‘Oh Imma,’ said Lucia, ‘you’re in love. I can see, you’re thinking of Emilio and you’re smiling.’ Imma did not object, she did not want to disillusion her sister about romance, though she was glad to be back at home with them all, where she could sew in silence if she wanted while her sisters danced.
The first autumn of Imma’s marriage, Lucia was perfecting a performance for Christmas. Holding the household broom by its tall helve in one hand, and the feather duster upright in the other, Lucia practised, with one of Davide’s suits bunched around her small wiry waist, and her face ringed with the latest pin curls (she slicked them down with candle grease) and dirtied with pale ashes from the wood stove. In bare feet under the rolled trousers, she would sing out for Imma’s approval with maximum plaintiveness, in a cracked off-key voice of the kind her Uncle Franco, the musician of the family now, had grown to appreciate in America:
‘It’s Christmas, pay no attention to me –
Just a chimneysweep.
Other children have a warm hearth and a toy
But when I come close to play
They push me away,
“Don’t touch! Go and sweep the chimney!”’
This was Fantina’s cue to push Lucia hard, aim a kick at her legs and stamp her foot, while brandishing and coddling her doll. She would then cry out in a wobbly warble, much closer to her father’s melodious and rich vibrations than Lucia’s odd false-noted throatiness:
‘Don’t touch! Go and sweep the chimney!’
Fantina couldn’t help laughing at this point, and Lucia would get irritated that she couldn’t act her role to the hilt; but Fantina wanted to make sure her viciousness towards her sister looked a sham to whoever was listening.
Lucia would then begin again, scraping for a higher pitch:
‘You hit me because my face
Isn’t white like yours, I know –
But inside the little sweep too
Beats a heart like any other child’s.’
Her head on one side, she’d place the feather duster under her tilted cheek, and with eyes closed as if asleep, continue:
‘If you’ve such a treasure
As a soft little downy bed,
Think of me, who feels like a lord,
Dreaming in a lovely bed of snow.’
Lucia remaining still, blind, the others would join in, singing till their eyes prickled agreeably with sympathy at the little sweep’s hardships, thanking God their plight had never been so severe, even in the worst days of Crosby Street, even the winter when Lucia and Talia had impetigo spattering their lips and chins like rotting waterlogged tapioca and the man came from Sanitation and put a cross on their door and locked them in and told them they weren’t allowed to go out, not at all. There was still a distance between the chimneysweep and their condition. They always had shoes. They always had something to eat. They always had clean clothes, ironed too, they always had combed hair.
By fixing on the absolutely reduced, the indigent, the figure of the downtrodden sweep, the first and last of the child labourers, the first cousin of the little match girl and Little Nell – scugnizzi – they could see that they were different, secure and superior; they needed performances like Lucia’s to shape and mark the stuff of their confidence, which rose slowly, surely in the warm temperature of their everyday intimacies, as yoghurt works its way in milk when coddled in a towel. Maria Filippa drew out the thread of worn-out clothes if it were still strong, and snipped every button, hook and eye, press-stud fastener, unstitched every interlining or pad or stiffener to adapt to new garments and turn out her daughters presentably because they had nothing else; and to raise them creamy and firm and fresh within these constrictions without souring needed concentration on those less fortunate, needed a culture of pity and sentiment to grow without envy. So they sang in unison, Franco blowing on his trombone to accompany them,
‘You hit me because my face
Isn’t white like yours, I know –
But inside the little sweep too
Beats a heart like any other child’s.’
‘I’ve decided to write an opera buffa,’ Franco announced, rubbing his hands hard one cold afternoon when he called. ‘About the Queen of Sheba. She was someone who flourished under the Genial Tropical Sun, you know. So I think I might touch a responsive chord – celebrating Our Glorious Empire.’ Chafed to warmth, he pulled up a chair beside Imma, who never leaped about like her sisters, but preferred to apply herself to a hem, a darn, a spot of glue. She used fish paste which she brewed herself, the others objecting to the reek, but kindly, to make room for the eldest’s preference. They were aware, for their mother, reminded by Davide’s journals, had often recalled it, that Imma had stood in for her on Crosby Street to take care of the younger children when she went out to the machine room to work every day.
‘I’m hoping to have it staged here, a farsetta to entertain the crowd. The Committee for Intellectual Co-operation is keen that musicians should rally the people to right thinking. I intend to join in the praise of the Genial Tropical Sun.’
Franco’s mouth curved, and he began humming the soldiers’ marching song, striking with his fingers on the edge of the table, ‘Faccetta nera, bell’Abissinia…’
The Leader was dreaming of changing every Abyssinian into an Italian. The big strong hands of the soldiers advancing into Ethopia and claiming it as Abyssinia, part of the new empire of Rome, were encircling every little black face, thrusting the flag into the women’s and children’s hands; they were colonising by the spit of the guns and the kiss of the invader, the bullet and the bed; these were the arms of the new crusaders, taking possession.
‘A farce?’ asked Lucia. ‘Is it going to be funny?’
‘It’s not a tragedy, by any means. Romantic, yes, comic, yes, but serious at heart, you know, like Mozart.’
‘So?’ The young women were alert.
‘The Queen of Sheba was Abyssinian,’ said Fantina, solemnly. ‘The priest told us. She came from somewhere round there in Africa.’
‘Bravo, bravo, priest, you always know what’s right. And yes, my opera is going to celebrate her. She was wise, she was beautiful, she was a Black Madonna and when she met the great Solomon – who was also wise, and handsome, but white, like us – she saw how much she could learn from him and so she wanted to be with him always, forever and ever. They had babies, lots of babies. This is the stuff of comedy, my dear lovely nieces.’ He went on singing, and the girls joined him, Lucia raucous, Imma soft.
‘What won’t I do for art?’ sighed Franco. ‘That bastard – sorry, Maria Filippa – that worthless, tuppenny-halfpenny songster writing that anthem for the Leader and his dreams. Well, I can do better, everything I do is better, and I can get people to take notice of it too, I can get my music performed. Strings, woodwind, brass, lots of brass, for those silver celestial sounds, trumpets for the Queen as she approaches the throne of Solomon with her elephants and her tigers.’
‘Elephants and tigers!’ Fantina was staring.
‘He’s fabricating, of course,’ Lucia nudged her.
‘The horns of Solomon are calling to her, summoning her to undying love, to the reconciliation of civilisation and barbarism, of white and black, which will produce a flower, a new flower and a new world. Like a prickly pear, coming suddenly into bloom, in the middle of nowhere, in a desert. And maybe I’ll win the Mussolini Prize – 50,000 lire offered by the Corriere della Sera for the best work in praise of our glorious fasces!’
‘No one appreciates anyone any more,’ murmured Maria Filippa, adjusting her spectacles and looking Franco straight in the face. ‘Without…’ she rubbed finger and thumb together, and went back to unpicking an old undergarment of its still useful parts. ‘That’s what counts. And where’re you going to get it?’
Franco turned to his more receptive audience, ‘The Queen of Sheba reaches a stream, she refuses to cross it on the bridge in front of her because she recognises – she’s got a third eye,
inside her skull, at the top, the pineal eye that makes you clairvoyant,’ Maria Filippa nodded here, ‘and she sees that the bridge is made from the wood that at some point – in the far distant future – will provide the cross of Jesus.’ He paused, and sang falsetto,
‘Accursed and Holy! Accursed and Holy!
Instrument of the passion and the pillory of our Saviour,
Cause of our joy and source of our salvation …
‘I want the Queen to have a rich mezzo, all brown and nutty-tasting, like nocino, sweet, but not too sweet Aah!’
Fantina said, ‘I know this story!’
Imma smiled quietly, and Fantina noticed, and called out in delight, ‘You told me! It wasn’t the priest!’
‘Auntie Rosa told me in New York, when we were all alone in the cold, in the dark, she knew how to make you forget. Stories are good for forgetting.’
‘The wood comes from the tree that grew out of Adam’s body when he died –’
‘Out of his navel –’
‘He did have a navel even though he had no mother?’ Lucia put in, being clever.
‘He had to be a man like all the men coming after, and all men are born of their mothers and attached to them by a tie from their navels …’ Maria Filippa explained.
‘We don’t like it, though, no, no.’ Franco pinched Fantina’s cheek.
‘And?’ Lucia was imperious now. ‘Go on.’
‘But that’s it,’ said her uncle. ‘It’s in my head, a beautiful fantasy.’
Fantina felt for her navel through her dress, and pressed it; it made her feel sick, though in spite of that she quite liked investigating the flat pleats around the button, and poking out the dust that lodged there.
Imma fetched a bowl of olives, small jade eggs flecked with spice, and set them in front of her uncle. He began eating them, scraping the pale green flesh with his teeth until the darker pit was stripped bare between his finger and thumb.
‘What does the Queen do about crossing the stream? If she won’t use the bridge? What else does she do? How does she get to the other side?’ Lucia was becoming impatient with Franco’s inconsequence.
‘Don’t you know the story?’ asked Fantina. She laughed. ‘The King says the magic word, and the water turns to glass.’
Franco sucked on a pit, and chuckled. ‘There is a story,’ he said, ‘that the Queen of Sheba had legs, well, not like they should be. Who knows what strange things women conceal under their dresses, aah!’
Maria Filippa frowned, but did not intervene. They were alone.
‘According to the story, Solomon wants to make sure that this beautiful Queen isn’t a monster in disguise.’
‘A flying fox,’ put in Lucia, not to be left out. ‘I know, it’s a ghost story. Some women are really flying foxes. They’ve been done a wrong by their lovers and they roam restlessly in their grief. They only show their true faces at night.’
‘He works a spell to find out about the Queen…’
‘He puts her to sleep,’ Lucia interrupted again. ‘He brings her peace at last.’
‘Let him speak!’ Talia pinched her sister. ‘Stop talking. That’s why you don’t know the story. You’re always the one who’s doing the talking.’
‘I’m not, I’m hurrying him up.’
‘He calls in his chief wizard and orders him to turn the stream to glass so that the Queen of Sheba can walk on it without getting her feet wet. Ahah, what a scene this will make! It’ll bring them from all over Ninfania, from Campania even, perhaps from Rome!’
‘What happens?’
‘Solomon is waiting on his throne; the Queen reaches the bridge; she refuses to set foot on it; the wizard comes on; he freezes the stream, and turns it to glass, so what have we got?’
Franco gestured at the floor. ‘A mirror!’ He laughed; Maria Filippa’s lips curled.
‘The Queen of Sheba walks on a mirror and you can see what she’s got underneath? I don’t like it.’ Lucia made a face.
‘You’re a vagabond and a rascal,’ said Maria Filippa. ‘I shouldn’t let you near us. You undo all my good work.’
‘No, Mamma,’ Talia spoke before she realised her mother was tender, teasing.
Franco continued, ‘It’s pure lyric! The Queen of Sheba! She advances across the stream of glass and into the arms of King Solomon, and they’re singing a duet, most voluptuous and dramatic … It will be a noble dream.’
‘It had better stay like a dream, too,’ Maria Filippa said.
‘No! The patriotic angle is a good one. It’s going to get performed. Who could turn down such a panegyric to our Leader’s vision? And I’ve joined the Party…’ His manner sombred, then he ground out a short laugh. ‘Solomon as the Leader, why not?’
‘You’re spoiling it,’ she said.
Talia put in, ‘We were imagining someone young, handsome, and romantic you know. Our Solomon… Not the Leader. He’s bald.’
Maria Filippa gave Franco’s arm a pat, and said, ‘It’s a masterpiece, of course it is. I can see and hear it now. It’s as good as written, just the way it is. In here.’ She tapped an ear.
Franco looked up, following her back as she busied herself at the dresser, ‘No one wants to hear good music any more. They only want handkerchief tunes – hanky songs, fit to make you cry and nothing else. For the patria, for the broken heart, for Mamma, what’s the difference. Cry! Your tears’ll make you feel beautiful inside, all trembling and choked up on sacrifice and nobility and … vacuousness, sentiment, hanky emotions for hanky songs. I stand up there on the rostrum in the Via Sparano and people come up to me and say, “Please maestro, please play us something really sad. We want to feel sad.” Why do they ask this? Because they don’t know what it is to feel something, really to feel something, to know a passion, not to be telling a story, making it up, but living it. Aarrh, that’s what I do too, of course, I’m not different. How could I be? I’m here.’
Maria Filippa hushed him, setting a freshly filled bowl in front of him. ‘We’re all here, it’s the will of fortune, what can we do? We have to make do with what we have. What eke can we do?’
During that autumn, as the war continued – there were pictures in the magazines of smiling Abyssinians and others of war heroes; photographs of aeroplanes dropping fire out of the sky onto a landscape of mountains where tiny figures could be made out, running – the Leader proclaimed that Italy was his woman, and he would cajole and swear until she yielded to him in her entirety; there was direction and might and other strong meat in his wooing, as well as sweet flattery and heady enrapturement as the big round head thrust forward over the balcony in the Piazza Venezia and roared, strong jaws jutting, spraying the crowd with bursts of his own gunfire, cramming them with promises of pleasure and power under his expert caresses. ‘Eia eia allalà!’ the voice exploded from the trumpets of loudspeakers in the streets and flickered at twilight in the open-air newsreels, printing the Leader’s features in spectral wrinkles which hung in the air, like a gigantic shadow arching over the body of the land whose reciprocating passion he demanded.
In December he called for the ultimate pledge of the Italian people’s allegiance, and Maria Filippa came forward and gave it. (He told his journalists privately that no woman had ever resisted him – his force always overcame them in the end.)
She put on her cloche hat with the widow’s veil, scattered with mouches, and her best cloth coat, and called Imma and Talia to accompany her; she had made Imma a new coat, somehow, from a blanket, for the winter of her pregnancy. It had padded shoulders in the new fashion, and hung loosely, so that her five months’ swelling did not show. They set out for the Town Hall. As they walked, they soon found themselves part of a crowd flowing towards the broad shallow steps of the new concrete edifice, pride of the Ninfanian capital under the new dispensation, with fins of glass bricks at the corners of each wing, and the bound bundles of reeds, floating with ribbons and topped by the double axe of Justice displayed in trophy over the grand entrance an
d the windows. On the steps, between two leaping horses with their tamers, cast in concrete in tribute to the marbles of the Quirinale in Rome, a krater leaped with a blue flame, and around it stood a deputation to greet the people of Riba when they responded to their loving Leader’s call: in white tunics, caught at the waist and falling in crinkled folds like statues, with garlands of laurel in their hair and emblems in their hands – axe and fasces, lute and plough, cut out of cardboard and hand-painted – in mantles of scarlet hung from their shoulders, stood half a dozen shivery matrons and maids of the town, priestesses of the undying flame of the nation’s glory. To one side of them on the wide concrete podium, some Piccole Italiane in their uniform of black cloaks and berets over white shirts with black ties at their necks and short white socks kept up their singing over the hubbub of the crowd to the accompanying stomp and drone of the brass band – not Franco’s but a rival’s. In the centre, the daughter of the Mayor, Fiordiligi, who had been in the gymnastics group with Talia, was wearing a crest of white plumes on her head and carrying a spear and shield; her tunic was emblazoned with a sash which identified her as the Fatherland. She stood motionless, presiding over the table where the krater was smoking, with her maids of honour around her, while the crowd clambered up the steps to do obeisance to her and make their offerings to the idol. Now and then she wiped her eyes at the corner; the smoke from the eternal flame was making them water. Four soldiers’ helmets lay upturned on either side of the flame, and were every now and then picked up and shaken by one of the officials. They had become the sacred receptacles, the ciboria into which the faithful were laying their sacrifice of gold. For in the new Roman Empire, in distant Abyssinia, Italy would find again the grandeur that was Ancient Rome. And to do this the Leader had asked for the effort of every man and woman.
The Lost Father Page 26