by Elsa Morante
“What? Be careful how you speak, you: better than me!”
“No . . . better than you, no! that word came out by accident, it really doesn’t mean anything. I meant that you are seriously treating me as ignorant now if you think you can tease me, and you think that I don’t know certain things, and the truth of them! Well! As if it weren’t a known fact: that boy devils can’t exist! Because if a person dies as a boy, he can’t be a big sinner. Even if, in that short life of his, he did some deed like, maybe: steal! Or even maybe: kill Christian souls! Well, it doesn’t count. That’s not infamy! For him all sins count as venial sins. Boys, at most, can get twenty, twenty-five years of Purgatory; and afterward the littlest boys all become cherubim angels, and the bigger ones seraphim. That’s why people go and console their mothers saying: Be content, signora: that child has had the greatest good fortune! God has chosen him, to become another angel. You can’t make a devil with a boy. To make devils, it necessarily takes older people.”
That argument, which in itself might have sounded rather comical, was delivered with such gravity that to laugh would have been too crude an insult. And so we remained quite serious; even my father was content to laugh just a little.
“And so now,” he said to her, “with this wonderful opinion of yours, you feel safe here! Convinced that those knights are angels in Heaven! And you don’t even believe what my ancestor told me in my dream, that tonight he’ll come with them to harm you!”
“Well, who can believe the words of that fellow, who was saying that all women are ugly?”
“Aha!” my father exclaimed, getting up proudly. “That’s the latest novelty, which does me honor. And I have to listen to it with my own ears! So here someone would dare to state that an ancestor of mine tells lies!”
“Nooo . . . I didn’t mean that . . . about your relative . . . no, I was wrong . . . But he . . . he really said that all women are ugly? That’s what he said?”
My father stretched out in the chair, laughing hard:
“Yes,” he declared, “that’s just what he said: they’re all ugly.”
She looked at me, as if seeking confirmation of this curious case. “You really want to know what he said?” my father resumed. And right away he began to declaim, imitating the Amalfitano:
“ ‘Ugh, how ugly they are, better not to think about it, my dear Wilhelm, about how ugly they are. And they come out everywhere, all over the world; they multiply by the thousands, the millions, those insults of nature. I wonder if they also exist on the other planets, on the moon? And the more perfectly they’re made (so to speak), the uglier they are! They’re petty, it’s the stamp of their race, which is bitter! But why? How can it be explained? Everything in creation is so well made, even the things of no importance: A strand of seaweed! A brook! A minnow! An aphid on the roses! A grass-pea flower! A chicory leaf! All things have something alluring, agreeable that makes you say: Ah, wonder of the universe! How beautiful it is! What a pleasure to live! Even when you happen to meet a person who’s a bit lame, a poor fellow rejected by the draft, a cripple, a dwarf, and at first sight you think: He’s really ugly; yes, indeed, and then, even in this case, if you look closely you always find something that lets you say: But after all he’s not entirely displeasing. Oh, yes, in a scorpion fish, in a spider, if you observe it carefully, you recognize that sign of the artistic and enchanted hand that created all things in the universe. Except that for one single species, women, there was no mercy. They got ugliness and nothing else. They must be of another make, that’s the only possible explanation.’ ”
At that speech, declaimed in a comic tone, the two of us burst into laughter. Then my father lazily threw me an orange peel, and said to me:
“You, moro: instead of laughing so much, it would be better if you’d tell us your ideas on the beauty of women. For example, what do you think of this bride? Does she seem pretty to you, or ugly?”
I felt my face blaze up, because I wasn’t prepared for such a question, and the truth was that I didn’t even know, precisely, what I thought of the bride. Before giving my opinion I glanced at her, as if to evaluate her on the spot. But then, at that very moment, I realized that looking at her was of no use, that, unbeknownst to myself, I already had in mind, from before, my idea about her. And here’s what it was:
About the ugliness of women in general, as far as I knew and saw it, the Amalfitano seemed to me more right than wrong: and this woman in particular couldn’t be said to be less ugly than others. But still, regarding this woman, in spite of her undeniable ugly features, I, according to my taste, considered her supremely pretty!
But this opinion of mine seemed too personal and unmotivated, and I was embarrassed to offer it; on the other hand, I didn’t want to lie. And so, disdaining to look at either her or my father, I lowered my eyelids and, with a frowning, almost fierce expression, answered:
“She doesn’t seem ugly to me.”
“Ha, go on!” my father exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders. “You want to play the gentleman, full of compliments. She doesn’t seem ugly to you, come on! What in the world do you find beautiful there?”
She laughed, in sweet confusion, not at all resentful at being considered ugly. I looked at my father boldly and proclaimed with determination:
“She has beautiful eyes!”
“Eh, what do you mean? They’re saucer eyes, too big! But go on, what are you telling me, moro?”
At that moment she looked at me, and her eyes, alive with timidity and joy and gratitude for the praise they had received, were so marvelous that her forehead was as if adorned with a diadem.
I laughed and was silent.
And my father, turning to her with a haughty motion of his chin, said:
“You needn’t pride yourself, Signora Gerace, since we know you’re an ugly little thing, a slattern . . . Tonight the dark-haired kid wants to be courteous to you, he wants to play lord of the castle, the ladies’ man!
“Rather, madame: instead of acting the beauty, with your saucer eyes, you, too, tell us what you understand about beauty. For example, how does he look to you, this dark kid? Huh? What does he seem like to you?”
She was embarrassed to give a response aloud; she got close to my father’s ear and, with a conscientious and solemn expression, said to him softly (but I heard it, too, anyway):
“To me he seems handsome.”
I turned my head in another direction, with an expression of indifference. My father laughed and said:
“Well, this time I agree. It’s true, he’s a good-looking boy: yes, not for nothing is he my son!”
I pretended not to notice, as if I didn’t know they were talking about me. To provoke me he gave me a light kick under the table, and continued to laugh almost sweetly, looking at me; and so I, too, began to laugh, with him.
He poured himself some more wine; and for perhaps two minutes while he drank we all sat there without speaking. We heard again the sound of the waves, down below, in the small bays: and at that sound I saw in my mind the shape of the island lying on the sea, with its lights; and the Casa dei Guaglioni, almost sheer above the point, doors and windows closed in the great winter night. Like an enchanted forest, the island concealed the fantastic creatures of summer, buried in hibernation. In undiscoverable dens underground, or in cracks in the walls and the rocks, the snakes and turtles and families of moles and blue lizards were at rest. The delicate bodies of the crickets and cicadas had crumbled to dust, to be reborn later by the thousands, singing and jumping. And the migrating birds, scattered in the zones of the tropics, thought with regret of these beautiful gardens.
We were the lords of the forest: and this kitchen lighted in the night was our marvelous lair. Winter, which until now had seemed to me a land of boredom, tonight suddenly became a magnificent domain.
Night
A shadow of that earlier sweet hilarity was still playing on my father’s mouth; and I thought I could hear his breathing, continuous and reassuring as the
sea. The present seemed to me an eternal epoch, like a fairy celebration.
Dinner had been over for a while, although we lingered at the table. My father still had some wine in his glass, and continued to joke a little with us, but soon he tired of it. Every so often he stretched his arms, or sighed, which in him was a sign not of sadness but, on the contrary, of a profound and almost bitter pleasure in existence. At a certain point, he made as if to reach an arm toward the bride, to draw her to him. She rose hastily and moved away, saying that she had to clear the table; and I saw reappear on her features that fear, which had left her for a while.
With a frightened and conscientious expression, she piled two plates one on top of the other, and started to go to the sink with them; but my father, without rising from his chair, grabbed her around the waist and, imprisoning her with his arm, held her close to him.
“Where are you going? Clearing the table!” he said. “Tomorrow morning our servant will take care of cleaning up. You are Signora Gerace, remember! And now our wedding night is about to begin.”
Not daring to struggle, she stared at my father with helpless eyes. She was trembling visibly and, with all her hair, looked like a wild beast with black fur, caught in a trap unawares.
“You’re afraid, eh? You’re afraid of your wedding night!” my father exclaimed, breaking into a fresh, free, and pitiless laugh. “Stay here. Don’t move.” And he clasped her more tightly to his hip, enjoying her fear. “You’re right to be afraid: you know, yes, what happens to girls on their wedding night! But the worst, then, Nunzià, is that you very seldom meet a husband as mean as I am. Husbands are usually meek little men . . . No, it’s pointless to try to escape now; you can’t save yourself, it’s over!”
Instinctively she had begun to struggle weakly, as if indeed under the illusion that she could escape. And that desperate attempt made my father laugh even harder. “It’s over!” he repeated, with childish sharpness, holding her easily with just one arm, as if in a vise. “Those days are over when you ran away and hid so you wouldn’t have to see me: don’t think I’ve forgotten, girl! I’ll make you pay for them all tonight!”
And in a threatening, offhand way he began to play with her curls. His face shone, yet betrayed an intimate, jubilant malice. “Yes,” he declared, “she rejected me! She refused to marry a man like me, this flea-bitten girl! She even got it from her mother, because she refused such a suitor, the owner of a castle, among other things!”
Stating these facts, he had assumed the air of a tribune, as if the whole population, summoned for the fatal punishment of the bride, were there at the table, listening to him.
Disoriented, she said, in a faint, weeping voice: “I . . . wanted to be a nun!”
“Liar! Confess things as they are! You wanted to be a nun because you didn’t want to marry me. You decided to marry me only in obedience to Mamma. You said you were afraid of me! And if I’m not wrong, someone even heard you say that I’m ugly! Is it true or not, that you find me ugly?” He laughed, with an arrogant, inexpressible grace; and she stared at him with her big eyes, which in their distress seemed to become blacker—as if she really did find him ugly.
“And now get ready to pay me back for all of them, Signora Gerace.” The hours could be heard striking in the bell tower, and he looked at the watch on his wrist: “Ah, it’s ten! Time to go to sleep . . . it’s night. I’m sleepy, Nunziatè, I’m sleepy . . . Nunziatè!” And he pressed her to his heart, without, however, caressing her, or kissing her, but, on the contrary, almost maltreating her, and mussing her hair. Then fear, which had been lying in wait for her all day, seemed to descend, like an enormous cloud. She said, “Before I go up . . . I . . . have to close the shutters of the door.”
“All right, close them,” said my father, and unexpectedly let her go. And, as if he intended to give her a respite, he lighted a cigarette, inhaling a first drag. But this respite was, it seems, a false one, which he was using for the fun of playing, like a cat. She was about to lift the heavy bolt of the door with her agitated hands when he put the cigarette he’d just lighted down on the plate and, getting up from his chair, said to her harshly:
“That’s enough. Don’t concern yourself with the door! Leave it!”
Just then I seemed to hear a rhythmic din, as if a cavalry were approaching from somewhere; and I was amazed to realize that it was my heart beating. My father, with a kind of angry happiness, moved toward the bride and, taking her by the wrist, with the gesture of a dancer spun her halfway around. His eyes sought hers, with an even harder look than usual; but at the same time there was in them a kind of violent, enchanting, innocent statement. Maybe regretful, or maybe to rouse her pity, he said, making his voice gentle: “Don’t you see how tired I am? It’s night: let’s go to sleep.” She raised her defenseless eyes to him. “Let’s go! Walk!” he ordered her harshly; and she, obedient, followed. Before crossing the threshold, she turned her head back, to look in my direction; but, gripped by a strange feeling of hatred and rage, I immediately looked away.
I was standing in front of the table. When I looked again at the doorway, they had already disappeared from the hall, and I heard their steps going up the stairs together. Then I lowered my eyes and, seeing the plates and glasses from dinner, the remains of the food and the wine, felt a sudden disgust.
I stood there, near the table, without moving, without thinking, and it seemed to me that a very long time passed; but in fact when I moved to go up to bed, the cigarette left lighted by my father was still burning on the plate, among the orange peels. So it had been barely a minute! And that day, and that evening just ended, seemed instead, who knows why, years distant. Only I, Arturo, remained as I had been, a boy of fourteen; and I had still to wait many seasons before becoming a man.
When I passed my father’s room, I heard from behind the closed door an excited whispering. I was almost running when I reached my room: I suddenly had the sharp, incomprehensible sensation that I had received from someone (whom I couldn’t yet recognize) an inhuman insult, impossible to avenge. I undressed quickly and, as I threw myself into bed, wrapping myself in the covers up to my head, a cry from her reached me through the walls: tender, strangely fierce, and childlike.
By the way, I realize something here: that not only could I not call her by name when I spoke to her, but talking about her now as well (I don’t know the reason) I don’t know how to refer to her by name. There is a mysterious difficulty that keeps me from those simple syllables: Nunziata, Nunziatella. And so here, too, I’ll have to go on calling her she or her or the bride or the stepmother. If later, as a matter of style, it’s sometimes necessary to name her, perhaps, in place of her full name, I can write N., or maybe even Nunz. (This last sound I like pretty well; it makes me think of an animal that is half wild and half domesticated: for example a cat, or a goat.)
CHAPTER 3
Family Life
Family Life
The next day, I woke at dawn. My father and the bride were still sleeping; the weather was beautiful. I went out, and when I returned it was late morning.
I walked around the house, to the kitchen side; and through the panes of the French door I saw that she was in the kitchen, alone, intent on making pasta on a cleared space on the table. She had dumped egg yolks into the middle of a mound of flour and was beating them energetically with her fingers. She hadn’t noticed me, and I stopped behind the panes, astonished to see how much her appearance had changed since the night before.
How, in an interval so brief, could such a strange transformation occur! She had the same red sweater as the day before, the same skirt, the same old shoes; but she had become unrecognizable to me. Everything that yesterday had made her beautiful in my eyes had vanished.
Today, too, obeying my father’s whim, she wore her hair loose, but her untidy curls, which yesterday were a fabulous garland, today gave her a slovenly, common look; and their blackness, contrasting with the pallor of her face, added something bleak. That heavy
, slack pallor had banished the pure white color of yesterday from her cheeks; and the sockets under her eyes, whose untouched delicacy had made me think of the petals of a flower, were marked by a dark halo, ruined. Every so often, as she worked the dough, she pushed the hair off her forehead with her arm; in that act, she raised her eyelids slightly, and her gaze, which I remembered as so beautiful, appeared veiled, animal-like, and pitiful.
Seeing her again now, I was ashamed that the day before I’d been so intimate with her, going so far as to tell her my secrets! On the bench, forgotten, was my book of Great Leaders: and that sight increased my shame. Angrily I opened the French door, and then finally she saw me. A light of contentment and friendship illuminated her face and with a sweet smile she said:
“Artú?”
But without responding to her greeting I looked at her sternly, as when a stranger, and an inferior, takes some liberties that we haven’t agreed to. Immediately her face lost its confident and happy expression. Her smile vanished and I saw her look at me with a strange expression: disappointed, questioning, and savage but not humiliated, and without the shadow of a prayer. I didn’t say a word to her; and, taking my book from the bench, I left.
During that day and those which followed, I avoided her presence, giving up even the company of my father rather than share it with her. I spoke to her only if I was really forced to, and on those rare occasions my manner was cold and off-putting, to make her understand clearly that to me she was less than a stranger. Wounded by my behavior, whose motivation she couldn’t know, she responded in a rapid, unsociable manner, looking at me reluctantly, with shadowy glances. But sometimes, mostly in the evening, when all our family was gathered, she offered timid propitiatory smiles, or seemed to ask humbly with her eyes what had caused her to lose my friendship. At those moments, I felt real disgust for her body. Her mouth especially repulsed me, which, like the rest of her face, wasn’t the same as on the first day. It had become a lifeless pink color, and opened slightly when she breathed, with a weak, stupid expression.