Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘No.’

‘To me it does, now. You want to be like a man, so you imitate them, like he said; that’s what makes you feel like a mutilated being. I feel sorry for you, Jò! Jò! I will never utter that mutilated name again. Joyce, you are whole, and a woman.’

‘I’m not a woman. I’m a deviant being. For years I tried to correct this deviation through analysis, but we failed, he and I…’

‘He who? Your analyst? Your analyst tried to correct a deviation?’

‘Yes, a departure from the sound rules of nature. Even Freud says so.’

‘But Joyce! Aside from the fact that it’s only an indication … your Freud later conducted studies, proved himself wrong, insisted on being corrected over time. He keeps saying that he has only pointed out one path, as yet imperfect, for those to come after him. Joyce, you mistake him for a god, that man who even hated philosophy. Your Freud is a fine old doctor, tired and sick after years of oral cancer. Can we for once knock him off his pedestal and look at this cancer, and maybe apply his theories to him, as he did with Michelangelo? 84Who knows, this cancer may be a way of punishing his mouth because he talked too much, violated taboos, codes, religions … You’re staring at me and backing away like Mother Leonora, when she read my silent thoughts and saw that I denied her God. You people just can’t live without a religion …

‘Where are you going? To kill yourself? Don’t do it. I love you, Joyce, but remember that from today on I will keep a close watch on you. I will watch your every move. Your misery mustn’t touch Mela and Bambolina, because it’s a contagious disease.’

‘You don’t love me anymore, Modesta, if you can speak to me like that.’

‘A person can love someone and still watch them. I’m not looking for absolutes.’

‘You don’t love me anymore!’

Joyce waits with her hand on the doorknob. Outside the circle of light on the bedside table, Modesta can only make out a shadow, barely darker than the darkness of that artificial night. Beyond the drawn drapes, the sun must surely be wiping the blood off the Prophet’s long hair and will then reshape his thoughtful profile. A good swim will take us to that tiny island in an hour or two, right Tuzzu? It’s also a daughter of the big island, all of them nursed by the immense breast that nourishes with its fire: the sun’s milk.

‘ How many daughters does the big island have, Tuzzu ?’

‘ Many, many of them. It’s one big womb. And the belly button that goes round and round, down to the beginning of life and death, lies there where Castrogiovanni towers among the clouds and bald mountains .’ 85

‘ And you’ve seen it, Tuzzu, this belly button ?’

‘ No, nobody can. Even the bravest are seized with vertigo. That’s where her rules are made, and no one can scrutinize them .’

‘ Why ?’

‘ Because the island is a woman, like the moon. Like your mother and my mother, who know how to steal your seed and make it sprout in their belly. My father and grandfather were right to teach us to fear them .’

‘ I’m not afraid of my mother .’

‘ What a revelation! A revelation typical of Giufà. You’re not afraid because you’re a woman, and even though you’re a picciridda , you’re aware of your power .’

In fact, Joyce, her face serene when we’re at the table, pretends to be kind, but she’s aware of her power. Jacopo is afraid of her. ’Ntoni is terrified by Stella’s tears. And maybe Prando hides his fear of me by using anger.

Why don’t you want to recognize your power, Joyce?

* * *

‘Modesta, finally you woke up! This strange way you have of sleeping frightens me.’

‘But I only just fell asleep.’

‘You slept all day yesterday, and it’s almost noon now.’

‘It seems like yesterday, doesn’t it, Joyce, that I was overcome by sleep, and you came up? And to think that for weeks I’d been looking for a ruse to get you to come to my room. It was like a dream. You fall asleep hoping for something and when you wake up the gift appears … a dream. And now I wake up and you’re back.’

‘This sleep isn’t healthy.’

‘How can it be unhealthy if it brings me gifts and an appetite? I’m ravenous!’

‘I meant it’s not healthy mentally.’

‘This is the first time you’ve told me that something in me isn’t healthy. And so seriously that it would frighten me if I weren’t so hungry.’

‘Stella gave me a tray.’

‘Oh, thank goodness! That way I don’t even have to wait.’

‘So then, I’ll leave you to your breakfast.’

‘No, no, stay here. You can have some tea. Besides, it doesn’t seem kind to leave me after telling me I’m not well. You’ve never told me that before.’

‘Even the way you cling to me … you’re like a child. It’s not healthy.’

‘Why isn’t it healthy, when I love you?’

‘Love! Maybe it doesn’t even exist between a man and a woman, much less between two people of the same gender.’

‘What are you talking about, Joyce?’

‘Love is an illusion!’

‘All right, and I have to counter with: La vida es sueño , life is a dream. 86But that doesn’t mean that we don’t live life or that I don’t love you.’

‘You think you love me, but it’s pure transference. You identify me with your mother. Not only that, having lost her so young and through your own doing, you feel guilty, and you’re always afraid of losing me.’

‘And even if that were so? What’s sick about searching for a joy you once knew or only imagined? I tried to find in you the serenity I had with Beatrice and I found it. Oh, Joyce, why this professional tone between us all of a sudden?’

‘For your own good, Modesta. I was weak, I admit it, and I stole years and years of your youth, dragging you into a relationship that has no future for you and, as such, is unhealthy.’

‘But the future doesn’t exist, or at least worrying about the future doesn’t exist for me. I know that only day by day, hour by hour, does it become the present. And in this present that we’ve had — and have — you’ve given me happiness, taught me new concepts, made me grow mentally and … And why did you call it an “unhealthy relationship”? Joyce, you’re not referring to Mela and Bambolina again, are you? Well? Look, you made me lose my appetite, and that’s certainly unhealthy! Let me think, you also said a relationship with no future, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, to try and understand you … since I assume that all relationships are without a future, given that people change and as we change relationships grow stale for us, making us require fresh emotions … Come to think of it, in fact, maybe people age prematurely because they limit themselves to a few hallowed relationships and scenery that never changes. But to try and understand you … why do you say our relationship has no future?’

‘No homosexual relationship has a future.’

‘Here we go again! I should have expected as much. You’ve picked up from where we left off yesterday.’

‘The day before yesterday.’

‘The day before yesterday, fine. And while I was sleeping, you changed the terms, or rather you painted them in psychoanalytic hues so you wouldn’t have to relinquish your fundamental conviction, which today is clearer to me than it was before: a homosexual relationship has no future because you cannot proclaim it to the world, that is, in church, by marriage. And it doesn’t bear fruit, namely, children, right?’

‘Partly.’

‘But Joyce, that’s so conventional!’

‘You have all that confidence because you’ve known men and you’ve had children.’