Solitaria (19 page)

In late afternoon, David heads out as he often does, and runs into the countryside to escape the weight of Piera's past, stories which end in maudlin, self-pitying sentences such as, “Oh, how I've suffered!” and “I have worn out my threshold of pain.” During these afternoon getaways, he can breathe deeply, unencumbered by her reproach, which he is beginning to feel is directed at him, even though her stories occurred to others, decades before his birth. Sometimes he tells her that everyone suffers one way or another; that silence, too, is a suffering. She stops in mid-sentence when he says these things, and stares at him with huge, open eyes. Then she says, “Yes, yes, of course, you're right.” There's a resignation to these admissions, but David doesn't think she is entirely sincere.

Sometimes he rises early and runs in the morning, then again later, after he sees Piera. The long hours sitting with her leave him restless and filled with a disquieting energy that does not dissipate with wine or food or sleep. He runs until he is exhausted and doesn't have to think. He's beginning to know Belisolano. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that those in Belisolano are beginning to know him. The neighbours call him
il corridore
, which simply means
the runner
. Often, people stop him to enthuse over Clarissa, shaking his hand as if her fame might rub off on them. It doesn't matter that they haven't seen her since she was a child. The mere knowledge that she once lived here makes her the property of Belisolano, and her appearances on television and on the covers of
CD
s and
DVD
s render her face so familiar that the townspeople feel she has been with them always. As well as complimenting Clarissa, they recount for David brief stories of Piera's goodness toward them: “Without her loan, I would not have been able to buy our house,” or “My child would have died if Donna Piera had not arranged for the operation,” or with salutations: “How is Donna Piera? Please give her my regards,” or “Please remember me to her,” and David begins to understand Piera's position in the town. People speak of her with reverence, if perhaps also with a little fear. He always listens, thanks them, and carries on running. Sometimes, children follow him for blocks, or people stop and stare after him, shaking their heads. Zia Piera laughs and says they probably think he's a little unbalanced, and that this is good, because they'll neither come too close nor try to befriend him. Why she thinks that he would not welcome friends is puzzling, and when he asked her this yesterday, she said, “How many friends do you have back home?”

“Lots,” he said. “Dozens.”

“Exactly how many?” she persisted.

He stared at her as closely as she was staring at him. “Where are all your friends?” he asked.

“Dead,” she said. “But we're not talking about me. We're talking about you and your many friends.”

“When I was in second grade,” he told her, “I had a little albino friend called Henry, who nobody liked because he had red eyes, pink skin, and hair whiter than that on their grandparents' heads.”

“Is this Henry your friend now?” she said.

“I'll tell it my way or I won't tell it at all,” he said.

She shrugged and sighed, but he could see she was interested.

“Henry's eyes were so sensitive to light he had to wear sunglasses even in the classroom. The older boys picked on him in the schoolyard, and our classmates named him Pinko. I was Henry's only friend, even though he was incredibly intelligent and witty. Perhaps the other children were threatened by his straight
A
grades, and his ability to laugh off their mocking.”

“And you,” she said, “what didn't they like about you?”

“My last name,” he said, “my mother's accent—”

“A cultural clash,” she murmured. “Was it difficult growing up in a foreign country?”

“It wasn't foreign to me,” he said. “It's all I've ever known.” He paused. “And despite what you're implying, I had no trouble making friends.”

“Really?” she said, and smiled. “So what happened to your albino friend? Did you betray him?”

“No, of course not,” David said. “Why would you say that?”

“And then what?”

“And then nothing. We moved. Or he moved. What difference does it make?”

“You abandoned him for another friend,” she said.

“I did no such thing!” His voice rose. “Why would you assume such a thing?” he said. “Is this what you would do?”

“I know you,” she said.

“No, you don't,” he said sharply. “You haven't seen me in years. How can you possibly know anything about my life?” Anger swelled in his chest, and for a moment, he imagined this was how Teresa felt, hearing Piera's baseless assumptions.

“I know you,” she repeated, and closed her eyes.

The words circle in his head, like a mantra, or an ear worm. He continues to run, clockwise, always beginning in the medieval part of town, then following the concentric circles, so that with each lap, he is a little further out, a little closer to the olive groves and vineyards that surround Belisolano. An unravelling.

Out by the train station, he's surprised by a large gathering of men chatting, smoking beneath the date palms that line the three blocks from the piazza of Il Monumento Ai Caduti to the chain-link of the station. It's as if he has stepped back a half century, to a distant Italy he has only read about. He slows down and walks through the throng, puzzled by the serious tones of the men's voices. Then Marco's hand is on his shoulder.

“Are you looking for work now?” he says, smiling.

David raises his eyebrows, and Marco quickly explains that these men are labourers and employers.

“See that one over there?” he says. “He owns three large fields and word is he needs four labourers for Monday. This is where he finds them.” He nods to the man. “I'm hoping he'll hire me for the next few weeks. No one likes to work in August.”

“So it's a kind of employment office,” David says. “But why don't they hire them for the season?”

“Oh, it's much too complicated to explain,” Marco says. “No one needs workers all the time. It's all to do with the crop. Besides, this is how we've always done it.”

David nods. “Is this what you do, then?” he asks. According to Piera, Marco lies around all day, watching
TV
and surfing the Web, and in the evenings goes out drinking and gambling with friends.

“If you're a good worker, you can get steady work.” He pauses, then touches David's arm. “This is all very difficult for my mother, you know.”

“For all of them,” David says.

“Especially for my mother.”

David shifts from foot to foot. “I'm sorry about your father,” he says.

“I don't remember him at all. He left when I was still a baby.”

We're both fatherless, David thinks. Kindred cousins.

The recorded church bells sound. From the distance, the brass of a marching band. Around them, people emerge from their homes and head towards the church, as if summoned by a Pied Piper.

“St. Bartholomew,” Marco says, nodding towards the sound. “Every weekend — almost — there's some procession or other, some celebration of some saint.” He smiles. “It's probably more about the party than about the saint, really. I mean, who knows anything about St. Bartholomew?”

“Wasn't he an apostle?” David says.

Marco rolls his eyes. “Flayed to death in Armenia. A martyr. They're all martyrs. You can't be a saint unless you're a martyr.” His eyes twinkle. “Zia Piera should be beatified soon.”

David laughs, though he feels guilty. “She has a good heart,” he says.

“Oh yes. A good heart full of arrogance,” Marco says. “She thinks she knows everything.”

David shrugs. “She's lived a long life.”

“That does not make her an expert on
other
people's lives,” Marco says, his voice suddenly harsh.

“No, of course not.” David pretends he hasn't heard the tone, the hostility.

Marco relaxes, laughs. He waves his finger at David. “She'll take advantage of you if you let her, you know.”

“I'm just the messenger.”

“We're both her slaves,” he says in a half-mocking, half-joking tone.

“What does she make
you
do?” David asks, curious at Marco's perception of both of them.

Marco flinches, then stiffens, his eyes searching David's, for what? “Defend my mother, for one,” he says. “You have no idea how cruel Zia Piera can be.”

“But you,” David says. “Surely she's kind to you?”

Marco laughs. “She's kind to no one these days, though she's always talking about love. When has she ever loved anyone?” he says, and pauses. “She has lived only in the past—her glorious life before Sandro died, before she drove us all away, one by one.”

“You're still here,” David says. “And Teresa.”

“Where would my mother go?” Marco says, his voice tight. “She's spent a lifetime with Zia Piera. As for me? There are ways to be absent, even when you're physically present. I've never lived up to whatever it is Zia Piera thinks I should be. Not that it would matter what I'd do. She'd find fault in it, just because that's what she does.” He pauses, and looks away, embarrassed, as if he's said too much. Then he slides on a mask, and shrugs. “Women, huh?”

David raises his eyebrows.

“Look,” Marco says, “I feel sorry for you, stuck in that house all day. Tell you what.” He pulls out his car keys and shakes them. “Any time you want to use my car, just ask.”

David begins to object, but Marco silences him with a wave of his arms. “It'll give you a chance to get out of town.”

When David arrives in the evening, Piera's face is blotchy, her eyes red and puffy. She's in her housecoat, and her hair is uncombed. All around her on the bed are sepia photographs, blue airmail letters, birthday cards, death announcements. Teresa has told him that she keeps everything and can ascribe a year, a day, a story to each item.

“Oh how I longed for Mamma's arms around me,” she says, as if they've been talking about this. She stares into the sheer curtains that billow against the window. “When Clarissa was born, I ceased to exist. I should have been so jealous of her, but all through our lives, it's been the other way around,” she says, her voice suddenly bitter. “You see? Even now she accuses me of sins so abstract I can't even defend myself.
Mamma always loved you more
, she says.”

David says nothing, not sure how to respond. He watches her pace up and down at the end of the bed.

“She's jealous of everything,” she says. “Even photographs. Look.” She reaches for a photograph lying on the bed, and hands it to him.

The photo shows a tiny girl in a white cotton nightgown, one side nudged off the shoulder, a large ribbon band in her hair, a rose in one hand, a dark pearly necklace around her neck, a bracelet of white pearls.

“I look slightly pornographic with that costume jewellery,” Piera says, “as if my mother had tried to make me into a little woman. Only my expression leaves no doubt that this was not a pleasurable moment — my eyebrows are furled, and I look as if I have been awakened from a deep sleep and not very happy about it. I am two years old, and this photograph is another thing that Clarissa has never forgiven me for, even though she wasn't even born when it was taken.” She pauses. “It's nonsense, all nonsense. Mamma was too busy to love anyone more or less.” She blinks several times and dabs her eyes with a hanky. “Clarissa has always been naive and hungry for love. She has been away from Italy for forty years and has forgotten… no, re-invented the past, as people do.”

“This is one of Mamma's miniatures. It's supposed to be her. Look at the detail: the three-flounce skirt, the hair held back with a ribbon. She had begun by moulding crumbs of bread into forms, until Papà brought home clay that she shaped into the most exquisite miniature creatures — farm animals, villagers, saints, demons, fields, houses, churches, and miniatures of each of us, including Daniela — an entire life recreated and put on a windowsill to dry. Nowadays on
TV
they talk about virtual worlds and virtual lives people have on the Internet. Well, after the stroke, Mamma spent most of her time creating a second life for herself through these creatures, a happy life.

“And now, I'm going to read you a story about Mamma and Papà, which although it may not seem relevant right now, will be later on.”

‡
1951. Belisolano, Italy.
Slowly, as the months passed, the children resumed their lives. None of us spoke about Daniela's death. We all concentrated on keeping Mamma comfortable. She had regained most of her physical abilities after the stroke, but none of her mental ones, so that at thirty-eight, she was sweet and transparent, fearful and naïve.

Sandro sold one of our fields, and bought Mamma and Papà a lovely five-room house in town. At first, Papà did not want to accept this “charity,” as he called it, proud as he was. “Why do we need anything so grand?” he said. It breaks my heart to think of the life he endured for us all. In the end, I convinced him that it was for Mamma's well-being. When my parents moved to town, Papà gave me the wooden mask, saying, “This kept you humble throughout your childhood. May it help you now to keep your pride in check.” I hung it at the side of my bedroom door, where it stayed until after Sandro's death.

Whenever Sandro was out of town on business, I went to stay with Mamma and Papà to help out. On one of these occasions, six months after Mamma's stroke, while we were seated at the midday meal, Mamma looked at Papà and apropos of nothing said, “But you have a small penis.”

Renato looked up, surprised. I reached over and dug my fingers into his thigh under the table. He immediately stared into his plate, embarrassed. In her normal mental state, Mamma would never have mentioned genitals, and certainly not the size of Papà's penis at the dinner table. I looked away, so as not to embarrass Papà.

But Papà smiled at Mamma indulgently. “And I suppose you've seen some different ones?”

“Oh yes,” she said, and toyed with the potatoes on her plate. She looked at us all and smiled. She was still a beautiful woman, with chestnut hair and dark expressive eyes.

“After marriage?” Papà asked, and I heard the subtle change in the tone of his voice.

I looked at Renato and saw my alarm mirrored in his eyes.

“Yes,” Mamma said, “when I was going to buy provisions for the shop, there was a young man with whom I had an affair.” She looked up and smiled at Papà, her face vacuous and innocent, then she bit into her potato.

“And what was his name?” Papà asked, his voice tremulous.

Mamma frowned. She put her fork down, and thought for a moment. Then she smiled again. “Gianni Balore,” she said, pleased to have remembered it. She nodded, picked up her fork and stabbed a small morsel of meat.

Papà was desperate. It was as if she had plunged a knife in his honour. We could all add and deduce the time of this affair to be after the incident with Agata, between, perhaps, Clarissa's birth and Renato's, when Mamma was twenty or twenty-one. I looked at her with new respect, amazed not only that she had been capable of having an affair, but also that she had been able to conceal it all these years.

As soon as Mamma went to lie down, Papà called us together. He was tense, agitated.

“I have to go to that town and kill that man,” he said. He collapsed into a chair.

“But Papà,” I said. “Mamma is surely inventing this. She's not in her right mind.”

“He will not get away with this!” Papà shouted, banging his fist on the table.

Mamma cried out, “Clarissa? Where is Clarissa?” She sang a few hoarse notes.

I went to her immediately, and stroked her face. “It's okay, Mamma,” I said. “Go back to sleep. Everything is fine.” She smiled and closed her eyes. I returned to Renato and Papà, and guided them outside, where Mamma would not hear us.

“Please, Papà,” Renato said, “Even if it could be true — which I can't imagine — it was so many years ago. Why not forget it?”

“It's my honour!” Papà said. He paced up and down in front of our house, his fingers combing through his hair.

“Twenty years, Papà,” I said. “And you are not exactly innocent yourself. Renato is right. This is something to forget.”

Papà stopped and stared at us, disbelieving. He shook his head slowly. “Neither of you understand,” he said. “Better to die with
honour
than to live with shame!” he said, pounding his fist into his open palm. He went into the kitchen, pulled out a carving knife and said, “Let's go.”

“Papà, you can't go taking the law into your own hands,” Renato said, reaching for the knife, but Papà stabbed the air, keeping us at a distance. He motioned us outside.

“I'm not driving you anywhere with that knife,” I said.

“Open the trunk!” he said, and when I did, he threw the carving knife in.

I quickly locked it and said, “Papà, please. What if he hurts you? Who will look after Mamma?” to try to make him come to his senses.

“
Meglio morire con onore, che vivere con vergogna
,” he muttered, then sat in the passenger seat staring ahead, not speaking to us.

We called a neighbour to stay with Mamma, while we took my car and headed for Matino and Casarano, two adjacent towns in the Murge Salentine, where we knew Mamma used to go by train to buy supplies. We could feel the vendetta poisoning Papà, but it seemed so out of place, so anachronistic. Renato sat in the back, half amused, half afraid of what might happen. I didn't even know how Papà thought he would find this man after all these years.

When we reached Matino, I stopped in front of the train station, as if Gianni Balore would be there, waiting for Mamma two decades later. Papà sprang out of the car and banged on the trunk so he could get his knife. Renato and I followed him out, and I refused to open the trunk.

“Papà, they'll put you in jail,” Renato said, trying to urge him back into the car.

“Or maybe an insane asylum,” I said, smiling.

“I will kill him and restore my honour!” Papà said in the voice of a movie actor.

A part of me wanted to laugh, the other was terrified of what Papà might be capable of. “Papà,” I said gently, “these are different times. You can't go around waving knives.”

In the end, he agreed to leave the knife in the car while we went searching for Gianni Balore on foot. We tried cafés, piazzas, markets. We entered a church and asked the old priest. No one knew of him. Satisfied that he must not have lived here, Papà ordered us back in the car, where he stared stonily ahead again while I drove us the few kilometres to Casarano.

We circled the town, searching for men of Papà's age and by lunchtime, we had asked everyone we'd met, but no one knew Gianni Balore. Abruptly, Papà stopped in the middle of a piazza, took out his handkerchief, and wiped the sweat off his forehead. A combination of sun and rage blotched his face. I took his arm and coaxed him into a little bar for a slice of pizza and an espresso, which we ate standing, while Papà questioned the two young men behind the counter, who were barely out of their teens — probably the sons of the proprietor — and did not know Gianni Balore.

We walked back to the car, and while I was relieved by our failure, Papà was determined that we would not go home until we had found the man. We drove up and down narrow streets the car hardly fit into, around miniscule piazzas, back and forth along the railway tracks, as if Papà truly believed that he would easily be able to identify the man who had cuckolded him. Renato and I remained quiet, waiting for the appropriate time to suggest we should go home. When I think of it now, I see us in a farce, a Fellini film into which we had been inadvertently dropped. Finally, to one side of a park, we saw a cluster of old men playing bocce on a patch of grass. Papà made me stop in the roundabout, even though I told him it was illegal. He rolled down the window and beckoned to one of the men. “I am looking for Gianni Balore,” he said.

The old man looked up, took a long drag of his cigarette, and said, “Gianni Balore? Stefano's son?”

Papà reached across and took the keys out of the ignition, then he sprang out of the car. Renato and I scrambled out, but Papà turned and pointed to us, sternly. “Stay here!”

I looked at Renato in dismay, recalling the Papà of our childhood, who raged against Vito with unrestrained abandon. We leaned against the car and watched Papà approach the men, motioning with the keys as if they were the knife.

“Where is he?” Papà shouted.

The men stared at him in dumb amazement. Perhaps they thought he was crazy. They looked at each other, then back at Papà. One of them shrugged. “Oh no, Gianni is no longer with us.” He crossed himself. “He died of cancer years ago.”

Papà, who had been tense and rigid, released a long sigh, his body caving into itself. We all waited, anxious. “
Disgraziato
,” he hissed, and the old man frowned, as if Papà were addressing him. Papà turned and walked back to the car. “Let's go home,” he said, got in, and rolled up the window.

Because the objective had been accomplished, Papà was able to relax and leave it be, and Renato and I were relieved about not having to deal with whatever Papà might have done to restore his honour. We never spoke of it again.

That whole year, everyone's demands and expectations became tumours which grew inside me and metamorphosed as various physical and emotional dysfunctions — constant migraines, a menstrual period that never ended, a nervous restlessness that made me short with everyone, including Domenica, who was a saint and deserved only kindness. I criticized everyone, sometimes for trivial, insignificant oversights. I spoke too harshly to our housekeeper, a gentle woman Mamma's age who had been with Sandro's family since her birth. I was impatient with everyone, insisting that sloppiness and laziness and ignorance motivated my outbursts, that I was trying to bring out the best in everyone. Most afternoons, Sandro sat in his study listening to the townsfolk's troubles; Domenica flurried around the house, begging me not to smoke, not to wear high heels, not to expose my shoulders, my elbows, my knees, my ankles, my anything exposed, fearful that I might sin.

Eventually, I barricaded myself in the bedroom, shutters down, surrounded by saints and martyrs, and refused to get up, to listen to the constant supplications ever-present in this house, even to speak. I felt besieged, and the bed became my bunker. It was the only way I could cope with the vortex of misery, the constant demands of my siblings and parents, who grew increasingly incompetent. Three years before, when Clarissa ran away to her voice teacher's house in Bari, I had to go and secretly arrange to pay for her keep. Papà's harvest this year was only possible because I had paid for the seed and the workers. The house Sandro bought for my parents needed a new roof. A magnitude of money was necessary to sustain everyone — Mimí's winter coat was threadbare; Renato's bicycle had been stolen; Vito had run up debts in Milan. Only Aldo asked nothing of me. I had even arranged for a
domestica
, Teresa, to look after Mamma during the day.

Piera looks up from the page.

“Yes, the same Teresa out there, my sister-in-law. I won't pretend to be happy about it. I have been in conflict with Teresa for many years now, so that our relationship has become a complex dance of insults and mortifications. It began a long time ago, as a result of two incidents that have forever pitted us one against the other. I will tell you the truth, though Teresa will give you her version, and Teresa is but one voice of a large ensemble called my family, who have all been like water, necessary and destructive, tides waxing and waning through my life, breakers, torrents, whirlpools, eddies, riptides, tsunamis, all caused by the gravitational attraction of love.

“I will tell you this now, because I hear Renato is coming home. I want you to hear the truth before he poisons you with his version. He has never forgiven me, you know. Renato's absence is my memento of this incident which occurred two days past my fourth wedding anniversary in 1951.”

I awakened to an orange sun filtered through the shutters of my room. I had been migraine-free for almost a week, and I craved light and fresh air. I called Domenica to open the shutters and the window. Then I got up, dressed and went out. I was feeling much more energetic than I had in months, probably because for a few days, I had not taken the migraine medicines that had become progressively stronger and subsequently had weakened me.