Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘For God’s sake, Nina, don’t start in with Sacco and Vanzetti!’

‘Yet if the Allies win, we’ll have to take a look at that ugly crime, my dear Mody.’

‘No, Nina, no! Instead, tell me: any news of Arminio?’

‘Nothing, not about Arminio or your ’Ntoni. But we can be happy to have heard something about Jacopo and Prando. And if I’m happy, not being part of the family…’

‘You are part of the family!’

‘How I love your Mattia! If it weren’t for Bambolina I would gladly spend a couple of hours one-on-one with him. But though Nina may be a cottarola who loses her head easily, she gives in to her fancies, yes, but not with men who are taken.’

Nina, Nina … The dark-haired, feral Nina of the island, the golden-haired, smiling Nina of Carmelo. Finally I can run beside her, enjoy the sight of her harmonious freedom, her step that sketches melodious whorls of vital energy. Now she stops, preoccupied. She must have something to confess to me.

‘I have a confession to make, micia . Last night I had a relapse, so to speak. It’s just that that dark-skinned guy appealed to me, plus this morning, he was leaving. Well, now you know, it wasn’t so bad…’

Each time she confesses, my surprise at not being jealous makes me run into her arms, grateful. How can that be? Thinking of Joyce, I realize that jealousy is always provoked by those in the habit of using it out of pointless, venomous cruelty. Besides, after her confession, her arms tighten around me with new warmth.

‘You’re not mad at me, are you, micia ? What can you do? That’s how Nina is! She’s a bit of a maschiaccio , a hoyden, as Arminio used to call me when I was a little girl. And was he ever right! Don’t pay any attention. They’re just passing fancies, nothing serious, things that only render the affection I have for you purer. Even with my husband, it was the same. Of course, he got worked up a little…’

‘And if he did it?’

‘Oh well, it doesn’t work both ways!’

‘And if I do it?’

‘It works both ways, micia , don’t worry. Nina keeps her word.’

‘But you’re all I want.’

‘Bullshit! It’s just that you don’t know; you have no experience. You, Bambolina, you’re the first to have had a little freedom. Not to brag, but we, in these things, had it really easy with my mother, and my mother with my grandmother … But then come to think of it, maybe each of us is the way we are. Any rational thinking stops when it comes to love, and it’s best not to talk about it. What a time your Nina went through, torn between you, who were dying, and that little one so far away! Only Jacopo understood me. That young man understands everything. How could I leave you to go and bring Olimpia back from Rome? “Well, then we’ll send Pietro,” he said, without batting an eye. “If you feel you can rely on him, write a letter to your sister and Pietro will go and get her.” What a decision, my micia with that giant who never looks at you directly. I trust him, but would Licia trust that beast? And so Jacopo, as if he had read it in my eyes, said: “All right, I’ll go. For some reason, everyone trusts me.” For some reason, he says! He looks like an angel!’

‘But Jacopo will come back, right, Nina?’

‘Of course, like they’ll all come back. Even Arminio, I’m sure of it.’

The magical balm of her certainty spurs us to keep Carmelo’s rooms ready and waiting, and nothing else exists around us, neither the unbridled joy of those to whom everyone has returned, nor the ashen, death-like grief of those who have lost everyone and wander like blind men through the ruins, the markets, the shops. It’s horrifying to meet their gaze, eyes dilated in a question that has no answer.

‘Don’t look at them, Mody. Do as you did on the island with those who were starving. It doesn’t help them or us.’

And without looking, we waited through winter, then summer. And then another winter and another summer.

That opulent golden summer, unforgettable for its harvest and its light … as if the earth, anticipating the end of that deluge, was ready to rejoice in a silence brimming with grain, which had suddenly fallen over the fields.

Mattia: ‘Never in living memory has such a rich harvest been seen on the island! Down in Catania everyone is wild with joy. They cheer for peace just like they called for war before.’

Modesta: ‘Always the same reckless lunatics, Mattia. Reckless and vulgar, Nonna Gaia would have said. They don’t see that, once again, it’s a foreign military rousing senseless hope in them.’

Pietro: ‘Everything has stopped, Mody…’

Bambù: ‘Not a single plane flies over anymore, Zia. I thought war would break out with all those airplanes passing over us, especially at night.’

Mattia: ‘In 1918, at the end of the Great War, we young people were joyous because we thought everything would turn out well. And it annoyed us to hear the old people who kept saying: “Peace has broken out, and it will be worse than war”.’

Pietro, on the other hand, is calm. He has managed to prevent at least one former prefect from jumping onto the platform and speaking again.

Pietro: ‘How that traitor Pasquale pleaded! “I was young when they decided to beat up Carlo. What did I know? They only intended to teach him a lesson.” And on and on, pleading and reminding us of all his good deeds. Good deeds! Five years in prison for my Mody! And he, fat and slick, keeps saying that there was nothing more he could do: “How could I have saved her from a proven charge of financing a clandestine party?” If everyone had done as I did and as signorino Jose ordered, something could certainly have changed. At least we would have got rid of the old faces, although now new ones are coming from America. Yesterday I nearly got myself in trouble; I saw the notorious D’Alcamo brothers in a jeep.’

Mattia: ‘And who are they, Pietro?’

Pietro: ‘Two mafiosi, vicious as sin, so vicious that first they were called angels. Then they disappeared. But as we know, angels fly around, and just as they vanished earlier, now they’re back in the arms of the foreigner. And this tells us that nothing is going to change.’

Bambù: ‘Oh, stop, Pietro! that’s enough! Uffa , you make me want to cry! You older people are right, but I want to be serene like Zia. I want to have hope! Hope, at least, that Prando, Jacopo and ’Ntoni will return. Oh, Zia, they must return!’

In the silence of an indifferent peace that envelops the endless fields, I find myself wandering alone in the midst of an irreverent abundance of lush fruit, vegetables and fleshy flowers that mocks the dead buried under the rubble. Like at the time of the Spanish flu, big rats (nourished by the corpses? I shudder to think of it) prowl through the half-ruined stables, menacing our livestock. Yesterday we heard about another child found at dawn with his little feet gnawed by those creatures, now as big as cats. Shotgun in hand — it’s now the rule at Carmelo — anyone who has time goes hunting for that primal enemy. And so I too skulk around to flush them out, my head deafened by the blast of the pellets, my wrists sore.

I’ve been crouching for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette, when a furtive rustling from behind the fence makes me instinctively raise the barrel of the gun.

‘Damn, it must be my fate! Wherever I go, all I find are guns pointed at me. Hey, Mody! Is this any way to welcome me back?’

‘’Ntoni!’ I hear my voice scream. ‘What on earth were you doing behind the fence?’

‘Well, I was trying to recover a little before making my appearance. I felt so fearless as I was walking here! But once I saw the house I was ashamed to show up like this … I don’t know! I was hoping I’d seem more decent if I rested up a little.’