“How do I look?” I asked the old woman, who meanwhile had piled up in her cupped palm at least ten pits.
She scowled uncertainly.
“Good,” she said, without conviction.
“I know,” I declared, with, instead, an air of satisfaction. And I chose two more cherries with joined stems. I was about to put them on my other ear, but I changed my mind and held them out to Signora De Riso.
“No,” she defended herself, drawing back.
I got up, walked behind her, and, as she shook her head, laughing nervously, flushed, freed her right ear from the gray hair and placed the cherries on the auricle. Then I stood back to admire the sight.
“Beautiful!” I exclaimed.
“No,” the widow murmured, embarrassed.
I chose another pair of cherries and went back behind her to adorn the other ear. Afterward I embraced her, crossing her arms over her large bosom and hugging her hard.
“Mammina,” I said to her. “It was you who told my father everything, isn’t that true?”
Then I kissed her wrinkled neck, which was rapidly turning red. She squirmed in my arms, whether from uneasiness or the wish to free herself, I don’t know. She denied it, said that she would never do that: how could that occur to me?
She had, however, done it — I thought. She had played the spy, in order to hear him shout, slam doors, break dishes, enjoying it anxiously from within the nest of her apartment.
The telephone rang. I kissed her again, hard, on her gray head, before going to answer: it was already the third ring.
“Hello,” I said.
Silence.
“Hello,” I repeated, calmly, as I observed Signora De Riso staring at me hesitantly and meanwhile struggling to get up from her chair.
I hung up.
“Please, stay a little longer,” I invited her, becoming formal again. “Would you like to give me the pits? Eat the rest of the cherries. Just one more. Or take them with you.”
But I felt that my tone was not reassuring. The old woman was standing now and was heading toward the door, with the cherries astride her ears.
“Are you angry with me?” I asked her, in a placating voice.
She looked at me in amazement. She must suddenly have thought of something that stopped her in her tracks.
“That dress,” she said to me, in bewilderment, “how did you get it? You shouldn’t have. It was in the suitcase with the other things. And the suitcase was never found. Where did you get it? Who gave it to you?”
As she spoke, I saw that her pupils were switching rapidly from astonishment to fear. I wasn’t happy about that, I hadn’t intended to frighten her, I didn’t like causing alarm. I smoothed the dress with the palms of my hands as if to make myself taller; constricted by that short, close-fitting dress, too stylish, unsuitable for my age, I felt apprehensive.
“It’s only fabric without memory,” I murmured. I meant that it could do no harm to either me or her. But the widow De Riso hissed:
“It’s dirty.”
She opened the door and closed it behind her quickly. Just then the telephone rang again.
20
I let it ring two or three times. Then I lifted the receiver: buzzing, distant voices, indecipherable sounds. I repeated “hello” without hope, just so that Caserta would know that I was there, that I wasn’t frightened. Finally I hung up. I sat down at the kitchen table, took the cherries off my ear, and ate them. By now I knew that all the calls that followed would have the pure function of a reminder, a sort of whistle like the one that in the past men used when they wanted to announce from the street that they were coming home and the women could put the pasta on.
I checked the clock: it was ten after six. To keep Caserta from forcing me again to listen to his silence, I picked up the receiver and dialed Uncle Filippo’s number. I was prepared for the long sound of the rings. Instead he answered, but without enthusiasm, as if annoyed by the fact that it was me. He said that he had just come in, that he was tired and cold, that he wanted to go to bed. He coughed artificially. He mentioned Caserta only when I asked, and then was irritated. He said they had talked for a long time but without quarreling. They had suddenly realized that there was no longer any reason for it. Amalia was dead, life had moved on.
He was silent for a moment, to let me speak: he expected some reaction. I had none. So he started muttering about old age, about solitude. He said that Caserta had been thrown out of the house by his son, had been left on his own, just like that, without a roof, worse than a dog. First the boy had stolen all the money he had saved and then had thrown him out. His only good fortune had been Amalia’s kindness. Caserta had confided to him that they had seen each other again after many years: she had helped him, they had kept each other company, but discreetly, with mutual respect. Now he lived like a tramp, a little here, a little there. These were things that not even someone like him deserved.
“A fine man,” I commented.
Filippo became even colder.
“There comes a time when one has to make peace with one’s neighbor.”
“And the girl on the funicular?” I asked.
My uncle was embarrassed.
“Sometimes it happens,” he said. I didn’t know it yet but I, too, would find out that old age is a brute, ferocious beast. Then he added: “There’s worse foolishness than that.” Finally he said, with uncontrolled bitterness:
“Between him and Amalia there was never anything.”
“Maybe it’s true,” I admitted.
He raised his voice.
“Then why did you tell us those things?”
I retorted:
“Why did you believe me?”
“You were five years old.”
“Exactly.”
My Uncle Filippo sniffed. He murmured:
“Go away. Forget it.”
“Take care of yourself,” I advised him and hung up.
I stared at the telephone for a few seconds. I knew that it would ring: somewhere Caserta was waiting for the line to be free. The first ring was not long in coming. I made up my mind and left quickly, without locking the door.
There were no more clouds, there was no more wind. A whitish light reduced the Arciconfraternita di Santa Maria delle Grazie, tiny between the transparent façades of ordinary buildings covered with advertisements. I headed toward the taxis, then changed my mind and went into the yellow building where the subway entrance was. The crowd rustled beside me as if it were made of paper cutouts intended to amuse children. The sound of obscenities uttered in dialect — the only obscenities that could fit together sound and sense in my head in such a way as to make concrete a sex that was troublesome in its aggressive, pleasure-seeking, and sticky realism: every other formula outside of that dialect seemed to me insignificant, often lighthearted, pronounceable without repulsion — softened in an unexpected way, becoming a kind of rustling against the roller of an old typewriter. As I descended into the underground at Piazza Cavour, a warm wind blew in, making the metallic walls sway and mixing the red and blue of the escalator, and I imagined I was a figure from Neapolitan cards: the eight of spades, the woman who, calm and armed, advances on foot ready to jump into the game of briscola. I bit my lips between my teeth until they hurt.