The Lost Father

by Marina Warner

  Yet, when he had found America so barbaric, she had demurred. He could see that, even now, she hankered to go back.

  She was right, of course, there were many things about New York… Davide sighed, and passed a hand over his moustache to adjust the angle. It seemed surprisingly hot in the carriage for the time of year.

  Davide did not seek to change Maria Filippa’s nostalgia for her idea of the past, his own old-fashioned style gave him stature and beauty in her eyes, he knew. Davide sheltered her, as a woman should be sheltered. If he could not haul the family out of their genteel poverty, he could at least protect his women, his wife and his daughters, from the knowledge that he and so many others shared, mute and unrecognised, in the offices of the law, in the architects’ and developers’ bureaux, in police and magistrates’ waiting rooms, in prison officers’ canteens, in teachers’ common rooms, camps. You could keep it from the women, the hidden story of the cells and the cemeteries, of the club and the castor oil bottle. Everybody knew it, they knew it too, but if it weren’t told, it could lose its power to injure. If it were quarantined, the contagion would stop. So he dreamed, so he resolved. How could he report to his girls the tortures he knew happened in the city prison? The bodies that disappeared into unmarked graves? The threats to children to silence colleagues who, far braver than he had ever been, asked the uncomfortable question, or asked any question at all. Far better to leave them in innocence. He thought of Fantina’s little face, and groaned that her eyes might see the sordid, futile world that he had to enter to work and survive. Far better to let them grow up safe than expose them by making himself conspicuous. He thought of Lucia’s mobile mouth, her often oblique wit, and dreaded that she might start to question, and come to the wrong person’s notice. Ignorance was a rampart to keep out danger, and danger to women was specially acute. The things they could learn could damage their nature in its essence. Knowledge was not a womanly way of life.

  That was one of the aspects of America he didn’t like; and Maria Filippa had agreed, it seemed to him, after he had made it clear. The women knew too much; they weren’t protected from ugliness and squalor. From the earliest youth, those city girls were like old women, they talked dirty, and they thought dirty and they probably… Davide sighed; with Tommaso Talvi he had been hungry for experience, but now, he wondered what had impelled him then to want so much, everything, travel, influence, money, work, before he had ever touched a woman; when now he sang arias of extreme emotion, when he grieved and sobbed his passion in La Forza and Boccanegra and La Traviata, he thought of young men in the future bursting their hearts for his daughters. He wondered, what would it be like to fall in love with Immacolata? With Talia? With Lucia? With Fantina? Then, he could soak in the vivid feeling of the song until the sweat stood out in gobbets on his forehead and his veins swelled in his neck like vines and Nunzia and Maria Filippa listening would wring their hands, invoking the protection of all the saints against that winged demon Fate flapping at his back.

  In the city one morning, as he turned the corner of the street into the shade of the acacias on the main boulevard, a woman ran out and plucked him by the sleeve, pulled him into a doorway and snatched his hand to kiss it. She was about his age, and in the chronic torpid state that overcame him dairy as he faced work, he could not make his embarrassment at her gesture connect with his limbs. He submitted tongue-tied, and shivered with repugnance when he felt the warm wetness of her face. Yet, at the same time, her lips on his hand, and her cheeks, where tears had fallen, brought to mind other openings and liquids in her bowed body. His impulse to clutch at her and lift her skirt and dabble with finger and thumb in her recesses led to a quick shame, and he was so appalled that he could not push her from him either but let her, still attached to his hand, mutter her compliments, in disjointed phrases falling pell mell. At last, he pulled his fingers from her bent face, and with the other patted her shoulder to make her straighten and look up at him, which she did. And he knew her then, from the stationery shop on their street. She gave the children change from small sums in leaves of pink blotting paper; the girls like it, had made it into lampshades for their bedroom. Immacolata said it glowed prettily, the light was flattering, and this recollection passed across his mind at the same time as he registered the woman’s contorted face, her blotched cheeks and veined eyes, and began to hear what she was saying:

  ‘He’s a good boy, he’s done nothing, they’ve taken him away, I know he always comes home or sends me word if he’s going to be kept.’ She was dry-eyed now, but her voice on the edge of wailing made Davide clutch her and pull them both deeper into the courtyard shadow of the entrance where they stood. ‘Please, can’t you do something for us; we are nothing, the least of things, why should anyone pay any attention to us? Go to the Police Station and ask for him, please, perhaps if someone like you shows that he knows he’s missing they will do something. Make them, please. I’ve no learning, no education; I daren’t tell my husband, I pretended Gregorio told me he was going away, but it’s not true.’

  She had refused to get up, now held his legs in a hug, and her face against his thighs, turning now one cheek then the other into the material of his trousers, just below his crotch, and he was dismayed that she might smell him, that his buttoned flies, however spick – and they were freshly laundered – might carry some old aroma all the same, for he knew how bodies animate and inform even the most lifeless paraphernalia, how Maria Filippa marked her hairbrush, her pillow, her section of the wardrobe, as surely with her scent as a roe leaves spoor for a hunting dog in a forest. When the ironing was being done, if he came in, holding out a shirt or a collar for special attention before he put it on, he caught, sometimes, among the warm bread-like goodness of pressed linen and cotton, fragrant from soap and water, the stab of pungent humanity, a momentary trace as the heavy iron stamped the armpit of one of his daughters’ blouses, the ferrous, lively whiff of blood lingering around the soft white squares of cotton they wore during their time of the month. She sensed his fear and, perceiving that he had placed this construction upon their encounter, pressed herself closer to the soft protuberance of his cock, touching his balls with her cheeks, one side and then the other, wheedling the while. He had a moment – it was more than a moment, it was minutes together – when he wanted to cup a hand around her head and for all that they were still almost in the street, open his trousers and feel her tongue lap him and her lips close on him. But the moment passed, for there was something in her grasp of his legs that was so awkward, so inexperienced, and the pitch of her entreaties remained so anguished that he knew she was only doing what she imagined might persuade him to help her; and a wave of self-loathing washed over him, that a woman like her could think of a man like him in such a light.

  So now he lifted the woman from the stationery shop to her feet. Her eyes were black, and fear bruised them, like fallen plums. Shaking his head, angry, he quietened her, until at last she dropped her hands and stopped gabbling and turned back into her shop. Davide had not uttered a word of consolation. How could he? He had none to give her. Yet in Ninfania, blandishments were the stock-in-trade – ‘Of course your son will return,’ he could have said. ‘Of course we will manage something, together, you and I. And many others, my connections, your connections…’ But the phrases had not formed. Davide, after returning from America, had lost his bump of locality for his native place; when the plan showed a turning one way, he missed it, or found he wanted to walk back where he had come from, or go in another direction altogether. He was not clear about it, had no notion of his objective or destination; he knew only that he had once felt filled with high sense of purpose, that aimlessness had not then been his condition, but a starry conviction. Tommaso, Rosalba, Caterina, and everyone on the periphery had stood like markers on the map, pointing out the course he must follow, the way to the quarry, to fight with Tommaso. And he had felt so light, so sure-footed, so approved, so anchored. Now he’d lost that sense of fitting the rubrics wh
ich his kin and his province drew up for the proper conduct of a man like himself. He could meet the woman in the shop, pass through the curtain in the back, make sure her husband was out, and fuck her, that’s what was being asked of him; then help her, drop a word in the police chiefs ear, shrug his shoulders and wave his hands at the severity of the charges, promise on his professional honour that such a boy was hardly a threat. A worm turn and bite the foot of the great Leader? Inconceivable. A cognac paid for here, a box of chocolates for the Party wife there, a hint that he might fix that plot of land for someone … It wasn’t so hard to do, the signposts were all in place and legible, yet he could not get his bearings.

  Lethargy squeezed him the whole of the rest of the day, after his encounter with the mother of the vanished boy. It oppressed him like the static heat of the big sun – the lion sun – when nothing stirs. He gazed at the newspapers dully, he convinced himself he must be ill. He could do nothing, nor could he apply himself to thinking about her case. Only on his way home at lunchtime did he at last rouse himself enough to make a detour, and stop by at his brother’s apartment and invite Franco to come home with him for lunch. Franco was surprised, he was hard at work, had just reached an important moment in a piece he was composing and didn’t want to be interrupted. But something in his brother’s petition alerted him, and he pushed aside the quire of his new score. ‘I’ve just reached the moment when Susanna is getting into the bath – couldn’t you have chosen another time to visit? The elders are in position behind some bushes, and she is singing a sweet romantic song of youth and yearning.’ Franco began to hum, as he followed Davide out. ‘It’s based on a country tune, you know the one.’ Davide nodded. There was a pressure on his head, not the usual warning throb of a migraine, but a weight, as if a giant hand were spread and bearing down to push him under; he shook himself, and, leaning close into his brother’s side, struggled to describe the morning’s incident. Franco tensed. He said, ‘There’s been picketing at the Town Hall, some rioting, the blackshirts moved in. Haven’t you heard?’

  Davide shook his head.

  ‘I forgot, you’ve become an ostrich, of course, like all the rest. But you can’t have missed this can of worms, even from a foot deep of sand. It’s quite a story, and a lot of people don’t like it; that woman’s son must be one of them. What a little fool. What does he think he can achieve? He should stay home, like me, and write opera, preferably buffa.’

  They were walking in the street, hugging the shade, yet Davide’s face was reddening, the sweat damped his shirt to his back, his pants to his groin, his feet to his socks.

  ‘Our Leader doesn’t like to be told that his election was a fraud, that actual grievous bodily harm was perpetrated to bring him victory, that people weren’t telling the truth when they said they wanted him, only him, when they said their hearts beat as one with love of him. He doesn’t like that at all – yet that’s what our heroic opposition managed to say, and not among themselves alone. That might have been all right, just. But no, our hero goes and says it in parliament. They’ve already given him a taste of the castor oil, a bout of gaol, a bit of a beating, just a tickle, a caress of their united methods, but still, you know, you’d think it was enough, it has kept so many others from singing. But this hero won’t be quiet, and when our Leader wants to pass thousands of new laws in a matter of half an hour or so, he jumps to his feet and objects. What’s more, he says he’s sent his objection in several copies, abroad. The Leader is sad, very sad, he’s near to tears that the opposition spokesman is so unkind about him and spreads such cruel lies; his friends are even sorrier for him, they don’t like to hear him insulted and misunderstood. They hear him when he says, “The revolver is the only way to stop a mad dog,” they hear him, for sure, and the next thing, what do you know? The hero is not at home to callers, not at home in the office, in absentia at parliament. Funny, he’s not abroad either. No, no one’s seen him. He’s just not there any longer; and it’s as if he’d never been, for none of the things he said are heard any longer either; it’s a bad dream, and the Leader doesn’t have to sleep through it any more.’

  Franco had his arm around his elder brother’s shoulder, his mouth dose to his face, his other arm gesticulating gracefully, as if conducting an invisible band of players. His words combined with Davide’s torpor to dose around him like an iron lung; though the sweat brought on by his pace was now increased by terror. Franco had always had this power to part the curtains on a scene he did not want to see.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ he whispered, with constricted voice.

  ‘Because … ah, no, I mustn’t say. Let’s just leave it that music has wings, that song floats free even through prison bars. Isn’t that poetic? I think so.

  ‘This is a country, my dear gentle brother, my dear monkey who sees no evil, hears no evil, speaks no evil, a country of cowardice and brigands, and no one in between, except, and the hero was such an exception he had to be …’ Franco gestured at his head with two fingers and thumb cocked, ‘But the bad dream isn’t quite over for our beloved Leader,’ he hit the words hard, for the benefit of a passerby, who smiled and nodded in assent. ‘Our beloved Leader – our glorious Leader –’ (this repetition for the benefit of another, who responded, ‘Long live the Leader!’) – ‘has brought to his attention that someone who can still see this nation of the blind has noticed a certain car hanging around the hero’s house, filled with big bad men. And the police, who are true servants of justice – it surprises you? But it’s so – trace it by its number, and when they find it, ooh, aah, my God in heaven, the upholstery is all bloody, and worse! It belongs to the beloved Leader’s comrades, that stout-hearted and fearless pair of white knights, the decorated killers, the implacable, the irresistible duo,’ Franco dropped his voice till almost inaudible, ‘Dumini, Volpi, famed for the elimination of their country’s enemies abroad, and for their service in the nation’s gangs – and gaols – and not least, for their closeness to the beloved, glorious – Long may he live! – Leader of the people.’

  Davide was shaking his head, his teeth almost chattering. Franco released him from his embrace, tapped him on the chest and dropped his tone of ghastly jocularity. As they went up the stairs to the apartment on the first floor of the block, he gripped Davide by the arm, and said, ‘For God’s sake, and for your children’s, don’t touch the case. Let the woman alone. Don’t interfere. Her son’s got mixed up in it, probably demonstrated yesterday with the Socialists outside the Town Hall. Wrote the hero’s name on a wall somewhere. She shouldn’t have approached you. She could compromise you. And if they look into you – you could be in deep water. Her boy will be back. Or he’ll vanish without a trace. Either way, there’s nothing you can do. You know now not to play the hero, don’t you? Don’t play your old tune, will you? You learned what happens. Do you hear me, nothing can be done, by you, or by anyone else.’

  Davide was walking now down the street which intersected with the woman’s shop; she still gave sheets of pink blotting paper for change, and a photograph of her son was pinned up on the shelf behind her till; the news was that he was in the army, but Davide was ashamed to inquire what that report concealed. He never went into her shop.

  He was keeping to the awnings, and a passing squall, just as he had foreseen on his departure from Dolmetta that morning, approached from the interior and sailed grandly overhead, steeping the baked stones of the port in a blissful freshness for an interval; the snails would be coming out, he thought. Even so, his head hurt, it felt as if the planes of his skull were pinching and thumbing his eyes from behind, in the sockets, as if to pop them out. So he turned into Gambrinus’s and sat himself down at a small ironwork and marble table, and asked for some water.

  The worst of it was that his headaches made him so angry; it was a symptom of the poison that was killing him by degrees. Lead dripped into the centres of affection and hardened there, producing spasms of derangement; then the nervous system learned to skirt the new
obstacle, and Davide’s habitual mildness would return. He would groan when he realised, afterwards, how he had raged at Maria Filippa. She stood by him, she never reproached him for his failings, and at times he felt even worse because she was so forbearing. His failings were many, he knew; though she would not hear of them, ‘You’re the father here, and the father must have respect’ – she would say, sternly, to forestall any apologies he might begin in front of the children.

  He put his head in his hands as the waiter brought over the glass of water; he sipped it, and dabbed some on his temples to cool them. The waiter hovered, noting his client’s discomfort, but Davide shook his head, ‘Just a passing weakness. The heat.’ He waved inconsequentially towards the outdoor light, where the small rain was falling.