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I didn’t have the courage to confess that, on the contrary, these things do happen to us; it seemed to me that it wasn’t true. I said weakly, hiding behind a smile, “Yes, you’re right, but let’s speculate, let’s suppose that Mirella’s attitudes become too free, that she stays out late and I don’t like her expression when she returns … ” He interrupted me, annoyed: “I don’t want to hear you say that, even as a joke.” “All right,” I continued, in the same tone. “Then let’s say she comes home with expensive gifts that a man gave her and explains them with a lie, like that night, you remember? When she said she went out with Giovanna and instead went dancing. Let’s imagine she says she wants to live an easy life, in whatever way, by whatever means … ” Michele replied that he would never allow her to speak like that in his house. I objected that the time is past when a father could say “I won’t allow it” and the daughter had to obey because he provided food, clothing, lodging. Now, whether it’s good or bad, I don’t know, but a girl like Mirella can say, “I’m leaving home and going to work.” Then Michele said he didn’t want to waste his time listening to this absurd conversation, I had nothing to do, evidently, if I got lost in these speculations, he had the paper to read, I was never interested in the international situation, I didn’t realize what was happening in the world. I said I am very well aware of it and in fact these problems don’t seem unrelated. He said, “What could they possibly have to do with each other?” I didn’t know what to say, but I feel that way.
[...] I’m afraid his determination to go to Argentina is a gesture of discouragement; maybe he thinks it’s a way of avoiding inner struggles, but I don’t think going to a new country is enough to avoid them. He brought home a brochure, an advertisement from a travel agency, that showed the mountains and lakes of Argentina. I pointed out that his trip wouldn’t be a vacation, the mountains and lakes have no importance, and Italy has plenty of mountains, too, but he wants to go anyway. Michele exhorted me not to dissuade him and, although my opinion differs from his, these decisions are up to the father, so I stopped saying anything. Michele and Riccardo often leaf through that brochure together and look at the mountains, getting excited. Michele said to him, “If you like it there, I’ll come, too.” I objected: “And us?” “You, too, of course,” he added, “we’ll all go.” Riccardo said, “You can get rich quickly over there.”
I thought that for Michele and me it would be different. We were young: just married, we would leave for Venice, we’d have a big room on the Grand Canal. My mother often said she’d had to fight with her parents for a long time in order to marry my father; she had decided to run away with him, if they wouldn’t let her. I couldn’t take what she said seriously—the very idea made me laugh. I imagined them meeting at night, in a coupé. She’d arrive breathless, holding up her dress with its train, and papa would be waiting for her, twisting the ends of his mustache. But in those clothes, in those gestures, I imagined them already old, familiar and irritated with one another, as they are now. It’s so hard to see the people around us as different from the figures they’re compelled to represent for us.
I’d like so much to talk about these things with Michele. But if I try, I don’t know why, I get embarrassed and pretend to be joking. Last night I sat beside him as he was reading the paper and told him that Riccardo intends to get married soon, before going to Argentina. He said it would be a really bad idea, because a man who marries is no longer free to direct his life as he pleases, he’s ruined. Humiliated, I asked if, then, he … But he immediately interrupted me, saying that our case is an exception. So, almost teasingly, I asked if he was happy. With some annoyance he answered, “What difficult questions! Yes, of course, why shouldn’t I be? The children are good, they’re healthy. Riccardo will have a great career in Argentina, Mirella’s already working, then she’ll get married. What more could we wish for, mamma?” He smiled, patting my hand fondly, and went back to reading.
DEVASTATING
[...] Today, for example, I was sorry I’d gone to the office and wasted time doing nothing: the kitchen still had to be cleaned up and Michele needs some shirts that these past evenings, in order to write, I didn’t iron. Sometimes, in a happy state of intoxication, I imagine giving in to disorder: leaving the pots dirty, the laundry to be washed, the beds unmade. I fall asleep in that desire, a violent, greedy desire, similar to the desire for bread I had when I was pregnant. At night I dream of having to remedy all that disorder and not succeeding, not finishing in time, before Michele gets home. It’s a nightmare.
Suddenly, I thought that I, too, hide a notebook, and that Mirella, looking for a hiding place for hers, might find it. If she read it, she would discover that I am different from what she thinks. She would know all my secrets, would know about the director, also of the appointment I agreed to for Saturday, of the apprehension with which I ask myself if he is in love with me. The thought of him, the fear of the notebook being discovered, and the impression that a dense mystery envelops each of us give me no peace. I see Mirella who leaves home with her diary in her purse, Michele who returns to the bank on Saturday to write his script in peace, Riccardo who has put up the photograph of the Argentine mountains on his bedroom wall, and it seems to me that, although we love each other so much, we protect ourselves from each other like enemies.
I went to the kitchen and started frying the potatoes, then the eggs. I think Mirella was lying, and in any case, if she destroyed the diary, she did it after meeting Cantoni. Soon she joined me and asked if I needed help. She rarely offers, so I looked at her with amazement. She’s really a pretty girl, her hair cut so short is very becoming. The joy of the money earned made her more ardent, and yet unusually sweet. She smiled: “Mamma, why can’t you admit that I’m happy in my way?” I told her that happiness, at least as she imagines it, doesn’t exist, I know through experience. She objected: “But you have the experience of one life alone, yours. Why don’t you want to leave me at least the hope?” I told her to go ahead and hope, it costs nothing. Then I handed her a plate with the fried eggs and asked her to bring it to her brother. She asked me why he couldn’t come get it himself. “I’ll call him,” she said. I turned to her harshly: “Take it,” I commanded. “Riccardo is tired, he studied all day.” “And didn’t you work all day?” she said brusquely. “And didn’t I work all day?” Yet she brought it to him. When she returned, she said, “That is what disgusts me, mamma. You think you’re obliged to serve everyone, starting with me. So, little by little, the others end up believing it. You think that for a woman to have some personal satisfaction, besides those of the house and the kitchen, is a fault, that her job is to serve. I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want that.” I felt a shiver run down my spine, a cold shiver that I can’t get rid of. Yet I pretended indifference to what she said. I asked her ironically if she wanted to start being a lawyer in her own home.
omg
It’s very difficult to talk to Riccardo about Mirella: when they’re together they’re like enemies. Maybe it’s always been that way, but until now I thought it was petty sibling spite. Now I’m afraid there’s some other reason, more profound, that I can’t define, and that grieves me deeply. I don’t want to think that Riccardo doesn’t love his sister; rather, it’s as if he poured out on her an animosity directed toward himself. Today he said that women take advantage of working to do as they like. I reminded him that I, too, work and that it was helpful for our family, including him. He replied that I do it only out of necessity, and therefore my work is a proof of solidarity with my husband, basically a proof of submission. He added that, if I could, I would do without it, and I don’t know what restraint, maybe the Saturday appointment, kept me from contradicting him.
At the table Michele and Riccardo didn’t even notice her absence. Michele was enthusiastically describing the visit to Clara: they hadn’t been able to read the script, because other people had arrived, but Clara had promised to read it soon and would call to make another appointment. Both Michele and Riccardo were satisfied and lively. Michele opened the window: it’s already spring outside, they said, and I was almost sorry I’d stayed in the house all day. I showed Michele the drawers I’d reorganized; he said, “Great, that’s great,” and then resumed talking about Clara and her friends, people known in the world of cinema. He said they all have cars, and one of them had driven him home. Riccardo took advantage of his father’s mood to announce to him that he is engaged, that I know who the girl is, and that he wants to introduce her to him soon. I was afraid that Michele would get angry, and I was irritated with Riccardo, who was spoiling a happy day. But Michele seems to have changed his mind about marrying young. He said to him as well: “Great, that’s great.”
heartbreaking
Michele stared at her, rigid in the black dress, in the tremulous light of the candles. “She was a saint,” he said, and kissed my hands, softened by his grief. “You were always so kind to her.” Maybe it’s true. At a certain point we no longer understand what is kindness and what is ruthlessness in the life of a family.
I liked hearing him say he’s alone, even if he was speaking indifferently, in a slightly cynical tone. Yet, shaking my head, I persisted in saying that he has a great business and the opportunity to have a comfortable, easy life. He replied that that’s not important, either; it’s other things that count, he said, and in a flash Venice passed before my eyes. “At a certain age,” he continued, “everything we’ve done is no longer enough. It was useful only in making us what we are. And just as we are, now that we’re truly ourselves, what we’ve wanted to be or could be, we’d like to start to live again, consciously, according to our current tastes. Instead, we have to continue to live the life we chose when we were someone else. I’ve worked my whole life, I spent thirty years becoming what I am. And now?” He addressed this question into the void bitterly. Then, as if regretting he’d let himself go, he added, laughing, that an age should be established—“forty-five, let’s say”—past which we had the right to be alone in the world, and to choose our life from the beginning. “Besides,” he observed, “no one understands what we do, the effort it costs us, no one, except those who work with us.” I felt that he was criticizing his wife; maybe Michele is similarly critical of me sometimes. I said to myself that I wasn’t asking for anything, I bought only shoes for the children, clothes for the children, food, and no mink coats. But I wondered if there was a difference; and concluded yes, to my disadvantage, because Michele can’t even complain. “Still,” I said with a mischievous smile, remembering what Mirella had said about Barilesi, “if someone invited you to give up the effort that the work requires, would you give it up?” As we were talking, we had stood up and gone to the window. Shadows were falling on the garden below, a melancholy garden of palms and oleanders. “No,” he confessed candidly. We laughed. “But maybe precisely because I have nothing else,” he added in a lower voice.