The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club

by Marlena de Blasi

  ‘The strand of truth in that voice was a bane, a rift in the purity of my motives. The other voice won, though: The children will be better off with you than with Isolda and Giulio. So into the amaretti tin I stowed my washerwoman’s pay.

  ‘My plans were humble, no dawn flight on a swift horse. I was too hungry, too tired. The first step to freedom would be prosciutto, a whole haunch of it swinging from the dove-shit-shined rafters over our shared bed. I dreamed of that haunch. In the dream I kept a long thin-bladed knife in the sleeve of my nightdress, pulling it out at will, reaching up to carve a slice of the rosy, salty flesh, or a slice from the cheek of a man bent on punishments.

  The girls, each curved into one side of me, Claudio on my chest, they were the shape of my life. Still, Tullia’s words chilled me: “Let them? My father was first. I never let him.” As I said, an instructress, Tullia. Her words framed half an epiphany: Stay far away from men. The other half I’d already heard from inside me: Feed hungry children.

  ‘I worked with Tullia through that spring and into the early summer, the lire growing in a thick pile at the bottom of the amaretti tin. We were happy enough, the children and I, our time with Tullia diminishing the nightly anguishes of purgatory. But as Isolda grew big with the next child, so did fresh agonies begin to ripen in me. I was fifteen, an ancient fifteen, and I knew that if I didn’t escape the farm before that baby was born, I never would. Or worse, perhaps worse, when I did find a way to leave, I’d take this next one with me, too.

  Tullia and I spoke endlessly of my flight, she always in a froth over a new plot: her kin in Puglia would take us in until I found work; I should go to the hostels in Rome for homeless mothers and their children; or to a refugee program established post-war and still in operation in the north where her mother’s cousins had cousins. Dedicated as a partigiana aiding a refugee to the safety of the other side of a mountain, Tullia entangled others in her mission. She’d speak openly of it in the markets, in the village, in the public bathing house, which served as a kind of club for the farm women.

  Even for those few who had their own in-house plumbing, Saturday night at the baths was ritual. Soaped and dripping upon the rotting boards of the bathhouse floor, fleshy matrons, nubile daughters, le nonne, le zie, all of them championed Gilda, shouting through the gushing water of their own dreams of somewhere else. Someone else.

  To dine in a ristorante.

  On a terrace overlooking the sea, to dance in a blue satin dress with a Corsican prince whose hair smells like oranges.

  Yes, he must be a prince.

  No, no. He need only be a man, not just male but a man, one of that rare species of human.

  Yes, a man who wouldn’t beat me.

  A man who would make love to me rather than to take me in all the ways he pleased then leave me while he farts and burps and snores through the night.

  A man who wouldn’t endlessly keep me with child and then go off to the taberna on the nights when one of them died.

  I could better tolerate the taberna than the brothel. Before Marcello’s machinery broke down, the brothel was his sanctuary: Fortunate you were, knowing where he was. It was only after I’d planted Giangiacomo that I knew his whereabouts.

  All men, their concentration is singular, constant. The next opportunity. Where and how and with whom The where and the how and the with whom being less urgent than the when. Of course, most men make do with fantasy and use the one handiest on which to play it out. I think I was Luca’s fantasy for a night or two. Not much longer than that before I began to feel, you know, disembodied. A device. Useful only from the neck down.

  I know that feeling. There was always something false about Marcuccio, false or indifferent. Maybe that was it … I used to feel as though all of him was never there … and, more, that it wasn’t me he was with but it …

  Fabio never kisses me. A graze in passing once in a while but …

  A wrapped-in-his-arms-wanton-hungry kiss? Never. First I was the unassailable Madonna and soon after I became the shrew. A wife is relegated to these two states.

  It’s true but it hardly matters. We have so much more than they do: children, family, friendships, house, Church. If we work things right, a lover or two. Most of a man is his sex. Think how tragic then for a man when his chassis begins to break down. It’s his tyranny, a man’s sex.

  So little awaits him beyond his lust. I used to feel so sad for Gianni when he first found himself on the wane. He was so like a boy who’d lost his mate, a child whose favourite toy was broken. And there was all that apologia, the self-acquittal. It was me, it was me who’d broken his toy for I was aggressive, I was passive, I was fat, I was cruel. When he tired of castigating me, he turned to the gods, to the fates who’d put the harvest at risk, soured the wine, let his beloved dog die. And my impulse to soothe him he spurned bitterly. I withdrew. I waited. He seemed to pass over the lurid phase common to aging men although pornography and an intensified kind of ogling took him over from time to time. I can say, though, that he never deteriorated into the pathetic, the whoring, the desperate lechery. However cunning he may be, a woman knows the signs that mark a man with these.

  Amen.

  It wanted two years, closer to three, until Gianni moved from the brutal phase back into a kind of humility, which, when he directed it at me, sometimes felt like tenderness. He found himself amazed when, if only now and then, his chassis would rally to a flickering renaissance. Otherwise I think he was mostly content having made a kind of peace with that wilful thing between his legs. An ancestral relic, nostalgic, outworn, precious. How fortunate we are that our sex doesn’t age the way theirs do. When it feels like an autumn leaf down there rather than a juicy fig, olive oil is all it wants. Ecco. Siamo apposto. All is in order.

  Amen.

  Verissimo. There is no parallel for us, that disastrous diminishing for a man. When our own ‘impotency’ sets in, we are mostly ready for it, for the ending of fertility and all that it signifies. Anzi, hallelujah. How strange the difference between us: he remains fertile but can’t perform, we can’t conceive but our desire and our satisfaction are spurred with a caress. Our own or someone else’s. Wouldn’t it be grand if a smear of fine oil could do that for a man? For all the good it would do him down there, better he should use his oil on his beans.

  There’s one thing more uniquely ours: mystery. That’s not to say men are not grand liars, skillful betrayers. But rarely are they mysterious. Her mystery, it’s really all a woman can keep safe from time. Mystery and olive oil.

  Yes, Gilda, go. For all of us, go and find yourself a young one, a charmer, an …

  An enchanter.

  ‘The women in the bathing house couldn’t have known how uninhabited by charmers and enchanters were my dreams, though I suspect their own were as well, all that reproach made mostly of bombast. What with hunger and dying babies and endless fields to bend to, their countrywomen’s notions kept them safe from the peril of romanticising a man, less themselves.

  ‘As the children slept and my eyes would no longer let me read, I’d sit to rifle one more time through Magdalena’s things. I’d read all her letters a hundred times and then I’d read them again. There were many from a girl called Giorgia, my mother’s classmate in Orvieto. Giorgia Filippeschi. Our own. Miranda’s own. It seems that, after years of silence, my mother – during her epoch of desperation after I was born, after Pepucci had wandered off – had taken up correspondence with Giorgia. Tied with a length of string, there were twenty letters, at least twenty from Giorgia. Tucked in among the clothes, one letter was loose, dated after my mother went to live with the angels. In this one, Giorgia pleaded with Magdalena: Come to Orvieto for a visit, Magda, you and your little girl. Stay with us for a while. Let me take care of you. One night as I read that letter, the last two lines leapt from the page: I’m here waiting for you. My arms are always around you.

  ‘I took up a pen and wrote a letter of my own:

  Cara signora Giorgia,
>
  Though we’ve never met, I feel that I know you and that you will be pleased to hear from me. I am Magdalena’s daughter. I am Gilda. Among my mother’s things I found your letters …

  •

  ‘Just before dawn, the August day already hot and dry, Isolda was preparing to leave for the fields when I hurried down the dovecote stairs, scrubbed and braided, my out-grown boots pinching, Tullia’s brown poplin dress hanging from my thin white shoulders. Swaddled to my chest with a shawl, Claudio was sleeping. I moved, stood between Isolda and the door. A cheeky move, to confront the princess.

  ‘“I will be leaving the farm today,” I said, holding out my hand to her, offering a piece of paper on which I’d written Giorgia’s address. Here’s where we’ll be living, for the time being. That is, if you should want to contact us.”

  ‘“Us?” Isolda looked at me then quickly shifted her eyes to some point beyond me. A crack in the wooden princess, a snag in her breath, aural. Still looking away from me, Isolda waved her hand toward the baby, toward my chest, which was already tight with pain.

  ‘“I will be taking Claudio with me. The girls, too.”

  ‘Composure regained, Isolda had no questions. Not a single muffled regret. She took the piece of paper and, looking away still, let it flutter in the direction of the oilclothed table behind her. A nod, her farewell, Isolda stepped beyond me and her son. Out the door, her stride was long and sure.

  ‘I would have stayed, you know, that’s the strange part,’ Gilda says to me, her tone pleading, trying to convince me of what I already knew.

  ‘Until that last moment, part of me longed for Isolda’s intercession. Two words of entreaty and I would have continued on as before. That’s how dearly I wanted to belong somewhere, anywhere. A prisoner pardoned, lingering in his cell.’

  ‘I know. We are wont to give prisons, almost any prison, the shape of refuge. The only way we can endure them.’

  ‘I … yes, I suppose. Prison, refuge. A small twist of will or vision and one can become the other.’

  ‘Già’.

  ‘Chou, you should have seen Livia and Dafne on that morning. Six and four they were by then, resplendent in pinafores of white organdy, white stockings and shoes gifted by one of the bathhouse women from her now grown-up daughters’ stores. Wide white ribbons I’d tied around their heads, bows flopping just above their eyebrows. Perhaps not understanding the import of their journey, perhaps having understood it indeed, both were nearly faint with giggling anticipation for it.

  ‘Two lengths of rope I fastened to my belt, the other ends of the ropes I tied into loops to slip over each girl’s wrist, thus leaving my own hands free to carry two cardboard valises packed with the children’s clothes and my own wreckage. I unwrapped Claudio, slung a large cloth purse across my chest, retied the baby. I banked the fire, and closed the door.

  ‘Small knots of bathhouse women waited along the edge of the yellow dust road and, as our little party reached them, they joined in, walking in a body to the village where the autobus would stop. The women sang, wept, stopped to press kisses upon the children, to stuff the girls’ pockets with pistachios. In a woven basket that Tullia slipped over Livia’s free arm, there were thick cuts of Genzano bread, a paper-wrapped package of mortadella, a heft of pecorino, biscotti filled with marzipan. The autobus would deliver us to Stazioni Termini in Rome from whence we would ride the train to Orvieto.

  •

  ‘I saw her on the platform, Giorgia. Her own two boys hanging on her skirt, the first thing she said to me was, “Jesumaria, you’re so tiny, so blonde. I’d been expecting Magda. All this while I’d been imagining Magda. Welcome home, darling Gilda. And who would be these little beauties?”

  ‘Slipping her wrist from the loop of rope tied about my waist and likewise freeing Dafne, Livia reached out for Giorgia’s hand while, Dafne, leaving no doubt of her dominance, flicked her fingers, palms inward, at Giorgia’s five-year-old twins. Taking the little boys’ hands, Dafne settled herself between them, swung their arms high, pulled them along in a triumphant march. While holding tight to Livia, Giorgia nuzzled Claudio, took my arm and, in tight formation, we seven walked out of the station. Though none of us could know it then, save Giorgia, we were already a family.

  ‘Not as forlorn creatures but as cherished kin, Giorgia embraced us. No less did her husband. You know Flavio. Had I written horrid things about the conditions of our life with Isolda and Giulio? No. What sentiments I’d let fall between the lines of my letter which Giorgia was able to interpret, I’m not certain. I’d asked if the children and I could stay with them until I could find us a place, until I could find work. I’d told her that I had funds, never mentioning a sum. What with my savings plus the envelope thick with lire that I’d found in the trunk, my name written on it in the old aunt’s shaky hand, I’d thought I was flush. Significant enough back then, today all those beautiful lire notes the size of a dinner napkin would total thirty euros.

  ‘Giorgia and Flavio baked bread for a living. Situated on the ground level of a narrow three-storey palazzo off Piazza della Repubblica, their forno perfumed the vicolo, the steamy frangrance of it reaching into the marketplace, and I wanted to sleep on its flour-dusted floor. I remember thinking that. They lived upstairs and, above, in the attic, a seamstress had her atelier. I don’t think she ever paid rent but traded mending and sewing for Giorgia and her sons and then for us. They lived well, if hand to mouth.

  ‘“Do you need help in the bakery? May I put up a sign offering myself as a washerwoman? There are so many shops that surely I can find …”

  ‘“It’s the school you’ll be off to find, amore mio,” Giorgia said. “Two years you’ve been away from the nuns, time to catch up.”

  ‘“But the little ones …”

  ‘“Soon enough the twins and Livia will also go to school and then I’ll have Dafne and Claudio all to myself; though I expect Dafne will soon enough be running the bakery if not the neighbourhood.”

  ‘Rules, chores, manners, expectations. New bread, a laden table, baths and fresh towels, embroidered linens and goose-down quilts, soap and toothbrushes and doctors’ visits and never a word from Isolda, from Giulio. Livia asked me once if her parents were coming to live with Giorgia as well. Before I could respond, Dafne, her black eyes wide and round, “If they do, they’ll have to sleep on the floor.”

  ‘Even amidst a paradise, old habits die hard. I suppose I found it difficult to trust that my fortune would last. Someone would come to take us back to the farm or me back to the convent, and the children, who knows where? I began to hoard bits and pieces from the table, mostly bread, cheese, sometimes a few potatoes from the sack in the pantry. I took candles, soap, bars of chocolate. Strolling the markets with Miranda and Giorgia, I would long for an hour’s plundering with Tullia. Such richness there. Soon enough Giorgia sent me to shop on my own and it was then, that first Saturday in the markets by myself, when I stole the peaches.

  ‘Theirs was the most beautiful table in the market, the one belonging to Iacovo’s father and his uncles. Peaches piled in pyramids and rolling out of baskets and strewn across a length of red brocade, scenes awaiting an artist. I would approach the banco, step away, gaze at it from afar, put myself in the queue only to step away when my turn came. Giorgia’s list did not include peaches. And then I saw my chance. The three men who’d been selling motioned to a young boy. The men went off toward the caffé, leaving the boy in charge. I waited for other shoppers and when the boy was serving them I struck: three peaches on a branch. Just as Tullia had taught me to do, I smiled, kept my eyes on the the people around me, even spoke a word or two to no one in particular, never looking down, letting my hands do their work. Into my sack. Three heavy peaches on a floppy, leafy branch. Wandering slowly away, looking this way and that, not a care in the world and then I heard someone calling, “Signorina, signorina, aspettami, ti prego. Wait for me, wait, please.”

  ‘I turned to see it was the young boy shouting,
running toward me. Too mortified to notice the newspaper-wrapped parcel he carried, too mortified to notice that he was smiling, I stayed where I stood. “Per voi, signorina. Queste sono i più belle. For you, miss. These are the most beautiful. Posso? May I?” he asked, opening my sack, taking out the branch, placing the parcel inside, then replacing the branch on top. “There, now we’re in good order. Buongiorno, signorina. Buongiorno. A presto.”

  •

  On the next Thursday Night, Gilda Aida Mimi-Violetta Onofrio wore Magdalena’s necklace, a triple string of baroque pearls clasped in the hollow of her throat with an unpolished ruby. On the Thursday after that, she left the pearls behind but wore the blue velvet dress that she’d worn before only on a Christmas. On the last Thursday Night of that November, Gilda wore the pearls and the blue velvet dress. There was about Iacovo on that same Thursday Night the unmistakeable pungency of cloves.

  •

  Early in December Gilda, Ninuccia, Paolina, Miranda and I meet to plan the supper for the Thursday before Christmas. There would be no other Thursday Night Suppers in December before that one, honouring a traditional, seasonal hiatus. Rather than meeting at the rustico, Gilda – surprising us all – suggested that we gather at her place. Usually at these planning sessions one brings along some little morsel to share. Gilda said we shouldn’t.

  When we arrive at one o’clock she leads us to the kitchen end, the windowless part of the room where candles are lit, the table set with branches of mistletoe thick as a wrist, paper plates, cups, napkins, these last raising a snuffle from Ninuccia. We talk about the December supper, argue, compromise, drink the red wine, which Gilda tells us is Iacovo’s own. There is no sign of food. Still snuffling, Ninuccia asks if she might stir the white embers of the fire. ‘At least we can be warm if not fed.’