Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘But why tell me your mother was dead?’

‘She is dead, can’t you understand! Dead! I swore on Joland’s body that for me she was dead. She hated Joland. She was never willing to accept her. I tried in every way I could to make her see how much I loved her, but she did nothing, disapproving and distant. Yet she knew the loneliness I struggled with, she knew everything about me … Besides, she brought me into the world the way I am, abnormal … it was she who gave me that book — I was twelve or thirteen — the book that described cases like mine … If she had at least accepted Joland, we wouldn’t have been so alone. But she, so beautiful and flawless, with her successful life, how could she accept a relationship that was so “aberrant”? That’s what she called it. If she had only accepted us, I would never have abandoned Joland … all alone, poor little thing, helpless. Oh, if only I had died!’

‘Too easy, Joyce, too easy. Like going to prison and letting yourself be tortured for the cause.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘As long as people like you go to the slaughterhouse to appease their sense of guilt, the cause will be lost from the start. I no longer have any confidence in you, or in any future hero like you. Don’t cry, Joyce, it was predictable. We’re probably nothing but a pair of murderers like all the others. Except that I killed for my own needs, and the crime, if you can call it that, will not be discovered, whereas you, like Mother Leonora or Gaia, did so for others, arming yourselves with eternal sentiments and duty.’

‘I wish I were dead!’

‘You are dead, Joyce, because you finally met someone practised in killing, and more skilful than you. Not a Joland or a Beatrice, brought up to be sentimental romantics, as they used to say … What am I talking about? They still say it.’

‘Enough! Stop!’

‘Don’t cry. Even if the victim has slipped out of your hand, don’t despair. I love you. Not eternally, but I still love you. And now as equals, killer to killer.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Well, to wash my hands. It’s eight o’clock and I’m hungry. I’ll send a nurse to watch over you. I wouldn’t want to have to bury you in my garden — and admit that the comrades were right.’

Cloaked in his manly silence, Prando hastens the separation by firmly removing Bambolina’s desperate arms from around his neck. What does that desperation signify? And Mela’s silently staring at me, biting her lip? An accusation? Is it my fault they’re losing their dearest darling? I’d like to hover over them and protect them, but it’s not permitted. There’s a precise limit to helping others. Beyond that limit, invisible to many, there is only a desire to impose one’s own way of being … The lie contained in words is a bottomless pit, and Modesta decides to keep silent and remain at the mercy of that empty place around the oval table of their childhood, which, seen from the top of the stairs, in the evening, is a yawning abyss. I can’t go down those stairs. If I could only lean on Prando’s arm … but Stella is crying and calling from down there. No, she’s not crying; she’s just upset.

‘Modesta, please, come down! Ever since Prando moved out, there’s no peace in this house anymore.’

‘What is it, Stella?’

‘How do I know! Every day it’s something else! They were so quiet before. Since Prando left…’

‘That’s enough about Prando leaving, Stella! Don’t make me mad. I asked you what’s wrong and that’s all!’

‘It’s just that Jacopo, ever since … well, for days now he hasn’t been himself, and this morning he stopped eating. He hasn’t budged from his room. He didn’t even want to come down for Crispina’s lesson, and the picciridda started crying. It took a hundred and one stories to quiet her down! Even now that it’s time to eat he won’t come down … Oh, you’ll go? Thank goodness!’

I’m familiar enough with the room Jacopo chose, but I’ve never noticed that the immense bay windows almost touch the large palm tree that presses to come in. On the walls, in the dim light, are large blackboards with numbers, sketches, rows of Greek words. The lamp casts a yellow light on the table, on the book shelves, on the skeleton that belonged to Uncle Jacopo, resurrected from the attic and carefully dusted off.

‘ It’s dreadful! I won’t come to your room anymore if you don’t get rid of that appalling “thing”! ’

‘ Don’t be silly, Bambù! It’s very helpful, more so than books! That’s the only way you learn. It’s fascinating to see how we’re made inside. ’

‘ Would you believe it, with all the wonderful things there are in the attic, he goes and chooses a skeleton! ’

‘ But the gentleman interests me. I’ll call him Yorick, like Hamlet. Maybe every man should have his Yorick … Plus, you’re so irritating, Bambù! Do I say anything when you bring down those silks and laces that you like, and that I find hopeless? ’

When I touch Jacopo’s shoulders, unmistakably alive under his light shirt, I feel reassured, though he doesn’t move and persists in lying curled up against the wall. He always did that, even as a baby …

‘Don’t call me “baby”!’

‘You’re right, you’re big now.’

‘That’s not why, and you know it!’

‘What do I know, Jacopo?’

‘That I’m not your baby.’

‘… I dreamed I wasn’t your baby, and that you found me in a basket left by someone — who knows who? — under the Saracen olive tree.’

‘So let’s hear it. Where did I find you this time? The last time it was in a boat at the seashore and you weren’t sad when you told me about it.’

‘I can’t stand it anymore. I want to die.’

‘So this dream has always upset you and you hid it, like you do with your teeth, so we wouldn’t feel sorry for you? Is that it, Jacopo? I know you don’t like to do what ’Ntoni does, making a mountain out of a molehill just so we’ll make a fuss over him.’

‘No, no … the dream has nothing to do with it. I’m sorry, but I need to be alone. I gave my word of honour. Please, go down to dinner, I need to be by myself!’

Word of honour, a man’s word, a manly silence. ‘ A man who is a man keeps his silence when he has sworn. ’

‘Didn’t we decide, Jacopo, not to listen to people’s prattle and to talk about everything together, as we’ve always done?’

‘I swore on my honour. Don’t insist! And besides, I already feel better. I’ll come down if you really want me to. I’ll come to dinner; that way we’ll get it over with!’

Who could ask Jacopo for his word of honour and make him give it? ‘ A man who is a man doesn’t go around giving his word left and right. ’ Only one person had the power to do so, someone who tiptoed through our lives, someone who appeared meek, who stayed a moment and then disappeared soundlessly. The apparition of that smiling face in scenes of the past, that docile presence who for the good of her child promised to endure the cross that God had given her, took me back to a hatred long forgotten. Loathsome Inès! A woman noxious to women and to man, a vile woman incapable of giving birth … After Jacopo was born, she aborted four times, ever more prone; through those Calvary-like ordeals, she thought she had atoned for her sin … I see her now smiling there in the wings, sufficiently purified to reclaim the sacred fruit of her womb.

‘Why did you allow me to be born? Why?’

‘How could I not let you be born? Inès was healthy, beautiful … How could I force her to have an abortion?’