Arturo's Island

by Elsa Morante

  After my father’s departures, Immacolatella circled around me constantly in the Casa dei Guaglioni, worried about my listlessness, inciting me to play and forget the past. How many shows that wild dog put on! She leaped into the air and dropped to the ground like a ballerina. She even became a jester: I was her king. And, seeing that I wasn’t interested in her, she approached me impatiently, asking with her brown eyes: “What are you thinking right now? Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Like women, who often when a man is serious think he’s sick, or get jealous, because his serious thoughts seem a betrayal of their frivolity.

  As one would with a woman, I avoided her, saying: “Leave me in peace for a while. I want to think. Some things you can’t understand. Go and play on your own: we’ll see each other later.” But she was obstinate, and wouldn’t be persuaded; and finally, confronted by her frenzied games, I regained the desire to play and to be frenzied with her. She would have had the right to boast; but she had a happy heart, without vanity. She welcomed me in marvelous triumph, like a final gallop, thinking that I had pretended my earlier seriousness in order to make a good impression, as in the tarantella.

  Someone will say: So much talk about a dog! But as a boy I had no other companion, and it can’t be denied that she was extraordinary. To converse with me, she had invented a kind of deaf-mute language: using her tail, her eyes, her positions, and many different notes of her voice, she could tell me all her thoughts; and I understood her. Although she was a girl, she loved boldness and adventure: she swam with me, and was my helmsman in the boat, barking when obstacles came into view. She followed me everywhere when I roamed the island, and every day, returning with me along lanes in a countryside already passed through countless times, she would get excited, as if we were pioneers in unexplored lands. When, crossing the narrow strait, we disembarked on the uninhabited little island of Vivara, a few meters from Procida, the wild hares fled at our arrival, thinking that I was a hunter with a hunting dog. And she chased them a little, for the pleasure of running, and then came back to me, content to be a shepherd.

  She had many loves, but until the age of eight she never got pregnant.

  Grandson of an Ogress?

  One could say that in all my youth I knew no female being other than Immacolatella. In my famous Code of Absolute Certainties no law concerned women and love, because I had no certainties (apart from maternal affection) with regard to women. My father’s greatest friend, Romeo-Boötes, detested them; but had my mother, as a woman, also been rejected by him? That question was a reason for distrust between me and the shade of the Amalfitano. And it had no answer—since I had never heard from my father any talk about the Amalfitano or about women, and his smile (when the terror of the Casa dei Guaglioni on the part of all women was mentioned) wasn’t an explanation but, rather, an enigma.

  As for my mother, maybe no more than a couple of times in all our life did I hear him name her; but it was only in passing, and by chance. The memory remains of how his voice seemed to focus almost tenderly for a moment on that name, and immediately moved on, with sharp, evasive haste. He had the expression, on those occasions, of a handsome exotic cat that, walking impudently at night, stops for a moment to look at the cold fur of a lifeless female, touching it with a velvet paw.

  Certainly I would have dearly wished him to tell me something about my beloved mother; but I respected his silence, understanding that it must be too painful for him to return to the memory of his wife’s death.

  And about another death, too, he remained stubbornly silent: I mean about my grandmother, the German. Against her, however, his silence must have fostered some terrible reproach: or at least so I deduced from a single brief episode.

  One day, rummaging through some books in the wardrobe in his room while he was smoking absentmindedly nearby, I found in my hands a photograph I’d never seen before: it portrayed a group of girls about the same age, one of whom was marked with an ink cross. Naturally, my gaze rested with greater interest on her, who seemed to me, in the brief minute that I could look, a fairly ordinary girl, dressed in a skirt and blouse and wearing a ribbon in her hair. She had an ample, womanly bosom confined under the white shirt, which was buttoned up to the throat; but otherwise her figure, like the features of her face, was too big, heavy, and solid to be called beautiful. But her romantic pose betrayed an almost pitiful need to feel weak and pretty.

  Under the photograph some words were written in German; in addition, I could distinguish a vague resemblance, especially in her gaze and in her mouth, in spite of her ordinary looks, which let me guess at once who she was. A natural curiosity drove me to ask my father for confirmation of my discovery. And I rushed to show him the photograph and ask if that fair-haired woman was my grandmother from Germany.

  At which, rousing himself from his absent thoughts, he hastily and rudely observed the card, which I brought him in triumph, and abruptly took it out of my hands. “What sort of relics are you finding?” he said. “It’s your grandmother, yes, it’s my mother,” he then admitted, in a surly tone, emphasizing it’s my mother with an almost vulgar expression of ostentatious rejection. And he said softly, through clenched teeth, “Rather, luckily, was.”

  He added no other words; but going to the chest of drawers he threw the photograph in the bottom drawer, which he closed brutally with his foot. And in that act, his face disgusted by irritation, like a grim executioner, he seemed to say: “Stay there, evil, terrible, and intolerable woman. And don’t ever show up again, from now on!”

  That was all; but it was enough to instill in me a confused suspicion that my paternal grandmother had been, in life, an ogress, or some other similar scourge. I happened to glance inside that drawer later, but the photograph had disappeared. My father must have put it in some even darker hiding place.

  In conclusion, my father’s knowledge did not at all illuminate my ignorance regarding women.

  Women

  Besides, apart from the maternity of my mother, nothing, in the obscure population of women, seemed important to me, and it didn’t much interest me to investigate their mysteries. All the great actions that enthralled me in books were carried out by men, never by women. Adventure, war, and glory were men’s privileges. Women, instead, were love; and books told stories of royal, splendid females. But I suspected that such women, and even that marvelous feeling love, were only an invention of books, not a reality. The perfect hero existed—I saw the proof in my father. But I knew no glorious women, sovereigns of love, like those in books. And so love, passion, that famous great fire, was perhaps a fantastic impossibility.

  Although I was ignorant about real women, I had only to catch a glimpse of them to conclude that they had nothing in common with the women of books. According to my judgment, real women possessed no splendor and no magnificence. They were small beings, who could never grow as tall as a man, and they spent their lives shut up in kitchens and other rooms: that explained their pallor. Bundled into aprons, skirts, and petticoats, in which they must always keep hidden, by law, their mysterious body, they appeared to me clumsy, almost shapeless figures. They were always busy, and elusive; they were ashamed of themselves, maybe because they were so ugly; and they went around like sad animals, different in every way from men, without elegance or daring. Often they gathered in a group, and discussed with passionate gestures, glancing around in fear that someone might surprise their secrets. They must share many secrets, what could they possibly be? Surely all childish things! No absolute certainty could interest them.

  Their eyes were all the same color: black! Their hair, all of it, was dark, rough, wild. Truly, as far as I was concerned, they could stay as far away as they wanted from the Casa dei Guaglioni: I would never fall in love with one, and didn’t want to marry one.

  Very occasionally, a foreign woman happened onto the island, who went down to the beach and took off her clothes to swim, without any respect or shame, as if she were a man. Like the other Procidans, I felt no curiosity ab
out foreign swimmers; my father seemed to consider them ridiculous and hateful people, and, with me, fled from the places where they swam. We would happily have chased them away, because we were jealous of our beaches. And no one looked at those women. For the Procidans, and also for me, they were not women but like crazy animals, who had descended from the moon. It didn’t even occur to me that their shameless figures might have some beauty.

  And so I think I’ve related almost all the ideas I had at the time about women!

  When a girl was born on Procida, the family was displeased. And I thought of the fate of women. As children, they seemed no uglier than boys, nor very different; but they had no hope of growing up to become a handsome, great hero. Their only hope was to become the wife of a hero: to serve him, to wear his name like a coat of arms, to be his undivided property, respected by all; and to bear a handsome son, resembling his father.

  My mother missed that satisfaction: she had barely had time to see this dark son, with dark eyes, completely the opposite of her husband, Wilhelm. And if by chance that son, although dark, was destined to become a hero, she couldn’t know it, because she was dead.

  The Oriental Tent

  In the snapshot that is the only image of her known to me, my mother doesn’t appear any more beautiful than other women. But as a boy, looking at that picture, contemplating it, I never wondered if she was ugly or beautiful, and didn’t even think of comparing her to others. She was my mother! And I can no longer say how many enchanting things her lost maternity meant for me at that time.

  She had died because of me: as if I had killed her. I had been the power and violence of her fate; but her consolation cured me of my cruelty. In fact, that was the first blessing, between us: that my remorse merged with her forgiveness.

  Examining her portrait in memory, I note that she is just a girl. In fact, she isn’t even eighteen. She has a serious and concentrated manner, like an adult, but her curious face is a child’s; and the outline of youth is even more recognizable in her disfigured body, clumsily bundled in the clothes of a pregnant woman.

  At that time, however, I saw in her portrait a mother, I couldn’t see a childlike creature. The age that I gave her was, if I think about it, perhaps a maturity, as great as the sand and summer on the sea, but perhaps also an eternity, virginal, gentle, and unchanging, like a star. She was a person invented by my regrets, and so she had, for me, every wished-for kindness, and different expressions, different voices. But, above all, in the impossible longing I had for her, I thought of her as faithfulness, intimacy, conversation: in other words, all that fathers were not, in my experience.

  The mother was someone who would have waited at home for my return, thinking of me day and night. She would have admired all my words, praised all my undertakings, and boasted of the superior beauty of a dark child, with black hair, of average height or maybe even less.

  Woe to anyone who dared, in her presence, to speak ill of me! In her opinion, indisputably, I was the greatest personage in the world. The name Arturo for her was a gold standard! And in her view it would be enough to say that name for everyone to know that she was speaking of me. The other Arturos existing in the world were all imitators, inferior.

  Even hens, or cats, have certain special delicate modulations of their voice when they call their offspring. Therefore one can imagine in what a delightful voice she would have called Arturo. And certainly she would have loaded that name with every sort of female adulation, which I would graciously spurn, as Julius Caesar spurned the crown. In fact, it’s noble to show disdain for all kinds of adulation and pampering; but since one can’t be pampered by oneself, in life a mother is necessary.

  I lived completely ignorant not only of adulation but also of kisses and caresses: and this was a proud honor. But sometimes, especially in the evenings, when I was alone between the walls of a room, and began to miss my mother, mother for me signified precisely: caresses. I sighed for her large holy body, her hands of silk, her breath. My bed, on winter nights, was freezing cold: and to get warm I had to fall asleep entwined with Immacolatella.

  As I didn’t believe in God and religions, neither did I believe in a future life and the spirits of the dead. Listening to reason, I knew that all that remained of my mother was underground, in the cemetery of Procida. But reason retreated before her, and, without realizing it, I actually believed in a paradise for her. What else could that sort of Oriental tent be, raised between sky and earth and carried by the breeze, in which she dwelt alone, idle and contemplative, with her eyes on Heaven, like one transfigured? Whenever I turned to my mother, that was where she appeared naturally in my thoughts. Later, the day came when I no longer looked for her, and she disappeared; someone folded up the magnificent Oriental tent and carried it away.

  But, while I was a boy, I addressed her at the times when others pray, like a sentimentalist. My mother was always wandering around the island, and was so present, suspended there in the air, that I seemed to be talking to her, the way one talks to a girl looking out from a balcony. She was one of the enchantments of the island. I never went to her grave, because I’ve always hated cemeteries and all the signs of death; but still one of the spells that bound me to Procida was that small tomb. Since my mother was buried in that place, it almost seemed to me that her fantastic person was a prisoner there, in the blue air of the island, like a canary in its gilded cage. Maybe that was why when I went out in the boat I never got very far before the bitterness of solitude seized me, and made me turn back. It was she who recalled me, like the sirens.

  Waits and Returns

  But in truth there was another, even stronger reason that, when I went out on the water, soon made me turn the prow back toward Procida: the suspicion that in my absence my father might return. It seemed to me intolerable not to be on the island when he was; and so, although I was free and dearly loved great enterprises, I never left the sea of Procida for other lands. Often I was tempted to flee in my boat in search of him; but then I would realize how absurd the hope of finding him was, among so many islands and continents. If I left Procida, I might lose him forever, since one certainty existed only on Procida: always, sooner or later, he would return. It wasn’t possible to guess when he would return. Sometimes he would reappear suddenly a few hours after his departure; and sometimes he wasn’t seen again for many months. And, always, every day, at the arrivals of the steamer, and every evening, returning to the Casa dei Guaglioni, I had a hope of seeing him. This eternal hope was another of Procida’s spells.

  One morning, Immacolatella and I, in the Torpedo Boat of the Antilles, decided to go as far as Ischia. I rowed for almost an hour; but when I turned and saw that Procida had grown distant, such a bitter homesickness gripped me that I couldn’t bear it. I reversed course, and we went back.

  My father never wrote letters, he never sent news of himself, or any greeting. And for me the certainty that he still existed was miraculous, and that every moment lived by me on Procida he, too, was living in some land or other, in some room, among foreign companions whom I considered glorious and blessed for the sole reason that they were with him. (I didn’t doubt, in fact, that being with my father was the most desired form of aristocracy in all human societies.)

  As soon as I thought “At this very moment he . . .” I immediately felt a sharp tug inside me, as if, in my mind, a black screen had been torn, and flashes of marvelous stories passed by. In these apparitions of my imagination he was almost never alone: around him were the indistinct persons of his followers; and nearby, always at his side like a shadow, the elect of that aristocracy, Algerian Dagger. My father, waving his pistol in an act of challenge, jumps onto the prow of an immense armed ship, and Algerian Dagger, exhausted, perhaps mortally wounded, drags behind, handing him the last cartridges. My father advances through a dense jungle along with Algerian Dagger, who, armed with a knife, helps him open a path through the lianas. My father is resting in his war tent, lying on a camp bed; and Algerian Dagger, kneeling
on the ground at his feet, plays Spanish music on a guitar for him . . .

  Wait till you grow up, to go with me.

  Occasionally during my days of solitude, some trick of the senses gave me the sudden illusion that he had returned! Looking at the sea, on a stormy day, I seemed to hear, in the din of the breakers, his voice calling me. I turned toward the beach: it was empty. One afternoon, reaching the pier after the arrival of the steamer, I spied from a distance a fair-haired man sitting at the café on the square. I hurried to the café, convinced that I would find him, just off the boat, stopping to have a glass of Ischian wine—and found myself facing a dark foreigner, wearing a straw hat . . . One evening, having dinner in the kitchen, I saw Immacolatella go on the alert and leap at the window; I rushed over, hoping to see him outside, arriving as a surprise, and I was in time to see a cat that, having peered in at our dinner, jumped down from the window grate and fled.

  Every day, Immacolatella and I were present at almost all the arrivals of the steamer from Naples. The passengers who got off were usually people we knew, for the most part Procidans who had left in the morning and returned in the evening: the shipping agent, the wife of the tailor, the midwife, the owner of the Hotel Savoia. Then, on certain days, you could see disembark, after the ordinary passengers, the prisoners destined for the penitentiary. In civilian clothes, but handcuffed and accompanied by guards, they were immediately loaded onto a police truck, which brought them to the castle. During their brief passage on foot, I avoided looking at them: not out of contempt but out of respect.