Giovanni Arpino: Scent of a Woman

A large iridescent fly buzzed around the window on the landing; the walls smelled of fresh paint. Relishing the taste of air, the fly veered suddenly, found the narrow gap at the partially open window, and disappeared. I leaned out too, to toss away my cigarette butt. The courtyard below was deserted: a meagre couple of yards of cement in the late August sun. In the distance, the withered green of the hills beyond the river blended into an opaque sky. Before ringing the doorbell, I felt to make sure my cap was sitting firmly on my forehead, checked the knot and proper positioning of my tie.

The door opened at once, as if the woman had been there all along, waiting.

She was a tiny old woman, incredibly rosy and diminutive, dressed in white and grey. Smiling and twinkling through every one of her delightful wrinkles, she gestured for me to come in. Behind her, the darkness of a long corridor. We quickly turned into a kitchen, two chairs already moved out from the table.

‘Good, good, very punctual, that’s a pleasure to see.’ She sighed, still smiling, nodding, her hands clasped.

I told her my name and carefully balanced my cap on my knee.

‘But you’re hardly more than a boy, good heavens!’ she lamented, squinting. I felt myself blush. ‘Who knows whether a young man like you will have the patience that this situation… the patience to stay here.’

She remained undecided, holding her breath, her lips slightly parted over her porcelain teeth.

So I told her that my commanding officer at the barracks had explained the situation to me in detail.

Her smile faded, she nodded again, stroking the back of her right hand with the slender fingers of her left. She had very beautiful hands, transparent as tissue-paper, in keeping with her, with the immaculate surroundings, with the two flowers in the vase on the table.

‘A student, I think. An only child?’

I told her a little about my father, a clerk, about my mother and my younger sister. As I searched for the right words, those three familiar faces emerged from their usual misty haze for a moment, only to become softly shrouded again soon afterwards. I then specified my age, twenty years old, and the university faculty I was enrolled in, business and economy.

The voice coming out of my mouth felt unconnected to me.

Her sigh in response was not one of relief.

‘I know nothing about today’s young people,’ she said finally, hedging. ‘Him too, him in there, with that great misfortune of his, I can’t understand him either. It must be my age. And then too: can understanding help in any way? Sympathy does, of course.’

But as if stung by delirium, she was once again on her feet and smiling, expressions flitting across her face: ‘There’s chilled coffee, would you like some? It’s good. Or maybe an orangeade would be better? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like some.’

She was spinning around. I thought: a squirrel. I soon had a glass of coffee in my hands.

‘Is it all right if I smoke?’

She laughed quietly. ‘Go ahead. Him too, one cigarette after another. You men.’

She accompanied that ‘him’ with a brief wag of her fingers over her shoulders, as if to indicate the entities hidden beyond the darkness of the corridor.

She recovered her composure, her hands clasped, and continued: ‘Still, all in all you give the impression of being a fine young man, fine indeed.’

We went on looking at each other; I was determined not to be the first to ask a question.

Finally she made up her mind to speak, lowering her voice: ‘I’m his aunt. He says I’m only a cousin, but in fact I’m like an aunt and more, because who nursed his poor mother up until the end, if not me? Fortunately she passed away before having to endure the worst. Afterwards it was all so difficult, no one can ever imagine. Until the day of the accident I didn’t know him very well. He was always roaming around the world, boarding school, academy, the military. But since then I’ve had to be the one to look after him, it’s clear that God above willed it. It’s been nine years now, did you know that?’

I finished the coffee, and went on holding the glass in my hand. It was still cool.

‘Nine years,’ she went on in a monotone, her voice increasingly thinner. ‘Today it’s nothing, but at the beginning: oh, I don’t even want to think about how it was at the beginning. A young man like him, losing his sight and a hand. Just like that: only because Our Lord won’t let anyone be happy in this world. During manoeuvres, playing with a bomb. I say “playing” because what else are these manoeuvres nowadays? Here, give me that glass.’

‘My commander explained it to me,’ I said.

In order to appear indifferent, I stared at the tiles on the floor. Each set of four formed a blue design, a kind of improvised flower against a white background. Through the transparent curtains at the window the light fell on those flowers in a sunburst, revealing their fragility.

‘A man like him,’ she went on slowly, as the wrinkles on her face crumpled and unfolded. ‘Even rather wealthy, yes. He’s rich, I’m certainly not. A scrap of widow’s pension, that’s all I have. But him: rich. Not even forty years old. Healthy as a horse. And all alone in the world.’

Carefully I crushed out the butt in the little plate she had offered me as an ashtray.

‘Take good care of him during this time, please,’ she added. ‘You must never leave him alone. You know that, don’t you? And be patient, young man, very, very patient. Don’t contradict him, don’t argue for heaven’s sake! Always tell him he’s right, whether he’s making sense or raving. The only sure way out is to always answer yes. Yes and yes, sir. Do you understand?’

‘Of course, ma’am.’

‘Ciccio, the soldier who is in hospital right now, his attendant up until the day before yesterday, was Calabrian, thick-headed but good, in some cases even cunning. He realized right away that his only reply must be “yes” and “yes, sir”. That Ciccio too, though: coming down with typhus just now, on the eve of the trip. Does that sound like luck to you?’

‘In our barracks too there have been three cases of typhus,’ I said, immediately noticing her lack of interest.

Her watery eyes were fixed on me, as though seeking some image beyond me.

In a wispy voice, she offered: ‘Bad is a strong word, and I wouldn’t want to actually say he’s bad, but he’s cut from different cloth, nothing in common with people like us. The great damage he’s suffered, of course. But he was a little like that even before the accident: God knows what his mother had to put up with, raising him. Then too, the pain. But these are our secrets, right, my boy?’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

She continued gazing at me with fleeting tenderness, then sudden mistrust. She set down the glass, and carefully and repeatedly smoothed the cuffs of her dress, her fingers lightly ironing out invisible creases.