Cabaret (4 page)

“Soon I must leave you, but I have so much to say to you first.” Here she paused with the effort of speaking, and I was terrified she had already gone, because she was so quiet then, and I couldn’t tell if she was breathing, and her cloth hands were weightless and limp and I didn’t know what to do except cry.

But then she continued, quietly, and quickly, as though she was running out of time.

“Fiamma, don’t feel bad about what happened. It wasn’t your fault. It was the card that was dealt to you.You are destined for great things in your career, but you will marry a fool. Be happy. My Fredina, my sensitive one, I worry most for you.You too will be successful in your work, but you will have bad luck. Far in the future I see a ventriloquist, but no good will come of…” Here she broke off, but quite clearly hadn’t finished the sentence. It was left hanging precariously in the air, and we waited in silence for her to continue. I don’t know which of us realized first she had already gone.

Inside I was drowning, but outside I was quiet and still.

There was an opening and shutting of a door behind me. A draft of air. I believe some people came in, and went away again. I gripped Mamma’s hand and willed her not to leave me. I was too young to be an orphan. I felt if she tried hard enough, she could come back from the brink of death. But she didn’t try.

Much later Fiamma said:

“I suppose I better take you back now.”

“Not yet,” I said. “I want to see her face.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes, I do, help me.”

She hauled me to my feet and then went to smoke a ciga –

rette in the corridor. She hadn’t smoked before. Already she was developing bad habits.

“I want to remember her as she was,” was what she said.

But I wanted to know.

Carefully I began to unwrap the bandages, starting at the top of Mamma’s head, peeling them away like the layers of an onion. I did see Mamma’s face, but it wasn’t the face I knew.

T
hey tried to stop me from going to the funeral—

the nurses, the doctors, Uncle Birillo—all saying that I wasn’t strong enough, but I showed them. I even escaped from the hospital in order to visit Mamma in the Pompi funeral home. I made Fiamma push me there. She wouldn’t come inside, so Signora Dorotea Pompi, who owned the business with her husband, Porzio, took control of the wheelchair and propelled me into the chapel of rest.

The transformation of Mamma was nothing short of a miracle. Signora Pompi was an artiste; there was no doubt of that. Mamma was restored to her beautiful self. I could hardly believe it. Her face was whole again, and so natural, not like a mask. Her eyes were closed, just as if she were sleeping, and her false eyelashes had been skillfully applied. Her lips were then unblemished, plump, and rosy hued, and the husks of hair from the palm trunk that previously covered her face in a coarse and hoary beard had been painstakingly removed. Her hair, which had been mostly lost as she flew through the air, had been replaced and coiffed into an artful arrangement of sleek, cascading curls that tumbled across the pillow and trailed playfully over her shoulders.

I felt an enormous sense of relief, knowing that Mamma could now go to her grave with her head held high, and I was terribly grateful to Signora Pompi for giving her back her dignity. Later, in the reception area, the signora gave me a glass of lemonade and some honey cookies, and this was the first food I had eaten since the accident.

Later still, when I emerged, I discovered Fiamma on the opposite street corner with a gang of boys on
motorini
who looked dumb and dangerous. On the evening of the accident she had dumped her reliable steady, Ruperto, a medical student.

“There’s no future for us,” she had told him, before jumping on the back of a scooter with Norberto no-brain, who was widely known, even by his family, to be the most stupid youth in our district.

A few days later followed the funeral service, which took place at the Chiesa di Santa Griselda della Pancia, the little church dedicated to artists and entertainers. Finally heeding my pleas and my threats, Uncle Birillo had come to the hospital for me, bringing with him the mourning Aunt Ninfa had acquired: a dress with a wide sash and puffed sleeves, and a beret with an enormous pompom on the top. Every birthday and Christmas she got me little-girl’s clothes, for she just couldn’t accept that now I was sixteen, not six.

And so, arrayed like a teenage toddler, I was loaded into the back of a minivan for the journey across town. I was amazed to see that the sun was shining, that there were people walking about, that shops were open, conducting business as usual. Vendors advertised their wares in strident voices:

“Rice fritters,” “Artichokes,” “Onions,” “Chicken livers—

fresh, fresh, fresh.” A line of infants in pinafores crossed the street ahead of us, solemnly holding hands in pairs. Bicycles passed and pony carts jangling bells; cars and trucks zoomed by. A squashed rat lay in the gutter. There was the sulfurous smell of tar bubbling in a cauldron, the smell of drains, rotting garbage.The familiar pigeons were cooing and scratching.

Everything was normal. Except my mamma was dead.

The street outside the
chiesa
was swarming with people, who parted to allow us through. Flashbulbs exploded in my face. Images of me were to appear in the evening papers, and I still have the cuttings, pasted into my scrapbook, alongside the obituaries. My mouth was open and my eyes were shut, and my damaged neck was bowed down by the weight of the giant beret on my head. I looked like a simpleton.

We seemed to be the last to arrive for the service, and the entire congregation turned to look as we came through the doors, the plaster cast first, me second, and Uncle Birillo third. Incense filled my nose, causing it to stream with mucus.

I remember there were enough people inside to fill a football stadium. In fact, there weren’t enough seats for them all, and many were forced to stand along the side aisles and at the back. We progressed at a suitably sedate pace in time to the requiem being sung by the choir, and it seemed to take forever. Lots of the ladies looked at me and burst into tears, causing their mascara to stream muddy streaks down their cheeks.

I recognized Signor Saltini, the
padrone
of the Magnolia club, where Mamma was the star. His eyes were raw from crying, and his impressive wart throbbed. He blew me a kiss, and then collapsed onto the false bosoms of Mimi Fini, the female impersonator with whom Mamma had shared a dressing room. There followed the whistling sound of air escaping though a puncture.

The members of Mamma’s band, L’Elastico, stood shoulder to shoulder, sobbing in perfect harmony, their cries ranging from that of big Ivo, the double bass player, whose grief was resonant and deep, to the blaring wailing of Gianan-drea, who was famous on the trumpet.

The chorus line had collapsed in a flurry of sequins and feathers and despair, the cocktail waitresses were in hysterics, and the barmen were bawling. There were so many regular patrons of the Magnolia in attendance that the small ones were obliged to sit on the laps of the bigger ones, and they comforted each other as best they could.

There were several celebrities present. I recognized immediately the man who played the alien in the movie
Galas-sia 17,
even though he didn’t have the extra eye attached to his forehead, or the pointy ear extensions. Then I saw the man who read the news, the woman who predicted the weather, and the identical twins who appeared in the commercials for Zecca toothpaste. Mamma would have been really proud that all these famous people had come.

Further forward was Mamma’s agent, Vittorio Bruschi, seated among his entourage: his secretary, Norma, who, from time to time, blotted his head with a powder puff; his strapping mistress, Valentina, whom he always passed off as his niece; and his tailor, his hairdresser, his masseur, his chauffeur, and his three-man bodyguard.

The rest of the pews were occupied by the people from our neighborhood. There was Signor Russo, who owned the newspaper kiosk; Signora Fognante, who sold tripe from a tray balanced on her head; the toothless street sweeper whose name I never knew; and the crazy man who masqueraded as a monk and sang songs while washing his feet in our fountain.

All the occupants of our building were there: Papa Giovanni, Signora Semifreddo and Signora Mantelli, and Maria Assunta and her son, Remo, whom I loved, furtively and hopelessly.

When I saw them all—all dressed in their smartest clothes, all looking back at me with their eyes so sad—that’s when I cried for the first time that day, and once I started I didn’t stop.

At the far end, on a dais in front of the high altar, was the coffin of shiny wood, surrounded by arrangements of white flowers: lilies, roses, and dahlias. I felt sick seeing it there, knowing Mamma was shut up inside it.

Sitting with Aunt Ninfa in the front row was Fiamma. Although she had been pretending to be tough ever since the tragedy, sitting there she looked dwarfed and haunted, like a little frightened girl. Uncle Birillo parked me in the aisle, and I reached out to her. She fell into my arms and instantaneously we were wracked by sobs. Our aunt Ninfa joined in. She is truly the loudest woman I have ever known, and her trumpets of grief throughout the service were sometimes sufficient to drown out the words of the priest, and at times even the choir of matrons hired by Uncle Birillo at great expense.

Uncle Birillo’s disapproving looks at his wife were not sufficient to silence her, in fact, their effect was quite the reverse.With a defiant gleam in her wet eyes she sobbed all the louder.

Trapped inside my brace and my plaster cast, I felt captive in a nightmare from which there was no waking.

As the matrons sang the Ave Maria, we filed in a line past the coffin. When her turn came, Aunt Ninfa kissed it and left a slimy slick of pink lipstick behind, like a snail’s trail, which Uncle Birillo was only able to remove imperfectly with his pocket handkerchief.

Later, as they lowered Mamma into her grave, my heart felt as thin and lifeless as the long-dead lizard on the footpath that everybody had trodden on.

L
ater still when I was discharged from the hospital, I discovered I wasn’t going home. Fiamma and I were to live with Uncle Birillo and Aunt Ninfa, at their apartment in Aurelio, in one of those soulless modern blocks overlooking the very same highway on which the accident happened, some twenty kilometers beyond, toward the coast.

Under protest, Fiamma was already there. Across the river, our own apartment in the Via Giulia had been stripped bare, and given up. It was now rented to a dentist with a wooden leg and a tenuous connection with Aunt Ninfa’s hairdresser. There could be no going back.

Everything had changed so fast: it was as though our other life never even existed. I didn’t even get the chance to say good-bye to anybody: to Signora Mantelli, who smelled of the aniseed balls she sucked and who knitted us mittens every winter; to Papa Giovanni upstairs, who cut for us figures out of folded paper with a pair of tiny scissors; and to Signora Semifreddo, who lived across the hall and who sobbed for ten minutes every afternoon at five. And downstairs, the building superintendent, Maria Assunta, who polished the floors of the communal areas until they reflected scenes so lustrous they seemed to contain in their glossy depths a life more vivid than that being lived above the surface. And, of course, Remo, lolling gracefully at corners, who appeared in my fevered ado-lescent dreams. I never saw him again.

At Uncle Birillo’s, Fiamma and I were obliged to share the same small room for the first time in our lives.Thankfully, my uncle and aunt had no children (they hadn’t been blessed, as Aunt Ninfa delicately put it), but they did have Signora Pucillo, Aunt Ninfa’s mother, who had been a constant feature of their married life, even accompanying them as newlyweds on their honeymoon to Taormina.

Signora Pucillo did not relish the prospect of sharing the already cramped apartment with two teenage girls, one of whom she regarded as a murderer. She was the type of elderly person who views youth as a disease and is afraid of catching it. Still, with or without Signora Pucillo’s blessing, we were installed in my uncle’s apartment in the Via Gregorio Sette, and although it was scant consolation to her, we didn’t like the arrangement any more than she did.

In those first few months after the accident Fiamma couldn’t commit to anything. She gave up the place at teacher training college she had worked so hard to get, and for short bursts of time she applied herself to various occupations. For a few days she became a tourist guide at the Coliseum, but found the centurion’s costume hot and heavy, and the helmet kept getting stuck on her head.Then she tried out as a kennel maid in a puppy farm, a blender in a glue factory, an artist’s model, and a packer at a wholesaler of religious parapherna-lia, a croupier in a nightclub, a biscuit taster, a window cleaner, and a rat catcher. The final straw came when she en-listed in the navy and packed her bags in secret.

That night, alone at last, and free from her nocturnal chuntering, I enjoyed the best night’s sleep I had had since the accident. But for one night only. At dawn, with the gangplank partially drawn up, Aunt Ninfa besieged the port and stormed the ship, demanding the return of her niece. So Fiamma was dragged back to the suburbs, although her protests were in truth halfhearted. One night in the fetid dorm with eleven burly sailor girls had been enough to convince her she had made a huge mistake, and although she cried crocodile tears for Aunt Ninfa’s benefit, in reality she felt like kissing her.

But my uncle and aunt had had enough of Fiamma’s antics.The same day that she had been rescued from the
Nettuno,
Uncle Birillo exploited his connections at the Ministero degli Affari Esteri, and, in return for various favors, got Fiamma employed in a clerical position with good prospects and salary. Fortunately Fiamma took to the job, and over the years was able to work her way up to become a high-ranking civil servant with her own office, secretary, and, enviably, her own executive washroom. Once her talents became known to the bigwigs there was no stopping her, and she became involved in secret affairs, whose true nature was known only to Fiamma, a handful of people in Security, and the prime minister himself.