by Elsa Morante
Involuntarily, N., with that last phrase, had provoked her mother to a fatal argument. At the words everybody likes it, she turned to her with an expression between rage and pity. “Oh, Nunziatè, don’t contradict Mamma,” she exclaimed, “when Mamma is here to defend her flesh and blood! Oh, yes, this cave is very fine! But Mamma is ashamed of having sent you here, it’s so hideous! And no family would stay here: that’s how much it’s liked! Well . . . the devils like it, that’s who likes it. Full of devils . . . Oh, You, my patience, help me not to overdo it!” she added, raising her eyes to Heaven and then covering her face with her hands.
But shortly afterward she showed her face again, with a different expression, grim and yet crafty: as if, behind the words she was about to say, she wished to imply also, on her account, who knows what other mysterious schemes! And, advancing toward us from the end of the hall, she began in a low, cautious voice: “You know, Nunziatè, you know, for myself there are certain things I believe and I don’t believe. I don’t say they aren’t true—without a doubt, they are truth! Only, I don’t always believe them. But surely you know what all the women down in the town say: that this house is cursed, and full of devils! They’re evil spirits and as soon as they see a woman they wake up and come running from every direction, and join together; and sooner or later they cause trouble, because they don’t want her here. And you know what they told me about your husband: that with all those spirits from Hell he’s as happy as Satan, and in fact, some say, he brings wives here just to annoy those devils: because the angrier they get, the more fun he has! But you, my child, now, you listen to Mamma: she does not want to leave you here in this house!” And as she spoke she began sobbing more uncontrollably than before.
N., seeing her mother weep, couldn’t restrain her tears; yet she reproached her: “Oh, Ma, in front of this infant, to speak of those things!” And with her fingers she made the sign of the cross on my stepbrother’s forehead.
Here I decided it was time to intervene. “Now, come on,” I said, contemptuous and haughty, addressing N.’s mother, “when will you be quiet? You make me laugh, and I don’t even care to explain to you certain truths, because you wouldn’t understand anything. But if all those women believe in devils, they shouldn’t be visiting here all the time. They talk a lot of nonsense; and then every day here they are again! One after the other, they come here, to our house!”
N.’s eyes rested on me, moved and vehement, as if to thank me for my alliance; and as if such an alliance inspired her to the supreme retort!
“They come! Yes! To our house!” she repeated, in her most glorious way, a great lady even as she wept. “They come here! And they even have coffee!”
Lamentations
Our relative stayed with us for four or five days, sleeping at night in N.’s room, where she had brought Silvestro’s cot. From the beginning, though, she must have been convinced that N. was absolutely determined not to separate from my father and not to leave our house: on this point, there remained nothing for the mother to do but set her mind at rest. And so, resigned to fate, she returned to Naples, where her other daughter was waiting for her.
In the days she spent with us after that dramatic start, she proved to be more easygoing and even pleasant. She sat for hours in N.’s room, conversing with her about a quantity of Neapolitan people and doings; and N., who was never very talkative with the town women, with her mother, on the other hand, was eager to discuss. She returned willingly to her own life as a girl; and on various occasions she even talked again about Vilèlm. But if her mother hinted at some comment against him, N. immediately darkened, withdrawing into herself. She was like a sensitive plant when it came to anything that might sound insulting to him.
Yet every so often our guest could not help venting her bitterness against my father; and, not daring to insist on that subject with N., she sometimes vented even to me! I certainly didn’t give her much satisfaction: at most I might concede a scowl, or some impatient grumbling. But, even if unwillingly, I sat and listened to her, since I was so eager to hear about him! She naturally didn’t dare to say too many bad things. But although she tried to be moderate, she always ended by reiterating in every tone her irrevocable opinion that the marriage was an absolute disaster for N.
“Think,” she repeated with pained and bitter looks that seemed to forget my person, as if she were speaking more to herself, “think that she, poor girl, was opposed to marrying him, she seemed to understand him, girl though she was: ‘Oh, Ma,’ she’d say, ‘I don’t feel I want to marry him!’ ‘You,’ I said, ‘speak with no knowledge. What are you looking for, the moon? A landowner, a millionaire, tall, handsome, who’s mad about you . . .’ ‘To me,’ she said, ‘he really doesn’t seem handsome. When I look him in the face, he gives me a sense of fear . . . I’m afraid of him . . . I’m afraid, Ma! I’d be happy not to get married . . . I’d be happy to become a nun . . .’ ‘You,’ I said, ‘you want to torture Mammeta, because you’re more obstinate than a mule . . .’ And so, insisting, I convinced her! And to do good I did evil, poor little girl of mine! Think! With so many fine young men who praised her, and they would have kept her like a rose in their buttonhole! Look, who did I settle her with instead? With that man . . . that man . . .”
Here N.’s mother, remembering that I was listening to her, recovered herself. But her eyes betrayed her hostility. It was evident that she was firmer than ever in her opinion that my father was a terrible husband. And finally, straining with every word to repress her angry scorn, she exclaimed:
“Is my child a cripple, an old woman, to be humiliated like this? Always alone, summer and winter, not even a line in the mail—worse than if she’d married a prisoner! And at least, when he does reappear, her husband should make a little more fuss, to console her. Instead . . . well, now I understand, how it is, this marriage . . . She won’t say and she defends him, but, even if she doesn’t want to, I can make her speak just the same. When I want to, with her, I’ve got a way, I know how to get the facts as they are . . .
“. . . Oh, my poor Nunziatella, she didn’t deserve to get married with that fate! Because when a woman marries, it isn’t enough to be married. A young married woman needs some other satisfaction as well. And the satisfaction is that her husband holds her near his heart, with some nice show of respect and feeling, and compliments her, with pretty words, and caresses, and kisses, even a husband’s beatings are like Oriental pearls! And when it’s cold and raining, it’s like the house has a great heating system! For that affection! Enough! But a husband who doesn’t put sugar in the coffee gives his wife a bad name: because a wife is not like a woman from a brothel, who he throws himself on for those two minutes, then turns around and fare-thee-well.
“Well, Violante, you can say it aloud: for that affection your Raffaele (even if he provoked you to resentment) could die with the conscience of the saints: because he kept his wife like a doll, and never made me look bad! Instead my poor Nunziatella—who would have thought?—had to get married for this shame: never some nice little compliment, never a caress, never a kiss: treated like a woman from a brothel.
“Imagine, such a pretty daughter, with that laughing mouth—folk would fall in love with her just saying hello! And when she passed by, the boys on the street, seeing all those curls, started singing, Curly, curly!”
The mother stated these great successes of N. with such emphasis and conviction that for an instant I was almost led to consider N. a kind of beautiful diva: and I saw her walking the streets of Naples, greeted by all the people; while a crowd of lovers, flanking her passage, sang serenades in her honor on mandolins and guitars!
The Conversion
In those days, since I was often present at the conversations of N. and her mother, I got to know various details of their life in Naples: doings, friendships, acquaintances, etc.
But the most extraordinary fact I learned was one concerning Wilhelm Gerace. Although it seemed almost incredible to me, that fact was the
plain truth; and in learning it I could explain what N. had meant, the long-ago day of her arrival, by the phrase but your father is a Christian now, which I had attached no importance to at the time. It was this: my father, in order to take N. as his wife, had converted to the Catholic religion!
By birth, as I’ve said, he was Protestant. Here is the story of his conversion, as I could reconstruct it from the conversations I heard.
Already for more than a month my father had been asking N. to marry him, and she, after much uncertainty, had just decided to accept him, to her mother’s satisfaction, and was finally about to tell him her decision, when she learned that he wasn’t a Catholic and that the marriage would be only at the city hall. At this news she had been so frightened that she no longer wanted even to see her suitor; and when her sister or other friends instructed by her warned that he was coming up from the street corner toward the alley, she immediately left the house, shaking like a madwoman, and took refuge in some other doorway. Her mother tried to restrain her, even rudely, because she was eager not to put off that suitor, the owner of a castle; but she developed the strength of a tiger, to free herself from her mother’s hands; and repeated—as she’d already said, once and for all—that it was impossible, she didn’t want a non-Christian husband, and rather than marry without the sacrament she would die. But her mother didn’t dare tell the man; and when he asked, again and again, “Why isn’t your daughter ever here? And may I know when she’ll give me her answer?” she tried to appease him with some civilities, without ever explaining. Then he became increasingly impatient and wondered at never finding the girl, exclaiming every time: “What sort of nonsense is this, that your daughter’s never home?” And, every time, the mother had to invent a new pretext, which didn’t seem very convincing. He would sit there, waiting for his love, and meanwhile the mother, hoping that she would make up her mind to return, and at least greet him, tried to entertain him as well as she could with her conversation. But he sat sullenly, without saying a word, and didn’t even look her in the face: he’d stay for half an hour, or even an hour: out in the alley, sitting on the chair in front of the door, kicking cans, or inside, lying on the bed, chasing flies. Finally he left, more sullen than before, and said to the mother: “Goodbye. Tell your daughter to be here tomorrow, at this time, because I’ll come to hear her answer.”
So much the better! In this way, he himself had given her warning beforehand: and the next day, long before the fixed hour struck, she took care not to be found, running away to hide in some hole-in-the-wall in the alley. “She had to go . . . you must excuse us . . . holy Madonna, no idea how long they’ll keep that girl there now . . . She said she’ll do her utmost to get back soon . . . but who knows? Circumstances beyond our control! You must excuse us,” said the mother. And he decided to wait, sitting there like one who is meditating murder; but the girl didn’t come out of her hiding place until one of her trusted friends told her that he’d grown tired of waiting and left.
Finally, one day, arriving without warning, he caught her at the moment she was fleeing, looking to hide in the alley; and he grabbed her and pushed her back into the house and drove the mother in, too. Then he closed the door and said: “You damn bitches: if you don’t stop this comedy, the only way you’ll leave is on a stretcher or in a coffin.”
The girl, already unnerved by so many days of struggle and fear, barely had the strength to answer in a faint voice: “Don’t hurt my mother. I’m the one who should die. I’d die rather than go through with this marriage.” And then the mother intervened, and, with suitable words, trying not to offend his religion, revealed the truth.
When he heard it, he fell back on the bed, where he was sitting, and broke out into one of those laughs that he sometimes had: like someone watching a comic scene and, at the same time, eating a sour fruit. Then sitting up again he looked at the girl resolutely, with an expression that was tranquil yet threatening and ironic, and asked her:
“So, the whole story is that it’s important to you to get married in church, in the Catholic rite?”
The girl nodded.
“I agree. What do I care!” he exclaimed. “As far as I’m concerned we can get married in a mosque or a pagoda, according to Chinese rites. I can become a Jew or convert to the prophet Muhammad. Anyway, I don’t believe in any God, and, one or the other, it’s all the same to me.”
She sighed. He got up.
“Well,” he said to her, “then we’re agreed.”
Trembling, and not daring to look at him, she moved her lips but didn’t say a word. Then she sighed again and finally said:
“But maybe you don’t know . . . ?”
“Come, what else does he have to know?” the mother interrupted. “He said he’ll make you happy, that you can get married in church. Now leave him alone, so he can rest in holy peace! Why are you still bugging him now?”
“Oh, Ma, let me speak,” the girl begged, almost in tears. “It’s better to say it all right away, and not leave out anything.” And in a slightly rough, cracked voice, catching her breath every so often, as if she were running, she resumed: “But you . . . do you know? That to have a true Christian wedding ceremony both spouses have to be Christians of the true Church, of the true family whose head is His Holiness Our Lord. I’ve been to the priest, here at San Raffaele, to find out all the explanations of the true ceremony, and the priest also told me that. Because for a true marriage it’s not enough to be valid in this world, it has to be valid in Heaven as well. Because Holy Matrimony is a sacrament, and the sacraments aren’t just written on paper, they’re also written in Paradise. There in Paradise only the eternal truths are written, sanctified by divine approval and the approval of the First Apostle. And so the Lord made us this gift of the sacraments in order to assure us that a thing we do down here on earth becomes an eternal verity in Paradise. Two people can’t be joined together without the eternal truth: that would be an ugly union. And so they both have to be Christians, with holy Baptism, Christening, and the Eucharist of the true Church presided over by the Holy Father who sits on the throne of Peter. Then a marriage becomes the true Christian sacrament! And if a marriage is not like that, I won’t consent to it.”
With the conclusion of her speech, the girl appeared to have consumed in the presence of her lover all the reserves of audacity she had left. From then on, in their later encounters, it was much if she sometimes managed to say four words together without trembling.
Briefly: that very day the indomitable suitor also accepted the final condition that she required, and that was to convert from Protestant to Catholic, performing all the duties imposed on novices in the Roman Church, up to the nuptial sacrament . . . And he listened, more curious than concerned, to the information that, with her few remaining breaths, she believed it best to impart: nor did he make any objections, only some slothful comments, as if certain things did not concern his soul and scarcely his body. Among other things, the girl told him that he would have to confess: “What! I have to confess!” “Yes, you have to make a general confession—of all the sins committed in your life . . .” she explained, in a voice hoarse with timidity, “and first you have to examine your conscience . . .” At this, he began to meditate, as if he were undertaking his examination of conscience at that moment; yet from his attitude one would have said that this examination didn’t give him much trouble. “Well, of course,” he declared then, in the tone of someone announcing a grand enterprise, “I’ll make a general confession!”
So they became engaged. Now that she had promised herself to him, she no longer thought of avoiding him, although the mere sight of him, at a distance, could make her freeze with fear. What scared her most was to find herself alone with him; nor could she have said the reason for this, since, when there was no one else around, he treated her in the usual manner, neither paying her much attention nor offering her much intimacy, and he didn’t even take her arm when they went out. In that they differed from all other lovers, who wen
t around arm in arm, and close together; maybe, she thought, he was different because he was born in a foreign country, and that was how fiancés behaved in his country. If he sometimes touched her, it was only to hurt her; for example, pull her hair, or shake her by the arm, or other such abuses. They weren’t terrible abuses, but enough to make her tremble. And then he’d let her alone and laugh fiercely, saying: “If you’re so scared now, when we’re barely engaged, what will happen when we’re married?”
Meanwhile, she followed him in his apprenticeship as a Catholic, with constant secret apprehensions: since she couldn’t forget that he had said he believed in no God.
As he had agreed, he performed all the acts and practices necessary to join the Church, and from his indifferent and enigmatic mood it was impossible to know what he thought about it. With his fiancée, he clothed himself in mystery on the subject; and once when she dared to express to him some worry he assumed a fierce and solemn pose, and reproached her for her doubts, even asserting that his conversion was so holy and conscientious that almost every day now he had visions of angels flying through the air, and other such marvels.
The moment for general confession arrived for him in the afternoon, the day before the wedding. He had her come with him to the church, where at that hour there was no other worshipper; and while he was at the grille of the confessional, she knelt in a pew not far away to wait. Every so often, amid the intense whispering close to the grille, lips concealed behind the hollow of his hand, he absentmindedly spoke a little louder; and then she was afraid of hearing some word of his, which would not be good, because confession is a secret between the priest and the penitent, and no one else should surprise that secret. But luckily the only phrase that reached her distinctly was this: Word of honor! Word of honor! Which, at intervals during the confession, the penitent repeated more than once. What, then, he affirmed on his honor only the confessor heard.