Marianne eats well, she has always eaten well. It’s not enough. “Mangia, mangia,” says the mother before she has even finished what’s on her plate. “Thank you, grazie,” Marianne refuses with the obligatory politeness and a movement of her hand, “really.”
“Ma dai, mangia,” insists the mother and at that point in the dialogue, the same point every time, she tosses a piece of meat on her plate or pours onto it the contents of the frying pan. At first, Marianne is amused by her insistence, flattered too. Then it starts to get on her nerves. She says “no more” brusquely, considers not eating what is forced on her, but she’s reluctant to leave it. Finally, Marco intervenes: “Mamma,” he says, “she’s big enough to make up her own mind. Stop.” Which is still not enough and the next day, when a pork chop lands heavily on her plate, Marianne, exasperated, transfers it to Marco’s.Without a word, but without appetite either, he eats it. The scene is repeated the following days: Mangia, mangia, no, thank you, it was very good, really, shower of tomatoes, transfer to Marco’s plate, his sighs, the sound of his fork, mangia, chicken breast, grazie, no, piece of sausage, prosciutto, apple, pear, fig. It all ends up with Marco, who is starting to show signs of distress.
Mute signals, no more than an exhausted look at his mother, the sketch of an impatient gesture, hardly anything. But finally, she has understood. This is about her son. Her son, whose limits she knows and submits to as to the Ten Commandments. No more negotiating. Marianne has won because Marco has won. If she wants more meat, she helps herself. When she’s eaten her fill, she takes nothing more. Her white plate stays white and her liver, intact.
The table is the altar of an untouchable life in which the foreigner has suddenly appeared, like a hair in the minestra, like one mouth too many between child and breast. Because in fact the distance between Marco and his mother is no larger than the table, and the table isn’t a real distance, it’s their most tangible connection, their common language, under the tablecloth is an invisible love letter and on top of it, the mother sets down plates that twice a day, miraculously, transform her son into a punctual man.
A mother is a mother in most cases. Her diffuse power branches out in songs, in knowing how to make and do everything — a fire, coffee; and in knowing how to listen, to guess, to console; to buy soap, cheese; to find the missing shoelace in a corner of the cupboard or the right word, the one word out of all others, all the words of others, that will guarantee unconditional love.
At the age when he still submits to his mother’s voice, the child is not yet aware of the brutal fact that elsewhere, around that voice and outside it, there is an indifferent universe, streaked with stray arrows waiting for his inexperienced body, waiting for his naïveté that’s offered prematurely and with no ulterior motive; the child is ignorant of the nature of exchanges and of the cruel and arid duty that will be imposed on him as soon as he starts school. But it is from the world itself, cruel as it is, that the child will learn that there’s no absolute, that there are only other elsewheres. He will grow up and step into ingratitude, as if the milk of happiness were turning sour. Some mothers agree to give up their kingdom, they lay their burden down on the earth and open wide the door, mourning no doubt, but in agreement. They’re still available and have within easy reach a medicine chest that can take care of everything. The return home of an injured child is a celebration, a sad, short celebration, unmentionable, camouflaged behind the accessibility of an attentive ear, and some mothers even go so far as to become friends.
In political terms, Marco’s country belongs to a handful of citizens, but it’s also the country of everyone, it is said to be the cradle of western civilization, it is the mother’s voice gently seizing the world to make it fit to live in, soothing with the palm of her hand the very first suspicion, smoothing into the child’s hair an opaque lullaby that often keeps him from growing, holding him in her arms until he suffocates. In that country, motherhood has such power that it transcends in power education, government, the Church. The mother is Mary, already a victim of the wicked who will take away her son.To give is her vocation. By giving, the mother is the Madonna and she cannot be abandoned.
In the mediocre, magnificent village, its belly held tight by its belt of stone, Marco’s mother married a childhood friend, a fisherman like half the men in the village, like his father and his grandfather before him. She was young and very beautiful, with plump cheeks, perfect teeth, and eyes like black pearls. Her husband was honest, hard-working, quick-tempered, depressive. His skin was warm, his forehead high.They had no ambition beyond finding their place in the village, submitting to the atavistic rhythm of established rules, and not disturbing anything in that microcosm. They went out together on the boat every night, taking the nets she crocheted. When they came back in the morning, she washed the fish, filleted it, and sold it.Very soon, they had a son and six years later, a second. She never slept, except when her body collapsed like a bundle in the boat or in some Etruscan’s open grave. She said little. She did. Did the things that had to be done and did them perfectly. She observed her older son and her husband carry on a furious battle that wouldn’t end until the older man died — and not even then, really. She took refuge in the growth of the younger son, Marco, the child who was seven before he talked, who slept in the dogs’ kennel and rarely played the same games as others.Year after year, she repeated actions learned from her mother and from all the mothers before her — cutting the bread and tomatoes, pouring oil onto them, making coffee before someone asked, before they even realized they wanted it, ironing sheets till they were as smooth and white as the paper of those who know how to write. She became expert at these actions, she became the irreplaceable head of the family, making ends meet and giving her husband just enough to drink away his depression.
She became Action. Even today, all her energy goes into it, and all her person and all the meaning of life, and when there’s nothing left to knit for her family, she knits bonnets for the children of others.
The first son is gone. The husband is dead. Marco is still at home, shut up in his silence and in his remarkable gaze. He is the Kingdom, he is Life, the things done for him are the only ones possible, they’re the eternal actions, the ones without which the sky would be empty.The stagnant centuries of the village have stolen from the mother any other form of identity. Her last son is stamped onto her skin like the print of a fossil; their separation is inconceivable.
She warns Marianne as soon as they’re alone for the first time: “Marco will never leave, you know; he told me so, he said it like this, now listen, he said: I’ll never leave.” Marianne knows that Marco is incapable of making such a promise, she also knows that it doesn’t matter, that those words his mother has put in his mouth have a power of truth that surpasses everything else, that surpasses reality itself. She knows that she’ll have to struggle against them and she knows that she’ll lose the battle. Each day spent in Marco’s country is a day spent losing him, a day spent accepting that he shrinks back behind his mother’s mouth, behind the wall of the village.
You run to the car in the rain. We count the ducks between the rushes, you see five, I see six, mysteriously they disappear. I’ve put a long table in my house to make room for disorder, any kind of disorder.Your country rises, fateful, along my throat, it extends its hand.While I’m swimming in the lake, you walk along the shore, carrying my clothes on a stick.You hold out your hand that’s filled with figs and hazelnuts, I see it that way between two breaststrokes, diagonal and full in the mauve line of the evening. I think about the roads in your country and on both sides the wind, the sunflowers that tell the time, the yellow sky above them. I hear the roads.They chatter and they hold me in a terrible emptiness, they steal what’s left to me here — the grocery list, the schedule for the bus that takes me to the centre of town.
Idle, Marianne tries to find some innocent activity. After a moment, she thinks about the garden in front of the empty house. Marco’s mother sowed some seeds there s
o she’d have a fresh stock of flowers to take every day to her husband’s grave.The flowers are already high, they sparkle, but weeds have grown too and when she notices them, Marianne thinks, That’s it, perfect.With the sun like a brick on her shoulders, she starts weeding.What she knows about gardening is truly appalling, but no one will see, once the weeds have been put in the garbage, that she has also included a few of what might have been flowers. Less and less scrupulous, more and more merciless, she leaves her mark on the garden, happily frenzied in this major cleaning job.
When she hears Marco’s mother’s bicycle come around the corner, her blood runs cold. She jumps up and stands in front of the pile of weeds, hoping without much confidence that it won’t be noticed. But the mother knows. Faster than her shadow, she rushes at Marianne, pushes her with one hand, takes one look at the pile of weeds, another look at the garden, then rolls both eyes to heaven. It hasn’t taken her five seconds to assess the situation and her diagnosis is clear: this is a case of garden murder.
“I could beat you, what are you doing, I plant flowers and you pull them up, a garden’s not supposed to be weeded anyway! Ah! Madonna mia, ma che hai fatto!”
Seething with exclamations, beside herself, and with no respect for the fine clothes she wears for visiting the cemetery, she kneels, takes from the pile of weeds those that would turn into flowers, and puts them back in the ground, ma veramente, waters them, floods them, violently pounds the soil around them, mamma mia, while Marianne, rigid with shame, tries in vain to blend with the whitewash on the house.The mother finishes her repairs, shoots a furious look at her, and stomps out of the garden, her Mass shoes covered with mud.
Starting that day, Marianne begins to suffer from having to detest something as beautiful and fragile as the flutter of a red petal against the blue of evening when it’s windy, even just a little. But she can’t help it: the longest flower stems are as upright as the bars of a cage.
I have put the immense table in one room of my house, so that some disorder could expand — mine.
Often she asks her for recipes. Like all experienced cooks, Marco’s mother never knows what to reply.
“You have to pluck the bird, chop off the head, cut it up, stuff it with a mixture of olives and breadcrumbs and oil and spices.”
“Which spices?”
“Oh, well, that depends on what you’ve got.”
“And why is the minestra so thick?”
“Why? Because it’s thick.”
“And the fresh pasta?”
“What, you don’t know how to make your own pasta?” (Surprised, slightly condescending.) “Come early some night and watch me.”
According to the cook, the ingredients are always the same, the preparation is always the same, yet the meal is always different. Several times, Marianne comes to watch, but she doesn’t really learn anything that might be useful later; all she learns is the curve drawn by hands that do everything quickly and well, all she learns is the route taken by footsteps in the big kitchen, everywhere at once — to the oven, the table, the sink. It’s hot, the gas flame adds to the sweltering heat, and the mother never sweats.
Her isolation, her meagre knowledge of the language, and her own idleness confer on Marianne more and more the identity of a slug. Every mouthful she ingests at Marco’s mother’s table reinforces that image, she knows it, and as the weeks go by she reaches the point where she’d give anything to be able to offer some dazzling proof of her normality, like those frogs that turn into princes.
One night, the mother lays down the last straw, saying abruptly: “If you ever want to get married, you’d better learn how to cook.”
“But I do know how to cook!” replies Marianne, red as a rooster (and with no intention of marriage).
“Then why not make supper tomorrow?”
“Why not?”
“All right?”
“Okay.”
All through the night that follows, Marianne tries to recall the easiest recipe she knows that isn’t spaghetti or lasagne. She finally decides on her recipe for fish with croutons and cheddar cheese, one of the most reliable. The next day she sets off with a basket to do her shopping — unaware, though she has a faint suspicion, that she’s heading for disaster.
She buys some fish, whatever white filets she sees — it’s amazing how the names of fish vary from one language to another. It seems affordable but mysteriously, she’s charged a steep price. Then she goes to buy cheese. Since nothing resembles extra-old Canadian cheddar, she discusses the recipe with the saleswoman.
“Fish and cheese, really?” asks the saleswoman, grimacing.
“Umm ... yes,” replies Marianne, suddenly doubting her own existence.
“What kind of fish?”
“Well, umm, I don’t know, a white fish. I haven’t bought it yet,” replies Marianne, hiding behind her back the bag whose smell clearly overwhelms that of the cheese.
“What kind of cheese do you want?” (Still unsmiling.)
“A kind that will melt in the oven.”
“A hard cheese, then. Strong or mild?”
“Strong.”
“All right then, this one?” pointing at the most expensive.
“Yes, all right, that one,” Marianne resigns herself, seeing a substantial part of her fortune end up in a piece of cheese.
The saleswoman cuts the cheese, makes a greasy package of it, and leaning over the scale, she checks: “Cheese and fish, are you really sure?”
Next, Marianne goes to the bakery. The ideal bread for this recipe is the sliced, white, toaster-size milk bread that comes in a plastic bag. In the village there’s no toaster and therefore no sliced bread. Marianne falls back on ordinary white bread, which tastes of nothing because it contains nothing. She tells herself that she could also turn it into French toast, just so Marco and his mother can finally taste the maple syrup she gave them as a present, which they stuck away on top of the highest cupboard between an Etruscan vase and a stuffed viper. She also buys parsley, an onion, and the makings of a salad that she’ll serve with a real French vinaigrette.
She gets there around six. She realizes at once that the mother won’t leave the kitchen and that she’ll make it a point of honour to supervise operations, in particular to assure herself that she won’t set fire to the house with the gas stove. Fine, thinks Marianne, who is capable of pride for a few hours more, at least I’ll be able to show her how quickly I can slice vegetables.
The vegetables are lined up on the carving board and held there firmly with her left hand while the right one moves the knife from top to bottom, rapidly, its tip always in contact with the board. Her way of cutting vegetables seems to impress Marco’s mother, who has stopped all activity to look on. But Marianne, aware of her eyes, cuts her index finger and gets onion juice in the cut.
The mother leaves the kitchen briefly and comes back with a Band-Aid.While Marianne chops the rest of the vegetables, she starts to unwrap the fish.
“So, you bought fish.What kind is it?”
Marianne, who of course doesn’t know, counts on the fact that the mother will see the filet any second now.
“So, it’s sole,” says the mother. “Where did you get it?”
Suddenly Marianne remembers that she’s in a family of fishermen and that Marco’s cousin, the grandfather’s worthy descendant, has a virtual monopoly on the sale of fish in the area. She has seen the huge house that he built at the top of a hill, she’s seen his fish-farming tanks. In this terribly poor region, their name appears prominently, surrounded by a big red hook, on the front of all the village fish merchants and that of the factory where the fish is filleted before being shipped. The mother, herself a seasoned fish-filletter, works for the cousin occasionally. She makes it clear that her nephew always requests her help with extreme politeness and that she does him a favour by going to the plant. She’s long past the age at which people generally retire. But even so, she hops on her old bicycle with the soft tires.When people see he
r in the stupefying sunlight on the main road, in a wool jacket and with a scarf around her neck, they realize at once that she’ll be spending the day with the fish and the other filletters in the plant refrigerator. She works quickly with her hands and draws a minimal salary, how much no one knows but the bosses, who are careful to keep it to themselves. Glad to be working, proud to be working well, and mindful that she’s contributing to the family business, the mother never asks herself any questions. She comes home just before supper. Through some strange phenomenon that may result from being exposed to fishing for all those years, she never brings home a fish smell. Sometimes, but rarely, she’ll say that she’s a little tired.
“Where did you get this fish?”
“On the Piazza della Fontana.”
“And how much did the bastard make you pay?”
“Umm, well, it doesn’t matter.”
“A lot?”
“Not that much ...”
“How much?”
Marianne tries to come up with an answer evasive enough to save her honour and precise enough to satisfy the other woman, who is rummaging in the package for the bill. She finds it.
The Perfect Circle Page 6