Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

‘Isn’t my Stefania beautiful?’ he says, turning to the nun who nods compassionately.

So he’s mistaken her for her mother. And now what? Go along with it or correct him? She watches him a moment in bewilderment. She feels her father’s strong fingers squeeze her wrist, then slip into her closed fist with a lascivious gesture. The smiling nun moves away. She has other things to do. She leaves Amara alone with her father who thinks she is his wife.

‘Papà,’ starts Amara timidly, ‘I’ve brought you some fresh doughnuts. Do you like doughnuts?’

But he seems not to hear her, perhaps he isn’t even listening. There’s a radiant smile on his pale dry lips. He holds her hand tightly and begins humming.

‘What are you singing, Papà?’ Amara bends over him and tries to catch the notes from the mouth of a sick man who has lost his memory. But perhaps no, perhaps he hasn’t really lost his memory, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his memory has overcome his conscience. A fragile man at the mercy of a powerful memory. Now she thinks she recognises the tune. A song of the Alpine troops, from the time when he was a National Service recruit in the Cadore Mountains: ‘Down in the valley there’s a tavern, And fun and fun, Down in the valley there’s a tavern, Where we Alpine soldiers love to be … And if I’m a girl pale as a rhinestone, A winestone a winestone, and bottles of wine!’ He’s singing a cheerful hit-song about wine, ignoring the war, the wounds and the fear.

‘I’ve been waiting for you, Stefania,’ he says now in a smooth clear voice. Not like his humming a moment ago, when he was muddling the notes. He squeezes her hand so hard it hurts. ‘I’m always alone. Why do you always leave me alone? But I knew you’d come. So I put up with the nuns, and with all these idiots round me. And that nurse Lucia who keeps telling me you’re dead and buried. Dead my foot! I know you’re alive. And here you are at last. Isn’t this a live hand? And a live arm? Do the dead wear clothes? What lovely material you’re wearing! So soft, so soft. Silk is it? Or percale perhaps? I’ve always liked percale, it reminds me of those white flowers, what are they called? You know, the ones that seem to be ceramic, with a single yellow pistil and a strange smell of dry figs and hydrolyte. Do you remember when I used to add hydrolyte to the water and you would say: more, Amintore, more! And I would put in the powder and then the water would sting the tongue like bicarbonate … In my opinion, hydrolyte is just bicarbonate … Do the dead wear shoes? I can see them, you know, the little red shoes you’re wearing, really beautiful, you could even dance in them, couldn’t you? We should go dancing more often. It’s years since we last went dancing, Stefania darling. Now let me take off this cap which stinks of sickness and wash my hands and we’ll go out together. Here they always force me to eat the same stuff: potatoes and cabbage, cabbage and potatoes. They say there’s a war on but that’s just talk. The war ended years ago, I know that. Sometimes they give me a boiled egg, but what can I do with a boiled egg? What I need is a nice chicken. Next time you come will you bring me a nice little chicken? Do the dead wear silk stockings, eh? Do the dead wear knickers? I can feel them, you know, I can even feel them through your skirt, I can feel the elastic on your knickers. Are you wearing the ones I like? Those black ones with a little ruff round your thighs, is that what you’re wearing? Show me, Stefania!’

Amara pulls abruptly away from her father as he touches her legs and her sex.

‘Papà, it’s me, Amara!’ she says more loudly, angrily. But he doesn’t hear. He gives her a dark look and reaches out to draw her closer again. ‘Where are you?’ he shouts, worried now. ‘Why are you moving away?’

‘Papà, I’m Amara, your daughter, I’m Amara!’

At last he seems to understand and releases his grip. His eyes fill with tears. With his mouth open he turns a more comprehending look on her, but seems unable to find words.

‘What did you come for? To make fun of me?’

‘I came to see you, Papà. Such a long time since we met.’

‘You’ve always been rather plain and dull. Are you trying to pass yourself off as your mother who was far more beautiful and intelligent than you could ever be?’

‘No, no, Papà, I just wanted to say hello.’

‘I don’t need you or your visits,’ her father says harshly, holding her eye. ‘You’re coming to spy on my death, I know.’

Suddenly Sister Adele is there to help, swift and silent as if she has sprung from a hole in the ground. Who knows where she has been or whether she followed the whole scene? She seems to have been prepared for what would happen. And now here she is, solicitous and maternal. She picks up the rug which Amara’s father had flung away in a fit of rage, and wipes the saliva dribbling from his mouth. She says a few affectionate and reassuring words to him, then takes in both hands the bar at the back of his chair and pushes it, still talking softly to him, towards the end of the loggia. Amara follows sadly. She is not sure whether this is the end of the conversation, or just a brief interruption.

They come into a great hall with high windows reaching up to the ceiling. In it are other wheelchairs and other nuns. In the middle a long table with a flowered cloth. Metal plates with rough edges and metal beakers. A powerful smell of cooking fat and unwashed hair. Two young nuns come and go from the kitchen with steaming cauldrons.

Sister Adele pushes the wheelchair up to the table and arranges the furious Amintore in front of a full plate. She hands him a large spoon made from bright metal and moves away. Perhaps I should go now, Amara tells herself. But something keeps her in that distressing place that reminds her of the year she spent with Ursuline nuns at a convent at Calenzano when she was a little girl. The same brusque, essential gestures, efficient and sometimes even a bit brutal. Yet she had loved Sister Carmela. She had asked her to be her mother and she had agreed, always with the same no-nonsense efficiency, but not without humour. ‘I’m not really your mother, remember that,’ she had said with a laugh. Her soft eyes had a slight squint; you could never tell where they were looking. Her cheeks, red as two apples, and her smile overcrowded with teeth gave her a slightly clownish look. But Amara became very fond of her. She got her to wash her hair and mend her socks, and ran to throw her arms round her waist when she felt anyone had been treating her badly. Strangely, Sister Carmela, so ready to cut her nails or sew a patch on her jumper, became touchy and sharp when Amara tried to learn more about her life. ‘I was abandoned in a basket on the Nile,’ she would say, giggling. ‘Why the Nile?’ Sister Carmela wouldn’t answer. Or else in a very low voice she would murmur, ‘ Les jardins du Nil. ’ ‘You know French, Sister Carmelina?’ ‘I know nothing, I’m tired,’ the nun would say brusquely, and send her about her business. Then at table she would make sure Amara got a double helping of tomato jam. Amara didn’t at all like the tomato jam the sisters were so proud of. She would end up swapping it for a piece of hard bread or half a glass of milk.

When her father came to take her home again, Amara cried for days. She could not forget the apron with its good smell of basil that Sister Carmela wore over her habit, or the patient hands that lingered over her hair, pulling but never hurting, to loosen the knots. She couldn’t forget Sister Carmela’s raucous, almost aphonic voice. Or how once, when she had a high temperature, Sister Carmela had held ice against her head and stayed up with her all night as she sweated in delirium.