The House in Via Manno (7 page)

Actually, though, things began to look up for my great-aunt and great-uncle and my cousins in Milan
.
They moved from the attic to Cinisello Balsamo, and my father, who always went to visit them during his music tours, said that they lived in a big, tall building full of immigrants — a rabbit warren of a building with lots of other immigrants, but there was a bathroom and a kitchen and a lift. There came a time when you couldn’t really talk about immigrants any more, because they now considered themselves Milanese and no one called them
terún
any longer, because now the fights were between the reds and the blacks of Piazza San Babila, where his cousins bashed and were bashed, while Papà went to the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatorium with his bags full of music, and took no interest in politics. Papà tells me that arguments broke out between him and his cousins, about politics and about Sardinia, because they asked stupid questions, like, ‘So is that jumper made from Sardinian
orbace
?’ — talking about a beautiful coarse jumper Nonna had knitted for him — or, ‘So what form of transport do you use to get around down there?’ or, ‘Do you have a bidet? Do you keep chickens on the balcony?’

First Papà would laugh, then he’d get pissed off and tell them to get fucked, polite and calm pianist though he was. The cousins couldn’t forgive him for his lack of interest in politics, or for the fact that he didn’t sufficiently hate the bourgeoisie, that he’d never beaten up a fascist and had never been beaten up. Even as kids they’d gone to Capanna’s student meetings, they’d marched in protest rallies in Milan in May 1969, and they’d occupied the university in 1971.

But they all loved one another and they always made up. Their friendship began during that famous November of 1963, in the attic, when they’d slipped out the window and wandered over the roofs, keeping it a secret from their parents — the Milan uncle out selling rags, the Cagliari uncle coming along to help him, the Milan aunt working as a maid, and the Cagliari aunt, totally mad, off studying the architecture of
case di ringhiera
, with that unforgettable woollen cap held in place by her plaited Sardinian-style buns.

Nonna told me that her sister used to phone from Milan to tell her that she was worried about Papà — a boy from another world, all music. He had no girlfriends, whereas her own sons, who were younger, were already dating. The fact is, Papà wasn’t fashionable; he had short hair when everyone else, apart from the fascists, had long hair; poor thing, he certainly wasn’t a fascist — he just didn’t like his hair going in his eyes when he played. She felt sorry for
him, with no girlfriend, and all alone with his music.

Then Nonna, when she hung up, would start crying, afraid she’d passed on to her son her madness that made love flee. He’d always been alone as a boy — no one had ever invited him anywhere. He’d been an unsociable boy, at times clumsily affectionate, whose company no one ever sought out. In high school, things had gone better, but not much. She tried to tell Papà that there were other things to life besides music, and so did Nonno, though he laughed about it. They could never forget the night of the twenty-first of July 1969 when, as Armstrong landed on the moon, their son wouldn’t stop practising Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 35, Book 1, for the end-of-term concert.

12

When Nonna realised she’d grown old, she told me she was afraid of dying. Not of death itself, which must, she thought, be like going to sleep or going on a trip, but because she knew that God would feel hurt because He’d given her many beautiful things in this world and she hadn’t been able to be happy, and for this He would not forgive her. Deep down she hoped she really was mad, because if she was sane, she’d
definitely be going to Hell.

She’d argue with God before going to Hell though. She’d point out to Him that if He created a person a certain way He couldn’t then demand that she act like she was someone else. She had put all her energy into convincing herself that this was the best life possible, and not that other one for which she felt a yearning and desire that took her breath away. But there were certain things she would genuinely ask God’s forgiveness for: the cashmere dress that Nonno had bought her in Milan that she’d ripped on the escalator at the station; the cup of coffee, like a dog’s bowl, at the foot of the bed during her first year of marriage; her inability to enjoy so many days at the beach, when she’d been thinking that the Veteran might arrive at Poetto, walking nimbly on his crutch.

And then there was that winter’s day, when Nonno had come home with a bundle of mountain gear he’d borrowed from who knows who, and had proposed a trip up to Supramonte, organised by his office for the staff of the saltworks, and she, even though she’d never been to the mountains, had felt only irrepressible annoyance and had just wanted to tear that ridiculous clothing from his hands. But he stubbornly kept telling her that true Sardinians needed to get to know Sardinia.

They’d lent Nonno an ugly pair of sports shoes and a heavy jumper, also very ugly, while the nicest things were for her and the boy. In the end, Nonna unenthusiastically said, ‘Alright then’, and started preparing bread rolls, while Nonno, who usually would have helped her, for some reason made sad
plin plin
sounds on donna Doloretta and donna Fannì’s piano. They went to bed early because they had to meet the group at five in the morning and go to Orgosolo, up to Punta sa Pruna, across the Foresta Montes, and then continue as far as the Dovilino megalithic circle and across the mountains that join Gennargentu to Supramonte, up as far as Mamoiada.

Everything was covered in snow. Papà was beside himself with excitement, but Nonno’s teeth were chattering, and others in the group recommended the warmth of a fireplace, and potato ravioli, pork on a spit, and
fil’e ferru
in a local restaurant. But, no, he was stubborn. They were people of the sea and the plains, and they had to get to know those Sardinian mountains.

The Foresta Montes, one of the few old-growth forests in Sardinia — its ancient holm oaks have never been cut — was immersed in silence and in a soft white snow that came up to their knees. So Nonno’s shoes and trousers were immediately soaked, but he went on in silence, without stopping. And he marched along at the same speed as everyone else. Nonna had walked ahead for a good stretch, almost as though she had neither husband nor son, but when Lake Oladi appeared down in the valley, frozen like something out of a fantasy world in that immense solitude, she stopped to wait for them.

‘Look! Look how beautiful that is!’

Later, when they went through the durmast woods, where slender trunks all crossed over one another and were covered in snowflake-shaped moss, she put one of those fantastic leaves in her pocket, and picked a bunch of thyme that she’d use in broth once they got back to Cagliari. And she kept watching her footsteps, comparing her nice, fur-lined shoes with Nonno’s ugly shoes, because she wasn’t annoyed with him, not at all — in fact, she felt very sorry that she didn’t love him. She felt very sorry, and it pained her, and she wondered why, when it came to love, which is the most important thing, God had organised things in such an absurd way: you do all the kindest things imaginable, and yet there’s no way of making it come, and maybe you act like a bitch, like she was right now — she hadn’t even lent him a scarf. And still he followed her in the snow, half frozen, even missing the chance, hearty eater that he was, to eat potato ravioli from that part of the world and pork on a spit.

During the return journey she felt so sorry for him that, in the dark of the bus, she rested her head on his shoulder, and a sigh of resignation escaped her. And Nonno was so cold it was frightening; he looked like a frozen corpse.

At home, she prepared a hot bath and dinner, and she was frightened by how much Nonno drank. It must have been the same amount as usual, but it was as though she’d never seen it before.

That night, though, it was beautiful — more beautiful than all the other times. Having put Papà to sleep, Nonna sat in her old nightgown and petticoat, ready to go to bed, lost in thought and eating an apple. Nonno locked the door of the kitchen, to make sure the boy couldn’t come in, and started their bordello game, ordering her to take off her nightgown and petticoat and lie naked on the table, as if she were his favourite meal. He turned on the heater so she wouldn’t catch cold, and started eating again, helping himself to all that goodness. He touched and squeezed her all over and, each time before tasting something, even the delicious Sardinian country sausage, he would put it in Nonna’s pussy — in bordellos, that was the word you used. She started to get really excited, and touched herself, and at that point she no longer cared about loving him or not loving him. She just wanted to continue the game.

‘I’m your whore,’ she moaned.

Then Nonno poured wine over her whole body, and licked her and sucked her, especially her big butter tits, which were his passion.

But he wanted to punish her, maybe for the way she’d behaved on the trip, or who knows why — with Nonno, you could never tell — so he took his belt from his trousers and forced her to walk around the kitchen like a bitch, hitting her, but being careful not to hurt her too much and not to leave any marks on her beautiful arse. From under the table, Nonna stroked him and gave him head, which by then she’d learnt to do expertly; but every so often she stopped to ask him if she was a good whore, and how much she’d earned so far, and she didn’t ever want to stop playing this bordello game.

They played for a long time, and then Nonno sat down to smoke his pipe, so she curled up on the far side of the bed, and, as usual, she fell asleep.

13

At night with the Veteran, on the other hand, she was so excited about having finally, surely, discovered the most important thing, that she lay awake looking at how handsome he was, making the most of a faint light in the darkness, and when he gave a frightened start, as though he heard shooting, or bombs falling on the ship and breaking it in two, she gently brushed his skin with her finger. In his sleep, the Veteran responded by pulling her towards him; even asleep he was never far from her. Then Nonna took heart, and made herself a little nook in the curve of the Veteran’s body and put his arm around her shoulders and his hand on her head, and the feeling that this new position gave her was such that she just couldn’t resign herself to the idea — which was senseless, in her opinion — of falling asleep when you’re happy. So she had to ask herself if people in love lived this way, whether it was even possible, or if they, too, had to decide at some point to eat and sleep.

The black notebook with the red border was now with the Veteran, who read through it and was a very demanding teacher, because for every spelling mistake, repetition of a word, or other error, he gave her a smack on the bum and ruffled her hair and wanted her to rewrite the whole thing. ‘It’s no good,
non mi va bééne
,’ he’d repeat, with that closed
e
sound they use in Genoa and Milan, and Nonna wasn’t in the least offended; she enjoyed it enormously.

And she was mad about his music. He would sing classical pieces for her, doing all the different instruments, and then some time later he’d do them again and she’d get the title and the composer right, or he’d sing opera with the men’s and women’s voices. Sometimes he’d recite poems, like those by someone he’d gone to school with — Giorgio Caproni — which Nonna liked a great deal because they made her feel like she was in Genoa, where she’d never been, even though the places in the poem resembled Cagliari. Everything was
vertical
, so that when you came into port — this had happened to her once on the boat returning from Sant’Efisio — the houses seemed to be built one on top of the other. Just like the Genoa described by the Veteran and by that poet friend of his, or by that other poor fellow, that Dino Campana who died in a mental asylum —
dark
and
labyrinthine
and
mysterious
and
damp
, then opening onto sudden and unexpected views of the great
Mediterranean
light
, blinding, so that even if you were in a hurry, you couldn’t help but look out over a wall, or over an iron railing, and enjoy the
rich
sky and sea and sun. And if you looked down, you saw the rooftops, the terraces with geraniums and washing hanging out, and the agaves on the rocky slopes, and the lives of all the people, who seem really small and fleeting, but also joyful.

Of all Nonna’s services, the Veteran’s favourite was the Geisha, the most difficult one. With Nonno, she could get away with just talking about what was for dinner, whereas the Veteran wanted more sophisticated services, like the description of Poetto beach, and Cagliari, and her village, and stories about her daily life and about her past and about the emotions she had felt down the well. He asked her a whole lot of
questions, and he wanted detailed answers.

So, my Nonna came out of her shell, and started enjoying it. She would go on and on about the pure white dunes at Poetto, and their blue-and-white striped beach hut, and she described how, if you went there after the winds in winter to check if it was still standing, mountains of white sand blocked the entrance and, looking from the water’s edge, it really seemed like a snow-covered landscape, especially if it was intensely cold and you had on gloves and a woollen hat and an overcoat, and the windows of all the huts were closed. Except that these huts had blue, orange, and red stripes, and you couldn’t really forget that the sea was there, even if it was behind you.

In the summer, they would go there on holiday — even the neighbours and their children would come along — and they took everything they needed in a little cart. She wore a special beach dress that buttoned up at the front, with big embroidered pockets; whereas the men, when they were there on a Sunday or on a holiday, wore pyjamas or terry towelling bathrobes, and they all bought themselves sunglasses — even Nonno, who’d always said that sunglasses were
ta gan’e cagai
, a load of shit.