87
Michele’s return to his senses was marked not only by a return to his flowery speech but also by the absence among the guests of a person who during that period of crisis had been very close to him: Alfonso. Not to be invited was for my former schoolmate a source of great suffering. For days he did nothing but complain, asking aloud how he had wronged the Solaras. I worked for them for so many years, he said, and they didn’t invite me. Then something happened that caused a sensation. One evening he came to dinner at my house with Lila and Enzo, very depressed. But Alfonso, who had never dressed as a woman in my presence except the day he tried on the maternity dress in the shop on Via Chiaia, arrived in women’s clothes, leaving Dede and Elsa speechless. He was troublesome all evening; he drank a lot. He asked Lila obsessively: Am I getting fat, am I getting ugly, do I not look like you anymore? And Enzo: Who’s prettier, her or me? At a certain point he complained that he had a blocked intestine, that he had a terrible pain in what — addressing the girls — he called his ass. And he began to insist that I look and see what was wrong. Look at my ass, he said, laughing in an obscene way, and Dede stared at him in bewilderment, Elsa tried to stifle a laugh. Enzo and Lila had to take him away in a hurry.
But Alfonso didn’t calm down. The next day, without makeup, in male clothes, eyes red with crying, he left Basic Sight saying that he was going to have a coffee at the Bar Solara. At the entrance he met Michele, and they said something to each other. Michele, after a few minutes, began to punch and kick him, then he grabbed the pole that was used to lower the shutter and beat him methodically, for a long time. Alfonso returned to the office badly battered, but he couldn’t stop repeating: It’s my fault, I don’t how to control myself. Control in what way we couldn’t understand. Certainly, he got even worse, and Lila seemed worried. For days she tried in vain to soothe Enzo, who couldn’t bear the violence of the strong against the weak, and wanted to go to Michele to see if he could beat him, Enzo, the way he had beaten Alfonso. From my apartment I heard Lila saying: Stop it, you’re frightening Tina.
88
January arrived, and my book was now enriched by echoes of many small details of the neighborhood. A great anguish came over me. When I was at the last stage of proofs I timidly asked Lila if she had the patience to reread it (It’s very changed) but she answered decisively no. I didn’t read the last one you published, she said, those are things in which I have no expertise. I felt alone, at the mercy of my own pages, and I was even tempted to call Nino to ask if he would do me a favor and read it. Then I realized that, although he knew my address and phone number, he had never appeared, in all those months he had ignored both me and his daughter. So I gave up. The text moved beyond the final provisional stage and disappeared. Separating from it frightened me, I would see it again only in its definitive guise, and every word would be irremediable.
The publicity office telephoned. Gina said: at Panorama they’ve read the proofs and are very interested, they’ll send a photographer. Suddenly I missed the elegant apartment on Via Tasso. I thought: I don’t want to be photographed again at the entrance of the tunnel, or in this dreary apartment, or even in the gardens, amid the syringes of the addicts; I’m not the girl of fifteen years ago, this is my third book, I want to be treated properly. But Gina insisted, the book had to be promoted. I told her: Give the photographer my phone number — I wanted at least to be notified ahead of time, attend to my appearance, put off the meeting if I didn’t feel in good shape.
In those days I tried to keep the house in order, but no one called. I concluded that there were already enough photographs of me around and that Panorama had decided not to do the article. But one morning, when Dede and Elsa were at school and I was sitting on the floor, in jeans and a worn-out sweater, my hair uncombed, playing with Imma and Tina, the doorbell rang. The two little girls were building a castle with blocks that were scattered around, and I was helping them. In the past few months it had seemed to me that the distance between my daughter and Lila’s had been bridged: they collaborated on the construction with precise gestures, and if Tina appeared more imaginative and often asked me surprising questions in a pure Italian, always clearly pronounced, Imma was more decisive, maybe more disciplined, and her only disadvantage was a constricted language that we often needed her friend to decipher. Since I delayed going to the door as I finished answering some question or other of Tina’s, there was a commanding ring. I opened the door and found myself facing a beautiful woman of around thirty, with blond curls, a long blue raincoat. She was the photographer.
She turned out to be a very gregarious Milanese, expensively dressed. I lost your number, she said, but just as well — the less you expect to be photographed the better the photos. She looked around. What a job to get here, what a wretched place, but it’s exactly what’s needed: are these your babies? Tina smiled at her, Imma didn’t, but it was obvious that they both considered her a kind of fairy. I introduced them: Imma is my daughter and Tina the daughter of a friend. But even as I was speaking, the photographer began to wander around, snapping photos constantly with different cameras and all her equipment. I have to pull myself together, I tried to say. Not at all, you’re fine like that.
She pushed me into every part of the house: the kitchen, the children’s room, my bedroom, even in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Do you have your book?”
“No, it’s not out yet.”
“A copy of the last one you wrote?”
“Yes.”
“Take it and sit here, pretend to be reading.”
I obeyed in a daze. Tina grabbed a book, too, and assumed the same pose, saying to Imma: Take a picture of me. This excited the photographer, she said: Sit on the floor with the children. She took a lot of pictures, Tina and Imma were happy. She exclaimed: Now let’s do one alone with your daughter. I tried to pull Imma to me, but she said: No, the other one, she has a fantastic face. She pushed Tina toward me, she took an infinite number of pictures, Imma became upset. Me, too, she said. I opened my arms, I called to her: Yes, come to Mamma.
The morning flew by. The woman in the blue raincoat dragged us out of the house, but was somewhat tense. She asked a couple of times: They won’t steal my equipment? Then she got carried away, she wanted to photograph every squalid corner of the neighborhood. She placed me on a broken-down bench, against a flaking wall, next to the old urinal. I said to Imma and Tina: Stay here, don’t move, because the cars are going by, I’m warning you. They held each other by the hand, one fair and one dark, the same height, and waited.
Lila returned from work at dinnertime, and came up to get her daughter. Tina didn’t wait for her to come in before she told her all about it.
“A beautiful lady came.”
“More beautiful than me?”
“Yes.”
“Even more beautiful than Aunt Lenuccia?”