Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘Don’t disparage me in front of Modesta, Nina. I was a doctor even in the army.’

‘Sure, in Africa. Some guarantee of reliability that is! And then, it’s not as if it were yesterday! You’ve probably forgotten everything.’

‘Doctors are born, just as denigrators are — is that the right word?’

‘Yes, and you know it.’

‘Denigrators like you.’

‘You can’t say that. As far as your body goes, I admire you a lot, as Carluzzu would say. It’s quite a scene going out with Marco, Mody: everyone turns their head.’

‘Class, Nina! You can’t beat class!’

They joke around as if they’ve known each other for years. To my surprise, I find myself listening to his voice, which sounds to me like a refrain I once knew but later forgot.

‘He seems like one of us, doesn’t he, Modesta?’

‘Yes, but how did you meet him?’

‘Prowling around, micia … Damn, it’s late! Speaking of prowling reminded me of an appointment. I’m going up to get dressed … No, Marco, why are you getting up? Stay, I’ll have the gardener call a taxi.’

I’d like to go back up with Nina, partly because heavy clouds are darkening the Prophet’s brow, and that profile is frightening when it’s angry. But Marco says nothing; his silence has a familiar rhythm. Plus, he must know everything about us since he calmly murmurs, ‘I agree with Nina. I find this villa more agreeable than Carmelo. Bambù was wise to buy it back. I can’t forget the joy in her eyes when she told me: “Go, Marco. Go and see how beautiful our childhood villa is! You’ll see, every room still echoes with our songs and games.” Then, too, it’s a way of preserving something in this race to destruction that’s seized everyone. I want to photograph it. Bambù gave me permission.’

I don’t feel like talking. Maybe they’re right to be concerned about me. I hear myself say with effort, ‘Don’t tell me you revel in looking back on the past as well, Marco? It’s become stylish, this nostalgia, a real bore.’

‘No, I don’t mourn anything from the past, but for some time now I’ve also understood the lie that masquerades behind the word “progress”, and I console myself by going around photographing things that will soon disappear … Rome’s last trattorias, the last of the taverns … I have hundreds of photos of the Civita … They’ve demolished street after street, house after house.’

‘How come you speak Italian so well?’

‘It’s simple: my mother was Sicilian and my father British. And in the battle that parents always wage to have you all to themselves, my mother won; that’s it. And so I rejected a specialist’s life — that of a doctor, in my case — as my father wanted, and returned to my maternal Eden.’

‘Poor Marco! That path must have cost you dearly.’

‘As it does all outsiders: hunger, a variety of jobs, adventures.’

‘Now I remember. Nina insisted that I meet you this winter, and to entice me she said: “My Marco is one big adventure!”’

‘Nina exaggerates. Basically I’m just a photographer … But you’re cold, Modesta.’

Yes, I’m cold. And grateful for his silence, I let him take my hands and help me up from the sand, which has become damp beneath me. When I stand up, my head spins — I must be really unwell — and it’s no wonder he holds me close against his chest to support me. Maybe La Certa has decided to keep her appointment right here on our beach, still filled with the cries of children, the fluttering of Beatrice’s white skirts, the sound of Carlo’s voice, and Pietro’s slow, solicitous step … Could be.

I open my eyes to decipher that message, but I encounter a calm gaze, as though he were intent on listening to some melody. That gaze prompts me to rest my head on his shoulder and listen with him.

‘You have an intense feeling for life, Modesta, which I now understand because I followed you this entire past year.’

‘You followed me, Marco?’

‘Yes. Not that I was really aware of it. I was very intrigued by your way of speaking, your way of falling silent. You were silent a moment ago as well, but I could see by your face that you were thinking. About what, Modesta?’

‘I was gripped by an intense curiosity about my death. Yes, as if another biological adventure could be read in that word, yet another metamorphosis that awaits us, Marco: me, you, Nina.’

‘I’m frightened by it…’

‘Naturally. But there’s also an intense curiosity to know . You’re a man, Marco, and you don’t know — or you knew and then, in your haste to act, forgot — the material transformations in your body, so the word makes you tremble a little. But if you hold me close, I, a woman, will help you remember, and not be afraid of that which must change in order to continue living.’

As he holds me tightly, his tremor disappears, and between my body and his, the eternal, shivery heat rises in waves until his eyes widen in mine with pleasure. Now I understand: I’ve learned many things in life, but never how to inhibit love … Can you inhibit love, Mimmo? ‘ You can inhibit the intelligence of others, the facts of history, even destiny — I grant you, even destiny — but never love! ’ And if Carmine hadn’t told me, how could I have known that the indifference I thought I felt for that man, the apathy and boredom, were merely my attempts to evade the mysterious imperative that always inspires fear, and which the scalpel of human speculation has not yet managed to dissect?

‘How could I have told you, Modesta, when I myself didn’t know it yet? But now that we’ve discovered it, if you like, we can be together for some time. I’ve been alone for many years, and wandering the world alone is tiring. Will you come with me?’

And so it was that with a simple gesture, abetted by Nina, life handed me the most beautiful gift a child’s mind could ever imagine. And from a man I had mistakenly thought to be a former golden boy, grown old in comfort and ennui, I discovered day by day, year after year, the wealth of knowledge and experience that only a mature body can possess.

From him I learned that I did not know my island — its powerful, secret physical body, its hot nocturnal drafts that fuse stone upon stone to solidify the spirit of the drywalls into a single block, the mystical breath that keeps the columns of the temples alive and makes them throb in the sunsets: ‘Here, Mody, this is where the stone widens so that the column breathes and produces the optical illusion of levitation’; the white silence of abandoned fishing nets, cast away by the sea and by man, yet for ever pervaded by the ghosts of the tuna that stop there, seeking the reason for their life and death; the eternal currents of the seas that converge around the island, at times enclosing it, at times releasing it, ever changing in intensity and colour. ‘That emerald coloured strip over there is the sea of Africa.’

From him I learned the art, which I still did not know, of coming and going from my land, forgetting it at times, travelling to different continents and oceans, then rediscovering it: new, and even richer with layered memories and sensations. And what can I say about our evenings and nights together? If only I could freeze them! Being alone together, holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes, recounting impressions, intuitions, talking …

‘They say so much about first love, don’t they, Marco? Lies, like all the rest.’

‘That’s true, Modesta. I never would have imagined it either, and unfortunately you have to reach our age to find out. Did you see how those kids were looking at us on the bridge today? I was almost tempted to tell them, but they wouldn’t have believed me.’