Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘If I may say so, my dear girls, you read too much. It’s not good for the eyes. My uncle, a doctor, claims that reading causes wrinkles … Gaia permitted you to? Well of course, always one of a kind! A woman of great merit, no question, but too, too…’

‘Last Sunday at Mass, the Baronello Ortesi showed a real interest in our darling Beatrice. Of course they’re not from an old family, but these barons are wealthy! We must have him meet Beatrice … Oh no! Not here! You two are women alone and cannot receive men. You could accept cousin Esmeralda’s thoughtfulness, since she so kindly offered to arrange a tea. Oh, it would be nice if there were a man in this house…!’

Beatrice grew pale, and I no longer slept, increasingly oppressed by figures and accounts. Tossing and turning in bed, I banged my head against the walls of that prison of payments, property taxes, tenancy agreements … The campieri , the estate’s armed guards, and the sovrastanti , the gabellotto ’s trusted men, were struggling to collect the rents, the peasants were rising up, the land wasn’t yielding, wages tripled. To read a book I sacrificed hours and hours of sleep. The piano was silent. Jacopo’s trunk, still closed, stood forgotten in a corner of the room next door. What kind of trap had I fallen into?

I pressed on, managing that seemingly immense realm which was leaking on all sides. And that odd house kept like a royal palace? ‘ I would suggest that Voscenza refresh the drapes in the spring ,’ the major-domo had respectfully directed. Which meant having them remade. The country villa, Carmelo, was still open, serving as a hotel, awaiting the return of all the deceased; twenty mouths to feed, twenty wages to pay each month. I couldn’t sleep anymore. Gaia had also suffered from insomnia. Now I understood her obsessed look, the way she remained shut up in her study intent on fighting that impossible battle. What had she sacrificed herself for? Out of duty, for a name to be held high in other people’s eyes or her own? In fact, all those lawyers, bankers and notaries had the same impervious gaze she had, fixed in one direction. Not Carmine. In my memory, Carmine, his white curls unruffled in the breeze, rode toward me on his horse, laughing … For months I had only seen him surrounded by notaries and attorneys imprisoned in their close-fitting black vests and jackets. As soon as he could, he fled. I too had to get away from those walls and those men whom I had so admired when I managed Carmelo, but who now seemed like inmates in a prison that they themselves had built day by day. ‘ If I may say so, Princess, Voscenza should have been born a man. ’ At one time I had thought those words were the highest recognition one could receive from other people, but now the terror of becoming like Gaia tightened my chest so that I couldn’t breathe.

The city taught me. The power of those majestic domes, of the rapacious palazzos and towers barely refined by haughty, ornamental gates, kept out the wretched swarm that was bled dry serving and smiling, and reminded everyone, rich and poor alike, that amassing wealth was a way to contend with the fear of death, a word that in reality is no more frightful than the words ‘illness’, ‘slavery’, ‘torture’. I would no longer worry about death, that final destination which, once it’s no longer feared, makes each hour enjoyed to the fullest seem eternal. But you had to be free, you had to take advantage of every moment, experience every step of the walk we call life. Free to observe, to study, to gaze out the window, to look beyond that jungle of palazzos and glimpse whatever light from the sea might filter in through the shutters … Someone had turned off all the streetlamps, the port’s siren saluted an unseen ship, the clatter of shutters arose as they were opened, one by one. A fishmonger’s cry went up from the narrow back streets surrounding Via Etnea, interrupting the call of the snow vendor, who reminded people of the heat in order to sell the ‘Mountain’s saliva’…

But all this was out there, not here on this elegant boulevard of heavy bank doors, sumptuous as coffins. They had opened the doors of the Bank of Sicily, and here came the first employee crossing the street. You could tell from the perfect cut of his dark suit and his jaunty, polished cane that he wasn’t a mere clerk. The man surely had the same insistent, focused gaze as Attorney Santangelo and was preparing for his day as a manager, pleased to give orders and humiliate people. No, I would not become an employee to my inheritance. To begin with, I would not receive anyone that day.

Jacopo, with his ironic smile, is calling to me from inside the trunk. I must open that trunk. At one time he spoke to me about wealth and poverty, but I was too young then. Somehow he told me that both one and the other can bestow life and death: ‘ From Carmelo, 27 March 1912. I leave tomorrow. I’m resuming my travels. There is no life in these minds obliterated by pride. I feel contemptible leaving the entire burden on Gaia’s shoulders. But what good is it to oppose history? My duty would be to shut myself up in this prison with her and go along with her absurd hope of keeping up a mentality and wealth obtained on the backs of the poor, and soon to be swallowed up by a middle class fortified by a new greed. And if not that … a spectre is haunting Europe. I declare myself a coward, but I am resuming my life. The only regret and guilt I’ll take with me — a heavy burden — is Beatrice. We should prepare her for life, make her study; the new world will belong to doctors, engineers, chemists. I’m leaving, and the rest is silence. ’

Beatrice said that Jacopo would have been as handsome as Ignazio if he hadn’t had a curved back … Stooped under his burden, Jacopo walks along paths unknown to me, long dark paths with no trees or houses. Where was he going?

‘You see, Beatrice, he’s always doing that. He speaks to me and then he goes away.’

‘Don’t say that; it frightens me! God, it’s so scary, Modesta! What did he tell you?’

‘Many good and proper things that he wants for your happiness and mine.’

‘Oh God! That’s enough now. Let’s go to sleep. Hold me! I’m afraid I’ll see him too.’

Beatrice clings to me. I like to feel her trembling: the way it starts up, how slowly but surely she calms down in my arms until her hand drops or the pressure of her head on my chest plunges me with her into a deep sleep that holds no memories. According to what I was told, I slept for two days and two nights.

‘I’m selling everything. I said I’m selling everything. I’ll rent the palazzo to the bank. Attorney Santangelo agrees: turn everything into gold and some shares. Then we’ll see. Before long it will take a suitcase full of paper to buy a crust of bread. The seaside villa will do, and it will also be good for Ippolito: here he can’t go out in the street and his health is suffering. At Carmelo he had grown used to working with the gardener, to being outdoors, to—’

‘And it was a mistake! Word about his deformity spread throughout the fields. It’s one thing to imagine it and another thing to see it, figghia , and you’ve lost standing! If, in addition to this first error, you now want to add, as you’re telling me, that of retreating to a small house without a household staff, it will be difficult to keep up your prestige.’

‘But I don’t want to keep up any prestige, Carmine. Maybe I wasn’t clear. I want to dispose of the lands as well.’

‘The lands too? No, that I didn’t understand! The Princess, God rest her soul, and I placed our trust in you, but I can see you’re just an indolent woman. Are you tired of working so soon?’