Among Women Only (6 page)

"And Carlotta?" I asked. "What is she doing? Still dancing?"

But Gisella had gone on talking about the shop and told me the usual story—she was glad to see me and relieve her feelings. I was struck by the rancorous tone she used in telling me that Carlotta had made her own way—she had been a ballerina in Germany during the war, then nobody had seen her. Gisella went back to the store, said that she had been bled white by Giulio's death, had been paying his sanatorium bills until three years ago. She told me about the old lady's death and of bad times even before the war. Her daughters—she had two, Rosa and Lina: one coughed, was anemic; the other one, fifteen years old; both were studying—they were a great trouble, life was expensive and the shop didn't bring what it used to bring in the old days.

"But you're well off. You still have that apartment."

Just trouble, she told me, nobody paid their rent; she had to throw out the previous tenants and now was renting to a group of girls. "It pays better. We're squeezed in upstairs." I recalled those two upper rooms, the stairway, the tiny kitchen. In the old lady's time, to climb those stairs was a risk, she was always in the middle of things, yelling at Gisella, telling her not to go out on the street. I was struck by the way Gisella now resembled the old lady, sighed, half shut her eyes; even the resentful smile she threw at my fur and stockings had a tinge of the rancor with which the old lady used to judge the rest of us.

She called her daughters. I would rather have left. This was my whole past, insupportable yet so different now, so dead. I had told myself so many times in those years—and later too, as a matter of fact—that my purpose in life was to make good, to become somebody, in order to come back some day to those alleys where I had been a girl and enjoy the warmth, the amazement, the admiration of those familiar faces, of those little people. And I had done it, I came back; and the faces, the little people had all gone. Carlotta had gone, and Slim, Giulio, Pia, the old women. Guido, too, had gone. Neither we nor those times mattered any more to the people left, like Gisella. Maurizio always says that you get the things you want, but when they are no more use.

Rosa wasn't there, she had gone to the neighbors'. But Lina, the healthy one, ran down the stairs, sprinted into the shop; she stopped, cautious and reserved, outside the cone of light. She was dressed in flannel, not badly, and was well developed. Gisella talked about making coffee and taking me upstairs; I said it would be better if we didn't leave the shop. In fact, just then the bell rang and a customer came in.

"Ah yes," Gisella said when the door closed again, "we were girls who worked, in those days... Other times. My aunt knew how to give orders ..."

She looked at Lina with a faint smile of pleasure. It was plain that she had chosen the role of a mother who kills herself with work to keep her daughters from soiling their hands. She wouldn't even let Lina make the coffee. She ran upstairs herself to put it on. I exchanged a word or two with the daughter—she looked at me complacently—I asked about her sister. A woman came in, ringing the bell, and Gisella shouted down the stairs: "Coming."

I had said positively that I was just passing through Turin and leaving the next day: I didn't want obligations. But Gisella didn't insist; she brought the talk back to the old lady, made me talk about her in front of her daughter: about how the old lady ruled the roost and even gave advice to other people's daughters. That's how it always turns out. With the excuse of raising her, of giving her a house and a husband, the old lady had made Gisella into her own image—and now she, Gisella, was working on her daughters. I wondered if my mother had been like that, whether it is possible to live with someone, order her around, and not leave a mark on her. I had escaped from my mother in time. Or had I? Mother had always grumbled that a man, a husband, was a poor thing, that men are not so much bad as fools—and, as you see, I had pretty well accepted her preaching. Even my great ambition, my passion to be free and self-sufficient, didn't it come from her?

Before I left, Lina began to chatter about some friend of hers at school and found the opportunity to speak badly of her, to wonder where her family found the means to send her to school. I tried to remember myself at this age, what I would have said in a case like this. But I hadn't gone to school. I hadn't drunk coffee with my mother. I was sure that Lina would talk about me behind my back to her mother just as she had talked to me about her school friend.

11

Only the hours I spent at Via Po didn't seem wasted. I had to run around looking for this and that and met various people at the hotel. By Ash Wednesday, the masons and whitewashers were finished; the most difficult work remained, the furnishings. I was on the point of taking the train and going down to discuss everything again; you can't make yourself understood on the telephone to Rome. They said: "We trust each other—do what you like," and the day after, they telegraphed me to expect a letter. The architect designing the interiors came to dinner with me at the hotel: he had come back from Rome with a portfolio full of sketches. But he was young and liked to stall around; to avoid making decisions, he would agree to anything I said; from the look of things, all our nice Rome ideas had collapsed. You had to take account of the light under the porticoes and consider the other shops in Piazza Castello and Via Po. I began to agree with Morelli: the location was impossible. It was the kind of district you no longer find in Rome, or perhaps only outside the gates. People walked in the Via Po only on Sundays.

This architect was red, stubborn, and hairy, just a boy; he was always talking about villas in the mountains; as a joke he sketched me the plan of a little glass house for winter sunbathing. He said that he lived like me, out of a suitcase, but differently from me in that I could wear whatever I made or liked, whereas only those pigs who had money—nearly always stolen—could live in his villas. I got him talking about the Turin painters, about Loris. He got excited, steamed up, said that he preferred the whitewashers. "A housepainter knows color," he said. "If he studied, a housepainter could paint frescoes or make mosaics any day. No one can understand decoration unless he begins by painting walls. As for these artists, for whom do they paint and what do they paint? They can't spread themselves. What they do serves no purpose. Would you make a dress that isn't to wear but to keep under glass?"

I told him they didn't just make pictures or statues but had also talked about putting on a play. I told him some of the names. "Oh, great!" he interrupted sarcastically. "Great. What would you say if that bunch put on a fashion show and invited Clelia Oitana to see it?"

Then we went on in this vein and concluded that only we window dressers, architects, and dressmakers were true artists. He ended, as I expected he would, by inviting me to go to the mountains to see an alpine retreat that he had planned. I asked if he didn't have something a bit more comfortable to propose. Even a building in Turin. He gave me a one-eyed look, laughing.

"My studio ..." he said.

I was sick of studios and talking. I almost preferred Becuccio and his leather bracelet. This other man was called Febo—he had signed all his drawings this way. I laughed in his face, with his own cockiness, and sent him to bed like an overly clever boy.

But Febo was red, stubborn, and hairy and must have decided that I would do for him. He managed to discover exactly how I stood with Mariella, Nene, Momina, with Morelli and his cognac, my visit to Loris's studio. The next day he came to tell me he wanted to take me to a gallery show. I asked if it wouldn't be better to decide on those curtains. He said that the show was the right atmosphere,- you had a drink, you studied the furnishings of the place,- it was a question of taste. We went, and even on the stairs I could hear Nene's laugh.

The rooms were a blend of Swiss chalet and twentieth-century bar. Girls in checked aprons served us. Inasmuch as the chairs and crockery were also part of the show, one was a bit uneasy and felt on show oneself. Febo wouldn't say if he had had a hand in it himself. There were paintings and small statues on the wall; I passed them up and looked at Nene instead, who, in her usual rags, laughed continuously, sprawled across a chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, while a waiter lighted her cigarette from behind. Momina was there, with other women and girls. A little old man in a Chinese beard had settled in front of Nene and was sketching her portrait. A few people crowded to the door for a peek—the public viewing the artists.

But Nene soon noticed me and came over to ask if I had seen her work. She was happy, excited, she blew smoke in my face. Her thick lips and bangs really made her a child. She brought me to her statues—little deformed nudes that seemed shaped out of mud. I looked at them, bending my head from side to side, and thought— but didn't say—that Nene's womb might very well produce children like those. She looked at me avidly and open-mouthed, as if I were a handsome young man; I waited for someone to speak, bent my head to the other side. Febo came up from behind and said, catching us both by the waist: "Here we're either in heaven or in hell. It takes a girl like you, Nene, to reveal such terrors ..."

A discussion sprang up in which Momina also took part. I paid no attention. I'm used to painters. I was watching Nene's face as she frowned or started at whatever was said, as if everything hung on someone else's opinion. Had she really lost her boldness, or was this another of her roles? Feho was the least believable of all. Only the other day he had said dirt of Nene and her things.

They talked good-naturedly about her and she played the bewildered child. Her insistence on showing me her things had bothered me. Couldn't she have let me see them by myself? But Nene was keeping up her reputation as a mannerless and impulsive girl. Perhaps she was right. Mariella's the only one absent, I thought. What would Becuccio say of these crazy women?

The idea of Becuccio started me laughing. Febo turned around genially, came closer, and whispered against my cheek: "You are a treasure, Clelia. You would make better children, I dare say."

"I thought you were speaking seriously before," I answered. "The most sincere one here is still Nene ..."

"This gutsy art has given me an appetite," he whispered. "How about some sausage?"

Drinking
grappa
and eating sausage, he talked about the mountains again. Even the old painter with the beard was a competent climber. They were arranging a trip to some hut, assigning jobs, telephoning all over the place.

"You people go," Momina said. "I'm not going to the hut. Clelia and I will stop on the way... Have you ever been to Montalto?"

12

The Topolino stopped at a villa at the foot of the mountains. The two of us were alone. The other cars went on, they would wait for us at Saint Vincent. A few days of good weather had been enough to bring out the bloom in the hothouse flowers, but the trees in the garden were still bare. I hardly had time to look around when Momina cried: "Here we are."

Rosetta wasn't wearing her blue dress this time. She came to meet us in a skirt and tennis shoes, her hair bound with a ribbon as if we were at the seaside. She gave me a strong handshake, another to Momina, but didn't smile: she had gray, searching eyes.

Her mother came out also, in slippers, fat and asthmatic, wearing a velvet dress. "Rosetta," Momina cried, "you can come back now. The parties are over in Turin..."

Momina told her about friends, our outing, and who was going. I was surprised that Rosetta should accept her lightheadedness and answer in the same spirit; I wondered if I really had seen her on that stretcher—how many days ago? Fifteen, twenty? But perhaps Momina chattered that way to help her, to relieve her and us of embarrassment. They must have been close friends.

It was her mother, poor thing, who had tearful, frightened eyes, who was upset with Momina and looked at me apprehensively. She was so much the little lady that she complained of the hardship of living in the country, of staying at the villa out of season. But Rosetta and Momina didn't encourage her. It ended with Momina laughing at her. "That wicked father," Momina exclaimed, "imprisoning the two of you like this. You've got to escape, Rosetta. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Rosetta said quietly.

Her mother was afraid it wasn't a good idea. "You don't have skis, you don't have anything," she said. "Father doesn't know..."

"Who's talking about skiing?" Momina said. "Let those idiots ski if they like. We're going to Saint Vincent. Clelia hasn't come to ski..."

But first the mother wanted to give us tea, prepare the thermos, equip us. Not to waste time, Rosetta had already run off to dress.

We stayed with the mother. Momina murmured: "How is she?"

The mother turned around, her hand on her cheek. I could see her again in her furs, running down that corridor. "Please," she said, "don't let anything happen..."

"You've got to come back," Momina cut in. "You shouldn't hide like this. Her friends at Turin are beginning to talk..."

We reached Saint Vincent, keeping always to the mountains. Here, too, there was sun on the snow, and not many plants. I was amazed at all the cars in the Casino parking lot.

"You've never been here?" Rosetta leaned forward to ask me. She had wanted to sit in the back, in her fur jacket, and during the drive she and Momina had talked without looking at each other.

"It's nice," I said. "Three hours by car."

"Do you gamble?"

"I don't believe in luck."

"What else is there in life?" Momina said, slowing down. "People dream about having a car to come here to win enough for a car so they can come back... That's the world."

She was very positive, but also, I thought, mocking. In any case, neither of them laughed. We got out.

Luckily our friends had been scattered around the game rooms for some time and we three could sit alone at the bar. It was jammed and like a hothouse. Rosetta took an orangeade and sipped it quietly, watching us. Her gray, sunken eyes laughed very little. She seemed a quiet outdoor girl in her yellow sweater and slacks rolled up at the bottom. She asked who was with us beside Pegi and the girls.