The City and the House (18 page)

Lucrezia

Princeton, 25th June

Dear Alberico,

Roberta phoned me and told me that your film will have its premiere in a few days. I send you my best wishes and hope that it will be a success.

I've heard about you from other people too. I know that you're very busy and that your house is always full of people. I know that you often eat squid and mussels in brine, I know that you type naked, except for red underpants, with oropax in your ears and the baby on your knee. I see you like that, and it's a reassuring picture. I'm very pleased that you are working. You use a typewriter when you write, I write in long-hand as you know. I have written a novel. It is called
The Knot
. Naturally I'd be pleased if you read it. I've sent it to Lucrezia and perhaps you could ask her to let you have a look at it. I don't know if you'd like to. Two agencies have already turned it down. Nevertheless I haven't given up the idea of having it published. A friend of mine, someone called Danny, is thinking of sending it to a third agency.

This Danny is Chantal's ex-husband. Chantal is my wife's daughter, my stepdaughter. What a strange phrase stepdaughter is, I really cannot connect it with Chantal or with my relationship with her.

As we write to each other so rarely, and telephone so rarely, I feel that every now and again I have to explain who these people I talk about are. Besides, you have a bad memory, or at least you have a bad memory when it comes to the things I tell you about myself.

You and I live in very different ways. You are surrounded by people, so much so that when you are at home you have to put oropax in your ears. You always eat with lots of people and you give supper parties. I never see anyone except the students who take my course, and Danny when he comes to Princeton to see his little girl, and our neighbour Mrs Mortimer, and in the evenings Schultz and Kramer who were friends of my brother. I don't see anyone else. Anne Marie, Chantal and I are alone a great deal. Sometimes I am afraid that Chantal is bored and I try to make her go out. Over the last few weeks she has got to know a group of students and she goes out with them in the evenings. I'm pleased about this. I bath the baby, give her her supper and put her to bed. Anne Marie has no patience with children. When I was young I didn't have much patience with children, but I've changed as l've grown older.

I was pleased to hear from Roberta that you are still going to Dr Lanzara for psychoanalysis. I ought to say that I'm especially pleased because Dr Lanzara is living in my house. That house is still mine and it always will be. A man can sell his house or give it to someone else to his heart's content, but he always keeps it within himself nevertheless. I find it reassuring that for a few hours of the day you are between those walls. I don't, to tell you the truth, set much store by psychoanalysis. Whilst I've been going through a difficult patch I've been tempted to go to an analyst, but I've immediately rejected the idea. On the other hand it's possible that talking to Dr Lanzara is very useful to you. Remember me to both the Lanzaras, husband and wife, and remember me to the walls of my house.

The other news I hear about you is less reassuring. I haven't heard it from Roberta, but from other sources, and I hope it's not true. Roberta says it's not true. She says that you have a fundamentally healthy character and a core of deep common sense. I'd like to believe that this is so.

I think I might be able to come to Italy next autumn. I'll come with Anne Marie and Chantai. And so you will meet the people I love and with whom I spend my life. I thought you would come to see me in America, but I see that you have too much to do in Italy.

With love from

your father

Rome, 4th July

Respected father,

My film's premiere was yesterday evening. I didn't go. People tell me it was well-received. I don't like it at all. I enjoyed myself making it, but I don't like it. However, if other people like it, so much the better.

A lady who comes and cleans for me has brought me your novel. I telephoned that friend of yours, Lucrezia, to ask her to let me have it. The lady who comes to my flat also goes to hers. And so this morning she left it on the table for me, and I will read it.

The things people tell you about me are often wrong. I don't put oropax in my ears. My underpants are not red but black.

With love from

Alberico

I've just realized that the last phrase in my letter could be misinterpreted. In fact the colour of my underpants has no special significance. I don't like black. I buy black underpants so that I won't have to wash them so often.

Rome, 4th July

Dear Giuseppe,

Yesterday evening Alberico's film
Deviance
was shown. It was shown in a little private hall on via Flaminia. It was a great suecess. There were lots of people. Alberico wasn't there. I phoned him and he said he hadn't come because he had a headache. Nadia, Salvatore, Adelmo - all the friends I meet when I go to see him - were there. Nadia had a little, round, black straw hat perched on top of her head.

The film was lovely. It is well-directed. It all happens in a big restored farmhouse in the country. The rooms are large and half-empty with white curtains fluttering about, and tiled floors. There's a constant bright white light. I shan't tell you the plot, mainly because I couldn't follow all of it, there was something wrong with the soundtrack and I was sitting in the last row at the back. There is a boy, a girl and an old man. Then guests come. There are some drugs hidden in the farmhouse but no one knows where. It's an upsetting film because the white light is there the whole time, and because little by little everyone dies. But the most upsetting thing is the light, the white walls, the tiled floors and the fluttering curtains. Alberico told me that it cost very little to make because the farmhouse belongs to Adelmo's father and he let them have it for a small sum. The actors were amateurs, taken off the streets.

I was there with Lucrezia and the Lanzaras. However Lucrezia left half-way through the second half. She said she couldn't stand that kind of film. She was bored to death and wanted to sleep. But in fact as we went in we saw Ignazio Fegiz with his friend Ippo. They were sitting in the front row, next to Salvatore. As I told you, it's all over between Lucrezia and Ignazio Fegiz.

Lucrezia isn't well. She is run-down and is always very pale. She never recovered after the birth and loss of her baby. On top of which 'I' has left her. She must think that she has destroyed her marriage for nothing, for a relationship with someone who has other relationships that are clearly more binding. I often go to her house but I don't know if she likes seeing me. She is always saying she likes to be alone. If you've gone all the way across the city to see her and keep her company for a while, you feel put out. She says that Rome is a hateful city inhabited by hateful people. She wants to live in another city, she doesn't know which one. Nevertheless at the same time she says she needs a house in Rome. In a few months time she will have to leave the one she is in. I tell her that a psychoanalyst might help. She gets annoyed. She doesn't believe in psychoanalysis. She doesn't like psychoanalysts. She doesn't like Dr Lanzara. She thinks it's a crazy idea having that bald head in front of her and having to tell him about herself. I tell her she could go to a different one. But a different one would have some other unbearable characteristic. And anyway psychoanalysts cost money and she has very little money. I try to point out that she doesn't have so little. She is very open with me and I know how much she has. Not that little but when someone gets it into her head that she doesn't have much money, it's difficult to convince her that it's not true. You were the same when you went to America, you'd got it into your head that you didn't know how you could manage here. You remember how I tried to point out to you that you did have money and that you would be able to get by very well indeed? You left, and I don't know whether you did well or you did badly to move to America. Perhaps you did well seeing that you've got married and settled down.

A few evenings ago,
Mirra
had its opening night in a very small inconvenient theatre, a long way away, on via Olimpia. Serena was acting in it. You know that to act in
Mirra
was always the great dream of her life. Lucrezia and I went. Serena's father was there, he'd come down from Genoa. He sat in the front row, with his great white moustache. Albina was there, she had come specially from Luco dei Marsi. Egisto was there. It was a modern dress
Mirra
. Serena was wearing black slacks and a jumper. The stage was empty, there was just a little iron ladder. There wasn't much applause and the newspapers the next day tore it to pieces. Nevertheless, Lucrezia told me that Serena was very happy. She seemed happy on the evening of the first night too, when we went to see her in her dressing-room, and she wasn't, at all aware that there had been so little applause. She was going to have supper in a pizzeria near the theatre, with the director and the other actors, and she asked if we would like to go with them, but it was perfectly clear that she wanted us to disappear. Her father was tired, he took a taxi and went back to his hotel. We - Lucrezia, Albina, Egisto and I - went to a pizzeria a little further away, but after a while we saw Serena and her group arrive, perhaps because the other pizzeria was closed. Serena made great hello-there gestures but didn't come over to us, she sat with her group at a table at the end of the room. Egisto remarked that she was very rude, and that she should have invited us to sit at her table. But Albina said that she could understand her, that she was in her new surroundings, and that she didn't want to see our old faces around her. So we tried to chat among ourselves and not to look at the other table. Egisto and Albina started to talk about the Women's Centre in Pianura, when Serena acted Gemma Donati, but all of a sudden Lucrezia said that she was tired and felt sleepy, she got up and left, going straight between the tables without turning round. We thought that she was offended by Serena's behaviour, and Serena must have thought so too, because I saw her glance towards the door. Lucrezia told me later that she couldn't care less about Serena's rudeness, but that she had suddenly felt very sad when she remembered Pianura, the Women's Centre, Monte Fermo, those places, those people, those years. Albina went to sleep at Egisto's because Serena lives in her bedsit now, perhaps with her director, who is called Umberto and with whom she is very happy.

Albina, as you know, is married, but her life is the same as before, except that now she has to cook for her husband as well, and iron her husband's shirts as well as her brother's and father's.

Alberico's film had very favourable reviews. I will send you the cuttings. I phoned to congratulate him, but he said that they were all idiotic. He is already working on another film.

With love from

Roberta

Rome, 10th July

I went to see your son's film. I thought it was really awful. However, I was the only person who thought it was really awful. Everyone else praised it to the skies.

'I' was there with Ippo. So I've finally seen her. I've seen the famous hair.

I also went to
Mirra
. I can't remember whether I've told you that Serena has finally been able to say ‘Now I am dying, Empia' in a theatre. Now she says it every evening. She has a man, and she's very happy. She hardly ever phones me.

I saw Albina. She came to Rome to see
Mirra
. She came alone, in her station-wagon. She has got her licence and bought a second-hand station-wagon. She uses it for going around the countryside looking for timber. Her husband has a furniture factory. To look at she's just the same, with her dry lizard's claws, and her handbag that's always open with kleenex and biscuits spilling out of it. But inside she has changed. It's as if she has become dry inside too, serious and hard. She and I no longer had anything to say to each other. I asked her if bed were still a problem for her. She didn't smile, she remained serious. She said no and quickly changed the subject. I think it's a very big problem for her.

Yours

Lucrezia

Rome, 20th July

Dear Giuseppe,

Roberta told me she would phone you. But I don't know if she has or not. Something terrible has happened. Nadia is dead.

It happened five days ago. Nadia, Salvatore and Adelmo went to the cinema. Alberico stayed at home and two of his friends who are always there were with him, Giuliano and Gianni. It was around midnight when Adelmo phoned. He was phoning from the General Hospital. Nadia was in the emergency ward and she was dying.

What I know I learnt from Adelmo. But Adelmo remembers everything in a very confused way. They came out of the cinema. They had bought an ice-cream from a kiosk. They were walking towards the car which was parked in piazza Tuscolo. Two men appeared on a scooter. They were a couple of kids, Adelmo says, they must have been seventeen or eighteen. They came up to Salvatore and said they wanted a word with him. And then four others got out of a Fiat 500 that was parked on the corner. One of them had a long blond pony-tail. They all went for Sajvatore together and started beating him up. Nadia threw herself into the middle of it all and yelled out for them to leave him alone. Salvatore's jumper was torn and one hand was bleeding. Nadia got in front of him. One of them opened fire. Adelmo thought it was the one with the pony-tail but he isn't sure. They wanted to shoot Salvatore but it was Nadia who fell. People came. Someone called the emergency services. All of a sudden Adelmo could see neither Salvatore nor the two on the scooter nor the others. He thought he could still see the pony-tail for a moment. Nadia was lying on the ground. An ambulance arrived and immediately afterwards two police jeeps.