy.
But Febo was red, stubborn, and hairy and must have decided that I would do for him. He managed to discover exactly how I stood with Mariella, Nene, Momina, with Morelli and his cognac, my visit to Loris's studio. The next day he came to tell me he wanted to take me to a gallery show. I asked if it wouldn't be better to decide on those curtains. He said that the show was the right atmosphere,- you had a drink, you studied the furnishings of the place,- it was a question of taste. We went, and even on the stairs I could hear Nene's laugh.
The rooms were a blend of Swiss chalet and twentieth-century bar. Girls in checked aprons served us. Inasmuch as the chairs and crockery were also part of the show, one was a bit uneasy and felt on show oneself. Febo wouldn't say if he had had a hand in it himself. There were paintings and small statues on the wall; I passed them up and looked at Nene instead, who, in her usual rags, laughed continuously, sprawled across a chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, while a waiter lighted her cigarette from behind. Momina was there, with other women and girls. A little old man in a Chinese beard had settled in front of Nene and was sketching her portrait. A few people crowded to the door for a peek—the public viewing the artists.
But Nene soon noticed me and came over to ask if I had seen her work. She was happy, excited, she blew smoke in my face. Her thick lips and bangs really made her a child. She brought me to her statues—little deformed nudes that seemed shaped out of mud. I looked at them, bending my head from side to side, and thought— but didn't say—that Nene's womb might very well produce children like those. She looked at me avidly and open-mouthed, as if I were a handsome young man; I waited for someone to speak, bent my head to the other side. Febo came up from behind and said, catching us both by the waist: "Here we're either in heaven or in hell. It takes a girl like you, Nene, to reveal such terrors ..."
A discussion sprang up in which Momina also took part. I paid no attention. I'm used to painters. I was watching Nene's face as she frowned or started at whatever was said, as if everything hung on someone else's opinion. Had she really lost her boldness, or was this another of her roles? Feho was the least believable of all. Only the other day he had said dirt of Nene and her things.
They talked good-naturedly about her and she played the bewildered child. Her insistence on showing me her things had bothered me. Couldn't she have let me see them by myself? But Nene was keeping up her reputation as a mannerless and impulsive girl. Perhaps she was right. Mariella's the only one absent, I thought. What would Becuccio say of these crazy women?
The idea of Becuccio started me laughing. Febo turned around genially, came closer, and whispered against my cheek: "You are a treasure, Clelia. You would make better children, I dare say."
"I thought you were speaking seriously before," I answered. "The most sincere one here is still Nene ..."
"This gutsy art has given me an appetite," he whispered. "How about some sausage?"
Drinking grappa and eating sausage, he talked about the mountains again. Even the old painter with the beard was a competent climber. They were arranging a trip to some hut, assigning jobs, telephoning all over the place.
"You people go," Momina said. "I'm not going to the hut. Clelia and I will stop on the way... Have you ever been to Montalto?"
12
The Topolino stopped at a villa at the foot of the mountains. The two of us were alone. The othe
r cars went on, they would wait for us at Saint Vincent. A few days of good weather had been enough to bring out the bloom in the hothouse flowers, but the trees in the garden were still bare. I hardly had time to look around when Momina cried: "Here we are."
Rosetta wasn't wearing her blue dress this time. She came to meet us in a skirt and tennis shoes, her hair bound with a ribbon as if we were at the seaside. She gave me a strong handshake, another to Momina, but didn't smile: she had gray, searching eyes.
Her mother came out also, in slippers, fat and asthmatic, wearing a velvet dress. "Rosetta," Momina cried, "you can come back now. The parties are over in Turin..."
Momina told her about friends, our outing, and who was going. I was surprised that Rosetta should accept her lightheadedness and answer in the same spirit; I wondered if I really had seen her on that stretcher—how many days ago? Fifteen, twenty? But perhaps Momina chattered that way to help her, to relieve her and us of embarrassment. They must have been close friends.
It was her mother, poor thing, who had tearful, frightened eyes, who was upset with Momina and looked at me apprehensively. She was so much the little lady that she complained of the hardship of living in the country, of staying at the villa out of season. But Rosetta and Momina didn't encourage her. It ended with Momina laughing at her. "That wicked father," Momina exclaimed, "imprisoning the two of you like this. You've got to escape, Rosetta. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Rosetta said quietly.
Her mother was afraid it wasn't a good idea. "You don't have skis, you don't have anything," she said. "Father doesn't know..."
"Who's talking about skiing?" Momina said. "Let those idiots ski if they like. We're going to Saint Vincent. Clelia hasn't come to ski..."
But first the mother wanted to give us tea, prepare the thermos, equip us. Not to waste time, Rosetta had already run off to dress.
We stayed with the mother. Momina murmured: "How is she?"
The mother turned around, her hand on her cheek. I could see her again in her furs, running down that corridor. "Please," she said, "don't let anything happen..."
"You've got to come back," Momina cut in. "You shouldn't hide like this. Her friends at Turin are beginning to talk..."
We reached Saint Vincent, keeping always to the mountains. Here, too, there was sun on the snow, and not many plants. I was amazed at all the cars in the Casino parking lot.
"You've never been here?" Rosetta leaned forward to ask me. She had wanted to sit in the back, in her fur jacket, and during the drive she and Momina had talked without looking at each other.
"It's nice," I said. "Three hours by car."
"Do you gamble?"
"I don't believe in luck."
"What else is there in life?" Momina said, slowing down. "People dream about having a car to come here to win enough for a car so they can come back... That's the world."
She was very positive, but also, I thought, mocking. In any case, neither of them laughed. We got out.
Luckily our friends had been scattered around the game rooms for some time and we three could sit alone at the bar. It was jammed and like a hothouse. Rosetta took an orangeade and sipped it quietly, watching us. Her gray, sunken eyes laughed very little. She seemed a quiet outdoor girl in her yellow sweater and slacks rolled up at the bottom. She asked who was with us beside Pegi and the girls.
The conversation turned to her friends, to the latest doings in Turin. Momina said at one point that the play was in deep trouble (she was smoking, eyes half closed in the smoke).
"Why?" Rosetta asked coldly.
"They don't want to embarrass you..." Momina said. "You know the play ends unhappily..."
"Nonsense," Rosetta cut in. "What does that matter?"
"Do you know who's in favor of the original version?" the other said. "Mariella. Mariella wants to give it and doesn't see any allusion in it. She says it doesn't matter to you..."
Rosetta glanced at me quickly. Getting up, I said: "Excuse me. I'm going to the ladies' room."
They both looked at me, Momina with amusement.
I had a feeling that I had said something one doesn't say. While I walked the corridors to calm down, I kept thinking: you stupid oaf. This is how you betray yourself. I imagine I was blushing.
I stopped in front of a mirror and noticed Febo coming out of one of the game rooms. I didn't turn until he had gone back.
When I returned, I said: "Excuse me." And Rosetta, with those steady eyes: "But you can stay. You don't bother us at all. I'm not ashamed of what I did."
Momina said: "You saw Rosetta that night. Tell us how she was. The waiters hadn't undressed her, I hope..."
Rosetta had a pained expression, as if trying to laugh. She even blushed. She realized it and her eyes hardened, looking intently at me.
I said something or other, that her mother and the doctor were standing around.
"No, no. I mean how Rosetta was," Momina said, not giving up. "The effect she made on a stranger. You were a stranger then. If she looked ugly, distorted, like someone else. The way one is, near death. After all, that's what she wanted."
They must have known each other very well to talk like that. Rosetta looked at me out of her deep eyes, attentive. I said that I'd only been there an instant but that her face seemed swollen, she was dressed in blue and didn't have shoes on. Of that I was certain. Everything was so in order and so little disturbed, I said, that I had looked under the stretcher to see if there was blood. It looked like an accident, an ordinary accident. After all, a person unconscious is very like a person asleep.
Rosetta breathed heavily, not attempting to smile. Momina said: "When did you take the pills?"
But Rosetta didn't answer. She shrugged her shoulders, looked around, and then asked in a low voice: "Did you really believe I had shot myself?"
"If you really wanted to do it," Momina said, "shooting would have been better. It worked out badly."
Rosetta gave me a deep look, intimidated—at that moment she seemed to be someone else—and she whispered: "Afterwards you feel worse than before. That's what's frightening."
13
There was no more time to talk about it. The girls saw us and came over, and common acquaintances, even some from my hotel, showed up. Now that they knew we were here, Febo, Nene, and that fellow Pegi shuttled between the game rooms, where they carelessly played and lost, and the bar, where they downed one drink after another. It ended with Nene and the boy Pegi, half drunk, squabbling so much that the old painter and Momina intervened because the rest of us were leaving. "We're coming, too," Momina said.
Meanwhile I wandered through the rooms, but the people packed around the tables got on my nerves, and there were big landscapes and nudes on the walls, almost as if to say that the aim of all the gamblers was to live well and keep nude women in furs. What makes you boil is that you have to admit that everything really does come down to this and the gamblers are right. They are all of them right, even those who live by it, even the impoverished old ladies whose avid eyes seem to cash in the other gamblers' winning chips. At least everybody is on a level, gambling—wellborn or low-born, whores, pickpockets, fools or geniuses, they're all after the same thing.
The moment came when Nene, desperate, threw herself on a chair and cried: "Take me away, take me away." Then we went to the cars and piled the others in. It was only then that Nene noticed Rosetta and began calling her and wanted to kiss her. Rosetta obligingly calmed her by lighting her cigarette through the car window.
They left. Now it was our turn. But, looking at each other, we burst out laughing. "Let's have dinner at Ivrea," Momina said, relieved. "Then we'll go back to Montalto."
We returned to the rooms for a last look. Momina said she wanted to try to win the expenses of the trip, now that the jinxes had gone. "Stick with me," she said to Rosetta. "You're loaded with luck, like the rope from a hanged man's neck." Very solemnly they sat down at a table. I stood by, watching. In a couple of turns Momina had lost ten thousa
nd lire. "You try," she said to Rosetta. Rosetta lost another five thousand. "Let's go to the bar," Momina said.
Here we are, I thought; now it begins. "Listen," I said as I was drinking my coffee, "I'll take you to dinner, but leave off."
"Lend me another thousand," Momina said.
"Let's go," Rosetta said. "There's no point."
I gave her the thousand, and we lost that too. While we were in the foyer and Momina was going on about her losses, who should show up but hard-nosed Febo, looking sly.
"And where are the beautiful ladies going?" he grinned.
He hadn't left. No one had thought of him. He had been in the room when we were playing. "You see," Momina said, "it's your fault. Go away, go away."
Instead, all four of us crammed into the Topolino. It wasn't easy to get rid of him, the more so because he joked bitingly about the common jinx and said: "You owe me something. We'll spend the night together."
Febo knew Ivrea well and took us to a place carters went to. "Nice," Momina said when we entered. We went on through to a sort of back room which had a large, hot terra-cotta stove, and the owner, a big man with hair in his ears and a big apron, came and helped us out of our coats, very attentive. "Be careful there," Febo said.
I was watching Rosetta throwing off her leopard jacket. "Put all your furs together and this man's hair would still be more than a match for them," Febo whispered.
"Our architect's not so bad either," Momina said.
"I'm not the only one," he came back. "How about Loris's hair?... How come he wasn't along?"
Momina turned to Rosetta: "You used to like Loris once. He was so amusing."
"In my opinion," Febo said, "hair's a great thing. Suppose Loris was merely degenerate? He would have had to give up his trade long ago. But with all that hair of his he gets off scot-free..."
Among Women Only Page 5
