‘You have to keep busy.’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Yesterday at the market I saw that they were selling badly crocheted red and blue berets. I can get by with a crochet hook…’
‘Exactly. That’s what I was saying.’
‘I want to try!’
‘And you could also make baby blankets. All they do is have babies on this island.’
‘That and die. Not one day goes by that you don’t see a funeral. It must be all these rocks and the lack of water. I’d really like to try! Yesterday, with two berets, an old woman took home a litre of water. I really should give it a try. Are you sure they’ll send us yarn from your house? What’s happening at your house, anyway? All you do is get letters, read them and say nothing. Nina is curious, very curious. It’s a defect of hers.’
‘You can read them.’
‘Oh no, not that! My father said it’s a violation of privacy. It’s not part of the anarchist “Ideal”.’
‘If you want, I’ll tell you.’
‘It’s about time!’
A succession of iron birds streak across the sky, ignoring the wretched piece of land in the middle of the sea. Where are they headed, to spew out their deadly breath? To more attractive places, of course, full of people and life.
‘That’s why they ignore us, Nina. Their metallic hunger craves young, wholesome flesh, not a few acres populated by shrunken bodies and spent eyes. Oh, Nina, have you seen the man who sells lemons? If you can call him that. He has no nose, no lips, and two slits for eyes. He looks like he was eaten by insects.’
‘Only him, Mody? I counted about a dozen of them and then I got tired. It must be leprosy, even if they don’t say it. But never mind, tell me about things at your house … Bambolina is going to marry your Mattia? Are you upset about it?’
‘When she told me about it that night — it seems a century ago — I was sad at first, but then as I waited for dawn, I realized that I wasn’t sad because I was losing Mattia but because I felt vanquished, old: forty years!
‘You, forty years old…’
‘Forty-two today, Nina…’
‘… I don’t believe it. Not even if I were to see it in writing!’
‘Yet I felt every one of those years that night. Because youth and old age are only hypothetical.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that even age is something that you choose, that you convince yourself of.’
‘You think so? But nature also comes into it.’
‘Of course, and hard work, and poverty, the privations that age people prematurely. But for those who have had the privilege to be spared that, like me, old age is only a concept instilled in you, like so many others.’
‘I like you, Mody. I like the way you acknowledge your privilege.’
‘It’s the primary duty, it seems to me, for those who think like we do.’
‘But tell me about that night.’
‘I told you: I was falling into the trap of cliché. Oh, no matter how much you rebel, it’s hard to overcome the rules of society that tell you: this is how you are at ten; then at twenty, like this; at forty, with children, you’re old … I’m ashamed to say it, but that night I was losing my rebellion. I was about to enlist in the army of sheep ambling through the world.
‘But not for long! Before dawn I’d realized it, and if they hadn’t arrested me, I would have gone in search of something else. The world is big, as Carmine used to say.’
‘You still think about your old man?’
‘When he helps me.’
‘When are they getting married?’
‘Oh, they’re not getting married. I said that to make you understand. They’re already together, and things seem fine, even in bed. Read this: “And don’t worry, Zia, even though everything is fine between me and Mattia, I won’t ever become one of those legitimate … whom our friend talks about.”’
‘What do the three dots stand for, Mody?’
‘Whores. She didn’t write it because she was afraid of censorship.’
‘And who is this friend?’
‘August Bebel … Here, there’s more: “I got to know him well, not like Mela, who only pretended to read him. And now I know that Papa was right when he said that our friend’s words will be the new bible for the women of tomorrow. But enough of these serious matters. I want to tell you how wonderful the villa has become with all the rooms full of life. Even Pietro and Crispina are with us because of the bombings. Catania is an inferno.” And so Carmelo has returned to the Brandiforti, as Beatrice hoped it would.’
‘And Mela? Crispina?’
‘Crispina is studying with a real teacher, and Mela has had a series of successes. In America, life goes on.’
‘Still with her Ippolita?’
‘Still. Who can understand nature! I think that she will always love only women, although for the press she passes as a virgin devoted solely to Music. Maybe in time, she’ll take a husband as a cover … unless the world changes.’
‘Oh sure, the world is going to change tomorrow! Please!’
‘Still, it might change.’
‘We’re comrades and we can say it, Mody: where do you see that it’s changed? In Russia, they’ve discarded everything that mattered to our individual freedom. After only a few years, they forgot about free love and went right back to marriage. And that’s not all!’
‘I like it when you talk like that, Nina.’
‘Well I don’t! I’m sick and tired of talking virtuously and reading books full of dreams. It’s easy for you to talk, but in Spain the man of my life was killed by our communist comrades!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure as can be: eyewitnesses. You yourself know that when the time came, they did away with all the anarchists, and not just them.’
‘The dream was too far ahead of its time, Nina. Anarchy is a destination, not…’
‘Oh sure, too far ahead! And when is it that we’ll really decide to take a small step forward, eh, my worthless Princess? And your Gramsci? You condemned him! Arminio, my brother, saw him, you know! Always alone in a cell, or outdoors, isolated from the comrades and scorned. The jailers had a free hand.’
‘So?’
‘So Gramsci suffered from insomnia, and the guards banged on the bars every hour to wake him up. You’re as good as dead in prison if the comrades abandon you. “They” killed him!’
‘But even though Arminio knew these things, he continued the struggle like you, it seems to me.’
‘Thank you kindly! One must always stay on the side of what’s right! But with your eyes open, don’t make me angry, Mody!’
Nina is terrifying when she gets infuriated. Her eyes flash yellow sparks and her deep voice echoes cavernously.
‘I don’t want to lose my temper, Mody, over these stories from the past! Tell me about ’Ntoni. I like that young man from your descriptions of him. Have you heard anything about him?’
‘No. I only know that he fled after my arrest.’
‘Many were arrested in Rome. I heard it yesterday at the port where the ship that unloads water is docked. They were talking about Rome.’
‘What were they saying?’
‘That in Rome all you see are women, children and the elderly, and that people are starving in the streets…’
83
’Ntoni drags his pale, swollen legs through the streets of Rome, shoved about by indifferent old people and women. He is just one of many who are doomed: the flesh swells with water and the skin becomes taut and white, whiter and whiter before you starve to death.
‘What is it, micia, why are you screaming? Open your eyes. Nina is right here. Wake up!’