“I chose one dress and I wore it every day. A dark brown dress with a pattern of white camellias and small green leaves. A long brown woollen shawl. Thick black stockings and black lace-up shoes. My hair I fixed in a single plait, let it fall down to the small of my back. I wore a white basque. Wanting nothing of the forced intimacy that would come of my sitting at table thrice daily in the pensione, I lied to my patrons. Told them I’d made other dining arrangements. Besieged by ghosts, I would be one, too.
“I would slip down three flights of carpeted stairs, leave quietly of a morning. Return then as quietly to rest. Back down again in the afternoon, the early evening. A final, stealthy turn of the long, flat key in the lock and I’d climb to my room for the night. Two exits, two entrances without speaking a word. An easy ghost I was.”
“I began my exploration of the city by following people. Some days I would let myself be led to the waterfront, sometimes to the markets. In each place, I began to draw my own route. Make my own map. Where to sit to watch the boats. Mark the hours when the fleets came in, went out, came in again. The fishermen’s wives who waited. Sun-browned faces slashed with lipsticked mouths, bosoms spilling out of tight cotton pinafores, fraying sweaters straining across thickened waists. Patched rubber boots over unmended stockings, they marched three or four abreast to the edge of the pier and I thought them a dazzling troupe. I waited for them as I might have for friends, forgetting that I was invisible to them. In the markets, I would always have two 100-lira coins ready in my hand. A sack of plums. Two scoops of pistachios, salted in the shell. Always a slice of pecorino pepato and a quarter loaf of sesame bread. Or two flats of Arab bread from the man everyone called Santo. Though I might go to the same merchants and even buy the same things for days on end, no one paid notice to the good ghost I’d become. Whatever change remained from my purchases I would drop in the upturned hand of the gypsy who smelled of night jasmine and old sweat and who crouched near a fishmonger who I think was her son. Recognizing her as a ghost, too, she was, for months, the only person in whose eyes I looked.
“Though everyone who had something to eat ate it on the street, I was embarrassed to do likewise. On a bench in the Favorita, my lookout place between the shacks and the oil drums on the pier, in one place or another, I would dine. Unwrapping my cheese from its thick white paper, I would sometimes think of the crumble of pecorino that the shepherds would chisel from their great, dark yellow rounds for Mafalda and me in the markets and how she would hold her mouth open for it, a famished little bird. Now I could buy as much cheese as I wished. As though I had children to feed, a husband on his way home to lunch, di più, di più, more, more, I would say to the merchant as he moved the great glistening blade of his cutter above a larger and yet larger wedge of the cheese. I would try to taste it with the old hunger. I’d close my eyes and wait for the burst of sharp, sour heat on my tongue but I felt nothing. I’d refold the thick white paper ’round the cheese and put it in my bag, walk along until I came upon a child bent on some mission or another or, less often, a group of children playing, and offer the cheese. Oh, the wonder, the ecstasy it never failed to cause, that slice of cheese, and that impulse would always make me think about the many emotions of which hunger is made.”
“Everywhere I walked, I looked for him. Not a conscious, deliberate search, mine was the instinctive chase of the lover longing for the beloved. In the market, in the bar, in the street, along the pier, I am a constant huntress tracking her dead prince. The sighting of any man, tall and light-haired, visible above the crowd, would stop my heart. I would run, snake through the throngs, traverse screeching traffic to intercept him. Leo. Leo. I would call and people would make way for me, shouting oaths or cheering, applauding the classic scene of a woman in pursuit of a man, their eyes saying get to him, kiss him, shoot him, do what you must. But get to him. And so it was not at all startling to me when, one day, I saw my mother.
“Her same fragile beauty I think to see in a woman who stands among those waiting for an autobus. Tendrils of straw-colored hair fall from a kerchief tied behind her head. Just like my mother. A pale blue cotton dress with padded shoulders and black leather pumps with white cotton socks turned down at the ankles just like my mother’s Sunday clothes. I stop on the edge of the group as though I, too, have come to wait for the autobus. I stare at the woman who I am certain is my mother. Unlike the times when I’d approached a man who I thought to be Leo and then saw it was decidedly not him, now I am sure. The still sane part of me knows it is the madness of grief that makes her appear now. But why doesn’t she look at me? How can she not see me if I can see her? I walk closer to her, stare openly at her. I study her as though she is wax.
“Mamà, it’s me, I tell her softly. Mamà, can you see me? Tosca, she whispers. Che cosa ci fai qui? What are you doing here?
“She is not Mama. She is Mafalda. Mafalda, who is now the same age, nearly the very same age, as my mother was when she died. As my mother was when I last saw her. In the almost thirteen years since I have seen my sister, she has grown to be the sosia, the twin image of Mama.
“ ‘Ciao, piccola,’ I say. She allows my embrace but does not return it.
“ ‘What brings you so far away from your palace, Tosca?’ She pulls away from me, adjusts her kerchief, narrows her eyes so tears won’t fall.
“ ‘I, I live here now.’
“ ‘Oh, does your prince also have a palace here?’
“ ‘Why didn’t you let me know where you were? Why did you abandon me or hide from me or whatever it is that you did?’
“I pull Mafalda over to a bench that has just been vacated since the autobus has arrived but she pushes me away, reaches up the flat of her hand, and strikes my cheek. She strikes me three times before I have the presence to take hold of her arm. She screams, ‘Me? Why did I abandon you? Are you sure you remember things as they really happened, Tosca? You left me and you left Papà and . . . ’
“ ‘Mafalda, stop it. Stop it. You didn’t know, you were too little to understand, but the truth is that Papà sold me to Leo. He traded me for a horse, Mafalda.’
“ ‘I know that. I know that was how it began. You love to say it, don’t you, Tosca? You love to be the victim, the poor little orphan girl sold to a prince. Truth is, Papà did you a favor sending you to them. He didn’t sell you into slavery after all, he set you down inside a fairy tale. But you could have returned. You weren’t held captive, were you? I can understand why you would have stayed there for a while, a year or two if only for the relief, the change. You were still little, too, and your head was turned. But to stay? I never believed that you would stay with them. I waited for you. Papà waited for you, too.’
“ ‘You’re lying. Papà forsook me and you know that. He wouldn’t let me return. Have you forgotten that?’
“ ‘He was testing you. Even I could see that. He wanted you to prove to him that you preferred life with us over life with them. I believe that, Tosca. But you surrendered so easily to the temptations of the palace.’
“ ‘I was nine years old, Mafalda. I was frightened and angry and grieving and hungry and yes, at that time in my life I suppose I did choose Leo over Papà. But I stayed at the palace, in part, because I believed it was the best way to take care of you. You were too young to understand that, and perhaps I was too young to have carried through with my plans as fully as I might have. Yes, you’re right, I had my head turned. But taking care of you was what I’d set out to do. And I did, didn’t I? Didn’t I come to see you whenever I could, bring you presents? But when you went away and then when Papà did, too, all I could do was wait. Remember, you who knew where I was. Leo and Cosimo worked for years at finding you, following the thinnest threads. They wrote letters to the communes and dioceses of the towns and villages where people with our name and Mamà’s name were registered. More than once they traveled to talk to someone who knew, someone who remembered . . . but nothing. I’ve been angry with you, too, Mafalda.’
“ ‘You have no reason to be angry with me. You’re angry with yourself because I’m different from you. Maybe you envy me a bit, Tosca. Envy me because I didn’t sell out. The best way you could have helped me would have been to share bread and cheese with me and to stay close to me. We were fine, then, Tosca. We were just fine. I won’t say that I didn’t look forward to your gifts but you see I was already safe. I still knew what we used to know together. I knew that I would always get by. That no matter what, I would always be able to arrange things. Somewhere along the way I guess that turned out not to be enough for you. Getting by. Arranging. But it’s always been enough for me. It’s still enough for me, Tosca.’
“We are quiet, appraising each other, each one of us beginning to speak, both deferring. Silence. Until Mafalda says, ‘And when Papà got sick—did you even know that he was sick?—he told me that I, too, would have to go to live with the prince’s family. I cried and screamed and begged him not to bring me to Leo and that’s when he made arrangements for me with zia Elena. He brought me there, promised to visit me soon, and that was the last time I saw him.’
“Mafalda sits on the bench then. Perches on the edge of it, her face pale, tortured. I look at her hands, which are red and dry, old for a woman of twenty-two. For the Bellini Madonna whom she so resembles. As though they are borrowed hands or hands fixed, by error, onto the slender white wrists of her. I sit next to her. Hold her hands in mine. She tells me, ‘When Papà didn’t come to see me, I got myself back to our place. It took me a week, but I got there. Too late. He was gone, everything was gone. I didn’t want to go back to zia Elena. Things were not so good there. I never even considered knocking on the great doors of the palace. And so I have been on my own since a few months before I was twelve. Mostly it was easy to find work, since I would do almost anything to earn my food and a place to sleep.’
“ ‘But why, why didn’t you come to me? Ask me for help? Why didn’t you allow me to help you? I didn’t know. How could I know? All this time, I didn’t know.’ I’ve pulled Mafalda to her feet and now I’m screaming and weeping and shaking her. Then holding her to me. Why? Why, piccola?
“ ‘Because I didn’t want your gifts, your food, your clothes. I wanted you, Tosca. I wanted us to be a family.’
“Mafalda is quiet then. Wipes her face with a fresh handkerchief pulled from her purse. ‘I will take the next autobus. It’s due in a few minutes. I have an appointment that I intend to keep.’
“ ‘An appointment? You can’t mean that you won’t come with me now. We can sit somewhere and talk, I can take you back to my room. I don’t even know why you’re here or where you live; you can’t just get on an autobus after thirteen years . . .’
“ ‘I’m still trying to find Papà. Whenever I’ve had money to spare, I’ve spent it in looking for him. I know what it’s like to write pleading letters to strangers. I’m here in Palermo to see a woman who knew Papà. I think they were lovers. A long time ago, when Papà and I were still together, I found a letter, a note really, among his things. I kept it. I don’t know why I kept it except that it was a sweet note, written on pretty paper. Signed Loretta. I liked the name. Long afterward when I began trying to find him, it was this Loretta, this Signora Capella, to whom I first wrote. I was living in Piazza Amerina then. She never wrote back to me and so I came here, went to the return address on the letter. Of course, she’d moved, or at least the portiniera said she had. I never thought about her again. I managed to discover some other remote leads, but I think he’s long since died. Or so I thought until a few days ago, when I received a letter from this Signora Capella. I’ve kept in touch with the people for whom I worked in Piazza Amerina and they forwarded her letter to me. She asked me to telephone her, and when I did, we made an appointment for today. Nothing, not even you, Tosca, could keep me from going to her.’
“ ‘Meet me afterward. I’ll be wherever you say.’
“ ‘Come with me, Tosca.’
“ ‘I don’t care to come with you. I’ll wait for you.’
“Mafalda rises, begins walking toward the bus, which has just lumbered up to the curb in front of us, the hiss of its opening doors muffling her parting word.
“ ‘Tomorrow,’ she says.
“She mounts the steps, pays her fare, turns back toward me, and waves.
“ ‘Pensione d’Aiello,’ I shout. ‘Pensione d’Aiello.’ ”
· · ·
“I go out early the next morning, buy bread and cheese from the gastronomia down the street, a sack of ripe brown pears, a liter jug of red wine, then head back to the pensione to wait for my sister. I ask Signora d’Aiello for glasses, plates, napkins. A knife. I tell her that I am expecting company. She says we are welcome at the family table for lunch or dinner. Offers to fix tea, to send for pastries, and seems disappointed when I respectfully refuse. I straighten up my already very orderly room, take up my book, and I wait. I can’t read, though; I can’t rest, I can’t stay quiet. Alternately I pace and look out the window. By five I begin to reason with the fearful voice inside me. But she didn’t give a precise time, did she? And if she has a job, which she surely has, she’s had to work all day. The only thing she said was ‘tomorrow,’ and that could mean any number of things. Not a visit but a call. Not a call but a letter. At ten I eat the bread, drink some wine, undress, and go to bed.
“For three days, I trace the same template. By the fourth day I begin to wonder if I’d only imagined Mafalda. I try to find some evidence of our meeting, but of course, there is none. I’ll take an autobus to her village, to Piana degli Albanesi. Thirty kilometers away, perhaps less. And it’s not a place so big that it will be difficult to locate her. How many Bellini Madonnas can there be in Piana degli Albanesi? It’s three in the afternoon on the fourth day and, my morning’s shopping in a sack slung on my shoulder, I am on my way to the bus station. How I wish I had a horse. How much simpler it had been when we were little and I knew the way, knew where to find my sister. It occurs that she has stayed away these past few days so she might think upon what we said to each other. So that we both might think. I queue at the ticket desk, try not to look out of place. I have not ridden on a public bus since before my mother died. Mafalda taps me gently on the shoulder.
“ ‘Are you on your way to find me, Tosca? I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you sooner. Papà is dead. La signora Capella didn’t want to tell me on the telephone. He died in the spring, but she only learned about it a few weeks ago.’
“I take her arm and we begin to walk outside to the street.
“ ‘She couldn’t tell me very much except that Papà had been living in Calabria. That he’d been sick, in varying degrees of gravity, for a long time. Though they continued to correspond, she herself hadn’t been to visit him, nor he to her, for four years. When so much time passed without receiving an answer to her last letter, she called his landlady and it was she who told Signora Capella that Papà had died. That’s when she wrote to me in Piazza Amerina. She and I will go to visit his grave, have Masses said for him. I hope you’ll come with us. Now you know all that I know. I needed to be alone for a while before coming to see you. You understand, don’t you?’
“ ‘Let’s go to my room,’ I say.”
“Mafalda lies down on my bed and I sit in the chair that I have placed beside it. I want her to talk. I desire only to listen. She seems at ease and begins to tell me things as she recalls them, without order, without finishing one piece before launching into another and then returning to an earlier event, trusting me to follow her. I do. Prone in the soft curves of the feather bed, she is very beautiful. Her telling seeks neither pity nor wonder.
“She has worked in a fish-canning factory as a cook’s helper on a deep-sea trawler; she has been an au pair to an English family living in Taormina; she has moved about the island harvesting grapes and almonds and olives with itinerant farm workers. I understand about her hands now. She has lived in Piana degli Albanesi for almost two years and she thinks she will
stay there. She works as a seamstress and a house model in a small, exclusive atelier owned by two French women. Sometimes a client will come to them for a wedding dress from as far away as Rome, she tells me. The two French women are wise, I think to myself, to have found this lovely creature to do justice to their skills. But now she is talking about a man. She loves a man called Giorgio. By day, he is a clerk in the city hall in Piana degli Albanesi and by night, a violinist in a chamber music orchestra. He is the eldest of the eight children—two boys and six girls—of a Slavic mother, a Sicilian father. She tells me about his eyes—gray and sharply slanted, gift of his mother. She says that he goes to her apartment and cooks for her in the afternoon after his day work is finished, leaves her supper warm in the oven, flowers on her table. A note. And then he’s off to rest and later to play his violin. He comes to stay with her on the weekends, but only sometimes. As much as she likes to be with him does she like to be alone. Besides, she must study, since she is attending classes at the technical school that will prepare her to receive an accountant’s license. I think that somehow the accountant, the house model, and the almond picker seem equally fine careers for this Madonna. She tells me that Giorgio has bought her a hope chest, that his mother and sisters have set about to fill it with embroidered linens and towels and nightdresses and even with baby clothes. Giorgio asks Mafalda to marry him every Sunday after Mass. She doesn’t know yet if someday she will say yes. She has worked so hard, this little sister of mine. She has done what I have not yet done. She has found her own way home.
That Summer in Sicily Page 20