Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘That’s my business. You can’t understand. I don’t like this work. I want to study!’

‘Study? Listen to her! And what does that mean, study?’

‘You see? You can’t understand. All right, so I’m lazy and a woman, call it whatever you want.’

‘I won’t say another word. But when they know you’re selling, word will get around and you won’t find anyone who will offer you the real value of the land: they’ll give you next to nothing, like what happened last month with the Suormarchesa estate in the Serradifalco territory: it had to be sold at public auction and Don Calò bought it for a song.’

‘So don’t wait for a public auction and for Don Calò to arrive. Buy it yourself. Carry out the plan you’ve had for twenty years.’

‘I see you’re perceptive. But I didn’t steal anything; I took what was coming to me by my labour, while the Prince and his offspring, not to speak ill of the dead, fooled around studying books and gazing at the stars. Besides, I did it for my sons.’

‘Your sons? What sons?’

‘I have two sons … didn’t you know?’

‘How could I know when you didn’t tell me?’

‘I had to tell you? You observe, figghia , you listen. You’ve become like these signori . Always taken up with useless things … I’ve been very worried during these four years of war. But as God willed, Mattia returned when you gave birth, and now Vincenzo is coming home after he was said to be missing. You too have a son; did you forget that? If you sell everything, what will you leave him? You may have enough to live on for ten or twenty years, but lands give children status. And you have a son!’

‘He’s your son too.’

‘He doesn’t have my name!’

‘You talk like the old man you are: “name”, “status”! My son will make his way on his own. We younger people are different.’

‘That may be! But as you say, I’m an old-fashioned man, and for me my duty as a father comes first. And while we’re on the subject: my sons mustn’t know about my weaknesses. You’re a child, just a few years between you and Mattia.’

‘So?’

‘We can’t see each other like we used to. My sons mustn’t know.’

I lunged forward to strike him, but this time he didn’t let me hit him. He blocked me with his hand and, holding me at a distance, said in a frigid tone that I didn’t recognize:

‘Stop right there, carusa , the time for fun and games is over, little girl! You have to keep quiet. Understood? And forget. Carmine has forgotten. Always at your command, Princess.’

* * *

‘This one we absolutely must take; it’s a unique painting, and this landscape too, look! Even if you don’t like them very much, we must keep them. We’ll put them all in one room. Uncle Jacopo used to say that over time they would become priceless. Fortunately he made a note of the ones he thought were valuable. He knew everything about painting, about sculpture, even architecture. Such freedom, Modesta! Have you noticed how my colour has returned, like you wanted, and that I’ve even gained weight? Come on, give me a hug and smile. I just can’t stand to see you so sad. Let’s hope that this illness will soon pass. What did the doctor call it … anaemia? Is that what he said? I want so much to take driving lessons with you. What a good idea you had to sell that hearse and buy a small car. Without a driver we’ll be free to go wherever we want. We’ll drive ourselves, just think what fun! How do you feel? Better? Come with me, there’s a really nice Empire-style table that I’d like to take with us, but I want your opinion.’

Did you hear how Beatrice talks? Carmine is gone and she senses the emptiness I’m left with, and that I need her.

Until a few minutes ago I had meant to skip over the episode of Carmine’s desertion, recalling that being abandoned or abandoning is one of the obligatory phases that life imposes on us. But as always happens in ‘affairs of the heart’, his words assumed the right to live without my intellect’s permission. Don’t worry. I won’t give you a blow-by-blow description of the struggle that everyone comes to know and tries to forget. I suffered just like everyone else. But love is neither absolute nor eternal, and love doesn’t only exist between a man and woman, possibly consecrated. You could love a man, a woman, a tree and maybe even a jackass, as Shakespeare tells us.

The harm lies in the words which tradition presents as absolute, in the distorted meanings those words continue to hold. The word ‘love’ is a lie, just like the word ‘death’. Many words lied, almost all of them lied. That was what I had to do: study words exactly as one studies plants, animals … And then, wipe away the mould, free them from the deposits of centuries of tradition, invent new ones, and above all discard and no longer use those that common practice most often adopts, the most corrupt ones, such as ‘sublime’, ‘duty’, ‘tradition’, ‘self-denial’, ‘humility’, ‘soul’, ‘modesty’, ‘heart’, ‘heroism’, ‘feeling’, ‘compassion’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘resignation’.

I learned to read books in a different way. As I came across a certain word, a certain adjective, I extracted them from their context and analysed them to see if they could be used in ‘my’ context. In that first attempt to identify the lie hidden in words that were evocative even to me, I realized how many of them there were, and accordingly how many false concepts I had fallen victim to. And my hatred grew, day by day: the hatred of discovering that I had been deceived.

I found the words to kill Carmine. I found what all the poets know: that you can kill with words, just as well as with a knife or with poison:

You kill me, but my face

remains glazed

in your eyes.

At night

your eyelids weep,

nailed shut.

And thinking back to Beatrice in the early days of our love, to the Beatrice of that time, before I forget her:

What drives you on

through obscure, unsettled

seasons,

you who pale at the slightest

heat

and collapse, shattered,

at the slightest stir

of shadows on the lawn?

Don’t be afraid. I won’t recite all the poems that flooded my mind like a swollen torrent.

* * *

‘What are you doing, Modesta? You shouldn’t work so hard. Forgive me for coming to look for you. It’s so nice down at the shore with this heat. We’ve prepared a fire; tonight we’ll dine on the beach. Pietro caught a lot of fish this morning. He’s so funny, he wants us to think that Ippolito caught some too! Come on, we’re all so cheerful, the only thing we’re missing is you.’

And they all seemed really happy to scurry around under Beatrice’s orders. In a short time, she had transformed the small cove into a dining-room glittering with silver cutlery and porcelain plates, lit by bright acetylene lamps on the boats. The happiest of all was Ippolito who, hand in hand with his Signorina Inès, sat staring at the sea. Did the sea whisper freedom to him as well? It must have been so, because those big eyes with no eyelashes, always teary, widened as they stared at the water. A distant echo of recollection seemed to appear in his eyes when he turned his gaze on me. Terrified, I had the precise feeling that those eyes were looking at me with recognition, as he repeated: ‘Boo-tiful, Mama, boo-tiful.’ Fortunately, Signorina Inès burst into one of those sudden laughs that shook her dark ringlets, her neck and her breasts. Fortunately, because I was about to run away when I heard him address me as ‘Mama’.

‘Did you hear that, Princess? He said “beautiful”. With me he’s already said it, and many other words as well. But, just as I thought, in front of you he’s embarrassed. Do you see how much weight he’s lost? And do you know, he’s just about finished painting the vegetable garden fence with the gardener’s help, and his hands have almost stopped shaking.’