Letter from Casablanca (4 page)

I often felt like crying, and I didn’t know why. The tears ran down without my being able to do anything about them, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of my Latin—by then I knew the parisyllabics and the imparisyllabics from memory. Mama was right after all—for these things there’s no need to take lessons or leave the house, a little study is enough. It was just that I felt like crying. And then I sat on the wall watching the lizards and thinking about the previous summer. The memory that made me cry the most was an image of Papa and me on a tandem, he in front and I behind, and Mama and Nena following us on a tandem shouting, “Wait for us!” In the background was the dark pine grove of Forte dei Marmi and in front of us the blue of the sea; Papa wore white trousers, and whoever arrived first at the Balena bath would be the first to eat bilberry ice cream. And then I couldn’t hold back the
sobs and I had to cover my mouth with my hands so as not to let Mama hear. My repressed voice was a weak muttering that was like the sound Belafonte made when he refused to be dragged along on his leash. And the saliva, mixed with tears, soaked the handkerchief that I desperately stuffed in my mouth, and then I felt like biting them—my hands—but slowly, very slowly, in nibbles. How strange! At that point everything was mixed up, and I tasted on my palate, sharp, very distinct, with an unequivocal aroma, the flavor of bilberry ice cream.

It was that taste that succeeded in calming me. I felt suddenly exhausted, without strength to cry anymore, to move, to think. Around me in the grass the gnats buzzed and the ants walked by. I seemed to be in a well. I felt an enormous weight inside my chest. I couldn’t even swallow. I remained staring beyond the hedge at the pall of heat that dimmed the horizon. Then slowly I got up and went into the kitchen again. Mama was still pretending to sleep in the armchair, or maybe she really was asleep. I heard Nena scolding her Belafonte. She said, “You silly thing! How is it possible you don’t appreciate a bow like this? Why do you insist on ruining it, silly? None of the other cats have one.” I raised the latch of the window screen and called to her in a low voice, “Pst, pst, Nena! Come into the house and we’ll have a snack. Do you want bread or ricotta? Or would you rather have jam? I’ll open a jar.” And she ran cheerfully, leaving Belafonte, who tried in vain to untie the bow from his neck, in the lurch. She was completely satisfied that I had finally remembered her. Perhaps she still had the hope she would succeed in convincing me to be the architect.

Mama usually came alive around six. She walked through the house putting in order whatever there was to put in order, moving a knickknack an inch or two, smoothing a wrinkled lace doily under a vase. Then she came into the kitchen, washed the dishes that she had not had the heart to wash after
eating, and set about to get supper, but without any hurry because there was nothing else to do all evening. Tommaso would not return before ten o’clock. They would give him some soup at the nursing home, where he spent all his days now because his cousin was sick and the young ladies let him stay with him the whole day. “Indeed, they’ll do a favor for anyone who’ll do their sweeping for them,” said Mama disdainfully.

It was the nicest part of the whole day. At least we were together with Mama. We finally talked a little, even if il wasn’t really a proper conversation, but there was always some small satisfaction. The radio, for example, which could be turned on, and even if it broadcast songs, Mama didn’t change the station as long as the volume was low and provided that Nena implored, “Please, Mama, give us a little music.” And how could you resist her when she made her voice both cajoling and sad? But I preferred a gentleman who talked about the whole world and evoked the capitals which were represented in my geography book. How I liked to stay and listen to him! He would say, “Today in Paris General DeGaulle in consultation on the Suez problem …” and I closed my eyes and saw the Eiffel Tower of my book, slender and all openwork, the pyramids, and the Sphinx with her face gnawed by the weather and the desert dust.

In bed I found it hard to fall asleep. I remained with my eyes open staring at the glimmer from the windowpane, listening to the regular breathing of Nena, who slept peacefully. Before going to bed Mama came to make an on-the-spot investigation, because Belafonte often slipped under Nena’s bed and then during the night slept curled up at her feet, and Mama said that it was not hygienic. But by this time Belafonte succeeded in getting away with it because he understood the method and got out from under the bed only when the house was perfectly quiet. I didn’t say anything, even though I didn’t
like Belafonte, because it was obvious that Nena needed a little company.

So, in the dark of the bedroom, while Nena slept and Belafonte purred or scratched the sheet with his claws, I remained listening to the noise of the trains that whistled as they left the city. Often I imagined going away. I saw myself get on one of those trains at night, stealthily, when the train slowed down because of work in progress on the roadbed. I had a tiny suitcase with me, my watch with the luminous hands, and my geography book. The corridors had soft carpets, the compartments were lined with red velvet and had white linen headrests, there was an odor of tobacco and upholstery, the few travelers slept, the lamps were low and light blue. I settled myself in a deserted compartment, opened my geography book, and decided that I would go to one of those photographs. Sometimes it was “The City of Light from the Top of Notre Dame,” sometimes “The Parthenon in Athens at Sunset.” Bui the photograph which attracted me the most was the port of Singapore, swarming with bicycles and with people in cone-shaped hats, and strange-looking houses in the background. Vapors from the heat of a hazy dawn woke me. Through the strips of the Venetian blinds, the first rays of the sun drew on the floor a yellow staircase that climbed obliquely up the fringes of Nena’s bedspread.

I had no desire to get up. I knew that I was again about to begin a day identical to the others: cod-liver oil, bread with butter and jam, coffee with milk, the morning lost in waiting for dinner, and finally the interminable hours after dinner, my Latin, Mama dozing in the living room, Nena singing “Banana Boat” to herself in her
pied-à-terre
dragging Belafonte behind her. All this until that afternoon when Nena crossed the garden at a run, stood under the living room window, called, “Mama! Mama!” and made that statement. It was a Saturday afternoon. I remember the day because Saturday
morning the grocer came, stopped the delivery van in front of the main gate, and unloaded what Mama had ordered by telephone. That particular morning he had also brought the caramel puddings that Nena adored. I would have liked them, too, but I tried to control myself because they hurt the cavity in my molar and I had to wait until September to go to the dentist because Aunt Yvonne was coming for a week in September and she would take care of it. Can you imagine for one moment Mama being willing to take me down to the city? I was concentrating on studying
Jupiter-Jovis
, which had an infamous declension, even though it fortunately lacked the plural, and so at first I took no notice of the statement. Besides, Nena often came to bother me or to distract Mama with sentences like, “Hurry, quick, Belafonte hurt himself!” or “Mama, when I’m grown up can I make my hair blue like Aunt Yvonne’s?” And if you consented to listen to her, heaven help you—she would begin to be impertinent and wouldn’t stop. The best thing was to discourage her from the beginning by pretending not to hear. So that time it took me perhaps a minute to realize what she had said. I had my head in my hands and was desperately repeating the ablative. Nena’s statement seemed like more of her usual nonsense. But all of a sudden I felt a blast of heat rise to my forehead. Then I began to shake, and I realized that my hands were trembling on the Minerva of my Latin grammar, which had closed by itself.

I don’t know how long I remained motionless, with my hands inert on the book, unable to stand up. It seemed that a glass bell had descended over the house and plunged it into silence. From my table I could see Mama, who had got up from the armchair and was leaning on the windowsill, very pale. The handkerchief had fallen to the floor. She supported herself on the windowsill as if she were about to fall, and I saw her move her mouth as she talked to Nena, but by a strange magic I heard nothing. Her slowly moving lips looked like the mouth of a fish in the agony of death. Then I made a
sudden movement, the little table my knee had bumped groaned on the floor, and it was as if I had pushed a button—the sound returned around me, I heard again the concert of the cicadas in the garden, the whistle of a train in the distance, the buzzing of a bee which attacked the screen, and Mama’s inexpressive voice, automatic and distant, saying, “Come into the house now, love. It’s too hot. You need to take a nap. You can’t stay out there in that humidity—it’s not good for children.”

It was a strange afternoon. Nena resigned herself without raising objections to rest on the divan, something that had never happened before, and when she woke up she stayed quietly in the kitchen drawing pictures. That day I wasn’t able to study Latin no matter how hard I tried. I forced myself to concentrate on the adjectives with three endings and I repeated them stubbornly, but my mind was far away. It ran as if crazed after that statement of Nena’s that perhaps was my misunderstanding, that surely was my misunderstanding, and Mama would tell me was a misunderstanding if only I would ask her. But the fact is that I had no desire to ask her.

On Monday a letter arrived from Aunt Yvonne, and we were very close to tears. She was not coming to visit us in September as she had promised when she left. She and Rodolfo went to Chamonix, not because they liked Chamonix: “I can’t stand the mountains, you know, they make me sad, but everyone comes here in the summer, all of Rodolfo’s colleagues, I mean. And if you don’t have at least a minimum of social life here, I mean if you don’t put yourself forward a little, they look at you as if you’re a baboon. They already have a superiority complex about Italians. If you even hint that you don’t like the chic places, you’re laughed at, no one looks at you anymore. Rome was really almost better, except for the bother and the salary. At least there was sun there. The climate here is infamous…”

Perhaps it was because of that letter that Mama’s silences
began, or maybe because of that nonsense that Nena had said—who knows?—but more probably because of the letter. Not that Mama was moody, and not even melancholy. Rather she was absent. You saw that something occupied her thoughts. You said to her, “Excuse me, Mama. May I have the caramel pudding that was left over from dinner?” or whatever, and she didn’t answer you. After a few minutes she said, “Oh, did you ask me something?” And her eyes were fixed far away beyond the kitchen window on the avenue that ended in the country, as if someone were about to arrive. And you repeated the same question to her as before: “I asked you for the leftover pudding, Mama.” But the answer didn’t come this time either, only a vague gesture in the air that could mean, “All right, do whatever you want. Don’t you see that I’m thinking of something else?” And so even the desire for the dessert left you, so what sense was there in sitting down to eat the caramel pudding? Wasn’t it better to go and study Latin in order to occupy your mind a little?

I learned the fourth declension perfectly. It’s true that it didn’t present the same difficulties as the third—you can’t even compare them. Even the directions in the first paragraph said so: “The fourth declension does not present particularities of any kind, save for rare exceptions to be learned from memory, for which see paragraph four,” and I very nearly felt like mourning the third declension. If that week I’d at least had a really difficult thing to learn, I’d be distracted a little, but with that stupid
domus-dornus
I did nothing but think of that statement of Nena’s, of Aunt Yvonne who wasn’t coming, and Mama’s silences. In my notebook I wrote little sentences like
silentium domus triste est
, which I then cancelled out with many little crosses connected to each other like barbed wire. It was a method my desk-mate had taught me. He called it “erasure by barbed wire,” and I liked it very much.

After that exceptional day in which she had taken an afternoon nap, Nena had resumed her habits and again spent the
afternoons in the
pied-à-terre
. But she didn’t sing “Banana Boat’’ anymore, she realized that it wasn’t right. And by then she didn’t come under the window anymore to bother me or to invite me to be the architect who was courting her. She resigned herself to being alone in the garden. Who knows how bored she was, poor Nena. Now and then, glancing from the window, I saw her intent on combing Belafonte with a large pink comb that had arrived for her from Lausanne together with some hair curlers and a drier with batteries that blew real hot air. They came in a little box on which was pictured a doll covered with curls and the inscription
La petite coiffeuse
. But she played wearily, as if against her will, and who knows how much she wanted to come to invite me to be the architect? And I, too, at times would have liked to close that stupid book, go to her and tell her, “I’ve decided to be the architect who’s courting you. Let’s play. Don’t be so quiet. Why don’t you sing a little ‘Banana Boat’ that I like so much?” And instead I remained with my forehead in my hands, looking at the faraway countryside that quivered in the thick summer air.

But the next Saturday something new happened. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Mama was in the armchair with the blinds closed. I was doing an exercise entitled
Dumus Aurea
, all full of adjectives with three endings referring to substantives of the fourth declension—a torture. Nena must have been near the main gate. Perhaps she had taken Belafonte for a stroll. I lost sight of her for a few minutes. I saw her arrive out of breath, emerging from the corner of the house on the veranda side. Then she stopped dumbfounded, looked behind her, hurried on a short distance, stopped, turned around again. The noise of the gravel under the soles of her sandals was the only sound in the afternoon silence. At first she seemed undecided which window to choose. Then she rejected Mama’s window, maybe because the blinds were completely closed. She came under my window, called me, but did not pronounce my name. She said only, “Listen! Listen! Please
listen!” And her voice was imploring, but not like it was when she was teasing for something. Now she was really different. I had never heard Nena like this before. It was as if she were crying without crying.