Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘You’re not sorry, are you? No answer? All right. It stands to reason. You hate me and you don’t want to give me the satisfaction. But I observe. And I can see that you’re not sorry. From the way you carry your belly it’s clear that you’re not sorry.’

Not only wasn’t I sorry, but now that my nausea was gone and the stench of vomit had faded in the villa, day by day everything was coming back to new life. The draperies, the drawing rooms, the light, people’s gestures. A hunger I’d never experienced before made all food seem like a marvellous gift of fortune. I craved it all: fruit, water, milk, and especially bread. I had forgotten the taste of warm bread, fresh from the oven, sprinkled with olive oil and salt. I could have eaten nothing but that. And with the hunger, the light became warmer and more intense, the grass fresher and greener, the peaches and figs sweeter and riper. Picking them and holding them in my hand each morning, it was as if a stream of forgotten sensations returned to get reacquainted, flowing from a distant past that I kept hidden in some remote corner of my memory. Even sleep had become a carnal pleasure. As soon as I got into bed, shadows and thoughts bent over me, lulling me. To prolong that sensation of peace I tried to elude sleep, but it was hopeless: dreams glided over me in streams of light and colour. When I was no longer able to wear a corset and saw my huge, misshapen waist and swollen belly in the mirror, instead of despairing, as I had at first thought I would, I laughed as if it were a funny trick of no great concern that life had played on me. I couldn’t manage to be serious. The only nuisance was the sorrow I had to simulate for everyone over the Princess’s death.

With Ippolito it was easy. As soon as the Princess died I allowed him to come out of that prison of a room and, as I had thought, once outside, accompanied by Pietro, his attention was distracted from my person. He had bonded to me because, aside from those who were paid, I was the only woman he had ever seen. To gain more freedom, I had a skilled nurse come from Turin. I chose the prettiest one. And when Signorina Inès began bustling around him with her brown ringlets and her sprightly, competent ways, he forgot all about me. So much so that I was nearly upset by his ‘fickleness’. But I didn’t feel the need for anybody; I recalled Beatrice’s caresses and Carmine’s embraces as though in a fog …

Carmine never came around anymore. All the work had fallen on my shoulders. I didn’t need books either, or the piano. I was a bit frightened by that discovery. Will I always be that way? But I soon understood. Just as I was now swelling, afterwards I would deflate, and would surely go back to being as I was before, if I didn’t die. Yes, that’s what that languor was which my body imposed in the form of contented dreaminess, along with hours of sleep. Nature was preparing me for the labour I would have to face. At the same time, I sensed that gradually this languor, when repeated numerous times in women who did nothing but give birth, generated a state of dull-witted deficiency that isolated them from life. Of course, how could that preparation on the part of both body and mind — for the most mysterious, most risky undertaking a human being can confront — how could it not make everything else seem, in the long run, pointless and dull?

When the moment announced itself with a fierce spasm that slashed down from the stomach, tearing hips, kidneys and intestines, she knew she had to awaken from that torpor and fight. It wasn’t just labour, as she had thought. It was a battle to the death that raged inside her as if her body, whole at first, had split in two, and one part was struggling to eat the other.

‘Scream! Scream, it will help you!’

‘The position is right. Good it’s coming. Scream and push! You can do it!’

Who can do it? That overwhelming wave of pain? Was she supposed to follow that wave? Her body was fighting the other body that, like an iron ram, kept battering the wall of her belly to get out. The enemy was there, in that ram that kept pounding to get out of its prison and live at the cost of tearing, destroying her body which, though prepared, couldn’t manage to expel the enemy and not succumb.

‘There, brava , that’s the way. Not writhing all around, but pushing down; that way you help it and you help yourself.’

Yes, she had to push him out, that stranger who already had a strong will to live his own life. She felt that he was determined to live even if it meant killing her. And with one last push, which from her shoulders ripped through her, sending a sharp spasm to her lower abdomen and thighs, she felt him slip out of her with a silent thud and fall into space.

No. They had caught him. Hands held him up, slapping him against the milky light from the window. It must be dawn; the birds were screeching. Birds always screech at dawn. In there, too, slapped by those hands, wails came from the mutilated part of her exhausted body.

Why was he screaming like that? Was he crying for the life he had won, or because, in the mystery of that carnal act, the creature knew he had nearly killed for his life? Only my body and his knew the secret meaning of that mortal, non-hostile struggle: each battling for his own life.

I came back from that long journey just in time to see that I was about to lose Beatrice, for the second time. How had I managed not to notice those lifeless, staring eyes, the drawn-back hair that made her look like an old woman?

‘We must stay here and honour Nonna’s wishes. Even though she didn’t leave a will, this is what she wanted. And nothing must change. I look after her room too now, which must remain as if she might return at any time.’

I had stayed away too long, and Gaia and all the family dead had seized the opportunity to worm their way into her. Suddenly I knew what that thing called destiny was: the unconscious desire to continue what for years has been insinuated, imposed and repeated to us as being the only right path to follow. My throat tightened. I didn’t want to lose her, and that sad, haggard face masquerading as Gaia drove me out of bed and into action. To act, I must not contradict her. I resumed caring for those rooms with her and I did not force her to see the ‘thing’s son’, as she called the tender dumpling that clung to my breast just as she had once done.

‘You’re breast-feeding him yourself? It’s a disgrace. A real princess would have immediately brought in a wet-nurse!’

She slammed doors now, like her grandmother. The noise woke Eriprando, who started crying and screaming. He was always wailing and squirming in those swaddling strips that bound his torso and limbs. Tight, sturdy strips to make him grow straight and strong. Rigid strips to educate and correct — or to cause body and mind to become unbending? I couldn’t stand hearing those screams. I leaped up, enraged by all those constraints which, coming back from that long journey inside my body, on the sidelines of life, appeared to me with a clarity I had never seen. And I too began shouting, something I’d never done:

‘Enough! Enough! Enough!’

I didn’t want to hate Beatrice, but she had put on a harsh face that I had to destroy. I threw open the door and went running down the corridor, screaming my hatred. I could hear my voice but I couldn’t understand what I was saying. Until I came upon a trembling Argentovivo. I started slapping her. And between my shouting and her tears I heard her voice saying, ‘Of course, Princess! I won’t swaddle him anymore! Don’t fret so! Oh God! Yes, yes, you’re right!.. The Principessina is in her room … Yes, yes, I’ll bring her here!’

When Beatrice too stood before me, trembling — with that obscure will that she was unable to oppose making her look old — I grabbed her by the head and pulled out the hairpins, yanking her hair. Feeling her tremble even more as I did this, an insane fury made me raise my hand to her, and slapping and kicking her, I dragged her to my room, slamming the door in Argentovivo’s face as she wept. I didn’t want to hate her, but I couldn’t stop my hand. Only when I saw her collapse at my feet did I leave her there in the middle of the room and, locking myself in the bathroom, put my head in a basin of cold water. I didn’t care about anything anymore. If she wanted war, war it would be, but open warfare. I couldn’t act toward her as I did with others. We two were equals, bound together. The cold water calmed me and I went back into the room.