Among Women Only (11 page)

"Just what one needs," I observed.

But after the marriage Neri had got his revenge. After all, his grandfather had only been a steward, one of those who go around on horseback, wearing riding boots. Neri had an excuse to stay in the country to look after his lands, and Momina had left him.

"You, Rosetta, are you like Neri or like Momina?" I asked her.

"How do you mean?"

"Your father's a working man," I said. "Do you admire your father?"

"I'm more like Momina," she said without hesitation, and smiled.

So we went to the Riviera. The novelty of this trip was Nene's coming too. We took two cars, two magnificent Studebakers. I was seated between Nene and Rosetta, and some baron drove us, a young man, a donkey who didn't know the score but did know paintings. He drove all the time, half turned around to talk to Nene about plays and Frenchmen. Momina was up ahead in Mariella's car, which was full of people I had barely met. It was still dark and rain was threatening. But everyone swore the sun always shone on the Riviera on Sunday.

Rosetta scarcely opened her mouth. Again I was amazed at Nene, sculptress or painter or whatever, thick-lipped and banged, and her shameless way of laughing like a baby. And yet she was thirty at least, only a little younger than I. She was also naive and impulsive, and when Rosetta asked how Loris was and why he didn't come too, she got confused and dropped her voice as if caught in the act. Strange girl—she seemed like a lizard. Probably she really was clever, and anyhow artists are what they are.

But I was sleepy. We had spent the evening at the baron's house having dinner and waiting for the girls so we could leave. I drowsed off. We met a strong wind in the Apennines and the rain caught us on the road deep in the woods. Then, as the day slowly brightened, the rain thinned out, until we were running along the sea in warm air with the windows open, under the last showers. Here the gardens were green and already in flower. I asked Rosetta if she were going to the sea that year. She said no, she was going back to Montalto.

Our destination was a villa above Noli, but someone said: "Let's go to San Remo."

"As for me," the baron said, "I'd like a little nap."

While they talked, we got out in the square at Noli. Momina came up. At that hour, in the early light, the square was deserted, the cafes closed.

"We're early birds once again," Momina said to me.

Rosetta, her bag hanging from her shoulder, had her back to the sea as she leaned on the railing, smoking.

"I've never seen the sea at this hour," Nene said.

"You never do unless you stay up all night," Momina said, "but it's not worth the trouble. This breeze with the smell of flowers is better than the sea."

We set out again. The baron had won. We took the mountain road and, speeding between stone walls and around risky curves, we reached the villa, which was like a huge greenhouse among the magnolias.

21

As we walked in the garden, Rosetta told us that last year she had wanted to become a nun. We had gone off, she, Momina, and I, into a little stand of trees, up to a balustrade from which you looked out at the sea.

"But they don't want girls like me," she said.

"Why not? If you have the money?" Momina said.

Rosetta began to laugh softly and said that the nuns had to be virgins.

Momina said: "It's a marriage like any other. All one asks of a bride is that she be dressed in white."

"It's beautiful up here," Rosetta said. "But tomorrow it won't be so nice. To keep some respect for the world and people, one should do without everything. A convent solves the problem."

"And what would you have done, all alone like that? Painted Madonnas?" Momina asked. "I wouldn't know how to get through the days."

Rosetta shrugged off Momina's allusion. I was hardly aware of it myself. But Mariella and the others were already approaching under the magnolias, and Momina murmured: "One day at a time is enough. Let's get through this one..."

The weather was really promising, if only there hadn't been the women, sisters and friends of the baron, and their escorts, who insisted on making a fuss and wore out the tormented old caretakers opening the house, carrying stuff, putting the verandah in order. Momina took things in hand by suggesting that they assign us women a bedroom and let us rest for an hour.

The villa was a splendor, full of heavy furniture and armchairs, but all sheeted, even the lamps. The wooden shelves were still covered in waxed paper. "It's like a medieval castle," Momina said, walking along a corridor. When the coming and going to the bathroom stopped, I sat in a wicker chair and Mariella combed her hair at a mirror, Momina took off her shoes and collapsed on the bed, Nene and Rosetta gossiped at the open window. It reminded me of those American movies about girls who lived together in one room with an older girl, quite experienced, who plays wet nurse to the others. And I thought how phony it all was: the actress who plays the ingenue is the most divorced and the best paid. I laughed to myself, and Momina, who was smoking, said: "I hope they send up a drink."

"I don't understand," Mariella began, "why Donna Paola dresses like a gypsy that way, with those earrings..."

They talked for a while about the earrings and the absent women. At a certain point I gave a start in my chair: I had dozed off again. I felt the coolness of the room and heard Nene's aggressive voice exclaiming: "You're nasty, nasty. I don't have to mother anyone."

"You don't need to, but you do it," Momina said.

Nene, standing in the middle of the room, shouted stridently: "Men are babies. We artists are children twice over. If you take that away from us, what's left?"

"What do you want to take away?" Momina said. "There's nothing to take away from life, it's already zero. Ah," she turned over on the bed, "you make me sick."

From the window Rosetta said: "If you like him, Nene, pay no attention to what Momina says. She does it to make you angry."

"Of course," Mariella said.

"Who are you talking about?" I asked.

"That genius Loris," said Momina, jumping down from the bed. "He won't take a bath unless someone's in love with him. I prefer Fefé."

Downstairs they rang the gong. "Let's go," Momina said. "Girls into the living room."

On the verandah we ate the lunch that the custodians had combed the countryside to scare up. Donna Paola in her scarlet gypsy cloak acted as hostess and apologized because we had to pass the plates ourselves. We had Chianti and liqueurs in brandy glasses. Mariella chattered endlessly. Toward the end of lunch the curtains had to be drawn, the sun was so bright.

It wasn't yet noon. When we got up, they talked about what to do. Someone said: "Let's go down to the sea." Some wandered into the garden. I had a fat, homely fellow beside me who wanted to point out the antiquities of Noli from above. I brushed him off. I escaped to the second-floor bedroom and sat at the window.

From the garden rose shouts and voices that I recognized; they were talking again about going to San Remo. Suddenly my door opened; Mariella came in. "Oh, it's you," she said. "Excuse me." Behind her I caught sight of the baron.

"Should I leave?" I said.

Mariella smiled broadly and closed the door in the baron's face. "I was looking for you." She came up to me. "The trouble with these trips is that there's always somebody
de trop,"
she chattered. "What I wanted to say, Clelia... let's help poor Rosetta... You know how sensitive and intelligent she is, we were such friends before... We've got to get her away from her morbid thinking, distract her."

I waited to know what she was getting at. I could still see the baron's bewilderment.

"You tell her, too. I know you've been seeing each other. She doesn't like to come out with me. You can't keep these girls together. How hard it is to try to put something on."

"Perhaps Rosetta has grown up," I said. "She doesn't want to play dolls any longer."

"No, no," she said, "there are feuds, petty jealousies ..."

"She doesn't seem to have anything against Nene."

"It's not that. Ever since Momina came out against the play— Momina, too! how silly—Rosetta wants nothing more to do with it, she's dropped us."

"I think," I said, "that Rosetta tried to kill herself because she was sick of Momina, of the play, of you, of everybody. Don't you think so?"

Taken aback, she flushed and looked at me. Then she went on vivaciously. "You exaggerate. Rosetta's an intelligent and sincere girl..."

"Exactly," I wanted to answer. "Exactly." But someone was knocking. It was Momina.

"We're going to San Remo," she announced. Then, narrowing her eyes, she said, "I'm surprised at you."

We didn't get to San Remo. Nene began to feel sick, to flail the air, toss around on the seat, groaning. "It's terrible. I'm dying. Stop." The first car stopped too. "It's nothing," the baron said. "Car sickness. This car acts that way."

The fat fellow and a woman in the other group were sick too. We made them lean over the low wall and vomit. Nene was the most tragic: dark-ringed eyes and wild talk. They explained to me that these big American cars were so comfortable and easily sprung that they gave you the sensation of rising and falling in sea swells.

We had stopped under a rocky overhang at a wide turning, facing the sea. Irritated, Rosetta looked at the scene.

"Do you feel well enough to go on?" we asked the three.

22

They didn't feel well enough, and so Momina and I walked down among the cacti to the beach. Mariella shouted to us to wait for her.

"This is the sea," Momina said, leaning against a wall.

"Mariella thinks you go too far with Rosetta," I told her.

"Does she?" she said coldly.

Mariella, shouting "Yoo-hoo," arrived with two or three men. "Shall we swim?" they said.

"No, go collect pebbles," Momina said, "but don't put them in your mouths."

They did, in fact, go away.

"Listen," I said, impressed, "do you see much of Febo?"

"He's a presumptuous, slimy, hairy boor. Satisfied?" She laughed. "Why? Are you interested in him?"

"No," I muttered. "I wanted to know if you like only women."

"What did that stupid girl say to you?"

"I'm the stupid girl. I can't understand why Rosetta doesn't marry. It's the only thing she can do. Is she still attached to you?"

Momina looked at me for a moment there in the sun.

"I don't like women, and neither does Rosetta. That's the truth. If I did like them, you can be sure I wouldn't think twice about it. It's an idea Rosetta has got into her head. It happened three years ago, we were at the sea, like today... She came in a room and found me... I wasn't alone. It was horseplay, like Ivrea. Then she wanted to be daring, but the impression stuck and she considers me ... something... like her mirror. Do you understand?"

I understood. The story was so absurd that it had to be true. But it was clear she hadn't told me everything.

"Why doesn't she get married?"

"Would that change anything?" Momina said. "She doesn't need to make her own way. She knows what a man is ... And then they keep her under lock and key at home."

Mariella returned with her men. Up above they were calling us; they had decided to drive back to Noli. I wasn't sorry they had decided against going to San Remo, but what would we do in Noli? As for me, I decided to spend the evening in the little town square.

We had left Nene in the other car; I was sitting between Momina and Rosetta. Mariella and the baron were in front, whispering and plotting together. He turned around suddenly to ask if the car was making us sick. Then we were off like the wind.

We passed through Noli without stopping, through Spotorno and into Savona. This was beginning to get dull. I nudged Momina, motioning toward Mariella, who was pressing up against the baron, and said: "Aren't you beginning to feel a little queasy?" When the big car braked, it bounced back and forth on its springs. They turned and said: "Shall we go dancing?"

It was fun arriving at the Riviera. We drove up to a tearoom on the square and the people on the sidewalk clustered at both ends of the car as we got out and provided us with a guard of honor. We might have been a variety number.

Once inside, Momina expressed what we were all thinking. "Look here," she said to the baron, "devote yourself to Mariella. I don't feel like dancing today."

"Neither do I," said Rosetta.

"Nor I."

It was a modern place, with lattice partitions and palms. "We're going to see Savona," we told them. "Have a good time."

We went out into the street, relieved. There wasn't much to see in Savona on Sunday, but a new city always has an effect on you. There was a great sky with a few clouds, there was the sea air, we walked around aimlessly. We ate cakes in a cafe, looking at the women, who looked back. We went as far as the port, where we found ugly red and black ships instead of houses.

"That's the end," Momina said. "Everything ends."

We passed by the fried-fish stalls.

Momina said: "Well now, your friend Morelli would invite us to have a liter of wine. The trouble is, he can't hold it."

"Can you hold it?" Rosetta asked.

"In Rome you can do that sort of thing," I said. "That's the good thing about Rome."

"I can take the wine. I can't always take Morelli," Momina said.

We leaned on the wall over the water and lit cigarettes.

"This is how I used to get my meals," I said to Rosetta. "Not in dives like these, but at a dairy bar. Turin is full of girls who eat that way."

"It must be very nice," Rosetta said. "When I went to school, every morning I used to pass a dairy bar and in the winter through the windows you could see people warming their hands around their cups. It must be nice to be alone inside like that, when it's cold outside."

I told her that the girls don't always have time to warm their fingers in the morning. You drop your cup and run to the office, cursing somebody.