Solitaria (23 page)

“This is a photo of Sandro and me out in the fields. Look at the grapes. How big they are. It must be near harvest time. Although Sandro was a magistrate, and spent most of his days in his office behind his desk, reading and writing, he loved being outdoors. He used to say he would have been happier as a peasant, which infuriated me, because I felt he was mocking my origins. You may not understand this in America, but there is a huge social difference between a peasant and an artisan. My grandmother came from a family of artisans, and so Sandro would tease me: ‘You are the daughter of the daughter of artisans,' he'd say.”

‡
September 1954. Belisolano, Italy.
The first time Domenica informed me that Teresa was waiting to see me, I felt the beginning of an anxiety attack. I told myself to stop, that if something were wrong with the boy or Vito, I would have heard much sooner.

“Come in, please,” I said, and motioned Teresa into the living room. Teresa had not been in this house since she was thirteen, and for the first time, she came not as a servant, but as my sister-in-law.

She followed me into the living room, her shoes clicking on the marble tiles. She was so ill at ease, it reminded me of the time, years before, when I'd found her with Renato. Teresa sat on the edge of a couch, her knees slightly apart so that I could see her fleshy inner thighs, and the white nylon slip.

“Close your legs, Teresa,” I said. “Didn't your mother teach you anything?”

Teresa quickly brought her knees together and pulled the hem of her skirt over them.

Domenica came in and hovered around us, like a flying gnat. She had taken to doing this, and when I asked her about it, she said it was because I lit cigarettes and forgot them in the ashtrays. I knew, however, that Domenica was not worried about earthly fire, but that I might say something bad and thus sin.

“Domenica, could you ask Maria to make us a cool drink?” I said, smiling sweetly at her.

We watched her leave, then I turned to Teresa, who avoided my eyes. She was trying her best to act composed and proud, but I had already understood why she was here.

“Well,” I said. “You didn't come here to see how I am.”

Teresa looked at me, and for a moment, I saw pure hatred in her eyes. Then they welled with tears, and she said, all at once, “We're in such trouble. I don't know what to do.” She covered her face with her hands, and began to sob aloud.

I got up and walked to the window, lit a cigarette, and tried to calm myself. “How much?” I asked.

“He's gone,” Teresa began. “Abandoned us.”

I sat down and bit my lip. “Are you sure?” I asked. “You know Vito. Sometimes he disappears for a few days.”

She nodded and pulled a folded sheet out of her purse. “He says he's sorry.” She launched into new sobs. “What am I to tell our child? And how can I possibly repay his debts?”

“How much?” I said again.

“Two thousand dollars.” Teresa spoke quickly, as if to mitigate the sum, explaining that Vito didn't spend money on himself. If he bought wine for everyone at the
trattoria
, if he bought focaccia for everyone, wasn't this proof of his goodness? Sometimes, yes, he gambled, but only because there was a possibility of making a sum that would help their lives immensely. He was only thinking of her and his son, and so on and so on.

I shut Teresa out. Two thousand dollars, I thought, trying to imagine how Sandro would find the money to bail her out. How could Teresa have allowed this to happen? Did she not wonder where their money came from? Stupid, stupid girl. And stupid, stupid Sandro for putting the two of them together.

Teresa continued to cry, quietly now, dabbing her eyes now and then, like someone spot cleaning a garment.

“Stop it,” I said, finally. “If anyone should cry, it should be me.”

Teresa sniffled loudly, but I ignored her.

Domenica tiptoed in, carrying a silver tray. She set it on the coffee table, stared at Teresa, then at me, frowning, as if I had done something wrong.

“How is the baby?” I asked, and when Teresa looked up, surprised, I motioned toward Domenica with my eyes, to make Teresa understand that we could not speak of this in front of that childlike saint.

“He's a very good boy, obedient. Thank you, Donna Piera,” Teresa said.

I nodded. Born in July of that year, Marco was sweet and obedient, even though, eventually, he would fulfil Mamma's predictions about babies born in July, by being cavalier and daring, short-tempered and merciful, moody and self-indulgent.

“Does he study catechism?” Domenica asked anxiously.

“He's barely one, Domenica,” I said. “But Teresa knows the importance of catechism, and as soon as he's capable, she'll send him to study, won't you, Teresa?”

Teresa nodded. Domenica smiled, and handed us each a lemonade, then sat in her high-backed chair staring at us.

“
Per carità
, Domenica, please, stop watching us. You're making me nervous.” I lit another cigarette and waved it in the air. Domenica rushed up, found a nearby ashtray, and set it under my hand. I sighed loudly. “Domenica,” she said. “Would you be a dear and get us some biscotti? I'm sure Teresa would love some biscotti.”

As soon as Domenica was out of the room, I said, “We don't have that kind of cash. I'll speak to Sandro and we'll see what can be done.”

I didn't want to give Teresa the money. We didn't have it, and would have to sell property. “When will it end?” I said to Sandro. “When will my family cease their constant demands?”

“I have to live in this town and hold up my head,” Sandro said. “We'll take care of the debts.”

You don't understand, perhaps, what it is like here. We tend to our own, we take care of our own dirty laundry and we do so in private, not like in America, not like those people I see on
TV
who abandon their family members when they're in trouble, or worse, send them to jail. For all our sakes, I felt I was responsible for Vito and Teresa, and so did the townspeople. You see, they were sure I wouldn't refuse him.

Sandro sold one of the fields to pay Vito's debtors. And soon we discovered that Teresa had not told the whole truth. More debtors came forward, and Sandro had no choice but to sell another field to pay them off. And so, Sandro and I took over all financial responsibility for Teresa and Marco. This is why she hates me. Though I have tried to please her, and humiliated myself in numerous ways, Teresa has remained a savage beast who bites everyone and everything. She lives in a state of eternal defence, barricaded against the world.

Teresa says I've abused my position, used Sandro's money to control everyone. You see, she says these things, even as I continue to pay her bills. But I just wanted to protect them. I loved them all, and if I criticized them or asked something of them, it was for their own good, not mine. Everything I did, I did for love.

“You've never loved anyone for who they are,” Teresa tells me. “Only for who you are.”

I was barely twenty-five, yet I felt I had lived several lives already. Little by little, I fell ever deeper into a cavern, until I could no longer even get out of bed. The tiny rays of light entering through the pinholes in the shutters were daggers in my eyes, and I wailed if Domenica or Sandro did not immediately tighten them. Everyone thought this darkness was itself a sickness I was wallowing in. I only recognized excruciating pain from which I could not escape.

Finally, one of the doctors prescribed morphine, of which I knew nothing. Sandro explained it was derived from poppy seeds, the juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy,
Papaver somniferum
. It all sounded very benign to me, because poppies are common flowers here, and I'd never been warned against them. At the time, I knew very little about narcotics, except that the word “narcosis” meant “to make numb, to deaden” — something I was very happy to do to my body and mind.

The injections were miraculous: all pain suddenly ceased. Because morphine acts directly on the central nervous system, it also relieved my restlessness, my anxiety, and my unbearable sadness. I was rendered completely neutral.

As well, it kept me in a state of drowsiness.
Somniferum
. Sleep inducing. Years later, I discovered that it had been named appropriately after Morpheus, the god of dreams.

I slept through half of the next year, it seems, so little do I recall. To be pain-free, I needed higher and higher doses, which knocked me out completely. I was somnambulant. Weeks would pass without my knowing; Domenica would indicate Catholic holidays and processions I was too exhausted to stand up and watch; Sandro materialized in front of me — both solid and elusive — as if he were in a continual dream beyond my reach; Vito, the children, Mamma, Papà faded to a distant indifferent space in my head.

You can better understand this state I was in when I tell you that even when Clarissa returned from a triumphant run at La Scala, full of stories of glory, I couldn't muster the energy to get up. She came into my bedroom and sat on the bed. I realize now how alarmed she must have been to see me there, indifferent, languid — her older sister Piera, who was in charge of everything and everyone. I must have listened to her; I don't know, although I do remember she had signed a contract and was going to New York. But this may have been told to me later. Clarissa left soon after, and within a few days, she had faded in my mind to yet another dream.

Finally, Sandro grew alarmed with my disorientation, my complete surrender to sleep, which I still found preferable to pain. He found a new doctor who switched me from morphine to methedrine — a derivative of morphine that acts on the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. What it does, really, is alter one's state of consciousness and perception of pain. I felt euphoric, fantastic, all the pain gone, awake, aware, as if I were floating on air. Nothing mattered. Not that Vito had run up another bill; not that Renato never wrote us letters, not that Mimí was consorting with dubious characters and smoking cigarettes; not that Papà had been diagnosed with chronic bronchitis. These things wafted into and out of my consciousness in a single breath. Nothing mattered except the delicious injections which I could buy over the counter and administer to myself easily — into my thighs and buttocks, where no one could see the tracks.

Soon, I was giving myself up to fifteen methedrine injections a day, sneaking out from one pharmacy to the other. Sometimes, I paid Mimí to get me more. What was fantastic was that I could function normally. I'd give myself an injection, then friends would arrive, and I'd play cards perfectly well. There were no telltale signs that anything was wrong. In the middle of the card game, I would simply excuse myself and go to the bathroom,where I'd inject myself again.

Whereas before I had been depressed and exhausted, now I bounded through the house, instructing everyone on how to do everything. I stopped to chat with Sandro's clients; I took an active interest in what we would eat each day; I motored out each afternoon to see Mamma and Papà; I invited Sandro's friends and family to dinner and card parties. In short, I was suddenly so busy and overactive that it was simple to drive from pharmacy to pharmacy, from town to town to replenish my supply, and thus to hide my growing, desperate need.

On Easter Sunday of 1955, while I was sitting in a church pew between Sandro and Domenica, my arm began to itch. I rubbed it, but this seemed to stimulate rather than relieve the itching. I used my nails, drawing them back and forth along my forearm, at first gently, then ever harder, so that red lines appeared on my skin. We had been sitting in the church for over an hour, and I felt restless and out of breath. Domenica, who while in a church normally knelt, head bowed, eyes shut and hands clasped, suddenly turned to look at me, as if she had perceived my distress. She sat back, grasped my forearm, and held it in her lap. The itch did not stop, but intensified. The priest's voice drilled into my brain:
Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper virgini… quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere
…