Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

A tenderness I’d never felt before for that big body lying naked, disappointed, on my belly and tightly locked thighs almost makes me let go of his penis. But my hand will not obey me, and I’m left crushed between his sex and mine, frozen.

‘What’s wrong, Modesta? What is it? You can tell Carmine. If you’ve suffered so much that you can’t forgive, Carmine can understand.’

‘No, no. It’s that I’m afraid, Carmine, afraid!’

‘Afraid of what, picciridda ? I don’t understand.’

‘There’s youthful sap in the old tree, Carmine. I can feel it in my hands.’

‘Ah, that’s all it is! And you’re right. Forgive me, figghia . I should have thought of it, but I wanted you so much and I was only thinking about my own pleasure.’

Gently he lifts himself off of me and drops beside me.

‘You’re right. I don’t want to complicate your life with another pregnancy, but don’t leave me like this. I’m in pain. Feel how hard I am. Here, use your hands and your mouth: give me some relief. But when you feel that I’m about to come, move your mouth away. I don’t want to make you gag.’

With his hand, watchful like back then, he guides my strokes. I had never kissed him like that, and a new wave of tenderness drives away the earlier chill. A fierce heat envelops my body again and makes my senses sway with his. And now that his cock is rising and falling between my tongue and palate, I can’t let go and I come with him, sucking the unfamiliar semen which bursts from the depths of his being to quench the burning thirst in my mouth. A tangy, sweet taste: tree resin, or the curdled milk of men also born to suckle.

His sex, now small again, rests passively on the wiry, curly hair. I enjoy nudging it with my finger. Like back then, he puts up no resistance, and like then I burst out laughing, an odd trick of the emotions.

‘What’s so funny, tosta carusa , my impudent little girl?’

‘It’s just that it looks so comical, so puny and drained! Also, I hadn’t noticed it before, Carmine, but how come the hair is dark down here? Not even a single white strand?’

‘If you look closely, there must be a few.’

‘No, Carmine, not even one! It looks like Eriprando’s hair.’

‘Ah, he has our colouring? I’m glad.’

‘But how can it be, Carmine, that all the hair on your head is white and the hair here is dark?’

‘What can I say? It must be that I’m half old and half young; what can I tell you?’

‘And your armpits? Let me see, lift your arm.’

Slowly I travel over his body. Under his arms, too, the hair is all dark, but on his chest there is some white.

‘What a hairy chest you have, Carmine! Thick and curly, whereas the hair on your arms is smooth and soft.’

Slowly I make my way back down that big body. I want to see the hair down there again. I want to see if it really is as dark as I’d thought it was before I travelled upward.

‘You’re prowling up and down me like a kitten, figghia ! Your hair is tickling me. What are you looking for?’

After that long journey from head to toe, I let my head rest on the dark curls. I’m tired. I close my eyes and start toying with his cock again: satisfied, it almost fits in the palm of my hand.

‘First it was sooo big, now it’s teeny weeny. Why, Carmine?’

‘Go ask the Saracen olive tree, which enjoyed doing odd things. 48Carmine knows nothing about nature.’

‘Not a one; the hairs are all dark here, Carmine. How old are you anyway, old man?’

‘I’ll be fifty-three, if I make it to the Day of the Dead.’

‘You were born on 2 November?’

‘Exactly, figghia . My mother used to say that that year the dead brought her Carmine as a gift. 49Who knows why that beautiful woman laughed and liked to think that. I didn’t like the idea at first, and for many years I told everyone, outside the family, that I had been born on the 3rd. Then, little by little, I didn’t mind it anymore, and like my mother, I laughed at both the dead and the living, and at God and the devil!’

I had never heard him talk so much. His cock in my hands, I was lulled by his voice. I didn’t want him to stop talking.

‘What was your mother like, Carmine?’

‘I told you: beautiful, tall and strong like a man. She didn’t know how to read or write. And when one of us misbehaved, without waiting for my father, as women do, she beat the living daylights out of us. More than once she gave me a black eye. And I had to lie to my buddies and pretend I’d had a fistfight with my brothers. What else could I say? That a woman had made me look like a boxer after a match? Especially since I wanted to be a boxer.’

‘What did you know about boxing?’

‘An uncle who was a boxer in America, loaded with money and women, had taught me something about the noble art the last time he came to see us. I was obsessed with the idea, and I couldn’t manage to apply myself to numbers and words. And every so often I would go to my father and ask his permission to go to America, to Uncle Antonio, and eventually become a boxer. You see, Uncle Antonio didn’t have any children and he often asked my father to send me.’

‘And your father?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t answer. Instead he told me: “Go ask your mother for permission.”’

‘And your mother?’

‘Without saying boo, she gave me a beating, and I respected her and we didn’t talk about it again for months.’

‘And then?’

‘My obsession with boxing gloves would come over me again. I’d lose my interest in the fields, and I’d go to my father, and he’d send me to my mother and she made me get over it with her beatings.’

‘So you were little then?’

‘Well, fourteen or fifteen.’

‘And you let her hit you?’

‘I told you: I respected her. Besides, she washed for us, she cooked for us … she was always laughing and singing as she cooked. And I swear to God, after she died I never again ate maccu 50as good as hers!’

He falls quiet. In the silence, his peaceful breathing draws faint sand dunes in my mind’s eye. Softly, under the moon’s spiteful gaze, I place my ear on the spot he had shown me with a clenched fist: the place where that bald hag had laid her eggs. But the slow beating of his heart reveals nothing, not a cry, not a moan. The veil of silence becomes heavy, and I don’t feel like sleeping.

‘Carmine, why are you speaking now? Before, you never talked to me.’

‘Why, does it bother you, picciridda ? If I’m bothering you, I’ll keep quiet.’

‘No, not at all, I like hearing your voice. But how come?’

‘How do I know, picciridda ! Or maybe I do know. You see, figghia , since they told me down in Catania that I might have three or four months to live, memories, good and bad, have come back to me … the faces of loved ones who have been gone a long time, the beautiful places I’ve seen. How can I explain it to you? It’s a kind of nostalgia for the good things and the many springtimes that fate and good fortune have granted me. Carmine has been a lucky man, and even in bad times he has lived fully. And so, hearing the word “end”, I felt a strong desire to relive my life. Take tonight, for example: what old man around here or anywhere in the world could have had the good fortune of feeling a weight as beautiful as you on top of him?’

‘And you’re not afraid?’

‘Afraid of what, figghia ? My father died peacefully. He, too, had been granted a full life by fate. He amassed houses and lands for us and for my mother who passed away, at a ripe old age, just six years ago. Of course, as my father used to say, if you’re born weak in mind and body, and let yourself be hoodwinked by all those notions the priests hand us, then La Certa must naturally be terrifying. To acquire what there was to acquire, my grandfather, my father and I had to gain respect with our fists and with our shotguns. I’ve had a close brush with La Certa many times. And how those shotguns or knives flourished in the night! But I’m here with you, and I don’t care.’