"I don't understand," Mariella began, "why Donna Paola dresses like a gypsy that way, with those earrings..."
They talked for a while about the earrings and the absent women. At a certain point I gave a start in my chair: I had dozed off again. I felt the coolness of the room and heard Nene's aggressive voice exclaiming: "You're nasty, nasty. I don't have to mother anyone."
"You don't need to, but you do it," Momina said.
Nene, standing in the middle of the room, shouted stridently: "Men are babies. We artists are children twice over. If you take that away from us, what's left?"
"What do you want to take away?" Momina said. "There's nothing to take away from life, it's already zero. Ah," she turned over on the bed, "you make me sick."
From the window Rosetta said: "If you like him, Nene, pay no attention to what Momina says. She does it to make you angry."
"Of course," Mariella said.
"Who are you talking about?" I asked.
"That genius Loris," said Momina, jumping down from the bed. "He won't take a bath unless someone's in love with him. I prefer Fefé."
Downstairs they rang the gong. "Let's go," Momina said. "Girls into the living room."
On the verandah we ate the lunch that the custodians had combed the countryside to scare up. Donna Paola in her scarlet gypsy cloak acted as hostess and apologized because we had to pass the plates ourselves. We had Chianti and liqueurs in brandy glasses. Mariella chattered endlessly. Toward the end of lunch the curtains had to be drawn, the sun was so bright.
It wasn't yet noon. When we got up, they talked about what to do. Someone said: "Let's go down to the sea." Some wandered into the garden. I had a fat, homely fellow beside me who wanted to point out the antiquities of Noli from above. I brushed him off. I escaped to the second-floor bedroom and sat at the window.
From the garden rose shouts and voices that I recognized; they were talking again about going to San Remo. Suddenly my door opened; Mariella came in. "Oh, it's you," she said. "Excuse me." Behind her I caught sight of the baron.
"Should I leave?" I said.
Mariella smiled broadly and closed the door in the baron's face. "I was looking for you." She came up to me. "The trouble with these trips is that there's always somebody de trop," she chattered. "What I wanted to say, Clelia... let's help poor Rosetta... You know how sensitive and intelligent she is, we were such friends before... We've got to get her away from her morbid thinking, distract her."
I waited to know what she was getting at. I could still see the baron's bewilderment.
"You tell her, too. I know you've been seeing each other. She doesn't like to come out with me. You can't keep these girls together. How hard it is to try to put something on."
"Perhaps Rosetta has grown up," I said. "She doesn't want to play dolls any longer."
"No, no," she said, "there are feuds, petty jealousies ..."
"She doesn't seem to have anything against Nene."
"It's not that. Ever since Momina came out against the play— Momina, too! how silly—Rosetta wants nothing more to do with it, she's dropped us."
"I think," I said, "that Rosetta tried to kill herself because she was sick of Momina, of the play, of you, of everybody. Don't you think so?"
Taken aback, she flushed and looked at me. Then she went on vivaciously. "You exaggerate. Rosetta's an intelligent and sincere girl..."
"Exactly," I wanted to answer. "Exactly." But someone was knocking. It was Momina.
"We're going to San Remo," she announced. Then, narrowing her eyes, she said, "I'm surprised at you."
We didn't get to San Remo. Nene began to feel sick, to flail the air, toss around on the seat, groaning. "It's terrible. I'm dying. Stop." The first car stopped too. "It's nothing," the baron said. "Car sickness. This car acts that way."
The fat fellow and a woman in the other group were sick too. We made them lean over the low wall and vomit. Nene was the most tragic: dark-ringed eyes and wild talk. They explained to me that these big American cars were so comfortable and easily sprung that they gave you the sensation of rising and falling in sea swells.
We had stopped under a rocky overhang at a wide turning, facing the sea. Irritated, Rosetta looked at the scene.
"Do you feel well enough to go on?" we asked the three.
22
They didn't feel well enough, and so Momina and I walked down among the cacti to the beach. Mariella shouted to us to wait for her.
"This is the sea," Momina said, leaning against a wall.
"Mariella thinks you go too far with Rosetta," I told her.
"Does she?" she said coldly.
Mariella, shouting "Yoo-hoo," arrived with two or three men. "Shall we swim?" they said.
"No, go collect pebbles," Momina said, "but don't put them in your mouths."
They did, in fact, go away.
"Listen," I said, impressed, "do you see much of Febo?"
"He's a presumptuous, slimy, hairy boor. Satisfied?" She laughed. "Why? Are you interested in him?"
"No," I muttered. "I wanted to know if you like only women."
"What did that stupid girl say to you?"
"I'm the stupid girl. I can't understand why Rosetta doesn't marry. It's the only thing she can do. Is she still attached to you?"
Momina looked at me for a moment there in the sun.
"I don't like women, and neither does Rosetta. That's the truth. If I did like them, you can be sure I wouldn't think twice about it. It's an idea Rosetta has got into her head. It happened three years ago, we were at the sea, like today... She came in a room and found me... I wasn't alone. It was horseplay, like Ivrea. Then she wanted to be daring, but the impression stuck and she considers me ... something... like her mirror. Do you understand?"
I understood. The story was so absurd that it had to be true. But it was clear she hadn't told me everything.
"Why doesn't she get married?"
"Would that change anything?" Momina said. "She doesn't need to make her own way. She knows what a man is ... And then they keep her under lock and key at home."
Mariella returned with her men. Up above they were calling us; they had decided to drive back to Noli. I wasn't sorry they had decided against going to San Remo, but what would we do in Noli? As for me, I decided to spend the evening in the little town square.
We had left Nene in the other car; I was sitting between Momina and Rosetta. Mariella and the baron were in front, whispering and plotting together. He turned around suddenly to ask if the car was making us sick. Then we were off like the wind.
We passed through Noli without stopping, through Spotorno and into Savona. This was beginning to get dull. I nudged Momina, motioning toward Mariella, who was pressing up against the baron, and said: "Aren't you beginning to feel a little queasy?" When the big car braked, it bounced back and forth on its springs. They turned and said: "Shall we go dancing?"
It was fun arriving at the Riviera. We drove up to a tearoom on the square and the people on the sidewalk clustered at both ends of the car as we got out and provided us with a guard of honor. We might have been a variety number.
Once inside, Momina expressed what we were all thinking. "Look here," she said to the baron, "devote yourself to Mariella. I don't feel like dancing today."
"Neither do I," said Rosetta.
"Nor I."
It was a modern place, with lattice partitions and palms. "We're going to see Savona," we told them. "Have a good time."
We went out into the street, relieved. There wasn't much to see in Savona on Sunday, but a new city always has an effect on you. There was a great sky with a few clouds, there was the sea air, we walked around aimlessly. We ate cakes in a cafe, looking at the women, who looked back. We went as far as the port, where we found ugly red and black ships instead of houses.
"That's the end," Momina said. "Everything ends."
We passed by the fried-fish stalls.
Momina said: "Well now, your friend Morelli would
invite us to have a liter of wine. The trouble is, he can't hold it."
"Can you hold it?" Rosetta asked.
"In Rome you can do that sort of thing," I said. "That's the good thing about Rome."
"I can take the wine. I can't always take Morelli," Momina said.
We leaned on the wall over the water and lit cigarettes.
"This is how I used to get my meals," I said to Rosetta. "Not in dives like these, but at a dairy bar. Turin is full of girls who eat that way."
"It must be very nice," Rosetta said. "When I went to school, every morning I used to pass a dairy bar and in the winter through the windows you could see people warming their hands around their cups. It must be nice to be alone inside like that, when it's cold outside."
I told her that the girls don't always have time to warm their fingers in the morning. You drop your cup and run to the office, cursing somebody.
Then Rosetta asked me: "Do you think girls are fools to work? Should they sell themselves instead?"
Momina said, staring down at the water: "It looks more like a sewer than the sea. Do you suppose they wash their dishes here?"
"Going to the office is also selling oneself," I answered Rosetta. "There are dozens of ways to sell yourself. I don't know what is the most useless."
I don't know why I was saying such things, particularly to her. Especially since I didn't believe them myself.
Touched, Rosetta replied: "I know that life is hard..."
"Oh, drop it," Momina said. "All this political talk... Let's move."
Now we were walking in the middle of the street. Rosetta, reflective, kept glancing at me. Suddenly she said: "Please don't think I despise prostitutes. One does anything to keep alive... But isn't it simpler to live by working?"
"That's working, too," I said. "Don't think there's any other reason for it."
"I think that prostitutes are stupid," Momina said. "You only need to look at their faces."
"It depends on whom you call a prostitute," Rosetta said. "You're talking about the unlucky ones."
"It's all a matter of knowing how to look after yourself," Momina said.
Finally we got back to the Studebaker in the square, and our tearoom. Momina said: "Shall we go in?"
The other two were dancing among the palms, wrapped together like husband and wife. We stood by the bar and watched them awhile. Tall Mariella's blond head rose above the other dancers. There's one who knows how to take care of herself, I thought.
They came up to us, smiling a bit stupidly. They had had quite a few. The baron asked Rosetta to dance. They danced. Then we told him we ought to go back. Mariella, excited, said she would have liked to see Savona with us. Rosetta, very serious, said that she hadn't missed anything.
In an instant we were back at Noli and it wasn't yet evening. The sea began to take on color. We found the others in the cafe on the square, bored and noisy. We decided to eat there and then go back in comfort, without any more fuss.
23
The next day I had a visit from Nene at the Via Po. She wanted to see the fitting rooms and tell me what a fool she'd been to get sick. She examined the niches and mirrors, the porcelains and frames, and then invited me to a little party they wanted to give in Loris's studio. She asked why I didn't decorate the shop with something modern. She damned Febo. She discussed the Turin painters, knowingly and cleverly. I replied that I was seeing some projects through and had a lot of work these days.
The same day Mariella sent me a bouquet of white roses with a card: "In remembrance of an innocent trip." During dinner at Noli the baroness had asked us if we had had a good time in Savona. Mariella, too, invited me to an evening at her house: someone was going to read poetry. I said that I had a lot to do.
Morelli invited himself to dinner at my table. He asked why we didn't eat upstairs in my room. I replied that it wasn't proper even with a mistress.
Even Maurizio put in an appearance with a long letter; he wrote that he missed me; people in Rome were beginning to tease him about his widowhood, and I should please not come back married to a Turin football player. In short, I should tell him whether he was to confirm the renting of the villa for next summer. I suddenly realized I could no longer remember the faces of people in Rome, that I often confused Maurizio's with Guido's. But what I didn't confuse were those wild times with Guido, his fits of bad temper, his demands, and mine too, and the tranquil resignation I enjoyed with Maurizio. Maurizio was shrewd, Maurizio was in no hurry. You get things when you can finally live without them.
I talked about it with Rosetta when she came back for a visit. She appeared in her usual way, at the door, as I was going out. I told her I had been asked to Loris's party.
"Are you going?" she asked with a half smile.
"Nene wants me, Mariella wants me. When I was a girl and ate in dairy bars, such invitations would have driven me wild. But those days one used to go into the hills instead."
Rosetta asked me what I used to do on Sundays.
"I told you. To the hills. Or dancing. Or to the movies. Played around with the boys."
"Did you do that in the hills?"
"Not much. Much less than in other circles."
"Sometimes Loris used to take me to the cafes in the slums."
"Where blood flows," I said. "Have you ever seen blood flow?"
"Loris played billiards. There was often a floorshow. Disgusting women..."
"What do you think of those slums?"
"Those are things one does to see life. It's an existence, a suffering we can't understand."
"It's not enough just to see things. I'll bet that you got only one thing from all that experience."
"What?"
"You got to know Loris better."
Rosetta did something I didn't expect. She laughed. She laughed in her forced way, but she laughed. She said Nene was right: men are babies, and artists are doubly babies. It didn't take much to know Loris, much less than to get rid of him.
"I don't believe in this nonsense about babies," I said. "Men aren't babies. They even grow up without being mothered."
Rosetta made another unexpected response. "They dirty themselves," she said. "They dirty themselves like babies."
"What do you mean?"
"Whatever they touch. They dirty us, the bed, the work they do, the words they use..."
She spoke with conviction. She wasn't even irritated.
"The only difference," she said, "is that babies only foul themselves."
"Women don't foul?" I asked.
She looked at me frankly. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "I don't mean that. I'm not a lesbian. I've been a girl, that's all. But love in any form is a dirty thing."
Then I said: "Momina told me about you two. About that day at the sea when you opened the door and found her with someone. Is that what has disgusted you so?"
"Momina," Rosetta said, blushing, "does lots of crazy things. Sometimes she is laughing at us—but she agrees with me. She says there's no water that can clean people's bodies. It's life that's dirty. She says that everything is wrong."
I was about to ask her why she went on living then, but caught myself. I told her that when I had been in love, though I knew very well—one knows these things—that we were two maniacs, that my man was incompetent and slept at home all day while I went to work, still, despite all this, one can't learn to live alone unless one has first lived with someone else. There was nothing dirty about it, only an innocence—like animals perhaps—but also an innocence of clumsy people who only in that way can understand who they are.
"Anything can be dirty; it depends on what you mean by the word," I said. "Even dreaming or riding in a car can be dirty... Yesterday Nene vomited."
Rosetta listened with a half smile, more from the lips than from the eyes. It was Momina's smile when she was passing judgment on someone.
"And when love is over," she said tranquilly, as if everything were settled, "and you know who you are, what do you do wit
h these things you've learned?"
"Life is long," I said. "Lovers didn't make the world. Every morning is another day."
"Momina says so too. But it's sad that it should be so." She looked at me the way a dog looks at you. We hadn't stopped in front of some shop windows I wanted to see, but had reached the hotel.
"Well, come to Loris's party," she said. "Mariella's going to bring me, too."
When Momina phoned me, I told her that Mariella was right: that she, Momina, sometimes went too far with Rosetta. But one should never discuss such things on the phone. I heard Momina's voice harden. I could even see her expression when she said: "That's nonsense."
I had to explain that I was only talking about their conversations.
That Rosetta seemed unhappy enough on her own account not to have to listen to her malicious jokes. That it was very important not to touch her on her sore spot. I kept talking and knew that talking was silly. Momina didn't even have to adjust her face; she cleared her throat as she listened.
At the end she said coldly: "Finished?"
"Listen, everyone spends all day putting his nose into other people's affairs. I hope it does some good. I've said my piece."
"And that fool Mariella..."
"Mariella has nothing to do with it. It's our discussion."
"I don't thank you."
"And who's asking you for thanks?"
"I understand."
Then, as if nothing had happened, we talked about what we would do in the evening.
24
Every now and then Momina took an interest in the shop and asked me if we would have it done in time for a spring opening.
"I'm fed up," I said, "discouraged. It's up to Febo now."
"But you work here a great deal."
Among Women Only Page 9
