The Lost Father

by Marina Warner

  ‘What was she like?’ he said, instead.

  Talvi became thoughtful, assumed the air of a man dipping deep into his emotional experience, and said, ‘What can I say?’

  Davide paused, dangled, hating being dangled, could not but prompt his friend.

  ‘Fantastic, you know, hot, juicy, noisy, rank, as a cat, and twice as loud.’ Tavli demonstrated, throwing his head back and panting in loud, short, piercing squeals.

  Davide shook his head, sorrowfully, he knew now his friend had no hope; only the worst made a noise. The women he would know would never make a sound, but give themselves tranquilly, like spring water flowing around him, like a contralto’s music, not a soprano’s shrieks, a lullaby rather than an aria, like his mother, who bit down on a towel and hung from a rope when her babies were coming so that no one should hear her pain, as was the custom, he’d been told by his father as they waited in the courtyard on the bench in the shade, for Franco to arrive, the only one whose birth Davide could remember, for he was seven years younger.

  ‘Disgusting,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Exciting,’ said Talvi. ‘I hadn’t expected it. It makes you …’ he gestured with his hands in front of his belly. Davide jumped up; the crickets leapt all at once in alarm as if he’d splashed water from a puddle. He said, ‘I’m leaving here. I can’t stand it here any longer. I’ll go away… to Argentina! To America!’ America would be better than Naples; it would be quiet and clean and rich, he would continue to be happier than Talvi, due order would be restored, everything back to rights, as it should be. Tommaso Talvi, with ulcerated flesh, would be dead of sin, and he, Davide, would have a wife, and live in America off the fat.

  Tommaso got up too, and walked out into the full sunlight beyond the shade of the olive, turned and opened his arms to embrace the vista of knotted trunks and said, in gross sarcasm, ‘And leave all this? Surely not.’

  ‘I’ll come and visit you in Naples before I leave,’ Davide replied magnanimously.

  ‘Oh, the little saint will dare to, will he? Careful now. Think what might happen…’

  Davide smiled, and shook his head, ‘Not for that,’ he said, ‘I’m keeping myself for the woman I marry. You can laugh, go ahead. But I mean it And I’ll stick to it.’

  Talvi flicked his fingers against his chin in a gesture of derision. ‘What a gentleman!’ he said. ‘What chivalry!’

  ‘That’s not in your line much, these days, is it? It’s Naples this, and Naples that, and this is what we’re like in the big city, we spit on priests, and everyone’s a whore and the ones that aren’t go to whores. You’ve got yourself so filthy it’s bubbling into your eyes, and you can’t see anything but filth,’ and Davide stabbed two fingers at Talvi towards his pupils, and Talvi cocked his head on one side, and took the gesture with a snicker in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Lucky I don’t care any more, isn’t it? Lucky your laying devil curses on me doesn’t matter to me, isn’t it? Lucky I don’t believe you can put horns on my head like that, with a wave of your hand. Otherwise …’ And his pale eyes seemed to flicker and then go out in their coldness. Then all of a sudden he grinned. ‘Your trouble is, you take everything so seriously. It’s only women, you know.’

  Davide had dropped his hand upon the instant Tommaso identified the malediction in his spontaneous movement; he nursed it now, rubbing it with his other hand, as if he had put it to the fire in an ordeal, remembering his nightmare, his anger extinguished. He only echoed back with an empty heart, ‘Only women, yes, of course.’

  Rupe was a little place, and Talvi had kicked over its traces before him, and with no fuss. Then Davide checked himself: the littleness was contagious, it was making him petty. How could he envy Talvi a life in the army? Even if it did give him independence, at least from home. He would never never let himself be manoeuvred into that way of escape. He flung his arm around his friend, and said, ‘Forgive me, you’re back, I’m so pleased you’re back. We’ll have a good time, you’ll see, I shan’t let my bad old temper stop us, I’m just jealous because I’d like to be going to Naples too, I can’t wait to finish my exams, and then I’ll be there too, in Naples, and we’ll get up to all sorts of things together. Ignore me. Try to get past the shell to the inside! I’m good inside!’ And Davide thumped his chest and his friend’s, and a rush of comradeliness filled his head and lifted his spirits, and he found himself wondering not for the first time how extraordinarily pleasant and comfortable it was to speak out in affection, how the words banished the sour breath of his earlier anger and envy and hurt, how, once spoken, though they had begun as a kind of pretence, they made up a new story for what had passed between them; feelings, adopted in propitiation, turned into an authentic mood. He felt radiantly magnanimous towards Tommaso, he embraced him again, released him when Tommaso at last hugged him back, and together they made for the town while Davide punctuated their faster pace with excited anticipation of the treats his mother would set before his family on Easter Sunday when Tommaso and his mother and his father were of course invited.

  5

  From The Duel

  RUPE, 1911

  FRIED ARTICHOKE HEARTS stood arranged around hard-boiled eggs which had been tinted pink and yellow and scarlet and blue in honour of Easter Day. There were bottled pimentos, both the saffron and the vermilion kind, and a majolica green bowl of paler grey-green olives on the table, with big-bellied carboys in straw jackets of fruity ruby red wine from last summer’s grapes already unstoppered, and a domed, dense-grained wheel of bread. The first tomatoes of the year, firm and cushiony, with tucks where they plumped out around the bottom of the stalk were quartered in their own juice on a dish with oregano and slender crescents of a veined purple onion, sliced with the first stone pressing of olive oil. Nunzia had spread one of the lawn threadwork cloths from her dowry under the food she offered as accompaniment to the centrepiece of her family’s hospitality – a kid killed for the feastday of the Lamb in honour of the resurrection. The gathering would be large: a capretto was a rare treat.

  Caterina and Rosalba, working at Sabina’s side in the cool of the pantry’s shade, were pinching pouches of dough to seal in the stuffing of cream cheese, pepper and chopped basil and lining up the results on a white tea towel powdered with coarse rice flour. They greeted Tommaso unselfconsciously, not like a grown-up visitor of the opposite sex with whom they should use manners. But he bowed his head, and made Rosalba, practised in modesty, worry whether she should curtsey in response.

  Curtseying was not a country custom, and besides, even had they been in town, she wasn’t sure she should to one of her brother’s friends, whom she’d known since he was a boy. Still, she wondered, had she seemed uncouth, a country girl who didn’t know how to behave, by not returning his compliment? Or had he inclined his head like a peasant, before a padrone? In which case, it would certainly be wrong to return his gesture, in any way. In her confusion, as she continued the preparations for the meal, she looked over to him to ascertain that she had not given offence. His returning look reassured her. She longed to please, Davide noticed with sympathy commingled with impatience. He was trying to summon back his bubbling feelings of well-being and brotherly love, but gradually everything seemed to combine to stifle them. What could be wrong with him, that his friend’s bowing should irritate him so, that Tommaso’s frank fond greeting of his mother should seem to him so casually proprietary, that his instant engagement in argument with his father, as he drank down the dash of grenadine cordial he was offered before they began eating, should strike such a false note? In his mounting misery at the loss of the goodness he had earlier recovered, Davide drifted through the meal, unable to participate in the rising arguments, to find a happy role as ally or adversary. Davide’s father was remonstrating, ‘What’ll it cost? A fortune. Why don’t they spend it here? Here, where it’s needed. For the love of God, an aqueduct’s been promised since I can’t remember how long. My own father used to talk of it. The land was requisitioned
years ago. But nothing happens. The cisterns run empty by July if we’re lucky, and who cares? No, forget it. Forget those godforsaken southerners, those peasants. Let’s go, let’s cover ourselves in glory – in Africa,’ and his usually mild tones rose in indignation. ‘Africa!’ From what Davide could follow, he agreed with his father, rather than his friend; but when he tried to voice an opinion, he sounded to his own ears savourless and dull, eager to agree with authority, fearful to break out across the frontiers of duty and obedience and honour. No one paid attention to him. So he fell silent, and in his speechlessness, found himself associated with the women who were, as expected, attending to, not participating in, the discussion. Ranged with his mother, his sisters, he was cowed; he felt, not just some months’ Tommaso’s junior, but a child again, like his little brother Franco, also quiet and busy with his food, as if he had not yet made that transition from the mother’s arms to the father’s side that should duly occur at thirteen.

  Tommaso was saying: ‘You all go to America, you think the pot of gold lies there, but you’re wrong, you should wait around. Things are changing in Italy, even in Italy! We will be our own masters yet!’

  ‘That’s what they teach you in military service, is it?’ remarked his father, from one end of the table. ‘I see the mailbags from the United States Post Office every day, with the money our people are sending back. It makes me think of going there too, getting away from this cesspit where nothing changes and finding dollars in America.’

  ‘Beh!’ his neighbour interposed, chewing as he spoke. ‘Why aren’t you content here? You’re not a labourer, breaking your back in the fields all day. You’re a solid man, here. You have something.’

  Luigi Pittagora rejoined, ‘You remember that great man, Carlo Cafiero, a Neapolitan? How fat he was? You couldn’t get fatter than he was in gold, and he wanted to give it all away to the revolution; he was Malatesta’s friend, and Malatesta parted him from his money, sweet and easy does it – all they got for their pains was years of exile and prison, and a few dead policemen.’

  ‘Umberto the King was shot,’ Tommaso added under his breath. Davide’s father heard him.

  ‘That’s why the people in the League talk more sense, in my opinion. They don’t want riots and bloodshed. They want justice by fair means.’ He pointed a finger at Tommaso. ‘I recommend you to reflect on their ideas, young man.’

  Boldly, Tommaso went on, light dancing in his pale eyes, ‘That’s some good that came out of America, at least: the assassin from New Jersey, here’s to him!’ He drank up, laughing.

  ‘And they burned the debtors’ bills! And the title deeds of property!’ Rosa registered this, her grandfather’s only interjection.

  ‘Imagine, after such action, what muddles, what chances for further, stupendous villainy! Anyone could rush in then, with trumped-up documents, forgeries, lies.’ The elder Talvi shook his head.

  ‘Cafiero, that rich son of a pig, he came this way, tried to make the peasants rise on his own estates,’ Davide’s father was talking, ‘but he found them hard to excite down Acquaqueta way in spite of everything. His mind gave way, poor fool. You know, he died indoors, worrying that he would enjoy more than his fair share of sunshine if he went out.’

  ‘Sunshine!’ Nunzia sniffed. ‘Moonshine, more like.’

  With patient system, her daughters helped the men to food, sliced the big loaf for them, arranged the shining vegetables and heaped bowls of glazed yellow and green earthenware, steaming and fragrant; and then removed the dishes, stacking them quietly so that the men should not be interrupted in their flow. Yet even the padding, gliding, stooping bodies of his sisters, assisted by his mother, at the change from the hot food to the offerings of the first cherries, became visible and eloquent to Davide in his exclusion from the conference between the other older men and Tommaso. He noted his mother’s fluttering glances across at her daughters, and he winced, as the understanding pierced him that the men were oblivious to him. He almost laughed aloud. What vanity, to imagine that Tommaso was continuing his exhibition of savoir-faire acquired in Naples for his benefit Then, almost assuming his mother’s shape, he observed that Tommaso’s broad back shifted in rhythm to Caterina’s movements, that he swivelled on his angled chair, sometimes on one leg, sometimes on two, to keep her not in his sights but outside them. Davide caught his start when she leant over to give him a clean plate, how he set his chair straight and then, after a falter, flowed on, hammering the air with his clenched hands as he made his points, as if determined not to notice her. And Davide saw, too, how on the other hand he accepted the ministrations of Rosalba with pointed gratitude, looking up at her when it was her turn to bend over him, though she did not need to bend from the waist, wand-like as her sister, but rather leaned her plump body forward to adjust some dish, brush off some crumbs with a dithery movement that suggested – again he felt a stab of pity, followed by impatience – that her own body was always in her way. Tommaso’s gaze flickered over her, appraisingly, and he had made no such reckoning of Caterina, as Davide grasped. It was hardly necessary. His mother was aching at the evidence before them both; her ache transmitted itself through her flesh like a smell, and he absorbed it.

  The feasting for the day of Christ’s resurrection painted bright patches of colour on the faces of the men; their voices rose, their limbs spread, they called out compliments on the food to the women who made it; Davide’s uncle praised Nunzia to her father, singling out her good humour, comparing it favourably to his own wife’s melancholy, to which she in her turn, hearing herself commented upon, tossed her head, and set her jaw. Again, he addressed the assembled men, stabbing the air with a fork, ‘There you are, a sourpuss.’

  Davide’s father, catching sight of the Easter cake, the swelling mound of almonds and millet, scented with rosewater and baked to the colour of the golden fields of August, called for silence by tinkling his wine glass, and Rosalba, who was holding the serving dish out from her body with both hands, stood and stopped in the door at the hurly-burly her proffering excited. She took the men’s cheers as somehow directed at herself, at her person, not at the food alone, but unlike the chorus that might greet the appearance of some women of the town, they did not place her in danger, and she allowed herself a small smile in acknowledgement, and came forward to set the dish down.

  Sometimes, overhearing the heckling and the comments in the street, she had wondered, What must it be like, to have a man think so dirty about you? And then thrust the thought from her. For a moment, as she had stood there, Davide noted how she truly recalled the virgin martyrs he had dreamed of, with her Easter cake as emblem, like the twin mound of her breasts St Agatha bears on a dish in heaven.

  The women cut their own slices smaller than the men’s, as they were accustomed to do, though Rosalba picked at the crumbs fallen from the baking pan. Rarely did me family eat so much, break so many eggs for a single meal, or stay so long at the table; the pleasure of idleness rocked her limbs, the restless noise of her own worries grew still and their voices faded in her head. She was paying attention to the men’s talk, to the discussion of money, the fall in the price of wool, and the cunning of a certain local landowner’s brutal conditions. ‘But his wife is so ugly, it doesn’t matter how rich he is!’ said someone, laughing. Over in Gioia del Colle, a child had been born with a lucky mole, said another. Then Davide’s father brought up the Socialists’ opposition to the war, which Tommaso scorned; and the talk of money resumed. Several joined in to complain about the tribute required by the deputy in Riba. He was new, he was worse than the one before. Rosa’s mother made a rare interruption: as annual leaseholders, they too owed tithes to the landowner. ‘That measuring device they use, it gets bigger every year. No hens lay eggs that size.’ Then she laughed, ‘We’ll have to start keeping ostriches next.’

  ‘You poor things,’ murmured Tommaso’s mother, looking glad however that the Pittagoras suffered some misfortune.

  ‘Then we can ride diem,’ put in
Tommaso, and he imitated the motion, clinging on to a bucking animal. ‘And make hats for your sweet girls, so they look like ladies, beautiful ladies, cosmopolitan ladies, ladies of elegance and city manners.’ And again he mimed, this time a mincing gait, and sketched in the air a picture hat, with a spray of feathers, sweeping down.

  Davide wanted to burst out, ‘You hypocrite, stop making up to my sisters and playing the shining knight, I saw you go to communion today, and it made me sick. How could you? When you don’t even… You looked like … I saw you coming back from the communion rails, with your eyes down and your hands folded, as if you weren’t putrid inside, but I know. I know.’ He flexed his hands under the cloth, and shouted irritably at Rosa, ‘You’ll never make a city woman, thank God,’ and then, seeing her face fall, wondered at it My sisters belong here, he told himself fiercely, like almonds, like cherries, like the percoco, which blends the sweetness of the almond and the apricot together, much better than those whores he’s talking about.

  Sentimentally, his father called out to Caterina, down at the end of the table where the women sat. She came, he sat her on his knee, and bounced her, then ordered her off, shouting she was now too high to bounce. ‘Sing,’ he said, ‘sing for us.’ He sat her down next to the piano, and tinkled out an arpeggio to announce the performance.

  She straightened, took up a position at his side, adjusted her feet in a v like a ballerina in first position and, holding out the panels of her skirt, nodded to him to begin.

  Rosalba soon joined in, their mother too, and gradually, quietly, all the women, while the men appreciated them. Among them, only Davide joined in the singing with his rich, sweetly melodious voice, underscoring with its surprising deep timbre the quavery piping of his sister’s soprano.