As I watch, I see Leonardo and Matteo break away from the soccer game and say something to Ugo. I see his eyes shift away from them, then his arms draw inwards and he pushes himself away from the fence. I see Leonardo laugh and shove his shoulder. I see Ugo’s look of fear, his uncertainty. Leonardo pushes again and he stumbles, and now Matteo has shoved him from the other side and he falls, and I see the boys starting to kick his prostrate form. He does nothing to protect himself, he just lies there as the two boys kick him all over, and now the other children have noticed and are forming a circle around them, egging them on as the kicking continues. I run to the circle shouting, but the noise is so loud that no one hears me. I break through the ring of children at last and grab hold of Leonardo’s arm. He is red in the face and his lips are drawn off his teeth in what looks like a smile. There is sudden silence and the circle begins to disintegrate. I tell Leonardo and Matteo that I want to see them. They must wait outside the classroom door in silence until I come.
I make sure that everyone has gone before I turn to Ugo. He picks himself up self-consciously. I feel irritated with him; I wish he were not so pathetic, that he would defend himself, value himself a little. I help to dust him off. His face is scratched and bleeding so I take him to the bathroom and wash his hands and face. Some of the cuts are quite deep. I realise I am going to have to take him to the secretary’s office to have the wounds disinfected and bandaged. It is something I do not want to do. I tell him curtly to follow me. Signor Cappi, the secretary, sits him down on one of the chairs reserved for visitors to the school and goes to the storeroom to fetch the first-aid box, then returns and sits on the arm of the chair and gently dabs at the boy’s face, talking to him soothingly and kindly as he does so, probing ever so gently into how he got hurt. His eyes go from my face to Ugo’s. The child does not speak but passively allows himself to be nursed. I am not sure what the procedure is but feel certain that I will have to make some kind of report at this point, to the headmaster, to the parents, to authority in general.
I return to the classroom where the two boys are waiting.
– So, Leonardo, what was that all about?
He looks at me sullenly, and then averts his eyes.
– Niente, he mumbles.
– That wasn’t nothing. I saw you push and kick him.
– Era colpa sua. Cercava guai.
– How could it be his fault? He was just standing there watching.
The boy stares stonily at the wall. I tell him to go and wait outside, and then call in Matteo. He is a softer, more pliable boy, I know.
– Allora, Matteo, tell me what happened.
He bursts into tears. I watch the sobs racking his shoulders.
– Non volevo, è che ci guarda sempre, e Leo m’ha detto di dargli una lezione. E mi dispiace.
– Sorry? Yes, well sorry is good. Would you be prepared to say sorry to Ugo?
– Si, Maestra.
One at least is saved.
I send him back to his classroom. But I will have to deal further with Leonardo.
Outside, I watch the grub struggle then lie still as the wasp inserts its ovipositor into the flesh and begins to lay its eggs. Soon they will hatch and tiny maggots will begin to devour the living creature from the inside. It will die when they are ready to emerge into the world.
Wednesday 24 October
I am in class, setting up for the next lesson when one of the girls from the fifth grade knocks on the door and enters shyly.
– Mi manda il Segretario. C’è una telefonata.
I lock the door of the classroom behind me and walk swiftly along the dark echoing passage to the secretary’s office. He gestures towards the receiver lying on the counter. I pick it up.
– Pronto. Chi parla? Who’s there?
– Qui è la Questura di Roma di Via San V. This is Ispettore Lupo speaking. Ha ricevuto la mia lettera di convocazione?
My voice trembles slightly as I answer.
– Yes, I received the letter.
– Perchè non si è presentata?
I can’t think of anything to reply. Why hadn’t I gone to see him as he had asked? My mind is blank. A shiver of apprehension runs through my body.
– Deve presentarsi immediatamente in Questura. You must report to the police headquarters in Rome immediately.
– What is it about?
– Lei lo sa. You must come at once. You know why.
– No, I don’t know. Please tell me.
– Certo che lo sa. You have received our letter.
I don’t reply. His voice becomes mellifluous, persuasive.
– Perchè non vuole venire? Why don’t you want to come? What are you hiding? Che cosa nasconde?
– I’m not hiding anything. Why do you need to see me? Can’t you explain over the phone?
The tone changes at once.
– No, deve venire in Questura di persona, con i documenti. You must come here in person. With your documents. Without delay.
– I can’t come now. I am busy.
He waits for me to continue. At last I manage to mumble:
– I’ll come on Friday afternoon, after school. I can’t come before then.
– Va bene. L’aspetto venerdì. Ma mi raccomando, non manchi. But I’m warning you. You’d better be there.
I replace the receiver carefully and softly in its cradle and return to my classroom.
Thursday 25 October
School. Home. I have a cheese sandwich for lunch.
At last I pull out some paper and my paints.
I clear the table so that I can work without worrying about knocking things over or messing them. I put down some sheets of newspaper and set out my paints and colours. For some time now I have been obsessed with painting self-portraits. I have hung them about my apartment and they now cover every surface and in places are doubled up even, since there is nowhere else to hang them: small ones, large ones, in oils, in inks, in watercolours. The eyes follow me constantly, watching, judging. They are not soft, there is no compassion in this gaze I turn on myself.
Today too I feel a need to paint a self-portrait, to capture something about myself that doesn’t feel very clear to my understanding, some microscopic shift. I hold a small mirror in my left hand and paint with the fingers of my right, trying to trace the lines, the darkness and light that I see reflected. I have begun to know the shapes well. I work swiftly, the lines already so familiar to me, the deeply etched frown that pulls my eyebrows close to protect my eyes from the glare, the dark shadows under the eyes. This is the core of my face, of my portraits, that I paint again and again, often not bothering with the other features, which feel less distinct.
This time the colours run and blend in places and my expression comes out particularly dark and anxious-looking. I suddenly feel exhausted. I pack everything away and lie down on my bed, hoping to make time pass, hoping that it will soon be night and that I can end this day, which hasn’t been a particularly bad day, so I am not sure why I am feeling so scratchy. I look at my watch. Only an hour has passed. It is only five o’clock. Three hours to go before supper. Six hours before bedtime. How am I going to fill this time?
I put my hands into my pockets in boredom. They are full of junk as usual. I pull out the contents and examine them dully. Amongst the crumpled tissues and odd coins I find a receipt. It is from a hotel in Rome. Pensione Arcadia. It is made out to my name. Strange, I have no memory at all of having been there.
I fall into a troubled sleep.
Friday 26 October
On Friday afternoon I take the 2.30 ferry to Anzio. The sun is hazy over the sea, high cirrus clouds filter and obscure the light but the glare is painful to my eyes. Spaces in between, transitions. I take the bus in rush-hour traffic, where bodies are stacked, piled into the little standing space and pressed up tight against one another. And after a while I feel an anonymous hand touch me, grope, then slide under my skirt. La mano morta, as they call it here, the dead hand. I try to move
away but the disembodied hand follows me so I eventually get off in the square a few stops away from Via San V. and walk the rest of the distance to the Questura, my feet echoing on the pavement. The rubbish bins, the cassonetti, are full and garbage is overflowing on to the pavement. Some of the bags have been torn open and orange peels and coffee grinds litter the ground. I stop breathing as I walk past, but it takes too long and when I am forced to take a deep breath the smell of decomposition fills my lungs.
Outside the building, tired-looking people hang around waiting, leaning against the iron railings or smoking nervously. It is impossible to distinguish the bystanders and informers from the plainclothes policemen, scruffy and unkempt, who wait with them, attempting to infiltrate their lives.
I go into the dusty drab shabbiness of the Ufficio Stranieri of the Questura, the immigration section, the high wooden counter at which lines of people wait, day in, day out, mostly immigrants hoping for a break, hoping that today, at last, all the documents they need will miraculously come together and the file will be complete and they will be given the permesso di soggiorno that will allow them access to the land of milk and honey, to the stability that makes possible memory and hope, which are so tenuous even here but impossible in their places of origin. Africa, Asia, Middle East, South America, Central America, Eastern Europe. Just about anywhere except for this small haven of privilege here where they are trying to find a space, a tiny harbour that will take them in and give them rest. A place that will allow them to collect themselves and their memories and aspirations and make a story, a narrative that will give meaning to their fragmented lives.
I join the queue, the dark-skinned, anxious, exhausted-looking queue of extracomunitari and wait, like all the others, patiently, part of the herd. A woman in front of me in the queue is giving the breast to her infant as she stands, naturally, unconcerned about her public nakedness, unconscious of the hungry looks of the men, the lewd comments. I step up to the counter where there is a sign saying EXTRACOMUNITARI in capital letters, and ask for Ispettore Lupo. I am told to wait. I sit down on the graffiti-covered bench against the wall and wait. Nothing happens. After an hour I rejoin the queue, and when my turn comes, repeat my request. Once again I am told, more impatiently this time, to wait. I return to the bench feeling heavy and tired and anxious.
The queue has grown shorter and at last straggles to an end. I return to the counter and struggle to catch the attention of one of the police clerks. He looks at me in irritation.
– Che c’è ancora? What is it this time?
I tell him I am waiting to see Ispettore Lupo.
– È già andato via. He’s left. Come back on Monday.
As I walk back towards the bus stop my eyes catch sight of a small sign on an old building. Pensione Arcadia. I suddenly remember the receipt I found in my pocket yesterday. I look up at the building but there is nothing to be seen, just the brass plaque with the name and the single star beneath it.
I stand outside on the pavement, trying to understand. It disturbs me not to be able to remember. I know I have been here before, but it’s a feeling on my skin like a ripple of recognition rather than a memory that I can locate. I try to push against the resistances of my mind a little, try to force the images to come. But it’s like having a word on the tip of your tongue. I will have to wait for it to come of its own accord.
I wander on along the street. The plane trees are bare now, their trunks livid grey in the pale light of the street lamps. I remember reading somewhere that they will all have to be cut down soon, that they are hollowed out from within, diseased, their hearts dead. Their falling branches represent a danger to pedestrians and motorists.
Heavy traffic inches past, emitting clouds of exhaust fumes into the already polluted air. I am uncertain what to do. There are other people standing around like me and I realise that they are waiting for a bus. After a few minutes one arrives. I follow them on board and take a seat near the window. I watch the familiar streets pass by. I get off near Castel Sant’Angelo and walk down near the river, which glides past greasily after the October rains. Two canoes pass under the bridge near the far bank, the oarsmen rowing in unison, thin black shadows, their reflections repeating their shapes on the black waters.
It is dark as I walk back through the narrow streets towards the bus terminus. Under the deep porticoes figures emerge and retreat into the shadows. Women, mouths gaping in rage or laughter, pace to and fro in the cold night air. Their eyes meet mine, and then pass on, immediately excluding me as a client. An old man with a purple nose comes up to me, his tongue out, lips wet and covered in spittle, and rubs his fingers in my face, the age-old symbol of money, and I shake my head in confusion and turn away. Dark bird-shapes wing silently, just beyond vision, no more than a presence.
Cars sidle by, one stops. A woman steps up to the open window, takes in the details of the driver’s lust. Sometimes this will be all he requires and he will speed away to spill his seed alone. Others, more literal, will invite her in and consummate their passion on the back seat of the car in the piazzale around the corner.
I pull my threadbare corduroy coat tighter around me, feeling the cold filter up into the sleeves and down the neck. I wrap my scarf up around my face so that only my eyes can be seen above the scratchy fabric. I feel conspicuous and try to pass by as quickly as I can. At last I see Sabrina. There is recognition, a half-smile, and the woman turns and leads the way towards a small hotel a block away. I follow.
Saturday 27 October
She is already gone when I awake in the morning, and I catch a bus down to the river. I walk across the ancient Roman bridge to Trastevere where I have discovered a second-hand bookseller who has a couple of stands, rather like steel cassonetti, that he locks at night but that open out into shelves full of strange books by day. I have started buying books by the box from him. Most of the time he has not even opened the boxes and has no idea what is in them – they are as they have arrived from the seller. Whatever is in them I read, as they have been delivered to his stall. Often the owner of the books has died and his sons and daughters are getting rid of his earthly belongings as quickly as they can, getting rid of the things that formed the contours of his mind, that went to shape his thoughts and world. His children want nothing to do with that world, convinced that the world that they are creating around themselves will be infinitely superior and more interesting. Except that their children will do the same with their personal effects when the time comes. Sometimes, as I wander the streets I read the funeral announcements, black framed, on the walls or doors of the buildings, and I wonder if the books I am about to read belonged to this or that person. Commendatore Tommaso Cossuto, Ingegner Matteo Sbertoli, Vedova Elena Capecchi. I like to imagine their lives, governed by routine and social obligations, the little worries and concerns and niceties that occupied so many of their waking hours.
I buy a box of books from the bookseller and am curious to see what is inside, so I open it on the bus on my way back to Anzio. The books had evidently belonged to a certain Avvocato Mario Rossi. He had neatly written his name and the date into the front page of each book, in a rather old-fashioned flowing handwriting. I imagine a small, meticulous man. The books are all in immaculate condition, although they are obviously well read, with notes and passages underlined and bookmarks at favourite pages. There is a well-thumbed, clearly well-loved copy of the Divina Commedia, printed cheaply on furry pages that must have had to be cut open with a paper knife – the edges are still slightly frayed.
Amongst the books I discover a small cheaply printed one that looks particularly interesting to me. It is fragments of a Diario, written between 1554 and 1556 by a Florentine artist, Jacopo Carucci also known as Pontormo, after the name of the little town where he was born. I let it fall open by chance and my eyes stop on the following entries for a few days in the spring of 1556, just before he died, while he was busy painting the frescoes in the choir of San Lorenzo in Florence:
Tues
day evening I felt all weak and I ate a rosemary loaf and an omelette and salad and some dried figs.
Wednesday I fasted.
Thursday evening, omelette with one egg, a salad and four ounces of bread.
Friday evening, salad, pea soup and an omelette and five ounces of bread.
Saturday, butter, a rosemary bread, salad, sugar and an omelette.
Sunday 1st April I had lunch with Bronzino and I did not eat in the evening.
Monday evening I had steamed bread with butter, an omelette and two ounces of cake.
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
On Saturday I went to the tavern; salad and omelette and cheese. I felt good.
This could be my diary.
It is very strange, to see him list these days that kept coming and departing with nothing to say for themselves. I think I would like to translate this book for myself.
Sunday 28 October
After lunch I walk up on the mountain, feeling a need to connect with my body, to draw my mind down into my body, this busy restless mind that leaves me so little rest. I set my foot to the little path that zigzags up through the bushes from behind the village. I pass the sign that says that the nesting season is now completed for the year and thanking me for not disturbing the birds – the sign has been there unchanged for the past three years. I walk upwards, feeling the tightening and release in my calf muscles, first one then the other, the rhythmic feel. I reach the first peak, my breath coming faster, recognising the beating of my heart in my chest, uncontrolled, or at least out of my control, my will. My mind is clearer now, focused on these physiological movements, on the dampness gathering in the hair at the nape of my neck. I wonder whether to take the contour, to limit the scope of my walk or to scale the highest peak. I decide that I need to extend myself, that I need to push through some kind of resistance, some barrier that is holding my thoughts, my emotions, in a limited frame, so I take the path that leads down into a little dell amidst a few last pine trees and then begins to climb, first to the shepherd’s hut, then up the side of the buttress and on and up, climbing steeply so that I have to stop every few minutes to catch my breath, up to the radio mast, the highest point of the island. The sun is now high and I am sweating freely. I stop often to rest and drink water. I realise I am exhausted, that I have pushed beyond my own strength. I am thirsty, dehydrated, and have only a few sips of water left in my bottle. I wonder whether I should stop, go back, retrace my steps, but I figure that it will be shortest to go forward. I have been marching now for about three hours.
The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself Page 2