Eva Sleeps

by Francesca Melandri

  My mother never told me I ruined her existence. On the contrary. When I was a little girl she would cling to me like a small raft and I was proud of that, I wanted to be able to take her to safety beyond the rough waters of her life. But I didn’t save anybody. Not myself and not her.

  As a young adult I tried to run away from my inability to make her happy. I remember the day of Ulli’s funeral, I decided to leave our luminous mountains, with the air fragrant with hay, the balconies full of flowers. Suddenly, all this beauty seemed to me like a cruel farce that could no longer cover up the narrow-mindedness that had killed him. I could afford to do it. I was twenty-five years old, with no children (all my life I’ve taken great care not to get pregnant). I’d already been working for several years and had put some money aside. I was planning to go to Australia and look for work there. I wanted to get away, away from Alto Adige/Südtirol, and from its obsession with itself, away to a new life in the Antipodes!

  When I communicated these intentions to my mother, she replied, “I’ve always wanted to see kangaroos, and now I’ll finally get the opportunity.”

  I couldn’t get anything else out of her.

  I didn’t go to live in Australia in the end. When all’s said and done, I am a Dableiber.

  Lying on the bunk, rocked by the motion of the train, I can’t get any deep sleep, only shreds of dreams. The Po Valley flashing past us outside the window penetrates the side of the carriage, the blanket provided by the train company, and my skin. Its monotony, no less absolute just because it’s invisible in the darkness beyond the glass, takes possession of me, and my mind becomes flat and without relief. Even so, every time my consciousness starts to forget itself and finally dissolves into sleep, the clatter of a high-speed train bursts in on me. A metallic, linear, daytime ego self that wakes me with a start. Once, startled, I prop myself up on my elbows, lift myself up and look out. We’re standing still in a small, deserted station. The blue sign with white lettering says: POGGIO RUSCO, a name that evokes countryside, tractors, home-cured pork without polyphosphates. For some reason the train stops there for almost half an hour. The Po Valley air is so thick with the juices of the soil that the cones of orange light projected from the tall lamp posts look like jelly. I try opening the window. It’s jammed. If I wanted to call the attendant from one compartment to the other in that intimate, almost conjugal way, he’d rush straight away, his eyes puffy with sleep. He would clumsily try to conceal the excitement triggered by the unhoped-for night call, unblock the window lock with a spanner, watch me as I inhale that greasy humidity smelling of manure and recently plowed fields, then ask, “Why aren’t you sleeping?” And I would have to explain to him that I am already an insomniac as a rule, let alone today that I’m traveling the entire length of Italy, rushing to Vito’s bedside.

  Vito. Why did he call me and not my mother? She was his long lost love, whereas I was just a child when he last saw me.

  “I always think about you,” he said on the phone with that tired voice of his. What does the word “always” mean?

  Once again I lie down on the bunk. As if this was the secret signal it was waiting for, the train starts again.

  1963

  Gerda lost both mother and father in less than an hour. She had returned home after over three months’ absence, her belly already stretched. She revealed her state to Johanna, who put a hand on her chest, her face twisted with retching. A gush of transparent vomit came out of her purple lips, splashing Gerda’s shoes, then she fell off the chair. This is what Hermann saw when he came back home: his wife’s body lying on the floor, nothing more than a thing now; Gerda’s belly next to her, throbbing and swollen with life; his daughter’s suitcase leaning against the Stube. For a moment he remained motionless and silent, slightly bow-legged. Then, with an odd kind of efficiency, as though he had practiced this gesture all his life, Hermann picked up Gerda’s suitcase and, tracing an elegant arc with his arm, hurled it through the front door, which had remained wide open. The suitcase rose very high, struck the lamp post outside the house, and opened in mid-air. Gerda’s clothes flew out, colorful and fluttering like migrating birds. Hermann and Gerda watched their ocean crossing in silence. The continent on which they landed was the patch of dirt track between the Shanghai houses. And once they were lying there on that dark, damp stretch of suburb where the sun shone only in the summer, their wretched inanimate nature was obvious once again.

  Hermann didn’t look his daughter in the face. He pointed with his finger at the area outside the door, now covered in clothes that had been bought at the Wednesday market, clean but overused underwear, knitted sweaters.

  “Aussi,” he said.

  So Gerda left.

  With a quiet but nonetheless definitive sound, the front door closed behind her. Gerda bent down to pick up her scattered clothes, stuffing them back into the leather suitcase as well as she could. She picked from the ground her best outfit, a green-and-white shirt-dress she had made herself from a sewing pattern. It was tailored at the waist and she hadn’t been able to wear it for months. She carefully dusted it before putting it back in the suitcase.

  From inside the house which she would never re-enter, Gerda heard the man who until just a few moments ago had been her father strike hard blows on the walls, or perhaps the floor or the table, without emitting a single lament.

  The building of the National Organization for Mothers and Children was on the outskirts of Bolzano, near the steelworks where Peter hadn’t been hired. It was a triumph of rational dimensions, solid and ultra-Fascist; even the garden hedges had pedantic lines. The river Talfer ran nearby but you couldn’t see it because of the high wall that separated the garden from the street. When Gerda walked in, the janitor nun closed the iron gates behind her in a way that left no doubt: you didn’t come here out of free choice, but necessity. Then she led her through wide corridors to the large empty dormitory, where there lingered a smell of boiled vegetables and chicken stock: lunch was being served in the refectory.

  Her suitcase closed as well as it could be—after the knock one of the clasps wasn’t working anymore—Gerda had arrived two weeks before she was due. However, Eva, who from the start was a child who caused very little trouble, sped things up: Gerda was still finishing putting her clothes in the small iron cupboard when she felt a violent clawing in her gut. Surprised, she looked beyond the tall windows, as though looking for a reason in the garden.

  The janitor nun, who was explaining the rules and timetable of the place, noticed immediately. It was the same with all these girls: when the moment arrived they always looked astounded, as though until then they hadn’t really believed it. At the second spasm, Gerda didn’t look out but down on the floor, between her shoes, and a soft moan came out of her lips.

  “You’re complaining now, but you enjoyed it before,” the nun said, but without any acrimony or moral judgment—rather, like a fact she had observed over her long years of experience, something it was as pointless denying as it was trying to stop labor.

  The midwife’s eyes were the color of water in a thick glass; a sweaty blond lock of hair escaped from her cap, even though it wasn’t she who was giving birth. She had a Star of Goodness medal pinned to her white coat, above her large bosom: it had been conferred on her just a few months earlier for services rendered, on Mother and Child Day. During the ceremony one hundred and forty gift packages were handed out to as many unmarried mothers and their children.

  “Push,” she said.

  Gerda didn’t react, she was drowning in the pain. The other woman, a nurse nun, clicked her tongue. She was small and black like a watermelon seed. She had a starched white coronet, and you could just about see the dark roots of her hair on the back of her neck. She said contemptuously to the midwife, “This one doesn’t even understand when you say ‘push’.”

  Gerda waited for the pain to subside, then stared at the nun and said, “I do unders
htand.”

  The nurse nun made a grimace of disbelief. “Undershtand . . . ” She repeated, aping Gerda’s German accent. She burst out laughing. “Undershtand . . . ” She laughed, her bony shoulders shaking, unable to stop.

  The midwife and Gerda stared at her, motionless.

  “Undershtand . . . ” the nun kept repeating as she left the room. Her laughter echoed down the entire corridor, until she went beyond the glass door that sealed off the ward.

  The midwife nun looked at Gerda. She raised a shoulder and protruded her lower lip. She half closed her eyes deliberately, as though inviting her to do the same.

  “Pay no attention to her. She’s from the south that one—a Terrona.”

  Terrona. Gerda, a young Daitsch, who had known few Italians, knew nothing of the differences among the Walschen, and how important it was for them not to be confused with one another. She made a mental note to learn this new word. Terrona: “A stupid, rude person who laughs inappropriately.”

  Meanwhile, however, she had another surge of pain.

  It was a perfect pain, of blinding beauty. A galaxy of suffering-inflicting stars that throb, tear, pierce. In the middle they came thick and fast, unbearable. In the thin spiral arms spiraling outward/that spiraled out , however, they were rarer.

  The galaxy was spinning on itself, majestic and relentless. Nothing could have stopped it, neither Gerda’s screams, nor terror, nor exhaustion. In the rare moments of pause the long tentacles of pain stretched out, transporting Gerda to their very tips, and then for a moment she would look out onto a quiet stillness, a vibrant infinite silence which encompasses everything, including itself.

  Here, Gerda breathed.

  But soon the tentacle of pain would contract again with an animal shudder, violently calling her back. And, once again, Gerda would fall into the incandescent heart of the pain.

  It was as though she had been there for thousands of years but it had only been a couple of hours. Her wide hips had been made especially to make the passage of a new life easier. And now, after one last burning explosion between her legs, Eva was born.

  She had fair skin. Her upper lip, like a shell, promised that she would have full lips, like her mother. Her bald skull looked like a map of the world: the network of tiny purple veins caused by the effort of being born traced rivers, chains of mountains and continents of a new planet. The little hair she had was very blond, almost white. There was no hint of red, something that made Gerda very relieved: this yet unknown newborn looked only like her.

  By the time the midwife brought her back all washed and dressed in the regulation little outfit of the Organization, Gerda’s breasts were already huge and painful, streaked with green veins, and the rise of milk had wet her nightgown. She received the newborn’s hungry mouth around her dark nipples like a blessing. Eva’s head started bobbing up and down on her breast, like a strong, efficient little pump. The midwife with the Star of Goodness stood watching her with her transparent eyes, then proclaimed, “This one won’t ever give you any trouble.”

  Almost as though she heard herself being mentioned, Eva opened her eyes and fixed them on her mother’s. As though it was she who wanted to get to know her, and not the other way around.

  The janitor nun was right: until this moment Gerda didn’t think it would really happen. Only now was she beginning to realize that she had a daughter.

  It was the first thing in the world Gerda could call her own.

  Many girls remained at the Organization way beyond the regulation three months. Many had nowhere to go. The nuns of the house gave them little jobs in the kitchens, in the creche, or cleaning. If they were lucky, they would find them piecework with local craftspeople: embroidery, knitting, sewing, then they could become independent and start looking for rooms to rent. However, sometimes months or even years would pass before that became possible. When, with the nuns’ help, they managed to find a job and went back into the world, they would linger at the gates and turn to look back with a mixture of regret and relief—but only those who had kept their children. Those who departed alone, whose children were left behind in the orphans’ wing, which was separate from the one for the women who had just given birth, would leave as quickly as they could; no sooner were they able to walk after delivery than they would exit through the iron gate. When the janitor nun closed the gate behind them, none of them turned to look back.

  In the bed next to Gerda’s, in the dormitory with tall, arched windows, which she shared with seven other unmarried mothers, an obese woman stayed for a couple of days. They called her Anni. It was impossible to tell her age, at night she snored and during the day she kept the tip of her index finger pressed against the corner of her mouth even when she ate. Gerda heard that Anni had already been through here five other times. She was never able to say who the father of her newborn was. Some nuns suspected Anni wasn’t even aware of the connection between the children that came out with extraordinary ease from between her huge thighs, and the things men did to her under tavern stairs while clinging to her enormous body, amid cans of beer and buckets full of sawdust. Every time, she looked perplexed at the sight of the newborn covered in blood and meconium coming from her, and hand him over to the midwife or one of the nurses. When she was attending to women like Anni, certain thoughts about abortion and contraceptive methods would come to the midwife’s mind, which, if they had been heard by the authorities of the National Organization for Mothers and Children, would have cost her Star of Goodness. Consequently, she kept them to herself.

  Gerda watched Anni as she would an inhabitant of the Amazon jungle, dressed only in pearls and feathers, whom reliable sources had told her was a distant relative of hers: with dismay, disbelief and suspicion, but also with uncontrollable curiosity to discover if they had any characteristics in common. She did not discover any. Certainly not the fact of giving children up for adoption: that was a possibility that hadn’t even crossed Gerda’s mind. In any case, whether or not Anni ever had any sadness or regret nobody knew. The morning after every one of her brief stays, her bed was already vacant.

  The days drifted by, all alike, punctuated by the rhythm of feeding times and weighing times, meals and sleep. The surrounding wall that had seemed to Gerda like that of the prison was now beginning to feel like protection: from that world which, judging from the way things had turned out till now, didn’t promise to welcome her back very warmly once she had left here.

  Only fragmentary echoes reached her from that world. After dinner, Gerda would sit with Eva in her arms in the television room. The legs of the uncomfortable iron chairs had carved countless, perfect little circles on the green linoleum on which were reflected the black-and-white images of the bulky television in the wooden chest. Every evening, albeit without particular interest, she watched the news.

  SCIENTISTS AGREE: ALGAE WILL BE HUMANITY’S FOOD OF THE FUTURE. IT IS INEXHAUSTIBLE AND NUTRITIOUS.

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF A HAIR OF PROPHET MOHAMMED’S HAT, KEPT IN THE HAZRATBAL SANCTUARY OF SRINAGAR, HAS CAUSED PROTESTS AND DEATHS ACROSS INDIA.

  THE UN IS DISCUSSING THE PROPOSAL TO MAKE THE YEAR ACROSS THE WORLD START ON A SUNDAY AND END ON A SATURDAY. THEY ARE WAITING FOR THE POPE’S APPROVAL.

  They were also announcing Mina’s return to television. The singer had been banished for over a year after having a child with her married lover—the announcer managed to convey the news without using the world “banished,” “lover” or “married” even once.

  That evening, the unmarried mothers crowded the television room. The program was called “La fiera dei sogni” and Mina was singing È l’uomo per me. She had the nose, eyes and mouth of an Egyptian queen, and arm and hip gestures that ruled out any contrition with regard to her own immorality. Many girls grew almost tearful with the unexpected hope that this both daring and gentle voice gave them, apologizing for nothing and to no one.

  “Maybe one day i
t won’t be so bad to have children without being married,” a dark girl the same age as Gerda said to her softly. She was never very clean and had a look in her eyes that was akin to hunger. She hadn’t yet learned to hold her dark, wrinkled newborn, who was always crying.

  “It will always be bad,” Gerda said without turning around.

  Mina carried on singing, her face more luminous than the rhinestones on her low-cut dress.

  The janitor nun hadn’t yet dared confess to her spiritual father the business with the tweezers. It wasn’t exactly theft. Their owner, an unnatural blond with underwear that was a little too well cared for, had left the institute over a month earlier, leaving behind an extra orphan for whom they had struggled to find a family. Finding the chrome steel tweezers at the bottom of the empty cupboard couldn’t be considered a sin, and perhaps nor could not handing them immediately to the Mother Superior. The fact was that once the pointless period pains which she had suffered for over thirty years had ceased—thank God!—a few hairs as tough as barbed wire had started to grow on the sister’s chin. When nobody could see her, she would furtively look for them, holding her hand like a claw, and, with a decisive grip of her thumb and index finger, she would tear them out. The tweezers had been an epiphany.

  Now, however, she feared the moment when she would find the strength to confess that sin of vanity, not just because of the shame and contrition that awaited her, but because she would then be ordered to hand the tweezers over to the Mother Superior once and for all. And so she would have to do without their neat, accurate pull, which was so much more pleasant and elegant than the angry gesture with her fingers. And so she was intent on tweezing tufts of very tough hair, still telling herself that it was the last time, though not really believing it because she had had this resolution for days without acting on it when, in the porters lodge that was her kingdom, the gate bell rang. To serve in that Institute was probably the charitable activity least likely to make a nun regret taking the vow of chastity. The sadness, disorientation and fear of the girls who found here a brief refuge was nothing to envy. “You’re complaining now, but you enjoyed it before,” the janitor nun had said to Gerda when her labor had begun, which could have seemed like acrimonious jealousy. Instead, in that sentence that was not original but which she used with almost all the girls giving birth as a distilled point of view based on her experience, a question was especially implicit. Since they had enjoyed the before so much that they were ready to ignore the serious consequences they were suffering now, exactly what was so pleasurable about this before?