by Lina Simoni
Angela and Madam C went back a long time. They had been born one year apart in the same shabby building on Vico Caprettari, Angela the only child of a single mother, Madam C, Clotilde in those days, the only daughter in a family of seven: her mother, her father, Clotilde, and four loud boys. She was the youngest child. Vico Caprettari was a caruggio few people knew beyond those who had family there and those who called it home. It was dark, narrow, and impregnated with the smells of seaweed, garbage, and minestrone. It was a world apart, with tall buildings stuck to each other to mark its boundaries, ensuring that the world of the neighboring streets would not seep over.
Clotilde’s family lived in three rooms on the seventh floor, with stairs so steep and narrow Clotilde’s father, a tall, strong man with shoulders much wider than his waist, had to climb sideways, and the younger children had to climb on all fours or they wouldn’t reach the steps. Angela and her mother had one room on the first floor, darker than a manhole. As a child, Angela used to hang out with Clotilde and her siblings in the dirty street, chasing pigeons. None of them went to school. One after the other, as soon as they were strong enough to lift, the boys went to work with their father in one of the warehouses by the docks; the girls were not educated, period. Angela’s mother was a seamstress, and she had done that for so long in that dark room on the first floor that her eyes were failing. When Angela was old enough to find her way around the maze of the caruggi, about seven, she made pickups and deliveries of clothes, sheets, and bedspreads for her mother. The rest of the time, she sat quietly next to her and watched those swift hands push the needle in and out of hems and buttonholes. At eight, Angela did her first repair all by herself: a white linen sheet, thin and torn in the middle, where someone’s body had been lying at night for years. As she mended, she thought she would meet this person someday, certainly a fat woman, and she would tell her to her face, “I know what you did to that sheet with your big behind.”
Meanwhile, on the seventh floor, Clotilde and her mother worked around the clock to keep their men fed and clean. They scrubbed, cooked, washed, ironed, and made beds. With all their chores, Angela and Clotilde had little time to spend together, but when they managed to do so, it was the best part of their day. Sometimes Clotilde helped Angela deliver the mended pieces; sometimes Angela accompanied Clotilde to the fountain to wash clothes. They always talked about their dreams: Angela, of the store she’d open in Via Luccoli some day, where beautiful rich ladies would have their Sunday dresses made to measure; Clotilde, of the trip she’d take on the back of a white horse on her eighteenth birthday, up and down the hills, to see the world.
Clotilde’s father had his own ideas about Angela and her mother and voiced them often and openly in front of his family at dinnertime. Who was that Angela, anyway, he’d mumble, dipping his bread in pasta sauce, who lived in that hole down below, and what kind of family was that without a man to give it respectability? And who knows who Angela’s father was to begin with, possibly a drunken sailor, but there was no point asking that question, was there, because no one knew the answer, not even Angela’s mother, who these days, with those tiny crossed eyes, looked more and more like a mole. Plus, who knew what was going on in that dark room when Angela was out, he’d continue, and in any case, even if nothing happened any more, surely those two females were no good for Clotilde, the daughter of a warehouse shift leader, respected by all and strong like a mountain. Clotilde’s heart sank when her father spoke of Angela that way, but she was careful not to show her tears, which she pushed hard down her throat, as she knew better than to contradict her father, especially after he had stopped at Lorenzo’s, the neighborhood bar, on the way home. Her mother had talked back to him one evening, over a bowl of soup that wasn’t warm enough, and the little blue scar across her lip was there to remind everyone who was in charge.
A father’s words, no matter how silly or mean, do make an impression on a daughter, so eventually the talk about Angela and her mother convinced Clotilde that she deserved better friends than the daughter of an unknown drunken sailor. Unconsciously, she began to avoid Angela in her outings, until the girls became estranged. So estranged, in fact, that years went by without Angela and Clotilde exchanging words. It took Clotilde a long time to realize that Angela no longer lived downstairs.
Clotilde’s family fell apart suddenly when Clotilde was sixteen. Her mother died of consumption, and her father began spending more time at Lorenzo’s than at the warehouse, until he could hardly stand up and finally got himself fired. He walked out of Vico Caprettari one morning, cursing his fate, and never came back. Clotilde was left alone with her brothers, who hardly talked to her at all. When they did, it was only to give her orders for a meal or ask for clean clothes. Her routine became more strenuous, as there was now one woman to take care of four men instead of two women to take care of five; her mother’s absence made the routine unbearable. The two of them had talked, laughed, joked. The days went by before Clotilde knew it. Now her days felt longer than seasons. When finally night fell, Clotilde prayed to God to take her so she could be with her mother again and have a laugh once in a while. There was never a reason to laugh now that she was all alone. And she wished that Angela were still living on the first floor, so she’d have someone to talk to, not just her four brothers who ordered her around like a mule.
On a sunny spring day that made even the darkest of the caruggi come alive, Clotilde went to the Sottoripa market to buy fruit. On the way back, she crossed paths with a beautiful, elegant, tall woman with long wavy cinnamon hair falling on her shoulders beneath a beige satin-brimmed hat. Her dress, a perfect match to the hat in color and material, glimmered under the sunlight and fit her body like a glove. Clotilde stopped walking and stared at the woman as she passed by. In front of Clotilde, the woman stopped and smiled. “You don’t recognize me, do you? I can’t blame you. I’ve changed.” It was then that Clotilde realized that the elegant woman was Angela. “You haven’t changed,” Angela continued. “I’ve thought of you many times.”
Clotilde spoke with a thread of voice. “I’ve thought of you, too. What happened?”
“Come along,” Angela said, taking Clotilde’s hand. “I’ll tell you everything.”
They went to Angela’s home, a spacious two-room apartment on the top floor of a white and gray building, with high vaulted ceilings and a tall window off the sitting room overlooking the port. The contrast to the dark room on Vico Caprettari couldn’t have been starker. “This is it,” Angela said. “My private palace. Bright and airy, for a change.” She opened the window, and Clotilde stood by it a few moments, blinded by the brilliance of the sea, inhaling the sharp, familiar odors of salt and weeds, lost in the multitude of sounds that rose in waves from the docks. “It’s beautiful here,” she said, taking a seat next to Angela on a worn-out couch. Angela nodded, then explained that the reason she could afford the place was that she had found a way to make good money with little effort, and she had done that for a couple of years now, since her mother had gone blind and moved in with her sister in the Lerici countryside. “And what about you?” she asked.
Clotilde summarized her life in two sentences, then inquired about the way to make good money with little effort, asking if there was a chance that she could do that, too. As Angela went on explaining, Clotilde understood what the way was and told Angela she was happy to have met her that day but now she had to go, and, no, she wasn’t interested in that way at all. True, she added, it was a bad life to be serving her brothers day and night, but at least she wouldn’t be going to hell after her death, which would be coming soon, as she couldn’t keep living like this much longer.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Angela replied. “And you don’t go to hell for this. You go to hell if you do things that hurt other people. I make men happy.” She paused and cocked her head. “For a fee.” She stared at Clotilde. “What’s wrong with that?”
Clotilde was out of arguments against the way.
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��Come with me tonight,” Angela said. “You don’t have to do anything. Just watch me. Then decide. Can’t make a decision without knowing, can you?”
Clotilde couldn’t find an argument against that, either.
“Look at my clothes,” Angela said, showing Clotilde to her closet. “I buy the cloth at the market and then I cut and sew. For myself. Which is so much better than that silly idea I had of opening a store and making dresses for other people. I’ll make you a dress—what am I saying—three dresses of your favorite colors. For tonight,” she said, rummaging in the closet, “you can borrow this.” It was a dress of pale yellow muslin, with little glass beads along the hem and the neckline.
“Me?” Clotilde said, pointing a finger at herself. “Wearing that dress? I couldn’t. Look at me. My hair is wild, my hands are rough.”
“We have time,” Angela insisted, hanging the dress back in the closet. “Come with me.” It took them a few hours of scrubbing, drying, and styling. Then Clotilde wore the yellow dress and a pair of shoes with heels and a golden buckle she had seen before only in her dreams. Angela pinned a yellow cloth flower to her hair, dabbed some powder on her cheekbones, and took her downstairs, so she could see herself in the windows of the furniture store across the street. “I guess you won’t be going horseback riding on the hills any time soon,” Angela said with a naughty smile as Clotilde stared at the image of a woman she didn’t know. She stood still a moment, then turned around and shook her head to make her black hair bounce. Hands on her waist, she took two steps back, then two steps forward, and bowed at her reflection in the dusty glass. Angela laughed. “You’re on your way to heaven, darling. Forget hell.”
That night they went to a bar by the port, the Stella Maris, a pickup place for prostitutes who worked illegally out of the brothels. Angela was one of them. By then, she had already experienced most of the dangers of that life: adventurers without scruples, drunks, perverts prone to violence and rough games, and, last but not least, the hostility of the brothels’ owners, who hated the “strays,” as they called them, for taking away their business by charging less than the brothels did. Still, Angela entered the crowded bar with her head high, proud of her shiny pink dress and the fresh rose she wore on her heart, below the neckline. Clotilde walked behind her in a daze, staring at the men drinking and smoking cigars, intoxicated by sounds and odors she had never heard or smelled before. They sat at a table, and three sailors who were standing by the counter joined them at once. One of them bought a round of drinks. A second sailor ran a hand across Angela’s breasts, and Angela chuckled, then told the sailor that would cost him and did he have any money or was he a bum. Then the third sailor grazed Clotilde’s neck with his fingers, and Clotilde felt a long wave of heat filling her cheeks and going to the tip of her nose. Angela noticed at once her friend’s big, fearful eyes and told the sailor not to touch her, as she was not what he thought she was. The sailor laughed and asked, “What is she doing here if she’s not a whore?”
“They are not all like him,” Angela said after the sailors had left the table. “I meet gentlemen sometimes, who know how to treat a lady.” Clotilde stared at Angela a while, wondering where those gentlemen were, as she would have liked to be treated like a lady right there and then. Two of the three sailors came back shortly with a roll of banknotes. Angela counted the money carefully before nodding a yes and standing up. “Come along,” she told Clotilde. She paused, then spoke softly in Clotilde’s ear. “Unless you want to stay here by yourself.”
At that, Clotilde stood up fast, and they all went back to Angela’s place, which was only two blocks away. Clotilde sat outside the apartment, on the stairs, while inside Angela took care of the sailors, and that was the part of the evening Clotilde liked the least, sitting all by herself on the musty floor, and thank God she was still wearing the yellow dress, so she could look at it and feel less alone.
The sailors left in a hurry a half hour later. From the open doorway, Angela waved for Clotilde to come in. She showed her the money, stacked in a pile on the small table next to the wood stove. “One of these is for you,” she said, taking a banknote and handing it over.
Clotilde shook her head.
“You helped me,” Angela insisted.
So Clotilde took the banknote, hoping her mother would be busy that night up in heaven and wouldn’t have time to look down and notice.
They went back to the bar ten minutes later and returned home shortly with more sailors. Again, Angela handed Clotilde a banknote after the sailors left. “I’m tired,” Angela said, yawning. “Let’s go to sleep.”
It was then that Clotilde realized that she had left home many hours earlier to go to the market and had not returned. She hadn’t made dinner for her brothers, or washed the floors, or ironed clothes. For sure her brothers would beat her if she showed up. Her stomach shrank for a moment. She looked out the window at the dark shadows of the sea, then gazed about the room and saw Angela snuggling under the covers and falling asleep. “Good night,” she whispered, then understood with clarity that she would never go back to Vico Caprettari, because home for her was where she was now, in Angela’s apartment, with the yellow dress, the banknotes, and the musky smell of the sailors.
The following morning, Clotilde awoke in a thick daze. From across the room, Angela lifted her eyes from her needlework. “Good morning, my friend,” she blurted out in a joyful voice. Clotilde yawned and stretched before coming to a seated position. “So,” Angela asked, “have you decided?”
“What?” Clotilde asked in a raspy voice.
“If you want to be in business with me.”
Clotilde bent her neck forward, as if to hide her face. She thought of her brothers. As much as she tried to visualize their faces, all she could come up with was a blur. Then she thought of her mother, and her gentle, loving face came to her in full clarity. She grimaced and let out a long, deep sigh.
“It’s only a job,” Angela said, forcing a white thread through the eye of a needle.
“I could find a different job,” Clotilde argued. “I could be a waitress. Or a maid.”
“And work for someone who will treat you as badly as your brothers did? Making little or no money for the rest of your life? Believe me, being poor is no fun. No fun at all.” She paused. “Wouldn’t you rather work for yourself? Be independent? When you do what I do there’s no one in the whole world who can tell you when to work, or where, or how. It’s you who decide.” She flipped the cloth over. “You’re the boss.”
Clotilde leaned back, raising her head to look at the ceiling. She remained silent a while, eyes fixed on a dormant fly, as Angela rhythmically hemmed the white cloth.
“I never thought of men that way,” Clotilde said after a moment. “Actually, I never thought of men at all. All I ever did was try not to think about the men in my life.”
“You don’t think about these men, either,” Angela clarified. “You use them. That’s all.”
The fly woke up and flew away. “I like being the boss,” Clotilde stated.
Angela’s eyes lit up. “Very well, partner,” she chirped. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”
Over the next week, Clotilde spent time learning the trade. She began by watching, for which Angela charged her clients more. Then she became involved in the foreplay, and Angela’s prices doubled because of that. “I’m ready,” Clotilde told Angela one afternoon, as they were talking about the evening plans. Angela gave her a smile.
That night, Clotilde’s first client, a tall, bearded helmsman with the belly of a whale and a sour odor of cheap alcohol and sweat, laid on her his fantastic weight. As he pounded her into the thin mattress set on the floor of Angela’s sitting room, Clotilde heard her bones squeak and cry out in pain. With her eyes closed, she dreamed of her ride on the hills on the white horse and of the sweet smells of grass and flowers.
From the bedroom, separated by the sitting room by only a curtain, Angela heard every one of Clotilde’s stifled mo
ans, intermixed with the roars of the helmsman’s pleasure. In the morning, she found Clotilde at the open window, elbows on the sill, staring at the sea. “It’s a beautiful day,” Angela said.
Clotilde nodded without turning around.
“When businesses grow,” Angela said softly after a moment, “so do their offices. We need a larger place.”
Clotilde nodded in silence a second time.
Angela joined Clotilde at the window. “The first time is the hardest,” she murmured. “It gets easier as the nights go by.”
“I hope you’re right,” Clotilde sobbed, laying her head on Angela’s shoulder.
“I am, darling,” Angela said. “I am.”
The search for their new apartment began without delay. They looked first at the neighboring buildings, then as far away as the Stazione Principe and the western edge of the harbor—to no avail. Their reputation preceded them, so the owners of respectable buildings turned them down. The other buildings, the shabby ones with dirty lobbies, dark rooms, and shady tenants, which were common in the caruggi that bordered the port area, were something, both girls agreed, they wouldn’t settle for, as such places reminded them of the building they had been born in and vowed to leave behind. It took them two months to find an appropriate accommodation. At the onset of spring, through the intercession of one of their clients to whom they had to promise three months of free service once a week, Angela and Clotilde moved into a four-room apartment on the third floor of an elegant historic building halfway up Via San Lorenzo, out of the caruggi. Their arrival rocked the neighborhood: