Who was it and what could he know about me? Even if it was Ispettore Lupo he could only track my outer life. He would still know nothing about my private thoughts, or anything about the boy. But I don’t know what information he has got from the South African authorities. What records do the doctors, the police, store from those times of which I have no memory? What would they know of my inner world?
Towards morning I fall into a deep sleep, so deep that I don’t hear my alarm clock, or the morning sounds of the harbour.
Monday 17 December
I startle awake a few minutes before the school bell and drag on my clothes. I hear the bell ring as I rush down the alley and across the square. The children are already inside. I stop at the door. I have never seen them so animated. The boys have fabricated a ball of paper and sticky tape and are playing a kind of basketball between the desks. The girls are banging on the wooden desk tops with their open hands as an accompaniment to a song they are singing in chorus, over and over.
Sant’Antonio, Sant’Antonio
Il nemico del demonio.
Without pausing, and increasing the tempo and volume, they sing it again.
Sant’Antonio, Sant’Antonio
Il nemico del demonio.
The noise is deafening and they don’t notice my arrival at the door. It is only when I cross the room to the podium that they become aware of my presence.
They slowly settle, scrutinising me carefully for signs of anger or retaliation. I lean against the lectern watching them. A tense silence falls. I let it lie there between us, enjoying their fear. At last I tell them to sit.
The lesson falls into its usual pattern: homework is distributed, I repeat my explanation of the working of the adjective in English and its position in relation to the noun. I notice the stifled yawns, the dull eyes. I send one of the children to the office to fetch the register. She returns holding the big green book and an envelope for me. I glance at it quickly. Just a plain white envelope. I ask the child:
– Who gave you this?
She shrugs and looks at me sullenly, without understanding. I repeat my question in Italian.
– Da dove viene?
She points down the corridor and giggles with embarrassment, but still says nothing. I give up.
After the morning’s lessons, I sit at my desk feeling limp and exhausted. I take the envelope between my fingers and turn it over, but it is blank. Eventually I take a pencil and slit it open carefully. Inside is a sheet of paper and a photograph. I have a horrible feeling about the photograph and quickly place it face down on the table. With a sense of foreboding I open the letter. Blank. No name. No signature. No possibility of reply. I feel my heart beating fast. With trembling fingers I turn over the photograph. A grainy black-and-white image, but there is no mistaking the faces. Ugo and I stand in the alley as I unlock the door into my apartment. I have an anxious look on my face.
I tear the photograph into tiny pieces and place them back inside the envelope.
I tell Ugo he must not come again. Ever. I see his face drain of blood and he reels out of the classroom.
Tuesday 18 December
What I knew would happen all along has finally come to pass. It could not have come at a worse time.
The headmaster sent one of the pupils to my classroom this morning with a message asking me to come to his office during the lunch break. When I enter he is sitting at his vast polished desk with the Italian flag to one side. He half rises, nods at me to take a chair on the other side of the desk, then lowers himself carefully to the edge of his seat and clears his throat.
He goes about the matter with great circumstance and self-importance, puffing himself up, filling himself with the words. He speaks about the Ministry in Rome, about the Provveditorato, about IRRSAE. About policy regarding qualifications, unions, board examinations, the democratic values of the republic, language policy. At last he comes to the matter at hand.
A teacher has been appointed – a person of the highest calibre, you understand. A real teacher. He will be arriving at the end of the month. From the first of February my services will no longer be required. He wants to take this opportunity to thank me for all my years of hard work, what was it, five, six years? He seems surprised when I tell him it is almost twenty. As a temporary teacher I have always existed only on the periphery of his vision, a shadow without clear outline or colour.
He gets up and accompanies me to the door.
I come back to my empty classroom. The children are still outside playing in the pale winter sunshine. The air is stuffy. I stand at the window looking out at the playground and the hills beyond, my eyes unfocused. Strange that I can feel so indifferent.
The afternoon goes by in a haze. Ugo is not in class. I give the children an exercise to keep them busy.
It is growing dark by the time I leave the school buildings and make my way up the narrow streets to the old town where I lodge. It feels like years since I was last here. I go upstairs and lie down on my back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. A fly is circling round and round the naked light bulb that hangs blankly from its wire. The eyes in the paintings that surround me leer at me mockingly. I feel my head spinning, and my stomach lurches. I try to turn over but the room sways about me. I try to get to the bathroom, but all I can do is slip off the bed on to the cold tile floor and attempt to crawl there, but then the floor feels so cool and my body so hot that I just lie down and let myself go.
It is night-time when I awake, still lying on the cold floor, my body stiff and frozen. I try to get up but my head throbs violently and at last I give up. I am afraid I am very sick, that I need a doctor, that I am going to die, but the thoughts just keep slipping away. I have a sudden image of a long dormitory with rows of beds marching down each side of the room, each bed below a high barred window, the moonlight shining through, casting barred shadows across the beds and over the sleeping drugged bodies of the women lying there. I don’t know how long I lie there. At some point I drag myself to my bed and fall into a deep sleep.
Wednesday 19 December
It is late morning when I wake up. I get up and wash, then make some tea and go back to bed. By the afternoon I feel a little better. I eat some dried biscuits with tea, and by evening am able to sit at my armchair at the window and gaze out at the rain that is teeming down on to the rooftops. I take up the Diario, which is lying open next to the chair, and begin to read listlessly.
Tuesday evening I felt all weak and I ate a rosemary bread and an omelette and salad and some dried figs.
Wednesday, I fasted.
Thursday evening, an omelette with one egg, and a salad and four ounces of bread altogether.
Friday evening, salad, pea soup and an omelette and five ounces of bread.
Saturday, butter, salad, a rosemary bread, sugar and an omelette.
Sunday the 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.
I think I have already read these pages but I’m not sure. It doesn’t really matter. Did Pontormo also lose whole days?
So many of my days pass with nothing to say for themselves, when I can’t even remember what I have eaten, I can remember no sensations, no thoughts. I presume I must have lived through them but nothing remains to me of them. How little of my life I have actually lived. How little I remember of the books I have read, of the people I have known.
Thursday 20 December
I force myself to get up and go to Modugno’s for supper, but the food turns dry in my mouth and I can’t swallow it. I leave early. As I do, Ugo’s uncle, red-faced and uncertain on his feet, staggers across the square from the bar on the corner where he has been drinking and playing briscola since early mornin
g, shouting as he throws down his cards. I see him stagger up the alley, uncertain on his feet. I see him stop and support himself on the wall. I see him fumble with his fly and urinate against the wall then stagger on. I hear the door slam behind him as he enters the house next door. As soon as he is gone I race to my door and lock it behind me. From my room I hear his shouts in the next-door apartment, his wife’s voice shrill in reply. I hear bangs and the sound of things smashing, and I hear her scream. I hear his voice roaring over the top of everything. Then silence.
I huddle at my window hardly daring to breathe, feeling his voice penetrate my skull, his animal howls and moans inside me, flames and fire and roaring waters and darkness. Out of it all Ugo arrives at my door.
– Posso entrare? he asks. He is breathless and wild-eyed.
– Ugo, you know you mustn’t. I told you not to come.
He looks at me imploringly.
– Mi farà male.
I feel my resolve begin to waver.
– Ti prego. Solo per questa volta.
– Just this time then, I whisper, but never again. Come in, child.
Soundlessly I take him in, soundlessly caress and soothe and clean the wounds.
– Did your uncle do this to you?
He doesn’t reply.
I take him into my bed and hold him tight and we lie there clinging to each other like two lost children in the dark. I hear his breath grow quiet and even and shallow and I try to give him a rhythm with my own, slow and calm, as I used to do with my father as a child, to help release him into the arms of sleep, and by doing so I too am caught in its embrace until at last we lie there together, side by side, at peace.
Friday 21 December
School has broken up today for the Christmas break. The children rush out into the streets after the last bell as if they have been trapped for months, as I suppose they have. And I have been the prison keeper.
I need to go to the Questura, so I decide to spend a night in Rome and try to get to the queue early before it is too long.
What has happened is difficult to even start putting into words.
I remember catching the ferry over to the mainland. I remember standing on the deck and smelling the damp salty breeze blowing across the water against my face, the oily leaden smell of diesel smoke as the heavy vessel slowed to manoeuvre in the harbour. I remember coming down the gangplank on to the jetty and waiting for a taxi, since the buses were on strike. I remember standing there feeling very conspicuous. I remember a man in a mustard-coloured Cinquecento who stopped and offered me a lift. I remember squeezing into the front seat next to him. I remember the way his lips curled off his teeth as he smiled at me. I remember a joke, his hand slapping my knee, a gesture of friendship. And then the fingers moved and the gesture shifted into something else, the meaning now changed, the hand, the hairy square fingers on my pale knee the same as before when he slapped me in mirth, but the fingers kneading now, moving up, under the edge of my skirt, while I just watched and he looked at me then turned off the main road into a country lane.
I remember lying on my back under the trees and the leaves slowly tumbling through invisible currents, floating, sighing, hovering, golden sunlight and leaves and shade shifting slowly in the gentle autumn breeze – no, not a breeze, no wind at all, yet the leaves still moved, as if of their own accord, perhaps there was a breeze higher up, but here where I lay there was none, the broken chestnut shells from bygone years poking into my back, the soft, loamy earth cushioning my body. When he had done I turned over on to my side and curled up into a ball. There was a faint smell of mushrooms.
Saturday 22 December
Something happened, I am sure. But I don’t know what it was. I wish I could remember. It is hovering on the edge of my consciousness, like a dream that I just can’t catch hold of. I know that I can’t tackle it directly, that is not how dreams work. I will have to wait for it, attentive, pretending to look the other way so as not to frighten it back into hiding.
I get up and put on a pot of coffee and stand waiting in front of the stove while it heats and percolates, enough to distract my mind from pursuing the memory actively, leaving enough space for images to arise. Something brushes through the undergrowth of my thoughts. A mouse? A snake? I clutch at it but it is already gone. I stand rocking gently, there it is again, dry leaves, rustling, rustling, floating down, I am lying on a bed of dried leaves in a forest, in a wood, soft humus under me, warm and fragrant, a scent of green things, growing things, of decay, mould and mushrooms, secret tunnels, aerated underground passages. I lie there abandoned, my clothes loosened, my skirt about my waist, my thighs open. The sun sparkles down through the falling leaves, golden and orange and red. Beside me is a man, lying face down, half across my body, a lover perhaps asleep after sating his passion. I turn my head to look at him and see blood seeping through his clothes down into the soft warm earth beneath us. I see three wounds across his back, puckered and dark, almost black against his navy shirt. I push him off me, his body lifeless, and get to my feet. I see a knife in the grass. I brush the leaves from my clothes and hair and straighten my clothes. I look around. I see a small mustard-coloured Cinquecento on the edge of the clearing.
The coffee is percolating rapidly, noisily, almost a scream. I pour a big mug of coffee and put in lots of sugar. I carry it over to my seat at the window and sit down, wrapping my dressing gown around me for warmth. I take a sip and look out across the rooftops. The big ferry is pulling up the gangplank. It hoots twice and slowly moves away from its moorings leaving a white trail behind it in the water. It will be back in a few hours. It manoeuvres slowly out of the harbour and as it passes the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater, it speeds up. Where is it going? Probably Ventotene, where there is a prison built to resemble Dante’s Inferno, with concentric rings leading down to a pit in the centre. What happens in that pit, I wonder.
I sip my coffee. It is ice cold and I become aware that my feet are freezing on the bare tiles and my whole body is tense. I go back to the stove. My eyes fall on the clock above the fridge. It is evening. What have I done all day? I look out of the window. The ferry is just leaving. I see the gangplank being hoisted, hear the hooter blast three times and see the water turn white where the huge propeller churns it as it moves away from the jetty.
Sunday 23 December
Monday 24 December
Tuesday 25 December
Christmas Day.
Wednesday 26 December
My diary has no entries for many days, days of nothing. I don’t remember whether I have been at school, whether I have eaten or slept or walked out. All around the walls are paintings I have not seen before. Black. Canvas after canvas of thick clotted black paint.
Masses of black birds, clotted together in varying degrees of liquefaction, some putrefied into a seeping mass.
Thursday 27 December
Eggs and salad.
Friday 28 December
I walked to the headland but it was very cold and my head began to ache so I turned back and came home.
Saturday 29 December
Sunday 30 December
Last night Ugo came again. When I wake up in the morning he is gone. I wonder for a moment if I have imagined everything, but then I notice the faint outline of his body on the sheets beside me and I know that it was true.
I wish Ugo and I could go away somewhere, just the two of us, far away from prying eyes and hurtful people. We could be happy by ourselves, I think.
Monday 31 December
New Year’s Eve.
Tuesday 1 January
Wednesday 2 January
I go to see a doctor, someone I don’t know in the capital, just an anonymous name on a plaque outside an anonymous building. I take a number and sit in the waiting room as one patient after another enters his room and emerges a few minutes later holding a prescription. At last my number is called. Through the doorway I can see il Dottor Montalti sitting behind his desk, a large overweight
man with a beard, wearing a white doctor’s coat that is too tight over his suit. He looks irritable, overworked and depressed. He does not rise when I enter but points to a chair. I sit.
– Mi dica.
I hesitate for a moment, and he drops the pen and glares at me irritably.
– Allora, cos’ha che non va? Si sente male? So, what’s wrong? Are you sick?
There is no way I can even begin to tell him what my fears are. But I force myself to try. I have come so far.
– No, I’m not sick. I think I’m losing my memory. My mind. There are things in my mind that I can’t explain and things I can’t remember that I am sure I must have done.
He barely registers what I am saying. I see no flicker even of interest in his eyes.
– Ah. Allora deve andare dallo specialista in malattie nervose. Lo psichiatra. The psychiatrist. You must go to the psychiatrist.
He punctuates the word carefully, tapping his index finger on his desk to reinforce my memory.
– Psy-chi-a-trist. A specialist in mental illnesses. Ecco, ti do una lettera.
He has shifted, imperceptibly, into the familiar form. Tu. I no longer deserve the more respectful Lei.
He writes, tears off the page and passes it to me. I understand that the appointment is over. I leave the room and walk down the stairs to the street. At the hospital there is another long queue to make an appointment. The first date they can give me is in two months’ time. I drop the appointment card in the rubbish bin at the door as I leave. I can’t wait that long.
Thursday 3 January
I hear the municipal workers in the street collecting garbage, shouting to each other as they hoist the cassonetti up and empty them into the jaws of the garbage truck, mechanical and human sounds disturbing the mid-morning peace. I realise that I am never here at this time of the morning, always at school, always my attention held by the activities of the classroom, the children, oblivious to the sounds coming from the outside, the world where shade and sunlight shift slowly across the houses and bay from hour to hour, subtly transforming them in ways I do not know. It crosses my mind that soon I will always be free in the mornings, and the routine of bells and lessons will no longer punctuate my day. How will I fill my time then? What will give meaning to my existence?
The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself Page 9