Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

For years I’d heard her scream like that without paying any attention to it, until one day, tired of dragging that wood, lying on the ground and hearing her scream, I felt a kind of sweetness spreading through my body. A sweetness that then became shivers of pleasure, so that little by little, I began to hope each day that my mother would go out so that I could listen, ear pressed to the toilet door, and take pleasure from those screams.

When it happened, I would close my eyes and imagine that my sister was tearing her flesh, harming herself. And so, touching myself in the spot where pee-pee comes out, my hands urged on by the screams, I discovered a pleasure greater than that of eating freshly baked bread, or fruit.

My mother said that my sister Tina — ‘the cross that God justly sent us because of your father’s evil ways’ — was twenty years old. But she was only as tall as me, and so fat that, if you could remove her head, she would look like the trunk that Nonno always kept locked. Nonno, who had been a seaman, was ‘even more wicked than his son’. I had no idea what a seaman did. Tuzzu said they were men who lived on ships and went to sea … but what was the sea?

Tina looked just like Nonno’s trunk, and when I was bored I would close my eyes and lop off her head. Since she was twenty years old and female, all females at twenty must surely become like her, or like my mother. For males it was different: Tuzzu was tall and had no missing teeth like Tina; his were strong and white, like the summer sky when you get up early to bake bread. His father was like him too: vigorous, with teeth that shone like Tuzzu’s when he laughed. He was always laughing, Tuzzu’s father. Our mother never laughed, and this too must have been because she was a female. But even though she never laughed and had no teeth, I hoped to turn out like her; at least she was tall and her eyes were large and gentle, and she had black hair. Tina didn’t even have hair: just a few thin strands that Mama combed out trying to cover the top of that egg.

The screams have stopped. Mama must be back, hushing Tina by stroking her head. Who knows if Mama too has discovered how much pleasure you can feel by touching yourself in that spot? And Tuzzu, I wonder if Tuzzu knows? He must be harvesting reeds.

The sun is high. I have to go look for him and ask him about this touching, and about the sea too. Will he still be there?

The light makes my eyes burn. Whenever I leave the room, the light always burns my eyes; when I go inside though, the darkness blinds me. The heat has let up and the mountains have turned black as Mama’s hair again. The mountains always turn black as her hair when the heat lets up, but when the heat intensifies they turn blue, like the Sunday dress that Mama is sewing for Tina. Dresses for her all the time, and ribbons too! Even white shoes, she bought her. For me, nothing. ‘You have your health, figlia mia , my dresses are good enough for you if I shorten them. What do you need dresses for, when you have your health? Give thanks to God, instead of complaining, give thanks to God!’ She’s always talking about this God, but if you ask her to explain, not a word: ‘Pray to Him to protect you and that’s that! What else do you want to know? Pray to Him, that’s all.’

The heat has really lessened and the air is fresh. In a short time the mud has dried up and the wind has died down; the reed bed is still, and isn’t screeching like it was yesterday. I have to look closely: wherever the reeds are stirring, that’s where Tuzzu is.

‘What are you doing there like a silly ninny? Catching flies?’

‘I was looking for you, and I’m not a silly ninny! I came looking for you. Are you finished?’

‘No, I’m not done. I’m taking a rest. And smoking a cigarette. Are you blind, besides being a halfwit like your sister? Can’t you see I’m lying in the shade with a cigarette in my mouth?’

‘So now you smoke? I never saw you smoke before.’

‘Of course I smoke. I started two days ago. It was about time, right?’

He shut up and took the cigarette out of his mouth. He wouldn’t talk anymore now. Whenever Tuzzu shut his mouth he wouldn’t open it again for hours, so his father said. And if he used to do that before, imagine, now that he smoked! How grown up he looked lying there like that! Had he gotten bigger, or was it the cigarette that made him look older? How can I talk to him now that he’s so grown up? He’ll laugh in my face and say I’m a silly little baby, like he always does. All I could do was sit near him and keep quiet. At least I could look at him. I looked at him a long time and I’m looking at him now: his sun-darkened face was scored by two huge, limpid wounds — certainly not eyes — which wept a deep, cool blue water. I watched the assured way he brought the cigarette to his mouth and then took it out, the way his father did.

That self-assurance made me shiver.

No, he wouldn’t talk to me anymore, and maybe he wouldn’t even let me watch him anymore. The thought made me feel so cold that I had to close my eyes and lie down, because my head was spinning like the time I had a fever. I closed my eyes and waited for him to pass sentence. He wouldn’t even let me watch him anymore.

‘What are you doing, scimuzza , falling asleep, you little silly?’

‘No, I’m not sleeping. I was thinking.’

‘Oh, you mean you think too? A silly scimuzza who thinks, huh! What were you thinking about? May I have the honour of knowing?’

‘I was thinking of asking you…’

‘What? Come on, tell me! A chicken about to have its neck wrung — that’s what you look like! What is it? Talk!’

‘Oh, nothing … nothing. I wanted to ask you what the sea is.’

‘Not again! Enough about this sea! Thick-headed, you are! I’ve explained it to you a hundred times. A hundred times! The sea is a vast stretch of water as deep as the water in the well between our farm and that hovel you live in. Only it’s blue, and no matter where you look you can’t see where it ends. What more do you want to know! Locca , a crazy fool, that’s what you are! And even if you weren’t locca , females, as my father says, have never understood a thing, not since the world began.

‘But I do understand: water deep as the one in the well, only blue.’

‘ Brava! Congratulations! So, stand up and look around! Do you see the chiana , the plain around us? 1What’s the name of this plain, huh? Let’s see if you’re capable of learning.’

‘This plain is the Chiana del Bove.’

‘Well then, the sea is a plain of blue water, but without the mountains of lava that we see out there. When we look at the sea’s expanse, we don’t see anything out there, nothing that limits our view, or rather, we see a thin line that is nothing more than the sea merging with the sky. And that line is called the horizon.’

‘What’s a horizon?’

‘I just told you: it’s where the vast stretch of blue water ends there at the sky. Way out there, where the eye can’t reach.’

‘A stretch of water blue as your eyes that meet the sky of your forehead.’

‘Just look at that, what a thought! A troubadour, that’s you. I swear to God, you’re like a troubadour! What happened? Did you tumble out of bed this morning? Is that why you’re having such poetic thoughts?’

‘And you, did you tumble out of bed this morning, is that why you’re smoking like a grown-up? You smoke and I’ll … can I look at your eyes? If I look at them, I’ll have a better idea of what the sea is like.’

‘Go ahead! Who said you couldn’t? If it gives you so much pleasure to know what the sea is like, go right ahead. It must give you a lot of pleasure, seeing how you’re blushing. You’re cute, even if you’re locca . Really cute! Who knows who knocked up your mother?’