Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

‘Just what Jose said.’

The shadow and hat brim were now about to blend, when suddenly those lips parted in an unexpected smile that lit up the darkness of the felt, the eyes, the shadows. Stella was right: that woman flustered you. I should have run off after Stella and got away from that deep voice whose intense pauses, underscored by long, distracted looks, made me all too aware of my awkward gestures and way of speaking. When she said again: ‘Do you think, Princess…’, the incongruence of my title with her elegance upset me to the point that, grabbing the chair, I heard myself say in a strident voice:

‘For heaven’s sake, Joyce, don’t call me Princess! I can barely stand it at the bank and with the lawyers.’

‘I understand … It sounded jarring to me too, when Jose talked about you. But as Jose told me: “In her, the title loses the hateful connotation custom and tradition have given the word, and revives all the fabulous legends of childhood.”’

Was she making fun of me? Or, influenced by her Jose — suddenly I felt I hated him for the power you could see he had over her — did she perhaps not notice my careless dress, my neglected mop of hair, my odious voice? Indignant, I deliberately looked her in the eye. No, she wasn’t making fun of me; rather, she was studying me like a curious plaything.

Full of hate for her and her Jose, I didn’t answer. Rising, I dismissed her with a nod, not smiling that foolish smile, which has lingered on my lips for hours. ‘ I advise you to smile less, Mody. You have a beautiful smile, but when you overdo it and ladle it out on every occasion, your plebeian origins show. Be careful! ’

* * *

‘It’s true, Modesta. It was the same for me too. From the first day I had the feeling that we had known each other for ever.’

She had called me Modesta for the first time and, spoken by her, that ugly name seemed almost beautiful to me. Well, dear Carmine, I followed your advice to flee a face by looking the other way, or avoiding a back street where a partly open window proffers alluring shadows. In Palermo, at the hotel, I had managed to shun those persistent roses that offered up their red song to the sun each morning. In Paris, with that Michel and his emerald eyes it was easy to move my departure up a few days. Even now, all I would have had to do was give her Pietro’s ticket, which was lying on my desk, and a ship’s name and date would have silenced that voice which, day after day, filled the house with fairy tales, landscapes, stories even more exciting than the adventures of Saint Agatha and Santa Rosalia. But how could I interrupt the description of that immense, dazzling villa, its pale wood carved in tracery, whose reflection — on returning from long rowboat rides at sunset — glittered on the leaden water of the Bosporus?

‘… to frighten us, Nazim would whisper that it was the ghost of our house that rose from the sea at that hour to greet the dying sun.’

No, I would not confirm with Pietro. Maybe later on, the next ship.

‘You seem lost in thought, Modesta. Am I perhaps boring you with my childhood tales?’

Besides, she doesn’t ask me about leaving either. She doesn’t even ask Stella anymore. Without waiting for my reply she adds:

‘It’s curious, Modesta, but since I’ve been here — I don’t know whether it’s thanks to your serenity or because of Stella, or this house — all my anxiety has vanished. I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m as content here as I was with Nazim, back then, in what was our childhood home.’

You see? She doesn’t want to go either. I mentally tear up Pietro’s ticket with the name of the ship, the captain and so on.

‘Yes, content as I was then! And maybe talking with you, I’m beginning to see why. I had never been to Sicily and I could never imagine…’

‘Imagine what, Joyce?’

‘How similar your region is to mine. The light, the harsh faces of the peasants, the ghosts!’

‘Ghosts?’

‘Yes. Here, every back street, every building — perhaps it’s your austere, white Baroque, though that may seem like a contradiction — your fountains, your ancient melodies … I don’t know, everything evokes ghosts and familiar voices. Often, while walking, I have the precise sensation that I’m hearing the wail of the muezzin, and I find myself gazing up, scanning for that stone cry raised to the sky, which for the pious in Turkey is the minaret. To me those cries are nothing but petrified screams, terrified of the merciless sky that crushes the frightened soul into the ground … How I would love to take a ship, Modesta, and show you Anatolia!’

You see? She even said the word ship, but without the slightest reference to the San Giovanni Decollato , which, as I’ve mentioned to her, definitely leaves for South America at dawn on Saturday.

‘Help you get to know Istanbul! Allow me to dream, Modesta. It’s been a long time since I’ve done so, and besides, as I told you, it’s your trees that are to blame, your sky, your light. Twenty days in Istanbul, with a brief side trip to Edirne, where the most beautiful mosques in Turkey are found. And then months and months through the rugged, epic heart of the Anatolian plateau. Anatolia! A land devoid of sentimentalism. Istanbul? No, Istanbul, like all capitals, betrays the true essence of the country it represents. Capitals — only now do I understand what Nazim used to tell me — are destined to a different life, which alienates them, if you will, from the rural countryside, from the country’s mountains and rivers. Perhaps that’s why Atatürk, after the revolution of 1923, made Ankara the capital … perhaps. I never spoke about it with Nazim, and now it’s too late. He’s in and out of those terrible Turkish prisons, like all the comrades, for that matter. We can’t take a ship to Istanbul, Modesta! At least I can’t, exiled not only from Italy, but also from my second homeland.’

The voice fades out along with the light, leaving a sadness that makes me cry like Bambù when she listens to Stella’s sad, sweet stories in the evening. But like Bambù, I decide to sleep a little and in my dreams change the doleful fate of my hero Giufà-Joyce 66 … Like Bambù, I’ll be the one to go into the woods and get back the fox skin that the bad men stole from Giufà when he dozed off. Without the fox skin that camouflages him in the woods, Giufà can’t procure food by catching the flies, mosquitoes and small worms that are his sustenance …

‘ Bambù has two lives, Mama, a daytime one and a nighttime one. That’s why I always obey her … if you only knew the things she does at night! She solves every problem: it’s only right that she give the orders. I sleep at night! If it weren’t for her, I’d be forever looking at pictures or reading. I can’t think of anything else to do, not one game. Whereas she’s always up to something! ’

Jacopo is right. Bambolina is like her mother. I wonder what Cavallina thinks of this Mela who plays all the pieces that I played for her at Carmelo? She’s talented, this carusa ! All I did was tell Stella she plays well, and overnight her touch has become more confident and commanding. What should I do, Beatrice? Should I send her to a boarding school? It’s time to economize. Attorney Santangelo is right.

‘ You, Modesta, agreeing with the sound judgement of an old bourgeois? You surprise me! ’ Feigning indignation, Cavallina embraces me from behind and whispers in my ear: ‘ We have the attics and corridors full of Uncle Jacopo’s paintings. Don’t you know they’re worth a fortune, Mody? That’s why I kept them back then. ’

‘ I know, I know, Cavallina, but we’d have to take them abroad and we need someone who is astute, sophisticated and familiar at the same time. In short, an expert. ’