‘And what do you see?’
‘Enormous freedom of thought and action! How did you manage to achieve such freedom? Down at Villa Suvarita they weren’t even surprised by your departure.’
‘I got them used to it.’
‘How?’
‘By allowing them the same freedom. When they were little — partly so I wouldn’t have to listen to them, partly to accustom them to it — I would go to a hotel in Catania. You have to put some distance between you and those you love. Distance clarifies things almost better than La Certa.’
‘Ah, I see. Is that why you sent Prando away?’
‘The weed of dominance was beginning to grow in him, and if this weed grows persistently in Tudia soil … Go find your slaves elsewhere, the world is full of them.’
‘The problem is that we Tudia aren’t fond of those whom you call slaves. It’s the mania to subjugate those who are free that drives us.’
‘I know. There’s that tendency in me as well, but I don’t nurture it. It doesn’t get you anywhere, Mattia! When you subjugate, you become a slave yourself, watching over those you’ve rendered powerless to look after themselves, clinging to you like leeches.’
‘Is that how you talk to your children? Aren’t you fearful for them, for their future?’
‘When you’ve fertilized the soil, the plant will grow, Mattia. You’ve brought me money for fertilizer.’
‘I thought you wanted to amass it.’
‘Now you’re talking like your father. Money is useful so you can be free in the present, not in some uncertain future.’
‘One night in Las Vegas, I was about to lose everything that Carmine had stored up. I was overcome by a mad urge to fritter it away and I lost and lost, but then something stopped me … a kind of oppression, rage at all those concrete and gleaming glass walls rising to the heavens. For many years they’d seemed like magnificent cathedrals of power, and then … I don’t know, Mody … That night I was dead drunk, and at the window where I went to get some air — it was sweltering inside — I had a sudden longing for our valleys of almond trees and orange groves sloping down toward the sea, and for a moment I seemed to be whirling in the scent of orange blossoms. They told me I fainted and fell to the ground. Naturally when I came to, I realized that I had to fertilize what little land was left, and I came back. Even if this house of the dead was the only thing waiting for me, the plants were still alive, and I knew I had to nurture that scent.’
‘You lost that much?’
‘Nearly everything. But, as you say, I feel liberated and I can sleep again. Why is that? That’s what I wanted to ask you.’
‘You’re asking what you already know. All that wealth was superfluous.’
‘Those years when I was well-off, always wheeling and dealing, went by without my remembering a single day. Now, like someone risen from the dead, I’m rediscovering everything, and that midsummer evening with you seems like a baptism. Though I was a mere bystander, there to watch, I drank in the sound of the mandolins, your wine, your joy, finally experiencing the sounds and tastes. Why is that, Sphinx?’
‘You’re asking me to put in words what you already know, Mattia.’
‘As confirmation. One must touch the Mountain’s true stone and the water of the Simeto98 of words to know what water is, what stone is, what words are. I’m sleepy again. Even the whisper of pain, which like a snake was slithering slowly from my arm to sting me here in my heart, has been dulled by sleep. What is it, Mody, why aren’t you answering?’
‘Did it go away when you slept?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then sleep, caruso. That way the painful serpent will glide away in your slumber.’
‘Did you say caruso?’
‘Yes, and picciriddu.’
‘Last night you embraced me. Was it gratitude because of the money?’
‘No. It was to touch the truth of stone and water, as you said before.’
‘What’s wrong, Mody? Why are you so pale? Why are you trembling? Come here. Sit down again.’
‘Oh, Mattia, I thought I saw a white figure coming through the trees down there.’
‘Where?’
‘Back there, among the branches of Nonna Gaia’s weeping willow. She loved that sad tree, and in the midday heat she would read for hours and hours in its shade … She didn’t sleep in the afternoon.’
‘I don’t see anything, Modesta. Maybe you thought of her and she appeared to you. The dead find their way in during the struggle between sun and shadow: it’s noon, the hour when the sun turns black.’
‘As a young girl I was always afraid in this room. It seemed immense to me, and instead it’s small. Even the grounds seemed endless … Maybe it was a ray of sunshine on one of those white statues. I had forgotten those statues. Let’s go outside. I want to see them again.’
‘Come on. I’ll take off my jacket if I may. I’d put it on because coming from outside, it’s chilly within these walls.’
‘Like back then, Mattia. I too used to look for a shawl when I entered the hall.’
Outside the walls the sun is dazzling. The sun always blinds me when I go out, and the white statues shimmer in a silent, frenzied dance: ‘One, two, three … one, two, three … Quick, let’s gallop down to the sun.’
‘Where are you running to? You’ll perspire and catch cold, Mody! What are you looking for? There’s nobody here. Hey, tosta carusa, where are you, you impulsive girl?’
In the distance, Mattia’s voice rises higher and higher. Or is it Beatrice calling me, frightened by the hour when spirits appear? It’s not Nonna Gaia stirring the branches of her willow tree. Joyce, motionless, stares at me, her gaze dilated: she does not speak.
‘What are you doing here, Joyce?’
‘That’s a question I should be asking you.’
‘I fell asleep.’
‘How convenient for you to fall asleep.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘The same way you did. By car.’
‘When I was a girl, shut away in that convent, I thought it took days and days to get to Catania. Then the first time I saw Catania in little more than an hour, with the sea just beyond it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.’
‘I’m not interested in your stories, Modesta. I’m leaving!’
‘Wait. Come up to the house. I’ll show you where I grew up.’
‘Don’t touch me! Go to him. Don’t you hear him calling you?’
‘You have no reason to be suspicious, Joyce. Wait! Mattia and I just talked and…’
Joyce whirls around, ashen. Arms rigid at her sides, she swerves behind a marble pedestal and disappears among the weeping branches of the willow.
‘She’s gone.’
‘Who, Mody? Now you’re scaring me. I saw something too.’
‘It’s Joyce.’
‘Why is she running away?’
‘She’s jealous, or rather she acts jealous now. Before, I could stay out for three days and she wouldn’t even notice.’
‘What’s between you and her, Modesta?’
‘You already know the answer: love, Mattia. On my side, a deep love that made me believe she loved me too. It happens. But then I understood, and now she’s dead to me … You were right; I shouldn’t have run. I’m perspiring and I feel dizzy.’