Evening Class

by Maeve Binchy

Signora had some memories that she did not run past herself in the little picture show of memories that she played in her mind.

  She didn’t think of the white-hot anger of Mario when she followed him to Annunziata and got off the bus that day, recognizing his father’s little hotel immediately from the description. His face had hardened in a way that frightened her to think about. He had pointed to a van that was parked outside and motioned her to get in. He had driven very fast, taking corners at a terrible speed, and then turned suddenly off that road into a secluded olive grove where no one could see them. She reached for him, yearning as she had been yearning since she had set out on her journey.

  But he pushed her away from him and pointed to the valley down below.

  “See those vines, those belong to Gabriella’s father, see the ones there, they belong to my father. It has always been known that we will marry. You have no right to come here like this and make things bad for me.”

  “I have every right. I love you, you love me.” It had been so simple.

  His face was working with the emotion of bewilderment. “You cannot say that I have not been honest, I told you this, I told your parents. I never pretended that I was not involved with and promised to Gabriella.”

  “Not in bed you didn’t, you spoke of no Gabriella then,” she had pleaded.

  “Nobody speaks of another woman in bed, Nora. Be reasonable, go away, go home, go back to Ireland.”

  “I can’t go home,” Nora had said simply. “I have to be where you are. It’s just the way things are. I will stay here forever.”

  And that was the way it was.

  The years passed and by sheer grit Signora became a part of the life of Annunziata. Not really accepted, because nobody knew exactly why she was there and her explanation that she loved Italy was not considered enough. She lived in two rooms in a house on the square. Her rent was low because she kept an eye on the elderly couple who owned the house, brought them steaming cups of caffè latte in the morning, and did their shopping for them.

  But she was no trouble. She didn’t sleep with the menfolk or drink in the bars. She taught English in the little school every Friday morning. She sewed little fancies and took them every few months to a big town to sell them.

  SHE LEARNED ITALIAN from a little book and it became tattered as she went over and over the phrases, asking herself questions and answering them, her soft Irish voice eventually mastering the Italian sounds.

  She sat in her room and watched the wedding of Mario and Gabriella, sewing all the time and letting no tear fall on the linen that she was embroidering. The fact that he looked up at her as the bells rang from the little campanile of the church in the square was enough. He was walking with his brothers and Gabriella’s brothers to be married because it was their way. A tradition that involved families marrying each other to keep the land. It had nothing to do with his love for her or hers for him. That couldn’t be affected by something like this.

  And she watched from this window as his children were carried to the church to be christened. Families needed sons in this part of the world. It didn’t hurt her. She knew that if he could have it another way then she would have been his principessa irlandese for all to see.

  Signora realized that many of the men in Annunziata knew there was something between Mario and herself. But it didn’t worry them, it made Mario more of a man than ever in their eyes. She always believed that the women knew nothing of their love. She never thought it odd that they didn’t invite her to join them when they went to market together, or to gather the grapes that were not used for wine, or to pick the wild flowers for the festival. They were happy when she made beautiful clothes to deck the statue of Our Lady.

  They smiled at her over the years as she stumbled through and then mastered their language. They had stopped asking her when she was going home, back to her island. It was as if they had been watching her and she had passed some test. She wasn’t upsetting anyone, she could stay.

  AND AFTER TWELVE years she started hearing from her sisters. Inconsequential letters from Rita and Helen. Nothing that referred to anything that she had written herself. No mention that they had heard from her on birthdays and at Christmas and read all the letters she had written to their parents. Instead they wrote about their marriages and their children and how times were hard and everything was expensive and time was short, and everything was pressure these days.

  At first Signora was delighted to hear from them. She had long wanted something that brought her two worlds together. The letters from Brenda went a little way along the road but didn’t connect with her past, with her family life. She replied eagerly, asking questions about the family and how her parents were, and had they become at all reconciled to the Situation. Since this drew no response, Signora wrote different kinds of questions seeking their views on subjects from the IRA hunger strikers, to Ronald Reagan being elected president of America, and the engagement of Prince Charles and Lady Di. None of these were ever answered, and no matter how much she told them about Annunziata, they never commented on it at all.

  Brenda’s note said she wasn’t at all surprised by the arrival of letters from Rita and Helen.

  “Any day now you’ll be hearing from the brothers as well,” she wrote. “The hard truth is that your father is very frail. He may have to go into hospital on a permanent basis, and then what will become of your mother? Nora, I tell you this harshly because it is harsh and sad news. And you know well that I think you were foolish to go to that godforsaken spot on a mountain and watch the man who said he loved you flaunt his family in front of you…but still by God I don’t think you should come home to be a minder to your mother who wouldn’t give you the time of day or even reply to your letters.”

  Signora read this letter sadly. Surely Brenda must be mistaken. And surely she had read the situation all wrong. Rita and Helen were writing because they wanted to keep in touch. Then came the letter saying that Dad was going to hospital and wondering when Nora would come home and take things over.

  It was springtime and Annunziata had never looked more beautiful. But Signora looked pale and sad. Even the people who did not trust her were concerned. The Leone family who sold the postcards and little drawings called to see her. Would she like a little soup, brodetto, it was a broth with beaten egg and lemon juice? She thanked them, but her face was wan and her tone was flat. They worried about her.

  Across the piazza in the hotel, the word reached dark, handsome Mario and Gabriella, his solid, dutiful wife, that Signora was not well. Perhaps someone should send for the dottore.

  Gabriella’s brothers frowned. When a woman had a mystery frailty in Annunziata, it often meant one thing: that she was pregnant.

  The same thought had crossed Mario’s mind. But he met their glances levelly. “Can’t be that, she’s nearly forty,” he said.

  Still, they waited for the doctor, hoping he would let fall some information over a glass of sambucca, which was his little weakness.

  “It’s all in the head,” the doctor said confidentially. “Strange woman, nothing physical wrong with her, just a great sadness.”

  “Why does she not go home to where she comes from then?” asked the eldest brother of Gabriella. He was the head of the family since his father had died. He had heard the odd, troublesome rumor about his brother-in-law and Signora. But he knew it couldn’t possibly be true. The man could not be so stupid as to do something like that right on his doorstep.

  The people of the village watched as Signora’s shoulders drooped, and not even the Leone family were able to throw any light on it. Poor Signora. She just sat there, her eyes far away.

  One night when his family slept, Mario crept in and up the stairs to her bed.

  “What has happened? Everyone says that you have an illness and that you are losing your mind,” he said as he put his arms around her and pulled up the quilt that she had embroidered with the names of Italian cities: Firenze, Napoli, Milano, Venezia, Genova. All in dif
ferent colors and with little flowers around them. It was a labor of love, she told Mario. When she did the stitching, she thought how lucky she was to have come to this land and to live near the man she loved; not everyone was as lucky as she was.

  That night she didn’t sound like one of the luckiest women in the world. She sighed heavily and lay like lead on the bed instead of turning to welcome Mario joyfully. She said nothing at all.

  “Signora.” He called her that too, like everyone else. It would have marked him out if he had uttered her real name. “Dear, dear Signora, many, many times I have told you to go away from here, that there is no life for you in Annunziata. But you insist that you stay and it is your decision. People here have begun to know and like you. They tell me you had the doctor. I don’t want you to be sad, tell me what has happened.”

  “You know what has happened.” Her voice was very dead.

  “No what is it?”

  “You asked the doctor. I saw him go into the hotel after he left me. He told you I am sick in the mind, that’s all.”

  “But why? Why now? You have been here so long when you couldn’t speak Italian, when you knew nobody. That was the time to be sick in the mind, not now when you have been ten years as a part of this town.”

  “Over eleven years, Mario. Nearly twelve.”

  “Yes, well, whatever.”

  “I am sad because I thought my family missed me and loved me, and now I realize that they just want me to be a nursemaid to my old mother.” She never turned to look at him. She lay cold and dead without response to his touches.

  “You don’t want to be with me, happy like it always is and so good?” He was very surprised.

  “No, Mario, not now. Thank you very, very much but not tonight.”

  He got out of bed and came around to look at her. He lit the candle in the pottery holder, her room did not run to a bedside light. She lay there white-faced, her long red hair on the pillow, under the absurd coverlet with all the cities’ names on it. He was at a loss for words. “Soon you must do the places of Sicily,” he said. “Catania, Palermo, Cefalù, Agrigento…”

  She sighed again.

  He left troubled. But the hills around Annunziata covered each day with new flowers had healing powers, and Signora walked among them until the color came back to her face.

  The Leone family sometimes packed her a little basket with bread and cheese and olives, and Gabriella, the stony-faced wife of Mario, gave her a bottle of marsala, saying that some people drank it as a tonic. The Leone family invited her to lunch on a Sunday and cooked pasta Norma, with aubergines and tomatoes.

  “Do you know why it’s called pasta Norma, Signora?”

  “No, Signora Leone. I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Because it’s so good it is reaching the same height of perfection as the opera Norma by Bellini.”

  “Who was, of course, Sicilian,” Signora finished proudly.

  They patted her hand. She knew so much about their country, their village. Who could fail to be delighted with her?

  Paolo and Gianna, who had the little pottery shop, made her a special jug. They had written Signora d’Irlanda on it. And they put a little piece of gauze over it with beads at the edge. It was to keep her water fresh at night. No flies could get in, or dust in the hot summers. People came in and did little jobs for the old couple whose house she lived in, so that Signora would not have to worry about earning her rent. And, bathed in all this friendship and indeed love, she became well and strong again. And she knew she was loved here even if she wasn’t loved back home in Dublin, where the letters were written with greater frequency wanting to know her plans.

  She wrote back almost dreamily of life in Annunziata, and how she was so needed here, the old people upstairs who relied on her. The Leone family who fought so often and so volubly, she had to go to lunch there every Sunday to make sure they didn’t kill each other. She wrote about Mario’s hotel and how much it depended on tourism, so everyone in the village had to pull together to get the visitors to come. Her own job was to guide tourists around, and she had found a lovely place to take them on a little escorted walk, to a kind of ledge that looked down over the valleys and up at the mountain.

  She had suggested that Mario’s younger brother open a little cafe there. It was called Vista del Monte, mountain view…but didn’t it sound so much more wonderful in Italian?

  She expressed sympathy for her father, who now spent much of his time in hospital. How right it had been for them to sell the farm and move to Dublin. And for Mother, now struggling, they told her, to manage in a flat in Dublin. So often they had explained that the flat had an extra bedroom, and so often she ignored the information, only inquiring after her parents’ health and wondering vaguely about the postal services, saying that she had written so regularly since 1969 and now here they were in the eighties and yet her parents had never been able to reply to a letter. Surely the only explanation was that all the letters must have gone astray.

  Brenda wrote a letter of high approval.

  “Good girl yourself. You have them totally confused. I’d say you’ll have a letter from your mother within the month. But stick to your guns. Don’t come home for her. She wouldn’t write unless she had to.”

  The letter came and Signora’s heart turned over at her mother’s familiar writing. Yes, familiar even after all these years. She knew every word had been dictated by Helen and Rita.

  It skated over twelve years of silence, of obstinate refusal to reply to the beseechings of her lonely daughter overseas. It blamed most of it on “your father’s very doctrinaire attitudes to morality.” Signora smiled wanly to herself at the phrase. If she were to look at a writing pad for a hundred years, her mother would not have come up with such an expression.

  In the last paragraph the letter said: “Please come home, Nora. Come home and live with us. We will not interfere with your life but we need you, otherwise we would not ask.”

  And otherwise they would not have written, Signora thought to herself. She was surprised that she did not feel more bitter, but that had all passed now. She had been through it when Brenda had written saying how they didn’t care about her as a person, only as someone who would look after elderly and unbending parents.

  Here in her peaceful life she could afford to feel sorry for them. Compared to what she had in life, her own family had nothing at all. She wrote gently and explained that she could not come. If they had read her letters, they would realize how much she was needed here now. And that, of course, if they had let her know in the past that they wanted her as part of their life, then she would have made plans not to get so involved in the life of this beautiful, peaceful place. But, of course, how could she have known that they would call on her? They had never been in touch, and she was sure they would understand.

  AND THE YEARS went on.

  Signora’s hair got streaks of gray in the red. But unlike the dark women who surrounded her it didn’t seem to age her. Her hair just looked bleached by the sun. Gabriella looked matronly now. She sat at the desk of the hotel, her face heavier and rounder, her eyes much more beady than when they had flashed with jealousy across the piazza. Her sons were tall and difficult, no longer the little dark-eyed angels who did whatever they were asked to do.

  Probably Mario had got older too, but Signora didn’t see it. He came to her room…less frequently…and often just to lie there with his arm around her.

  The quilt had hardly any space on it now for more cities. Signora had put in smaller places that appealed to her.

  “You should not put Giardini-Naxos there among the big places, it’s only a tiny place,” Mario complained.

  “No, I don’t agree. When I went to Taormina I went out there on the bus, it was a lovely place…its own atmosphere, its own character, a lot of tourism. No, no, it deserves a place.” And sometimes Mario would sigh heavily as if he had too many problems. He told her his worries. His second boy was wild. He was going to New York, aged only t
wenty. He was too young, he would get in with all the wrong people. No good would come of it.

  “He’s in with all the wrong people here,” Signora said soothingly. “Possibly in New York he will be more timid, less assured. Let him go with your blessing because he’ll go anyway.”

  “You are very, very wise, Signora,” he said, and lay with his head tucked companionably on her shoulder.

  She didn’t close her eyes, she looked at the dark ceiling and thought of the times in this room when he had told her she was foolish, the most foolish, stupid woman in the world, to have followed him here. Here where there was no future for her. And the years had turned it all into wisdom. How strange the world was.

  And then the daughter of Mario and Gabriella became pregnant. The boy was not at all the kind of husband they would have wanted for her, a boy from the countryside who washed pots in the kitchen of the hotel in the piazza. Mario came and cried in her room about this, his daughter, a child, a little child herself. The disgrace, the shame.

  It was 1994, she told him. Even in Ireland it was no longer a disgrace and a shame. It was the way life went on. You coped with it. Perhaps the boy could come and work in Vista del Monte, expand it a little, then he would be seen to have his own place.

  That was her fiftieth birthday, but Signora didn’t tell Mario, she didn’t tell anyone. She had embroidered herself a little cushion cover with Buon’ Compleanno, Happy Birthday, on it. She fingered it when Mario had gone, his tears for his defiled daughter dried. “I wonder am I really mad as I feared all those years ago.”

  She watched from her window as the young Maria was married to the boy who worked in the kitchen, just as she had watched Mario and Gabriella go to the church. The bells of the campanile were still the same, ringing over the mountain the way bells should ring.

  Imagine being in her fifties. She didn’t feel a day older than she had when she came here. She didn’t have a single regret. Were there many people in this or any other place who could say the same?