Cabaret (6 page)

I was so impressed with Signora Pompi that I wanted to be the best pupil she could ever have, and hoped in time to make her really proud of me. On my way back to the Via Gregorio that evening I stopped off at the public library and took out all the books on embalming I could find. I was exhilarated. I had had such a good day, and was so pleased with myself at having found my true calling so early in life.

Unfortunately my delight in my newfound career didn’t extend to my uncle and aunt and to Signora Pucillo.

“You’re going to do what?” the three of them chorused when I got back to the apartment, trying to be unobtrusive.

I looked round for Fiamma for moral support, but she wasn’t there. That evening she had gone to the cinema with Signor Cremoso, the man who sold
gelati
from a kiosk in the Piazza di Spagna all summer long.This being the dead of winter, he was obliged to offer his services as a relief floor buffer to the Ministry, which was where Fiamma met him.

Influenced more than she would admit by Mamma’s prediction for her future, Fiamma was determined to date only fools. Spurning anyone with a claim to good sense, like poor Ruperto, who still passed the nights sighing under our window, she homed in on those who showed signs of stupidity.

Fiamma was attracted by the way Signor Cremoso’s lower jaw stuck way out in front of his upper one, like one of those model Neanderthals they have in the Natural History Mu-seum. All too often she confused ugliness with stupidity. In the case of the ice-cream salesman, she found both. As well as his elongated skull, he possessed only one tooth, although I have to say it was a good big one, which he displayed proudly at the front of his mouth.

The date began well enough. Cremoso bought Fiamma the popcorn she craved, and although he couldn’t share it with her, he satisfied himself with a cornet of an inferior artificial vanilla. The movie was good too.
Thunderball,
which had just come out—one of those James Bond adventures Fiamma loved.

Afterward Cremoso walked Fiamma home, and thought about trying to hold her hand. Although he had offered a taxi ride—the equivalent of a whole day’s buffing—Fiamma wasn’t yet ready to put her trust in a motor vehicle.The good-night kiss, delivered in full view of the lovelorn Ruperto, lurking outside as usual, sealed the fate of this promising affair.

Trembling and feverish, the ice-cream man puckered up and leaned forward. Quite how it happened, nobody knows, but the lone tooth, itself eager to play a part, bit clean through Fiamma’s upper lip. Fiamma’s scream sliced through the night, bringing everybody in the surrounding buildings down into the street.

The blood loss was terrible. Lips enjoy a good bleed, and Fiamma’s, smeared inexpertly with “Coral Whisper,” was no exception. Blood gushed onto the sidewalk forming a stain that is there still, and can be viewed by those with an interest in that sort of thing, just to the left of the stone steps, outside number three hundred and thirty-eight.

Fortunately for Fiamma, Ruperto was at the ready with his medical expertise and quickly stemmed the flow of blood with a swab, treated the wound with antiseptic cream, and patched it with Elastoplast, all of which he carried in his pockets in anticipation of just such an emergency as this.

He got no thanks from Fiamma. Cremoso stood forlornly by, knowing that the tooth had blown it for him (if this happened again, he would have to think seriously about having it removed; although it was the last one, he couldn’t afford to be sentimental). Uncle Birillo looked askance at the culprit, and asked Fiamma whether his behavior warranted a beating, but she dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand. She retreated magnificently into the building without giving Ruperto, who had saved her life, a second glance.

Aunt Ninfa felt bad for the youth, and invited him in for a cup of coffee, as it was a cold night, and already he had been standing there for some hours, but Ruperto declined. He knew that his appearance in the apartment would infuriate Fiamma, and he couldn’t risk her hating him any more than she did already. And so we left him there, with the chill rising up through the thin soles of his shoes, and came inside to the warmth of the parlor, brightly lit, toasting chestnuts in the stove, and sipping steaming cups of hot sweet milk flavored with cinnamon.

D
espite the opposition of my uncle and aunt, Signora Pucillo, and also of Fiamma, who objected to the smell of formaldehyde that followed me around and infiltrated our bedroom, I continued my training with Signora Dorotea (as I came to call her), and the two years that followed I devoted to learning my art in its every aspect. I was a natural, so Signora Dorotea noted with joy, and after gaining a distinction in my diploma from the School of Morticians, I embarked on an advanced course in

“Trauma.”

Acceptance from my relatives did not come until April 17, 1968, which was Signora Pucillo’s ninetieth birthday, and the day on which she chose to die. There had been an afternoon of bridge, as usual, and Signora Pucillo and Signor Felice then had been doing so well that success went quite to their heads, and during one of the rubbers the dapper signor took the lib-erty of placing his hand on Signora Pucillo’s thigh beneath the table. Although nothing was said, she felt like a girl again.

Aunt Ninfa had prepared a tea and had even baked a cake with pink icing, and there were gifts too: two packs of pris-tine playing cards, linen handkerchiefs, a posy of lilacs, and a beaded change purse. The best present of all came from Signor Felice. Wrapped in a sheet of paper on which he had drawn a love heart with a shaky hand, was a tiny silver birdcage, inside which were two miniature songbirds with foliage of red enamel.

Signora Pucillo’s happiness was complete. Once the guests had departed, she sat down in her chair in the parlor, and without saying a word to anyone, she removed her spectacles and died.

A tearful Aunt Ninfa rang me at work, and within minutes Signor Porzio and I were on our way to Aurelio with a superior casket of mountain ash in the rear of the ambulance. The following day, in the chapel of rest, Signora Pucillo was un-veiled, her beauty in death leading all who saw her to forget her plainness in life.

Signor Felice was disconsolate. Why hadn’t he married her forty years ago, when she was a fresh, youthful widow, and he a man in the prime of life with full control over his bowel movements and a willing member? Why had he wasted so much time? Now he had lost his chance. Oh, he couldn’t bear it!

Signora Dorotea kindly bent the rules and allowed him to stay overnight in the chapel, where the body gave off the scent of jasmine, and he spent those few precious hours gazing at his beloved, describing in detail the life they would have had together if he only hadn’t been so stupid.

Then at last Aunt Ninfa and Uncle Birillo understood my calling, and I like to think they were as proud of me as they were of Fiamma.

My sister surprised us all by bringing to the funeral reception a young man we had not set eyes on before. Aunt Ninfa was pleased to note he had a full set of teeth, but nev-ertheless the signs did not augur well. Aside from the fact that his loud suit and comedy tie did not show the respect necessary at a funeral, and his wolfing consumption of the pink birthday cake, which was being handed round, betrayed a lack of good manners, it was his conversation that set him apart from all sensible people. His tasteless jokes, his insistence on performing magic tricks, and his braying laugh were all preferable to his monologues on fish or types of pickle. All the while, Fiamma watched our reactions to him with a blinkless eye and a smile playing upon her lips.

When all the guests had gone, including the dreadful young man, and we were washing up the cups and plates and tidying the parlor, casually Fiamma voiced her intention of marrying him.

“But he’s a perfect fool!” gasped Uncle Birillo, aghast.

Fiamma’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

“So much the better,” she replied.

I
n the years after the accident, Fiamma worked her way up from the puppy farm to the middle rungs at the Ministry. At the same time, in the field of her love life, she worked her way down from Signor Cremoso.

In those days, at the Ministry, there were far fewer women than there are now, and Fiamma was something of a novelty. She had her pick of a great many young men who were impressed by her beauty and by her meteoric rise, and I have to say, Fiamma left no stone unturned in her search for a nincompoop.

Since the ice-cream incident she had tried to conduct her affairs in private, but I know she had dozens of liaisons, the details of which she logged with her customary clinical then precision in a leather-bound volume she kept beneath her pillow.

When she was out, I read it. Here is a sample of what details she recorded under each heading. This is one entry dated March 23, 1966:

Contestant: Miseno Numitore

Category: Under Filing Clerk,
P-S
Section Date: walk in the Giardino del Quirinale, coffee in the Piazza Barberini

Conversation: dull but sensible

Hands: often wet and trembling

Kisses: salival

Overall verdict: insufficiently stupid However, in an entry dated April 17, 1968, the same day as Signora Pucillo’s birth and death, I read with interest the following:

Contestant: Polibio Naso

Category: Tea Boy, Investigations Section Date: Pickle Factory in Via Flaminia Conversation: completely moronic

Hands: dry, firm, wandering

Kisses: magic!

Overall verdict: promising

Action required: follow-up date with a view to marriage

This was in fact the last entry in the journal. On the following day Fiamma dispensed with her grid squares and had simply scrawled across the page:
Polibio Naso is the perfect fool.

Action required: marry him.

And so she did. On the day of the wedding, which followed rapidly after the funeral, Fiamma remained irritatingly cheerful, although Uncle Birillo, Aunt Ninfa, and I were horrified to see her throwing herself away. But I knew what nobody else did: she was assuaging her guilt over the accident by making Mamma’s prediction for her come true.

On the same day that Fiamma packed her clothes for her honeymoon, and her other possessions for her married life in the Via della Lupa, I too packed my bags.

I was nearly nineteen now, and was taking my own apartment. Although it was unusual in those days for a single girl to live alone, I was old beyond my years, and wanted my independence. Uncle Birillo felt depressed at the thought that he had failed us, but, like Fiamma, I was determined to go my own way, and there was nothing he could do to stop me.

And so Fiamma married Polibio in a magnificent ceremony at Santa Maria Maddalena—she wasn’t about to do the thing by halves—and as she walked up the aisle, I noticed that she had artificially reddened the scar on her forehead so it stood out like a stigmata.

At the back stood Ruperto, the medical student, the man Fiamma should have married. He was dry-eyed and pale-faced, and had the look of a man for whom life had become a baffling charade. Those who knew him were troubled by his air of calm desperation, and were fully aware that he was poised on the brink of disaster.

As the newlyweds drove off in a pony chaise and a blizzard of confetti, Ruperto watched from the corner on the opposite side of the street, where the plane tree was marked with a little wooden cross in memory of a murder, and where the man-hole cover was corroded and in need of attention.

As Ruperto plummeted through the rusty grating to meet his filthy death in the cavernous labyrinth of sewers that rid-dled the city, his only thought was of Fiamma, who had ceased to recall his very existence.

E
arly the following morning I embraced my uncle and aunt, and taking all my possessions in a small cardboard box, I set off for my new life in my own apartment.

“Won’t you take a few pork cheeks with you, Freda?” Blubbered Aunt Ninfa, tears streaming down her fat face.

“No, really, there’ll be food where I’m going,” I said, making for the door.

“A little
pecorino
at least? Some artichokes? I’ll pack them right up.”

“Honestly, I’ll be fine.”

“Birillo,” she bellowed, “why don’t you say something?”

“Ninfa,” he spat as though her name tasted bad, “how many times have I told you not to shout in my ears? What do you want me to say? She doesn’t need any artichokes…”

I slipped away as the two squared up to one another like wrestlers in a ring. I knew it would be a short time before the rumpus grew ugly and a longer time before they realized I had gone. As I climbed on a bus bound for the Centro Storico, I could still hear the wailing of Aunt Ninfa, which carried right along the block, above the roar of the traffic and the hooting of horns.

My apartment was in the Via dei Cappellari, one of the narrow alleyways leading off the Campo dei Fiori, just a few streets away from the Via Giulia, where I had grown up. Immediately I had the feeling I was coming home.

I threw open the windows to air the place, and soon my rooms were full of the succulent aroma of baking bread, coming from the
forno
opposite. The laundry strung on lines between the buildings fluttered like brightly colored flags welcoming me. From behind the neighboring shutters I could hear gossip, laughter, the radio news. Somewhere a baby was crying, and Sam Cook was singing “What a Wonderful World,” accompanied by the clattering of pots and pans. Below, the street sweeper was trundling his cart, children were playing, pigeons were pecking, and stray dogs were sniffing, all of them scattered from time to time by the passage of speeding scooters.

I was thrilled with it all. I was independent. And I was about to do something I had longed to for ages: I was going to acquire the parrot for which I had become unbearably broody.

Yes, in the Via Gregorio there had always been some lame reason for thwarting me: Uncle Birillo’s asthma, Signora Pucillo’s phobias, Aunt Ninfa’s hairdresser’s disapproval, Fiamma’s refusal to allow a birdcage into our bedroom. Now I could do as I liked, and relishing my newfound freedom, I set out once more.