The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself

by Penny Busetto

  Saturday 8 December

  She is gone when I awake and I am alone. The morning light is creeping through the green shutters. I have a shower then return to the large bed where I lie propped up on the pillows like a child who has cried herself out. Then, feeling numb, I pull on my clothes that still carry the smell of rancid oil from last night’s restaurant. I step into my damp shoes, put my bag over my shoulder and open the door. The owner is sweeping the hallway. I step over a used condom, and recover my identity card from the chain-smoking concierge who is listening to the soccer on a tiny transistor radio.

  I catch a passing bus and, as it trundles heavily in front of a church, on a sudden whim I press the button to tell the driver I want to get off. I walk back to the church and push open the door. It is dark inside, only a few candles flickering below an ex-voto painting of the Madonna and Child. I sit down on a pew at the back wondering what on earth I am doing here.

  I become aware in the silence and dark that I am not alone, that above me in the shadows someone is moving. I listen carefully; it sounds as if whoever it is is turning pages. Then I hear a squeaking puffing sound.

  The music starts, slow and soft. How do I describe what it sounds like to hear an organ in a darkened church unexpectedly? I sit back in the pew and close my eyes. The man above me, for I have decided it must be a man from the energy with which he plays, fumbles, stops, clears his throat, then goes back to the beginning of the bar and tries again. Again at the same place in the music his fingers falter and get stuck, again he stops and goes back. How well I remember just that, the striving for perfection, for the note to be just right. I feel tears streaming down my face and I am glad it is dark and no one can see me.

  My eyes settle back on the Madonna and Child in the dark chapel above me. All but one of the candles have gone out. I stand up, take some money from my purse and put it into the offerings box. I take three candles and light them from the spluttering remains of the last candle. The painting lights up in the flickering golden light.

  My thoughts go to Ugo.

  How many hours have I been sitting there? I have no idea. The organist has long since gone, it is dark outside. The rain has stopped and the air is soft and warm and fragrant. It feels full of promise. Dolphins accompany our little vessel back across the straits to Ponza, gleaming white in the moonlight as their backs surface alongside the boat. They seem to be playing with us as they swim around and under the hull, or surf behind us in our wake. I remember stories of shipwrecked sailors being saved and carried to shore by these creatures and I feel my chest and throat opening with love and wonder at the beauty of the natural world. They turn back as we pass the breakwater and round the light at the end of the harbour wall. It is late and there are only a few stragglers to meet us, but I see a childish form flit aside in the shadows and make out Ugo’s crew cut and round face. I collect my bags and come ashore. I know he is waiting for me, and that he will follow me. I pretend not to notice him, but find myself smiling to myself as I walk along the jetty and up the Lungomare to the village.

  Sunday 9 December

  We spend the day quietly together reading and telling each other stories. In the evening after dinner I send him home.

  Monday 10 December

  The alarm clock wakes me as usual. It is still dark and will stay dark until after I have got to school, I know. The weather has changed and a thin cold wind from Siberia has started blowing across the sea. It seems to manage to penetrate through the bricks of the walls, through the chinks in the plaster, and I shiver as I pull on my clothes, warm woollen polo-necked sweater and warm trousers, boots, a heavy jacket and gloves. I would wear a hat too, but can’t find it, so I give up at the last minute and go out bareheaded. The cold catches my cheeks and filters down the neck of my jacket, then is stopped by the collar of my sweater. My cheeks are pink, I am sure, by the time I reach my classroom.

  The room is overheated and stuffy, but I don’t dare open the windows for fear that one of the children might catch cold. I sit at my desk and give them a dictation, the longest I can find to take up the whole lesson. It is a passage from Robert Louis Stevenson from their textbooks. The children keep interrupting, wanting me to repeat what I have just read, clearly struggling to understand and reproduce the sounds. I wonder what they can be making of Jekyll, of this complex fictitious world so very remote from their own, or from mine either.

  I read the lines slowly, repeating the chunks of words twice to allow them time to write in between, so making it even more incomprehensible:

  It was a fine, / clear, / January day, / wet under foot / where the frost / had melted, / but cloudless overhead; / and the Regent’s Park / was full / of winter chirrupings / and sweet / with spring odours. / I sat in the sun / on a bench; / the animal within me / licking the chops of memory; / the spiritual side / a little drowsed, / promising subsequent penitence, / but not yet moved / to begin. / After all, / I reflected, / I was like my neighbours; / and then I smiled, / comparing myself / with other men, / comparing my active goodwill / with the lazy cruelty / of their neglect. / And at the very moment / of that vain-glorious thought, / a qualm / came over me, / a horrid nausea / and the most deadly shuddering. / These passed away, / and left me faint; / and then / as in its turn / the faintness subsided, / I began to be aware / of a change / in the temper / of my thoughts, / a greater boldness, / a contempt of danger, / a solution of the bonds / of obligation. / I looked down; / my clothes hung formlessly / on my shrunken limbs; / the hand that lay / on my knee / was corded / and hairy. / I was once more / Edward Hyde. / A moment before / I had been safe / of all men’s respect, / wealthy, / beloved / – the cloth laying for me / in the dining-room / at home; / and now I was / the common quarry / of mankind, / hunted, / houseless, / a known murderer, / thrall to the gallows./

  The passage disturbs me, although I am not quite sure why. I contemplate, wonder briefly if the people who compile these textbooks understand what they are putting into them. Who on earth would choose this passage, and for what possible reason?

  The morning drags by in a sequence of dreary disappointments, repetitions of other mornings almost identical to this one, almost but not quite, of boredom and irritation and resentment. All the feelings of love and hope that I felt yesterday have evaporated, leaving just a sour irritability in their place. At last the final bell rings. I pack up my books, clean the blackboard, put away the chalk and leave the room. I drop the register off in the office. The headmaster is there with Cappi. They fall silent as I enter. The headmaster nods at me, then watches me wordlessly as I pack away the register and leave.

  It is still freezing cold outside, the difference from the day before as extreme as if I had flown to a different continent. The sky is dark and heavy with clouds, and the sea heaves with long-submerged currents although the surface is unbroken and lies opaque and unreflecting like an oil slick over the water. I need some fresh air after hours confined in the overheated room so I walk out on to the breakwater breathing in the cold damp iodine smell but even that is not enough to lift the sense of stifling claustrophobia that grips my chest and diaphragm. I linger there for a while until it grows too cold for me to stay any longer and I walk back to my apartment. There’s a note, in large, childish handwriting stuck to my door.

  – Troia.

  – Slut.

  Tuesday 11 December

  I am sure it must be Leonardo. What does he know? Can he have seen Ugo arriving at my apartment or leaving in the morning? I close my shutters tight and go to bed early.

  Wednesday 12 December

  A violent storm with white sheets of lightning shatters across the sky and the sea is very wild. Huge waves crash against the breakwater and thunder through my dreams. Several of the little boats break their moorings in the night and are dragged out to the sea, which sucks and pulls at the rocks. Dark currents swirl perilously just below the surface as if there were huge monsters moving in the watery blackness. The lighthouse on the point howls mournfull
y as its light spins round and round trying to penetrate the gloom.

  A body was washed up on the rocks this morning, in the seaweed, sucked down, tugged down, hair afloat, stomach awash.

  Like everyone else, I go to see. An illegal immigrant on a night crossing from North Africa, full of hope for a better future, or perhaps a prostitute after a quarrel with a client. Waves lapping gently rock the body, which is naked, protective tattoos cut into her cheeks and forehead, loose belly with the dark shadow of pubic hair. I watch as the rescue workers lift the limp form on to the stretcher, an arm trailing lifelessly over the side, seaweed slicked over her face. I want to remove it so she can breathe again, but it will take more, much more than that, to make her breathe. First she will need to dissolve, to disintegrate, her organs disintegrating, the cells decomposing, the molecules separating and then being reabsorbed, to regenerate in some other form, perhaps as air, perhaps as a rain cloud, an ice crystal frozen for eternity. I sit on a rock and watch, the waves lap-lapping at my feet. I feel life through my flesh but also death as I feel the shame of her public nakedness when her thighs fall apart and the boys giggle, excited and aroused.

  Waves generated by the pull of wind and moon, generate degenerate. The salty smell, the seaweed smell, the smell of breaking waters, returning to the amniotic waters, to the holding, floating warmth, the lungs filled with fluid. Sightless eyes, there is nothing to see, tiny fishes have nibbled her nose, her eyes, her lips, featureless foetal face, flat, bleached, bloodless. But she has no longer any connection, no umbilical cord attaching her to a life source.

  Thursday 13 December

  The stranger left this morning.

  I am sitting in my classroom in exactly the same position as when he arrived last month. That feels like a lifetime away, a world of innocence. So much seems to have happened in the meantime. The taxi redeposits him with his suitcases on the jetty where the ferry is already waiting to depart. With a strange indifference I watch him go, as if he no longer has any part in my life. And indeed it is many days since I last thought of him. I wonder about that. It is since Ugo came.

  I also received a phone call from Ispettore Lupo. There is something about his voice that alarms me, although I can’t pin it down. He says he wants to see me, asks me to come back tomorrow. Polite. Cold. Not bullying.

  I am not hungry.

  Friday 14 December

  At the Questura, Ispettore Lupo is sitting at his desk and appears to be waiting for me. My file is open in front of him and he is squinting at one of the pages in the yellow light of the small desk lamp. His movements are as slow and spiderlike as on the previous occasions, but I sense an excitement beneath the surface that worries me. His colleague is sitting across the room on the plastic chair.

  – Ah, è Lei.

  I nod in greeting and sit down on the chair in front of him. He stares at me for a moment.

  – Come Le ho detto l’altra volta, abbiamo chiesto il Nulla Osta alle autorità sudafricane. As you know, we asked the consulate for your police record. Ecco, ora è arrivato. It has arrived. Of course you understand that this is just a routine check because of the murder. You have nothing to worry about.

  He looks at me again with that thin-lipped smile.

  – Do you?

  – Do I what?

  – Have anything to worry about?

  I don’t answer. I don’t know where this is leading.

  – Hanno mandato anche altre cartelle. They have also sent other folders. They evidently think they are relevant.

  I start and turn my face away so that he will not see my eyes, certain that I will not be able to conceal my expression. What have they sent? What I have dreaded all these years has finally come to pass. But he seems not to notice, and continues talking.

  – Le studieremo nei prossimi giorni. We will examine them in the next few days. You must please be available to come back so that we can talk. Also, we need your fingerprints. Before you leave today you must go downstairs to Room 14 where they will take your prints.

  I nod.

  He looks back at me with his pale eyes, and then taps on the file with his index finger.

  – Your records are very interesting.

  My breath catches in my throat.

  He winks at his colleague.

  – They have sent some very interesting things. La cartella clinica pure. And your hospital folder too. You didn’t tell me about that, now did you. So interesting.

  He sniggers and rubs his hands together, a cold dry sound like the sound of wind through long dry grass.

  – Don’t you want to know what they say? Come back next Friday and we can look at them together. Dobbiamo parlare ancora.

  I feel their eyes on my legs as I leave the room.

  I scrub my hands to remove the ink in the dirty bathroom next to the waiting room and then go out into the street.

  Ispettore Lupo’s questions and insinuations trouble me deeply. I walk past the Pensione Arcadia on my way back. It still feels familiar to me, but I still have no memory of it. I make my way to the nearest bar across the street from which I can see the entrance. There is only one small round table with two chairs squashed up in the corner. I sit down. There are coffee stains and spilt sugar on the Formica table top. I order some tea and open the well-paged copy of La Repubblica in front of me to avoid having to meet anyone’s eyes or exchange banter with the barman.

  I know I have been there before.

  I try to imagine what it would be like if I rang the bell of the pensione and went through the door off the street.

  I can picture it clearly. I know the door will open on to a deep, high-ceilinged, echoing hallway with an ancient lift shaft in a metal cage at the far end. Five wide stone steps will lead up to the left. At the top will be a glass door with the words Pensione Arcadia embossed on it in chipped gold letters. If you open the door, a little bell will ring somewhere in the recesses of the building. There will be a residual ingrained smell of tomatoes and garlic over another slightly mouldy smell of badly dried linen. There will be a desk and a row of pigeonholes against the wall, each with a number, some with the room keys hanging below the number, the patron no doubt sleeping late, still occupying the room. There will be, I know it, a brass bell on the counter to call someone’s attention, although your presence has already been signalled by the bell triggered as you crossed the threshold. If you go back out on to the landing, you will be able to choose either to take the lift up to your level, or to climb the narrow flight of grimy stairs as it spirals around the lift shaft, up to your room. When you reach the landing, there will be four doors. Yours is the one on the right, at the head of the stairs.

  Can I prove myself wrong? Should I go in and see whether this could be true? I could ring the bell and speak to the concierge, ask if he recognises me, find an excuse to look around, tell him that I lost an earring, could it still be in the room under the bed perhaps? Hopefully he will take me up.

  Yet how can I tell you what dread I feel? What if it is as I say? What if he does recognise me? Then I will have to face up to the knowledge that I am not able to remember. That my body was there although I was not. I decide that I do not want that certainty. There are levels of truth that I find unbearable. I pay for my tea and go out into the street, determined to return to the station.

  But somehow I find myself retracing my steps along the pavement until I am standing outside the Pensione Arcadia once more, my hand raised to press the bell. I hesitate for a moment, but only for a moment do I manage to wrest control over myself, then my finger presses the white porcelain knob and I stand waiting in the leaden cold. A woman’s voice rasps through an intercom.

  – Chi è? Who’s there?

  I mumble something in reply and the door clicks open.

  I push open the heavy wooden door, pass inside and let it go with a slam at my shoulders. I am in a dark deep hallway, with the lift shaft at the end exactly where I knew it would be. With a heavy heart I climb the five shallow ston
e steps to the left and push open the glass door. I recognise the smell. I recognise the little bell on the counter, the row of pigeonholes against the wall.

  A woman is standing waiting. A woman about forty, plump, with angry suspicious-looking eyes, dressed in black, a few black hairs sprouting from her upper lip and chin. I know her face but can remember nothing about her. I had not expected her. I am not sure whether I have seen her before. I have a faint recollection of a man, middle-aged with a paunch, then the image wobbles and fades. I try to clutch at it but it is gone.

  – Mi dica, the woman says curtly.

  I quickly invent a story. I explain that I stayed here a few weeks ago, that I lost my ring.

  – Has anything been found?

  – No.

  – There was a man here. Can I speak to him?

  She interrupts me at once.

  – Non c’è. He’s not here.

  – Will he be back later?

  – Non c’è, she repeats. È morto.

  I understand that she is not prepared to say anything more.

  I thank her and leave. The heavy door slams behind me with a bang.

  Saturday 15 December

  Sunday 16 December

  I spend a restless night tossing and turning in my bed. Whenever I fall asleep I have ragged dreams, from which I awaken gasping, of gaping laughing mouths, tongues poking in and out obscenely, eyes mocking and cruel. I feel sure that there was someone watching me in the alley the other night when I opened the door to the child.