Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘Oh, Stella! I treated her badly too.’

‘Stella understands. She was just worried because you wouldn’t drink the broth.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, and if we can manage to send this cup back down empty, Stella will no longer remember your incivility. You’ll see.’

‘“Incivility”! How strange your language is.’

‘So then, shall we drink this cup of broth to absolve your incivility?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m so thirsty!’

Spoonful by spoonful, through cracked lips, morning after morning, until that sunny afternoon following a week of rain when Joyce, sitting beside the window, is able to bring the cup of tea to her healed lips with her own hands.

‘Prando came to say goodbye to me as if he were leaving for America. He’s changed a lot, he’s no longer a boy, but he seemed at peace.’

‘He’ll have a house of his own, with his own key. He has to be free to come and go, to do as he pleases.’

‘And ’Ntoni? I haven’t seen him in days.’

‘Well, a lot has happened! Angelo Musco’s death upset his plan to escape, and now he’s studying like mad because he found out that there’s an acting school in Rome. Have you heard of it?’

‘No, I’ve never been too involved with theatre.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that he might be able to be admitted to the courses by taking an exam, even though he’s so young. And if he’s good, he might even get a scholarship.’

‘When will he take the exams?’

‘Next month.’

‘In Rome … And the two of us, Modesta?’

‘What about us, Joyce?’

‘I’m talking, asking questions, but without real interest. It’s awful. It’s as if I were dead and buried in your garden, as you used to say jokingly. If only I had died that morning when you almost ran into me at the gate! I thought you were returning from your usual lunch with Attorney Santangelo and…’

‘And instead?’

‘I realized that you’d seen Timur. Am I right?’

‘Yes. I would have told you.’

‘Oh, go, get out of here! It’s as if you’ve killed me. I hate you all, go away!’

‘And here I was hoping that, now that you’re better, I could tell you about a great joy I’ve had.’

‘What joy?’

‘Prando is not a Fascist! He finally spoke to me, and if a young man like him was able to make it with our support, it gives me hope. And I owe it to you as well, if I’ve managed not to make him end up…’

‘Like Timur? Say it, like Timur? He told you everything.’

‘Yes, everything.’

‘It isn’t true! I wasn’t the one who drove Renan to suicide. I loved her, more than my own life. I didn’t reproach her that day. Besides, she was my twin; we were like two peas in a pod. In every country we went to as children, we were met with a chorus of admiration. Two solitaire jewels, they called us. Look, see this solitaire? Papa bought one for me and one for Renan that year there in Sofia … And besides, what does Timur know? He wasn’t even born yet. How dare he repeat innuendoes, rumours. What does he know? When he was born my father was already dead. And with my father went all those incessant trips, never staying put! Three years here, two years there. Always new languages to tackle, short-term friends. Barely time to form a friendship, learn a language, and we had to leave, hardly enough time to finish settling into a house and we were on the train again … and Sofia! The most horrible city, anonymous, provincial, with all eyes fixed on the ambassador’s twins. And then how was I to blame if Renan, apart from physical appearance, was so different from me? What could I do when at each embassy she’d flirt with the clerk, get bored, fail to learn the languages, wouldn’t read? And “those two”, so bound up in their love! I never saw my father look at any woman amorously, not a one! She and her Great Danes were the only ones he gazed at adoringly … us only briefly, during departures and arrivals, almost as if to check that none of his baggage was missing. And who could imagine that on the first Sunday in that new city, in that huge, freezing-cold house — who knows how long it had been vacant — with those stoves that no one could get to work … I was reading in bed and Renan was smoking in hers. Whenever Papa went out, she took some of his cigarettes and smoked. My father had ordered me to prohibit her, but I never said a word, I swear! That day I was reading The Pit by Kuprin. Reading that book was forbidden, but I had taken it from Mama’s suitcase. And you know how fascinating it is. I wanted to finish it before they returned for dinner. I didn’t even notice … Afterwards, only afterwards did I remember that at a certain point Renan began pacing up and down. Why did they always make us sleep together in all those houses that were so big?… She started pacing, and then tried to lie down beside me. The bed was small, yes, it was small and she was annoying me, playing with my hair. Then she said: “Shall we take a walk?” How was I to know? It was the first Sunday. We didn’t know our way around. I wasn’t unpleasant, believe me. I simply said: “Papa has forbidden it; it’s dangerous.” Then it got dark, and I turned on the light to read the last lines. Renan was gone and it must have been quite late … I never read those last lines because I knew that Mama and Papa could return any minute, and I hoped that Renan would come back from her walk. She’d said: “I’ll go by myself then.” I waited at the window, expecting her to appear. That miserable square, with those dirty benches and that graceless row of sad little trees … I can still see that square! Until the steward knocked at the door for dinner and … I trembled at the idea of dinner, the three of us, without Renan. I quivered at my father’s silence and decided to wash my hands, so that at least I’d have clean hands and he wouldn’t get angry about that, too. In the bathroom, I found Renan hanging from one of those big heating pipes. You know, those pipes for heating bathrooms that are as big as a drawing room … Oh, Renan! Modesta, hold me, hold me tight, I’m so afraid!..’

I can’t help holding her, even though the name ‘Renan’ whispered in the growing darkness chills my bones, my thoughts. She trembles, cowering in my lap, and clings to my neck.

‘Hush, Joyce. You’re right: it was an accident.’

‘No! It wasn’t an accident! Always reproaching her, and what’s even more horrible, the censure was silent … What did Timur tell you, what?’

‘Everything, Joyce, but I didn’t believe him.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘Joyce, I repeat, I didn’t believe him. I was only frightened. You were right. Timur is dangerous.’

‘You see, you see? And then too, if they really thought so little of Renan, why did they let us sleep in the same room? Why those beds, always the same, why the same clothes?’

‘And Joland? She wasn’t your sister?’

‘He told you everything. Damn him!’

‘Why did you tell me that Joland was your sister?’

‘A lie, all right? A lie like everything else, like … go away, get out!’

‘As you wish, I’ll go. But Timur requested that I ask you to write to your mother. Your mother isn’t dead, Joyce … don’t look at me like that, try to understand my position too. I’m frightened. You told me your mother was dead. I, I … but never mind, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Will you write a note to your mother?’

‘Never! What does she want from me? Isn’t it enough that she tormented me? How she tormented Joland?… Oh, Joland, why did you do it, why?’

‘What did she do? Tell me. Let it all out! If we talk about it together we can see a way out.’

‘A way out of what? Talk about what? Talk, talk, talk, all nonsense!’