Solitaria

by Genni Gunn

  When Papà hears about Mamma, he checks himself out of the hospital against all pleading, and phones Piera. “If you don’t come to get me,” he tells her, “I’ll throw myself out the window.” He has a fever of 40°C, but he wants to be with Mamma.

  When Piera drives up in the white Fiat, he’s waiting outside, one hand leaned against the limestone wall. “Papà,” she says, “this is madness. You should not be up.” She rushes around to help him in, but he waves her away. He is frail and exhausted, yet no matter what she says, he will not speak to her. In the car, she talks about Mamma, while he stares out the side window, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  And then they are in Mamma’s room, and she exclaims, “Ovidio, I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve missed you so much. I feel such emptiness without you.” For several days, he sits by her side, and they hold hands like young lovers.

  Now and then, Piera has to turn her over, to keep her from getting bedsores. Papà says, “Don’t bother her. Leave her alone!”

  So Piera shows him the red circle. He says nothing after that, not even after Mamma’s third stroke, when she dies, not even a week later, when he’s on the brink of his own death.

  Her mother’s presence now swells into the room, not as a physical being, but as an incandescence, a gateway through which Piera need only step. But before the thought can take root, Mamma begins to fade, like a time-release photo. The colour drains, then details and features slowly, slowly turn to white. Mamma! Piera cries, and her voice is that of a child. Mamma, don’t go. But soon, Mamma is only an outline drawn in the air in front of her, white as sun. Piera’s eyes burn, and she begins to weep. Once she starts, she cannot stop the artesian well behind her eyes.

  For months now, she’s been crying indiscriminately as she watches TV. She cries for the atrocities of war, for heroic rescues; she cries overcome by the beauty of a violet, the suffering of a sick bear in a zoo; she cries for those who were abandoned, for those who reunited; she cries for the heartache of the unemployed, for the joy of instant lottery millionaires; she even cries during commercials — at the squeals of small children tasting a breakfast cereal, the delight of housewives discovering a new detergent… She empties boxes of tissues daily.

  In the hall outside her room, the sounds of heels tapping on tiles, Clarissa’s laughter, Oriana’s and David’s voices, Teresa. They have returned from the church.

  A knock, then the handle turns, but she has locked the door from the inside. “Piera?” Clarissa calls out. “Piera, stop this nonsense and open the door.”

  “Go away.”

  “This is not about me or you, Piera. This is about Vito. You should be ashamed! The whole town turned out for Vito’s mass.”

  “I’m sure you were in your glory,” Piera says. She imagines Clarissa dressed in a flowing evening gown, her mouth open, her arms out, everyone clapping.

  “Don’t think you can bait me. This is about Vito!” Clarissa repeats. “Open this door right now! We have a right to know what’s going on.”

  “Go away,” Piera says again. Tears flow out of her eyes, drop upon drop, until they form two rivulets, black water flowing, she and Clarissa separate and apart. She sniffles loudly.

  “We’re all sick of this,” Clarissa says. “Catering to you as if you were some delicate flower.” She sighs, exasperated. “First Mamma spoiled you, then Sandro spoiled you, and now you think you can get your way just by crying. Well, you’re wrong. We’re not going to go away until you open this door!”

  “You were the spoiled one!” Piera cries.

  “Me? Who had the perpetual headaches, and so got special treats? Who read in her room all day? Who always got her way by crying?”

  “While you were outside playing,” Piera says, “I was inside helping Mamma with the shop.”

  “I’m sure you were soooo helpful, Mamma couldn’t have done without you. What were you? Four? Three?” Clarissa laughs. “And don’t bother telling me about the kerosene and your stupid little hands.”

  “You’ve always been spiteful,” Piera says. “And self-centred.”

  “Mamma was far too lenient with you,”Clarissa says, her voice trembling, “because she loved you more.”

  Piera wipes her eyes. She gets up, and steps out onto her the balcony where her geraniums bloom, tall and thirsty in the August heat. How slowly the minutes pass, and how quickly too. The days, long and languorous, thirty-seven degrees, and the Adriatic Sea, if she could drive the few miles out to it, impossibly blue, impossibly inviting.

  “Piera?” Clarissa calls. “I need to talk to you.”

  Piera hears a new tone in her sister’s voice. She comes to stand behind the door. “What?” she says.

  “I know I made you a promise, but I don’t know if I can keep it any longer.”

  “Clarissa, please,” Piera says.

  “I mean it,” Clarissa says, softly, then she begins to sing “Un bel di vedremo” from Madama Butterfly, her gorgeous soprano piercing Piera’s heart.

  “What is it that you mean?” Oriana’s voice in the hall.

  Clarissa stops singing. “How long have you been there? Please turn that thing off. Fazio!” she calls down the hall to the kitchen where everyone is assembled. “Come and take your rude daughter away.”

  “Oriana, leave us alone,” Piera yells.

  “Ciao, Zia Piera,” Oriana says. “Finally we’re getting somewhere. Open the door.”

  “That’s enough, Oriana,” Fazio’s voice now joins the chorus in the hall.

  Clarissa’s soprano rises, plaintive, emotional.

  “Go away, Papà! I’m in the middle of filming. Talk to me, Zia Clarissa.” Then as Clarissa continues to sing, Oriana translates as an aside to her camera: “One fine day, we’ll see a strand of smoke / Over the far horizon and the sea / And then the ship will appear…”

  “What’s going on?” David’s voice now.

  Clarissa continues to sing.

  “Do you see it? He has come. / I won’t go down to meet him./ I will stay at the edge of the hill and wait and wait…,” Oriana says.

  “Clarissa, please,” Piera says again.

  A knock, then David’s voice. “Zia Piera, please open the door. There’s a commotion out here.”

  “Chi sará, chi sará,” Clarissa sings. “E come sará giunto, che dirá, che dirá?”

  She raps once more, then her heels tap away from the door.

  “Who will it be? Who will it be? / And as he arrives / What will he say? What will he say?” Oriana translates, her tone indifferent — already a voiceover to the film in her head. “Zia Clarissa, wait! Will you sing the whole aria for me? I’d like to use it as a soundtrack during our meals downstairs…”

  Piera brings her hands up to her cheeks. Her skin is hot and damp. She feels faint and goes back to bed, squeezes a few drops onto her tongue, then lies against the pillows and stares at the TV until the voices in the hall diminish, then stop altogether.

  She falls into a stupefied sleep, the television voices burrowing into her dreams and creating disorienting memories or nightmares. Before Vito’s discovery, before the family arrived, Teresa would come up and turn off the TV before she went to bed herself. Without Teresa, Piera leaves the TV on twenty-four hours a day, a chattering companion that allows her the illusion of being in touch with the world. She watches travel programs avidly, as well as anything educational, so that despite her fear of flying and of closed spaces, she can travel to faraway places from the comfort of her bed. She has so internalized the television travel that when anyone calls to tell her about a trip they’ve taken, Piera says, “I’ve been there too. So beautiful. So —” This is one of the many petty things she and Clarissa have fought about over the years. Clarissa says that Piera is not a participant in her own life, that she is a passive observer while claiming knowledge of everyone else’s.

  In her own mind, Piera had supplanted her mother. In her own mind, Piera thought of her parents, brothers, and sisters as her children, hers
to lead and nudge towards happy lives. In her own mind, Piera erected a large apartment building, so that all her siblings could live near her and adore her for the rest of their lives. In her own mind, Piera was Mother Earth, not a quiet, Zen Mother Earth, but a volatile one — the Mother Earth of Oriana’s TV documentaries, the one whose fury is unleashed daily in torrents of water, earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, avalanches, volcanic eruptions, and every other possible natural disaster, the one born and reborn from her own destruction.

  In late afternoon, David heads out as he often does, and runs into the countryside to escape the weight of Piera’s past, stories which end in maudlin, self-pitying sentences such as, “Oh, how I’ve suffered!” and “I have worn out my threshold of pain.” During these afternoon getaways, he can breathe deeply, unencumbered by her reproach, which he is beginning to feel is directed at him, even though her stories occurred to others, decades before his birth. Sometimes he tells her that everyone suffers one way or another; that silence, too, is a suffering. She stops in mid-sentence when he says these things, and stares at him with huge, open eyes. Then she says, “Yes, yes, of course, you’re right.” There’s a resignation to these admissions, but David doesn’t think she is entirely sincere.

  Sometimes he rises early and runs in the morning, then again later, after he sees Piera. The long hours sitting with her leave him restless and filled with a disquieting energy that does not dissipate with wine or food or sleep. He runs until he is exhausted and doesn’t have to think. He’s beginning to know Belisolano. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that those in Belisolano are beginning to know him. The neighbours call him il corridore, which simply means the runner. Often, people stop him to enthuse over Clarissa, shaking his hand as if her fame might rub off on them. It doesn’t matter that they haven’t seen her since she was a child. The mere knowledge that she once lived here makes her the property of Belisolano, and her appearances on television and on the covers of CDs and DVDs render her face so familiar that the townspeople feel she has been with them always. As well as complimenting Clarissa, they recount for David brief stories of Piera’s goodness toward them: “Without her loan, I would not have been able to buy our house,” or “My child would have died if Donna Piera had not arranged for the operation,” or with salutations: “How is Donna Piera? Please give her my regards,” or “Please remember me to her,” and David begins to understand Piera’s position in the town. People speak of her with reverence, if perhaps also with a little fear. He always listens, thanks them, and carries on running. Sometimes, children follow him for blocks, or people stop and stare after him, shaking their heads. Zia Piera laughs and says they probably think he’s a little unbalanced, and that this is good, because they’ll neither come too close nor try to befriend him. Why she thinks that he would not welcome friends is puzzling, and when he asked her this yesterday, she said, “How many friends do you have back home?”

  “Lots,” he said. “Dozens.”

  “Exactly how many?” she persisted.

  He stared at her as closely as she was staring at him. “Where are all your friends?” he asked.

  “Dead,” she said. “But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and your many friends.”

  “When I was in second grade,” he told her, “I had a little albino friend called Henry, who nobody liked because he had red eyes, pink skin, and hair whiter than that on their grandparents’ heads.”

  “Is this Henry your friend now?” she said.

  “I’ll tell it my way or I won’t tell it at all,” he said.

  She shrugged and sighed, but he could see she was interested.

  “Henry’s eyes were so sensitive to light he had to wear sunglasses even in the classroom. The older boys picked on him in the schoolyard, and our classmates named him Pinko. I was Henry’s only friend, even though he was incredibly intelligent and witty. Perhaps the other children were threatened by his straight A grades, and his ability to laugh off their mocking.”

  “And you,” she said, “what didn’t they like about you?”

  “My last name,” he said, “my mother’s accent—”

  “A cultural clash,” she murmured. “Was it difficult growing up in a foreign country?”

  “It wasn’t foreign to me,” he said. “It’s all I’ve ever known.” He paused. “And despite what you’re implying, I had no trouble making friends.”

  “Really?” she said, and smiled. “So what happened to your albino friend? Did you betray him?”

  “No, of course not,” David said. “Why would you say that?”

  “And then what?”

  “And then nothing. We moved. Or he moved. What difference does it make?”

  “You abandoned him for another friend,” she said.

  “I did no such thing!” His voice rose. “Why would you assume such a thing?” he said. “Is this what you would do?”

  “I know you,” she said.

  “No, you don’t,” he said sharply. “You haven’t seen me in years. How can you possibly know anything about my life?” Anger swelled in his chest, and for a moment, he imagined this was how Teresa felt, hearing Piera’s baseless assumptions.

  “I know you,” she repeated, and closed her eyes.

  The words circle in his head, like a mantra, or an ear worm. He continues to run, clockwise, always beginning in the medieval part of town, then following the concentric circles, so that with each lap, he is a little further out, a little closer to the olive groves and vineyards that surround Belisolano. An unravelling.

  Out by the train station, he’s surprised by a large gathering of men chatting, smoking beneath the date palms that line the three blocks from the piazza of Il Monumento Ai Caduti to the chain-link of the station. It’s as if he has stepped back a half century, to a distant Italy he has only read about. He slows down and walks through the throng, puzzled by the serious tones of the men’s voices. Then Marco’s hand is on his shoulder.

  “Are you looking for work now?” he says, smiling.

  David raises his eyebrows, and Marco quickly explains that these men are labourers and employers.

  “See that one over there?” he says. “He owns three large fields and word is he needs four labourers for Monday. This is where he finds them.” He nods to the man. “I’m hoping he’ll hire me for the next few weeks. No one likes to work in August.”

  “So it’s a kind of employment office,” David says. “But why don’t they hire them for the season?”

  “Oh, it’s much too complicated to explain,” Marco says. “No one needs workers all the time. It’s all to do with the crop. Besides, this is how we’ve always done it.”

  David nods. “Is this what you do, then?” he asks. According to Piera, Marco lies around all day, watching TV and surfing the Web, and in the evenings goes out drinking and gambling with friends.

  “If you’re a good worker, you can get steady work.” He pauses, then touches David’s arm. “This is all very difficult for my mother, you know.”

  “For all of them,” David says.

  “Especially for my mother.”

  David shifts from foot to foot. “I’m sorry about your father,” he says.

  “I don’t remember him at all. He left when I was still a baby.”

  We’re both fatherless, David thinks. Kindred cousins.

  The recorded church bells sound. From the distance, the brass of a marching band. Around them, people emerge from their homes and head towards the church, as if summoned by a Pied Piper.

  “St. Bartholomew,” Marco says, nodding towards the sound. “Every weekend — almost — there’s some procession or other, some celebration of some saint.” He smiles. “It’s probably more about the party than about the saint, really. I mean, who knows anything about St. Bartholomew?”

  “Wasn’t he an apostle?” David says.

  Marco rolls his eyes. “Flayed to death in Armenia. A martyr. They’re all martyrs. You can’t be a saint unless you’re a ma
rtyr.” His eyes twinkle. “Zia Piera should be beatified soon.”

  David laughs, though he feels guilty. “She has a good heart,” he says.

  “Oh yes. A good heart full of arrogance,” Marco says. “She thinks she knows everything.”

  David shrugs. “She’s lived a long life.”

  “That does not make her an expert on other people’s lives,” Marco says, his voice suddenly harsh.

  “No, of course not.” David pretends he hasn’t heard the tone, the hostility.

  Marco relaxes, laughs. He waves his finger at David. “She’ll take advantage of you if you let her, you know.”

  “I’m just the messenger.”

  “We’re both her slaves,” he says in a half-mocking, half-joking tone.

  “What does she make you do?” David asks, curious at Marco’s perception of both of them.

  Marco flinches, then stiffens, his eyes searching David’s, for what? “Defend my mother, for one,” he says. “You have no idea how cruel Zia Piera can be.”

  “But you,” David says. “Surely she’s kind to you?”

  Marco laughs. “She’s kind to no one these days, though she’s always talking about love. When has she ever loved anyone?” he says, and pauses. “She has lived only in the past—her glorious life before Sandro died, before she drove us all away, one by one.”

  “You’re still here,” David says. “And Teresa.”

  “Where would my mother go?” Marco says, his voice tight. “She’s spent a lifetime with Zia Piera. As for me? There are ways to be absent, even when you’re physically present. I’ve never lived up to whatever it is Zia Piera thinks I should be. Not that it would matter what I’d do. She’d find fault in it, just because that’s what she does.” He pauses, and looks away, embarrassed, as if he’s said too much. Then he slides on a mask, and shrugs. “Women, huh?”

  David raises his eyebrows.

  “Look,” Marco says, “I feel sorry for you, stuck in that house all day. Tell you what.” He pulls out his car keys and shakes them. “Any time you want to use my car, just ask.”