The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  In fact, rather than the old streetwalker, who still costs five hundred lire, the seminal evacuator might even prefer the rapid contact with the pederast, who is willing to pay him. Not much, because the pederast is usually a crafty, cheap man, but he does pay.

  Second: the decline of the profession. We’ve seen how fleeting and precarious the human relation between client and call girl is. The girl has neither the time, nor the way, nor the will to refine the quality of her performances. As for high-class prostitutes, their main goal is to establish as good a price as possible: the man who is unprepared, or even just a little shy, will feel that he can’t refuse five thousand lire. The woman will then equivocate about the price of the room. Once the act is over and he’s gone down with the girl to the front desk, the client, who had understood that everything, room and service, was included, all together, in the five thousand lire, will hear her innocently ask him to pay for the room. He doesn’t have the courage to argue in front of the desk clerk, who is looking at him with a single sarcastic eye. So he pays.

  The act itself, which was supposed to be intercourse – and for this the client has agreed on a price – becomes an operation of emptying the epididymis as rapidly as possible. Sometimes it makes you think that if the prostitutes knew by what means the torturers of the SS extracted seminal liquid from the testicles of their victims, exhausted by malnutrition and ill-treatment, to be used for who knows what laboratory experiments – if prostitutes, I repeat, knew that, they wouldn’t hesitate to do likewise.

  Even the ones who are reputedly more skilled, and during the hurried act fake excitement and orgasm, and moan, and mumble, will open their mouth – note – only to demand and stimulate a rapid ejaculation. Thus young clients don’t learn properly; in their turn they have neither the will nor the imagination necessary to ask for a larger and more complete sexual service, and the vicious circle drags on, who knows since when and who knows until when.

  There is a remedy: not, certainly, a return to the old brothels, which I continue to disapprove of and condemn, but, instead, an effort to spread a healthier sexual morality in Italy. To preach clearer and more open relations between man and woman, from puberty, liberalize the mentality of both young men and young women, teach them that a sexual relationship is a mutual joy and that as such it should be practised and granted freely. All I ask is not to have to pay that ten thousand lire every time.

  But these are debates, the goal is quite far off, and, given the way the wind blows, the worst is to be expected. I’ve tried to do what I could, in the current conditions and with current means. For example, establish a steady relation with a young call girl, setting a fixed price in advance, cultivating her, so to speak, getting her to understand my demands (which are, more or less, the demands of an average Italian client), educating her, in other words, in her trade. A vile trade, someone will say. But come on, read what Croce writes about it! The concept of a trade entails the beginning of an economy, and so is, in its sphere, a value. It produces a value, as a trade, and so, in the economic sphere, it’s neither reputable nor disreputable, neither reprehensible nor commendable.

  But this type of behaviour also includes some inevitable risks. Every human relationship requires participation, in effect, commitment, dedication, beyond giving and receiving. To put it simply, I should dedicate myself (member, feelings, thoughts) to the call girl. Absurd though it may seem, I sincerely tried that, too. With Pinuccia, for example: the madam called her Pinuccia, while she insisted on being called Giusi.

  After sex this Pinuccia, or Giusi, went to the bidet and sang the song that goes:

  From the cliff, gleaming and white,

  I talk to the sea about you every night

  And every night you entrust to the sea

  Thoughts of love for me.

  It’s a song I like, so I followed with my voice, which is fairly well trained. She said:

  ‘You like that song?’

  She spoke with a northern Emilia accent, maybe from Piatzenza, as they say in her town: stashion of Piatzenza, don’t crosh the tracks. And she continued, in her drawl, to explain to me that she liked the song, but not sung by Sergio Bruni – handsome profile, that Bruni, he hadn’t booed Villa, in Naples, he had paid his thugs to boo Villa, but now he had to pay some nice millions, to Villa, who had sued him.3

  And she had the courage to ask me, I who am of Tuscan-Ligurian lineage, transplanted to Milan, used to dealing with respectable, educated people, priding myself on speaking an unaccented Italian: ‘But you, you’re maybe a hick from the south?’

  Now, I say, how can one create a satisfying human relationship with a dog-faced woman like that? I tried to get close again to my wife, Viola, but there, too … Above all, she demands that copulation take place in the pitch-dark, more canonico et interposito lino. That is, she doesn’t take off her nightgown and she lies there, always lies there. And everything has to be resolved in a quarter of an hour at most, because she has to sleep afterward, and read before, and see to the house and the children for the rest of the day. All things considered, I really don’t know which way to turn. The other night I was overcome by despair, my nerves were tense, my blood was pulsing, and I had to do something.

  As twilight falls, Viale Maino is already crowded with streetwalkers, standing at their posts, waiting for cars. And I drove up and down the entire avenue three times. At first sight, only an embarrassment of riches. But in reality …

  For example, the one who kept slightly to the shadows, away from the street light, seemed pretty. But can one, honestly, venture to nod to a woman standing in the shadows? What if later, in the light, she reveals some outrageous physical defect? Others remained clearly visible: one, with her coat open, showed the swell of her breasts, which seemed promising. But can one trust what one sees of breasts with the shirt on? Who protects us from the tricks of bras, corsets, girdles, elastics and straps that, once released, often reveal devastation?

  Another had a figure that seemed to me, all in all, acceptable, but her face was obtuse and hostile, so I preferred not to signal to her. I drove slowly, staying near the edge of the pavement, three times up and down. But, however slowly you go, there’s no way of looking carefully, of reflecting on the pros and cons, of making a considered decision. These things are done better on foot. So I returned to Via Borgogna, parked the car, glanced at the photographs outside the Maschere, where they do stripteases, traversed the porticoes, crossed the temporary bridge that passes over the excavation for the metro in Piazza San Babila, and arrived at the porticoes of the Corso.

  The traffic is on a detour there, too, because of the metro, and since at that hour the creak of the buckets and the breathing of the cement mixers ceases, I heard no more than the tapping heels of people walking. Women walk rapidly, alert and sullen, all alike, whether they’re hookers or not. But I know how to distinguish them: that one, for example, maybe would have the face, but besides her purse she’s carrying a package, so she isn’t. The rule doesn’t admit exceptions: package plus purse – to be excluded. Also a book, a magazine, a Sunday supplement. The hooker on the job has always and only the small purse.

  Not only: while others keep their eyes fixed straight ahead and head high, when a prostitute meets up with you she turns her gaze slightly and gestures with her head. In this way I picked out three or four. One tall, shapely, with a shiny black leather coat; another smaller and round, plump, the way I like, with teased hair and a flared skirt; a third very thin and long, with a horsey face.

  I followed the small one; she noticed and slipped off along Via Agnello. She stopped in front of a shop window and when I was close she said immediately, ‘Will you give me ten thousand?’ I kept going, and from Via San Paolo arrived again at the porticoes. There I immediately found a buxom brunette who advanced at a comfortable pace, with a nice smile. She looked at me, and I immediately said ‘Good evening, Miss.’ She turned, faced me and tried to respond, but with gestures more than with her voice. From her thr
oat issued a faint, dull sound, ‘Uuuh, uuuuh,’ and yet she didn’t abandon her friendly smile. She held her hand open, as if to say five thousand. ‘Eeeh, annn, eh!’ she said again.

  I was stunned, in disbelief that a deaf-mute could be a streetwalker in the centre of Milan. I turned on my heels and went back over the bridge, having decided to get in the car and go home. But the car wasn’t there. I retraced all of Via Borgogna, went back, turned on to the side street, went as far as the Rivoli cinema, asked the parking attendant, but he didn’t even answer, because I leave the car in authorized spaces only, and that wasn’t one. In other words, it had been stolen.

  I went into a bar, asked for a phone token, dialled the number of the police station in the area. A blonde at the counter was looking at me, but I had other things on my mind. A southern voice answered, asking for the number of the licence plate, and assuring me that they would investigate. But for now all I could do was go home.

  There was no one left on the Corso at that dead hour between eight and nine, when people are having dinner and haven’t yet emerged for the evening’s entertainment. Only the streetwalkers are out, bolder now, hips swaying, majestic as galleons. That night they were even humming; a couple spoke to me but I kept going. The windows of Rinascente, the Galleria: in front of the cafés some painted women, sitting with their knees on display. La Scala, with the usual merry-go-round of trams, taxis, cars.

  But I didn’t feel like waiting for the tram on the narrow traffic island, in line with motionless, tense people. Trams went by, full of tired and drawn faces. I kept walking on Via Verdi, turned into Monte di Pietà, then along Via Cusani. Going off to the left was Via Rovello, with the Piccolo Teatro (to which I have a subscription) at the end and in the middle the regular prostitutes, the usual handful, the same for the past ten years, in position, like vultures. Since at that point the street is dark, they solicit you out loud, and if you don’t answer they insult you. I passed by almost at a run.

  Maybe in that bar in Largo Cairoli … But there was no one. I stood there a while, looking at the posters outside the Olimpia, the photos at Le Roi, then I headed towards the castle. Farther on, the gates of the park were locked, and around it, at regular intervals, other women loiter. There are some pretty ones, and I didn’t fail to look at them, and let them know I was looking. But none answered: in that area there are no hotels nearby, so the streetwalkers accept only clients with cars.

  I thought of my car, stolen, so without hesitation I cut across towards the bridge over the Ferrovie Nord tracks. There are always some young people in blue jeans and soldiers loitering there, talking and laughing. But as soon as they saw me they went silent and began to look at me. I seemed to hear a psst-psst. I went down the steps with my heart in my throat, and now I was in Via Venti Settembre. At one time certain hookers used to be stationed there, but I noticed that after the murder of Maria Maglia, who worked precisely in that area, they don’t stick around after dark.

  My feet began to hurt and a cold wind had risen. I was worried about my sinusitis, but still I kept walking. After the barracks on Via Mascheroni there is a dark avenue that borders the dirt road next to Leone XIII, a school for priests; it also has a large theatre that shows movie-club films (I’ve been a few times, because Father Nazzareno Taddei is an intelligent person, I’m the first to acknowledge it). And right there are thousand-lire women, who usually get in the car but will also agree to follow you on to the dirt road beyond the barbed-wire fence, which is broken in one spot.

  I went with a fifty-four-year-old (so she told me) and we had a quickie against the wall of the Leone. Since shadows were passing, perhaps voyeurs, I preferred that she do everything, covering her head with an edge of my raincoat. My legs were shaking when I finally got home. That evening my mother-in-law and my mother had come to visit Viola, who is expecting the happy event any day now. They had already had dinner, and when I sat down in front of the bowl of cold soup, they continued their conversation. I thought it best not to say a word, for now, about the stolen car. They seemed happy and excited, all three of them.

  They asked my opinion: whether it made sense to call the fourth-born Tito, and to combine the child’s baptism with Cesarino’s First Communion.

  ‘Il peripatetico’

  First published in the anthology L’amore in Italia: antologia di racconti italiani (Sugar, 1961) and later included in Il peripatetico e altre storie (Rizzoli, 1976).

  Anna Banti

  1895–1985

  She was born in Florence with the name Lucia Maria Pergentina Lopresti. In 1916 she sent Roberto Longhi, an art historian who was her teacher in high school, a letter signed ‘Anna Banti’, the name of a relative who intrigued her. The following year she took part in an initiative to fabricate toys made in Italy, an alternative to German imports. These creations were also signed ‘Anna Banti’. She gained a degree in art history and began teaching and publishing essays on art. In 1924 she married Longhi, who was to establish himself as a legendary connoisseur, critic and scholar of Italian painting. In 1930 she sent a short story by ‘Anna Banti’ to a magazine contest. She explained her decision: ‘I was Roberto Longhi’s wife and I didn’t want to expose myself or him with that name. Nor did I want to use my childhood name … so I chose Anna Banti, which is my real name, given to me neither by my family nor my husband.’ Thus was born Anna Banti, author of numerous novels, story collections and critical works whose official profession remained ‘housewife’. Hers was a twinned passion for art and literature. She wrote biographies of Claude Monet, Fra Angelico and Matilde Serao, the first Italian woman to found and direct a major newspaper. Artemisia, her best-known novel, is about the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, whose talent flourished when women had no place in the art world. An enthusiastic translator from both French and English, Banti brought works by Virginia Woolf, William Makepeace Thackeray, Jane Austen and Colette into Italian. In 1952 she won the Viareggio Prize for the collection Le donne muoiono (The Women Are Dying). This story, about a nameless woman, appeared in her last collection. Composed in the third person, but palpably autobiographical, it is essential to understanding Banti’s attitude – divided and doubled – towards her creative formation, her words, herself.

  Miss

  Translated by Jenny McPhee

  Twenty-three years old seemed ancient to her, as if the sun were already setting on her life. Other people, however, didn’t see it that way. So for decorum’s sake, and because she was well mannered, she acted as if she were still eighteen, her laughter disguising how terribly old she truly felt. She had already been quite alarmed when, as soon as she turned twenty, her name – the one she had been baptized with and used in childhood – was replaced, both at home and elsewhere, by ‘Miss’. It was the toga praetexta worn by unmarried girls until … she shrugged off the alternative, but knew, at least in the eyes of others, that she would be unable to avoid her candidature for this ‘promotion’. And it greatly disturbed her.

  Her ally was a troubled passion: desired, consented to, abstractly imperious. One does not love in order to dominate and conquer life – life being just a silent sequence of woes, interrupted, but not mitigated, by ephemeral sparks of distressing exaltation. Miracles were rare, yet they did happen – the approaching step of her Beloved seemed to be one. In fact, here he is, deigning to exist. For an hour – or for a few minutes – they take a walk together, words flowing between them, but then perhaps he’s a bit thoughtless and his words hit her straight in the heart, stab her even, but it doesn’t matter, blood coagulates. Like a terrified soldier pretending to be brave, she grows rigid with reserve.

  It could not, and did not, last. What are three years of a rapidly beating heart, of abandoned hopes, of constant disillusionment? A flash of lightning. Her bitterest ordeal, very nearly unbearable, was when convalescing she’d hoped that by appearing so delicately beautiful to him, with her feverish eyes and wan complexion, he would become tender towards her. Before going out, she had look
ed at herself in the mirror – a shepherdess, wearing an aquamarine dress that made her seem transparent, and a broad-brimmed straw hat blooming with violets. A fiasco. The Adored One was frowning and impatient. It’s over, she said to herself, fighting back stinging tears; her voice – a violin, according to university friends – babbling away in an attempt to casually avoid the ever-present and catastrophic threat of a permanent goodbye. But apparently today he is in a hurry, so the the goodbye is quick but not definitive. Her parched lips refuse to open even to utter a timid ‘See you tomorrow’; and then she is alone, the light silk of her dress weighing upon her like lead, her fever back.

  A slow summer of separation, a rare letter now and again, then final exams, graduation (‘Ah, yes, I had forgotten I graduated’). This display of indifference to academic affairs is de rigueur. He stops to light a cigarette, inhales: ‘Congratulations.’ Why bother taking another walk together? Ah, here it is: ‘You must do me a favour. I have been given a Maltese puppy and promised him to my friends as a Christmas present. Would you look after him for a couple of months? You might even have fun. He’s cute.’

  In a drawer, she found an old postcard-sized photograph, a document of an almost majestic unhappiness, the heraldic undertaking of an accepted defeat. She remembered the empty hours during the autumn in which she was terribly free; it made no difference to her if she stayed home or went out, if she was alone or with a friend. An acquaintance passing through town, a public park, an amateur photographer (who was he?), the latter a necessity because the inevitable is concretized in an image. The acquaintance chattered on unheard; adoring and adored, the puppy, on a leash, followed his temporary mistress with tiny steps. The shadows under the trees favoured, as in a half-sleep, tenuous hopes; perhaps the deal won’t stick, to deprive her of the animal would be too cruel. He had said: ‘Give him back to me whenever you want, sometime during the week before Christmas.’ She’d hoped he’d forget the whole thing; the wretched cling to anything. If he lets me keep Toby, we could meet again, if only to play with the puppy. She knew she was deluding herself, but didn’t dare deny herself this little reprieve.