The Lost Father

by Marina Warner

  When he had returned home that day, after leaving Franco, Maria Filippa had placed a dish on the table, filled with warm fresh taralli. ‘Immacolata has learned the recipe in her Domestic Science period at school, with some improvements,’ Maria Filippa said, raising her eyes to heaven at the crudeness of the teacher’s version, so that her eyebrows, already high in her forehead, jumped into her hairline. ‘Imagine,’ she went on, ‘No cinnamon! No rosewater!’

  Davide ate one of the sweet ring-shaped biscuits, then another, and a third, and would have laughed at her dear comical face and appreciated the baking, if his head hadn’t maddened him. But all of a sudden, observing the sparkling powder of fine sugar, he pushed the plate away, and accused her, ‘You weren’t expecting me now, were you? I’ve come home before you wanted me to, haven’t I? These biscuits were for somebody else, weren’t they? Since when do you spend money on the best sugar? While I’m out you steal your lovers in here and entertain them, with sweet biscuits, almonds and sugar, just perfectly warm, oh yes, I know your tricks, women’s tricks. When there’s no one else there to see. Cinnamon! Rosewater! Stuff for kissing and cooing over, side by side, here, in my house, how dare you? You women are all the same – a man just has to turn the corner of the street and the next thing, they’re all eyes and lips and tongue and sucking me’ – he tripped, changed – ‘sucking him towards them. Whirlwinds, water spouts, twisting and entangling and spinning us to destruction. You are nothing but a …’ There was Maria Filippa, however, looking at him through her glasses which had misted up in horror and grief at his outburst, gulping the air like a fish; she was not like his sister Rosa, not one of those girls he had to protect from their own compulsions, but his own beloved and burdened wife, so reserved in bed that he even regretted her modesty himself, and so far from the whore he was about to call her, he shuddered from head to foot.

  She was screaming at him now, that with a man like him she should have found another, her life had been nothing but work, work, work, worry, worry, worry, and now he made out she was a common whore, when she hadn’t had an instant’s pleasure in her livelong days. She beat the side of her head with her fist, and shouted, ‘What an idiot I’ve been! Could anyone ever knock any sense into this thick skull, and make me see what kind of a man I’m stuck with?’ She leapt towards him and, seizing the plate of biscuits, brought it down on top of her head until it shattered, and fell onto her arms. She was shaking with tears and laughter, and Davide began to laugh too, recalling above all his own mother who had broken their best service all those years ago when Rosa wouldn’t come to her senses about Tommaso …

  But when Maria Filippa heard Davide laugh, she twisted up from her stricken position and her eyes fixed on him with hatred, ‘You’re laughing, are you? Well, I’ve got plenty to laugh about too, Ha ha aha, ha ha aha, ha ha ha,’ she howled, jackal-like, till saliva flecked her lips. ‘I’ve given up my life for a fool and he’s never even noticed it. Which makes me something special, a real double double idiot, ha ha ha.’ And she tugged at the patterned chenille cloth spread on the table. Davide threw himself on it to stop her pulling it off altogether with the bowl of fruit and the jug of water and glasses with it; so they grappled, and in the contact something gave way, melted within them both and they clung together, aching in their heads and their bones as if they’d been caught out on the mountains in the winter and been chilled to the marrow.

  He remembered the feel of her tears on his own face, and covered his eyes in the Caffe Gambrinus; in shame for all those years ago when he had provoked such outrage in her, but in sweetness too, for jealousy was a sign of love, every woman knew that. It showed how desirable her man found her if he feared others might come after her. He’d probably given her pleasure with his tantrum. He hoped so; it proved he was a man after all, a man of passion and breeding, with strong heart and blood from his fathers. And he himself had been a faithful husband, not that he hadn’t had his chances – of course he’d had his chances – other supplications and wooing had come his way, more spirited too than that woman from the stationery shop. But he had chosen to serve his womenfolk with constancy.

  His head was growing heavy, he would ask for some coffee when the waiter returned; it was dark indoors, darker than he would have expected on a showery early summer afternoon, when the sun outside does not dazzle. He lowered his head on to the table; the marble felt fresh in contact with his flushed skin. Shame to disturb his toilette, when he had been so meticulous that morning. He must go now, to the apartment block, and make his calls on the tenants. He had the rentbook with him, in his breast pocket. He need only get up. The afternoon was drawing on and he must proceed with despatch, for he had promised his star, Fantina, his dearest daughter, that he would be back early.

  They were all waiting for him at home now, he knew, in the olive grove, where the snails would be out crawling in the rain. Their voices were rising in a strong chorus in his ears. He must reach them. The doves were fluttering upwards to the music, and his Maria Filippa – an unusual diva, wearing spectacles – with Pericle on her arm in a lace bonnet and button boots, was greeting him under the olives. Their three elder girls were standing beside her and the baby, and Fantina was darting around them. The trees were growing, it seemed to him, on the stage of a great opera house. Everything was in shadow, for the tiers of gas candles – an excellent improvement, that – were dimming, slowly, slowly, taking the sight of his daughters and his wife away from him, so that he found himself alone, as he began to sing.

  13

  From The Duel

  RUPE, 1912

  THE INTEREST OF the two sisters in Tommaso Talvi was common talk in Rupe when Davide came back for the summer from his law studies in Riba; Franco’s story of his younger sister fainting, with Tommaso’s name on her lips, had scored him new popularity in the elementary school. They played the scene in the break, taking turns to loosen the bows of their pinafores at the neck, fall against the playground wall, and moan with love pangs. In the bars, older men shook their heads. The minaciello, the devil that fastens itself on a woman and wears her out with longing, had sunk its claws deep into Rosa; the arts of priests or the sorcery of old women could not pick him off. Such heat in young women was a dangerous evil; they felt sorry for Davide and for his father, though there lurked in many of them a gloating anticipation of a quarrel. For the moment, though, they kept counsel when they saw the elder Pittagora. Nobody wanted to be the butt of his necessary anger. But it was different for Davide. He sensed that something was wrong at home as soon as he arrived.

  His mother laid siege to Rosalba’s confidence, but in her sixteenth year she had shut her mind to all her mother’s advice. In the days since Tommaso’s visit, she seemed to grow heavier, slower, as if the dreams that worked in her were swelling her body. The deftness she showed with the needle left her, her work fell from her hands, she botched household tasks lumpishly, she overfilled the lamps and knocked them over while lighting them; once she even set on fire a patch of their best carpet. Her mother was near weeping. Such an ill omen, she moaned. But Rosa seemed beyond even superstitious dread, in a padded chamber of her own making, somewhere beyond reach. She left pasta to boil dry and bumped into the furniture as if it had grown bigger since the last time she passed; she overcooked the iron and scorched the linen, until Nunzia snatched it from her hand and told her to stop, for the love of Christ, to leave everything alone.

  Caterina on the other hand became lighter, more agile as her sister’s bulk seemed to increase; she lived in her own grace effortlessly, and seemed, after her single spell of unconsciousness, to be refusing to exchange the child’s elfin speediness and darting for the slow ripeness of the nubile young woman. When her mother asked her if she’d like to join in the passeggiata rather than watch it from the sidelines – she was fourteen now, and eligible to go with Rosalba if she wanted – Caterina refused, with a laugh. She played cards at the table with the tapestry hung over it down to the floor; usually alone at differ
ent types of patience, though sometimes Rosa joined her. But Rosa’s state of possession made her lose track of the game, and Caterina always beat her, which she found boring. She couldn’t provoke Rosa either. She drew mazes, webby doodles which meandered across the back of used sheets of paper she retrieved with the help of a teacher who’d taken an interest in her. Her mazes wound in dishevelled bobbins with ladders leading one way or another and a choice of gates that also led up dead ends. ‘There is a way through, go on, try and find it,’ she’d say, pressing the paper on her father, ‘There’s a way to heaven. Try!’ Heaven was a space at one end of the maze with a puffball cloud and the portrait of a man with a beard in it. Her father would take up her pencil impatiently and come again and again to a standstill. Rosa would give this game a little more attention, but again, the pencil would soon drop from her fingers, after she had wandered once more down one of Caterina’s blind alleys.

  One day her mother began to do the maze, backwards, leaving heaven and advancing towards the start; and found that there was no way through.

  Caterina said, when her mother asked, ‘I always blocked the way through. No roads lead to heaven!’ She chuckled. ‘It took you an age to find out.’

  In the provinces of southern Italy, Ninfania and its neighbours, lie most of the ancient entries into the underworld: the field of flowers where Proserpina was snatched to be Pluto’s bride below, and malarial Lake Avernus, afloat in a mist humming with mosquitoes near Virgil’s point of descent; the grottoes of Mercury, where he halted to attach his wings on returning to the upper air, gaped clammily, toothed with stalactites, near Castellana. Caterina’s hell wasn’t the dark wood of antiquity or the platinum mirror of Avernus cracked with reeds, but the inferno where the Virgin presided. There was a statue in a niche at the corner of the square, where the Madonna floated above carved flames. The scarlet paint was slightly chipped, but the pink-faced parish priest in a biretta still looked as if he were burning well, alongside many other sinners, people perbene in good suits as well as peasants. Caterina did not worry her mother, she had a proper sense of how things stood. Unlike Rosa, who did not seem to understand how thin a crust stood between them and hell. Nunzia recited, interceding for her daughter, Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, over and over, charming away Rosa’s malady. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners …

  Franco, bobbing up and down at Davide’s side when he arrived back, filled in his elder brother with relish, ‘Caterina went to meet Tommaso in church, in the chapel of Our Lady – she spent a whole half lira on a candle, it was stupid – and she met him there and they talked. I was following her all the time, I had to see, for the love of Christ.’

  ‘Don’t blaspheme,’ said Davide.

  ‘Oh, all right I didn’t hear what they were saying, because I stayed back in case she saw me. But when I was following her on the way back home, she fell down in the street, and I found her, like that …’ His jaw dropped and he rolled his eyes, ‘She was saying, “Tommaso, Tommaso, Tommaso,” all sighing and crazy.’ He plucked at Davide, who looked as if he weren’t listening.

  ‘Then – this is even stranger – Tommaso was coming down the street, it was the same day, but later, and he had a bird he’d shot in his bag. He met Rosa, she was coming towards him, and he gave it to her, but she ran away, she was flushed, bright red, and about to cry. When she got home with it, Mamma asked her where she got it from, and she answered that she didn’t know. So then Mamma was cross, and Rosa said Grandpa had shot it, but Mamma could see it was a lie – Grandpa wasn’t even around – and she snatched the bird from Rosa and was about to smash it on to the floor when Sabina took it from her and then, God in heaven!’ – Davide was twitching with annoyance – ‘Mamma snatched it back and it fell on the ground and blood came out on the floor. But Mamma still hadn’t finished. Rosa ran away and when Mamma saw that she opened the sideboard and took out the plates one by one and smashed them on to the tiles, she was screaming and crying. Then I had to go to Aunt Lisa’s to borrow some money and buy some new dishes so that Papà wouldn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Davide.

  ‘Now you’re swearing,’ said Franco.

  ‘I’m allowed to, for the love of God. Leave me alone. I’m the eldest son, remember? I do what I like.’

  ‘Mamma went on trying to catch Rosa and get the truth out of her, but she’s like someone in a trance.’ Franco lolled and tried to look soupy. ‘Cati too gives little secret smiles – she’s driving Mamma out of her mind. Mamma is praying all the time. It’s a mess, I’m telling you.’

  Seeing that his brother remained dumb, Franco resumed, with relish. ‘One day, I got back for lunch from school and Rosa and Mamma were all crying, Mamma was saying over and over, “How unhappy I am, poor me, such a disgrace, daughters with no shame, no shame at all. How could it happen to me?” Mercifully Papà was still at school – Mamma had tried to talk to Rosa one more time, but she’d stayed mute, as usual, though Cati kept saying, “It’s not me, I’ve nothing to do with it! He’s keen on her,” pointing at Rosa, and smiling like a fool. Mamma began shrieking, “What a disgrace, what a disgrace,” again, and again, “She has no shame, going with a man, a no good man,” and saying that she’d never let her daughter marry a postal clerk’s son, and from Trieste! “Think of the family, never, never …” And Cati kept on giving little smirks at me, as if there were some wonderful secret I should know about.’

  Davide was feeling sick. He was going to have to act, he was being called, by a distant, ancient summons issuing from the dimness of Ninfania’s code of conduct. He wanted to stop his ears, but Franco went on. They were getting near now, and he had come to a halt so that he could finish his story before Davide’s homecoming.

  ‘Rosa was saying, “None of you understands me!” and Mamma began to howl at her, she understood all too well, she could see through her as if she were made of glass, and then she suddenly jumped up and went to the sideboard, but this time Sabina sprang up and barred the way. Mamma struggled with her, but Sabina stood her ground, and Mamma collapsed, she was crying really hard, and gasping out in between, “He’s the son of a devil, he’ll get us all into trouble.” “What are you saying, Mamma?” Rosa was furious. “You’re fantasticating, stories, nothing but stories.” “From you, that’s the limit!” And, and, and, they were just crazy.’ He paused. ‘We still owe Aunt Lisa the money for the plates.’ He looked at his brother, whose eyes were fixed on the street towards their house, and pulled a face. ‘Women!’

  ‘Enough! Quiet! You’re a child, a fool, what do you know about anything? Women! My God, who are you to talk like that? You’re not to say one more word. Understood? Good.’

  He started up again, at a fast pace, while Franco ran to keep up. When he got home, he put down his case, and took off his jacket in relief, and held his mother in a hug which lasted just longer than usual. He still hoped she would not speak of it, that he would not have to react. During the evening meal, with his father present, they talked of very little, and in the tranquillity of this ordinariness, Davide felt for a moment that it was possible Franco had made everything up.

  When Tommaso got his papers, he still had not yet seen Davide though he had heard he was back; and he had not visited the family again after his last call. Nor had he been present in the group of young men at the passeggiata the following Saturday. He had avoided it in the end, though he remembered he had mentioned something about it to the elder sister when he had paid them a visit.

  But he wanted to see Davide, before he left for Africa, to make it up to him, to show him his loyalty and continued friendship. He was ordered to Eritrea, it turned out, not the Libya that had dominated Rosa’s dreams. He wanted to say goodbye.

  As he was crossing the piazza one afternoon, someone called out to him, from outside the circolo, ‘Ahaha, Tommaso Talvi! Come here, come and tell us your adventures, your stories!’ As if Tommaso, once an outcast, had now acquired a certain reput
ation which made him a regular lad, included him in the men’s order. He went over to the group, and laughed, and told them his news, that he was bound for the Horn of Africa. Then he entered the long narrow room of the café next door. Within, it was cool and shady: the old men liked to sit there and watch the business in the light at the door. ‘Tell me now, tell me about that Pittagora girl, the little one, so lively.’ Tommaso’s summoner moulded an amphora in the air, ‘And her sister, she’s really ready for it, just about to drop for it,’ and he laughed, both hands on the top of his stick, tapping with it as he shook. ‘Don’t let her know you’re leaving, or you’ll be in trouble. She’ll be hanging round here, begging for you!’ More laughter, more tapping of the canes on the stone.

  They had not seen Davide was there, had passed through the bead curtain, and reached the curve of the counter in the quadrant of striped sunlight by the door on his way to say hello to Tommaso, whom he had glimpsed crossing the square.

  On an impulse, after a moment’s hesitation, he had decided to catch up with him, and there was nothing he could do now not to be there, to stop the scene he had dreaded from unfolding by rote just as if it were dropping out of a printing roller in bold type, instructing him, clamouring for him. Tommaso had not seen him; he had his back to the door as he set his coffee cup down on the low table beside the old men and said, with a chuckle, ‘Which one? One is hotter than the other!’ Some who heard him laughed with him, but many of them uneasily, not because they had seen Davide, but because it was not done to talk like that, not if you were young and vigorous. And in their minds they recalled what they had momentarily forgotten, that they had never found Talvi or his family one of their kind, the father was an outsider, his boy had not been raised according to southerners’ rules of obedience and good conduct. Tommaso’s betrayal was cheap; though he sensed the chill in the air, he drained his cup and capped himself, ‘When you’ve been to a woman in Naples, aaah, you don’t rate the local talent any more.’