Solitaria

by Genni Gunn

  David begins to object, but Marco silences him with a wave of his arms. “It’ll give you a chance to get out of town.”

  When David arrives in the evening, Piera’s face is blotchy, her eyes red and puffy. She’s in her housecoat, and her hair is uncombed. All around her on the bed are sepia photographs, blue airmail letters, birthday cards, death announcements. Teresa has told him that she keeps everything and can ascribe a year, a day, a story to each item.

  “Oh how I longed for Mamma’s arms around me,” she says, as if they’ve been talking about this. She stares into the sheer curtains that billow against the window. “When Clarissa was born, I ceased to exist. I should have been so jealous of her, but all through our lives, it’s been the other way around,” she says, her voice suddenly bitter. “You see? Even now she accuses me of sins so abstract I can’t even defend myself. Mamma always loved you more, she says.”

  David says nothing, not sure how to respond. He watches her pace up and down at the end of the bed.

  “She’s jealous of everything,” she says. “Even photographs. Look.” She reaches for a photograph lying on the bed, and hands it to him.

  The photo shows a tiny girl in a white cotton nightgown, one side nudged off the shoulder, a large ribbon band in her hair, a rose in one hand, a dark pearly necklace around her neck, a bracelet of white pearls.

  “I look slightly pornographic with that costume jewellery,” Piera says, “as if my mother had tried to make me into a little woman. Only my expression leaves no doubt that this was not a pleasurable moment — my eyebrows are furled, and I look as if I have been awakened from a deep sleep and not very happy about it. I am two years old, and this photograph is another thing that Clarissa has never forgiven me for, even though she wasn’t even born when it was taken.” She pauses. “It’s nonsense, all nonsense. Mamma was too busy to love anyone more or less.” She blinks several times and dabs her eyes with a hanky. “Clarissa has always been naive and hungry for love. She has been away from Italy for forty years and has forgotten… no, re-invented the past, as people do.”

  7. Clay Miniature

  “This is one of Mamma’s miniatures. It’s supposed to be her. Look at the detail: the three-flounce skirt, the hair held back with a ribbon. She had begun by moulding crumbs of bread into forms, until Papà brought home clay that she shaped into the most exquisite miniature creatures — farm animals, villagers, saints, demons, fields, houses, churches, and miniatures of each of us, including Daniela — an entire life recreated and put on a windowsill to dry. Nowadays on TV they talk about virtual worlds and virtual lives people have on the Internet. Well, after the stroke, Mamma spent most of her time creating a second life for herself through these creatures, a happy life.

  “And now, I’m going to read you a story about Mamma and Papà, which although it may not seem relevant right now, will be later on.”

  ‡ 1951. Belisolano, Italy. Slowly, as the months passed, the children resumed their lives. None of us spoke about Daniela’s death. We all concentrated on keeping Mamma comfortable. She had regained most of her physical abilities after the stroke, but none of her mental ones, so that at thirty-eight, she was sweet and transparent, fearful and naïve.

  Sandro sold one of our fields, and bought Mamma and Papà a lovely five-room house in town. At first, Papà did not want to accept this “charity,” as he called it, proud as he was. “Why do we need anything so grand?” he said. It breaks my heart to think of the life he endured for us all. In the end, I convinced him that it was for Mamma’s well-being. When my parents moved to town, Papà gave me the wooden mask, saying, “This kept you humble throughout your childhood. May it help you now to keep your pride in check.” I hung it at the side of my bedroom door, where it stayed until after Sandro’s death.

  Whenever Sandro was out of town on business, I went to stay with Mamma and Papà to help out. On one of these occasions, six months after Mamma’s stroke, while we were seated at the midday meal, Mamma looked at Papà and apropos of nothing said, “But you have a small penis.”

  Renato looked up, surprised. I reached over and dug my fingers into his thigh under the table. He immediately stared into his plate, embarrassed. In her normal mental state, Mamma would never have mentioned genitals, and certainly not the size of Papà’s penis at the dinner table. I looked away, so as not to embarrass Papà.

  But Papà smiled at Mamma indulgently. “And I suppose you’ve seen some different ones?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, and toyed with the potatoes on her plate. She looked at us all and smiled. She was still a beautiful woman, with chestnut hair and dark expressive eyes.

  “After marriage?” Papà asked, and I heard the subtle change in the tone of his voice.

  I looked at Renato and saw my alarm mirrored in his eyes.

  “Yes,” Mamma said, “when I was going to buy provisions for the shop, there was a young man with whom I had an affair.” She looked up and smiled at Papà, her face vacuous and innocent, then she bit into her potato.

  “And what was his name?” Papà asked, his voice tremulous.

  Mamma frowned. She put her fork down, and thought for a moment. Then she smiled again. “Gianni Balore,” she said, pleased to have remembered it. She nodded, picked up her fork and stabbed a small morsel of meat.

  Papà was desperate. It was as if she had plunged a knife in his honour. We could all add and deduce the time of this affair to be after the incident with Agata, between, perhaps, Clarissa’s birth and Renato’s, when Mamma was twenty or twenty-one. I looked at her with new respect, amazed not only that she had been capable of having an affair, but also that she had been able to conceal it all these years.

  As soon as Mamma went to lie down, Papà called us together. He was tense, agitated.

  “I have to go to that town and kill that man,” he said. He collapsed into a chair.

  “But Papà,” I said. “Mamma is surely inventing this. She’s not in her right mind.”

  “He will not get away with this!” Papà shouted, banging his fist on the table.

  Mamma cried out, “Clarissa? Where is Clarissa?” She sang a few hoarse notes.

  I went to her immediately, and stroked her face. “It’s okay, Mamma,” I said. “Go back to sleep. Everything is fine.” She smiled and closed her eyes. I returned to Renato and Papà, and guided them outside, where Mamma would not hear us.

  “Please, Papà,” Renato said, “Even if it could be true — which I can’t imagine — it was so many years ago. Why not forget it?”

  “It’s my honour!” Papà said. He paced up and down in front of our house, his fingers combing through his hair.

  “Twenty years, Papà,” I said. “And you are not exactly innocent yourself. Renato is right. This is something to forget.”

  Papà stopped and stared at us, disbelieving. He shook his head slowly. “Neither of you understand,” he said. “Better to die with honour than to live with shame!” he said, pounding his fist into his open palm. He went into the kitchen, pulled out a carving knife and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Papà, you can’t go taking the law into your own hands,” Renato said, reaching for the knife, but Papà stabbed the air, keeping us at a distance. He motioned us outside.

  “I’m not driving you anywhere with that knife,” I said.

  “Open the trunk!” he said, and when I did, he threw the carving knife in.

  I quickly locked it and said, “Papà, please. What if he hurts you? Who will look after Mamma?” to try to make him come to his senses.

  “Meglio morire con onore, che vivere con vergogna,” he muttered, then sat in the passenger seat staring ahead, not speaking to us.

  We called a neighbour to stay with Mamma, while we took my car and headed for Matino and Casarano, two adjacent towns in the Murge Salentine, where we knew Mamma used to go by train to buy supplies. We could feel the vendetta poisoning Papà, but it seemed so out of place, so anachronistic. Renato sat in the back, half amused, half afraid
of what might happen. I didn’t even know how Papà thought he would find this man after all these years.

  When we reached Matino, I stopped in front of the train station, as if Gianni Balore would be there, waiting for Mamma two decades later. Papà sprang out of the car and banged on the trunk so he could get his knife. Renato and I followed him out, and I refused to open the trunk.

  “Papà, they’ll put you in jail,” Renato said, trying to urge him back into the car.

  “Or maybe an insane asylum,” I said, smiling.

  “I will kill him and restore my honour!” Papà said in the voice of a movie actor.

  A part of me wanted to laugh, the other was terrified of what Papà might be capable of. “Papà,” I said gently, “these are different times. You can’t go around waving knives.”

  In the end, he agreed to leave the knife in the car while we went searching for Gianni Balore on foot. We tried cafés, piazzas, markets. We entered a church and asked the old priest. No one knew of him. Satisfied that he must not have lived here, Papà ordered us back in the car, where he stared stonily ahead again while I drove us the few kilometres to Casarano.

  We circled the town, searching for men of Papà’s age and by lunchtime, we had asked everyone we’d met, but no one knew Gianni Balore. Abruptly, Papà stopped in the middle of a piazza, took out his handkerchief, and wiped the sweat off his forehead. A combination of sun and rage blotched his face. I took his arm and coaxed him into a little bar for a slice of pizza and an espresso, which we ate standing, while Papà questioned the two young men behind the counter, who were barely out of their teens — probably the sons of the proprietor — and did not know Gianni Balore.

  We walked back to the car, and while I was relieved by our failure, Papà was determined that we would not go home until we had found the man. We drove up and down narrow streets the car hardly fit into, around miniscule piazzas, back and forth along the railway tracks, as if Papà truly believed that he would easily be able to identify the man who had cuckolded him. Renato and I remained quiet, waiting for the appropriate time to suggest we should go home. When I think of it now, I see us in a farce, a Fellini film into which we had been inadvertently dropped. Finally, to one side of a park, we saw a cluster of old men playing bocce on a patch of grass. Papà made me stop in the roundabout, even though I told him it was illegal. He rolled down the window and beckoned to one of the men. “I am looking for Gianni Balore,” he said.

  The old man looked up, took a long drag of his cigarette, and said, “Gianni Balore? Stefano’s son?”

  Papà reached across and took the keys out of the ignition, then he sprang out of the car. Renato and I scrambled out, but Papà turned and pointed to us, sternly. “Stay here!”

  I looked at Renato in dismay, recalling the Papà of our childhood, who raged against Vito with unrestrained abandon. We leaned against the car and watched Papà approach the men, motioning with the keys as if they were the knife.

  “Where is he?” Papà shouted.

  The men stared at him in dumb amazement. Perhaps they thought he was crazy. They looked at each other, then back at Papà. One of them shrugged. “Oh no, Gianni is no longer with us.” He crossed himself. “He died of cancer years ago.”

  Papà, who had been tense and rigid, released a long sigh, his body caving into itself. We all waited, anxious. “Disgraziato,” he hissed, and the old man frowned, as if Papà were addressing him. Papà turned and walked back to the car. “Let’s go home,” he said, got in, and rolled up the window.

  Because the objective had been accomplished, Papà was able to relax and leave it be, and Renato and I were relieved about not having to deal with whatever Papà might have done to restore his honour. We never spoke of it again.

  That whole year, everyone’s demands and expectations became tumours which grew inside me and metamorphosed as various physical and emotional dysfunctions — constant migraines, a menstrual period that never ended, a nervous restlessness that made me short with everyone, including Domenica, who was a saint and deserved only kindness. I criticized everyone, sometimes for trivial, insignificant oversights. I spoke too harshly to our housekeeper, a gentle woman Mamma’s age who had been with Sandro’s family since her birth. I was impatient with everyone, insisting that sloppiness and laziness and ignorance motivated my outbursts, that I was trying to bring out the best in everyone. Most afternoons, Sandro sat in his study listening to the townsfolk’s troubles; Domenica flurried around the house, begging me not to smoke, not to wear high heels, not to expose my shoulders, my elbows, my knees, my ankles, my anything exposed, fearful that I might sin.

  Eventually, I barricaded myself in the bedroom, shutters down, surrounded by saints and martyrs, and refused to get up, to listen to the constant supplications ever-present in this house, even to speak. I felt besieged, and the bed became my bunker. It was the only way I could cope with the vortex of misery, the constant demands of my siblings and parents, who grew increasingly incompetent. Three years before, when Clarissa ran away to her voice teacher’s house in Bari, I had to go and secretly arrange to pay for her keep. Papà’s harvest this year was only possible because I had paid for the seed and the workers. The house Sandro bought for my parents needed a new roof. A magnitude of money was necessary to sustain everyone — Mimí’s winter coat was threadbare; Renato’s bicycle had been stolen; Vito had run up debts in Milan. Only Aldo asked nothing of me. I had even arranged for a domestica, Teresa, to look after Mamma during the day.

  Piera looks up from the page.

  “Yes, the same Teresa out there, my sister-in-law. I won’t pretend to be happy about it. I have been in conflict with Teresa for many years now, so that our relationship has become a complex dance of insults and mortifications. It began a long time ago, as a result of two incidents that have forever pitted us one against the other. I will tell you the truth, though Teresa will give you her version, and Teresa is but one voice of a large ensemble called my family, who have all been like water, necessary and destructive, tides waxing and waning through my life, breakers, torrents, whirlpools, eddies, riptides, tsunamis, all caused by the gravitational attraction of love.

  “I will tell you this now, because I hear Renato is coming home. I want you to hear the truth before he poisons you with his version. He has never forgiven me, you know. Renato’s absence is my memento of this incident which occurred two days past my fourth wedding anniversary in 1951.”

  I awakened to an orange sun filtered through the shutters of my room. I had been migraine-free for almost a week, and I craved light and fresh air. I called Domenica to open the shutters and the window. Then I got up, dressed and went out. I was feeling much more energetic than I had in months, probably because for a few days, I had not taken the migraine medicines that had become progressively stronger and subsequently had weakened me.

  I walked along the road, and stopped to chat here and there with merchants and women who came out of their houses on seeing me. In his legal capacity, Sandro had helped most of them in some way or other: many of the peasants could not read or write, and Sandro filled out countless forms for them, witnessed their Xs, settled disputes between farmers, husbands and wives, between in-laws and outlaws. He was trusted by everyone for his fairness. He charged only what they could afford, and if they could afford nothing, he helped them anyway. Often, gifts were delivered to the house — vegetables, a chicken, an embroidered tablecloth.

  I cut across the old historic centre of town, down narrow passageways and small tunnels carved in the stone, around the church, out the other side, my feet tapping the flat polished Roman roads, built twenty centuries ago.

  Though it was after school, when I arrived at my parents’ house, I found it strangely silent. “Mamma? Renato?” I called. “Teresa? Mimí?” but no one answered.

  I set down my purse, and checked in Mamma’s room. She was sleeping, her face smooth, unworried. Poor Mamma, calm now, having escaped the witches and devils, the losses that had populated h
er past life. But beneath our feet, constant danger — tripwires every which way, landmines of misfortune — we could tiptoe all we wanted, tread as carefully as possible, but we still had to journey through our lives, and this would inevitably lead to explosions.

  I leaned down and kissed my mother’s forehead. I was about to head down the hallway, when I bumped into Renato.

  “What are you doing here?” he said in an insolent tone.

  “Shhhh!” I said, nodding toward Mamma. “What a way to greet your sister,” I said and smiled, to soften his heart, but he scowled at me. “Renato, what’s happened to you?” I said. “Why are you so hostile toward me? What have I done?”

  He shrugged, and pulled out a packet of American cigarettes. “I’m not a child any more,” he said. He shook a cigarette out of the package, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and lit it. Then he inhaled long and loudly. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  I sat down. “What have I ever done, other than nurture and love you as if you were my son?”

  He smirked.

  “You’re breaking Mamma’s heart with your attitude, you know,” I said.

  “Mamma doesn’t know what’s going on around her.” He sucked loudly on his cigarette, and glared at me.

  I sighed. “Where’s Teresa?” I asked.

  “Tidying up.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s good you’re here, Piera. You can look out for Mamma for a change.” Before I could say anything, he sauntered out.

  I sighed. Perhaps he’d grow out of it. I tried to remember if Aldo had ever been like this when he was fifteen, but I didn’t think so. But Vito. Yes. A shadow. I stood in the doorway and watched Renato walk down the road, into the landscape — trees, brush, flowers — that over the summer had slowly faded to sepia. I felt as if we were forever balancing between extremes — drought, hail, dust storms, family, family, family — forever doing damage control.