by Elsa Morante
Childish impressions took hold of me. I almost expected to encounter the shade of the Amalfitano as he wandered through the hallways, singing his tragic refrains in a melodious bass voice. And I was distressed at having to leave my stepmother alone in the house, with no defense against that murderer.
As I hurried through the narrow sleeping streets, I seemed to be in a tumultuous theater, in which many voices were shouting that odious word: Death! Death! I stopped first at the doctor’s house, which was near the little square, and began to pound on the door like a bandit; but finally a woman’s voice, from behind a shutter, told me rudely that the doctor had left for Naples. And so I could only continue on to the neighborhood of Cottimo, around three kilometers away, where Fortunata the midwife lived.
I had some ancient reasons for aversion and suspicion toward that woman, and the necessity of resorting to her annoyed me, as an evil sign; still, since there was no other choice, I ran madly toward her house, fearing that every instant of delay could be fatal to the life of Nunz.
The Midwife
This Fortunata had practiced her profession of midwife on Procida for more than thirty years; among the women in labor assisted by her was my mother. I blamed her for not having saved my mother for me, and I despised the opinion of the Procidans, among whom she enjoyed a reputation of great mastery in her art. Her enormous, dark hands seemed to me the hands of a murderer; and the knowledge that she had brought me into the light, and had, further, with timely instructions, guided my nurse Silvestro at first, wasn’t enough to reconcile me to her. She, among all the women of the island, was perhaps the only one who had never deigned to give any credence to the popular rumors, facing without fear the evil curse of the Gerace house. But not even that seemed to me a special proof of merit, because, although she wore women’s clothes, she couldn’t be properly numbered among women. To see her cross the town with her professional bag under her arm, with her long, wide-legged stride, military and yet slovenly, you would have said she was some petty soldier of the Turkish fleet, reincarnated as a midwife. Her figure was so tall and large (in some places angular, in others obese) that she had trouble getting through the small door of her house, and, near other women, she seemed a giantess. Her skin was quite dark; over her lip grew a small mustache, and on her chin some beard hairs. She had enormous feet and hands, long, irregular teeth, and an unpleasant voice, dark and rather hoarse. She wore glasses, and always the same dress of faded fustian, with a large flower pattern. In winter she covered this dress with a soot-colored duster coat. And on Sunday she wore on her head an embroidered veil, behind which she seemed even uglier.
Because of her ugliness, she had never found anyone to marry, and she lived alone in a one-room cottage. She used a rude, rough, and curt tone with others, always seeming distracted from their conversation, as if her mind were constantly occupied. And when she uttered some opinion of her own, she usually did so speaking not to any of those present but, rather, to herself, or to the air: in a dark, emphatic mumble, as if she were reciting obscure verses. Only with the newborns, or with her cat, did she at times talk more intimately and fondly. I knew the cat by sight: he was celebrated in the whole town as a kind of venerable centenarian, since he was already nineteen years old. And he was always sitting in the window of the cottage, like a sinister guardian. Often, passing by, I tried various ways of insulting him.
I think it didn’t take me more than ten minutes to get to Fortunata’s house (which usually is a journey of at least half an hour). I began beating on the door with my fists, and kicking, and the midwife was quick to look out the window, with a cloak thrown over her nightgown. “Hurry up,” I said in an imperious tone, “there’s a woman who’s sick at our house . . . she’s really sick!” “Hey, kid, you’re just one, I thought you were a gang,” she muttered in her cavernous voice. “A woman! It must be Nunziata who wants to give birth, who else would it be, this woman of yours! All right, wait for me a minute, and I’m coming.” “Hurry up!” I commanded again. Then, as she withdrew from the window, I shouted after her, in a tone charged with hatred and threat: “And now, hey, don’t get drunk. If you get drunk you’ll be in trouble!”
Truly, although it was known that she had a taste for wine, and always kept a flask in her room, no one had ever seen her drunk, and I made that remark only because I longed to express my animosity in some way. She, for her part, didn’t resent it, or bother to answer me. In the same way, when we happened to meet on the street, and I deliberately turned my face from her, she gave no sign at all of being offended, or even, in fact, of having noticed. Without a doubt, because she had helped me come into the world, she still considered me a child, whose fancies can be ignored.
I sat on the low wall, waiting for her. And I was almost surprised to observe that it was a beautiful warm night, the air still, with a big moon, just veiled by wisps of fog. The sea and the gardens had a smiling color, as in spring; and not a movement or a voice could be heard. Maybe I expected that all the presences of creation should be stirring around N., filled with emotion, like the court around a queen! But, instead, the agony of a woman in her room is a thing so small that it can’t cast a shadow on the great universe.
I stretched out along the wall, pressing my face against the rough limestone, with a feeling of inconsolable wretchedness. The beautiful landscape and the starry sky and my island suddenly seemed to me bitter, bleak, even abhorrent, because they had no thoughts for that room, which one couldn’t even see from here, isolated up at the Casa dei Guaglioni, and important only to me. There, every night for almost a year, guarded under the eyelids like precious gems in a jewel box, the two black eyes of a queen had slept, which could express the assurance, and the adoration, and the honor of serving me and being my relative. But now I saw again the anguish that had appeared a little before in those big eyes: so cruel, too vast for their ignorance. And I repeated to myself with horror: “Ah, certainly it’s death! It’s death!”
All my pleasures, my regrets, were turned upside down in confusion inside me. I had really forgotten Wilhelm, like a dream. It seemed as if only Nunz and I existed on the earth. And of my famous hatred for her, which had been my cross, not a trace remained.
The midwife reappeared at the door, ready, the usual bag under her arm; and I jumped down from the wall. As we set out (after she had directed toward the interior of the cottage, to her cat, a sickly-sweet, ceremonious goodbye), she examined the path of the moon, wrinkling her bespectacled forehead. And she decreed, speaking to herself in her usual fashion: “Good hours, these, for infants, male and female. Boys born after midnight and early in the morning grow up handsome, lucky, and in good health! And girls in good health and virtuous.”
Then, with great satisfaction, she began to march in her soundless rope-soled shoes, purposeful and villainous as the figure of an executioner. My eyes, disgusted, fell on her hands, which in the moonlight appeared blacker, enormous; and to spare my sight I ran quite a distance ahead of her, proceeding rapidly alone. Every so often I turned to see that she was following, and hadn’t sneaked off, maybe, into the gardens and alleys; and I shouted at her in a threatening tone: “Hey, move!” But when we got to the edge of the town, at the top of the long ascent after the square, my heart had a jolt: in the distance, high up, the Casa dei Guaglioni appeared, its windows on that side all dark; and it seemed an ancient and abandoned vision, as if already not a soul were alive within its walls!
The Young Cock
Then I started running again, harder than when I left, no longer concerned with the old woman. I didn’t care about anything else now, except to return immediately. I wanted to arrive at least in time to say a few last words to N., if she could still hear me for an instant. What words they would be it was impossible for me to predict: maybe I trusted in an extreme inspiration, in a kind of capricious improvisation, so sublime as to redeem, in a single phrase, all the curses and other nonsense I had said to her; and to be sufficient as an explanation between her and
me for eternity! I ran, in fact, toward our castle, as if, for me and for her, an eternity were at stake: and were guarded precisely in that mysterious, delicate phrase that at all costs I had to say to her, in the face of death. I’m curious to know what I intended to say, because at the time I still didn’t understand anything (and do I understand even now?); but I was sure that I would speak, although, on that last stretch of the road, of all the possible words in existence I remembered only one: Nunziatella. I repeated to myself that word Nunziatella in the same desperate rhythm as my steps. And all the rest was obscured, I neither heard nor saw anything else. I remember that the fields near our house, as I passed, didn’t appear to me as they were; rather, I seemed to be crossing a kind of enormous, ruined foreign square. And yet I had the sensation that, if N. were dead, here on the island and also elsewhere, wherever I went, I would find nothing but that wretched square, of mortar, iron, and stones: without heart or thought for me.
The door was open and the light was burning in the hall, as I had left them when I went out. As soon as I was on the stairs I heard from the floor above the wail of a newborn. Her voice couldn’t be heard. And, reaching the doorway, the first thing I saw was her, from behind, lying motionless under the covers, and the bed stained with blood. I thought: “It’s over!” and I think my face became waxen, I felt my knees buckle. At that moment, the infant’s crying, which had covered the sound of my steps, quieted a little, and she must have sensed my presence. She just raised her head, turning it toward me: she was pale but alive! And a smile of secrecy and fabulous joy transfigured her face. “Artú!” she said. “He’s born, Carminiello Arturo is born!”
He started crying again; I glanced at him, but she was holding him under the blanket, so I glimpsed only a small fair head. Meanwhile, in a weak, confused, and anxious voice, she sent me away from the bed and the room, and asked me about Fortunata; and I rushed back down to the old woman. “Come on, hurry!” I scolded her fiercely, colliding with her in the entrance. “You’re traveling on the slow train!”
Going back up behind her, I was able to see from the hall, where I stopped, that as soon as she entered the room she made as if to pick up the boy from the bed. But Nunz, as if someone were stealing him from her, quickly defended him with her arm and gave her a fierce, jealous look (not very different from the look that had flashed in her eyes the day she arrived, when I wanted to take from her hand the purse with the jewels; or from the look she had given me a few evenings ago, when she declared: I, however, wouldn’t let you leave!).
“Eh, what are you afraid of?” said the midwife, insistent, with her brusque, military ways, “I won’t break him!” Then Nunz laughed, ashamed of herself, and gave him up.
At that point, nauseated by the sight of that newly born creature, who was shrieking with his toothless mouth, I retreated from the hall into my room; but I left the door half open, so I could hear what happened, because I suspected that the old woman, with her executioner’s hands, might still do some harm to N., or even kill her. Her powerful, muffled steps reverberated through the house, while she busied herself in the little room, and passed back and forth in the hall, moving with assurance, as if she were still familiar with our castle, though it was some fifteen years since she’d been there. A couple of times N.’s voice reached me, giving instructions, but so low and weak that I could barely distinguish the words. As for the midwife, she, as usual, expressed herself only in authoritative mumblings or bombastic utterances. And the only person with whom she deigned to converse was my stepbrother. I understood that, to wash and dress him, she went with him into an unused room, opposite the small room; so that, through the open doors, Nunz from her bed could watch the operation. And while she waited, in the bed, for the moment when she would have him again, the old woman, in attending to him, seemed to have a kind of private conference with him, as if only she could understand him, and the remaining persons of the family were nothing but common upholstery. “You,” her large voice said to him, in a ceremonious and fascinated tone, “must certainly weigh more than four kilos. You’re very handsome. Really a fine boy.” And at these words N.’s faint voice could be heard from the small room, laughing, and pleased.
“And what nice flesh,” the midwife went on speaking, in the other room, “you’re a colossus, you’re a feast of roses and flowers. And you came out all by yourself, with your own cleverness, what a good boy, like a rabbit. You’ll learn to walk by yourself, with no help, and the girls will go crazy for you; and you’ll sing like the tenor Caruso. What lovely hair, already curling. And lashes around your eyes already! You came out already decked in your own beauty! You’re like a rose embroidered with gold. And what fine little thighs. What a fine bottom you have. And what’s your name?”
From the other room, the small voice answered for him:
“Carmine Arturo.”
“Oh, like that, you’ve got two names! I also have two names: Fortunata and Emanuella.”
“But he,” the little voice specified from the other room, with some emphasis, “is also named Raffaele and Vito.”
. . . Here I, feeling dead tired, lay down and fell asleep. A couple of times in the night the urgent wailing of the infant wakened me; but, immediately hearing N. whispering in response, I fell asleep content, in the thought that she was alive. That whisper, carried to my half-closed door by the silent air, came very close to me, so that it seemed to be on my pillow. Near dawn, the song of a young cock reached me from a garden outside; and then, without opening my eyes, in a half sleep I imagined the island growing light, starting with the farthest strip of sea, up to the sandy beaches with the piles of cold seaweed. And the different colors of the houses, the beautiful gardens full of oranges, lemons, and dahlias. Since Nunz wasn’t dead, I longed to return to run victorious over my lands, like a grand vassal who has recovered his domain!
My body relaxed contentedly into sleep, but my heart waited for the moment of rising with a mixture of joy, comfort, and curiosity. And even then I understood nothing; I couldn’t foresee the sorrows, the torment, that the future days were already preparing for me.
The Sea Urchin
From the moment we awakened, the next day was a happy celebration. The light had risen so clear that it seemed to be April, not November twenty-third; and after sleeping until late morning I ran to the beach and the wharf, coming back up from the direction of the square. The sea, the air, and all the things I encountered on the street shared my happiness, as if the entire universe were my family. The gardens along the street, which, last night, seemed desert mirages, avoiding me, today celebrated me faithfully. And again I was in love with my island, everything I had always liked I liked again, because Nunz hadn’t died. As if, since the time when we were children, and I was here on Procida and she in Naples, it was she who instilled in the indifference of things a thought of intimacy for me, and without letting me know, like a great lady.
That very morning, she moved with her infant from the small room into a bigger one: the same that my father had assigned to her the day of her arrival, and where, at the time, she hadn’t wanted to sleep. Now, though, with the arrival of the infant, the fear of being alone at night had ended. And as for the nuptial chamber, that remained again the undivided property of my father; since she foresaw that, on his return, he would not endure the child’s crying every night and similar discomforts, which mothers don’t mind.
And so that notorious room of the first day is back in the headlines, as the journalists say. Right away, we carried in a new bed, chosen for the occasion among the many unused in the castle. It was a massive wooden double bed, painted with images, such as used to be done in Sorrento (landscapes, boats, the tarantella, and so on), and rather elegant. It was supplied with two mattresses and many pillows, which her woman friends, immediately rushing to visit, carefully beat and plumped. And here, like a queen, she received the congratulations of the others.
She wore her hair bound simply with a band, as she usually had it at night
; and on her shoulders was her woolen shawl, fastened with a common safety pin. She appeared proud, and even slightly self-important (but also, basically, confused), to be at the center of so many tributes; and toward her friends she maintained the attitude of a serious, reserved woman. If one of them began to lament, “Poor thing, you had to give birth alone, with no one, not even your husband around—like a cat! Your husband is always leaving you alone, eh, Donna Nunzià!” she responded only with a severe silence, as if warning that busybody to mind her own business.