The Lost Father

by Marina Warner

  And the shore evaporated from our sight. Wiping our eyes, we turned back from the rail and set about assisting Papà San with the first meal on board ship. We must take care to husband fuel as well as water. Also, the rolling of the boat hampered the women at the small primus stove on deck – Rosa lurched like an idiot. I felt quite out of sorts at the contemplation of her ugly awkwardness. Thank God Sandro has provided her with a dowry in exchange for Caterina (that jewel!).

  Once the food was ready – Maria Filippa prepared some of the pasta shells my mother pressed out for us before we left, each one bearing the print of her hand upon it, so that we should not feel out of touch, she said – my spirits began to take wing again. The ship rocked on the sea, and paillettes danced in its depths of blue. Caterina sat by Rosa and combed her hair, and with her long stroking gestures seemed to impart to her some of her grace – Maria Filippa sat by me, with our son at her breast, snuffling and nuzzling. I could smell them both, milky and warm, like yeast. America stood before us, holding open her arms, to enfold us in them! In this blissfulness, I drowsed, and when I woke, Sandro was urging me to join him at cards. ‘Pigeons,’ he cried, ‘fluffing their feathers waiting to be pulled! Come, Davide, throw caution to the wind!’ But I refused. I worry that I might increase my obligation to him beyond bounds that I can repay.

  4 April

  We passed Stromboli in the night – all day and all evening the volcano had glowed like a beacon on the distant horizon. Today the dark cone of the mountain stands up against the spring sky, with a spate of fiery coals issuing from its crater and flowing into the sea where it is extinguished, in a fury of steam and bubbles and blistered rocks – can rocks be sensitive too? When they crack and boil like this they no longer seem inert but living organisms. Who’s to deny that maybe stones too could sing?

  The sea air has made Pericle fretful; he hardly slept last night, and tormented his mother with his cries. She came up to join me, for the other mothers protested that they were being kept awake and that she was disturbing their babies too. I slept fitfully, too, with my dear ones beside me on deck.

  Remember, when you read this, wife of my heart, how we looked up at the stars and found the Little Bear? I told you the story of La Calisto – I saw it three years ago at the Petruzelli, with La Besanzoni in the title role, and a brave Zeus (I don’t recall his name), but it’s the part I could take. For once a baritone who isn’t a hoary-headed old man but a father in his prime! When I came to the part when she yields to the god in his disguise as Artemis, you exclaimed, ‘How cruel! What deception! How can she be to blame?’ Then you sighed, remembering, ‘Yes, of course, it is her fault even if she is not to blame – that is the way of things.’ Presently Rosa, who was awake, it turned out, though I had been whispering to you, interjected, ‘Can women together …?’ ‘It’s a myth, Rosa,’ I said, laughing. ‘Gods are not the same as people!’ You can never be sure what she is going to overhear and alter in her own warped way of understanding to meet with her own ends. I do not understand her, my own sister.

  ‘Go on,’ you urged me, and I continued. The baby was quieter now – you felt his head under his cap and he seemed cooler – your hands cradled his dear fragile skull with the slight suggestion of dark down and he called to you as a young dove does when it edges itself towards the void and then tips itself off the roof in an attempt to fly. He has your round eyes – but I see my own father in his mouth and chin, a true Pittagora chin, pointed, with a dimple in the centre. You cry, ‘Nonsense’, and claim your mother’s side in the set of his jaw, as well as the angle of his ears. His ears are soft, softer than even the skin of his body, and translucent like mother of pearl held up in the light. For this gift you have made me, my Maria Filippa, I will labour like an ox in the cities of America; I will make myself like to one of these Negroes for you, why not?

  So, as I was saying, I was telling the story of Cavalli’s delightful opera buffa, with its moments of exquisite lyricism, and Sandro returned from the game of cards and was inspired by my murmurings to declare that I should set up as a shipboard entertainment. To which I agreed, in order to begin repayments of our debt. I must admit, I find it shameful to do what I do for gain – it gives me pleasure to tell stories, especially the stories of my favourite operas. But we are sailing to America, and I must swallow my pride, and overcome my fear. If I have a text to follow, I can face an audience, though. And, after a while, I can lose myself in the music, and forget they are there. Sandro understands the world we are entering – he will sell the tickets of admission and make up the tally, so I’ll oblige. If I cannot become a performing bear, I can at least tell the story of the Little Bear!

  5 April

  Lucia di Lammermoor made four lire, 3 soldi. Cati was passing the hat, my best fedora, but I asked Papà San to take it round himself. It did not seem to me a suitable task for his betrothed. Pericle is sleeping better, now that Maria Filippa lies beside me on deck. We are fortunate there have been no storms. Descriptions of the seasickness travellers have suffered before – Papà San relishes recounting his past travels – reveal what we have been spared. Fortune the capricious one smiles on us, it seems.

  We have traded the bunk in the cabin for two lire, a small profit.

  6 April

  The open Atlantic stretches all around. Oh! the immensity of the spheres! Gulls were our companions, lying on the ebb and flow of the wind like fish hanging in a sunlit rock pool. But now they too have abandoned us to the watery solitude of this vast sea. As we passed through the chasm that separates Europe from Africa, under the shadow of the big rock called Gibraltar, I was rehearsing to myself La Forza del Destino and humming certain arias with which to adorn my performance today on deck – what a tremendous drama! And what magnificence to be retelling it in that stupendous panorama. I do not know which is grander – God’s creation or man’s.

  I practised putting the maximum expression into the duet between the noble Don Carlo and the villainous Alvaro who has brought shame upon his family through his accursed love for Leonora … I was superb – singing out to the waves – though I had to bring down the pitch.

  My rage will not be quelled

  By base and lying words;

  Take up your weapon! Stand and deliver!

  I challenge you, you traitor!

  At the final curtain only the wretched Alvaro is left alive – he has brought about the deaths of Leonora, her father, and her brother.

  (I could not help thinking, at least I am still alive.)

  Rosa was listening. She made no comment. Don Carlo found Alvaro a noble and true friend – but then, oimè!, he learns by chance that the scoundrel who dishonoured his sister and killed his father is the selfsame false counsellor and confidant! His friend, a seducer! A base murderer! These changing appearances of men and women in the opera make it a true book wherein we may read the story of our own lives.

  As I sang to the huddled families on the deck, with the washing lines draped with laundry – it never dries in this salt air – dampness is our lot – and cast my eyes over the lumpish faces before me, enraptured and transformed by my music, I could not but realise that Verdi’s Don Carlo murders his sister Leonora rather than let her survive in guilt.

  Ah, but it was a long time ago, and another country, and besides, they live in art, Verdi’s figures, however real they may appear to us. Art mirrors our little lives in its glass, but that glass is not made of the same poor stuff as we are – it is eternal and cannot shatter. It is more insubstantial than air, less real than the blueness of the sky – and like this air which it resembles being both there and not there, it is the essence of existence.

  I had a headache in the evening – the wind has got up and Pericle wails unless his mother keeps him at her breast. He sucks, then twists about, and will not take any more though he still cries as though he were hungry. Maria Filippa looks at me with starting eyes to find a solution – so I gave him some rosemary water. He vomited, and she began crying with him.
My own heart leapt into my throat at her pain.

  7 April

  The first steer has been butchered – I stayed away but I heard the animal’s howl as it fell under the knife. Sandro brought us back a quarter of a kilo piece of shank and complained that the price was too high, that we should have carried our own beasts on board rather than suffer at the hands of those robbers – he was angry he had not established his own market on board, I could see, but I was glad of the meat at whatever price. To try and put some marrow into my precious Maria Filippa’s bones so that she can feed Pericle with renewed vigour! The animal’s blood smelled bitter, like the harbour water when the sea’s been quiet, and the raw odour swept round to our corner under the forward stack from the deck where they were cutting it up. Afterwards they sluiced down the decks and the jet of water spurted out of control and wetted our clothes bundles – a great misfortune, for though it is sunny on the open ocean, we are always damp from the spray – this ship rolls badly in the waves and all our clothes are becoming soft and salty. I can tolerate it, though I do not enjoy it – but Pericle needs warmth and dryness in his conditions. La Forza: six and a half lire! Sandro says it will be worth more than a dollar – imagine. I shall repeat my performance – the audience was enthusiastic.

  Out on the ocean, in the crystal sphere of the elements, we are alone now except for dolphins who play by our boat. They have a smile on their faces, a smile which does not show any teeth! With invisible leashes, they are drawing us across the billows, onwards, to America!

  15

  The Snail Hunt 4

  DOLMETTA, MAY 1931

  AS HER FATHER had promised, scraps of clouds rose from the mountains inland and by late afternoon were drifting overhead. They massed and came to a standstill when they met the sea breeze further out, and hung there to spill awhile. Fantina ran, her mother calling to her to hurry. She stopped for a moment; her shadow slanted across the familiar brilliance out of doors, and the freshened earth struck her with the quick green smell of growth itself. She ran on, Lucia following; they were making for the open ground where the best and largest snails would crack their sunproof seals and slip their shrivelled bodies out to bathe in the surprising daytime dew.

  The first rain fell on the cooked earth in punch-holes, a giant pricking out a huge and mysterious cartoon for an assistant to carve after him. Fantina stopped at the sight of a stone, spattered in drops as if in lines of perforation, and urged on a downpour: ‘That’s right, fill it in, a little more over here! There! There’s a gap there! No, not there again!’ Lucia dragged at her, but she shook her hand free. ‘See! I want to see how long it takes before the rain soaks it all up,’ and she began to count aloud, while Lucia clicked her tongue impatiently, and then ran on. Her sister waited till the limestone had turned cornelian brown in the shower. It was a light shower, but the touch of the soft wetness on her legs, the sudden shadow of the passing cloud pierced her with joy; she could have crowed out loud.

  The two elder sisters caught them up, swinging the wire salad basket. They overtook Fantina, and Lucia beyond her, ducking into the olive grove to reach the walled field where the ground rose towards the shallow hills chequered with sheep folds. In the sweetly wettened air, the snails that had taken refuge from the sun crept out from between cracks in the stones and stole along the stalks of sere grasses to soak up the moisture. They came away from the stem with a little tug, like fruit on the point of full maturity, a stalkless kind like quince which grows flush to the stem, and left behind them a shining coin of their spoor, or the long silvery slick of their passage. Fantina and Lucia picked them off and tossed them into the old tin they had brought. The snails were small and greyish-brown, with stripey markings on their shells like tabby cats, and their long grey erectile bodies, sliding out from the cool caves of their ‘houses’ began to gleam softly like pewter in the rain. Lucia tickled one with a piece of grass; it withdrew instantly, corrugating its long body like a knitted sock plunged into hot water.

  ‘They’re not really slow,’ she said. ‘He’s quick on his feet, this one. On his foot, I mean.’

  ‘But they’re steady,’ said Fantina. Lucia twitched at it again, but it remained fast inside the shell; she began to poke at another in the can. She would accomplish a single task to Fantina’s methodical dozen; even here in the field her initial eagerness had soon evaporated; she stopped gleaning the rain’s odd harvest, while Fantina’s hands continued to work, expeditious as a fortune-teller scooping up cards.

  ‘Papà says that the snail-sellers in Naples call out “Wall-fish! Wall-fish!” He says you can follow snails and find where the old cities were and the soldiers’ camps. There are heaps of shells in their rubbish tips, so people in the old days used to eat them too, just like us. Snails still breed in the same places, too. Their families are just as old as ours.’ Lucia set a snail on her hand, tickled it, and begged, ‘Come on, my beauty, don’t be shy, poke your head out. Put out your horns.’ She giggled. ‘Go on, I’m not going to eat you.’ She pretended to pipe at it, fluting through her lips and bouncing her thin hips, ‘Let me charm you, out of your shell, O snail, O snail, dance for me…’

  Fantina said, ‘Don’t lie to it, it’s not right.’

  When the snail remained tight shut, Lucia tossed it into the can. ‘You’re such a softy. I’ll say what I like. It’s only a snail. Anyway I’m not sure I am going to eat them, they’re food for the poor. I think we should just give them away,’ she waved airily about, ‘to… oh I don’t know, beggars and beggar children, just to show we don’t need to go out into the fields like this and pick snails. Why don’t we eat tarantulas too? Might as well. They’re just as fat and probably tasty.’

  ‘They’re poisonous.’

  ‘Only the sting. They’re black and furry, just like sea urchins. I bet they’re delicious.’

  ‘But you only eat the inside of…’

  Fantina caught Lucia’s look of despair at her younger sister’s credulousness, and stopped herself. ‘Look!’ she said instead. She bent down to watch two of their prey gliding out of the tin and down the outer side and on to the cooled earth. Lucia crouched beside her, as the snails’ horns touched and quivered. With bright eyes, she mimed their movements, her fingers close to her sister’s face. ‘This is Love!’

  The eyes at the tips of the gleaming horns waved about, seeking their partners’; they touched, and the ridged stems of their dun bodies twined themselves together, then wriggled apart, then met in another clasp, four long quivering pistils leading the approaches of snail to snail as they slid around each other, four stubbier horns following through with firmer touching; then one slipped under the other sideways to make room for their shells, and at contact both foamed along the juncture of their pods.

  ‘They’re kissing!’ Lucia nudged Fantina and made juicy noises with her lips.

  ‘Do you think we ought to take them?’ Fantina asked, without turning from the spectacle. ‘We’d be interrupting.’

  ‘They’ll be able to go on inside.’ And with that, Lucia shovelled up the lovers and threw them into the tin with the rest of their slithery collection. ‘Snails aren’t faithful you know. They can change partners in there.’ She laughed. ‘Men are the only creatures who are, that’s what Papà says.’

  Snails have fourteen thousand teeth, arranged in rows on the jaws’ hemisphere, and what the stalls can’t shred, the circle deals with, which is why they chomp their way through my back patch in a matter of hours after it rains – and it rains needless to say rather often here in London – unless I put down slug pellets. ‘Why’s the earth blue?’ asks Nicholas, after I’ve scattered the poison. Sometimes, it’s the only colour in the garden. My kind of snail, the south London breed, are actually edible, but their lardy dinginess puts me off trying; besides the city snail is to the escargot de Bourgogne as the squatter of Trafalgar Square to the berry-plump wood pigeon from the Périgord. I’d rather keep to the cylinders they sell in delicatessens, with those big brindled shell
s attached in a bag on the outside. I find it hard to eat something when I’ve seen it alive. I once saw a rabbit stunned and flayed right in front of my eyes. I called in on a farmyard: there was a sign on the gate advertising fresh eggs and other produce. Nicholas’s father – my ex, though I loathe that word, its cosiness rings so false, I think – had rented a gîte nearby one summer when Nicholas was still a baby. The fanner’s wife pointed to a big grey coney in a hutch; I found myself nodding, and before I knew what was happening she had knocked it on the head and tugged off its fur and was dropping the carcass into a plastic bag. When she handed it to me, the animal in the bag was very warm. I found it hard to cook, afterwards, and impossible to eat.

  Snails belong to the order of living things too, and it’s sentimental to mind about rabbits because they’re soft and furry, and then spare not a thought for a snail; their antennae are twitchy, as sensitive-looking as any rabbit’s nose. Yet I’ve taught Nicholas how to crunch a marauding snail whenever he spots one. Not to stamp on them directly, they have this way of oozing through the cracks in their shells with a kind of blood that’s sudsy. This must be the foam which rises to a head when they’re cooked at home (as I know, from your accounts of preparing them after picking). So I’ve taught Nicholas to throw them at the garden wall. If you fracture the shell, they die. He hasn’t quite got the knack of it, the flick of the wrist you need for impact; most of the time his victims tumble back onto the ground in shock, and wake up no doubt to find themselves in a delicious new fat tulip leaf to gobble. He enjoys it though, the first – the only – little murders I let him commit. Of course I rehearse the old liberal arguments: do they release his cruel natural urges in a harmless way? Do they anaesthetise him to pity and sympathy? Accustom him to destructiveness? Is a keen assassin of gastropods just like the boy who took delight in pulling the wings off flies? Will it get worse, will he burn their eyes with matches, given a chance? These are unanswerable questions, I’m telling you, for the mother of a little boy.