Happiness, as Such

by Natalia Ginzburg

  At times I get the impression that you’re unhappy. But Angelica is secretive with me. I believe that her secretiveness doesn’t stem from a lack of affection but because she doesn’t want me to worry. It seems strange to say, Angelica is very maternal with me. When I ask her about herself, her answers feel manufactured, calm and cold. In other words, I don’t know much about Angelica. When we’re together we don’t talk about her, we talk about me. I’m always willing to talk about myself because I’m very alone, but as I’m so alone I don’t have much to report about myself. I mean, I don’t have much to report about my daily life. My days are monotonous when I’m not feeling well. I don’t go out much, I might take the car out, sit on the couch for hours, watch Matilde do her yoga. Matilde, the lone wolf, Matilde at the typewriter working on her new book, Matilde making herself a beret from leftover yarn.

  Viola told me she’s angry at you because you’ve never written her, not even a postcard. She bought you a beautiful silver vase for your wedding and wanted to give it to you when you came. Please write Viola and thank her for the beautiful vase. Write to the twins too, they’ve been waiting for you and have gifts for Eileen’s children, a jackknife and a teepee. Of course, I wish you’d write me too.

  Osvaldo left for Umbria yesterday with Elisabetta and Ada. So we won’t have his evening visits for the next week. I’ve gotten used to having him show up in the evening. I’ve gotten used to seeing him for a few hours, his red face and his big head and tousled thinning hair. He must have gotten used to spending evenings in this house too, playing ping-pong with the twins and reading Proust aloud to me and Matilde. When he’s not here he goes to see Angelica and Oreste, where he does the same sorts of things but slightly differently, for example, he’ll read Paperino to the baby and play tombola with Oreste and their friends, the Bettoias. Oreste finds him pleasant but useless. The Bettoias think he’s useless but nice. One can’t say that he isn’t nice. I don’t think useless is the right word, because a person can’t have expectations from a useless person. Instead I expect that suddenly one day all the reasons for his existence on earth will be revealed to us. I think he’s very intelligent, but he keeps his intelligence locked away in his chest, in his sweater, in his smile, keeping it hidden away for his own secret reasons. Even when he smiles I think he’s a sad man. That may be why I’ve gotten so used to his company. I love sadness. I love sadness even more than intelligence.

  You and Osvaldo were friends and I’ve so rarely had the pleasure of knowing one of your friends. I occasionally ask him about you. But his answers are mechanical, the same as Angelica’s when I ask her how thing are going with her, whether she’s happy. I get the impression that Osvaldo doesn’t want to worry me either. Now that he’s not here, I’ve come to detest that calmness and his elusive, harmless responses. But when he’s here, I settle and accept his silence and his elusive responses. The years have made me resigned and docile.

  The other day I was remembering that time you came over and the moment you arrived, you started going through all the dressers looking for a Sardinian tapestry that you wanted to hang on your wall in the workshop. That must have been the last time I saw you. I hadn’t been in this house more than a few days. It was November. You went tearing through the rooms and upending dressers, everything that had just been put into place, and I followed you, complaining about how you always took my things. You must have found the tapestry because it’s not here. It wasn’t in the studio either. The tapestry doesn’t mean very much to me, and it didn’t mean anything to me back then. I think of it now perhaps because it’s connected to the last time I saw you. I remember feeling a big sense of happiness in the middle of the arguing and my being angry at you. I knew that my nagging would irritate you but also make you happy. I remember it now as a happy day. It’s unfortunate that we rarely recognize the happy moments while we’re living them. We usually only recognize them with the distance of time. I was happy complaining about the way you were going through my dressers. But I have to say that you and I lost a precious day. We could have sat down and talked about incredibly important things. That might have made us less happy, it may have even made us unhappy. Now I’m going to remember that day, not as a vaguely happy day, but as a day of essential truth for both of us, destined to illuminate your being and my being, the way we always speak with modest words, we never use clear and urgent words, our words are gray, harmless, floating, and useless.

  Ti abbraccio

  Your mother

  33

  April 20, 1971 — Leeds

  Dear Angelica,

  I am friends with Michele and Eileen. I met Michele at the film society. He had me over to dinner several times and that’s how I met Eileen.

  I am Italian and am here in Leeds on a fellowship.

  I got your address from Michele. He told me to visit you if I was back in Italy over the summer.

  I’m writing to let you know that your brother has left his wife and we don’t know where he’s ended up. His wife isn’t writing herself because she barely knows Italian and because she is in very bad shape. I feel quite sorry for her even though I don’t want to judge Michele. I also felt sorry for him when I saw him in the squalid hotel when he left.

  Eileen wanted me to tell you that Michele left, first of all because she doesn’t know if he told you about their marriage falling apart, and second because Michele didn’t leave a forwarding address and he left behind some debt. She has no intention of paying it off and is hoping you will take care of it. He owes three hundred pounds. Eileen is wondering whether you could send her the three hundred pounds right away if possible.

  Ermanno Giustiniani

  4 Lincoln Road, Leeds

  34

  May 3, 1971

  Dear Ermanno Giustiniani,

  Tell Eileen that we will be sending the money through Lillino Borghi, a relative, who will be coming to England in the next few days.

  In the meantime, if you find out where Michele is, I would be grateful if you could send me his address as soon as possible. We haven’t heard anything from him. He’d written to me that he wanted to go to Bruges, but I don’t know whether he ended up going there or somewhere else.

  He had told me that he didn’t have any friends in Leeds, but that might have been before he met you. Or else he lied, as he has perhaps lied about various other matters, and between his reticence and apparent lies, it’s difficult for me to figure out his life. But I certainly don’t judge him, and wouldn’t in any case have any of the essential information with which to judge him. I can be upset about the lies and his evasiveness but there are unfortunate circumstances that lead some people to tell lies and be evasive, even if they don’t want to be.

  I’m not writing Eileen directly because I don’t know English very well and also because I don’t know what I’d say to her beyond expressing grief for what happened between them, but maybe you can pass that on to her for me.

  Angelica Vivanti de Righi

  35

  May 15, 1971 — Trapani

  Dear Michele,

  Don’t be shocked, I’m writing to you from Trapani. I ended up in Trapani. I don’t remember if I told you about the nice woman I became friends with when I was staying in that boardinghouse in Piazza Annibaliano, the Pensione Piave. At the time she said that I could come with the baby to stay with her in Trapani. Then I completely lost track of her and couldn’t remember her last name, just her first. It’s Lillia. She’s fat and has all this curly hair. When I was in Novi Ligure, I wrote to a maid at the Pensione Piave, who I also only knew by her first name, Vincenza. I described the fat lady with the curls and the little baby. The maid sent me the address in Trapani, where the curly-haired lady’s husband had opened a restaurant. I wrote her but didn’t wait to hear back before setting off. So here I am. The husband wasn’t at all happy to see me but the curly-haired lady said I was going to be a help around the house. I wake up at
seven and bring her coffee, she’s still in bed, in her dressing gown. Then I take care of both our babies. I go down to do shopping, clean the house, and make the beds. The curly-haired lady brings up something to eat from the restaurant, usually lasagna because she likes it so much. I don’t really care for lasagna, or restaurant leftovers in general. The curly-haired lady is unhappy here. I think it’s a squalid city. And the restaurant isn’t doing very well. They have bills to pay. I offered to do the bookkeeping but the husband says that I don’t seem suited for it and I think he’s right. The curly-haired lady cries on my shoulder all the time. I’m not very good at consoling her because I’m unhappy too. But the baby loves it here. I take him and the other baby to the park in the afternoon. The curly-haired lady has a stroller that fits two babies. I chat with people I meet in the park and tell them lies. It’s nice to talk to strangers when you’re depressed. At least you can make things up.

  Now the curly-haired lady isn’t a stranger anymore. I know her face by memory and I know all her clothes, her underwear, the curlers she puts in at night to get all those curls. I watch her eat lasagna every day and get tomato sauce all over her mouth. I’m not a stranger to her either. Sometimes she treats me badly and I’ll answer her rudely. I don’t tell her lies anymore because I’ve already told her the whole truth while weeping on her shoulder. I told her that I don’t have anyone and that everywhere I go I get kicked in the ass.

  Her baby is seven months old and weighs nine kilograms, mine only weighs seven. But a pediatrician in Novi Ligure told me that it’s not necessarily better for babies to be too fat. Other than that, my baby is rosier and more handsome, and I have to say that his hair has grown thick and blond, and it’s not as red as yours and his eyes aren’t exactly green, they’re more gray with some green. There are moments when he’s laughing that I think he looks like you, but he doesn’t look like you at all when he’s sleeping, he looks like my grandfather, Gustavo. The curly-haired lady says there’s a blood test that will tell me if he’s yours, but even that isn’t totally certain. There’s no sure way to find out if the baby belongs to someone else. What does it matter? In the end, I don’t care and neither do you. The onesies your wife sent me would have come in handy now. I didn’t appreciate them then but it turns out they’re useful and sometimes I put the baby in one of the curly-haired lady’s onesies when there’s nothing else around.

  I’m practically a servant here. I don’t like being a servant. I doubt anyone likes it. I’m dead tired at night and my feet hurt. My room is off the kitchen. You could die of heat in there. They don’t pay me at all, they say we have an even exchange. They slip me cash sometimes, when they think of it, but that’s only happened twice since I got here. It is true though that they’re in bad shape themselves.

  I packed my fur in a dress bag and put it in the curly-haired lady’s wardrobe. Every now and then she unzips it a little and strokes the sleeve. She says she wants to buy it but I don’t want to sell it to her because I’m worried she won’t be able to pay me enough, probably nothing at all. I had considered keeping it as a souvenir of the time I spent living with the pelican, but I’m going to sell it after all because I’m not sentimental like that. Occasionally I’ll have a wave of sentimentality but it disappears instantly. I go back to being exactly who I am, not sentimental, a person with her feet planted solidly on the ground. Osvaldo says that I don’t have my feet planted on the ground and that I gallop through the clouds and that might be true because I’ve really fallen hard some of these times.

  I saw Osvaldo in mid-April when I stopped in Rome on my way here. I went to his shop and saw Signora Peroni, who was so happy to see me and the baby again. Then Osvaldo arrived. I asked after you but he didn’t have any news and had just returned from his trip in Umbria with Ada, naturally. He took me to the station in his Fiat 500. He told me that the pelican had moved to one of his villas in Chianti and he’s thinking about shutting down the publishing house because he’s lost interest in it. Ada visited him in Chianti. But I don’t care about the pelican anymore and the period of being a tearful wreck over him is done and it already seems so far in the past. What’s important is to keep moving and avoid things that make you cry. Osvaldo told me I wouldn’t be happy in Trapani and that they’d put me to work as a servant, which is exactly what has happened. But I told him that eventually, with patience, I would find another situation, maybe doing something like the work I was doing for the pelican before he dragged me away to go live in his penthouse. Though he didn’t really drag me, I’m the one who showed up on his doorstep. Either way, Osvaldo didn’t have any other suggestions, just that I shouldn’t go to Trapani. Brilliant idea. I knew from the start that this city would kill me. It’s so depressing at night. But you have to avoid looking out the window, jump right into bed, and pull the sheets up over your head.

  Osvaldo waited with me until the train left. He sat in the compartment. He bought me magazines and sandwiches. He gave me money. I gave him my address in Trapani in case he gets it into his head to visit me. Then we hugged and kissed and while I was kissing him I realized that he’s entirely queer. I had my doubts before but in that moment on the train, all my doubts disappeared.

  I’ll put my address at the bottom of this letter. I don’t know if I’ll stay here much longer, because now and then the curly-haired lady says they can’t possibly afford a live-in maid. Sometimes she says that, and other times she hugs me and tells me that I’m great company. I feel sorry for the curly-haired lady. At the same time, I hate her. I have come to realize that the more you know someone the more you feel sorry for them. That’s why strangers are better. Because you haven’t started feeling sorry for them or hating them. I think I might die of the heat here in August. I’m in my room now. There’s a window but you have to climb onto the bed in order to open it. It’s already hot. The restaurant is below us, which makes it feel even hotter. I’m sitting on my bed as I write you and there’s a pile of ironing beside me. Imagine, me starting to iron now.

  I’m writing to you at your same Leeds address. I often wonder what kind of life you lead with your wife in that English city. Your life has to be better than what’s become of mine. I haven’t seen any men I like around here. Where are all the men I might like who might like me back? I wonder that sometimes.

  Ti abbraccio

  Mara

  Via Garibaldi, 14 — Trapani

  36

  June 4, 1971

  Dear Mara,

  I’m writing with difficult news. My brother Michele died during a student protest in Bruges. The police came to break up the crowd. He was chased by a gang of fascists and one of them stabbed him. They might have recognized him from somewhere. It was an empty street. Michele was with a friend who went to call an ambulance. During that time Michele was left alone on the sidewalk. The street had a lot of stores but they were all closed because it was ten at night. Michele died in the emergency room of the hospital at eleven. The friend telephoned my sister, Angelica. My sister and her husband and Osvaldo Ventura went to Bruges. They brought him back to Italy. We buried Michele yesterday in Rome next to our father who died last December, as you may remember.

  Osvaldo told me to write you. He’s too upset. I am upset too as you can imagine, but I’m trying to be strong. The news was in all the newspapers but Osvaldo says of course you don’t read newspapers.

  I know you loved my brother. I know that you wrote each other. You and I met once, at a party last year for Michele’s birthday. I remember you well. We thought you should know of our terrible loss.

  Viola

  37

  June 12, 1971

  Dear Mara,

  I know Viola wrote you. My daughter and I are staying at my mother’s house now. I am keeping her company, we are spending these motionless days together, the days that come after a tragedy. Motionless . . . even though there is so much to do, letters to write, photographs to look at, and silence, ev
en though we try to talk as much as we can, tend to daily life. I guess we’re gathering memories, distant memories, the ones that seem innocuous. Sometimes we get lost in small details and find ourselves talking out loud, and laughing hard, just to make sure we still have the ability to think about the present, the ability to talk out loud, and to laugh hard. But the instant we stop talking we can feel the silence. Osvaldo has come a few times. His visits don’t disrupt the silence or the motionlessness and so they are comforting.

  I was wondering whether you’d had any recent letters from Michele. He stopped writing to us. They still haven’t found the people who killed him and we only have vague and confused information from the boy who saw it happen. I think Michele had gotten involved with politics again in Bruges and that the people who killed him had some motive. But I’m just speculating. In reality we don’t know anything and the only thing we can know is all speculation, which we go over and over, questioning ourselves, but we will never have a clear answer.

  There are things I can’t think about and mostly I can’t think about the minutes Michele was alone on the street. I can’t think that he was dying while I was at home, peacefully doing the same things I do every evening, washing dishes, washing Flora’s tights, hanging them to dry on the balcony, until the phone rang. I can’t think about everything I did that day because everything moves so steadily toward the ringing telephone. Michele had gained consciousness for a moment and gave that boy my number but then he died right afterward, which is terrifying, my telephone number is what came into his mind as he was dying. I couldn’t understand what they were saying on the phone because they were speaking German. I don’t know German. I called Oreste over because he speaks German. Oreste did everything after that. He took the baby to the Bettoias (our friends), he called Osvaldo and Viola, and Viola went over to tell my mother. I wanted to be the one to tell her, but I also needed to leave, and in the end I decided to leave because I wanted to say goodbye to Michele, to see those red curls of his one last time.