On Sunday I ate 10 ounces of bread and I spent all day feeling weak and tired and irritable – the weather was beautiful and it was full moon.
Monday 22nd April I felt well – all my complaints had vanished – I ate 8 ounces of bread. I wasn’t dizzy and I wasn’t weak and I felt hopeful.
Thursday 8 November
After school I walk up to the headland. The house looks abandoned. On an impulse I take the track to the left that leads past it to the beach. The track is overgrown with grasses and aromatic plants that release strong smells as I brush against them. I follow it until I reach a narrow path that zigzags down to the beach far below. There are no handrails and the path is badly eroded. I make way down it cautiously, climbing over boulders and rocks and afraid to fall.
I take off my shoes and walk from one end of the beach to the other, then lie down on the black volcanic sand and gaze up at the sky. Soft flopping of little waves at the water’s edge. Dark clouds hang on the horizon. Seagulls soar high overhead. I stretch my arms wide in imitation of their flight, and my fingers encounter something hard buried in the sand. I turn to look. Bird bones bleached white by salt and light. Skeleton of a tiny bird, huge sockets where once were eyes. Tiny brain contained: a life, a world enclosed in bone. I rub it between my fingers into fragments, grains of white on black.
I see the figure of a man silhouetted against the cliff top. He doesn’t seem to have noticed me. He stands for a few minutes gazing out to sea. I turn to see if I can make out what it is he is looking at. When I turn again he is gone.
Friday 9 November
It is Friday today and I must go and see Ispettore Lupo again. The small aliscafo takes just over an hour for the crossing.
It is strange how little I remember of these journeys. Often it is only as I disembark again on the island after the weekend that I suddenly become aware of what is going on. Of course no one here knows what I do when I go to the mainland, and even I find it difficult to remember the time I spend there. It’s as if it were shrouded in mist, the sea passage forming a boundary between worlds. Here on the island everything is normal, controllable, measured, my emotions muted, my existence repetitive. Across the straits it is all out of my control.
By four o’clock I am outside the Questura. It looks dirtier and more depressing than ever. This time I don’t wait in the queue, but go directly along the passage to Ispettore Lupo’s office. The door is ajar. He is standing at his desk talking to another policeman. He sees me at the door and waves me in. He seems amused at something, a private joke between them.
– La Signorina P! Eccola. Ben tornata. L’aspettavo da tempo. Si accomodi.
I sit on the only chair available, a cheap plastic chair. He looks knowingly at his colleague, then opens his drawer and pulls out the same bundle of files as the last time.
– I have only come to fetch my passport. You have no right to keep it.
– Si, ma non abbiamo finito la nostra conversazione, vero.
– I still don’t know what you want from me. I have nothing to tell you. I have come all the way from Ponza to see you and get my passport. Please give it to me and let me go home.
– Certo. Ma prima dobbiamo parlare.
He looks at me again. There is something different in his expression now, something has shifted. His eyes flicker downwards over my body, examine me briefly, and then rise to meet mine. I feel my stomach contract.
– Dov’era il 2 Novembre?
– I beg your pardon? What did you say?
– Il 2 Novembre. Dov’era. Where were you?
– I don’t know where I was on the second. Probably at school on the island.
– Mi sa che racconta bugie. I think you’re lying. I think you do know. And what can you tell me about the Pensione Arcadia?
I feel myself go cold.
– Why do you ask me that?
– What do you know about it?
– I may have seen it in passing. I may even have stayed there. So what?
He pulls a photograph out of the folder and shows it to me. In it I see a city street with a car, a mustard-coloured Cinquecento parked in front of a building. There is a sign on the wall behind it. Pensione Arcadia. He looks at me intently.
– Ma è proprio sicura? Are you sure that’s all?
Again I don’t reply.
He picks up a piece of paper.
– Ci risulta che Lei ha affittato una stanza per qualche ora in un albergo di questo nome vicino alla Stazione Termini. Ora si riccorda? Il 2 Novembre. You rented a room at the Pensione Arcadia near the station on the second of November. Your name was in the register.
– I don’t remember, but what if I did? What is it to you? Where are you trying to go with this?
– Stia attenta, Signorina. Mi risponda con cura, mi raccomando. Be careful what you say. Answer carefully, I’m warning you.
– Perhaps I was there. I don’t remember. I sometimes spend the night in Rome and take a room in a pensione. I don’t always take note of the name. I just go to the first one I find.
– Ma è proprio sicura? Ci ha pensato bene? Are you sure? Have you thought about this properly?
– Why do you want to know?
– A man died there that night. The hotel manager. His body was found on the stairs the next morning. Era morto. We suspect it was not an accident. We are making contact with everyone who spent the night in the pensione. E allora mi dica, did you see or hear anything?
– No.
– You mean you remember being there but no, you didn’t hear anything?
– No, I don’t remember anything.
And it is true. I don’t remember anything. I feel a sense of panic rise in me. If my name was in the register I must have been there. But I have no memory of it. And if I don’t, who did spend the night there? But I don’t want this policeman investigating. I feel deeply disturbed by the conversation. What does he know about me?
We continue for a few more minutes, then he tells me I can leave. He tells me to return next Friday after we have both given the matter some thought. He tells me not to leave Italy until I have spoken to him again. I think he is just trying to scare me but I don’t really know. He still hasn’t returned my passport.
I go out into the street and sit down in a bar and order a cup of tea. My thoughts are swirling. I don’t remember the Pensione Arcadia even though I know now for sure that I have been there. But the mustard-coloured Cinquecento? I do remember that. But there are no images attached. Strange flat emotionless memories.
I don’t know where to go or what to do. I know I can’t go and look for Sabrina since the police are probably watching out for me. I finally resolve that what I need is movement away, and that I will catch the first train out of the station, wherever it is going. I will let fate decide.
The first train, coming from Palermo, is arriving in twenty minutes and heading north to Frankfurt, passing through Florence on its way. That confirms it. I am going to Florence to see the Deposition by Pontormo after all. I wait on the platform with two or three other travellers, watching the track to where it curves out of sight amongst a sprawl of apartment blocks and TV aerials. It is still light but the darkness of evening is just beginning to creep in from the east. The train, shiny with rain, limps slowly into the station. I follow the general movement. I climb the stairs to the door and step into the corridor. It is packed full of people sitting everywhere, in the compartments, on suitcases in the passage, pressed against the steamed-up windows. I push my way through the mass of bodies and by luck find a seat in one of the compartments. The air is heavy and stale. Clearly the other passengers have spent all day travelling. Some are asleep, their bodies abandoned against the green plastic seats.
I sit in the train and slip into a half sleep. It is warm and comfortable and my breathing deepens. I catch hold of myself, force my eyes back open, glance at the man sitting next to me, check my watch, twenty minutes to go to the next station. I see him glance sideways, his eyes on my thighs
in the skirt and dark stockings. I adjust my position slightly, re-cross my legs, feeling my skirt hitch up slightly but not prepared to do anything about it. I feel too drowsy, the compartment too warm. I am flushed, aware of my body scent, lulled by the gentle swaying of the high-speed train. I force myself awake again, look out of the window at the fallow fields that have been ploughed in readiness for spring, the greasy soil of the Tiber valley, which the plough has turned slowly, slicing and turning it into furrows over and over across the wide plain. Low grey clouds hang heavy overhead, promising more rain.
The outskirts of a town flash past, confused and ugly, and now the landscape is changing, the hills are rising up on the left of the train, bringing embankments covered in shrubs and mimosas into view, while the land drops away invisible on the other. The train slows as it enters a tunnel, and the compartment darkens, then lightens again as we come through. I feel the man move beside me in his seat, his thigh grazes mine, then he is still, our legs touching. I close my eyes, uncertain, then let go, relinquish control. Wait to see what will happen. Vaguely curious, more sleepy than anything else. Comfortable, warm, the pressure from his thigh increases, now it is not just by accident, no longer casual, it is deliberate, there is intention in it. If I want it to stop, now is the moment. I breathe deeply and don’t move. The train enters another tunnel and the compartment falls into complete darkness. I feel his hand touch my knee, hesitate for a moment then begin to rise. I allow my legs to fall slack, open, feel his hand slipping between them and up, touching, aware now that there is no barrier, the fingers probe, penetrate deeply, then withdraw and the train trundles out again into the daylight. The other passengers have noticed nothing but I draw myself up on my seat and cross my legs. He is looking out of the far window as if completely unaware, ignaro, of my presence, his hands folded loosely in his lap. A few minutes later we reach our destination and the train pulls into the station. I feel him brush against me from behind as we push our way along the narrow passageway to the door. I feel his presence behind me again as I stand at the top of the steps looking out at the platform; I pause for a moment, then step down off the train and lose him in the crowd.
I walk towards the river and then turn left and follow the Lungarno Corsini upstream, listening to the soft accents of the people, the aspirated Etruscan sounds that so characterise the local speech. I cross over at the Ponte Vecchio to the little church of Santa Felicità, one of the oldest in Florence. The church is dark and empty. The high nave and pillars running along the main body of the church make it feel austere and spiritual, different from the theatrical overabundance, the false marble and papier mâché mouldings of the baroque churches further south. The painting I am seeking is in a little chapel to the right. There is a high wrought-iron grating across the front of the chapel, which impedes access to the Deposition. You can look through the bars but go no closer.
I put some coins into a slot and the lights come on and illuminate what I have come to see: Pontormo’s Deposition. The Madonna gazes longingly towards her dead son, while the helpers lift his heavy inert body from the cross. It is a strange scene full of grief and sorrow and yearning, almost suspended in air. The figures bearing the weight of the body barely touch the ground, as if in a sense they were dancing. The centre of the painting is empty – all the figures are around the sides, including the lifeless body of Christ, which is draped across the bottom. The bodies entwine and merge into a knot so that it is almost impossible to work out which limb belongs to whom, but it is clear that there is one arm too many. The flesh has a bluish tinge to it.
I sit on a hard wooden pew and gaze up at the scene. It makes me uncomfortable not to know where that arm belongs. I know I should be able to work it out but my mind feels as if it is slipping and I can’t quite keep my focus. My head is bursting, throbbing from lack of sleep. The light goes out and I am left sitting alone in the dark. An old woman, thin, grey-faced, silently enters the church and crosses herself. She kneels next to me in front of the Deposition, prays for a few seconds and then settles back on to the pew waiting to be confessed. A priest shuffles into the church from a side door, takes his seat in the dark wooden confessional box tucked against a pillar and closes the curtain behind him. At a signal that I do not catch, the woman gets up, goes to kneel at the side of the box and begins to whisper through the wooden grate.
The words are indistinct but the whispering fills the chapel and echoes up through the vault. The woman’s voice disturbs me, a keening that goes on and on, interspersed from time to time by the deeper reassuring voice of the priest. It feels as if the pain will never stop. After a while I get up and light a single candle with a match from the box that is tied with a piece of dirty string to the leg of the table on which stand rows and rows of burnt-out stumps, offerings by the faithful that no one has bothered to clean away. I watch the candlelight flicker over the surface of the fresco, picking up the grain. I wish I could pray but I would not know what to pray for, nor how to do it. I kneel and fold my hands in front of me as I was taught to do as a small child at bedtime but the thoughts and words will not come. I can not imagine myself talking to anyone.
At last I sit back on the seat feeling my knees sore and stiff. I get up to go, then feel reluctant to leave this place. I put out some more money and take two more candles. I place them carefully in the little metal clasps in line with the first one and light them, watching the flame catch alight and begin to glow warmly with a golden self-contained life. I stand and watch entranced the three little flames in the high cold dark church. The woman leaves the confessional and kneels again in the darkened pew and I turn my back and come out into the daylight and get caught up in the hordes of tourists pushing their way across the bridge. So many people. I try to imagine what it must have been like at Pontormo’s time. The same buildings stand as they did then; he too must have crossed the Ponte Vecchio to reach the church from where he lived each day. There was bad damage to the city during the war, and all the other bridges were blown up, but this bridge was never touched even though the Germans were aware that the Partisans were using the secret corridor to move backwards and forwards across the river.
I turn into the side streets to avoid the crowds, and catch a glimpse of myself reflected in a shop window, distorted, swollen, with dark eyes. I look away quickly, not liking what I see.
My eyes are inexplicably drawn to a shop across the street. I cross and look into the window. It is a casalinghi, a shop that sells household goods. The display is set up for a wedding register even though this is not the season for weddings: fine porcelains, silverware, bomboniere, pots and pans, a row of knives. A thought insinuates itself into my brain and will not shift, it sticks there like some primordial underwater sucking thing.
I enter the shop. A little bell rings as I step over the threshold, and an elderly woman steps out of a back room to serve me. She stubs out a cigarette in a metal ashtray next to the till.
– I would like a knife, I say. I need a knife.
Her eyes run impassively over my face.
– Che tipo di coltello?
– Like the one in the window. I point.
She coughs, a rasping, spitting sound, and pulls aside the little curtain that acts as the backdrop to the display in the window and extracts the tray with the knives.
– Quale vuole?
I stretch out my hand to pick up the knife, but she quickly pulls the tray away.
– Non si tocca. You may not touch it.
– That one, I say, pointing.
She grunts in assent, then picks it up and holds it against her hand, moving it from side to side. It sparkles in the light that penetrates from the window.
– How much is it? I gesture towards the knife.
She names the price, doubled I am sure because of what she perceives is an English accent, the illusion of foreign wealth. I accept and draw out the money. She wraps the knife carefully first in tissue paper, then in wedding gift wrap, white with silver wedding bells a
nd the words Tanti Auguri, Congratulations, repeated over and over. The transaction is done. The little bell rings behind me as I step back out into the street. Dark birds wheel in the sky, a black ball of them that turns as one, becoming silver as it reflects the rays of the setting sun, then black again as it turns away. Then suddenly the ball shatters and the birds fly off in all directions like dark thoughts across the sky.
I feel reluctant to go back to the station when I leave the shop, so I wander back down towards the river. It is late afternoon by now and the shadows are long. Birds are gathering in holes in buildings, under bridges, wherever they can find a place, a little protection, for all creatures seek protection from the elements when dark falls, except for those that hunt by night. I stand on the embankment gazing out across the ancient stream, polluted now after so many centuries’ contact with man. There is someone standing a few metres from me, also intent on looking out, but I can’t make out his features in the dark.
Today Sunday 7th January 1554 I fell and sprained my shoulder and arm. I was in pain so I spent six days at Bronzino’s house, then I returned home and was ill until Carnival which was on the 6th February 1554.
Sunday morning the 11th March 1554 I went to lunch with Bronzino, chicken and veal, and I felt well (so much so that when they came to fetch me at home I was in bed – it was quite late and when I got up I felt swollen and full – it was quite a good day). In the evening I had some roast salt beef that made me thirsty and on Monday evening I dined on cabbage and an omelette.
I walk heavily back to the station, along narrow streets, dodging cars parked on the pavement and huge rubbish bins overflowing with garbage. The discarded parts of our lives. People finding sources of sustenance even here. Food only partly spoiled. Shoes not totally worn through, a broken chair, a mouldy mattress that will still protect you from the frozen earth. Little things that matter when all else is lost. When a thin rag to cover the ground is all that is left between you and the grave.
The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself Page 5