Her Side of the Story E-Book

Alba de Céspedes

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 898

Beschreibung

A captivating feminist classic about a woman's struggle for independence in fascist Italy, from the author of Forbidden Notebook - with an afterword by Elena Ferrante __________ 'Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere' Annie Ernaux 'One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers' Jhumpa Lahiri 'Alba de Céspedes wrote novels in the 1940s and 1950s that were radically contemporary, both then and now... A courageous novel, beautifully imagined and written' Washington Post __________ Alessandra has always wanted more than life offered her. Growing up in a crowded apartment block in 1930s Rome, she watches as her mother's dreams of becoming a concert pianist are stifled by an unsatisfying marriage. When her father's traditional family try to make Alessandra marry at a young age, she rebels against the future they imagine for her. Soon she falls passionately in love with Francesco, an anti-fascist professor, and a new world seems to open up. Working for the underground resistance, she tastes the independence that she has yearned for. But what will it take for her to break free from society's expectations, and live on her own terms? Drawing on Alba de Céspedes's own experiences in Italy's wartime uprising, Her Side of the Story is a feminist chronicle of fierce and unforgettable power.

Leseprobe

iii

Her Side of the Story

ALBA DE CÉSPEDES

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY JILL FOULSTON

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY ELENA FERRANTE

PUSHKIN PRESS

v

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

—Alone, Edgar Allan Poe (1875)vi

Contents

Title PageEpigraphA Note from the TranslatorHer Side of the StoryAfterwordAbout the AuthorsCopyright

1

A Note from the Translator

By the time she wrote Her Side of the Story (Dalla parte di lei), Alba de Céspedes was already an extremely successful writer, but she struggled with the ambitious novel she originally hoped to call Confessione di una donna, or Confessions of a Woman. She wanted to astonish the critics with her style—though not at the cost of diluting her message. For, as Melania Mazzucco points out in her introduction to the Italian edition, de Céspedes intended to act as the defender of women. Like Flaubert, she could say proudly of her protagonist: Alessandra, sono io, I am Alessandra.

The first Italian edition was published in August 1949. Later, finding the novel “too rich” and considering the American public “very simple,” de Céspedes rigorously edited the Italian text for the English-language translation by Frances Frenaye. There were then further cuts (by de Céspedes herself and several editors at different imprints) before the book finally appeared in 1952, in shortened form, under the title The Best of Husbands. In Italy, the original version was only superseded in 1994, when Mondadori published an edition that reflected the first edit De Cespedes had undertaken. It is that version, shorter than the original Italian edition, but much longer than Frenaye’s English translation, that is translated here for the first time.

The novel opens around 1939, although perhaps because very few dates appear, and because it is such an intensely personal narrative, it 2can be difficult to correlate the plot with historical events. In June 1940, under the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Italy joined the Second World War as one of the Axis powers allied with Germany. The war dominates the second half of the novel, and although Mussolini is never mentioned by name, the “arrogant voice” that is frequently to be heard on the radio is his.

During the first three years of the war, Italy was fighting alongside Germany and pursuing its own imperialistic ambitions in the Mediterranean and Africa. Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Rome came under attack, and the novel’s heroine and narrator, Alessandra, witnesses the aftermath of the Allied bombardment of July 19 that left horse carcasses littering the pavements of Rome’s San Lorenzo neighborhood. A few days later, Mussolini was arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III. Alessandra recalls, “Even though I was pleased not to be afraid anymore, I burst into tears, humiliated to think that the arrogant voice had truly been the voice of my time and my era.”

But the war was not over. In September 1943, Italy signed an Armistice with the Allies, and Germany occupied most of the north and center of the country. Italy then declared war on Germany, initiating what was in effect a civil war within Italy itself, much of it conducted by partisans against the German occupiers. Rome was finally liberated by American forces in June of 1944, and in April of 1945 Mussolini was killed by partisans. Italy’s long-awaited freedom was achieved, but the country had now fallen within the American sphere of influence, something to which de Céspedes, with her Cuban ancestry, reacted with anger and regret. Speaking of Italy’s new relationship with the United States, she protested, “I can’t … understand how a nation could reduce itself to being a branch of a supermarket.”

a few notes on terminology. Early in the novel, Lydia and the Captain meet in a latteria and later Tullio waits in a latteria for Alessandra 3and Tomaso. A latteria was a small neighborhood shop selling milk and other dairy products, and it also offered coffee and light meals. Although there is no direct equivalent, the nearest term in English would be a milk bar.

The word babbo is an alternative to papà, the latter essentially French in origin and much used in the north. Historically, the upper classes preferred to use papà while the rest of the population—particularly in Tuscany—preferred babbo. Both words are now widely used by children, with babbo being marginally more popular in the south.

As an Anglo-American, Hervey would more typically have spelled his name with an “a,” as Harvey. Hervey is actually the phonetic representation of the Italian pronunciation of Harvey, and for this edition the author’s original spelling has been preserved.

—Jill FoulstonLondon, March 20234

5

Her Side of the Story

Imet francesco minelli for the first time in Rome, on October 20, 1941. I was working on my dissertation, and my father had been nearly blind for a year because of a cataract. We were living in one of the new apartment blocks on the Lungotevere Flaminio, where we’d found a place soon after my mother’s death. I considered myself an only child, even though before my birth my brother had come into the world, revealed himself to be a boy wonder, and drowned at the age of three. There were pictures of him all over the house: many of them showed him nearly naked, protected only by a white undershirt sliding off his bare rounded shoulders; in another portrait he was lying on his stomach on a bearskin. My mother’s favorite was a small picture in which he was standing, one hand reaching for a piano keyboard. She maintained that had he lived he would have been a great composer, another Mozart. His name was Alessandro, and when I was born, a few months after his death, I was burdened with the name Alessandra in order to perpetuate his memory, and in the hope that some of the virtues that had left an indelible memory of him would show up in me. This connection with my dead brother was a heavy burden during my early childhood years. I could never shake it off: when I was scolded, it was to point out how, despite my name, I’d betrayed the hopes invested in me, not to mention that Alessandro would never have dared act in such a way. Even when I got good grades at school or demonstrated diligence and loyalty, the implication was that half the credit should be given to Alessandro, who was expressing himself through me. This suppression of my personality made me grow up reserved and unsociable, and I later mistook as faith in my own gifts what was really only my parents’ fading memory of Alessandro.

I, however, attributed an evil power to the spiritual presence of my brother. My mother communicated with him by means of a three-legged 6 table and a medium called Ottavia. I had no doubt that he had found a home in me but—contrary to my parents’ belief—only in order to suggest unacceptable deeds, wicked thoughts, and unwholesome desires.

So I gave in, concluding it was useless to fight them. Alessandro represented what for other children my age was the devil or an evil spirit. There he is, I’d think. He’s in charge. I thought he might take control of me as he did the little table.

I was often left alone at home in the care of an old servant, Sista. My father was at the office, and my mother went out every day for hours. She was a piano teacher, and I realized later that she could have shown considerable talent if she’d been able to direct it towards art instead of the requirements and tastes of the wealthy middle classes, whose children she had to teach. Before leaving she’d prepare some diversion to amuse me while she was out. She knew I didn’t like loud, violent games, so she had me sit in a wicker chair just my size, and on a low table beside me she set out scraps of cloth, shells, and daisies to thread into bracelets or necklaces, along with some books. Under her affectionate guidance, I soon learned to read and write quite well; yet, as if to spite me, even this precocity was attributed to the influence of Alessandro. In fact, I thought and expressed myself like someone twice my age, and my mother wasn’t at all surprised, because she mentally replaced my age with what Alessandro’s would have been, and let me read books suited to more mature girls. Yet I now see that it was an excellent choice of books and informed by a sound education.

After kissing me fiercely, as if we were going to be apart for a long time, she would go out and leave me by myself. A clattering of plates came from the kitchen; Sista’s thin shadow moved along the hallway. At dusk Sista would shut herself in her room in the dark, and I’d hear her saying the rosary. That’s when I’d leave my books, shells, and daisy chains and go off to explore the house, knowing I wouldn’t be caught.

I wasn’t allowed to turn on any lights because we lived in the strictest economy. I’d start by wandering around in the half-light, proceeding 7 slowly and holding my arms out like a sleepwalker. I’d go up to the furniture, solid, old pieces which at that hour seemed to rise up from their quiet stillness to become mysterious presences. Spurred on by a feverish curiosity, I’d open doors, rummage through drawers, and finally, seeing the light retreat from the dark rooms, I’d crouch down in a corner, giddy with fear and delight.

In the summer, I’d go and sit on the balcony overlooking the communal courtyard, or I’d stand on a little bench and look out the window. I never chose the window facing the street: I preferred the one opening onto the small wisteria-clad courtyard that separated our house from a convent. The swallows swooped gladly into the shade of the courtyard and, with the first screech, I’d get up as if called and run to the window. I’d stay there watching the birds, the clouds’ shifting patterns, and the life of that secret community of women filtered through lighted windows. The nuns walked quickly, throwing large Chinese shadows on the white blinds at the convent windows. The swallows’ cruel shrieks were lashings that stirred my imagination. In my corner at the dark window, I quietly plundered everything around me. I defined this ineffable state of mind as “Alessandro.”

I would then take refuge with Sista, who sat near the stove in the kitchen, flushed by the burning coals. My mother would come back and turn on the light: the old servant and I would emerge from the shadows, stupefied by darkness and silence. My mute conversations with the piano and the swallows were so tiring they gave me dark circles under my eyes. Taking me in her arms and apologizing for her absence, my mother would tell me about the young daughters of a princess, Donna Chiara and Donna Dorotea, to whom she’d been teaching music for years without results.

My father came home fairly late, as southerners do. We’d hear his key turn in the lock—a long, thin key that was always sticking out of his vest pocket—and then the sharp click of the light switch. We’d be in the kitchen, where my mother was helping Sista prepare supper: but 8 as soon as she heard the sound of the lock, before her husband even entered the house, she’d hurriedly smooth her hair and go through to the dining room, sitting down with me on a hard sofa. She’d pick up a book and pretend to be engrossed in it. Then she’d ask, “Is that you, Ariberto?,” her bright voice expressing joyful surprise. During my early years, my mother put on this little comedy every night, and for a long time it was incomprehensible to me. I couldn’t understand why she frantically opened a book if she couldn’t keep on reading it. All the same, I remained fascinated by her call ringing through the house harmoniously every evening, making my father’s ugly name sound romantic.

My father was a strong, tall man with a crew cut. When I was an adult I came across some pictures of him in his youth, and I could see how he might have been successful with women. He had deep-set, very black eyes, and full, sensual lips. He always wore dark clothes, maybe because he was in the civil service. He spoke little, contenting himself with a disapproving shake of his head, while my mother spoke animatedly. She’d describe things she’d seen or heard in the street, spicing the story with clever observations, and enriching it with her imagination. My father would look at her and shake his head.

They often argued, but there were no scenes or noisy quarrels. They spoke quietly, skillfully launching sharp, biting verbal blows. I’d watch them, dismayed, though I didn’t understand what they were arguing about. If it hadn’t been for their angry expressions, I wouldn’t even have known they were fighting.

When this happened, Sista, who was always listening behind the door, would come and get me. She’d take me to the kitchen and force me to recite the rosary or the litany. Sometimes, to distract me, she’d tell me the story of the Madonna of Lourdes, who appears to the shepherdess Bernadette, or the one in Loreto who travels in a house carried by angels.

meanwhile, my parents went to their bedroom and shut the door. The silence thickened around me and our old servant. I worried that I’d 9 see, in the doorway, one of those spirits summoned by Ottavia on Fridays, which my childish imagination pictured as creaking white skeletons.

“Sista, I’m frightened!” I’d say, and Sista would ask, “Of what?” But her voice was uncertain, and she kept looking towards my mother’s room, as if she, too, were frightened.

They spoke softly, and I couldn’t hear a single word. Silence was a sign of the storm, spreading along the dark hallway and into the four rooms of our house: an ambiguous silence that seeped out from under the closed door and saturated the air, insidious as a gas leak. Sista, hands trembling, let her knitting fall to her knees. At last, showing signs of impatience and anxiety, she’d take me to my room, as if dragging me to safety, and begin hurriedly undressing me, tucking me under the sheets. I obeyed, mutely letting her turn out the lamp, defeated by the silence coming from the master bedroom.

Often after these distressing evenings, my mother would tiptoe into my room at night, kneel beside my bed, and frantically clasp me to her. She didn’t turn on the light, but in the dark I made out her white nightgown. I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her. It was an instant: she would soon escape and I’d close my eyes, exhausted.

My mother’s name was Eleonora. I inherited my blond hair from her. She was so blond that when she sat against the light from the window, her hair seemed white, and I was astonished to see it, as if I’d had a vision of her future old age. Her blue eyes and her transparent skin came from her Austrian mother, a fairly well-known actress who had abandoned the stage to marry my Italian grandfather, an artillery officer. In fact, my mother had been given that name to remind my grandmother of playing Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House,which she performed on gala evenings. Two or three times a year, on the rare afternoons she took off, my mother would have me sit beside her and she’d open the big box labeled “photographs” to show me pictures of my grandmother. She looked extremely elegant in her costumes, wearing large 10 hats adorned with feathers or strings of pearls in her loose hair. I could hardly believe she was really my grandmother, our relative, and could have come to visit us, entering through the front door of the building, which was forever ringing with the sound of the hammer of the porter, who was also a shoemaker. I knew the titles of the plays she’d been in by heart, and the names of the characters she’d played. My mother wanted me to have some knowledge of the theater, so she told me the stories of all the tragedies, read the most important scenes to me, and was cheered when I remembered the names of the characters as if they were family members. Those were wonderful times. Sista listened to these tales from her seat in the corner, hands under her apron, as if she wanted to vouch for the truth of such marvelous stories with her presence.

In the same box there were photos of my father’s relatives, small landowners from Abruzzo, little more than peasants. Women with ample, tightly corseted bosoms, hair parted and combed into two heavy curls falling on either side of a solid face. There was also a picture of my paternal grandfather in a dark jacket and floppy bow tie.

“They’re good people,” my mother said, “country folk.” They often sent us sacks of flour or baskets of tasty stuffed figs; but none of my aunts was named Ophelia or Desdemona or Juliet, and I wasn’t such a glutton that I preferred an almond tart to Shakespeare’s romantic tragedies. So, in tacit agreement with my mother, I looked down on our Abruzzese relatives. We opened their baskets, covered in rough canvas and sewn shut, with no interest and in fact with something like tolerance, despite our poverty. Sista was the only one who appreciated the contents, jealously stashing them away.

Sista was absolutely, if nervously, devoted to my mother. She was used to serving in poor homes where the women used coarse, vulgar language and confined their interests to their larders and kitchens, so she had instantly fallen for her new mistress. When my father wasn’t there, she followed her around the house and returned to her own work at night to make up for lost time. If she heard her playing the piano, 11 she quickly abandoned everything else, pulled off her apron, and ran to the living room; she’d listen to scales, études, and exercises just as she would sonatas.

She liked sitting quietly in the shadows: throughout my childhood, the darkness was always brightened by the shining eyes of this woman from Nuoro. She didn’t say much—I don’t think I ever heard her talk at length—and seemed bound to our house by the irresistible attraction my mother’s person exercised over her, revealing to her a world she’d never known, not even in her brief youth. So although she was very religious, she stayed with us despite the fact that my mother never went to mass and didn’t raise me according to a strict Catholic morality. I think she felt that living with us was sinful; she may even have confessed it and promised to end it, but she found herself increasingly mired in this habitual sin. When my mother wasn’t there, she must have felt the house like a vein drained of blood: the long, lonely hours of the afternoon went by wearily. If her mistress was even slightly late, she instantly began to worry that, distracted and absent-minded as she was, she’d been run over by a tram or a carriage: she’d imagine her body lying inert on the paving stones, her forehead pale, hair slick with blood. I knew that a painful yelp was stuck in her throat as she sat still and silent, fingering her rosary beads or warming her hands at the brazier. Yet an unlikely sense of decorum stopped her from waiting for my mother at the window. At such times, I, too, was seized by a chilling, irrational fear and clung to Sista’s side. Maybe she thought she would have to go back to working for fat ladies, excellent housewives, and I would be sent to my grandmother in Abruzzo. The light fell gradually, drowning us in waves of darkness. Those were exceptionally sad moments. At last Mamma would return, announcing, “Here I am!” from the doorway as if responding to our desperate call.

Sista also served my father loyally and meekly. She served him and respected him: he was a man, the head of the house. In fact, if she needed anything, she found it easier to ask him, because she recognized him 12 as her own kind: humble, inferior. I discovered later that she was aware of his sordid affairs—given the thousands of clues—but they didn’t really bother her since she had seen so many married men act like that, first in her village and then in the city.

At first, I couldn’t understand why my parents got married, nor did I ever learn how they met. My father was no different from the standard-issue petty bourgeois husband, the mediocre father, mediocre employee who repairs electrical switches in his free time on Sundays or devises clever gadgets for saving gas. His conversation was always the same: inadequate and spiteful. He often criticized the government or the bureaucracy with scant evidence, and he complained about office quarrels in the usual jargon. There was nothing spiritual in his physical appearance, either. He was tall and heavy, and his broad shoulders made him physically overbearing. His typically Mediterranean black eyes were sweet and moist, like September figs. His hands alone were uncommonly lovely—he wore a gold serpent ring on his right—and their shape and color recalled some noble, ancient race. His soft, smooth skin burned as if it held rich blood captive. It was this secret heat that revealed to me, embarrassingly, what had propelled my mother towards him. Their room adjoined mine and sometimes in the evening I’d stay up, alert, kneeling on my bed with my ear against the wall. I was consumed by jealousy, and it seemed that “Alessandro” really was behind my base actions.

Once, when I was very small, not yet ten years old, I surprised my parents embracing in the dining room. They were facing the window, with their backs to me. One of my father’s hands was resting on my mother’s hip, stroking it hungrily. She was wearing a thin dress and she surely felt the dry heat of his skin. But it didn’t bother her, that was clear. All of a sudden he placed his lips on the side of her neck, at the top of her shoulder. I imagined that his lips must burn like his hands: my mother’s neck was long, white, and very delicate, and it would have been easy to leave a red mark on it. I expected her to resist, to react 13 impulsively, and yet she stayed beside him, becoming lazy, slow, voracious. I turned to leave and bumped into a chair. At the noise my parents turned and looked at me in surprise. My face was tense and angry. “What’s the matter, Sandi?” my mother asked. But she didn’t come to me, didn’t hold me; we didn’t run off together. On the contrary, she let out a hollow, forced laugh. “Are you jealous?” she joked. “Are you jealous?” I didn’t reply. I stared at her, suffering bitterly.

I went back to my room, consumed with silent rancor. I could still see my father’s face: he was smiling mischievously, complicit with Mamma. For the first time, I felt he’d invaded our cozy feminine world like an insidious enemy. Before that, he’d seemed like a creature of another breed entrusted to us, his needs exclusively material. That was in fact all that seemed to interest him: we often ate leftovers from the previous meal while he had a steak: his clothes were frequently ironed, while we hung ours outside on the balcony to rid them of their most obvious wrinkles. I was therefore convinced that he lived in a different world, where the things my mother had by her example taught me to disparage had pride of place.

Around that time, I began to consider suicide, believing my mother to have betrayed our secret understanding. From then on, the idea returned countless times to tempt me, whenever I feared I’d be unable to get through a difficult moment or simply a night of uncertainty or anxiety.

The inadequacy of my religious education has always kept me from resigning myself to an unhappy life with the thought that it’s only transitory. The thought of suicide, however, which I clung to as a last resort, was a great help during difficult times. Thanks to that thought, I managed to appear cheerful and carefree even in the depths of despair. As a child, I’d imagined committing suicide by hanging myself from my window, which had a grate over it. Sometimes, though, I thought it would be enough to run away from home, leaving at night and walking, walking, until I fell down exhausted and lifeless. In any event, 14 that wasn’t feasible since my father locked the door every night before going to bed: three turns of the key.

Sleep calmed my desperation and my intentions. Nevertheless, during that period I often begged Sista to take me to church. I was like my mother, with her sudden impulses; sometimes for three or four days in a row she, too, would go to church at dusk, kneeling and singing, captivated by the music. But I prayed to the Lord to let me die. Nor did I consider my invocation a sacrilege: in our huge apartment block, God was called on to defend the most unspeakable cases. Years later, word got around that the lover of the woman on the second floor had pneumonia and was close to death. We also heard that the woman had urgently requested from the nearby parish a triduum, three days of prayer, “according to her intent,” which by now everyone knew very well: that her lover should live, become strong again, so that she could go on betraying her husband with him. All the women in the building attended the triduum. The woman from the second floor knelt in the front pew, her face hidden in her hands. The others refrained from crowding around her, in order to show respect for her modesty, her reputation, and her secret: they came to the service as if they’d just wandered in, one near the holy water stoup, another in front of a side altar. All of them, however, addressed God with the same fervor, indignant that he should continue to make the poor woman suffer.

I’d leave the house towards evening, hanging on to Sista’s hand. I felt serious and contrite as I walked, as if nursing a vow of holiness instead of some reprehensible desire. Passing through the gray streets of our neighborhood, we headed for the church, rising sleek and white between the large apartment buildings along the Tiber. It was the outer limit of our walks, as if the river marked the boundary of our domain and, with it, our freedom.

On the Lungotevere in the happy season, the plane trees were crowded with sparrows, and at sunset, as they flitted around capriciously looking for the best branch to sleep on, the old trees hummed 15 like beehives and quivered with the birds’ short, restless flights. I wished I could linger and look at the trees, but instead, arm in arm with Sista, I plunged into the dark cavern of the church. The greasy smell of human bodies and the oily aroma of incense stagnated in the aisles, and the shadow to which Sista and I were sentenced by my mother’s absence loomed over us. I barely knew the first prayers of our religion, but that reddish half-light, the hymns, and the strange scent immediately awakened my faith, igniting it like a flame.

I watched my hands tremble in the light from the candles. I stared at them intently, hoping to discover the blood of the stigmata; I felt my face growing thinner, like Santa Teresa’s on a statue my mother liked. Little by little, I lost the weight of my flesh and rose into the pure air of heaven, stars sparkling between my fingers. A sweet, raging river of words flooded my breast along with the organ music. They were the words my grandmother had recited in the theatre, the most beautiful words I knew, and with them I addressed God. He responded in the same language, and from then on I learned to recognize him in words of love rather than in altarpieces.

Everyone in the church looked serious and sad. They felt no joy in prayer or song. I loved them and wanted them to be happy, and I knew that all they needed was to be taught how to pray in the language of love. I could have saved them, but I didn’t dare: I was held back by the thought of Sista, who considered me merely Alessandra, a child. Everyone thought of me as only a child. But when the service was over and the last notes of the organ propelled us along the Tiber, the swallows recognized me and greeted me joyfully, as they greeted God.

we lived on Via Paolo Emilio, in a large apartment block built during the reign of King Umberto I. The entrance was narrow and dark and collected dirt, because the porter, as I mentioned, was busy working as a shoemaker, and his wife was lazy. 16

The gray spiral staircase was lit only by a skylight high overhead. Despite the secretive, somewhat disreputable appearance of the entrance and the stairs, the large block was inhabited by middle-class people of modest means. One rarely saw men during the day: they were almost all at work. Dispirited by the constant struggle to make ends meet, they left early and came home at fixed times, a newspaper tucked in their pocket or under their arm.

The large block, therefore, seemed to be inhabited by women only. It was in fact their undisputed territory, they went up and down the dark staircase innumerable times throughout the day, with their shopping bags empty, full, with a bottle of milk wrapped in newspaper, taking children to school with their baskets and lunchboxes, bringing them home, their blue smocks peeking out from under coats that were too short. They climbed the stairs, never looking around; they knew the writing on the walls by heart, and the wood on the bannister was bright with the constant polishing of their hands. Only girls went down quickly, drawn by the fresh air, their shoes clattering over the steps like hail against a window. I don’t remember much about the boys who lived in the building. Early on, they were rough kids who spent the entire day in the street and played soccer in the parish garden; then, when still very young, they were taken on by their father’s employer. And soon they assumed their father’s appearance, schedule, and habits.

Yet although the building looked sad and abandoned from the outside, it inhaled through its large inner courtyard as if through a generous lung. Narrow walkways with rusty railings ran past the internal windows, their arrangement revealing the age and situation of the inhabitants. Some piled up old furniture out there, others kept chicken coops or toys. Ours was adorned with plants.

The women felt at ease in the courtyard, with the familiarity that unites people in a boarding school or a prison. That sort of confidence, however, sprang not so much from living under a common roof as from 17 shared knowledge of the harsh lives they lived: though unaware of it, they felt bound by an affectionate tolerance born of difficulty, deprivation, and habit. Away from the male gaze, they were able to demonstrate who they really were, with no need to play out some tedious farce.

Like a convent bell, the first slap of the shutters signaled the beginning of the day. With the dawn of the new day, they all resignedly accepted the burden of struggles renewed. They took comfort in the idea that every quotidian action was echoed by a similar action on the floor below, by another woman wrapped in yet another faded housecoat. No one dared stop, for fear of arresting the motion of some precision mechanism. Instead, everything that contributed to their lives as housewives unconsciously drew attention to its inherent, if modest, poetic value. The clothesline that ran from one balcony to the next, making it easier to hang the sheets, was like a hand reaching out solicitously. Baskets went up and down from one floor to another with a borrowed utensil, something suddenly needed. Nevertheless, the women didn’t talk much in the course of a morning. During a quiet moment, someone might come and lean on the railing to look at the sky. “The sun is so beautiful today!” In the afternoon, though, the courtyard was empty and silent. One knew instinctively that behind the windows, rooms and kitchens were being tidied. A few old ladies sat on the balcony sewing, and maids shelled peas or peeled potatoes, tossing them into a pot on the ground beside them. Towards evening, they, too, went back inside to do their chores, and that was when I was alone in the courtyard, as if it were mine by right.

In summer, after supper, the men, too, would often sit on the balcony in shirtsleeves or even pajamas; you could see their cigarettes pulsing like red fireflies in the dark. But the women barely said “Good night” to one another, and their talk was different. Sometimes they spoke about their children’s illnesses. But everyone, bored, went in early, closing their shutters, and a great black emptiness fell over the balconies. 18

My mother rarely appeared in the courtyard and only, as I said, to water the flowers. This reserve, annoying though it was to the residents, earned their admiration. So even if we were very poor, our family enjoyed special consideration because of my mother’s delicate beauty, her elegant bearing, and her unfailingly calm and serene mood.

There was no lack of pretty and confident women in the building; some even had a bit of culture, having been teachers or office employees before they married. Yet my mother exchanged nothing with them but a brisk “Good morning,” or a passing comment on the weather or the market. The only exception to this was Lydia, who lived on the floor above ours.

My mother often took me to her apartment so I could play with Fulvia, her little girl. They’d leave us alone in her room, which was always cluttered with toys, or on an internal balcony that was also used for storage. The two of them would lie on the bed, talking quietly yet so animatedly that if we interrupted them to ask for a shawl to play with, a piece of paper or a pen, they’d give us their instant permission so we’d leave them in peace. At first I didn’t understand why my mother was friends with a woman with whom she had nothing in common. But I noticed that I, too, was coming under the influence of her daughter, my only friend from then on. She seemed older than I was, though she was actually a few months younger. She was pretty, with dark hair and lively, dramatic features. She was already so developed at twelve or thirteen that men would watch her go by when we went out with Sista. She looked like her mother, who was attractive, somewhat plump, and spirited, and favored shiny low-cut silk dresses that showed off her cleavage.

Mother and daughter were almost always alone because Signor Celanti was a travelling salesman. When he came home, they felt they were hosting a stranger, and they didn’t hesitate to let him know how inconvenient it was to have him around, interrupting their usual rhythms: they ate quickly, went to bed early, were short on the phone; 19 one would pretend to have long-lasting migraines while the other wouldn’t stop playing irritating and tiresome children’s games. Their house, a frequent destination for visits from the neighbors, was abandoned the minute Lydia announced, “Domenico is back.” Ultimately, both of them—perhaps without meaning to—rendered the house so inhospitable, so untidy, and so dull that Signor Celanti soon took off again with his suitcase, but not before praising the advantages of hotel life and the cooking in northern cities.

As soon as he left, Lydia and Fulvia would become their usual selves and go back to living as they always did. Lydia resumed her endless phone calls and went out in the afternoons, trailing the pungent scent of cloves, like a scarf, all the way down the stairs.

She’d go to the Captain. It was this captain she whispered about with my mother. Fulvia and I were well aware of it. She only ever used his title: the Captain says … the Captain likes … as if she didn’t know his name or surname. But it didn’t seem strange to me at the time: other women in the building had the Engineer or the Lawyer, and we didn’t know anything else about them, either.

Lydia talked about their romantic trysts, their long walks, and the letters a young servant brought her. My mother’s heart beat faster just listening to her. When I was a little older, I realized that the visits to her friend often followed evenings when she and my father were shut in their room, and silence spread through the house.

My mother had met Lydia when she was asked to give Fulvia piano lessons. Lydia came to knock on our door, and—as often happens in such buildings, where you worried that, showing up unexpectedly, you’d find the apartment a mess and people half dressed—she refused to come in, saying what she had to say at the door. Her visit caused some astonishment: no one had ever come to see us, not even for the usual and very widespread habit of asking to borrow a little salt or a few leaves of basil. My mother really wanted her to come into the living room, a dark room that was never aired out. Lydia admitted later that she’d come only in 20 order to see my mother up close, since her beauty and her reserve provoked gossip and rumors. It was an immediate success: Lydia, fragrant with talcum powder, was cheerful, lively and colorful, like a just watered plant. My mother was lethargic and small-breasted. She was attracted to Lydia’s full, lush bosom, which seemed to have its own, independent animal life. After a few lessons, which Fulvia took reluctantly, content with learning enough to pick out the popular songs, they became friends. My mother would go to them at a set time, as she did with her other pupils. But the moment she got there, Lydia called from her room: “Come in here, Eleonora.” She’d immediately start talking, unfolding her vivid stories and offering cigarettes. And so the hours went by.

I became jealous, with the vehemence that proves the authenticity of all my feelings. One evening, encouraged by Sista, I risked going up to ask my mother to come home. It was the first time I’d taken the stairs farther than our landing: I felt I was in another world. I hesitated. Sista prodded me from below: “Be brave!” and I knocked.

“Tell my mother it’s very late,” I said with a stern frown.

Lydia smiled. “Come in,” she invited me, and when I appeared uncertain, she repeated it. “Come in and tell her yourself.”

I had hardly ever been in anyone else’s house, so I was instantly overcome with curiosity to see how they lived, what their rooms and beds were like, what objects they had on their furniture. Lydia closed the door behind me and I stood, ecstatic, in front of some prints of mythological subjects: nymphs dancing in a meadow.

“I’d like you to meet Fulvia. You’ll be friends.” It was summer. Fulvia was in her room, half naked in a long voile dress of her mother’s. Her hair was up and she had lipstick on.

“I’m Gloria Swanson,” she said, and when I didn’t understand, she initiated me into the game. “Come here,” she said, undoing my braids. “I’ll dress you up like Lillian Gish.”

Fulvia, in short, attached herself to me as Lydia had to my mother. It was due largely to our naïveté, which goaded them on, and to their 21 perhaps unconscious desire to destroy our sense of order. Excited by the amazement they awakened in us, they unveiled the secret life of the large building we’d lived in for years. When seen through Lydia and Fulvia’s tales, all those women we met every day, grazing elbows as we climbed the stairs, appeared larger than life, with romantic histories like the characters Grandmother had played onstage. We finally understood the reason for the silence that fell over the deserted courtyard every afternoon. Released from their thankless tasks and making a brave stand against the dull life they had to live, the women fled the dark rooms, the gray kitchens, the courtyard that, as darkness fell, awaited the inevitable death of another day of pointless youth. The old women, bent over their sewing, stayed behind like pillars, guarding those neat, silent houses. They didn’t betray the young women: rather, they helped them, as if they were members of the same congregation. They were bound by a silent and long-standing scorn for men’s lives, for their cruel and selfish ways, in a repressed bitterness that was handed down from one generation to the next. Every morning when they got up, men would find their coffee ready and their clothes ironed, and they’d walk out into the crisp air giving no thought to the house or their children. They left behind rooms musty with sleep, unmade beds, and cups stained with milky coffee. They always came home at a specific time, occasionally in small groups like students, having run into each other on the tram or on the Cavour Bridge, and they’d continue together, chatting. In the summer, they’d fan themselves with their hats. As soon as they came in, they’d ask, “Is supper ready?,” taking off their jackets and revealing worn suspenders. “The pasta is overcooked,” “The rice isn’t done yet,” and with comments like these they spread ill humor. Then they’d sit down in the only armchair in the coolest room to read the newspaper. They only ever gleaned news of disasters from their reading: the price of bread is rising, salaries are falling, and they always ended up saying, “We’ll have to economize.” They never found anything good in the papers. Soon they went out again. You’d hear the door slam 22 behind them just as a minute before or a minute after you’d hear doors slamming on the other floors. They came home when the house was dark, the children asleep, and the day over—spent, finished. Once more they took off their jackets, sat down by the radio, and listened to political debates. They never had a thing to say to the women, not even “How are you feeling? Tired? What a pretty dress you’re wearing.” They never told stories, didn’t enjoy conversation or jokes, and hardly ever smiled. When a man spoke to his wife, he’d say, “You all do …,” “You all say …” lumping her with his children, his mother-in-law, the maid—all of them lazy, spendthrift, ungrateful people.

Yet they had been engaged for a long time, as was traditional with middle-class southerners. The young men had waited hours and hours just to see their beloved come to the window, or to follow when she went for a walk with her mother. They’d written passionate letters. It was not uncommon for girls to wait many years before getting married, since it was difficult to find a secure job and save enough money to buy furniture. They would wait, preparing their trousseau, and trusting in the hope of love and happiness. Instead, they found life draining—the kitchen, the house, the swelling and flattening of their bodies as they brought children into the world. Gradually, beneath an appearance of resignation, the women began to feel angry and resentful about the trap they’d been lured into.

Nevertheless, they usually got by in their onerous daily existence without complaining, and they didn’t keep reminding their husbands about the young women they’d been or how they’d been promised a peaceful, happy life. In the beginning, they’d tried: they’d spent many nights crying, their husbands asleep beside them. They’d flattered and tricked, pretended to faint. The most sophisticated had tried to interest their companions in music, novels, taken them to gardens they’d strolled in when they were in love—hoping they’d understand and mend their ways. But all they did was destroy their cherished memories of those places, because there, where they’d uttered the first anxious words or exchanged 23 the first kisses, still infused with unsatisfied desire and curiosity, their husbands couldn’t find anything to say that wasn’t trite or unfeeling. During the first years of marriage, a number of women had nervous breakdowns or crying fits. Lydia said one had tried to poison herself with veronal. Ultimately some accepted that they were just too old, or had lost all their charm and appeal. But they were the ones who were newly married, or who felt constrained by a solid Catholic faith. By now, most of the others waited every afternoon for a husband to say, “I’m off,” as he slammed the door shut. Those who had grown-up girls waited for them to leave as well, with friends their own age. They’d carefully prepare a snack, put it in a bag, and send the younger children to the park with the maid. All the others went out to do what they wanted or what interested them. No one asked the women, “And what will you do?” They were left with piles of laundry to mend and baskets of clothes to iron, stuck in their miserable routine.

Life was more bearable, Fulvia said, in winter. The women, grown lazy with the cold, would sit next to a brazier or in the kitchen, watching the rain slide down the windows and caring attentively for children with seasonal illnesses. In winter, they might find some bitter reward in that snug domestic life, and at night would fall, exhausted, into a dull, obliterating sleep.

The approach of spring dotted the trees on Prati’s bleak streets with red buds, and the mimosas and honeysuckle pressed against the gates, spreading their strong scent in the air; it reached right into our old courtyard. The women would throw open the windows to hear the swallows calling as they flew back and forth with shrill invitations. Unable to hold out any longer, they broke away from worries and sorrows as if from hateful constraints. “Jesus, forgive me!” they’d say as they passed the picture of the Sacred Heart in the hall and shut themselves up in their rooms. A short time later, they emerged transformed. They all liked dresses with floral patterns on a black background, wide hats that shaded their faces. They put on lipstick, scent, and powder, sheer gloves, 24 and presented themselves like this to the older women at the windows, who barely looked at them: they recognized the perfume, the determined voice saying, “I’m going out.” And even if she happened to be their son’s wife, they didn’t dare say anything, bound by a solidarity stronger than kinship.

Their lovers, Fulvia told me—sometimes I managed to catch a glimpse of them from the window—were waiting on the street corner. It was an unnecessary precaution, since everyone in the neighborhood knew who they were. Often they were younger men of a slightly higher class. I imagined a lover would be a fairly attractive man, well dressed, romantic-looking. I was amazed to see that almost none of them were like that. But it all became clear when Fulvia told me that the lover of a mature lady on the third floor, a lawyer, always called her Baby.

My mother and I were perturbed by these stories and the mysterious presence of those men besieging our house from a distance. We’d go downstairs in silence, dreamy and distracted, and make our way back into our dark apartment, among the heavy furniture, the books, and the piano. I immediately went to lie down; my mother would turn out the light and sit on my bed. If my father called her during those moments, her answer was curt and resentful. Meanwhile, Alessandro surfaced in me, asking obscene questions and stirring up a tumult of new and unmentionable feelings. The letters Fulvia had told me about were blank as they passed before my eyes: love letters, handed on by young servant girls and the old doorman. I wished I could steal them and read them all.

My mother stayed quietly with me on my bed, and finally left without kissing me. I watched her slender figure go through the door. Not long afterwards, Sista came in and shook me out of my drowsy state.

“You’ve been with them. Say the Act of Contrition and the Ave Maria.”

then two notable events took place: my mother met the Pierce family and had her first sessions with the medium, Ottavia.

The Pierces were a family of English origin who had moved from Florence to Rome that year. The mother, an American, was very rich, 25 yet unlike many of her compatriots she didn’t waste her money on balls and frivolous parties, using it instead to buy art and aid young musicians. The Pierces lived on the Janiculum in a villa surrounded by large trees and tall palms. The view from there was enchanting: Rome’s cupolas were framed by the windows like family portraits, and you could see the Tiber flowing under the bridges like a ribbon through lace. My mother would often suggest the Janiculum Hill for our Sunday walks so my father and I could admire the villa’s grounds from a distance. Actually, we sometimes pressed on, all the way to the side gates. Then she’d let me climb up on the wall, and she’d point to the three large windows on the first floor which belonged to the music room: inside was a grand piano Mrs. Pierce had had sent from America, her harp, and an ultra-modern gramophone that changed records automatically.

It was a very beautiful villa in the classical style, with dense vegetation that made the garden impassable. I saw large, elegant dogs go by, and my mother assured me that there were also white peacocks on the lawn, though I never did see them. We were both fascinated by that mansion, but my father didn’t share our enthusiasm. Maybe he felt the instinctive dislike of the poor for conspicuous wealth. He’d hurry us along, impatient to get to a nearby trattoria and drink a lemon soda.

Every Sunday evening, he took us to a café. I always loved gelato. But having seen the grounds of the Pierces’ villa from a distance, I was brooding and distracted; I fiddled with my spoon and left most of my gelato to melt into a yellow puddle. My mother did the same: this tendency of ours to become lost in thought irritated my father beyond words. He mistakenly saw it as contempt for our situation and his inability to earn much money.

Yet neither my mother nor I ever gave a thought to the way we lived. She had worn the same dresses for years, and although she occasionally freshened them with a buckle or a ribbon—or perhaps because of this—they were now so out of fashion that wearing them seemed an ostentatious eccentricity. She didn’t own a fur coat, only a shabby black one with which to face the rigors of winter. Her beautiful hair—still 26 long and gathered in a bun on her neck—was humbled under modest hats an older woman would have rejected. Our café was extremely cheap, and our fun was limited to those Sunday walks. The two of us studied the villa for some time, if only because we were drawn to the large trees planted in groups or in couples like people, and we realized what a privilege and a delight it must be for the Pierce family to look at them. Nor was it their only privilege. My mother considered them fortunate partly because, thanks to their money, they could follow their natural spiritual inclinations without worrying about day-to-day needs.

Absorbed in these thoughts, we sat at a small iron table on a pavement crowded with more tables and people like us: mother, father, and children. From their windows in tall gray apartment blocks, residents eyed our gelato resentfully until it disappeared from our bowls. The tram grazed the pavement as it passed and each time a harsh screech of metal drowned out our listless conversation. I couldn’t stop thinking about the ivy- and moss-covered trees behind the grand gate, the damp green lawns where white peacocks walked (though I hadn’t seen them), the three tall, gabled windows, the grand piano and the harp alone in the shadows.

That piano held a great allure for my mother, and this was due not only to its beautiful sound but also to the fact that she didn’t use it for teaching scales, exercises, or tedious sonatinas. She could play it freely, as if she were in her own home. The reason she had been called to the Pierces’ villa was rather unusual. The first day she went there, the mistress of the house had not received her in a rush, like other women, who’d present her with a new student and leave after a few minutes; she had invited my mother to tea, and she spoke about her art collection, her travels, and, finally, her family. Her husband was an industrialist who collected Brazilian butterflies in his spare time, and she had a married daughter in London as well as two younger children living with her, Hervey and Arletta. The former—who wasn’t well, she said quickly—often travelled. 27

It was Arletta my mother was to concern herself with, not to teach her the piano but to awaken in her an interest in music, as other teachers were trying to interest her in painting and poetry. The girl had not an ounce of artistic sensibility, her mother quietly confided. She explained how painful that was for the other family members, who lived almost exclusively for such things. Hervey was often away from Rome in part for that very reason. In fact, he’d left only a short time ago and would be gone for about a year. Arletta’s personality had become so intrusive that it couldn’t be ignored in the daily life of the house. She flaunted her preference for popular songs over chamber music, pulp novels over the classics of literature, and it would be necessary to educate her tastes gradually. She was very young, and willing, so perhaps she was curable.

Soon afterwards Arletta came in, and, given that she could have guessed what had just been said about her, my mother felt some embarrassment when shaking her hand. She told me she had imagined her differently: lively, cheeky, prone to argument and sarcasm. But she was my age, a little chubby, and rather homely. Arletta immediately offered to take my mother to the music room, and the way she turned the gilded handle revealed the reverential fear the room aroused in her.

The vast room was in shadow. Delicate branches were intertwined outside the windows, and the afternoon sun coming through the leaves of trees that reached up to the window sills turned the room the color of the deep sea, giving it the murky aspect of an aquarium. The dark bulk of the piano rose like an island in a corner, and the harp’s subtle gold, touched by shafts of sunlight, shone through the motes of dust. There was no furniture in the large space apart from some Empire-style chairs softened by lyre-shaped backrests and two deep sofas. Near the window, four tall music stands for violins threw huge, transparent, skeleton-like shadows over the white wall. My mother and Arletta tiptoed, afraid of disturbing all that silence and order. When she reached the center of the room Arletta stopped abruptly: in the light from the window, her white arms and white dress made her look like a large jellyfish. 28

“Signora,” she said, “I’m afraid. My brother doesn’t want me to come in here.” She seemed truly intimidated. “He feels that I’m resistant to music,” she added. “In fact hostile to it. It’s not my fault. I don’t understand it. Hervey’s right. He’ll travel a long way just to hear a pianist, and when he’s in Rome you might say that he lives alone in here with his records and his violin. I know very well that he doesn’t want me to come in here, because he’s afraid I’ll leave something in the air to disturb him even when I’m not around. It’s painful for me, Signora—it’s as if I had some secret illness and were contagious. You must cure me. It might be best to start with easy things, for children. I must get better,” she said determinedly. And added softly, “Because I love my brother Hervey more than anything.”

My mother took her hands and thanked her for being frank. She opened the windows in order to dispel the room’s mysterious atmosphere, and the branch of a fir tree reached into the room like an animal that had been lying in wait. Despite that, the large room remained stubbornly impenetrable and secret, the musical instruments like characters with thoughts and feelings.

“It’s Hervey,” Arletta repeated, looking around fearfully, and my mother also began to feel uneasy. “My mother doesn’t even dare to come in and play when he’s not here.” Arletta pointed to a white satin chair next to the harp. “When my mother plays, Hervey lies on the sofa and closes his eyes to listen.”

“And you?”

“I stay in my room, or go for a walk in the garden. At some distance, so he can’t see me from the windows.”

Arletta spiritedly defended her brother when my mother boldly expressed disapproval of such bizarre behavior. “Oh, no, Signora! Hervey is an artist. He plays the violin, or he’ll sit at the piano and improvise. Mother says the pieces are wonderful. No,” she said, “it’s really my fault.” She added sadly, “Lady Randall, my sister Shirley who lives in London, plays the piano beautifully.” 29

to make space for her new student, my mother had to give up others, since she was at Villa Pierce twice a week for nearly an entire afternoon. Unaware of the special nature of these lessons, my father had advised her against this: he worried that once she lost the students who had been studying with her for years, it would be difficult to find others if the Pierce family should suddenly disappear, and the new source of income with them.

However, she showed herself not only determined but obstinate. On days when she went to Arletta, she was restless from the start, as anxious as if she were going to a party. Given my nature and my feelings for her, I would have been jealous of the new student if my mother, on her return, hadn’t been demonstrably warmer than usual. In fact, after spending several hours at Villa Pierce, she seemed animated by a new enthusiasm. When she came home, her quick, light step shook our gloomy, somnolent rooms.

She often brought back sweets, a bag of sugared almonds she’d received as a gift. This irritated my father, and I myself ate them reluctantly. Maybe he feared that, in becoming acquainted with a way of life so different from ours, his wife might regret the life she led during the rest of the week. Indeed, most of my mother’s previous students were from the middle class, girls who were studying to become teachers so they could in turn make a living. Thus my mother got no personal satisfaction from her work and never met anyone the least bit interesting or notable. It was only to help my father provide for our needs that she had to go out whatever the weather and squeeze into the tram, climb up and down staircases like ours, enter sordid little apartments that smelled of the food eaten that morning and evening. It cheered me that afternoons at Villa Pierce offered her a pleasant holiday, and I willingly helped Sista relieve my mother of the burden of her household jobs. I even learned to mend, work I didn’t mind doing because I could sit silently by my favorite window while my thoughts ran free. 30

Those thoughts were not a little disturbed by my acquaintance—through Ottavia, the medium—with the mysterious and terrifying characters who lived in the sky, where I watched the swallows darting at sunset.