Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘But Modesta, don’t you see? You’re denying the sacrifice and abnegation of those who are fighting for the proletarian cause, for a better society without class differences, without man’s exploitation by other men, without…’

‘I’m not denying any struggle! I’m critical of a mind-set and way of thinking that is not very different from the old world that you seek to oppose. By thinking the way you do, you will build a society that, in the best of cases, will be a copy, and an inferior one at that, of the old Christian bourgeois society.’

‘But radical transformations take time. First we have to overthrow the bourgeoisie through revolution and change the relations of production. Everything else will then follow on its own because the superstructures created by the bourgeois ideology will collapse … In any case, what I wanted to talk about is us. I don’t see what this theoretical discussion has to do with it. But we’ll talk about it later.’

And talking about it, hearing myself accused in a thousand ways of being cruel, cold, rational, being told how much I had been loved without deserving it, hearing how love is so sacred and miraculous, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t listening anymore. As I watched his hands gripping my knees, I was thinking of all the discussions that I would have in the future, if I lived long enough, with Alberto, Giovanni, Michel … Michel, his eyes green as emeralds. Discussions that would come up again and again, exactly the same, for another ten, twenty, thirty years. The image of my future, of perhaps having many more years to live, coursed through my blood like a gentle April rain, soothing the irritation that Carlo’s voice now aroused in me.

But I had to show patience toward that tense, disappointed face, that of a child who will not resign himself to the fact that his plaything lies before him, irreparably broken by a gust of wind or a careless act (mine or his?). I didn’t want to lose that fervent intellect that encouraged me to explore and continually gave me new insights, new concepts, new words. Having experienced disappointment myself over the end of a good thing, I began to understand. He no longer loved me either, but he couldn’t resign himself to having been the cause.

‘It’s your fault. You’re the one who ruined everything!’

‘Yes, Carlo, it’s my fault.’

The admission of my guilt had the power to soothe him. Now he stopped attacking. He looked at me, appeased and drained. He let go of my knees, ran his hands over his face. He didn’t know where to look. He turned his head wearily from side to side.

‘You have no idea, Modesta, what the men I’ve known since childhood are like, the men who have, so to speak, shaped me. You don’t know how lonely they are, how little they know about the women they think they know all about, from the moment they first had the courage to visit a prostitute. Now I see I should have told you right away that the only women I had before you were those poor souls whom society forces to sell their body. You would have understood, and we would have quickly shattered the loneliness that for centuries has existed between men and women.’

I looked at him; he was smiling now as he finished his little speech. He was smiling his quiet, shy smile. And maybe because wispy clouds trailed uncertainly after a flight of seagulls promising unknown places, worlds and faces yet to be discovered, maybe because Beatrice, now recovered though thinner, came running toward us, one moment corporeal, bright, illuminated by the sun, the next rendered diaphanous by those timid, late winter clouds, I saw Carlo’s face the way I had once seen it.

‘I admire you a great deal, Modesta, but none the less, I want to tell you something, for your own good, for your future. I may be too sensitive, it’s true, but you’re too dramatic, far too dramatic!’

‘Modesta! Oh God, Modesta, Carlo, hurry, please! Eriprando, Eriprando! Nonna was right, the curse! Run! He’s on the carpet, screaming. His little foot, Modesta, his little foot, rigid like mine was. Hurry! Argentovivo went to lift him up to feed him, but he started shrieking!’

Beatrice was weeping on my shoulder, hugging me frantically. I couldn’t move. An anger I had never felt before for that little slip of a thing trembling in my arms and immobilizing me made me shout, ‘Shut up! Stop talking about curses and ill omens.’

I must have pushed her away violently. As I ran toward the house, I saw Carlo helping her up from the ground. But he lost no time comforting her. Once in the room, he reached out to support me just in time as I watched that little child writhing on the carpet, Argentovivo’s cries resounding in my head.

‘Steady, Modesta! We need a surgeon. Run to the car and wait for us, or if you don’t feel you can drive, call Pietro.’

‘No, no, I’ll drive. What is it, Carlo, what’s wrong?’

‘Run, Modesta, we must hurry! There’s no time! I don’t want to give you any false hopes.’

Eriprando struggled with his affliction alone, wrapped in a blanket in Carlo’s arms. And I mustn’t scream or cry or ask questions. I must simply drive, urged on by those screams, loud at first, then fading into a long, droning, dissonant dirge.

I was left standing outside a blank, unreadable door, the nurse’s impassive face regarding me as an outsider; the hospital’s silence screamed more loudly in my head than Eriprando’s cries, confining me behind an insurmountable wall of waiting. Or was it the slippery wall of the well, from which I was trying to crawl back up to the light on my hands and knees?… up there, maybe Mimmo would talk to me. I stayed in the stagnant well until Mimmo said in his unmistakable voice:

‘ Don’t worry, princess. It’s nothing serious. It’s not polio. All we had to do was cut a tendon. Carlo will explain it to you later. ’

‘Modesta, may I introduce my friend and colleague Arturo Galgani of Milan? Luckily he was here!’

‘Pleased to meet you, Doctor.’

‘The pleasure is all mine, Princess.’

* * *

The headlights gingerly probed the black lava pavement polished by the rain. Carlo drove cautiously; not a jolt, no abrupt braking, so as not to disturb the sleep of the little one who lay heavily in my lap. I couldn’t look at his face, which in a few hours had grown thin and pale, as if La Certa had paused for a moment to focus on him. I mustn’t look at him. The tall blond man had smiled and said, ‘Caught in time, it’s just a minor episode; I suggest you take him home, however. He should wake up in familiar surroundings and if you do not appear worried or anxious, as I’m sure you won’t, the child will no longer remember anything when he wakes up. It’s extremely important that he forget, and accept the exercises and massages as something everyone does.’

‘Do you feel ill, Modesta? Is that why you’ve closed your eyes?’

‘No, Carlo, no. I’m just very tired.’

To reassure him, I opened my eyes and the calm, friendly face from the past smiled at me a moment before turning back to watch the road.

‘What did you say the name of this muscle cramp or contraction was, Carlo?’

‘Oh, they call it a piede cavallino , a charley horse. Are you still thinking about it? It can be serious because the contraction stunts the leg’s growth, but caught in time it’s nothing serious, nothing at all.’

‘ Cavallino , like Beatrice?’

‘As a matter of fact!’

‘Thank you, Carlo. What if you hadn’t been there!’

‘But I was there. I’m always there. I’m not being arrogant, believe me; it’s just a statement of fact. I can’t help it. Whenever someone needs me, somehow there I am, at the ready. Convenient for others, though less so for me. What can you do! It must be this damned vocation of mine as a doctor.’