“Where are you?”
“In Rome, the train is stuck here in the station and I don’t know when it’s leaving.”
“Ah, these trains. Shall I tell the girls that you won’t be here for Christmas Eve dinner?”
“Yes, I probably won’t arrive in time.”
He burst into laughter, he hung up.
I traveled in a totally empty, frigid train. Not even the conductor came by. I felt as if I had lost everything and was heading toward nothingness, prisoner of a bleakness that accentuated my guilt. I arrived in Florence in the middle of the night, and couldn’t find a taxi. I carried my suitcase through the cold, on the deserted streets; even the Christmas bells had long since vanished into the night. I used my keys to enter. The apartment was dark and there was an anguished silence. I went through the rooms, no trace of the children, or of Adele. Tired, terrified, but also exasperated, I looked for at least a note that would tell me where they had gone. Nothing.
The house was in perfect order.
12
I had ugly thoughts. Maybe Dede or Elsa or both had got sick and Pietro and his mother had taken them to the hospital. Or my husband had ended up in the hospital, because he had done some mad thing, and Adele and the children were with him.
I wandered through the house consumed by anxiety, I didn’t know what to do. At some point I thought that, whatever had happened, it was likely that my mother-in-law had told Mariarosa, and although it was three in the morning I decided to call her. My sister-in-law answered eventually; I had a hard time waking her. But finally I found out from her that Adele had decided to take the children to Genoa — they had left two days earlier — to allow me and Pietro to confront our situation freely, and Dede and Elsa to enjoy Christmas vacation in peace.
On the one hand, the news calmed me, on the other it made me furious. Pietro had lied to me: when I telephoned he already knew there would be no Christmas Eve dinner, that the children weren’t expecting me, that they had left with their grandmother. And Adele? How dare she take away my daughters! I vented on the telephone while Mariarosa listened to me in silence. I asked: Am I wrong about everything, do I deserve what is happening to me? She took a serious tone, but she was encouraging. She said that I had the right to have my life and the duty to continue to study and write. Then she offered to let me stay with her, along with the children, any time I found myself in trouble.
Her words soothed me, yet I couldn’t sleep. I turned things over and over in my breast: anguish, rage, desire for Nino, unhappiness because he would spend the holiday with his family, with Albertino, and I was reduced to a woman alone, without affection, in an empty house. At nine in the morning I heard the door open, it was Pietro. I confronted him immediately, I yelled at him: Why did you hand over the children to your mother without my permission? He was disheveled, unshaven, he stank of wine, but he didn’t seem drunk. He let me scream without reacting, he merely repeated over and over, in a depressed tone: I have work to do, I can’t take care of them, and you have your lover, you don’t have time for them.
I forced him to sit down, in the kitchen. I tried to calm myself, I said:
“We have to come to an agreement.”
“Explain yourself, what type of agreement.”
“The children will live with me, and you’ll see them on the weekend.”
“On the weekend where?”
“At my house.”
“And where is your house?”
“I don’t know, I’ll decide later: here, in Milan, in Naples.”
That word was enough: Naples. As soon as he heard it he jumped to his feet, opened his eyes wide, opened his mouth as if to bite me, raised his fist with such a ferocious expression that I was terrified. It was an endless moment. The faucet was dripping, the refrigerator humming, someone laughed in the courtyard. Pietro was large, he had big white knuckles. He had already hit me once, I knew that he would hit me now so violently that he would kill me, and I raised my arms abruptly to protect myself. But suddenly he changed his mind, turned, and once, twice, three times punched the metal closet where I kept the brooms. He would have continued if I hadn’t clung to his arm crying: Stop it, enough, you’ll hurt yourself.
The result of that rage was that what I had feared on my return really happened: we ended up in the hospital. His arm was put in a cast, and on the way home he seemed almost cheerful. I remembered that it was Christmas and I made something to eat. We sat down at the table, and he said, point-blank:
“Yesterday I called your mother.”
I jumped.
“How did that occur to you?”
“Well, someone had to tell her. I told her what you did to me.”
“It was my job to talk to her.”
“Why? To lie to her the way you lied to me?”
I became agitated again, but I tried to contain myself; I was afraid that he would start breaking his bones again to avoid breaking mine. Instead I saw that he smiled calmly, looking at his arm in the cast.
“So I can’t drive,” he muttered.
“Where do you have to go?”
“To the station.”
I discovered that my mother had set out by train on Christmas Day — the day she normally assumed domestic centrality, the highest of her responsibilities — and was about to arrive.
13
I was tempted to flee. I thought of going to Naples — escaping to my mother’s city just as she was arriving in mine — and seeking some tranquility with Nino. But I didn’t move. Although I felt that I was changed, I had remained the disciplined person who had never avoided anything. And besides, I said to myself, what can she do to me? I’m a woman, not a child. At most she’ll bring something good to eat, like that Christmas ten years ago, when I was sick and she came to see me in the dormitory at the Normale.
I went with Pietro to get my mother at the station; I drove. She got off the train proudly, she had new clothes, a new purse, new shoes, even a little powder on her cheeks. You look well, I said, you’re very stylish. She hissed: No thanks to you, and didn’t say another word to me. To make up for it she was very affectionate toward Pietro. She asked about his cast, and since he was vague — he said he had bumped into a door — she began to mumble in hesitant Italian: Bumped, I know who made you bump it. I imagine, bumped.
Once we got home she ended her feigned composure. She made me a long speech, limping back and forth in the living room. She praised my husband in an exaggerated fashion, she ordered me to ask his forgiveness immediately. When I didn’t, she began to beg him herself to forgive me and swore on Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa that she would not go home if the two of us did not make peace. At first, with all her hyperbole, she seemed to be making fun of both me and my husband. The list she made of Pietro’s virtues appeared infinite, and — I have to admit — she didn’t stint on mine, either. She emphasized endlessly that, when it came to intelligence and scholarship, we were made for each other. She urged us to think of Dede’s good — Dede was her favorite granddaughter, she forgot to mention Elsa — the child understood everything and it wasn’t right to make her suffer.
My husband, while she spoke, appeared to agree, even though he wore the incredulous expression he assumed in the face of any spectacle of excess. She hugged him, kissed him, thanked him for his generosity, before which — she shouted at me — I should go down on my knees. She kept pushing us with rude claps toward each other, so that we would hug and kiss each other. I drew back, I was aloof. The whole time I thought: I can’t bear her, I can’t bear that at a moment like this, in front of Pietro, I also have to account for the fact that I am the daughter of this woman. And meanwhile I tried to calm myself by saying: It’s her usual scene, soon she’ll get tired and go to bed. But when she grabbed me for the hundredth time, insisting I admit that I had made a serious mistake, I couldn’t take it anymore, her hands offended me and I pulled away. I said something like: Enough, Ma, it’s pointless, I can’t stay with Pietro anymore, I love someone else.