“Think,” he said to me, “I’ve come so often to this city for work, but I didn’t know you were living here, that you had two lovely young ladies. Luckily there was this opportunity.”
“Are you still teaching in Milan?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that he no longer lived in Milan.
“No, I’m teaching now in Naples.”
“What subject?”
He made a grimace of displeasure.
“Geography.”
“Meaning?”
“Urban geography.”
“How in the world did you decide to go back?”
“My mother’s not well.”
“I’m sorry, what’s wrong?”
“Her heart.”
“And your brothers and sisters?”
“Fine.”
“Your father?”
“The usual. But time passes, one grows up, and recently we’ve reconciled. Like everyone, he has his flaws and his virtues.” He turned to Pietro: “How much trouble we’ve made for fathers and for the family. Now that it’s our turn, how are we doing?”
“I’m doing well,” my husband said, with a touch of irony.
“I have no doubt. You married an extraordinary woman and these two little princesses are perfect, very well brought up, very stylish. What a pretty dress, Dede, it looks very nice on you. And Elsa, who gave you the barrette with the stars?”
“Mamma,” said Elsa.
Slowly I calmed down. The seconds regained their orderly rhythm, I took note of what was happening to me. Nino was sitting at the table next to me, he ate the pasta I had prepared, carefully cut Elsa’s meat into small pieces, ate his with a good appetite, mentioned with disgust the bribes that Lockheed had paid to Tanassi and to Gui, praised my cooking, discussed with Pietro the socialist option, peeled an apple in a single coil that sent Dede into ecstasies. Meanwhile a fluid benevolence spread through the apartment that I hadn’t felt for a long time. How nice it was that the two men agreed with one another, liked one another. I began to clear the table in silence. Nino jumped up and offered to do the dishes, provided the girls helped him. Sit down, he said, and I sat, while he got Dede and Elsa busy, eager, every so often he asked where he should put something or other, and continued to chat with Pietro.
It was really him, after so long, and he was there. I looked without wanting to at the ring he wore on his ring finger. He never mentioned his marriage, I thought, he spoke of his mother, his father, but not of his wife and child. Maybe it wasn’t a marriage of love, maybe he had married for convenience, maybe he was
forced
to get married. Then the flutter of hypotheses ceased. Nino out of the blue began to tell the girls about his son, Albertino, and he did it as if the child were a character in a fable, in tones that were comical and tender by turns. Finally he dried his hands, took out of his wallet a picture, showed it to Elsa, then Dede, then Pietro, who handed it to me. Albertino was very cute. He was two and sat in his mother’s arms with a sulky expression. I looked at the child for a few seconds, and immediately went on to examine her. She seemed magnificent, with big eyes and long black hair, she could hardly be more than twenty. She was smiling, her teeth were sparkling, even, her gaze seemed to me that of someone in love. I gave him back the photograph, I said: I’ll make coffee. I stayed alone in the kitchen, the four of them went into the living room.
Nino had an appointment for work, and with profuse apologies left immediately after coffee and a cigarette. I’m leaving tomorrow, he said, but I’ll be back soon, next week. Pietro urged him repeatedly to let him know, he promised he would. He said goodbye to the girls affectionately, shook hands with Pietro, nodded to me, and disappeared. As soon as the door closed behind him I was overwhelmed by the dreariness of the apartment. I waited for Pietro, although he had been so at ease with Nino, to find something hateful about his guest, he almost always did. Instead he said contentedly: Finally a person it’s worthwhile spending time with. That remark, I don’t know why, hurt me. I turned on the television, and watched it with the girls for the rest of the afternoon.
I hoped that Nino would call right away, the next day. I started every time the phone rang. Instead, an entire week slipped by without news from him. I felt as if I had a terrible cold. I became idle, I stopped my reading and my notes, I got angry at myself for that senseless expectation. Then one afternoon Pietro returned home in an especially good mood. He said that Nino had come by the department, that they had spent some time together, that there was no way to persuade him to come to dinner. He invited us to go out tomorrow evening, he said, the children, too: he doesn’t want you to go to the trouble of cooking.
The blood began to flow more quickly, I felt an anxious tenderness for Pietro. As soon as the girls went to their room I embraced him, I kissed him, I whispered words of love. I hardly slept that night, or rather I slept with the impression of being awake. The next day, as soon as Dede came home from school, I put her in the bathtub with Elsa and washed them thoroughly. Then I moved on to myself. I took a long pleasant bath, I shaved my legs, I washed my hair and dried it carefully. I tried on every dress I owned, but I was getting more and more nervous, nothing looked right, and I didn’t like the way my hair had turned out. Dede and Elsa were right there, pretending to be me. They posed in front of the mirror, they expressed dissatisfaction with clothes and hairdos, they shuffled around in my shoes. I resigned myself to being what I was. After I scolded Elsa too harshly for getting her dress dirty at the last minute, we got in the car and drove to pick up Pietro and Nino, who were at the university. I drove apprehensively, constantly reprimanding the girls, who were singing nursery rhymes of their own invention based on shit and pee. The closer I got to the place where we were to meet, the more I hoped that some last-minute engagement would keep Nino from coming. Instead I saw the two men right away, talking. Nino had enveloping gestures, as if he were inviting his interlocutor to enter into a space designed just for him. Pietro seemed as usual clumsy, the skin of his face flushed, he alone was laughing and in a deferential way. Neither of the two showed particular interest in my arrival.
My husband sat in the back seat with the two girls, Nino sat beside me to direct me to a place where the food was good and—he said, turning to Dede and Elsa—they made delicious
frittelle
. He described them in detail, getting the girls excited. A long time ago, I thought, observing him out of the corner of my eye, we held hands as we walked, and twice he kissed me. What nice fingers. To me he said only
Here go right, then right again, then left at the intersection
. Not an admiring look, not a compliment.
At the trattoria we were greeted in a friendly but respectful way. Nino knew the owner, the waiters. I ended up at the head of the table between the girls, the two men sat opposite each other, and my husband began talking about the difficulties of life in the university. I said almost nothing, attending to Dede and Elsa, who usually at the table were very well behaved but that night kept causing trouble, laughing, to attract Nino’s attention. I thought uneasily: Pietro talks too much, he’s boring him, he doesn’t leave him space. I thought: We’ve lived in this city for seven years and we have no place of our own where we could take him in return, a restaurant where the food is good, as it is here, where we’re recognized as soon as we enter. I liked the owner’s courtesy, he came to our table often, and even went so far as to say to Nino: Tonight I won’t give you that, it’s not fit for you and your guests, and he advised something else. When the famous
frittelle
arrived, the girls were elated, and so was Pietro, they fought over them. Only then Nino turned to me.
“Why haven’t you had anything else published?” he asked, without the frivolity of dinner conversation, and an interest that seemed genuine.
I blushed, I said indicating the children:
“I did something else.”
“That book was really good.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not a compliment, you’ve always known how to write. You remember the article about the religion teacher?”
“Your friends didn’t publish it.”
“There was a misunderstanding.”
“I lost faith.”
“I’m sorry. Are you writing now?”
“In my spare time.”
“A novel?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“But the subject?”
“Men who fabricate women.”
“Nice.”
“We’ll see.”
“Get busy, I’d like to read you soon.”
And, to my surprise, he turned out to be very familiar with the works by women I was concerned with: I had been sure that men didn’t read them. Not only that: he cited a book by Starobinski that he had read recently, and said there was something that might be useful to me. He knew so much; he had been like that since he was a boy, curious about everything. Now he was quoting Rousseau and Bernard Shaw, I broke in, he listened attentively. And when the children, nerve-rackingly, began tugging at me to order more
frittelle
, he signaled to the owner to make us some more. Then, turning to Pietro, he said:
“You should leave your wife more time.”
“She has all day available.”
“I’m not kidding. If you don’t, you’re guilty not only on a human level but also on a political one.”
“What’s the crime?”
“The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women’s intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn’t realize it.”
I waited in silence for Pietro to respond. My husband reacted with sarcasm.
“Elena can cultivate her intelligence when and how she likes, the essential thing is that she not take time from me.”
“If she doesn’t take it from you, then who can she take it from?”
Pietro frowned.
“When the task we give ourselves has the urgency of passion, there’s nothing that can keep us from completing it.”
I felt wounded, I whispered with a false smile:
“My husband is saying that I have no true interest.”
Silence. Nino asked:
“And is that true?”
I answered in a rush that I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything. But while I was speaking, with embarrassment, with rage, I realized that my eyes were filled with tears. I lowered my gaze. That’s enough
fritelle
, I said to the children in a scarcely controlled voice, and Nino came to my aid, he exclaimed: I’ll eat just one more, Mamma also, Papa, too, and you can have two, but then that’s it. He called over the owner and said solemnly: I’ll be back here with these two young ladies in exactly thirty days and you’ll make us a mountain of these exquisite
fritelle
, all right?
Elsa asked: “When is a month, when is thirty days?”
And I, having managed to repress my tears, stared at Nino and said:
“Yes, when is a month, when is thirty days?”
We laughed—Dede more than us adults—at Elsa’s vague idea of time. Then Pietro tried to pay, but he discovered that Nino had already done it. He protested. He drove, I sat in the back between the two girls, who were half asleep. We took Nino to the hotel and all the way I listened to their slightly tipsy conversation. Once we were there Pietro, euphoric, said:
“It doesn’t make sense to throw away money: we have a guest room, next time you can come and stay with us, don’t stand on ceremony.”
Nino smiled:
“Less than an hour ago we said that Elena needs time, and now you want to burden her with my presence?”
I interrupted wearily: “It would be a pleasure for me, and also for Dede and Elsa.”
But as soon as we were alone I said to my husband:
“Before making certain invitations you might at least consult me.”
He started the car, looked at me in the rearview mirror, stammered:
“I thought it would please you.”
Oh of course it pleased me, it pleased me
greatly
. But I also felt as if my body had the consistency of eggshell, and a slight pressure on my arm, on my forehead, on my stomach would be enough to break it and dig out all my secrets, in particular those which were secrets even to me. I avoided counting the days. I concentrated on the texts I was studying, but I did it as if Nino had commissioned that work and on his return would expect first-rate results. I wanted to tell him: I followed your advice, I kept going, here’s a draft, tell me what you think.
It was a good expedient. The thirty days of waiting went by too quickly. I forgot about Elisa, I never thought of Lila, I didn’t telephone Mariarosa. And I didn’t read the newspapers or watch television. I neglected the children and the house. Of arrests and clashes and assassinations and wars, in the permanent agon of Italy and the planet, only an echo reached me; I was scarcely aware of the heavy tensions of the electoral campaign. All I did was write, with great absorption. I racked my brains over a pile of old questions, until I had the impression that I had found, at least in writing, a definitive order. At times I was tempted to turn to Pietro. He was much smarter than me, he would surely save me from writing hasty or crude or stupid things. But I didn’t do it, I hated the moments when he intimidated me with his encyclopedic knowledge. I worked hard, I remember, especially on the first and second Biblical creations. I put them in order, taking the first as a sort of synthesis of the divine creative act, the second as a sort of more expansive account. I made up a lively story, without ever feeling imprudent. God—I wrote, more or less—creates man,
Ish
, in his image. He creates a masculine and a feminine version. How? First, with the dust of the earth, he forms Ish, and blows into his nostrils the breath of life. Then he makes
Isha’h
, the woman, from the already formed male material, material no longer raw but living, which he takes from Ish’s side, and immediately closes up the flesh. The result is that Ish can say: This thing is not, like the army of all that has been created,
other
than me, but is flesh of
my
flesh, bone of
my
bones. God produced it from me. He made me fertile with the breath of life and extracted it from
my
body. I am Ish and she is Isha’h. In the word above all, in the word that names her, she derives from me. I am in the image of the divine spirit. I carry within me his Word. She is therefore a pure suffix applied to my verbal root, she can express herself
only
within
my
word.