Delilah Jay - Mistress - The Italian way

None of them wants to remember the days when there wasn’t enough money for bread. Friends who had to lend money to keep the hunger at bay. They had no bath, no toilet. Not enough to eat. Not in Molise. Not in Ferrara. They borrowed money to be able to buy bread. And most especially, to ensure that none of the children or his wife would go without the father’s love. Amos’ mother saw her husband’s whores come and go, as did Amos, for whom this became normal, and she spent long nights crying about the unfaithful husband until at long last, fate stepped in and he - thank God - having tormented his family to the last, finally died, of prostate cancer followed by lung cancer caused by all those years of smoking. At long last!

“My mother blackmailed me all my life with her crying and whining about my father,” that’s how Amos always accused his mother of emotionally pressurizing him with her tears and her grief and her emotions.

Entirely misunderstood!

“In reality, my father was the innocent, my mother was the one responsible, she drove him to it,” he kept wailing, always and all the time, poor rich Amos, the God of Love.

The truly guilty party, in actual fact, was his mother -poor Franco, he couldn’t help being unfaithful, could he?

No sooner does he come home with the money, than he spends it all on other women, instead of handing it to his family. Really! It requires the brain of a philosopher or a complete idiot to comprehend that kind of logic. Guilt reversal, that’s what it’s called. Learned at an early age, practised to perfection. Very Italian! That’s what he is like - to this day.

Amos never described the hunger, but he did describe not having a loo.

“We didn’t even have a bath, a toilet. But we were so happy,” my Amos retrospects.

I listen. Listen well. That’s another thing I excel at. The world is small and people are bad, especially when it concerns another’s discomfort.

Today I know that the hunger must have been terrible. I now have friends in Ferrara - nothing happens by coincidence. By the most bizarre route possible, I learn that my friend’s cousin was a schoolmate of Amos’ sister, who constantly talked about how hungry they were and how they had to borrow money to be able to buy food. How incredible is that, with a father who moved his family from Molise to Ferrara, leaving all their relatives behind, under the pretence of finding better work for more money? Or, whose appetite for sexual diversion was greater than his sense of responsibility towards his family? The little wretch that nobody noticed! Poor of physique, intelligence and even economics. Maybe Amos’ mother made too much of what she didn’t have?

Dottore didn’t know his father, not really. By his own admission, at least. At his father’s deathbed he thought he understood that his Mamma had blackmailed his Papa with her tears. No - she is not the victim - his father was! So what else was he to do except screw around, spend money on cigarettes, while his family went hungry? He had every right, didn’t he? And his Mamma blackmailing this “buono”, this good man, which is what he is. Blackmailing him with her tears? The trauma of an early Italian childhood that gives him the right, today, to live, judge, act as he sees fit. Added to by the Catholic Church.

“I am unable to masturbate,” he tells me with deepest sorrow.

Expecting pity.

“It always gives me a headache.”

Don’t we usually hear this from women, in bad comedy shows?

“Too many female hormones, Amos dearest?” I ask ironically.

“Could well be - what with your tears and all that feeling sorry for yourself,” I add.

And of course there is Adonis the beautiful - his good friend, best friend - as he calls him.

“I thought you didn’t have any friends?”

I have always listened carefully when Amos was talking... And now they start, the contradictions in his truth.

They are terrific, all of them together on Ponza. What’s to happen now with those building permits for the swimming pools up in the hills that, according to the press, were handed out as favours? At least someone was arrested here, and the ones involved are HE and the Gransignore in Carozza, the one with those fast red cars.

Here I am: riding every day, practising Jiu-Jitsu for self-defence and because I’m scared of being mugged -smoke too much, wear designer clothes, travel around Europe on business, am fluent in German, English and Italian, have intermediate proficiency in Latin - especially important for fellatio - can cook, swim, ride, read & write, am charming, arrogant, efficient, emotional, in love, beautiful, humorous, strong, hysterical, feminine, blonde with an ample bosom, am envied, hated, loved and admired and am THE lover! Has anyone ever really looked at this word, heard it, understood it? L O V E R -the one who is loved and who loves. Interchangeable in English and Italian: AMANTE or LOVER. Wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, daughters become instantly forgettable!!! They cease to exist in this frenzy of ecstasy! In all these orgasmic flights of fancy! There is only one - the lover, mistress! Me!

Aurelia has cancer. The diagnosis came fast and surprising from the Charité. Cancer of the tongue. Half of her tongue needs to be removed. It’s August - all the Italians are on holiday.

“I don’t want to disturb my family, don’t want to talk with the children. Not a word about my illness, to nobody, promise me!”

She bewitches me.

“I can’t do that!”

We drive to Verona and Aurelia does not come back. She has an operation, then her family learns about the lung cancer. She was in a terrible state and the worst was that she was completely at the mercy of her family. They all criticised her to the end.

“She had too many men,” says Flavio, the ex-husband - he should know, considering his career as a playboy in the provinces.

“Walked away from her family, left the children for others to raise,” says Aurelia’s friend Valentina.

“And she drank too much. A bottle of Vecchia Romagna hardly got her through an evening!”

Doesn’t sound credible to me, who lived side by side with her for half a year.

“Not to mention all those many cigarettes... ” Valentina continues although nobody asks.

I remember how we met: clutching a boring cocktail at one of those Berlin-Fasanenstrasse receptions. We chatted about art, literature, then quickly and abundantly about men, and we made fun of the Germans. Their idea of living. Of sex, eroticism, food, drink, generosity, elegance. We had an instant rapport, a kind of spiritual kinship. Then we met again at a private viewing in a Spandau loft. Her brother and her son were there and in the evening we went to dinner.

Both men had the hots for me, which Aurelia regarded with delight, wanting the “vittoria” - the victory - to fall to her son, wanting to see her brother lose this challenge. In fact, nothing came of it for either of them. Today Pietro, her brother, is by her discriminating side. He’s a surgeon, which means nothing. However, he is a family member and as such he has the power to decide what’s going to happen with Aurelia now.

“She’s staying with us, with her family. Here in Italy. I will perform the operation.”

And so it ended, our glamorous, lovely, close, oblivi-ous-to-everything friendship. Tarot cards in the morning with cappuccino and cigarettes, then riding, back for lunch, art, galleries, going out, socializing, discussing Italy... Verona, Ferrara, Robert de Niro, Briatore, Eros Ramaz-zotti, Luciano Pavarotti and Nicoletta, the invention of marriage, our illusions about men, sexual ecstasies, the transience of youth and beauty and... HIM. SHE knew him, Amos, my prince, spoke with him on the phone every day when I was or wanted to be out of reach, absorbed his charm and passed it to me, unfiltered. He induced the same state of trance in her as in me: TRUST! Which created Aurelia’s conviction that there was, or had ever been, no one better in my life. I trusted these words and everything else she said to me, and I believed. I even believed that I wanted a child. Thank you, Aurelia!