Beyond Babylon

by Igiaba Scego

  “It’s romantic,” Lucy concluded.

  “But we’re alone,” Zuhra tried complaining.

  “Better that way.”

  We weren’t alone on the terrace, though. A blond Swiss couple was there, as well as a French teacher, a Spanish adventurer, and a pair of Lebanese schoolboys. We occupied one corner and started chatting. I watched the stars and noted, simply, that I saw them. You never see stars in Rome anymore. I remember I did see them in Buenos Aires. When I was little, Ernesto and I gave them absurd names. In Buenos Aires I saw the stars, I surely did.

  This city is a gem. Outside the city limits (I still wonder how far) are massive pleasure resorts. People go there, they say in Routard or Lonely Planet, to find tranquility. People come to meditate, rid themselves of worry, wisely idle away. I came here because you told me to, Mar. Who told you? Could I have told you and don’t remember? It could’ve been a coincidence and no one told anyone. Perhaps the dead called us. They gave the best spot to the dead. The cemetery faces the ocean. Tombs clutter the beach and to swim you must pass them, greet them, honor and converse with them.

  I’m having a good time with the dead and telling them the story I’m telling you, Mar. I’m trying to be sincere through and through.

  In Rome, in the seventies, we went to Ostia to swim. Pablo Santana liked diving into the water. He was a good swimmer in Argentina. I think he won a medal at some youth tournament. Pablo had a chiseled body. Even today it’s not bad. I still find myself looking at him with desire. He couldn’t be mine. His pureness verged on the sacred. He was a knight, one of those who searched for the Holy Grail and had to be uncontaminated before being conceived. He could’ve been Flaca’s, if only she’d been in her right mind. Now that I think about it, he was Flaca’s, though she didn’t know it.

  When Alberto Tatti’s program ended, our collective psycho-drama began. The first night, no one had the courage to tell Rosa that the African voyage ended where it began, in Orano. She was expecting to move inland, to eat more Senegalese mafe, swing to the rhythms of Congolese rumbas. Instead, Alberto finished. He’d wished his audience happy listening to the Radio 77 programs and bid farewell. Very formal, with almost no warmth. A cold goodbye, hardly African. I remember being upset by it. How? I said to myself, after all that energy and sweat? How, after all those lost trains, lost ferries, accumulated kilometers? How, Alberto, do you say goodbye to us like that? Weren’t you thinking about us, the people who were with you all this time, who supported you, your disciples? Weren’t you thinking about Flaca, who waited for you as one waits for the singular breath of life?

  Even Nuccia was troubled by it. She didn’t expect such a brusque conclusion. She wasn’t familiar with Africa, but she used to tell us that “My Renato waged war in Africa,” at which point she’d get kind of quiet. Once each of us started thinking about other things, she’d remember to say, “That son of a bitch Mussolini sent us there. What wrong have these Africans done to us?” She’d take a tissue from the sewing basket on her lap and dry her bright eyes. “My Renato, he wanted to die in Africa. He told me that when the war ended, he would buy us land; we would keep our own beautiful farm and live happily and in peace. But only as equals, not superior like Benito wanted. We would be like everyone else. Africans ourselves.” Her weeping would come at this point and never cease. Tears gushed down her cheeks like a swollen river. In a choked whisper, she’d say, “He wanted to die down there, Renato, in that city on the sea. Instead, he died in Rome. Poor Renato. August 13, 1943. Casilino-Tuscolano. They bombed the train that was bringing him back home.”

  Maybe Alberto’s voice brought her closer to her Renato. Sometimes when I go to Verano to bring Nuccia flowers, I tell her stories about that time. I get emotional and cry. It’s different, Mar. It’s not crying over an unknown tomb. It is a cry of tribute to the people I knew.

  The first night without Alberto was terrible. We looked disfigured. We didn’t take our eyes off Flaca. In the end it was resentment that killed her. Resentment and nothing else. Rosa was like that, she took everything with graceful indignation, the pride of the disowned.

  When Alberto’s program ended, all her repressed pain wiped her out. The program had been a hiatus of unthinking happiness like the khamaseen, the gasping desert wind that reunites, blowing softly upon ruined loves. The man’s extravagant voice, the metallic sound of his sighs, the saliva he spat impishly with every guttural sound. You were a stupid hiatus, my boy. A useless magical khamaseen. The first night without Alberto was pure fury. Flaca thrashed like an injured grass snake. Her entire body shook and she spumed at the mouth. It was like this for three nights. Then she began crying in her odd way. I couldn’t stand it. You couldn’t hear a sob; she was like a silent film. She was only the expression of pain, air trapped in lungs, suffocated breathing. It was eerie not hearing Flaca cry. You saw her in tears, but soundless.

  On the seventh consecutive day of crying in front of Nuccia’s spent radio, I decided I should go look for the DJ. I was fat. A ball of fat, umbilical cord, amniotic fluid, and you, my fetus, my daughter. Time was running out and my anxiety was full-blown. Today, Alberto’s radio tower doesn’t transmit anymore. Back then it was at a crossroads in Prenestina, before you get to Centocelle. Dilapidated premises, dust, piles of dumped newspapers, the stench of marijuana, posters of our Ernesto Guevara on the walls. Closed fists, Black Panthers, De André and, strangely, an Indian ink portrait of Eleonora Duse. A stray image in my mind. My bright-eyed father speaking at the table about that actress on the wall. He liked Duse. My mother, I remember, was jealous of the diva.

  I saw a man with a white moustache and green eyes. A handsome man, I think, too old to be in a place with those young idealists. “Pardon me, do you know Alberto Tatti?” The moustached man took his eyes off the newspaper he was reading and settled them on me. I fixated on his paper. It was talking about Argentina. An entire article. Milagro! Close to the front page! I don’t know what got into me, but I snatched the pages from the moustached man’s hands and began skimming the lines like some demon. I was forward with him, rude. It didn’t matter to me one damn bit. I scanned the lines in a trance. This was all that mattered to me. The lines in my trance.

  I read the article’s lede and cried. It was an article about us, our Argentinian hardship. I didn’t think anyone in Italy knew. Things were different abroad. They’d shown interest in the Netherlands, and in Sweden they spoke a great deal about us. Pablo Santana told me that even in the hostile land of the United States, some people suffered alongside us desaparecidos. No one made a sound in Italy. The muteness offended me. Carajo, we were practically all Italians in Argentina, our mothers, our fathers, our grandfathers, our friends. How could Italy ignore us? She was in the blood of our mistreated bodies. Didn’t she give a flying fuck? It didn’t matter to her if we were her brothers or sisters. It didn’t matter to her if we came from the Apennine or the Alps. It didn’t matter if the colors of our football teams were taken from the historic crests of marine cities. She didn’t care, the bitch.

  Seeing my country’s name in an Italian newspaper warmed my heart. I still remember the spreading heat. I didn’t apologize to the green-eyed man. I focused on the name of the newspaper. I would’ve done somersaults to buy it off him. The man said, “This is a new paper, seems interesting. Rossana Rossanda and her people run it. Did you know that the split…” And he got wrapped up in an explanation of Italian politics that I tried to follow. This constantly struggling newspaper is forever going under. It’s one of the few things we have in common, you and I, Mar. We’re constantly struggling, always sinking. Eternal dreams of rebirth. I know you buy the paper because you can’t go without your art film gurus. Me, though, why am I so fond of it? Why do I still buy it? When someone asks me, I reply, “Because they were there.” That’s enough for me.

  The man told me that Alberto was in Africa, near Timbuktu. I was envisioning ancient manuscripts and legends, Tuareg wisemen and talking camels. I thought about
hippopotami. Yes, those fat water pigs. Elias, your father, liked hippopotami. He thought they were forthright and mighty. “I would like,” he once told me, “to live on a hippo’s back.” Later, this made me think. I wonder where he is now, the strange man whom I loved for one night only. When I think about him, I see him curled up on a hippo’s back. That’s why I wanted to go to Mali last summer, whatever the cost, you remember? But I didn’t. I didn’t have the courage. I wanted to look for your father. I’m sure he’s there now. As sure as I am that blood flows in my veins and that Mali, my love, means hippopotamus.

  In any case, Alberto Tatti was in Timbuktu. Far from me and far from Flaca. I was paralyzed in front of the man with the moustache. My heartache made the newspaper sheets drop to the dusty ground. I couldn’t move. I wanted to be a butterfly so that I could fly to Timbuktu and drag that man back by the neck. “Come back, we need you. Flaca needs you.” I had about ten empty cassette tapes in my purse. I wanted the DJ to record anything, a replay of his journey through the African metropolises. A personalized program that could placate Flaca’s resentment.

  “Can I leave him a message and some tapes?”

  “Well, yes, but we don’t know when he’ll be back, ma’am.”

  “Maybe he’ll be back in time.”

  I said this and felt my heart catch in my throat.

  Maybe in time. Maybe…

  I grabbed a piece of paper I found on a wobbly table where red ants mindlessly roamed. You were kicking quite a bit. Did you feel my sadness, love? You didn’t let up. My shortness of breath exceeded expectations. I threw myself onto a seat and wrote a letter to Alberto Tatti, addressed to Timbuktu. Then I gave everything to the man with the moustache and went away as I’d come, with empty hands. My back was killing me. I felt how close your birth was. Six days later you decided to come, cariño. You had a pretty little head and so much hair stuck to your neck.

  Resentment killed Flaca. Only resentment, my love. We should’ve known she wouldn’t make it much longer, from the moment she took off Marilyn Monroe’s white dress. Her decision was unexpected. It was the day you started making funny faces. She took off her outfit that very day. Suddenly both of you shocked us. Female telepathy. For a moment Pablo and I were happy. Now I know, there was nothing joyous in that decision. The clownish attire, the white dress that Billy Wilder had chosen to iconize Norma Jeane, was the umbilical cord that tethered Rosa to the land of the living. It was ridiculous, but such is life. When she took it off, Pablo Santana and I rejoiced. It seemed like a return to normalcy, to her former life.

  The day you made your silly expressions, the day of Norma Jeane’s adieu, Rosa Benassi, daughter of Italians, took a long, humid shower. Everything in our San Lorenzo hovel was fogged by the scorching humidity that came from our tiny bathroom. Rosa walked out without a wig and without clothes, entirely nude. Her pubic hair was a vibrant red. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen hair that color. I’d forgotten that in her past life, Rosa Benassi had been red like Tiziano’s Madonnas. Pablo Santana got an erection. It was unavoidable. It wasn’t desire. It wasn’t anything. Only astonishment at seeing her there, like the first woman of creation. It was a hymn to her beauty. I also got an erection. Where, I don’t know, but I had it. My imaginary penis straightened toward an imaginary sky. She wasn’t embarrassed by our reactions. She walked past us and shut herself in her room. She’d left Marilyn’s white dress in the bathroom, between foggy glass and water vapor. When she came out of the room, she was someone else. Not Rosa. Not Marilyn anymore. She was someone else. She vaguely resembled her dance instructor. A bun on her head, a brown cardigan, and a black skirt. A desert tan undershirt. All of it mine. Everything was big on her. Flaca was terribly haggard. I had had you for a while, Mar. My clothes were oversized. Flaca danced inside my clothes, but she wore them with an ease that made you think they’d always been hers.

  Pablo and I were happy about her transformation. It seemed like she was putting her head back in place. Pablo proposed cooking some rice. He was great at making rice with saffron, one of his grandmother’s specialties, he said. We left him in the kitchen to fiddle. Then Nuccia came. She wasn’t happy. I saw it from the way she bit her bottom lip. “It’s not a good sign,” she said. Pablo and I downplayed it and reassured her. Nuccia combed Flaca’s tallow hair that evening. She loosened the bun and made her a beautiful Indian braid. Flaca didn’t react. Immobile, stuck in the space her body occupied. Absence of movement. This didn’t concern us much. She’d taken off Marilyn’s dress. That was the sign we were waiting for. We were imbeciles, patent idiots. We didn’t know that it was already too late.

  Those were difficult months. My pregnancy, the end of Alberto’s program, Flaca showing no signs of life. Pablo was nervous. They sold even fewer ducks. We were in a disastrous economic situation. I saw Pablo headbutting the wall some nights. I saw him exhausted from the thousand things he did for us. One day, he came to me and said, “I found a job.” I don’t know if you could’ve called it work—it was exploitation. Twelve hours in a shoe factory in Cisterna di Latina, an odyssey, a massacre. Pablo left home with a smile and at night, worn-out, attempted the same smile he’d had in the morning. “Are you tired?” He never responded. It was a question I didn’t need to ask. It was as predictable as the response. Still, I asked every night. Every night I hoped he would say to me, “I’m destroyed.” Every night I dreamed of hugging him, massaging him, and telling him, “As of tomorrow you’re not going there anymore.” Pablo was stubborn then and even now when our halcyon days have passed. He’s a hardhead as few others are. I longed for his body on those nights. I wanted to forget my anguish, I wanted to forget Flaca and her exorbitant pain, which I was incapable of processing.

  Sometimes Rosa watched the spent radio. Nuccia ended up letting her have it. We never turned it on. Alberto wasn’t there anymore. There was no point in listening to strange voices that weren’t his. Rosa glanced furtively at the radio, worried about an imaginary betrayal. She needed someone’s voice, but she felt indebted to Alberto for his marvelous trip. She didn’t cry anymore. That was a relief. I couldn’t stand her soundless tears.

  Our lives followed an unvaried routine. The only unusual thing was you, my love. You cheered us up with your discoveries, your cries that became language. Watching you was fascinating, and you also enchanted Rosa, occasionally. I was happy you two crossed paths, despite everything. Nuccia was a big help. She took Flaca every Wednesday and Friday to dance on Via dei Giubbonari. Actually, Flaca didn’t dance. She sat in a corner to watch other people’s bodies keep to the melody of their own souls. It didn’t matter to the instructor whether Flaca danced or not. She knew her story and attending to her wasn’t a burden. She was pleased. “One day she’ll dance again,” she told me, and I almost believed her. She was a good woman. I think she loved Rosa. She was Hungarian. She had been deported to Auschwitz. “She’ll dance again, like I did,” and she gave her a helping hand.

  One day Rosa stopped going to Madame Elsa’s. She didn’t leave home anymore. We tried convincing her by telling her how beautiful the Roman sun was in spring. Nothing could be done. She stayed home. She played with you, Mar, and spent much of her time watching the extinguished radio to listen for the lost man’s voice.

  At some point, I don’t know when, she began washing things. She washed, cleaned, scrubbed, rinsed. She spent all of her time absorbed in these activities. She meticulously sifted through herself and her surroundings. It was an orgy of scouring that no one understood. At first, I welcomed her new mania. Rosa didn’t stink anymore, thanks to her humid, scorching showers. Before, when she had that Marilyn dress, she reeked of everything: cauliflower, excrement, pain, menstrual blood, sweat. The white dress turned orange from being worn so much. Pablo and I followed her like exterminators. We tried making the air around her less polluted. We appreciated that change, I admit. We bought her new dresses and she put them on. She spent a lot of time in the bathroom, and when she came out the air smel
led of talcum powder and lavender. Being with her was pleasant, not as embarrassing as it once was.

  When she stopped leaving the house so that she could wash herself, that’s when I began worrying. I saw her obsessiveness and didn’t like it. Even washing her hands was a ritual at that point. It was impossible to measure, on average, how much she washed her hands or her feet or her ears or nostrils. Everything was a purification ritual. You knew when she went in the bathroom, but not when she left, to the point that attending to her body wasn’t enough. She had to wash everything else on top of that. Us. The apartment. She became the queen of sponges and detergents. It was a war against germs, mites, bacteria. She began making specific requests to us for detergents, sponges, and other contraptions for the house. She wrote long, exhaustive lists and we said, “Ma’am, yes ma’am, it will be done.” We bought everything.

  We thought it might’ve been a way to return to normal. We should’ve taken her to the doctor, though, a psychotherapist. Madame Elsa would tell us, “You can’t keep her in the house.” Pablo and I didn’t have money for a psychotherapist. We didn’t really have money for the detergents she asked for either. We were in bad shape. A psychotherapist, where? Someone on Via dei Serpenti told us there was an Argentinian doctor who helped compatriots and gave preferential treatment. “His name is Antonio Puig.” They gave us his number. The secretary told us he’d be back in a month—he was on vacation. We had to wait.

  In the meantime, Rosa’s delirium extended to soaps as well. She looked at them lovingly, reverentially. They were the unsung divinities of the house, the principal focus of her ritual along with the drying rack. Rosa spent so much time cleaning that damn thing. The delicate balance of her mind stood on a clothes rack. It was perhaps among the appliances nearest to her heart, destined to collect clothes recently taken from the washer, destined to sustain all the cleanliness of the world. She rubbed it with care after every load of laundry. I knew it was a bad sign, but when she hung the wash out to dry, I would watch her for hours. She was meticulous, exact. Everything had a dizzying iconographic effect. It combined the colors of the clothes, their form, their weight as well. It was perfect, sprawled out as in a watercolor exhibition.