Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘Look, Modesta, you can’t fall back on that Alexandra Kollontai in every speech … Balabanoff, did you say? Maria Giudice? Come on, Modesta. They’re problematic figures, nonaligned. Sensational more than anything else, at least for the time being. When we learned that Maria was ill, I’ll be frank with you, it was a relief for everyone. It’s awful to say so, but all she did was create confusion. You can’t just suddenly start talking about free love, about abortion and divorce. You have to take it gradually, as comrade Giorgio says.’

Right, Giorgio … On the desk, his photograph stands out among the books.

‘Your husband, you mean?’

‘As you wish, Modesta. I see you haven’t changed.’

‘Nor have you.’

On the other side of the desk, polished and without a trace of dust, Joyce (or her ghost?) smiles at me with mild detachment.

‘Here, there are other, more urgent things to worry about.’

‘But why did I have to call you by your husband’s name in order to see you?’

‘What of it? True, you’ve never had a political mind, Modesta. We have to reassure the public, we have to show the country that we are respectable people in all ways, not those lawless reds, those rabble-rousing reds, and so on, like you still see written on walls in the rural areas.’

Where had she learned that winning, democratic smile, just like the one you saw on celebrities and politicians overseas? Before, she’d never smiled, and the grave sadness of her eyes had made her beautiful. Now, with that strange smile seemingly pinned to the corners of her mouth, her white hair expertly cut by skilful hands — a cut just barely longer than a man’s — her beauty had become rigid, reduced to an abstract image of mortuary solitude. Modesta had sensed it years before, but the living embodiment of her intuition makes her tremble with anger, and with fear.

To overcome the repugnance that Joyce’s words spill into her being, Modesta searches her memory for the faces of other female comrades she’s met on platforms, at assemblies, at rallies during those years … Luciana? Carla? Renata, maybe? Renata, only twenty-two years old, with that eternal refrain repeated yet again just last night? ‘ But women, barring some exceptions, are silly fools. A waste of time, Modesta! I really don’t understand how a person like you can waste your time going to dinner with one of them. ’ Watch out, Bambolina, Crispina, Olimpia: beware! In twenty or thirty years, don’t blame men when you find yourselves crying in a cramped room with your hands rubbed raw by bleach. It’s not men who have betrayed you, but these women who were once slaves themselves, who have willingly forgotten their state of bondage. By disavowing you, they can align themselves with men in various positions of power.

‘So what have you decided, Modesta?’

‘Decided?’

‘You never change! It’s hopeless to try to get you to think. The minute you don’t like what someone is saying, you lose yourself in idle reveries and amen! You had a lot of promise, Modesta, but I see that your exquisitely female obstinacy got the upper hand.’

Watch out, Bambolina, Crispina, Olimpia … Be careful, you who have had the privilege of culture and freedom, not to follow the example of these perfectly allied slaves. Instead of hands worn away by bleach, years of dismal mannish training await you — training in how to chain the poorest women to the assembly line — along with atrocious sleepless nights: efficiency at all costs. And after twenty years of this training, you will find yourselves trapped by distorted acts and thinking, restrained by emptiness and regret for your lost identity — like this shadow of herself who smiles out of official duty, an embodiment neither male nor female.

‘I told comrade Giorgio that it was hopeless to try to persuade you, but he insisted. He has a strange respect for you, and in the name of our old friendship, I decided to talk to you. But I see it’s no use, that you will not accept the cuts that have justly — I repeat, justly — been made to your article. It’s too violent, Modesta. We cannot today, in 1950, entitle an article: “We are all murderers”.’

‘Why not, Joyce? According to you and to what we Marxists have thought for decades at least, weren’t we all — I who speak to the crowds, you who sit behind that desk, the doorman who, content with his paltry power, ushers me in with reactionary bows — weren’t we all to blame for leading that woman from Salerno, for driving her to drown herself with her three children because of the wretched living conditions that—’

‘Mentally unbalanced, Modesta! I’m a doctor; don’t forget that.’

‘No, that wasn’t it! I spoke with everyone. I saw the photographs. She looks like Stella. Think about that, Joyce: Stella.’

‘And who is she?’

‘Stella. Jacopo’s wet nurse.’

‘Ah yes, that pretty little peasant girl, somewhat faded … how is she?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Just as this article doesn’t matter.’

‘So then we won’t publish it?’

‘Under those conditions, no!’

‘Modesta, you don’t intend to create a furore, do you?’

‘If it were possible for me to create one, I would, but I know that it isn’t possible because you are a gang of traitors, Joyce. And as such, powerful as usual.’

‘You mean we’re not insane. We can’t alarm citizens that way. We have to win the Catholic voters! We’re in a Catholic country, Modesta. You’re forgetting your history!’

‘An article in a magazine doesn’t have the circulation of a newspaper, and as I see it, the specialized press is exactly the place where we should begin discussing the most weighty issues in order to keep the tradition — our tradition — alive, and prepare to disseminate it tomorrow. The way you’re acting, you’re not merely showing respect for the Catholic electorate, you’re meeting it fully and distorting the very roots of our struggle.’

‘Fine! We’ve finally seen each other, but now I have work to do and I’d like an answer.’

‘Yes, Joyce, we’ve seen each other … and now I know why I tried to avoid seeing you these past years.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I knew that if I saw you I would understand things clearly, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to delude myself, and that’s because … damn! how hard it is to see clearly when you’re doing something that in itself satisfies you, gives you joy, drugs you.’

‘I’m trying to be patient with you, Modesta. What is it that you like so much?’

‘Well, speaking, feeling the vibration of the crowd, the applause!’

‘You never change. For me it’s not a pleasure.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘No, for me it’s a duty.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘That’s enough, Modesta, enough!’

‘You taught me the little bit of psychology that we should all know, Joyce.’

‘Oh, enough about the past. I have a lot to do.’

‘And I, on the other hand, no longer have anything, and I feel like a deflated balloon.’

So it was that Modesta had to decide to leave the most exciting pursuit that she had ever experienced. There was no sweeter liqueur, no freshly baked bread, no lover’s saliva that could compare with that breath of life, that intensity, which for years had sent her flying through the country, sweeping away every memory, every sorrow. Determined not to collaborate with the enemy, which, though disguised in a hundred modern ways — what was the face of that new power, which unfolded in the many silent tentacles of an octopus camouflaged in the various colours of science, the arts, the professions? — was still the same power in every respect, wearing the elegant uniform of an arrogant warrior.