Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

‘Stefania was discovered by a farm worker, a man called Passeri, who had been on his way home with his donkey. He stopped when he noticed something bright among the trees. Stefania’s white woollen socks that Aunt Miriam had crocheted for her. She still had them on even though she had lost shoes, skirt and knickers. The socks were as white as the moon if stained on one side with blood. Passeri was a charitable man and he untied her hands and feet and helped her to clean off the blood disfiguring her face and legs. He carried her on his donkey all the way to the hospital. Next day she lodged an accusation.

‘Mario meanwhile had heard about the rape and grabbed his hair in his hands. This was not what he’d wanted. He hurried to the hospital to ask Stefania’s pardon but she spat in his face and told him if he came again she would denounce him as the instigator of the disgusting act. He went away with his tail between his legs. He continued to apologise, sending her flowers picked on the banks of the Terzolle, and love letters which she always tore up unread. After many months of this she sent him a final letter telling him never to write to her or come near her again: to her it was as if he’d never been born and had never even had a name.’

‘Are you crying, Papà?’

‘It was all complicated by politics, my dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you about the rape of your mother, but I wanted you to know about it. Nanni went on to be a big fish. He’s a Member of Parliament now. It’s right you should know this. It’s the way our country works. Instead of punishing bullies, it celebrates them and pays them a salary. He’s managed to stay afloat. He’s rich now. He never discusses his past. But he has lots of ideas for the future. Haven’t you heard his voice on the radio?’

‘No, Papà.’

‘Your mother, who never had a political idea in her head, became a sworn enemy of the regime. All her previous admirers vanished, whether because of fear or contempt no one knows. A woman carries the violence she suffers on her own shoulders like a sackful of rocks, you know. Even Muzio disappeared, tall, elegant, handsome Muzio. I was the only admirer left. A little later my father died leaving me the shoemaking business so I had to give up the bakery and go back to the profession of my ancestors.’

‘So she chose you because she had no one else?’ Amara liked teasing her father. And she wanted to lighten the atmosphere after the grim story of the rape.

‘I think she began to think better of me when she found I wasn’t a paid-up member of the fascist party, and that I kept away from their rallies and never made the Roman salute or wore the badge or sang anthems in honour of the Duce. One Sunday we made love behind the shop among sacks of flour and bowls of yeast. That’s when you were conceived, Amara, in tenderness and consolation. I don’t think beautiful Stefania ever really loved me. I was too small and dark. She liked tall, lanky, elegant, blond types like Muzio and Mario, with blue eyes and smooth hands, Daddy’s boys complete with car and dégagé air. That was her type. Instead she got me with my wild hair, eyes like a desperate oriental khan and the ridiculous pomaded moustache she teased me about, and with no car, only a bicycle; I was a total disaster. But she was grateful and fond of me.’

‘Did she never take a lover, Papà?’

‘She didn’t have much time to, Amara dear, even if she’d wanted to. As you well know, she was still very young when she fell ill. It seemed just a slight fever, a mere nothing, but it turned out to be typhus, and the idiot of a doctor treated her for flu. By the time they realised it was typhus it was too late. She died beside me, at night, without a sound. And while she was dying you were sleeping the sleep of the blessed and I hadn’t the courage to wake you. She went so quickly, Amara darling.’

‘Was it she who gave me this stupid name, Amara?’

‘She would have preferred Marlene, like Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel , a film that came out the year you were born. One of the films I saw from the back row in that ramshackle cinema with wooden seats that made such a noise every time you got up or sat down.’

‘Wasn’t I named after a little bear born in a circus near our home? That’s what you once told me.’

‘Yes, maybe. Perhaps. I can’t really remember. But there was a bitter taste in my mouth from what was happening in this country. The increasing arrogance and bullying, the shortage of work, the new laws that made it almost impossible for anyone to breathe. Not surprising we were bitter, don’t you think? Then you arrived bitter, in fact very bitter, considering the times you were born in.’

‘But why did you never marry again, Papà?’

‘I never found anyone as good as your mother Stefania.’

‘But she’s dead now and you’re still alive.’

‘I talk to her. I go to her grave and tell her what I’ve been doing. I talk to her about you and about myself. And in her own way, she answers.’

‘How?’

‘She doesn’t need words. Thoughts travel faster than words. I can see her and hear her. She’s wiser now she’s dead. Not so haughty as she was. But she can still smile.’

This morning the hospital is flooded with sunlight. The broken shutters, the flaking walls, the old iron beds, don’t seem so gloomy and decrepit. The polished floor shines beneath the nurses’ coarse shoes. Medicine bottles tinkle as the trolleys go backwards and forwards.

There’s a party atmosphere and a great crowd of relatives in shirtsleeves with shopping bags over their arms on their way to see the patients. Three children are playing with a toy tractor on the floor. There’s even a sad-looking cat with bald patches in his fur, crouched on the sill before an open window.

Luca greets her from a distance. He is walking in the corridor with a pretty young nurse with long blonde hair and a white cap worn sideways. Thank goodness he’s found a distraction, thinks Amara, cheerfully approaching him. She is carrying a paper bag containing doughnuts that are still hot. She bought them in the street from a little boy with a squint who was struggling to keep off the flies with a homemade fan made from chicken feathers.

Luca hurriedly dismisses the young nurse and advances with unsteady steps. Now he seems more like the Luca she used to know: tall, suave, seductive and unpunished.

‘How are you?’ she asks, offering the sugared doughnuts.

‘I can’t eat those, Amara, but thanks all the same. Have you thought about my suggestion?’

‘I have, and my answer is no.’

‘Will you go back to Vienna?’

‘I’m staying here three days; I shall go and see my father, then I’m off.’

‘Three days from today? Let’s say four not counting yesterday. Why attach so much importance to that child who must have been dead for years?’

‘I don’t even know why myself. I like to think he could be still alive.’

‘You’ve always been one to chase after dreams. Here am I with my living body and you go running after someone who’s dead.’

‘I want to know if Emanuele made it.’

‘You’re raving mad.’

‘Tell me about your last flame, as Suzy calls her.’

‘I don’t feel like it.’

‘Was she a blonde or a brunette?’

‘You know I have a weakness for blondes.’

‘How much younger than you?’

‘What does it matter? She treated me as if we were the same age. We did all sorts of things together: journeys, expeditions, planning the future. We’d already paid the deposit on a new home on Viale Michelangelo.’

‘How much did that cost?’

‘A tiny flat. Where the gardener of a villa used to live. Falling to bits but just what we needed.’