by Milena Agus
When the moment came for goodbyes, she sobbed with her cheek against the suitcase, not for her sister, her brother-in-law, her nephews, but because if destiny hadn’t willed her to see the Veteran, then it meant that he was dead. She remembered that in the autumn of 1950 she had believed she was in the Hereafter, and then he was so thin, and with his slender neck, his amputated leg, the childlike skin and hands, and that terrible eastward march and the concentration camp and the shipwrecks and the possibility that the father of his daughter was a Nazi—she felt that he was dead. If he hadn’t been he would have looked for her, he knew where she lived, and Cagliari isn’t Milan. Truly the Veteran must no longer be alive, and so she wept. Grandfather picked her up and sat her down on the only bed under the small attic window. He consoled her. He put a glass in her hand for a farewell toast and her sister and brother-in-law made a toast to meeting in better times, but grandfather didn’t want to toast better times—he wanted to toast that very visit, when they had all been together and had eaten well and had some laughs.
Then grandmother, with the glass in her hand, thought that maybe the Veteran was alive—after all, he had survived so many terrible things, why shouldn’t he make it in normal life? And she thought, too, that she still had an hour, with the tram ride to the Central Station, and the fog was lifting. But, when they reached the station, there was only a little time before the train left for Genoa, where they would get the boat and then another train; and life would begin again, where in the morning you water the flowers on the terrace and then make breakfast and then lunch and dinner, and if you ask your husband and son how things are going they answer, “Normal. Everything normal. Don’t worry,” and never tell you things, the way the Veteran did, and your husband never says that you’re the only one for him, the one he was waiting for, and that in May of 1943 his life changed—never, in spite of the increasingly refined services in bed and all the nights you sleep there together. So now if God didn’t want her to meet the Veteran let him kill her. The station was dirty, littered with trash and spit. While she sat and waited for her husband and son to get the tickets, because papa never chose to stay with her but preferred to stand in line with grandfather, she noticed a wad of gum stuck to the seat and smelled the odor of the toilets and felt an infinite disgust for Milan, which seemed to her terrible, like the whole world.
As she followed grandfather and papa, chattering to each other, up the escalator leading to the trains, she thought that if she turned back they wouldn’t even realize it. The fog had cleared now. She would continue to look for the Veteran throughout all the disgusting streets of the world, despite the winter cold that was approaching; she would beg and maybe even sleep on benches, and if she died of tuberculosis or hunger so much the better.
She let go of her suitcases and packages and rushed down, crashing into all the people going up, saying “Excuse me, excuse me!” But right at the end she stumbled, and the escalator swallowed up a shoe and a piece of her coat and tore the beautiful new dress and her stockings and her woolen cap, which had fallen off, and the skin of her hands and legs, and she had cuts and scrapes all over. Two arms helped lift her up. Grandfather had run down after her, and now he was holding her and caressing her as he would have done with a child: “Nothing happened,” he said to her, “nothing happened.”
When they got home she started to do the laundry, all the dirty clothes from the visit, shirts, dresses, undershirts, socks, underwear: all the new things they had bought for the trip to Milan. They were doing well now, and grandmother had a Candy washing machine with two settings, for normal clothes and for delicates. She separated the clothes: those that were to be washed at a high temperature and those to be done in warm water. But maybe her thoughts were elsewhere, who knows, and she ruined everything. Papa told me that she hugged him and grandfather, amid sobs and tears, and got the knives from the kitchen and put them in their hands so that they could kill her; she scratched her face and beat her head against the wall and threw herself on the floor.
Later, my father heard grandfather telephoning the aunts and saying that, in Milan, she hadn’t been able to stand seeing her younger, coddled sister reduced to such a state. Here in Sardinia the small landowners had been modest but dignified and respected, and now the failed agrarian reforms had ruined them, and they had had to emigrate, the women to be servants, which for a husband is the worst humiliation, the men to breathe the poisons of the factories, without protection and, above all, without respect, and in school the children were ashamed of their Sardinian last names, with all those “u”s. He himself had had no idea about this: the sister and brother-in-law had written that they were well and he had thought of surprising them by going to visit and instead it had been humiliating. The children had devoured the sausages and the prosciutto as if they hadn’t eaten for goodness knows how long, and his brother-in-law, when he cut the cheese and opened the bottle of mirto, was moved, and had told him he could never forget that when the property was divided grandfather hadn’t wanted grandmother’s part, but, unfortunately, that had been wasted; for, while it had seemed to them that one couldn’t live on the land, those who stayed had been right. Grandmother, who, as her sisters well knew, was made in her own way, couldn’t stand this, and then today she had also learned that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and had ruined a load of laundry. He didn’t care, money comes and goes, but there was no way to calm her and her son was upset. Could they please come to Cagliari, right away, on the first bus.
But then, for my great-aunt and uncle and cousins, things improved. They moved out of the attic to the suburb of Cinisello Balsamo, and my father, who always went to visit them when, as a musician, he was touring, said that they lived in a tall apartment building full of immigrants, in a complex of buildings for immigrants, but there was a bathroom and a kitchen and an elevator. At a certain point you couldn’t speak of immigrants anymore, because they considered themselves Milanese, and no one called them terún, because now the fight was between the reds and the blacks in San Babila, where the cousins beat up their rivals and were beaten up by them, while papa went to the Giuseppe Verdi with his bags full of scores and had no interest in politics. Papa told me that arguments broke out between him and the cousins. About politics and about Sardinia. Because they asked stupid questions like: “Is that sweater made from orbace?”—of a beautiful heavy sweater knitted by grandmother of the coarse Sardinian wool. Or: “What kind of transportation do you have down there?” Or: “Do you have a bidet? Do you keep chickens on the balcony?”
So at first papa laughed, but then he got mad and said, Fuck you, even though he was a quiet, well-brought-up pianist. It was that they couldn’t forgive his lack of interest in politics—he didn’t hate the bourgeoisie enough, he had never hit a Fascist and had never been hit. They, still boys, had attended Capanna’s rallies, had marched in Milan in May of 1969, had occupied the state school in 1971. But they all loved each other and always made up. They had become friends in that November of 1963, in the attic, when they wandered over the rooftops, climbing out through the little window unbeknownst to their parents: the uncle of Milan who was out selling rags, with the uncle of Cagliari helping him; the aunt of Milan off cleaning for her rich people, and the aunt of Cagliari, completely mad, studying the architecture of the case di ringhiera, with that unforgettable woolen cap kept on by her hair, braided and rolled into chignons in the Sardinian style.
Grandmother told me that later her sister telephoned her from Milan to say that she was worried about papa, he was so out of the world, so engrossed in his music. He had no girlfriends, while her sons, who were younger, already did. The fact is that papa was never very with it: he had short hair when everyone wore it long except the Fascists, and he, poor guy, was certainly not a Fascist—it was that he didn’t want his hair to get in his eyes when he played. She felt sorry for him, without a girlfriend, all alone with his scores. So grandmother, when she hung up, began to cry, fearful that she had transmitted to her son
that kind of madness that puts love to flight. He had been a solitary child, whom no one invited anywhere, an unsociable child, at times awkwardly affectionate, whose company no one wanted. In the upper grades things had gone better, but not much. She tried to tell papa that other things existed in the world, and so did grandfather, though he laughed about it, and they couldn’t forget the night of July 21, 1969, when, while Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, their son had not interrupted his practicing of the Brahms Paganini Variationen Opera 35 Heft I, for the concert at the end of the semester.
12.
When grandmother realized she was old she told me that she was afraid of dying. Not of death itself, which was supposed to be like going to sleep or taking a journey, but she knew that she had offended God, because he had given her so many wonderful things in this world and she hadn’t been happy, and for this God could not forgive her. All things considered, she hoped that she really was insane; if she was sane, Hell was certain. But she would discuss it with God, before she went to Hell. She would point out to him that if he creates a person in a certain way then he can’t expect her to act as if she were not her. She had spent all her energy persuading herself that this was the best possible life, and not that other one, longing and desire for which took her breath away. But for certain things she would sincerely ask God’s pardon: the paisley dress that grandfather had bought her in Milan and that she had torn in the escalator at the station; the cup of coffee placed at the foot of the bed, in their first year of marriage, like a dog’s bowl; her inability to enjoy all those days by the sea, when she thought that the Veteran, so agile with his crutch, would arrive at the Poetto.
And the winter day when grandfather came home with a bag of mountain clothing, borrowed from somewhere or other, and proposed a trip up the Supramonte, which had been arranged by his office for the employees of the salt works, and she, even though she had never been to the mountains, had felt only an uncontainable irritation, and the sole wish to tear that ridiculous clothing out of his hands. But he stubbornly kept telling her that true Sardinians should know Sardinia.
For grandfather there was a pair of ugly sneakers and a heavy sweater, which was also very ugly; there were better things for her and the child. In the end grandmother reluctantly said “All right,” and went to make sandwiches, while grandfather, who always helped her, for some reason, played a melancholy plin-plin on the piano of the Signorine Doloretta and Fanní. They went to bed early because they were to be at the meeting place at five in the morning. They were to go to Orgosolo and climb up to Punta sa Pruna, cross Foresta Montes, continue on to the megalithic circle of Dovilino and walk through the mountains that link Gennargentu to Supramonte, as far as Mamoiada. Everything was covered with snow and papa was beside himself with joy, but grandfather’s teeth were already chattering, and others in the group advised the warm hearth and potato ravioli and porchetto on the spit and a local spirit, fil’e ferru, from a restaurant in the town. But he stubbornly refused. They had to become acquainted with the mountains of Sardinia, they who were people of the sea and the plain.
The Foresta Montes, one of the few virgin forests in Sardinia, whose ancient ilexes had never been cut down, was sunk in silence, and the soft white snow came up to the knees. So grandfather’s shoes and pants were immediately soaked, but he kept going, without a word.
And he walked at the same pace as the others. Grandmother went on ahead for a good stretch, as if she had neither husband nor son, but when, down in the valley, the lake of Oladi appeared, frozen, as if it had dropped into that immense solitude from the world of fantasy, then she stopped to wait for them.
“Look! Look how beautiful it is!”
And when they crossed the oak wood, where the slender trunks were intertwined and covered with moss in the shape of snowflakes, she saved some of the fantastic leaves in her pocket and also picked a bunch of thyme, for making broth when they returned to Cagliari. And she stayed at his pace, her beautiful fur-lined shoes in step with those ugly ones of grandfather’s, because she wasn’t angry with him—on the contrary, she was so sorry she didn’t love him. She was so sorry, and it pained her, and she wondered why God, when it comes to love, which is the principal thing, organizes things in such a ridiculous way: where you can do every possible and imaginable kindness, and there’s no way to make it happen, and you might even be mean, as she was now, not even lending him her scarf, and yet he followed her through the snow, half frozen, missing the chance, lover of food that he was, to eat the local potato ravioli and porchetto on the spit. During the trip home she felt so sorry that in the darkness of the bus she leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed, as if to say “Ah well.”
And she was frightened at how cold grandfather was, like someone frozen to death.
At home she made a hot bath and dinner and was scared by how much grandfather drank. It was the same as always, but it was as if she had never noticed.
That night, however, was wonderful. Better than ever before. Grandmother had put papa to bed and, wearing an old bathrobe and slip, ready to go to sleep, was absent-mindedly eating an apple. Grandfather, locking the kitchen door to be sure that the child wouldn’t come in, began the brothel game, ordering her to take off her bathrobe and slip and lie naked on the table, laid as if for his favorite meal. He turned on the heater, so that she wouldn’t catch cold, and began to eat dinner again, helping himself to all those good things. He touched her and worked her all over, and, before tasting anything, even the delicious sausage from the village, he put it in grandmother’s cunt—in the brothel, that’s the word you have to use. She got extremely excited, and started touching herself, and, love him or not, at that moment nothing mattered anymore, all she wanted was to continue the game.
“I’m your whore,” she moaned.
Then grandfather poured wine over her whole body and licked and sucked, especially her big buttery breasts, which were his passion. But he wanted to punish her, too, maybe for her behavior on the outing, or who knows, you could never understand grandfather, and, taking off his belt, he made her walk around the kitchen like a dog, hitting her but being careful not to hurt her too much and not to leave marks on her beautiful behind. Under the table grandmother caressed it and put it in her mouth, which by now she was expert at, but every so often she stopped to ask if she was a good whore, and how much she had earned; and she would have liked never to stop playing at the brothel.
They played for a long time and then grandfather got out his pipe, and she curled up on the opposite side of the bed and as usual fell sleep.
13.
With the Veteran, on the other hand, the nights were so filled with emotion that—because she had found, surely, the famous principal thing—she stayed awake gazing at how handsome he was, taking advantage of some glow in the darkness; and when he started in fear, as if he heard shots, or because bombs were falling on the ship, breaking it in two, she touched him lightly with her finger, and the Veteran, in his sleep, responded by drawing her to him, so that he wasn’t apart from her even when he was sleeping. Then grandmother boldly made a hollow for herself in the curve of his body and put the Veteran’s arm around her shoulders and his hand on her head, and the impression made by this position, which she had never before experienced, was such that she couldn’t resign herself to the idiotic—in her view—idea of sleeping when you’re happy. So you had to wonder if lovers lived like that. And if it was possible. And if even they at a certain point had to decide to eat and sleep.
Now the Veteran had the black notebook with the red border, which he read, and he was a very demanding professor, because for every spelling mistake, or repetition of the same word, or other mistake, he gave her a spanking and mussed up her hair and insisted that she rewrite. “Non mi va bééne, I don’t like it,” he said with that narrow “e” of Genoa and Milan, but grandmother wasn’t offended; in fact, she was highly amused. And she was wild about the music when he performed classical works with all the instruments, and then after a wh
ile he would do them again and she would guess the title and the composer; or he sang operas, with the voices of the men and the women. Sometimes he recited poems, for example those of a schoolmate of his, Giorgio Caproni, which grandmother loved, because she felt she was in Genoa, where she had never been, but it seemed to her that the places in the poems resembled Cagliari. Thus vertical, because when you arrive in the harbor from the sea—it had happened to her once, on a boat returning from Sant’Efisio—the houses look as if they were built on top of one another. Cagliari, like the Genoa described by the Veteran and his friend, or by that other unfortunate fellow, Dino Campana, who died in a mental asylum, is a dark and labyrinthine and mysterious and damp city, which has sudden and unexpected openings onto the great, blinding Mediterranean light. So, even if you’re hurrying, you can’t not look out over a wall, or an iron railing, can’t not enjoy the astonishingly rich sky and sea and sun. And if you look down you see the roofs, the geranium-dotted terraces and the drying laundry, and the agave plants on the cliffs and the life of the people, which seems to you truly small and fleeting, yet also joyful.
Of grandmother’s services the Veteran’s favorite was the geisha, which was also the most difficult. With grandfather she managed it by telling him what they would have for dinner, but the Veteran wanted sophisticated routines like descriptions of the Poetto beach and of Cagliari and of her village, and stories of her daily life and her past and the emotions she had felt in the well, and he asked a lot of questions and wanted detailed answers. So my grandmother emerged from her silence and began to enjoy this, and she went on and on about the white dunes of the Poetto and their blue-and-white striped bathing hut, and how if you went there in winter, after a wind, to make sure it was still standing, mountains of white sand blocked the entrance, and if you looked from the shoreline it really was like a snowy landscape, especially if the cold was intense and you were wearing gloves and a wool cap and overcoat and all the windows of the huts were closed. Except that the huts had blue, or orange, or red stripes, and even though the sea was behind you, you certainly knew it was there. In summer they spent vacations there, along with the neighbors and their children, and brought everything they needed in a cart. She had a dress buttoned up the front, just for the seaside, with big embroidered pockets. When the men came, on Sunday or for their holidays, they wore pajamas or terrycloth bathrobes, and they all bought sunglasses, including grandfather, though he had always said that sunglasses made people give themselves airs—ta gan’e cagai.
