History (6 page)

For her, those evenings of drinking were also holiday evenings, be cause once her father was in his cups, after having waved his flags of revolt, he would give free rein to his natural good humor, and recall his back ground as a peasant, ancient relative of animals and plants. He would imitate the sounds of every animal : from
ucedduzzi,
the smallest of birds, to
leuni,
lions. And at her request, he would repeat Calabri songs and fables as often as ten times, making them comic when they were tr

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because like all children, she enjoyed laughing, and her wanton laughter was music in the family. At a certain moment, Nora, too, defeated, would join in the performance, her ingenuous and slightly off voice produc ing a small repertory of her own-limited, actually, as far as I know, to
a
total of two numbers. One was the famous salon song,
Ideale:

"I followed you like Peace's rainbow Through the pathways of heaven . .
"

etc., etc. The o ther was a song in Venetian dialect, which went: "Look at the sky serene with all the stars,

\Vh a fi night this is for stealing girls

Those who steal girls are not called thieves They're called young lovers . . .
"

Then, around ten, Nora would finish tidying up the kitchen, and Giuseppe would put Iduzza to bed, accompanying her, like a mother, with certain lullabies almost Oriental in sound, which his mother and his grand mother had sung to him :

"0
come, sleep, from the mountain The wolf is eating the sheep

0
nni
0
nna Go to sleepy Sleep

sleep

sleep . . . sleep . . . slee . . .
"

Another lullaby, which Iduzza liked very much, was then handed down to the next generation. It was in proper Italian, and I have no idea where Giuseppe came across it:

"Sleep, little eyes, sleep, little eyes, For tomorrow we're going to Regg There a golden mirror we'll buy, All painted with roses and flowers.

Sleep, little hands, sleep, little hands, For tomorrow we're going to Reggio. There we'll buy a little loom

With a shuttle of fi silver. Sleep, little feet, sleep, little feet,

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For tomorrow we're going to Reggio There we'll buy some little shoes

To dance on the feast of Saint Ida .
.
"

Iduzza forgot all fear at her father's side. To her, he seemed a kind of warm baby-carriage, radiant and limping, more impregnable than a tank, as he gaily took her out riding, safe from the terrors of the world, accompany ing her everywhere, and never allowing her to be sent out alone into the streets, where every door, window, or alien encounter threatened her with harm. In the winter, perhaps for economy, he wore a kind of shepherd cloak, broad and rather long, and in bad weather he would protect her from the rain, holding her close, under his mantle.

I don't know Calabria well. And I can draw only a vague picture of Iduzza's Cosenza from the few reminiscences of the dead. Already at that time, I believe, modem buildings were spreading out from the medieval city that girds the hill. In one of these buildings, in fact, humble and ordinary, there was the Ramundos' cramped apartment. I know a river runs through the city, and the sea is just beyond the mountain. The advent of the atomic age, which marked the beginning of the century, surely was not felt in those regions; nor was the industri development of the Great Powers, except through emigrants' tales. The region's economy was based on agri re, progressively declining because of the impoverished soil. Th ruling castes were the clergy and the landowners; and for the lowest castes, I suppose there, as elsewhere, the habitual daily sustenance was the onion . . . I know for certain, in any case, that Giuseppe, as a student preparing for his teacher's certifi went for years without ever knowing the taste of hot food, nourishing himself chiefl on bread and dried fi

Towards the age of fi for a whole summer lduzza was subject to attacks of an unnamed disease, which distressed her parents as if it were some genetic defect. In the midst of her games and her childish prattle, she would suddenly fall silent, tum pale, with the impression that the world was spinning and dissolving around her. In reply to her parents' questions, she would utter only a little animal lament, but it was obvious she had already stopped hearing their voices; and a moment later she would put her hands to her head and throat, in a gesture of defense, while her mouth trembled in an incomprehensible murmuring, as if she were having a frightened dialogue with a shadow. Her breathing became shallow and feverish, and here, she would hurl herself violently to the ground, writhing and shaking in convulsive turm her eyes open, but empty in a total blindness. From some subterr source, a brutal electric current seemed

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to assail her little body, which at the same time was made invulnerable, never suff wounds or shocks. This would last for a couple of minutes at most, until her movements slackened and diminished, and her body settled again in sweet, seemly repose. Her eyes would swim in a dreamy awakening, and her lips would relax gently, without wholly parting, only curling a little at the comers. The child seemed to be smiling in gratitude for having come home again, to the double protection of her perennial guardian angels who bent their heads over her, at either side : one here, round and rumpled like a sheepdog's; and the other, there, a curly littl nanny-goat's poll.

But that smile, really, was only a physical illusion, produced by her muscles' natural distension after their harsh tautness. A few more instants would pass before Iduzza really recognized her domestic haven; and at that same moment, no notion remained in her of the frightful exile and return, as if they were events expelled from her memory. She could report only that she had suff red a great dizziness, and then had heard something like the sound of water, and footsteps and confused noises which seemed to come from far away. And in the hours that followed she would look tired, but more carefree and heedless than usual, as if, unknown to her, she had been released from a burden beyond her strength. For her own part, even later, she believed she had suff a common fainting-spell, without realiz ing the theatrical phenomena that had accompanied it. And her parents preferred to leave her in this ignorance, warning her, however, never to tell anyone how she was subject to certain attacks, so as not to compromise her future as a young lady. Thus, in the family, there was now another scandal to keep hidden from the world.

Ancient folk culture, still rooted in the Calabrian earth and especially among the peasants, put a religious stigma on certain inexplicable maladies, attributing their recurrent attacks to the invasion of sacred spirits, or lower beings, who in this case could be exorcised only through ritual recitations in church. The invading spirit, who most often selected a woman, could also transmit unusual powers, such as the gift of healing or of prophecy. But the invasion, basically, was felt as an immense and guiltless trial, the unconscious selection of an isolated creature who would sum up the collec tive tragedy.

Naturally, Professor Ramundo, with his social advancement, had gone beyond the magic circle of peasant culture; and moreover, in accord with his philosophical-political ideas, he was a positivist. For him, certain un healthy phenomena could derive only from the malfunctions or infi

of the body. On this score, he was openly dismayed by the suspicion that he himself, in his very seed, might perhaps have tainted his daughter's blood, through his abuse of alcohol. But Nora, as soon as she saw him

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worried, immediately did her best to console him, and said, reassuringly, "No, no, don't torture yourself with crazy ideas. Look at the Palmieris. They've always drunk, back to the grandfather and great-grandfather! And the Mascaros, who give their babies wine instead of milk! You can see for yourself! They're all the picture of health!"

In previous years the family would move, in the warmer months, down towards the tip of Calabri to the paternal home; but that summer, they didn't leave their stifl little Cosenza apartment, for fear lduzza might be attacked by her illness in the country, in the presence of grand parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. And perhaps the city's dog-day heat, to which lduzza was not accustomed, increased the frequency of her attacks. Country holidays stopped completely after that anyway, when as a consequence of that winter's earthquake, which destroyed Reggio and laid waste the plains, the grandparents went to live with another son, in a hovel in the Aspromonte mountains where there was too little room to permit

any guests.

From past vacati Ida remembered most of all certain dolls made of bread, which her grandmother baked for her in the oven and she rocked as if they were babies, desperately refusing to eat them. She wanted them beside her even in her bed, from which they were furtively removed at night while she slept.

There also remained in her memory a very loud cry repeated by the swordfi fi over the cliff and in her mind it sounded like this : "FA-ALEUUI"

Towards the end of that summer, after yet another of Iduzza's attacks, Giuseppe made up his mind, loaded himself and the child on a little donkey he had borrowed, and took her to a hospital outside Cosenza where there was a doctor, a friend from his parts, who now lived at Mon talto but had studied modern medicine in the North. Under the fi of the doctor who examined her, shy as she was, Ida laughed when it tickled, making the sound of someone ringing a little bell. And when the examina ti was over, she was told to thank the doctor, and she blushed all over, saying thank you, then hiding immediately behind her father. Th doctor pronounced her healthy. Having already learn privately from Giuseppe that during those attacks she didn't hurt herself or shout or bite her tongue or reveal other disturbing symptoms, he assured the father there was no reason to worry about her. Those attacks of hers, he explained, were almost certainly temporary manifestations of precocious hysteria, which would disappear of themselves as she grew up. Meanwhile, to avoid them, espe cially since the schools were about to reopen ( from her earliest years lduzz had attended the classes of her mother, who didn't know where to

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leave her otherw ), he prescribed a soothing syrup for her, to be taken every morn when she woke up.

Ida and Giuseppe made the return journ merry and lively, the father singing the usual songs of his repertory in which Ida joined from time to time wi her off little voice.

And after that day, subsequent events confirmed the doctor's predic tions. The simple soothing-syrup cure, obediently followed by Iduzza, proved its daily effi with no negative result except perhaps a slight somnolence and dulling of the senses, which the child was able to over come. And from then on, after the single invasion of that summer, the str illness never returned, at least not in its original severe form. It did, at times, rea somehow, but reduced to what had formerly been only its fi signal, a kind of dizzying arrest of all sensation, visible on the child's face with a mistlike veil of pallor. To tell the truth, these spells passed so ra that they eluded the notice of all present, and even lduzza own awareness. However, unlike the previous paroxysms, these imperceptible hints left in her a shadow of sad uneasiness, like an obscure sense of transgression.