Happiness, as Such Read online

  Your father’s operation was at eight in the morning. We were all there, in the waiting room. Me, Matilde, Angelica, Viola, Elio, and Oreste. The twins were staying at a friend’s house. The surgery didn’t take long. I later found out that they’d cut him open and then closed him right back up because there was nothing more to be done. Matilde and I were in the room with him when he woke, and Angelica and Viola were in the waiting room. He didn’t say anything. He died at two in the morning.

  A lot of people came to the funeral. Biagioni spoke first and then Maschera. Lately your father couldn’t stand either of them. He said they didn’t get his new work. He said they were jealous of him and he called them hawks. He said he could always tell a hawk.

  Clearly you don’t read my letters or maybe you read them and forget about them immediately. You can’t build cages for my rabbits when you get back because I already hired a carpenter to do it. There are four rabbits. Four. But I don’t know if I’ll stay out here in the country much longer. Maybe I hate it here.

  Filippo came to your father’s funeral.

  Your mother

  Ti abbraccio

  The letter written and sealed, Adriana put on a camel-hair coat and wrapped a black wool scarf around her head. It was five in the afternoon. She went down to the kitchen. Looked in the refrigerator. She stared hatefully at the ox tongue Matilde was marinating in a salad bowl. She thought that the tongue was probably a bad cut, and it would be around for months. Neither Matilde nor the twins were home. Cloti was in bed with the flu. Adriana checked in on her. Cloti was in her bathrobe under the covers, her head wrapped in a towel. The twins’ transistor radio was on the nightstand. Adriana told her to check her temperature. She waited. Bobby Solo was singing on the radio. Cloti said she really liked Bobby Solo. It was the first time that Adriana heard her express an opinion or positive thought. Usually the things Cloti expressed were accompanied by a deep sigh that had to do with her personal troubles, the lumpy mattress, the drafty window. Adriana said she was sorry not to be able to move the television into her room because it was too heavy. Cloti said that there was nothing good on television in the afternoon. Evening is better. She didn’t have a television in her room at her other job either, and there, they had provided her with all the comforts. She listed the comforts provided to her at her other job. A lovely big room. Nice white and gold furniture and a rug that was so valuable she worried about having it in her room. A soft mattress. Heating and air conditioning that regulated the temperature throughout the house. The lawyer was always traveling so there was nothing to do there except look after the cat. Adriana pulled the thermometer from Cloti’s armpit. Her temperature was normal. Cloti said she was definitely getting a fever because she had chills, hot and cold, and a strange ache in her head. Adriana asked if she wanted some tea. Cloti refused the tea. There was one thing she didn’t like about working for the lawyer, she said, and that was when he came home in the evening he wanted her sit with him in the parlor and make conversation. She never knew what to say. Not that the lawyer had propositioned her. He was respectful and understood what she was like from the very start. He just wanted to make conversation. That’s why she left. Because she didn’t feel like talking. And there had been gossip. The lawyer’s sister came to visit and made a comment about a particular osso buco. Another time the sister told Cloti to bathe because she smelled. Cloti washed herself every morning, armpits and feet, so there was no way she smelled. She only took a bath once a month because it made her feel faint afterward. But those were excuses. To be honest there was gossip. But now she understood that it’d been a mistake to leave. A giant mistake.

  Adriana went to get the car out of the garage. She opened the gate. She hated the two dwarf spruce trees that Matilde had planted by the gate. Fake alpine in the middle of that bare garden. She hoped they would die. The road ran in tight curves through the fields. The car lurched. It had been a sunny day and there was hardly any snow on the ground. The sun was still hitting the village and the sides of the hill, but dusk with its cold, gray, thin fog was rising over the plain. The twins weren’t home yet. She hated Matilde who had gone to buy olives and capers for the boiled ox tongue. There were no houses at all for a long stretch, then there was a low house with a thread of smoke coming out of a vent in the window. Two photographers lived there. The man was outside on the stairs washing dishes in a blue plastic bucket. The woman was wearing a red dress and stockings that had runs in them. She was hanging laundry on the line. For some reason seeing the couple gave her a sharp feeling of desperation, as if they were the only thing the universe had to offer. There was another long muddy stretch, desiccated hedges, fallow fields. Finally she got to the main road, with its constant stream of cars. At the side of the road men in overalls gathered around a dumpster.

  She thought of Filippo’s wife, who’d come to the funeral. She was pregnant. She’d worn a yellow jacket with big tortoise shell buttons running over her belly. Her face was angular and young, her hair was smoothly pulled back into a tiny bun. She stayed next to Filippo. Ruddy, serious, hard, purse in her hands. Filippo was the same. He took off his glasses and put them back on. He ran his long fingers through his coarse gray curls. He looked around, on his face an expression of feigned resolution and feigned authority. In order to get to the town center, you had to follow a steep ridge road lit with neon streetlamps. At the moment, the lamp poles were wrapped in paper garlands in preparation for a parade. She mailed the letter in town. She bought eggs from a woman with a grill and basket who was sitting in front of the church. They talked about the wind that had come up suddenly, the black clouds blowing in over the roofs, the rustling paper garlands. She went into a cafe to call Angelica, putting a finger in one ear to block out the noise. She told Angelica to come to lunch on Sunday. They were going to have boiled ox tongue. There was static on the line and Angelica couldn’t hear. They said their goodbyes quickly. She got back in the car. The day Filippo had come to tell her he was getting married he’d brought Angelica. He wanted Angelica there in case she fell apart and cried. Foolish of him. Adriana rarely fell apart and cried. She kept everything inside. She was solid like an oak. In any event, she’d been expecting it for some time. But that was when the house on Via dei Villini became odious. After Filippo left, she lay down in the bedroom with the arched ceiling and cried while Angelica held her hand.

  8

  “She seems like a complete idiot,” said Ada.

  “Not a complete idiot,” said Osvaldo.

  “Completely,” said Ada.

  “She’s not stupid, she’s ignorant,” said Osvaldo.

  “I don’t see the difference,” said Ada.

  “Either way, she can fry eggs,” said Osvaldo. “I know Signora Peroni’s mother. She has simple tastes.”

  “This is not about just frying eggs,” said Ada. “I know Signora Peroni’s mother better than you do and she’s not easily satisfied. She keeps an orderly house. The floors waxed and polished. A crying baby is going to get on her nerves.”

  “I didn’t know how else to help her and she’s breaking my heart with that baby,” said Osvaldo.

  “So you decided to dump her on the Peroni’s,” said Ada.

  “The Peroni’s love babies.”

  “They love babies who are passing by in strollers at Villa Borghese, not babies living in their house and screaming all night long.”

  Osvaldo had eaten at Ada’s house and now they were sitting in the living room. He was gluing stamps into an album for Elisabetta. Ada was knitting. Elisabetta was out on the veranda with a friend playing cards. The girls were sitting on the ground in grave silence.

  “There’s no point gluing those stamps,” said Ada. “It’s better for her to do it herself and she enjoys it.”

  Osvaldo secured the album shut with an elastic band and went over to the window to look out. The glassed-in veranda with its giant potted plants ran the length of the livi
ng room. He knocked on the glass but Elisabetta was absorbed in her game and didn’t even look up.

  “The azalea came out marvelous,” he said.

  “You know I have a green thumb. That’s hardly news. It looked dead when they brought it to me. It’s from Michele’s father’s house. The butler brought it. They were going to throw it out but it occurred to him to bring it here instead.”

  “You see, he has thoughts.”

  “Sometimes. Not often. But he’s not unkind. I taught him how to serve dinner properly.”

  Osvaldo was on the verge of saying, see, you have a green thumb for butlers, but it struck him that it was some kind of double entendre so he stopped himself, then blushed anyway.

  “That girl of yours, though, will never learn anything,” said Ada.

  “She doesn’t need to serve dinner at the Peroni’s. They all just sit in the kitchen together.”

  “What about the apartment on Via dei Prefetti? What happened to that?”

  “Nothing. She goes back on Sundays. She leaves the baby at the Peroni’s and goes to Via dei Prefetti. She relaxes. Has a girlfriend over.”

  “Is she sleeping with anyone?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. She says she’s tired of sex. All she thinks about is the baby. She’s stopped nursing. She gives him bottles.”

  “In other words, Signora Peroni gives him bottles.”

  “I think so.”

  “That baby looks a lot like Michele. I’m sure he’s his,” said Ada.

  “You think?”

  “Yes. Identical.”

  “The baby has black hair. Michele is a redhead.”

  “Hair doesn’t count. It’s the facial expressions. His mouth. I think Michele should come back and give that child his name. That’s what any decent person would do. Of course, he isn’t. He wouldn’t have to marry her. You can’t marry a girl like that. But give the baby a name, yes. What are you thinking of doing with the studio?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me. For now, a friend of Michele’s from London is staying there, a guy named Ray. But I think he’s only staying for a few days.”

  “It was a huge relief when Michele left. Now you’ve gone and installed another one in there.”

  “He didn’t have anywhere to go. He was staying with Angelica but her husband wanted him out of the house. They fought about politics. Angelica’s husband has ironclad ideas and doesn’t like them to be questioned.”

  “If they were really ironclad he wouldn’t mind discussing them. If he gets that angry, it means his ideas are more like cheese than iron. I know Angelica’s husband. He’s a modest person. A functionary. An apparatchik who comes off like an accountant.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “I’ll bet their marriage doesn’t last long. Though aren’t all marriages short-lived these days? We had a short marriage for that matter.”

  “It survived exactly four years,” said Osvaldo.

  “Does that seem long to you? Four years?”

  “No, I’m just saying how long it lasted. Exactly four.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t think much of these boys you’ve got hanging around now. They are wild and dangerous. I almost prefer the accountants. As far as the studio itself goes, I don’t care either way. I just don’t want it to go up in smoke.”

  “Well. Especially since I’d go up in smoke along with it because I live right upstairs. And the seamstress on the top floor. But this Ray guy doesn’t seem like the sort of person who blows things up. I don’t think he even knows what gunpowder is.”

  “Please don’t introduce me to Ray. Don’t bring him here. You always brought Michele over. I didn’t like him. He wasn’t pleasant. He’d just sit there and stare at me with those little green eyes. He thought I was stupid. But I just didn’t think he was very nice. I paid for him to leave. I helped him, but it wasn’t out of sympathy.”

  “It was niceness,” said Osvaldo.

  “Yes, that, and because I was thrilled by the idea that I’d never have to see him again. Although I think it’s a very big deal that he didn’t come back when his father died. A very big deal.”

  “He was worried about getting arrested,” said Osvaldo. “They arrested two or three other people from his group.”

  “All the same, it’s a very big deal. And you agree. You were shocked. A person lets himself get arrested in order to put his father’s remains in the ground.”

  “His remains?” said Osvaldo.

  “Yes. Remains. What did I say wrong?”

  “Nothing. It just seems like a strange choice of words for you.”

  “It’s a perfectly normal choice of words. In any case, I was trying to say that I didn’t think Michele was a pleasant person. He could be nice. He played Monopoly with Elisabetta. He helped me paint furniture. But deep down he thought I was a fool — I knew he thought it and it bothered me.”

  “Why are you talking about Michele in the past tense,” said Osvaldo.

  “Because I’m convinced he’ll never come back,” said Ada. “We will never see him again. He’ll end up in America. Or who knows where. No one knows. The world is full of these young people who wander aimlessly from one place to another. How will they ever grow up? It’s as if they’re never supposed to grow up. As if they’re supposed to stay the way they are forever — no house, no family, no job to go to, nothing. Some rags to wear. They were never young, never children, and so they are incapable of growing up. That girl with her baby for example. How is she going to mature? She’s already old. She’s a withered old seedling. She was born withered. Not physically, but morally. I could never understand why a person like you spends so much time in the company of all those withered seedlings. Maybe I’m wrong but I see better for you.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Osvaldo. “You’re too optimistic about me.”

  “I’m temperamentally optimistic. But I’m not optimistic about these young people. I can’t stand them. I think they create chaos. They seem so nice but deep down they’re hatching a plan to blow us all sky high.”

  “That wouldn’t be such a bad thing in the end,” said Osvaldo. He’d put on his raincoat and was smoothing down his thin blond hair.

  “You’d be happy about Elisabetta getting blown sky high?”

  “Not Elisabetta,” said Osvaldo.

  “You need to take that raincoat to the dry cleaners,” said Ada.

  “Sometimes you talk to me as if we were still married,” said Osvaldo. “Like just now, that’s the way a wife talks.”

  “Do you hate it?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You left me. I didn’t leave you. But never mind. Why drag up resentment,” said Ada. “Which isn’t to say you weren’t right. You made a smart decision. You do well alone. And I’m terrific by myself. We weren’t made to live together. We’re too different.”

  “Too different,” said Osvaldo.

  “Don’t repeat my words as if you were the cat in Pinocchio. It irritates me,” said Ada. “Now I have to go to Elisabetta’s school. I promised I’d dress the puppets for the Christmas Pageant. I’m taking the leftover fabric I have in the trunk.”

  “You’re always making work for yourself,” said Osvaldo. “You could stay home and relax all afternoon if you wanted. The weather’s bad. Not cold, but windy.”

  “If I stay here all afternoon, I’ll start thinking about sad things,” said Ada.

  “Bye,” said Osvaldo.

  “Bye,” said Ada. “You want to know something?”

  “What?”

  “Deep down Michele thought you were a fool too. It wasn’t just me. He sucked your blood but privately thought you were an idiot.”

  “Michele never sucked my blood,” said Osvaldo.

  He left. He hadn’t brought his car and he walked back over the bridge. He stopped for
a moment to look at the dense yellow water, the cars rushing, the tall plane trees. There was a furious gust of hot wind. The sky was heavy with swollen black clouds. Osvaldo thought about the machine gun Angelica had told him about after she’d thrown it into the river not far from this bridge. He’d never touched a weapon in his life. He’d never even held a fishing gun. Neither had Michele for that matter, at least not that he knew about. Michele had been exempted from the draft because of his weak lungs. And because his father had paid a bribe. Osvaldo had never done military service either because he was the only child of a widow. He’d only been a boy during the Resistance. He’d been evacuated with his mother to a town near Varese.