Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘Oh, Mama, thank goodness you’re opening your eyes again! For a moment I thought you had blacked out.’

It’s his voice, but that robust chest, those strong arms that almost lift me off the ground must be Prando’s arms. It’s best not to look; it must be an illusion. I shouldn’t have listened to ’Ntoni and his madness.

‘No, Mama, no, I’m not Prando. Here, look at me closely. I’m Jacopo, can’t you see? It’s this American uniform that’s to blame, but I wanted to come right away rather than waste time changing. Besides, what would I change into, Bambù? Nothing fits me anymore.’

‘Oh yes, Zia, even Prando’s shirts are too tight for him!’

Why don’t I recognize him? Yet Nina had alerted me: ‘ Of course, Mody, your Jacopo carried you in his arms all the way when you had the fever. ’ But it’s one thing to imagine and another thing to see, to touch. With my hands on that broad chest, I search for my Jacopo. With my palms, I inch slowly up toward the straight, broad shoulders. And only when I meet the grey eyes behind the misted glasses do I find him. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I can see why Bambolina bursts out laughing. But I can’t help taking off his glasses to be sure. Stripped of them, the pupils widen, gentle and shy, and the sad, demure gaze — as Beatrice used to say of Uncle Jacopo’s — stares out at me intently as if from the photograph. ‘ Oh yes, if it weren’t for his thinness and that stooped, solemn gait, Uncle Jacopo would have been a very handsome man ’… Uncle Jacopo moves off, bent under his burden, while my Jacopo sighs and settles his eyeglasses on his slightly aquiline nose with its thin nostrils.

‘Oh, thank you, Mama, now I can finally see you again! That’s right, Bambolina: I’m really blind as a bat! Just think, from a distance, even with my glasses on, I mistook you for Modesta.’

‘It’s just that she’s all you think about. You see her everywhere.’

‘And what about you, then? A fine welcome! Mama, do you know that until I was right under her nose, she kept staring at me suspiciously?’

‘I mistook him for one of those giant Americans.’

‘You should be ashamed! And how about ’Ntoni, staring at me as if I were a ghost? And you, Mama, so pale you can’t say a word? It’s all because of this damn uniform. Come on, let’s go, I want to take it off. I can’t stand it anymore!’

Gradually, as he speaks, the lightning bolt of joy that struck me dissolves into a happiness I’d never felt before. But as soon as he loosens his hold and starts to let me go, fear of the soft, unsteady sand underfoot makes me say foolishly, ‘No, Jacopo, don’t let me go. Carry me in your arms like you did when you came with Pietro to free me from the island.’ And Bambù laughs.

‘Of course, of course, but do you remember that? How can you? You were delirious.’

‘No, I don’t remember. Nina told me about it.’

‘Of course, Nina! Where is she? I’m really eager to see her again. What a courageous woman, Bambù. You can’t imagine.’

‘Oh, tell us about it, Jacopo, tell us and hold me tight.’

In Jacopo’s arms I listen again to the adventurous stages of our journey, and only now do my senses feel certain that the time in prison, the war, is over. Only now do I hear in his voice that it’s possible to think about a future. Indeed, as Jacopo says, settling me in an armchair and covering me with a shawl … What is he saying?

‘Yes, Mama, the worst horrors are over, at least for us here in Italy. But later on I’ll tell you about the things I’ve seen among these Allies! I couldn’t wait to come back here and discuss them with all of you. There is no Marxist thinking among their intellectuals, and I’m talking about intellectuals, students like me: peculiar students, who specialize in only one field. Of course, Roosevelt is a great man, but similar to our old Antonio, a rose-water libertarian socialist. But the things I’ve seen among the young people! Inhibitions, discrimination, racial hatred. Just think: there was a certain Bob, whom I came to like — he was in the hospital with me — I didn’t find out until later that at night, despite his poor condition, he would go out with a group of guys to beat up any fellow soldier who was black. The first one they came across, he told me afterwards with an innocent, disarming air: ‘The first black mug we run into’… But that part of my past is over now, and though we shouldn’t be pessimistic, neither should we think — as most people unfortunately do — that with the end of Fascism, all will be well. In the year I spent in that hospital, Mama, I felt like I had gone from a real cell to a somewhat more spacious one, with enough food and a newspaper or two: a slightly more permissive cell, as Joyce once described Italy in comparison with Hitler’s Germany.’

* * *

‘… Twenty years, only to start all over again. The revolution did not happen. And it will be all we can do to get rid of the Savoia. There’s a price to pay for twenty years of ignorance and the regime. On my trip back, all through Italy I heard talk that would make you shudder. I’ve become convinced that we’ll pay for these years, all of them, day by day, hour by hour.’

‘If it weren’t for how happy I am to see you alive, Jacopo, I swear to God I’d start arguing with you again! But I don’t want to spoil my joy and Mama’s. Look at her, Mattia. She looks like a different person; she seems ten years younger! Come here, Jacopo, hug your brother Prando. Welcome back.’

As they clutch one another, motionless, there in the sun, a joy-filled silence emanates from their embrace. That silence must have a certain pull, because one by one, all the residents of Carmelo pause at the door, almost on tiptoe: Pietro, old Antonio, who takes off his glasses and concentrates on wiping them with a freshly laundered handkerchief, Argentovivo with little Beatrice in her arms, Crispina holding hands with Olimpia, pointing out her hero to her little friend, and other faces new to me, the faces of carusi who work in the fields with Mattia; among them is an elderly man with big blue eyes set among deep creases, holding little Carlo by the hand. The beauty of that old man’s face captures my gaze. Or maybe I’m looking for an unknown face so I won’t be overwhelmed by emotion? Even Bambolina clings to me tightly, like when she was a little girl and we would walk side by side on the sand, facing the sun and then wading through the morning’s silent waves. With water up to her chin she’d whisper: ‘ Oh, Zia, I’m still too small. I can’t wait to grow up so I can get close to the sun like you. ’

She isn’t talking about the sun now, and even though her arm encircles my waist as it did then, I don’t have to stoop to hear her.

‘Oh, Zia, in our joy we forgot about ’Ntoni. He’s disappeared! Let’s go look for him right away!’

Without a word we go looking for him, searching through the immense rooms, the vast corridors, up and down those endless stairs that, given the anxiety that comes over me, suddenly assume the fearful quality they had when I wandered through that intimidating house as a girl.

‘I knew it! He’s locked the door. Quick, Zia! Good thing I realized…’

‘Realized what, Bambù?’

‘That’s why I had him sleep in Uncle Jacopo’s room … Come on! I know a way to get into the room. Here, behind this painting there’s a passageway that leads to the big tapestry in there. Come on, help me take it down.’

Going from the darkness of the passage to the room’s dazzling light, all I can make out is a silhouette framed against the open window: one arm raised as if to greet someone down in the garden. I barely have time to turn to Bambolina and see her rush toward that arm. A shot makes me instinctively bring my hands to my ears and close my eyes.