New Italian Women

by Anna Banti

  Luis danced with la Gramissa, but now dancing with the others didn’t matter to him and so he gave them all a turn, even the older ones, married or maiden. The del Fracin brothers had hoisted their sister onto a lame horse to get her home and from there she looked at Luis and it could be read in her large gold-flecked eyes that if he were to return to the place at the Pontisella, it wouldn’t be as before. There was in her look, together with the sadness of having been dragged away from his arms, also the exultation for that one dance that had no equal. Unique, unforgettable, Luis.

  Their love was happy and full of surprises. A love opposed by all, by old del Fracin who in his youth had been a friend of Sacarlott’s when he was still called Pidren and then after had stopped speaking to him because of Napoleon’s becoming emperor. Opposed by Rosetta’s brothers who had no feelings of confidence in that long, thin fellow who hurled greetings left and right. Opposed by Maria who looked upon the blacksmith’s daughter as many, many levels below them and who didn’t think that the raising of silkworms would have ever rendered enough to compensate for the difference. And then, too, she’s an unbeliever, la Luison declared, and that removed any remaining possibility from the del Fracin girl. Even la Gonda and la Marlattina shook their heads because of the red hair.

  Only Gavriel liked this love because he felt it would not let blood, it was without tears and without reproaches, without anguish; and when he went into the fields with his brother and listened to him talk about the girl it seemed to him that his long nose, the focal point of his expression, was elaborating a story wherein happiness was possible, within hand’s reach. It was born of itself, like a natural occurrence, the rain and the wind.

  That’s how it was for Luis, his love had no need of a future nor even of plans. He accompanied Rosetta del Fracin to pick the mulberry leaves that fattened her silkworms; he went with her to get greens for the rabbits; and they’d forget the leaves, forget the greens, so vast and unexplored was the territory in which they were adventuring and so intense the desire to know it together.

  Without ever being aware of the tragedy that could be just at their shoulders: in the forgotten leaves, in the greens left to wither at the edges of the meadow. They were not afraid, not of Rosetta’s brothers nor of storms, nor even of the dead that are met at dusk near cemeteries. A boundless faith in themselves flattened whatever did not concern them into an indistinct horizon, or instantly dissipated whatever could disturb them or contend their love. But this was also to have been the limit of their story, what restricted its duration and then erased any trace almost as if, turning back, they’d not be able to recognize anything, only indistinct forms from which a few trivial details remained alive: the running of a mill-stream, the soaring of a kite. Or the rhymes of the anthem in honor of Ferdinand of Austria, crowned that year in Milan.

  Because the only daughter of the anarchist blacksmith has a weakness for kings and emperors: “Hail excellent son of Austria, Ferdinand Emperor,...” she declaims, stretching out her arms. Difficult words for her, used to dialect, and her eyes shine as if she already could descry among ermines and carriages the brilliance of the double-headed Hapsburg eagle. Luis laughs but she continues, unperturbed, obstinate, determined to know and to see; she will not be stopped by Luis, no one will stop her and now she doesn’t want him to interrupt her, she breathes the words into his mouth, bites the hand that would muffle the torrent of words. A mill-stream runs between two stands of trees, she bends over to drink, exhausted, and Luis grasps her wet fingers, sucks them between his lips until he feels them docile and warm, silence fills her lungs and only the sound of water through the grassy banks is like the shiver that comes over them. Once she lost a clog and they had to search for it when it was dark, by touch, in the grass.

  Who knows if they ever made love in the full sense of the word, love that leaves one faint and satiated. Rosetta del Fracin had a great need to dream and to wait. So many bodices, so many skirts. Surely they must have come very close. Afterwards, when Luis hurt his knee and had to be immobilized for months, he thought at length of those moments in which all had been possible. He thought of how it would have happened, and what would have become of them, after. He thought, above all, of his baffling, fearless happiness. He imagined her melancholy, imagined the abandon in the gold-brown of her glance.

  Afterwards, when it was already too late. When at the first frost he fell on the slippery bricks in the lane and his knee hit the ground with the full weight of his body, forming internally a sack of fluid, a fluid that for months the more it was drained, the more it re-formed. Confined to a chair, he watched from the windows to see if ever there came del Fracin’s only daughter. He peered through the last, resistant leaves of the apple trees, through the dry stems of the asters planted that year for the first time. A sign, a message. And when in the morning the sun burnt off the mist and blue chunks of sky appeared, he told himself: today she’ll come.

  She came once only and she stopped under the vine-arbor to speak with Fantina; no one asked her in and Luis in vain tapped his fingers on the window-panes sealed by frost. She didn’t once raise her head, she didn’t turn her eyes upward an instant to search beyond the network of bare branches on the arbor. He saw her red hair coming out from her wool bonnet, her hands swollen and ruined from her work with the silkworms. And when he saw her go off down the lane, he broke the glass with his fist. But she was already gone and didn’t hear him shout. One afternoon before Luis slipped and struck his knee, they had gone up on the hill where the Gru farm was to fly a kite. The peasants in the fields had stopped to watch that strange bird tossed by the wind, always stopped at the same point. A bird that rustled in a sky gray with clouds while the triangular flights of migrating geese passed above it. On its wings that bird carried the written name of del Fracin’s daughter; but the peasants couldn’t see that, just as they could not see the string that kept it tied to earth as the night came on and the blacksmith’s sons canvassed the countryside in search of their sister. If they had found him, that Luis, they would have broken his bones. It was fall and Rosetta had put her cold fingers into Luis’ jacket. Above their heads that paper bird swirled and flapped until they forgot about it. After it was too late, the string had gotten tangled among bushes and they had run until they were breathless because the moon was already risen beyond the hills and no one would ever have been able to explain to the old blacksmith how important it was to fly a kite. Who could have explained it to her brothers. How marvelous.

  That year, when she went to confession for Christmas, Rosetta del Fracin never seemed to come out of the confessional and at the end was left by herself to say her penance while the sacristan went about extinguishing the last candles and she still hadn’t finished. And at midnight mass, when it was the moment of the Hallelujah her voice rose so limpid and high that the girls’ chorus fell silent. The Provost remained with his hands open above the chalice, stock-still, and the altar boys, astonished, turned their heads. But Rosetta del Fracin’s voice was beautiful in a too earthly sense and her Hallelujah celebrated in Christmas the light, the warmth, the food. The people who filled the church were poor, and they had looked upon her with fright.

  In spring, Maria took Luis to a famous doctor in Vercelli. The trip was long and tiring and when they got to the doctor, his leg was so swollen that it wasn’t even possible to drain it. Luis had a high fever, he was delirious. The doctor made an incision for the full length of his knee and did two blood-lettings, then told Maria that she should keep her son awake until the knee had emptied, only thus could he be saved. All night Maria talked to Luis, she cried and told him the story of her life, and Luis stayed awake to hear it and the fluid drained right through the mattress, wetting the floor. In the morning she could see the bone through the open wound.

  That trip to Vercelli was decisive. If ever Luis had had the possibility of walking as he once did, that wagon ride removed it forever. The fluid never formed again so consumed was the knee, but he was left with a t
hinner, lifeless leg.

  It was April when he tried again to walk; wheat was beginning to push up in the fields still damp with the last snow, some cherry trees more sheltered than others were in bloom, and the scent of the elder-trees could be discerned. Leaning on Gavriel, Luis got as far as the gate. Returning he tried walking alone, he was thinking of Rosetta del Fracin and of Gru’s hill, of the next kites to come. The dog nuzzled close to him and he had an instant of hesitation, then he straightened up, swayed, and finally went on. Gavriel, who was watching him, smiled. Also Maria, who so rarely smiled, seemed once again to be the Maria of before.

  Whoever thought that Luis would be left disabled, did not know him well enough. Even with one leg different, he held himself as straight as before and when summer came they saw him at dances with his cap set back on his curls and the jacket that changed color in the rain.

  But Rosetta del Fracin is no more, and there’s no use searching out her glowing fox-color hair. Nor the blue cotton dress she made herself. No use trying to pick up her contralto voice. She’s become engaged and she will be married after the grape harvest in a white gown which is already the talk of everyone. A gown given her by her brothers who went to pick out the fabric in Casale. Because Rosetta is a good girl and should be rewarded; Camurà is in love with her and doesn’t even want to wait for spring, already he’s fixing a house, a real house with a garden all around it and an oak tree in front of the gate. Camurà is rich, his money was made at the markets and fairs which he began to follow while still a boy pulling his cart up the hilly roadways.

  Translated by Helen Barolini

  * * *

  Maria

  by

  Dacia Maraini

  When I get up in the morning to go to work Maria is still sleeping. I slip out of bed without making any noise so I won’t wake her; taking the little pile of clothes from the chair I go and get dressed in the bathroom. I close the door behind me carefully without letting it click out loud and pass through the icy hallway. Our apartment house has no furnace; we have some gas heaters which, however, inconveniently warm only one section of air at a time. So the house is divided into hot and cold blocks that never mix with each other.

  At nine o’clock I’m in the office. For the first five minutes I’m stunned by the noise and ask myself how I’ve been able to stand it up to now. I can never get used to it. But the stupor and paralysis last only a few minutes, the first few. Then the noise of the machine tools beyond the glass is changed into something tremendous: the roar of a waterfall, broken at regular intervals by the roll of a drum. I begin to search among the filing cards to get the key punch started, keeping the calculating machine within reach.

  My office is a cubical of glass stuck in the middle of an enormous room in an automobile factory. Five other people work with me: three men and two women. By now I’ve been with them more than six years, but I can’t really say I know them. I don’t talk much. They chatter away, but I can’t hear them: the noise drowns their voices. To make yourself heard you have to put your mouth to the ear of the listener, and I never find anything important enough to persuade me to put my mouth on the brilliantined heads of my fellow workers.

  At twelve noon the siren goes off. The workers quit at once. The noise stops. At first the silence is a relief, then it becomes intolerable. I notice so many things that at first did not bother me: my eyes burning from the neon lights, my fingers numb from using the machine, the odor of sweat that floats on the tepid air.

  I look up and for the first time since I came in the factory, I look at the workers. They seem happy to go out in the courtyard and eat. Some carry bottles of wine with them, others dishes of spaghetti. They pass by without seeing me. Even though the cubical is transparent and full of light, they never stop to look in. They are so used to us that it’s as though we didn’t exist for them.

  With my eyes I follow a girl who goes by with a busy air, her black smock unbuttoned over her short skirt, her strong and muscular legs in thick red checked stockings. I look at her because her face resembles Maria’s. She has prominent cheek bones, wide jaw, narrow slanting eyes, black eyebrows, a slightly mongoloid expression.

  I stand up and put on my coat. I go out. When I pass by the courtyard I don’t see the girl. I look at a group of women who are sitting on the ground eating by the edge of a flower bed, but I don’t see her. She must be one of those who prefer the crowd and hubbub of the cafeteria.

  When I get home, Maria has just gotten up. The house is a mess. The bedroom stinks of cigarettes, the bed is upside down, the bathroom a lake, the freezing kitchen full of smoke.

  I begin straightening things up. Maria goes around the house in a kimono, smoking one cigarette after another. She follows behind me talking while I work.

  Maria has a very nice voice. Sometimes, while I wash, clean, put the house in order, she sits on a stool in the bedroom next to the window so she can get the sun on her back, and she talks to me like I wasn’t there.

  Often I can’t even follow her reasoning, which is deep and complicated, but I lose myself in her voice, which is clear and light and musical like a bird’s.

  We eat in the kitchen. Maria sits across from me and greedily eats everything I put on her plate. But she doesn’t look at what she eats, because she is thinking; then her face acquires that distracted and worried look so familiar to me.

  “Have you ever thought what love is between two women?”

  “No.”

  “There must be a reason, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why should I love you instead of a man? Why should I make love to you instead of a man?”

  “I don’t know. Because you like to.”

  “But why do I like to?”

  “I don’t know. Because you love me.”

  “Oh, fine, you fool. But why?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “I think that men and women don’t want to make love together any more so they won’t make children. There are too many of us.”

  “Do you want some more cod?”

  She nods yes. She brings to her mouth a big piece of cod – the most economical kind and therefore fatter and more thready – without paying any attention to its taste. I know she isn’t tasting her food by her face, which chews mechanically, her eyes staring, and by her throat that hastily swallows one piece after another without stopping.

  “They make me laugh when they talk of non-violence. What do we do from morning to night if not violence.”

  “I brought some grapes for you. Do you want them?”

  “We get up in the morning and begin by killing three thousand cows.”

  “Cows?”

  “Certainly. How many cows and little calves and sheep do you think are killed every day in a city like this one?”

  “How would I know.”

  “And don’t you suffer violence from your bosses?”

  “No. They don’t do anything to me.”

  “I don’t mean physical violence. How much do they give you a month?”

  “Eighty thousand lire.”

  “Do you know what they earn from your eighty thousand lire? At least twenty-five a month. It’s all earnings robbed from you.”

  “What has that to do with it?”

  “And when they make you stay in a cubical, in the middle of that noise, with that artificial light, for eight hours a day.”

  “What has that to do with it? I work and they pay me.”

  “Fine, stupid. You work and they rob you. That’s the truth. They rob you day after day, hour after hour. And you let them rob you, you’re even happy about it. Isn’t that crazy?”

  I start to laugh. She has such a serious, angry face it makes me laugh. I don’t want to argue because soon I have to go back to work and I would like to rest a moment on the bed. But Maria doesn’t want to interrupt her line of thought. She wants me to stay seated in my place, looking at her and responding, even if only occasionally.

/>   I fix coffee. I find the coffee pot open and full of old grounds; two cigarette butts are in it.

  “Why do you put your butts in the coffee pot?”

  “You know what I say. You have no political conscience. You lose yourself in things, in coffee grounds, in washing powder, in codfish, in grapes, in dirty sheets. And you never think of anything that concerns everyone and not just you. You don’t think of the world, of injustice. You refuse to judge. For you everything is okay. You’re worse than an animal.”

  She makes me sad when she talks like that. Suddenly I feel tired. I don’t want to do anything. I look at her hard and beautiful face, white enough to scare you.

  I go into the bedroom and lie down, closing my eyes. A moment later I feel her lips touching my forehead, chin, mouth. All sadness swiftly passes.

  I spend the afternoon again closed in the cubical, writing, typing, working the key punch, answering the telephone. Sometimes I raise my inflamed eyes to the glass that separates me from the rest of the department. I see bent backs, pieces of car bodies hanging from a cable in a row, black smocks in motion. The girl with the muscular legs and the mongoloid face works in another department, at a press for plastics. I see her only at noon and at closing time. She goes by the cubical without turning, swinging a bag of blue material.

  One day Maria greets me with a furious face. “What’s happened?” I ask her. At the same time I start straightening the bedroom. I like to move around a little after sitting for so many hours.

  “You know my father is a farmer.”