Cabaret (8 page)

“deserved” that I found particularly tricky. I didn’t feel I deserved anything. I showed my various attempts to Signora Dorotea, who snorted with derision,

“You’ll never win if you put that,” she said.

Then, finally losing patience, she instructed,

“Freda, write this,” then dictated, “I love
Mortician’s Monthly
and share it with all my friends.”

“But it isn’t true,” I complained. “I would never give this magazine to anybody.” However, history was set to prove me a liar.

“Never say never, Freda,” she said, and snatching the coupon from me, mailed it.

Then we waited.

On the closing date, as I was trimming Signor Settebello’s mustache, which had grown bushy since his death, I received a phone call.

“What did I tell you?” screamed Signora Dorotea, lifting me off my feet in a bear hug. “I just knew you would win!” From there things moved fast. Immediately a truckload of promotional products appeared, together with the contest organizer, a photographer, a stylist, and two assistants. I was required to pose in the cold room surrounded by giant bottles of solution proudly displaying the label of the sponsor, Dricol.

I appeared on the cover in the May issue. It wasn’t a bad photo, although I wish I hadn’t agreed to expose quite so much of my legs. Inside there was a wildly exaggerated biog-raphy of the lucky winner, along with equally exaggerated praise for the product. I know because we wouldn’t use it. It turned the flesh of the corpses an unattractive greenish color, as if they were seasick, and the smoke it gave off was poisonous.

Nevertheless I felt proud. I was pleased with the thought that Ernesto, wherever he was now, be it Bangkok or Buenos Aires, would see my image splashed on the front cover and would feel the unbearable regret of knowing he had lost me forever.

Signora Dorotea was over the moon, and convinced herself she had become clairvoyant. She immediately sent Signor Porzio out to get the magazine cover framed, and then she displayed it proudly in the reception area where all the bereaved marveled over it.

I bought several extra copies and gave one to Uncle Birillo and Aunt Ninfa. I had signed my name across it like an autograph. They were so proud. In those days they hadn’t got their own phone, so Aunt Ninfa went to the post office with her address book and a stack of coins, and spent all day on the public telephone informing everyone she knew. Soon a line of people wanting to use the phone stretched around the block, furious at Aunt Ninfa’s refusal to relinquish the receiver and vacate the kiosk. Uncle Birillo was equally pleased, and congratulated himself on having guided me into the business in the first place.

I gave another copy to Fiamma.

“Is that you?” she asked unnecessarily, and then laughed.

The last copy I gave to Pierino. He dragged it onto the floor of his cage and then shat on it.

O
n Thursday June 15, 1972, I was to present myself at Civitavecchia, Banchina 5, where I would, according to the brochure I had been sent, board the
Santa Domenica,
and in so doing, step back into a lost world of luxury and refinement. But I had a lot to do first. Fiamma, who was now pregnant, came round and cast a critical eye over the contents of my wardrobe.

“You can’t wear any of this stuff,” she said dismissively; “although I suppose if you have to perform any burials at sea, it would be all right.”

It was true that most of my clothes had been bought with funerals in mind. In my line of work I could hardly get away with the miniskirts in psychedelic colors and platform shoes then in which Fiamma scandalized, but also excited, the grandees at the Ministry.

Together we hit the streets around the Piazza di Spangna, where the sidewalks heaved with shoppers, foreign tourists, ice-cream vendors, gigolos, artists, and priests, and where the very trendiest boutiques in the whole of the city were to be found. Brushing aside my protests, Fiamma quickly filled a suitcase with the flimsiest, shortest, tightest, and most revealing garments she could uncover.

“For heaven’s sake, Freda,” she snapped. “You’re supposed to be twenty-three not forty-seven.You’ve been middle-aged your whole life.”

This came as something of a shock to me at the time, but thinking about it afterward, I supposed she was right.

So my cruise wear was one problem solved; at least it would be if I could summon the courage to put on the neon pink minidress with matching briefs and peaked cap, the gold lamé catsuit, or the super-flared pants and fringed bra top in lime green nylon. Signora Dorotea was to look after Pierino for me. She was the only one I thought I could trust with him.

There was one other thing I knew I had to do before I left.

For some time now Mamma’s teeth had been worrying me. At the end of the day, in that space between waking and sleeping, I thought of Mamma’s teeth. In the eye of my mind I could see her smile, and I wanted to restore it to her. Now was the time.

Therefore on Sunday June 11, 1972, I took two buses to the place where Mamma’s life was snatched, and mine shattered, seven years ago. I had not been there since. The road didn’t seem as long as it had then, or as steep. I started walking from the top, remembering all the details of that day that had seemed forgotten.

The poppies growing along the scrubby verge, the white butterflies, the dust rising, the sun hot on my skin, the wind in my face and my hair, plucking at Mamma’s hat, her laughter. An invisible band struck up “Io So Perchè,” and Mamma’s voice sang along. The wind began to whistle faster. It grew louder in my ears. Fiamma’s giant bubble of gum burst. The air became taut and tense as the hulk of the car hurtled out of control and roared toward the old man who was waiting for it to consume him.

I ran. My legs couldn’t keep pace with me. I thought I would leave them behind as I threw myself onward, faster, down the hill, my arms flailing. I stumbled. I ran on, and on, hardly aware that the screaming I could hear was coming from me. Finally I reached the bottom, and told my legs to stop, but the momentum carried me on for a dozen more paces. I bent over at the waist, letting my torso flop down and the blood fill my head. I was panting so hard I felt sick, and thought I would bring up my lungs and possibly even my heart. I stayed like that for a while, and then stood up, and walked around slowly.

I found the spot where the car had stopped, and where the old man had lain down and died, but there was nothing to mark the place. Just a gaping, screaming emptiness, and somehow this made it all seem even more pointless.Why had it happened? Why?

The nearby house seemed even more ramshackle now than it had then, although at the time I had paid it no attention. Some windows were boarded up, some broken; one of the shutters had bent its hinge and hung down. I pushed my way through the gate grown stiff without use. The garden, then so beautiful, had given way to ivy and thickets of weeds.

Thorns snagged at me as I waded through the growth to reach the palm tree. Startled lizards scattered in streams of shifting light. Propped up against the trunk was a wreath of tacky plastic pansies—Aunt Ninfa’s handiwork, no doubt.

Halfway up I found what I was looking for. Mamma’s teeth. Embedded. Six of them. Tracing the line of a crescent moon. I pulled from my pocket the pair of pliers I had brought with me, and removed the teeth one by one. When I had them all, I wrapped them carefully in a handkerchief and returned to the city.

Later that day I buried them in Mamma’s grave, and the following year there sprouted a fine crop of turnips. Why turnips, I don’t know, but I was glad.

O
n Thursday morning, Pierino, with Signora Dorotea, Signor Porzio, Uncle Birillo, Aunt Ninfa, Polibio Naso—Fiamma’s husband (Fiamma was in a meeting with the president and was unable to attend)—and an old woman with a motor-controlled hand whom I had never set eyes on before, formed a farewell party on the quayside.

The photographer from
Mortician’s Monthly
was there again, snapping away through an enormous telephoto lens, and I felt just like a celebrity.There were balloons and stream-ers, and the ship’s band had assembled on the deck, playing jaunty seafaring numbers to welcome me aboard. I didn’t realize until I stepped on the gangplank in my new white platform shoes that I had never been anywhere in my life before, and already I felt horribly homesick. How I wanted to turn round and run away. But it was too late. A handsome man in a smart uniform blew a whistle, troops of sailors began heav-ing at ropes, the great funnel emitted clouds of dirty black smoke, and a throbbing horn, seemingly located deep in the bowels of the ship, gave out a series of blasts that made me quiver.

Before I knew it the ropes were cast loose, the waters foamed and bubbled up between the side of the ship and the dockside, and we were away. The other cruisers cheered and whooped, and a few halfhearted fireworks were set off by an old sea dog whose burn-scarred face and hands showed he had done this sort of thing before, and not with an unqualified degree of success.

I looked down at the huddle of figures waving at me and picked out the woman with the mechanical hand, which waved urgently, never tiring, and I fancied that above the roar of the engines I could detect the squawking voice of Pierino wishing me bon voyage.

I watched my loved ones retreat into the haze, feeling a huge wave of nostalgia, praying fervently that nothing horrible would happen to me while I was away in the wider world.

As usual in my life, I was destined to be disappointed.

I
spent the first half hour of the voyage exploring the ship. Despite the extravagant claims of the competition organizers, my accommodation was to be a shared internal cabin without facilities, in the third-class portion of the vessel. So much for the lost world of luxury and refinement. A steward conducted me to my cabin, where I found the lower birth already occupied by a flabby girl of indeterminate age named Clodia, who, I was surprised to see, had a mechanical hand. I had never seen one in my life before, and yet now, within the space of ten minutes, I had seen two.

It later transpired that Clodia’s mother had been the one who joined my farewell party on the quayside. Her nearsight-edness made her unable to perceive anything but blobs at a distance, but her vanity wouldn’t allow her to acquire glasses.

Thus, and not altogether flatteringly, she had mistaken me for her daughter, and waved at me until her mechanism seized.

Clodia was quick to demonstrate with pride the many features of the hand (it certainly was a top-of-the-line model), but I was slightly worried when she drew up the coverlet to reveal under her bunk an enormous tank of spare petrol. The one disadvantage of the hand was its heavy consumption of gas. My only hope was that she didn’t smoke. But all too soon she was lighting up king-size cigarettes of full strength, which filled the tiny cabin with a choking smoke. We didn’t even have a porthole.

As Clodia puffed, I unpacked. There wasn’t a closet, just a couple of metal hangers on the back of the door. In the confined space, I had to stand in my suitcase in order to unpack it. I was horrified at what I found inside. I hadn’t really been paying attention when I had been shopping with Fiamma, but even if I had refused some of the items, she would have bought them anyway. She had always had the upper hand.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to wear half these things. They just weren’t me at all. I couldn’t appear in public dressed like this: everything was tiny, tight, and bright.The cruisers—and more worryingly—the crew, would surely think I was solicit-ing. As I was examining the flimsy scraps in the light of the bare bulb that lurched with the motion of the ship, I became aware of Clodia’s eyes bulging.

“Cor,” she said eloquently, “what beautiful things you have. Mother won’t let me have anything nice. All I’ve got is this…”

She unzipped her holdall and pulled out a number of sensible Crimplene housedresses in somber colors. Not brilliant by any means, but they would have to do.

“All right,” I said as though I were doing her an enormous favor, “I’ll swap with you.”

Clodia’s eyes bulged further.

“For real?” she exclaimed.

“For real,” I confirmed.

Quickly we climbed into each other’s clothes. She was approximately twice my size, but I tied the belt of the dress tight, and didn’t think it looked too bad. At least it was decent, which was more than could be said for the hot pants Clodia had struggled into. There was a degree of stretch, but not enough (these were the days before Lycra, after all), and the fabric, strained into submission, had become obscenely transparent. Below, above, and in fact, all around, rolls of white flesh burst out like Hydra’s heads, and writhed for su-premacy over their neighbors.

“Fantastic,” she said.

I then set off to take a look at the facilities, such as they were, with Clodia waddling behind. The bathroom on our deck was intended for use by all eighteen internal cabins, and a long and desperate line was wriggling through the cramped passage, and this was even before the attack of dysentery broke out.

The third-class dining room was evidently not that featured in the brochure. It was painted a nauseous green and had flourescent strips instead of chandeliers. The gilt wood chairs with pink velvet upholstery were only available to the first-class bottoms; here there were wooden benches like those in school. The air was stale with unpleasant odors: grease, garbage, and greens. Through the back, in the galley kitchen, the unappealing cook was preparing dinner. He rested his eyes momentarily on Clodia in the white hot-pants and then continued slicing desultorily at the slab of tripe under his knife.

Standards rose as we climbed to the higher decks. The second-class passageways were freshly painted and brightly lit. The dining room had windows that looked out onto the glittering sea, and there was waiter service instead of a con-veyor belt. However it was on the upper deck where the differences were most marked.There were deep red carpets and velvet drapes, mirrors, chandeliers, and lots of highly polished brass. We pressed our noses to the glass of the captain’s restaurant and ogled the crystal goblets, damask table linen, and displays of fresh flowers and fruit.