Listen to My Voice (7 page)

And so a man and a woman – among billions of their kind – meet each other at a certain point in their lives, and after a period of time that can vary from a few minutes to decades, reproduce themselves in another living individual.

According to the most advanced studies, the origin of this coupling probably can be found, once again, in the sense of smell, as is the case with migratory birds.

In fact, the human nose is the instrument through which we understand that the gametes of the person before us must be united with our own. There are no whys or wherefores, only the law of life, which seems to require that biological considerations trump all others.

It’s the nose, therefore, that suggests copulation, because this extraordinary organ (a valuable legacy from our distant ancestors) never errs, and the only mood it knows is the imperative: Do this, do that, make sure your line will continue into the future, shining like a star.

So do we follow our nose, or fate?

Is the improvement of the species the main factor, or
is
it the fragility of human beings, with their inexhaustible and inexplicable need for love?

The only image I have of my father in his youth – of the father I was able to track down after you died – is in a group photograph. He’s standing behind my mother. They’re holding cans of beer, as if they’re making a toast – the occasion is a meeting or a party, it’s hard to tell – and she’s looking up at him with the devotion of a dog watching its master. The smoke from her cigarette mingles with the other smoke hanging in a pall over the room. On the back of the photo, a date in pencil: March 1970.

This photograph was one of many family pictures mingled together in a large cardboard suitcase, which I found in the attic, buried under a couple of carpets. I also found many letters, some of them bound together with ribbons of various colours, others tossed confusedly into plastic bags along with postcards from Salsomaggiore, from Cortina d’Ampezzo, from the earth pyramids in the South Tyrol, and from Porretta Terme, as well as train tickets, museum tickets, wedding invitations, birth announcements, messages of condolence, and, at the bottom of the suitcase, four or five notebooks, which, judging from their covers, dated from different periods.

In addition, for reasons only you could fathom, you
had
saved two boxes of pins (one held safety pins and the other dress-making pins with coloured heads), a broken pair of scissors, an old caramel box containing buttons of every shape and size, an eraser, a tube of dried-up glue, a box of safety matches, a brochure from the Society of Dilettante Latinists, a train schedule from just after the war, a few recipes clipped out of newspapers, and a Bible whose cover had been removed by time, or mice.

Judging from the dust, that suitcase hadn’t been opened for years; surely a good while had passed since your last venture into the attic, and I’d never even considered it. The desire to turn back and explore the past comes only when life changes for some unforeseen or terrible reason, such as an illness or a sudden void. Then, for example, a girl fetches a ladder and ratchets up her courage, because she needs to climb up and get all dusty and open the suitcase. And inside she finds repressed, unspoken words, deeds never done, and people never met; a tiny impact is all that’s needed to liberate the ghosts.

The first ghost I came across wasn’t my father’s (although back then I wouldn’t have been able to recognise him) but my mother’s. I spotted it by surprise – it was hidden under a diary, a packet of letters, and a few scattered photographs.

I gathered up everything very carefully and went down to the living room. I didn’t want to stay up in the
attic
, in
their
territory; I felt too vulnerable. By way of pretending that I wasn’t alone, I switched on the television set and sat down in the armchair.

The pages of the diary were of Florentine paper with little lilies printed on it. On the first page, someone had drawn cubical letters in red ink with a felt-tipped pen: REBELLION. The word was underlined three times and followed by an indeterminate number of exclamation points.

14 September, 1969

Holy Cross Day

What’s so uplifting about a cross? Bah! The only uplifting thing I can think of is that today’s my first day of freedom! Farewell to the noxious exhalations of Trieste; farewell to the prison of my family
.

Making her accept my choice wasn’t easy. I could take the same courses in Trieste, so why incur the expense of moving to another city?

The Mummy gave in before I thought she would. The magic word was ‘autonomy’: ‘I want to test my autonomy.’ She lit up. ‘If that’s the reason,’ she said, ‘I’m in agreement.’ I could have told her that I was going no matter what she said. I’ve finally stopped being a minor, and I can do whatever the hell I want. I’ve already lost two years because of her closed mind
.

When I came here in July, an announcement on the
bulletin
board at the university led me to this flat right away. It’s a real hole. I’m sharing it with Tiziana, who comes from Comelico and is studying medicine
.

In any case, I don’t stay home very much. I feel like a dog who, after trying for many years, has finally managed to jump the fence; I’m always roaming around, sniffing the air, my eyes wide open in wonder, and I’m determined to try everything, to understand everything
.

21 September

Back from buying groceries – they have to last for a whole week!

27 September

Half of what I bought has disappeared from the fridge. Asked T., who denies everything. Avoided an argument
.

2 October

Telephone call from the M. I’m still asleep when the phone rings. She says the bora’s blowing ferociously – it’s cracked the trunk of a tree in the garden. ‘Why would I care about that?’ I say and hang up. I know very well that this is just one of her ways of controlling me
.

13 October

First class. The lecture theatre’s full, I get here late, and I have to stand the whole time. The professor’s an
old
guy with a reputation as a fascist. While he’s speaking, there’s a lot of tension in the air. Balls of wadded-up paper fly from one part of the hall to another. When, at the end, he explains the lecture schedule, a group of students rise to their feet and start hissing and whistling, joined by a large number of the others. The professor leaves in a huff, accompanied by a chorus of mocking laughter
.

15 October

T. never buys groceries. She waits for me to do it so she can live like a parasite. She’s selfish and stingy, and one of these days I’m going to tell her so
.

30 October

The M. called, at dawn as usual – she must be convinced that being a student is like being a farmer. ‘There’s a long weekend coming up,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come home?’ I was feeling magnanimous, so I said, ‘Because I have to study.’ Then I turned on to the other side of the bed and went back to sleep
.

4 November

Today, when I woke up, I thought about the times we’re living in. It’s incredible. Everything’s changing so insanely fast there’s no more room for hypocrisy, conformism, or injustice. It’s as if we’ve all suddenly opened our eyes
and
understood that we can’t go on in the old way. No more duplicity! No more slavery! The boss can’t exploit the worker any more! The man can’t exploit the woman! Religion can no longer oppress humankind
.

Freedom is the operative word for the times to come. Freedom for workers, freedom for women, freedom for children – they don’t have to be caged up in the obtuse rigidity of the educational system any more. We mustn’t clip their wings, because a different world can arise only from spontaneity and freedom, and we, we ourselves, are going to be the protagonists of this revolutionary change!

18 November

I’ve begun my philosophy of language course. The teacher’s an assistant professor. He’s got only a few grey hairs, and they make him even more fascinating. He’s the only professor who has a beard. Everyone listens to his lectures with great attention. When we left the lecture theatre, I said to Carla, my new study partner, ‘Not a bad-looking guy, Professor Ancona.’ C.’s smile was slightly malicious: ‘You think you’re the only one who’s noticed that?’

2 December

C. managed to drag me to a women’s consciousness-raising group. At first, I felt a little embarrassed, because they were all talking about their own bodies
.

According to them, they had finally learned to know their bodies only because of the disintegration of the atavistic sense of guilt they had all shared, and this new knowledge allowed them to recognise the incredible violence that had been done to their imaginations with the childhood injunction that girls must play only with dolls and miniature cooking sets. ‘The prelude to slavery!’ one of the women shouted, and everyone applauded
.

My turn was coming up, and I didn’t know what to say. Then a memory came to me like a flash, an episode with my father: I must have been six or seven, and after dinner, walking with great care, I brought him his coffee in the living room. ‘What a good little housewife!’ he exclaimed, smiling at me
.

Now, I said, it was clear that I’d been carrying that mark, that burden, that destination stamp inside me ever since. What if I’d wanted to become a neurosurgeon or an astronaut? My words caught everyone’s attention and earned general agreement. To hell with the good little housewives and all other clippers of wings. When I left the meeting, I felt as though I’d grown lighter
.

27 December

In order to keep the skirmishes from escalating into full-scale warfare, I had to come home for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, there was the usual gathering of
widowed
friends, depressed women, and distant relatives with nowhere else to go, and that way at least we could all be together and feel so very very good
.

The M., as usual, played the victim, announcing more than once that she’d been cooking for two entire days and hoping to receive applause and shouts of joy as her reward. And so it came to pass, as though according to a script. The comedy was played all the way through, right to the end, and no one missed a line. ‘It’s been a perfectly lovely evening, my dear, thanks so much,’ kiss kiss, ‘It was nothing, nothing at all, the bare minimum,’ and so on and so forth, in a cloying minuet
.

‘Cloying’ was also the word for the tree, with all its silvery tinsel, but nothing cloyed like the crèche: the ultimate representation of universal brainwashing, the Holy Family, which has been neutering normal families for two thousand years. There’s nothing sacred about those other families, but they pretend all the same, drain their poisoned chalices to the dregs, and go forth with a smile
.

That night in my bed, however, I thought about the Madonna, about how she’s basically the symbol of the woman of bygone days, the most exploited of all, because she had a child without even getting to enjoy the sexual act; when she looked the Holy Spirit in the eye, that was enough, it was all over for her, and for nearly two
thousand
years she’s been standing around with that blank expression on her face
.

And so, in the morning, before I left, I did her a favour. I snatched the little statue from her place at St Joseph’s side, left a note in the crèche that said ‘get over it,’ and took the Madonna out for some fresh air
.

Before getting on the bus, I put the statue on the low wall behind the bus stop. Let’s hope someone picks her up and carries her around for a while to help make up for lost time
.

31 December

Seeing that T.’s still back in her snowbound valley, I’m giving a big party tonight. While I was shopping earlier, I ran into Professor A. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him. I would’ve liked to talk to him, but shyness overcame me. I thought he’d probably look at me with terror in his eyes – he can’t be expected to remember all his students!

As I moved away from him, pushing my cart, I had the feeling he was looking at me. His eyes are black as coal, and when he speaks they seem to flash. Maybe they’re the reason why I felt such intense heat right between my shoulder-blades
.

Goodbye, old year; we’ll bid you farewell, wrapped in the dense smoke of the peace pipe
.

When 1969 came to an end, I closed the diary.

An anonymous car alarm sounded somewhere in the distance. There was a talk show on the television. Everyone talked and talked, with empty faces. The sheets on my bed were extraordinarily cold; no matter how tightly I curled myself up, I couldn’t get warm. The light of the April moon came in through a crack in the closed shutters, slicing the floor and the desk in half and settling on Ilaria’s photograph.

Despite all the things I’d imagined, dreamed, or conjectured about my mother, the simplest thing had never entered my mind: she was only a girl.