Planus (7 page)

Crispi, who was an old gentleman with a large nose all pitted and pock-marked and the kind, rather watery eyes of a faithful hound, was acquainted with my father and had taken me on his lap when, all of a sudden, I did a wee-wee on his knees, not because I was particularly struck by the terrific moustaches, bushy eyebrows and disturbing glance of King Umberto who, seated in the next box, turned round often to see who this boy sitting astride his Prime Minister's knee was, nor because I was moved by the ceaselessly renewed acclamations of the crowd thronging round the foot of the royal tribune, raising a cloud of dust which stung our eyes and parched our throats, but quite simply because I had eaten too many water-ices during the afternoon and I wanted to go and could not restrain myself, being weary and half-asleep.

Apparently Crispi laughed like a grandfather laughing at the innocence of his grandson, but in the carriage on the way back everyone teased me, and when we reached home Ricordi told the story, exaggerating it all, embroidering the tale and acting it out in fine Neapolitan style, using coarse and colourful expressions to make it into an impromptu comedy in which he played several parts at once — Crispi, myself, the King, the crowd — with such undignified verve and such a comic manner that he made everyone burst out laughing, even Signora Rosa! Only Miss Sharp and my mother did not laugh, Lily because she had not been invited to the gala and was up on her high horse, sulking, and
Maman,
who had stayed at home all day to keep poor Signora Rosa company,
Martian ... Maman....

I have never been able to discover how my mother managed to listen to this tale (which was such an embarrassment to my governess) later on, when Ricordi and my father, on the slightest pretext and especially when there were visitors in the house, made me undergo a recital of this misadventure until it became a sort of glory in the end, like a good farce to be boasted of . . . how did
Maman
listen without flinching or turning a hair, although it must have reminded her of this first night, the first she had ever spent waiting for my father, who had not returned from the gala, a night of feverish and anxious waiting which was to be repeated many times from then on ... and the gala was over.

I will not press the point. As Shakespeare put it:

Life is a farce, a comedy, a universal tragedy, and the destiny of each of the characters in the drama is plotted out for them without their knowledge, it shakes them as if in a cup and tosses them down pell-mell on the cloth, like dice at a poker game: Elena, who was to be killed by an anonymous shot on a calm and sunny Sunday afternoon; the old King, assassinated in the following year (and perhaps it was because he expected to be assassinated that Umberto I turned constantly in his gilded armchair to stare at me with his eyes so full of anxiety on the day of the gala);
Maman
, dead less than ten years later in extreme loneliness, and my father, twenty- five years later, remarried and utterly ruined, the son of a vine- grower as he was, who had started from nothing; little Vittorio Emanuele, who, very short of stature like Max Jacob, stuffed a pack of cards into his boots and planted an outsize ostrich-plume in his kepi to come up to the level of Mussolini, that 'Fairground Caesar', that craven, bloated and white-faced sex maniac and liar, who was ignobly hanged by one foot, head down, bleeding like a pig, while the little king was pushed out of office and Max became enshrined as the martyr-poet; the tender little infant, whom I had seen asleep with his thumbs tucked in, became, for one week, Umberto II, and was hounded and driven into exile after having been pushed to one side for years, weary, ageing, prematurely bald, sallow, discouraged, fearful, lifeless, having achieved nothing, given nothing, he whom the people had received with so much love and welcomed with so much hope and good will; my brother, become a diplomat, my sister, married in Italy, the Ricordi family scattered and the old court photographer still alive today, honoured and nearing his centenary, and I, writing these memories of childhood, tapping away at a typewriter, my face smudged with printer's ink, become a writer, that's the limit! For to write is, perhaps, to abdicate . who would have thought it, and why not admit that the destiny that played with us at poker-dice was a drunken barman who had made us drink diabolical cocktails, more numerous and less palatable a mixture than the sorbets which were handed round on silver and vermeil trays on the royal dais on the day of the Grand Gala, and which had such a deplorable effect on me? (page 1391)

Another story about wee-wee puts us on the track of the difference between the sexes, and it was Elena who formulated a law, a short time before the poor darling was killed, for little girls are much more wide awake than boys on these questions, and understand at an earlier age.

Although Monella's passage in the house was so brief, and appeared to be entirely devoid of significance, I date all the changes which came to bear on our lives from the time of her disappearance.

I have already remarked that my father did not come home after the gala. His absences from the evening meal became more and more frequent and were sometimes prolonged for whole days, and, under - the pretext of business trips, Ricordi soon began to accompany him and he too was absent more often than not. Moreover, my brother and sister, and Elena's sisters, who contemptuously called us the
'Promessi Sposi'
whenever they met us hand-in-hand, or with our arms tenderly about each other's necks, drove into town two or three times a week to have tea or attend parties given by children of their own age, and even spent Sundays on such-and-such an estate ] nearby, in the country or at the seaside. As the carriage drove down' the great avenue of cypresses they would jeer at us, 'the little ones', because we were not included in the party. Naturally, Miss Sharp , accompanied them everywhere, chaperoning the 'young ladies' (I included Alfred in their number), and the huge, overgrown garden was at our disposal and never had we enjoyed more glorious games there, Elena and I, losing ourselves in the remotest nooks; but on Sundays, by dint of insisting and making scenes with Mother — and also because Mother and Signora Rosa preferred their solitude on Sundays, Mother so that she could indulge her unspoken grief and tend her poor nerves, Signora Rosa so that she could ruminate on J the well-deserved reproaches she would heap on her husband's head when the photographer reappeared; each of them shut herself up in her bedroom at the far ends of the great, empty house — on Sundays I had won permission for Maria, an old Neapolitan nurse covered in holy medals, badges and scapularies, to accompany us to the nearby paddock on the Vomero, and there we would spend the afternoon playing round Virgil's Tomb, picnicking on the grass, and hiding to observe the little birds in the migrating season, while old Maria dozed off or told the beads of her rosary on the terrace of the abandoned cottage. Elena and I had never been so happy as during that period when we were left to our own devices.

My greatest passion was training snails. Beppino, the son of our farmer Pasquale, had shown me how to keep them awake by tickling their bellies with the point of a toothpick. We gathered them everywhere, big ones, brown, white, yellow, and some with shells like speckled coral and others transparent and fragile, edged with blue or black, whose medial ridge was as hard as nacre, and still others glued together in pairs, oozing and frothing. While Elena, armed with a toothpick, conscientiously tickled their bellies, I stretched strings in the air, from one twig to another, in straight lines, diagonals, zigzags, circles, and star shapes, and when the snails were wide awake we set them on the strings in single file, hundreds of them lined up, and their slow and comical processions wound in all directions, at different levels superimposed on one another, like penitents, each creature in its cowl and each carrying, instead of a lighted candle, its two eyes set on tentacles, which are tactile and can be so drolly telescoped. When we had made them perform the same exercise half a dozen times we laid the strings out on the ground in the same patterns, and the snails would follow all the complicated meanderings of the strings, like an endless train following the tracks of a railway, Ariadne's long, silver thread winding back upon itself several times in the twists and turns of the labyrinth before leading to the exit, and the exit was marked by a pile of fresh lettuce-leaves, where the well-trained creatures rested and regaled themselves, but saddled, harnessed and caparisoned like circus horses in the stable, ready for the next performance. We would make them repeat their act and Elena would clap her hands. J Every Sunday I presented her with a well-trained menagerie which Elena knotted into Maria's big headscarf, or which old Maria carried to the house in her rolled-up apron, grumbling all the way home about our ridiculous whims and making numerous signs of the cross.

I do not know what Elena can have done with all those snails, I never saw one of them again; I suppose she played with them in the secrecy of her own room, never showing them to anyone, and certainly not to her sisters, who would have screamed in horror, and that she made them perform just for her own amusement. I was pleased and proud of myself, and every day I searched for more snails, my chief hunting-ground being the old wall of the Salita di San-Martino, whose fissures contained specimens of phenomenal size and great variety, while those at Virgil's Tomb were rather mean and ordinary. Every weekday Elena and I explored the old wall.

One morning during the week preceding her death we found ourselves right at the bottom of the Salita, close to the dangerous territory behind Benjamin's kitchen-garden. The hunting had been good. Elena had tucked up her short skirt to make a game-bag to carry the snails we had collected and my pockets were crammed with the fat, frothing creatures.

'Shall we go and see Zia Regola?' said Elena.

'Yes, let's!' I replied.

We crept stealthily among the tall grasses beside the decrepit fence.

It was a long time since we had come to this lost corner, for now we spent all our Sundays setting bird-snares in the paddock of Virgil.

That day no one was about, Benjamin was not in his kitchen- garden. The small garden in front of the cottage was empty, and the piano silent. The lamp was not lit and we could see nothing but blackness between the broken slats of the closed shutters. But the door was wide open.

Half an hour went by.

'Perhaps Auntie Regola is dead,' whispered Elena.

We were sitting in the grass and could not drag ourselves away, so mysterious did the little house appear with its tangled fall of jasmin and heliotrope.

We did not take our eyes off the door.

Had the
Zia
seen us and was she watching us from the end of the passage? It might well be, and we began to feel afraid, just a little afraid. A breeze, scarcely a breath, shook the curtain of odiferous plants, as if a shiver had passed through them.

Who was
Zia
Regola, and whose aunt was she? We had often wondered and we knew nothing at all. Neither Mother nor Signora Rosa had ever breathed a word to us about her, and when I questioned my brother and sister, or Elena asked her sisters, they laughed in our faces. 'The aunt is the aunt!' they told us. And
Zia
Regola could not be Benjamin's aunt, for she played the piano like a middle-class woman.. 'She's a madwoman,' Benjamin replied when we asked the old gardener. 'She smokes like a man, but she's not wicked. I have to take care of her and keep an eye on her, so she doesn't run away. She's always lived here. She's a woman who's been crossed in love.' Perhaps she was the former heiress to the estate? . . . Perhaps she was a fairy?

And suddenly there was the aunt coming out of the house. She was a large, opulent woman, as swarthy as a gipsy and dressed like those vagabonds in a flowered peasant-blouse and a long, pleated skirt that trailed on the ground behind her. Her head was swathed in a red kerchief. She took a few steps forward and stopped in the middle of the path. We were ready to spring up and run for our lives. But the
Zia
stood still in the middle of the path, looking neither to right nor left, she stayed there a long time without moving, then turned on her heel and went back into the house. She paused for a moment on the doorstep, lit a cigar, and then disappeared without turning round again. Then we ran till we were out of breath.

'Did you see?' said Elena when we stopped, breathless, in the long avenue of cypresses close to our parents' house. 'Did you see? She did a wee-wee like a man !'

In fact, I had seen quite clearly the water flowing and forming a puddle between Zia Regola's feet when she stood on the path, but I had not realized what was happening.

'You're fools, you boys,' Elena said, 'you never notice anything!'

And she explained to me: 'We girls have to stand still to do our two jobs. Horses and cows do big jobs while they're going along, but have to stop for wee-wee. Boys, on the other hand, stop to do big jobs but can wee-wee on the trot. Do you believe there are creatures oil this earth who can do both without having to stop? It's impossible ! Even birds, the darlings, alight to drop their turds, and they never do wee-wee. But the aunt manages to do wee-wee standing up, just like a man, instead of squatting. I would never be able to do it.'

'How do you know?' I said, 'Try it!'

So Elena straddled her legs, standing up in the middle of the avenue, but after a moment the little girl dropped the snails she was I inkling in her bunched-up skirt, smoothed her dress down briskly, glared at me with her eyes full of tears and said, 'I'm not a boy, I'm ashamed!'

And she turned and fled.

'Elena!' I shouted after her, 'don't run away! What's the matter? Don't be scared!'

Hut the little girl ran on without turning her head and dashed into the house.

How silly girls are, I said to myself.

The lamp was lit and crazy, extravagant music poured out from behind the shutters.

Old Maria was lamenting, and the funereal vociferations of Mediterranean women are like none other on this earth : pagan imprecations, threats directed at the saints, appeals to the Blessed Virgin and the Infant Jesus, who are called to witness, hoarse and hellish cries, endless sobbing, long, modulated wailing, passionate prayers belched and stammered; the whole mournful
lamento
is on a note of consternation and there is something theatrical in this public outburst of grief. Already a few neighbours, idlers, people out for a Sunday stroll and huntsmen were coming into the paddock. The anguish of the old servant redoubled. I sped like an arrow to the Solfatara farm to find Pasquale.