Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘It’s boring!’

‘I know! Close your eyes part way, and imagine that Nina is taking you for a stroll through the woods.’

‘No, not the woods!’

‘Listen to her! And where would you like to walk? You just have to ask: there’s something for everyone.’

‘The beach, Nina. I haven’t seen the sea in so long! Take me to the seashore this time. Let’s walk along the never-ending strip of sand…’

‘About-face! Oh, no, you can’t lean on me like that! Come on, turn around and let’s start over … You like the sea, eh?’

‘Oh, yes … that isn’t the wall … that’s where the reef begins. Can you make it?’

‘Let’s try.’

‘If you can do it, Nina, maybe we’ll make it there…’

‘Make it where, micia ?’

‘To see the sunset.’

‘Of course, pussycat, whatever you like. Come on, just a little farther and we’re done for today.’

‘A little farther, yes. Look out there, do you see the little island, the Prophet?’

‘It looks like clouds to me.’

‘Because you can’t see it.’

‘Actually, I can’t see far away.’

‘Then trust me, and we’ll get there quickly. If we’re lucky, we’ll see the sun bend down to kiss the Prophet’s brow.’

‘No!’

‘Then in an instant, the sun drags the head down with it into darkness … Why are you stopping, Nina? There’s time before the soup. The sunset is far off. Let’s keep walking a little more.’

‘Too hot for me, too much light!’

‘Let’s at least go as far as the top of the rise. There are trees and shade up there.’

‘All I see are white rocks and yellow rocks, then more white and yellow. God, what misery!’

‘The yellow isn’t rocks, it’s yellow blossoms, broom. You’re really myopic, Nina!’

‘That’s right, keep it up! I’ve told you a hundred times I’m nearsighted.’

‘Then trust me and keep walking. There are trees and shade up there.’

Nina lies down in the shade and closes her eyes. Now I know I can lie down beside her and lay my head on her breast. Her ample bosom doesn’t feel my weight and I can travel, as I did then, from her belly to her neck without disturbing that deep, regular breathing. How can Carmine go on sleeping while I move up and down his body?

‘ You’re light as a feather, figghia ! Besides, how can a big animal like me feel the weight of a little micia , a pussycat? ’

‘ You’re not an animal, you’re a beautiful column! Once I saw them on the other side of the island. They’re scattered in the fields, sleeping in the sun. ’

It’s not Carmine who is caressing his pussycat with a parched marble hand. He used to call me gattina , kitten, or micia , pussycat, like the voice that keeps saying: ‘What is my minx of a pussycat doing, sleeping? Or is she getting ready to play a naughty trick on me?’

‘And you, what are you doing with your eyes closed?’

‘I’m trying to get over this fatigue that’s come over me. Clearly, though I yearned to see the sky, I don’t appreciate it now that I see it. I don’t feel it. What can I say? I can’t enjoy it. Well, four years in a cell are four years! I’m not used to the fresh air, and my eyes hurt. If I hadn’t met you, I might have rotted away in that jail awaiting trial. Shit, I had given up hope of any kind of sentence. It seems like a joke! Hoping for a trial as if it were a prize! Then you come and everything is resolved: relocation, books for you, ink, paper…’

‘And for you, yarn and a crochet hook.’

‘… A trial in a jiffy. It was all so quick, like in the movies, that I still feel confused. Oh, Mody, keep an eye on the time! At sunset we have to go back in. I have no intention of losing this paradise for a walk.’

‘It’s allowed, Nina. Don’t get excited. You were so strong in prison!’

‘True, I have to get used to it…’

‘And find something to do.’

‘That’s also true. You write, teach, but what do you write?’

‘Twaddle, Nina, to pass the time.’

‘And you earn money too! Didn’t you give a lesson today?’

‘No, I want to be free at least one day a week.’

‘Impudent minx! On an island the breadth of a hand, she wants to be free! Hey, I like it, because when I’m alone I don’t know what to do with myself.’

‘You have to keep busy.’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Yesterday at the market I saw that they were selling badly crocheted red and blue berets. I can get by with a crochet hook…’

‘Exactly. That’s what I was saying.’

‘I want to try!’

‘And you could also make baby blankets. All they do is have babies on this island.’

‘That and die. Not one day goes by that you don’t see a funeral. It must be all these rocks and the lack of water. I’d really like to try! Yesterday, with two berets, an old woman took home a litre of water. I really should give it a try. Are you sure they’ll send us yarn from your house? What’s happening at your house, anyway? All you do is get letters, read them and say nothing. Nina is curious, very curious. It’s a defect of hers.’

‘You can read them.’

‘Oh no, not that! My father said it’s a violation of privacy. It’s not part of the anarchist “Ideal”.’

‘If you want, I’ll tell you.’

‘It’s about time!’

A succession of iron birds streak across the sky, ignoring the wretched piece of land in the middle of the sea. Where are they headed, to spew out their deadly breath? To more attractive places, of course, full of people and life.

‘That’s why they ignore us, Nina. Their metallic hunger craves young, wholesome flesh, not a few acres populated by shrunken bodies and spent eyes. Oh, Nina, have you seen the man who sells lemons? If you can call him that. He has no nose, no lips, and two slits for eyes. He looks like he was eaten by insects.’

‘Only him, Mody? I counted about a dozen of them and then I got tired. It must be leprosy, even if they don’t say it. But never mind, tell me about things at your house … Bambolina is going to marry your Mattia? Are you upset about it?’

‘When she told me about it that night — it seems a century ago — I was sad at first, but then as I waited for dawn, I realized that I wasn’t sad because I was losing Mattia but because I felt vanquished, old: forty years!

‘You, forty years old…’

‘Forty-two today, Nina…’

‘… I don’t believe it. Not even if I were to see it in writing!’

‘Yet I felt every one of those years that night. Because youth and old age are only hypothetical.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that even age is something that you choose, that you convince yourself of.’

‘You think so? But nature also comes into it.’

‘Of course, and hard work, and poverty, the privations that age people prematurely. But for those who have had the privilege to be spared that, like me, old age is only a concept instilled in you, like so many others.’

‘I like you, Mody. I like the way you acknowledge your privilege.’

‘It’s the primary duty, it seems to me, for those who think like we do.’

‘But tell me about that night.’

‘I told you: I was falling into the trap of cliché. Oh, no matter how much you rebel, it’s hard to overcome the rules of society that tell you: this is how you are at ten; then at twenty, like this; at forty, with children, you’re old … I’m ashamed to say it, but that night I was losing my rebellion. I was about to enlist in the army of sheep ambling through the world.

‘But not for long! Before dawn I’d realized it, and if they hadn’t arrested me, I would have gone in search of something else. The world is big, as Carmine used to say.’