From Chapter 1

 

Through the window I have sent out into the night that whole heavy stench seeping through the cracks round the thin double door of the bedroom and gathering in a suffocating cloud of foul sepulchral odor. From the next room I can still hear the thick porcelain wash-basin ringing with the deepest notes of percussion instruments, and in that ancient chime I make out the squeezing and squirting of the sponge with which my wife’s unhappy hands are washing Madonna’s abdomen. I shudder in the damp south wind and do not yet dare breathe with even half my lungs. Even the tea is poisoned: I just steam my face and eyes in the rum evaporating from the warm cup. From the bedroom Madonna croaks:

“Me romperà the cups, quel wretch in there! He’ll smash

everything!”

The thin door shakes like cardboard as it opens.

“Hold that nose!” Cara smiles at me.

Cara smiles, oh yes, yes, she smiles, and smiles . . . When she carries the pot out like that, her smile is no more than a dim circle round her lips, it spreads concentrically over her chin and nose and shades her eyes. My wife, her eyes blind, dead, bears the heavy earthenware pot before her like an urn to the courtyard wall. There she climbs onto a stone, onto the pinkish marble stump of an ancient column, and tips the vessel over towards the sea. The ashes of our Madonna are borne away by the holy rivers.

The Ganges will wash away the generations, and this Madonna will continue to send her remains every eighteen days over the wall into the shallow Adriatic. She is indestructible, dying lengthily as she watches my wife and me age by her side.

The Doctor crosses himself before her and says: “Well, Signorina Madonna! How long shall we go on like this, dear lady?” She replies that he should be patient a few more days “until I recover! Pazienzza!” The Doctor then goes on crossing himself, in our room, angrily. Under his breath. For him she is a Great Riddle of Nature. Humane reasons prevent one, of course, there’s no question of that but how humane they are is another matter . . . although it would be just and merciful for us, who are still relatively young, to devote ourselves to our children. In God’s name . . . so, her hearing’s good and her eyesight! And, really, every eighteen days . . . like clockwork! There’s, quite simply, nothing like it in the medical literature. Nothing. And how old is she? Why, she’s old, really old . . . almost incalculably! And we aren’t even relations . . . . Incredible, impossible, completely unrelated! He taps his pockets, crosses himself at the door, and in the courtyard; he probably crosses himself again, round the corner, for his own sake. That’s how it is every time. He is the first to greet me in the morning at the fish market, compassionately; he asks me nicely, rhetorically, just to tell him how in God’s name it’s possible. And why on earth should I tell him anything! I’m not surprised at the dead continuing to live and keep us their service, submissive. I’m surprised by the living, at how they come by such strength in their frailty and helplessness, I’m surprised at myself and wonder how we can go on like this. And that is not a rhetorical question, my dear Doctor, it’s a question beyond hope that I keep asking myself, and nothing is impossible for her, nor for us, we are all kith and kin, tied by blood to the dead, in faecal kinship with the dying, with the blueadriatic, with this polluted oxygen we are breathing . . . But we’ll buy these few fish that have been fattened beneath Madonna’s courtyard wall, Doctor, and all go about our own business in brotherly and kindred peace. We shall be united by grey mullet. Enjoy your meal!

My own business is worse than the Doctor’s, but I’ve almost learned to enjoy my food.

“You make a start,” I say to Cara, “start frying the mullet so I can’t hear the old woman ranting.”

She has washed out the pot and turned it upside down on

the terrace to drain.

“Start frying those mullet,” I say, “they’re clean.”

My wife goes on washing her hands for a long, long time,

poor thing, I’ll have to fetch water tomorrow.

“Child!” calls Madonna.

“What is it, Madonna?” I ask from the doorway. “What the devil is it now? Tell me!”

It is dark in her room. She moans as she breathes from the depths of the room. She’s hardly there. She’s crumpled up in the hollow of the bed, as in a rocking cradle. But she fills the empty, acoustic room with her wheezing, and it seems as though she has squeezed all this murk and gloom out of her body like a cuttlefish.

“Child! Are you deaf, eh?”

Cara pushes me away from the door.

“We did everything beautifully just now, did our business and washed; so what is it now?” asks my wife, stepping into the darkness of Madonna’s room. She doesn’t find it difficult to enter this mausoleum; she spends days and nights here, poor

creature.

“If you aren’t quiet, I’ll sleep right through the night and I shan’t come at all, all right?”

“She would too, she would, si. If there were no Hell. Criminals! But then I’ll cry at the top of my voice, my dear, and shout. Tutta la notte. I will, you know!”

“What’s wrong?” asks blackmailed Cara. “What’s wrong

now?”

“I can’t hear the Hail Mary being said, that’s what’s wrong. A Christian soul needs . . . ”

And what can I do, I quickly start mumbling anything that comes into my head, withdrawing into our kitchen-living room, and Cara has come with me, she has started rolling the fish in flour and praying under her breath: “Give them eternal rest and eternal light for our souls you’ll have to bring some water there’s none left and I must wash before the journey souls in Purgatory and then you can rest as long as you like rest in peace. Amen . . . ”

The nuns have been ringing the evening Angelus from their little bell - tower for nearly a thousand years now without ceasing. Since the eleventh century mesdamesetmessieurs. A model of architectural achievement. More precisely, St. Andrew’s, as you see . . .

I took the zinc bucket as one takes a child by the hand and carried it through the back yard into the garden, I rang it, ringing out a response to the thousand year - old ditty of St Andrew’s by the Southern Sea, drumming my knee on the bucket. The bell hopped two or three more times on one leg, shocked by my shameless zincogram and then fell silent as though it had dropped into the sea, not leaving even so much as a romantic

hum in the air over the warm evening furrows.

There is none of that at St. Andrew’s. Its bells are tin. Once they’ve done their clanging, it’s all over, and you can’t any longer tell where it ended.

And one day no one will be able to tell exactly where my one and only life ended either. Here — so many years ago, when I took up my watch over the dying Madonna— or in freedom, if I survive the captivity.

I had not yet left the back yard — on the edge of the verandah behind me I made out the clatter of my wife’s overshoes. I thought I heard “for the priest”. I stopped, and then I almost ran to her. Out of the darkness she held out the rag ring for my head. I had forgotten it when I set off with my bucket. But still I asked:

“What . . . . has anything happened?”

“Lord no, don’t be daft!” sighed my wife.

“Piero! Little Piero!” came a call from the other room. Madonna was now calling my wife by the name of her brother, who, they tell me, died while still in his cradle.

Cara called back crossly and then whispered to me: “We can always change our minds. I’ll stay. But please don’t act the fool!”

The bucket suddenly seemed full of wet clothes; it had grown heavy in a gust of the south wind and was pulling me through the garden. I’m not clever enough to know how to act the fool. The south wind was blowing. There were eighteen days ahead of me in this huge house. Solitude. The vestibule of the grave. Life with a corpse.

The fresh air was stifling me, with its sticky damp and the smell of decay from the gardens. And there are no warm furrows here or any of that romance, of either dusk or dawn. The little bit of earth that has collected in the gardens among these rocks is not even earth. The houses, walls, streets, courtyards — everything is rock on rock, and the gardens are dunghills and rubbish heaps and graves, rotted bones, skin, where something clammy is fermenting, left behind by the passing generations, like sediment in a quarry. Where else would the black humus in these great stone bowls of walled courtyards have come from? Anything that could not rot in this compost heap is still scattered through the gardens, lurking in the wings: cement heads with buns, capitals, tiles, glass, earthenware vases and chips of majolica. In the viscous, greasy, amorphous gravy of decay which is earth for us, where magnolias, pittosporum, laurel and evergreens are planted.

I knocked at a neighboring ground - floor window, holding the rag ring like a halo over the balding top of my head. Then I raised the halo, as though removing a mighty tiara, and, as though paying my respects to Christ’s grave, I greeted the terrible face of my neighbor on the other side of the pane. What I bowed to was in fact the image of fear, disfigured by natural ugliness and unnatural boniness, blueness and whiskeredness.

The most attractive thing about her is her name, which seems neither attractive nor hers. Our friend is called Hermione. Not Erinye. Hermione. And for some years now, ever since we began neglecting our well, several times a week she has been frightened all over again, because I am eccentric and wicked and her nerves are bad in any case, bad fr fromher mother swomb!

“I said didn’t I that this was sanpietro come forforfor water, motherofGod! With a ha - lo!”

“And my wife has invited you to come over this evening for a while.”

“Alright, for goodness’sake, the poor woman’s go go going away . . . oh, but you gave me a start!! I know, I know she has to go. I’ll go with you. Why shouldshe shouldshe worry, just let her go!”

We drew the water from the well, poured it into my bucket and some of it over the bucket; the wind ruffled the water and sprayed it over the top of the well, which Hermione does not like, for the old folk always taught us that water that comes out of a cistern is no longer healthy if it fallsba fallsba ckagain inside, indrento.

She took one of the bucket’s handles, and I the other, and I did not need the ring, so I waved it about to keep my balance, because it is heavy. It is stuffed with stitched up remnants of old - fashioned homespun waistcoats, bits of felt slippers, hats, wool and silk in whip - shaped shreds, ribbons from old ladies’ gowns, moth-eaten plush collars and the sediment of centuries - old lye, and this heavy, tightly filled pie wafts from my hand an acrid smell of slops and boiled vegetables, which, when combined with the sweaty fumes emitted in waves by my breathless neighbor, lost its individuality and merged into one single bitter taste of amaranthus and these courtyards, this south wind and this destiny.

When we reached Madonna’s garden, Hermione put the bucket down in the dark dangerously suddenly, just in front of my toes, and said solemnly: “She’s going to die, you know! Didn’t I ss sayso before? Well, she will, the old lady will die soon now while you’re on your own. I swear. Before Christmas, before. Any anyday now.” I lit a cigarette so as to turn away from her face, and silently blew the smoke off to the side. If she had spoken the truth, maybe I would have lit a candle to St. Andrew instead of a cigarette. But then, again . . .

“She’s a devotee of the Co . . . Community of Worshipper of the Mo . . . st Precious Blood of Christ. She is. Perhaps you know that, but you don’t know that they all died before Christmas, all of those . . . them. If not exactly on the Eve, then a day before or after. This one and that one, and all. I know them all, on my honor (I am untouched!), not all the women, I didn’t say that, but those dev . . . otee . . . dammit, you follow? Not one of the worshipful sis sisterssur survived Christmas Eve! paroladonor!”

“Oh comenow, Hermione! At least seventy, each one of them.”

“No, no, lovey, they haven’t, not that that last . . . most important one. That’s what I’m saying. No, really. They didn’t when I sayso! Now you know.”

We couldn’t reach an agreement. I bent to pick up the bucket, she bent down quickly as well and we set off like two dumb fools through the dark garden into the courtyard, lashed by the south wind. No one should ever dare think that he might not one night find himself in this windswept universe humping the same stupid load with a person he does not understand, who has wandered off somewhere onto the other side of reason and settled there in some dry bloodless little bed forever.

“We won’t say anything to Cara, remember, will we. Hold your tongue like this . . . as though you didn’t have one. Why, it’s as clear as clear! Because poor Cara will be al . . . armed, because then she’d stay. And that would be some Chris . . . tmas and Newyear, honesttogod!”

We soon reached the terrace, put the bucket down and plunged into a cloud of smoke from the frying oil. My wife was blinking over the spitting pan the way she blinks over the crater of the chamber pot, and Hermione hurried into Madonna’s room to savor another’s inferiority. I stretched out on my couch and heard the same conversation I have heard goodness knows how often. First, the identification process takes a while, although Hermione spends as much time in our house as in her own. But Madonna often meets Cara and myself all over again, so it’s only to be expected with Hermione. And when she has finally established that she is neither this nor that late relative but little Hermione, her late father . . . bel campione! . . . and that late hussy’s daughter, then Madonna concludes that she does not know her, for she has not seen her since she was in nappies.

“You are . . . that is . . . young. Little. It’s alright for you, Godknows,” Hermione laughed jerkily: “why, Hermione isn’t in nappies any more, goodheavens! She’ll soon be restin . . . restinpeace, too! How . . . how old are you?”

“A hundred,” says Madonna firmly and proudly. “A hundred inpunto.”

“Ah now, it can’tbe . . . can’tbe . . . beso much, signora Madonna!”

“How much then, exactly?” asks Madonna inquisitively and provocatively. “In your opinion.”

“Well, roughly, oh how should I know. Lotslotsless. Plenty.”

There was a short silence. Suddenly Madonna screamed: “Aiuto, my little one!”

“Oh just leave her,” said Cara, “she frets the whole day whenever there’s a south wind.”

But Madonna was roaring hysterically by now: “Give me back my Kampor you thieves! Criminals and farabutti! This is my house, all of it’s mine, from top to bottom!”

Cara was draining the last mullet on a fork. She flung the whole thing onto a plate and went in.

“Dunque?”

“My guardian angel, drive this witch and Beelzebub out of my house!”

With elaborate gestures, Cara drove Hermione out of the room.

“Shoo, maledetta Communist witch! Shoo! There, sit down, while the fish is hot, have some with us. I’ll close your door, Madonna, so the smoke doesn’t hurt your eyes.”

“Close the gates of Hell, the committees have taken everything away from me! Kampor, the woods, the Sheepfold, Pidoka, the Kopun vineyards, the Castle, everything I owned, Barbat and Supetarska, Kalifront . . . all those villages and relics . . . and now they send witches to steal my years! Ladri! Assassini! Which I came by honestly . . . accumulated. Cento anni precisi! I am, I am! A hundred! Esatto!”

Her tears reminded her of her losses, and their memory provoked more tears. That is all she is still living for: to mourn her possessions, which she exaggerates hugely. And that is all she still remembers from the time of her more lucid old age: that confiscation of twenty years ago, which completely unsettled her. Since then her spirit just staggers through the wrongly disconnected regions of her younger days, among so many dead and in the timeless gloom of the non-existent.

We ate slowly, and my wife prepared a fish for Madonna, arranging flakes of pure flesh along the edge of the plate. Crunching little bits of fried skin and licking the bones clean as she went, she told Hermione to be sure and keep an eye on me and Madonna. Hermione just repeated from time to time: “Forgoodnesssake, I know, I know! He doesn’t need comp . . . company and letsay . . . let’s say friend - ship from me. Just look in and lend a hand.”

She always talks rapidly, breaking up her words crossly and chewing her thin whiskers as she stretches her skin and lips into grimaces of inexpressible contempt and disgust, while her eyebrows leap and collide above her nose as though they were artificial, stuck onto the face of a melancholy clown, while beneath them two little bulbs spark in turn, as though each eye belonged to a separate head.

Then she went, saying goodbye to my wife: “You don’t have to tell me morethanonce, farrò quello . . . quelloche potrò! Don’t you worry about anything.

‘Bye!”

For a long time after we were left alone, we could hear Madonna crushing her soggy little supper greedily and eagerly with her gums. Cara prepared the tub and heated the water for her bath, and I put on my pensioner’s cape and stepped out into the somber Lane of the December Sacrifices. I’m not saying that is actually what the street is called, but it is December and my real sacrifices are just beginning. And anyway, it doesn’t matter what these streets are called. Everyone calls them by the name of people they know who live in them in any case, or the arcade, or the tavern, or the well. They all display new stone plates with presumptuously huge historical names fit only for the devil. They all bluster with heroisms or boast of army divisions, and even the most bare-handed and blustering division would have to file through them endlessly one by one, from daylight to daylight, on dry rations, suffocating from each other’s foot - cloths in the narrow passage. The ancient, bashful past of these little streets is disfigured here by the arrogant history of the new world, so that old Kekina’s courtyard is actually called Thomas Woodrow Wilson Square, and not Kekina’s Manse or The Green as it has been from time immemorial. Each of these signs takes up half the street, for porches are Squares here; little broken flights of steps are Streets. And it would all warm a local heart if Madonna would only be done with her stools once and for all.