I undressed and took out the tampax: my period seemed to have abruptly ended. I wrapped the tampon in toilet paper and threw it in the wastebasket. I examined the base of the shower: disgusting short black hairs were scattered along the edges of the porcelain. I let the water run for a long time before getting under it. With satisfaction I realized that I could master the need to hurry. I was separated from myself: the woman who wanted to be shot off like an arrow, eyes wide open, was observed dispassionately by the woman under the water. I soaped myself carefully and did so in such a way that every gesture belonged to an external world without deadlines. I wasn’t following anyone and no one was following me. I wasn’t expected and I wasn’t expecting visits. My sisters had left for good. My father was sitting in his old house before the easel and painting Gypsies. My mother, who for years had existed only as an annoying responsibility, at times nagging, was dead. But as I rubbed my face vigorously, especially around the eyes, I realized with unexpected tenderness that in fact I had Amalia under my skin, like a hot liquid that had been injected into me at some unknown time.
I wrung out my wet hair until it was almost dry, and looked closely in the mirror to make sure that no mascara remained on my eyelashes. I saw my mother just as she was represented on her identity card and smiled at her. Then I put on the satin robe, and for the first time in my life, in spite of the ugly ivory color, had the impression of being beautiful. I felt, for no apparent reason, the same pleasant surprise as when I found in unlikely places gifts that Amalia had hidden, pretending to have negligently forgotten dates and celebrations. She kept us in suspense until, suddenly, the gift appeared, in some everyday place that had nothing to do with its exceptional nature. Seeing us happy she was happier than we were.
I suddenly understood that the contents of the suitcase had been intended not for her but for me. The lie I had told the salesgirl at the Vossi sisters’ shop was in fact the truth. Even the blue dress that waited for me on the bed was certainly my size. I realized it as if it were the robe itself on my skin telling me. I put my hands in the pockets, sure that I would find the birthday card. And in fact it was there, placed on purpose to surprise me. I opened the envelope and read Amalia’s girlish writing, with the ornate letters that no one knows how to make anymore: “Happy birthday, Delia. Your mother.” Immediately afterward I realized that my fingers were slightly sandy. I put my hands in the pockets and discovered that at the bottom was a thin layer of sand. My mother had worn that robe before drowning herself.
18
I didn’t notice that the door had opened. Instead I heard someone locking it. Polledro took off his jacket and threw it on a chair. He said in dialect:
“They won’t give me a lira.”
I looked at him in bewilderment. I didn’t know what he was talking about: maybe a bank loan, maybe money at interest, maybe a bribe. He was like a weary husband who thought he could tell me his troubles as if I were his wife. With his jacket off, you could see the shirt swelling over the belt of his trousers, the chest and the large heavy breasts. I got ready to tell him to leave the room.
“Instead they want back the money they advanced.” He continued his monologue from the bathroom and his voice reached me through the open door together with the flow of urine into the toilet. “My father asked Moffa for money without telling me. At his age, he wants to restore the old pasticceria on Via Gianturco and do with it who knows what. He told a pack of lies, as usual. So now Moffa won’t trust me anymore. He says I don’t know how to control the old man. They’ll take away the shop.”
“Weren’t we supposed to have lunch together?” I asked.
He walked past me as if he hadn’t heard. He went to the window and lowered the shade. The only light came faintly from the open door of the bathroom.
“You took your time,” he reproached me, finally. “It means you’ll skip lunch: at four the shop reopens, I don’t have long.”
I looked mechanically at the phosphorescent hands of the clock: it was ten of three.
“Let me get dressed,” I said.
“You’re fine like that,” he said. “But be ready to give me back everything: dresses, robe, underpants.”
I began to feel my heart pounding. I could hardly bear his dialect or the hostility he gave off. In addition I could no longer see the expression on his face, which kept me from gauging to what extent he was displaying an elementary model of virility, and to what extent, on the other hand, the model might materialize into real intentions of violence. I saw only the dark silhouette that was unknotting the tie.
“They are my things,” I objected, pronouncing the words carefully. “My mother gave them to me for my birthday.”
“They are things that my father took from the shop. So you have to give them back to me,” he answered, with a slight childish dip in his voice.
I felt sure he wasn’t lying. I imagined Caserta choosing those garments for me: colors, size, styles. I felt a shiver of disgust.
“I’ll just take the dress and leave you all the rest,” I said. So I reached my hand out toward the bed to grab the dress and slip into the bathroom, but the gesture sliced the air too quickly and hit the wall behind it, with the Madonna of Pompeii and the dry olive branch. I had to move more slowly. I brought my arm under control so that the whole room wouldn’t become animated, with every object shifting, gripped by anxiety. I hated it when frenzy took charge.
Polledro noticed my hesitation and grabbed hold of my wrist. I didn’t react, in order to keep him from trying to crush any hint of resistance by pulling me toward him. I knew I could keep at bay the impression of looming violence only if the speed of our movements seemed chosen by me.
He kissed me without embracing me, but keeping a strong grip on my wrist. First he pressed his lips against mine and then tried to open them with his tongue. He did it in such a way that I was reassured: yes, he was merely behaving as he thought a man should behave in those circumstances, but without real aggression, and perhaps without conviction. He had probably lowered the blind in order to take advantage of the darkness and surreptitiously change his appearance, relax the muscles of his face.
I half opened my lips. Forty years earlier I had imagined with fascinated horror that the little Antonio had the same tongue as Caserta, but I had never had proof of it. Antonio as a child had not been interested in kissing: he preferred to explore the entrance to my vagina with his dirty fingers and at the same time pull my hand toward his short pants. Then in time I had discovered that Caserta’s tongue was a fantasy. None of the kisses I had had in my life seemed like the ones I had imagined him giving Amalia. And Antonio as an adult was confirming that he was not the equal of those fantasies. He didn’t kiss me with much conviction. As soon as he realized that I had agreed to open my mouth, he pushed his tongue too impetuously between my teeth, and immediately, continuing to hold onto my wrist, pulled my hand over his pants. I felt that I shouldn’t have opened my lips.
“Why in the dark?” I asked him in a low voice, with my mouth against his. I wanted to hear him speak, to be definitively sure that he wouldn’t try to hurt me. But he didn’t answer. His breath was short, he kissed my cheek, he licked my neck. Meanwhile he didn’t stop pressing my hand, palm spread, against the fabric of his pants. He was insistent, so that I would understand that I shouldn’t be inert. I held his sex. Only then did he let go of my wrist and embrace me. He murmured something I didn’t understand and leaned over to find my nipples, pushing my chest back, tasting with his mouth the satin fabric and wetting the robe with saliva.