The Bottom of Your Heart

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  My mother was there. With the little girl. Outside the door, for two days, they’d never once stopped crying, grandmother and granddaughter. I came out. My mother knows me, and she took a step backward. She read the death in my face.

  I went over to her. I don’t know what I wanted to do, Rosine’; I reached out my hand. I touched her, and the little baby stopped crying.

  She felt my hand on her swaddling cloth and she stopped crying.

  The air outside stood still, not even a fly buzzed; you could hear Crazy Antonietta, you remember her, Rosine’? The one who sings all the time, even at night, who lives at the end of the vicolo. Hers was the only voice that could be heard. ‘Dimme, dimme a chi pienze, assettàta . . .’

  I looked at her, Rosine’. Just once, I looked at her. She has a nose, a tiny little button of a nose, exactly like yours. Do you remember, Rosine’, when I used to pretend I was hunting for your nose, that was so small I couldn’t find it? The baby has a nose like yours. Just like yours.

  You swore that oath, Rosine’. You made a promise and you broke it. I swore an oath, too. And oaths aren’t something you break.

  Her nose, Rosine’. You ought to see her. She has an adorable little button nose.

  You ought to see her.

  X

  Sitting at her vanity, Livia was brushing her hair and absentmindedly singing

  There once was a Vilia, a witch of the wood,

  A hunter beheld her alone as she stood!

  The spell of her beauty upon him was laid,

  He looked and he longed for the magical maid!

  There’d been a long period during which singing had been an important part of her life. From her earliest childhood, in the quiet city of Pesaro, Livia’s voice had grown up with her, turning rich and nuanced. As her voice grew, so did her beauty. Her parents, wealthy aristocrats, quickly realized that, given the varied talents that had been bestowed upon their daughter, who seemed every day more like a princess in a fairy tale, the sleepy little city on the Adriatic coast would be too small for her; and so they packed her off to Rome to study under an aunt who was an opera singer.

  It was then that singing became her passion and her profession. As a contralto, Livia toured the world, embarking on an extremely promising career. Then she met Arnaldo Vezzi, and she had sung no more.

  Certain men, Livia thought to herself as she continued to brush her hair, burn everything they touch to the ground. They’re like uncontrollable fires. Certain men cannot have anything but themselves in life. Vezzi was a genius, perhaps the greatest tenor of his time, and a genius’s wife couldn’t have a career of her own, or even a personality of her own. She had to be the wife of a genius and nothing more: smile, be beautiful, and keep her mouth shut.

  But Vezzi’s life had ended as perhaps he deserved, with his throat cut in a theater dressing room, there, in that city whose torrid heat was now pouring in through her open window. And it was in that same city that she had decided to live.

  Of course that was strange, and she realized it. Some of her girlfriends, in the phone calls from Rome during which they updated her on the latest gossip from the highest social circles, circles in which Livia had once traveled and which she didn’t miss in the slightest, had informed her that this decision of hers had generated its fair share of bafflement.

  As she sang, she reconstructed the chain of ideas that had led her subconscious mind to select that aria:

  For a sudden tremor ran,

  Right thro’ the love-bewilder’d man,

  And he sigh’d as a hapless lover can

  A never known shudder

  Seized the young hunter,

  Longingly he began quietly to sigh!

  “Vilia, O Vilia! The witch of the wood,

  Would I not die for you, dear, if I could!”

  Not a romanza for a contralto, but for a soprano. And it wasn’t from an opera, but an operetta. Sung by Hanna Glawari, Franz Lehár’s Merry Widow, from the start of the second act.

  “The Merry Widow.”

  Livia knew perfectly well that that had become her nickname in the drawing rooms of her new city, where her arrival had caused an uproar. The fact that she had refused to dress in mourning, in spite of her recent loss, had caused a scandal.

  The protocol of grief was a rigorous one. The first year, black dresses and hats, with no ornamentation of any kind, except for a horrible string of beads in dark wood, with the addition of a black veil for the first six months; no jewelry except for simple earrings, best if they were pearl; in the summer, white with black accessories; no luncheons or dinners, no theater, no movies, no concerts. In the second year, a few small concessions: tea was acceptable, and some color could be added to one’s dress, provided it was relatively drab.

  Livia thought it was awful that tradition should force a woman to sacrifice two years of her life just because her husband had gotten himself killed, and that it was unbelievable that the loss of a child wasn’t treated in a similar way. When diphtheria had taken her infant son Carletto six years earlier, and she herself had felt as if she were dead inside, no one had expected her to wear black; the death of a newborn baby didn’t call for mourning, perhaps because it was such a common occurance.

  After Arnaldo’s murder, she hadn’t felt it necessary to observe the appalling local customs for even a day. After all, they hadn’t been husband and wife for years. They were just two strangers bound by habit and convenience, by his prominent social standing and her beauty, which he showed off like a trophy. Thinking back, Livia was disgusted with herself, with her willingness to live like that.

  The merry widow, then. With her fashionable clothes, her valuable jewelry, the elegance of her lithe, feline gait that caught so many eyes. The merry widow, whose entrance into her box in the Teatro San Carlo was greeted with an intense silence, followed by a sudden buzz of conversation that rose like a tide. The merry widow, who smiled at everyone but confided in no one.

  Many men claimed, as they chatted in salons and foyers, that they had enjoyed her charms, but they were all considered braggarts because none of them had been seen out and about with her, and none of them could claim to have seen the interior of her lovely new apartment on Via Sant’Anna dei Lombardi.

  But now someone claimed to have run into her on the arm of a strange fellow with green eyes. And that someone had investigated further, and the rumor had circulated through word of mouth, much as the flames might leap from a burning curtain to the wallpaper. The green-eyed fellow was a certain Commissario Ricciardi, an officer of public safety, no less.

  Livia was certain that this subject was the talk of the town in the most exclusive cafés. She didn’t mind it, either, because those green eyes had been the very reason she had moved to this town.

  After a lifetime of watching men come as soon as she called, she found the role of suitor strangely intriguing. To hang on a man’s lips, to try to fathom his thoughts and foresee his wishes, was something absolutely new for her.

  It was hardly easy. Ricciardi was a tough nut to crack. When she was with him, Livia felt as if she could hear a sort of buzz, a background noise that spoke of memories or perhaps of regrets, of ancient sorrows. Livia didn’t rule out the possibility that these regrets concerned another woman, but from that point of view she feared no one. She was Livia Lucani, not just any woman. She’d turned the heads of princes and cabinet ministers; for two weeks a Florentine count had flooded her hotel room with bouquets of roses. She wasn’t about to be defeated by a phantom.

  Moreover she sensed that, even if he didn’t show it, Ricciardi enjoyed being with her. When they discussed a play or a movie they’d watched together, she glimpsed a flicker of interest and a tranquil enjoyment otherwise absent in those eyes the color of waves crashing onto a rocky shoal. The man was beginning to thaw.

  After that November night last year, there had been no
thing more between them. It seemed a dream, when she thought back on it. The rain, his fever. His pain, his hands, his shivering. The enchantment. Who could say if it had really happened at all?

  For the first time in her life she had imposed upon herself an abstinence that, in the full maturity of her body and her heart, weighed on her. But if a woman is in love, she’s hardly willing to settle.

  “Vilia, O Vilia, my love and my bride!”

  Softly and sadly he sigh’d.

  Standing at the door to her bedroom, holding an armful of fresh linen, Clara the housekeeper stood listening raptly. Livia saw her in the mirror and gave her a level, inquisitive look.

  The young woman couldn’t contain herself.

  “Signo’, I can’t help myself, I have to tell you: you are marvelous when you sing!”

  Livia burst out laughing: “Oh, come on, Clara . . . I thought I was singing to myself, I didn’t even realize that . . .”

  “What are you talking about, Signo’? People in this neighborhood come to the windows of the buildings across the way to listen to you! Don’t you realize what a stupendous voice you have? If I had a voice like yours I’d do just like the goldfinches do: I’d sing and never stop.”

  “Thank you, my dear. Thank you. It’s been so long since I sang that I’m out of practice. I loved to sing, when I was young. But now that time is gone . . .”

  Clara interrupted: “Are you kidding? I’ve never heard a voice like yours. And in this city we all sing from morning till night, and even from night till morning. You know what we like to say here? That a heart in love or a heart in despair has no choice but to sing. It can’t do without.”

  A heart in love, thought Livia. A heart in love has no choice but to sing. That’s why when I was with Arnaldo I lost all desire to sing. A heart in love.

  She turned to look at her housekeeper, who was now making the bed: “You know what I say? Let’s give a party. A party, in celebration of the wonderful summers that you have here.”

  “Signo’, I’ve always thought it was a deadly sin to have an apartment like this, with a drawing room that opens out onto a terrace, and never have anyone over.”

  Livia stood up and clasped the young woman’s hands in hers: “Yes, a wonderful party under the stars. We’ll invite two hundred people. I want everyone to be there. And we’ll have the piano moved out onto the terrace: you say that the people who live around here like to hear me sing, no?”

  “Of course they do, Signo’, it’s all they can do to keep from clapping, when you’re done.”

  Livia broke into a little dance step: “We’ll have a masquerade party. Let’s think of a theme, something fun, I want everyone to be happy. What theme can we come up with? Help me out.”

  Clara thought it over, wrinkling her nose in comic concentration. Then she said: “Why don’t we pick the sea, Signo’? Here, for us, summer means the sea.”

  Livia was delighted: “You’re a genius, Clara. The sea. Nothing could be better. And once again I’ll sing in public. We’ll call a maestro, I need to practice, I can’t come off looking like a fool. I want my audience to be amazed. It’s going to be a wonderful night. And I’m going to introduce the man I desire to everyone who attends. You said it yourself, didn’t you? A heart in love has to sing. I have to sing.”

  Clara was caught up in Livia’s happiness.

  “Signo’, listen, you have to sing a song with the words of our land, a song we can understand. A serenade, a tarantella, something that when the people hear it they’ll say: ah, the signora sings like an angel. An angel in love.”

  “Yes, Clara, you’re right. I have to sing a song that everyone, absolutely everyone understands. Even those who pretend to be deaf. It has to be an enchanting song. And I know just where to get it.”

  She went to her wardrobe. What she needed was an outfit that would take people’s breath away: in that garment, the merry widow would dance her waltz.

  XI

  Not even the heat could distract Lucia Maione from her worries as she walked briskly toward the market.

  A few nights earlier, from the darkness of the hallway, she’d spied on her husband as he sat at the kitchen table. The light of a candle cast a large shadow of his silhouette on the far wall. He was drenched in sweat, an undershirt covered his chest, and his head was bent over a sheet of paper on which, Lucia felt certain, he was adding up columns of numbers.

  She knew that because the same scene always repeated itself as the end of the week and payday drew near. She knew it because the following morning she would extract the sheet of paper from the trash and read it: always the same numbers.

  Always the same money.

  After the very last of the children had been trundled off to bed and fallen asleep, he would tell her to go to bed, that he was going to have a last espresso and then he’d join her: he just had some work matters he needed to think about. Lucia would pretend to retire and then, barefoot and silent, she’d tiptoe to the kitchen door and watch her husband worrying.

  Until the government had decided to cut salaries, a year and a half earlier, they’d been living comfortably. They weren’t wealthy, but they could afford to go out to the park for a stroll on Saturday afternoons and buy a spumone for the children, and once a month the whole family went to the movies. Now even the supplemental payments for especially large families weren’t enough to make ends meet.

  Raffaele didn’t talk about it. Every morning he gave her as much as she needed to buy groceries without showing any sign of worry, but Lucia knew perfectly well what was going through his mind, what he kept to himself to spare her the anxiety.

  She tried to be as frugal as possible, but the kids were at the age when they were as ravenous as wolf cubs, and God be praised they were all growing up hale and healthy, constantly outgrowing their clothing, which meant she had to test the limits of her remarkable skills as a seamstress and take in outfits to fit the smaller children as their elders grew bigger. She felt a pang in her heart when she saw how much Giovanni, at sixteen, resembled Luca and how proud the boy was to wear the clothing of his older brother, who had been killed in the line of duty. Still, she inevitably had to buy some new outfits, and that always brought her face to face with the harsh reality of constantly rising prices. And so Lucia was forced on long journeys to the market, where there were savings to be had. She always returned home loaded down like a mule; sometimes she made the older children come with her—they always saw the trip as an exciting adventure, which cheered her up.

  Then there was Benedetta.

  The girl had been orphaned by the brutal murder of her parents, a murder committed by her only living relative, one of her mother’s sisters. She was an only child, and Raffaele, in a surge of sorrow and pity, had brought her home at Christmas; now they had begun the proceedings to adopt the child. She was wonderful. Benedetta and their eldest daughter Maria were practically the same age and had become inseparable. And even if that meant that there was now another mouth to feed, and another small body growing with dizzying speed to be clothed and shod, they would never, because of the money, have given up the opportunity to give that marvelous creature a family of her own; she’d already suffered too much in her short life.

  Lucia slowed to a halt. Before her eyes the picture of her husband’s broad shoulders appeared to her, as he sat in the dim light of the kitchen, and those shoulders rose and fell in a sigh, a sign that meant once again the figures didn’t add up.

  Raffaele subjected himself to endless overtime, taking on shifts for colleagues who were bachelors or well-to-do. He was killing himself with work, and no one knew better than she did, she who loved him and knew him well, how little of himself he held back in the daily battle against the wrongdoers who infested the city.

  It had been, from the very beginning, his way of reacting to Luca’s death, Luca who had decided to become a policeman just like him: even more
honest, even more inflexible, even more attentive, even more tireless. But now it wasn’t just because of his mission that her husband was working so hard, it was also so that his family could live better.

  When Raffaele had stood up, gently pushing back the chair, and gone out onto the balcony, Lucia had taken advantage of the opportunity to peek at the sheet of figures that lay on the table with a pencil stub. As always, it contained a list, laid out in her husband’s large, neat handwriting:

  Bread, 12 kilos: 16 lire.

  Pasta, 4 kilos: 9 lire and 50 cents.

  Rice, 1 kilo: 1 lira and 50 cents.

  Milk, 5 liters: 11 lire.

  Potatoes, 5 kilos: 2 lire.

  Meat, 1 kilo and a half: 10 lire.

  Anchovies, 2 kilos: 7 lire and 50 cents.

  Salt cod, 1 kilo and a half: 3 lire and 50 cents.

  Eggs, 1 dozen: 4 lire and 20 cents.

  Fruit and greens, 15 kilos: 15 lire.

  Olive oil, half a liter: 2 lire and 60 cents.

  Sugar, a quarter kilo: 1 lira and 60 cents.

  Coffee, 150 grams: 1 lira and 90 cents.

  TOTAL WEEKLY EXPENSES

  86 LIRE AND 30 CENTS.

  On top of which, Lucia thought to herself, you had to add sixty lire for the landlord and ten for the weekly rate for electricity and heating. Plus at least thirty lire more for various expenses: cotton, clothing, notebooks, medicine. Too much.

  Too much, my poor love.

  She’d looked up at Raffaele, who stood looking out at the quarter dotted with streetlamps. In the distance she could hear a man and woman fighting and, closer in, the sound of a piano playing. In the heat, windows opened to let out life and all its passions.

  In the silence of the apartment, which was broken only by the regular breathing of the children in their bedrooms, Lucia decided that she wasn’t going to stand by and watch her man work himself to death for her and her children.