Her Side of the Story (eBook)

TWO DAYS AFTER the tragedy, my uncle Rodolfo arrived. We ran into him at the door just as we were leaving with the Celantis for the funeral. The brothers embraced silently and Uncle Rodolfo immediately took my arm to support me, and he didn’t let go until we returned home. I barely knew him, he had never written to me in all these years, but he was my godfather and I understood that I would soon be entrusted to him.

At the entrance, we found the porter all dressed up, with collar and tie, and some of our neighbors, the women in black. They watched us pass by, not offering a word of comfort, and followed behind us as we headed for the tram stop.

I sat between Papa and Uncle Rodolfo in the tram. Both of them were tall, with strong, square shoulders, and I felt as if I were trapped between two insurmountable gray walls. Lydia and Fulvia sat across from us. Signor Celanti had taken a seat next to Papa and every now and then patted him on the back. The two women gazed at me affectionately; I’d stayed with them since my mother’s death until that moment, but now I knew I’d have to part with their affection, too, and I felt my strength ebbing. The tram, issuing from the Lungotevere, turned abruptly and lurched onto the Risorgimento Bridge. Nearby my mother had killed herself: exactly where Alessandro had drowned. It seemed as if the tram, with the thunderous weight of its wheels, must be running over her body and mangling it.

We found other tenants at the mortuary door, along with Ottavia, Enea, and the seamstress who lived across from us and made our dresses. It was still early, perhaps nine, and it looked as if the day would be beautiful. In the garden of the hospital, the oleanders emitted a fresh, bitter scent. I wasn’t suffering, I recall; I really wasn’t. Aida, Antonio’s sister, was there, and Maddalena, who was crying, though she knew my mother only by sight. They didn’t approach me, because of my father and Uncle Rodolfo, but they looked at me from a distance with grave curiosity, trying to make contact with my pain. But at that moment, as I said, I wasn’t suffering.

We gathered in a group at the door of the mortuary. Signor Celanti went in and came back, followed by an old man dressed in black, and my father gave him a grateful look. Presently, a short man appeared wearing a smock and a white skullcap. “She’s coming down now,” he said. I realized that he meant my mother. I hadn’t seen her dead. My father hadn’t asked me to go and say a last goodbye, and, if he had, I think I would have refused. I wanted to preserve the image of her, animated by a sort of passionate restlessness, that I liked so much. I wanted to remember her gentle eyes and her way of walking, which was like flying. I had never seen a dead person. I was afraid I’d be frightened or disgusted, and I didn’t want to be frightened or disgusted by her. So, despite everything, I had the impression that she wasn’t dead, but travelling. I had lived with Lydia since the unbearable evening when my mother hadn’t come home. I had found Lydia beside me the moment I recovered my senses, while my father was speaking to the police; she had made me smell vinegar. Fulvia held my hand and stroked it. Sista was on the floor praying, her clothes bunched around her. My father had come in, pale, his lips trembling.

“Signora,” he said to Lydia, “they want to question you. You were her only friend. She threw herself into the river where her little boy drowned. I said they were not to question Alessandra, but they may want to see Sista. Remember, you two: she killed herself because she couldn’t find peace regarding her son. Understood?” His expression was tough under his ashen complexion. Mortified, we nodded yes, yes. Papa then left with the officers to identify her. Sista took my sheets and blankets and they made me a bed on the floor in Fulvia’s room.

“Here she is,” said the man in the white skullcap, and behind him, on the shoulders of some rough men we didn’t know, we saw a narrow wooden coffin.

That was when I began to feel an appalling pain. From the time I had come to after fainting, I had thought of my mother as a soft form fluttering through the air. I couldn’t imagine her unmoving, shut up inside that box. But that macabre sight gave me the material certainty that the good part of my life was over. I felt alone amid the people all around me, and I sensed that I would never again be able to speak about the things that were so important to the two of us, things no one else seemed to know anything about.

The horse walked slowly. We followed on foot, me between my father and Uncle Rodolfo. Someone had put a large wreath of red roses on the coffin, which completely covered it. There was no name on the ribbon, but everyone knew who it was from. My father must have felt an urge to have it removed by the men in black, who were bustling about. But then he remembered that his wife was dead because she couldn’t find peace after having lost her son, and so he couldn’t say a thing. The air was fresh and pure, the trees bent under the gentle nudging of the wind. Gradually, with the rhythm and sound of the footsteps accompanying my mother—calm, relaxed under the wreath of roses—I seemed to discover a resigned harmony that comforted me. I felt relief in letting myself lean on Uncle Rodolfo’s arm, a strong arm you could trust.

We entered a chapel of the great basilica of San Lorenzo, which I had never seen. It was a small side chapel, because people who commit suicide can’t be welcomed into the bosom of the Church.

The priest came outside dressed in funeral vestments. He studied us with a mixture of compassion and suspicion, maybe because we were the relatives of a woman who had thrown herself into the river. The coffin was then covered with a black cloth and the wreath of roses placed on top of it.

I stood next to Fulvia and Lydia. Instinctively, the women had taken their places to the left and the men to the right of the coffin, as peasants do in country churches. Feeling that I was once more in the warmth of creatures like me, my sorrow overflowed, swelled in my breast, and filled me entirely.

The priest, among the clerics, recited the prayers for the dead. Indifferent to what he was doing, I stared past the coffin at the group of men, who were listening seriously, some with arms crossed. They seemed humiliated rather than sorrowful, their looks betraying dismay at the inconsiderate things women suddenly do, which they vaguely feel they have caused. I sensed that they were stunned by the violence of these sudden rebellions, since they were convinced that a child’s cry, the presence of a stranger, or even a new dress was all a woman needed to console her. The porter said over and over that my mother had greeted him politely as she went out that morning: “Good morning, Giuseppe.” He was amazed and told everyone. Men don’t understand how women can smile and say, Good morning, Giuseppe right before dying. Yet something binds them so firmly to life that they try to remain part of it until the last moment, expecting salvation, perhaps, from its very energy. My mother had remembered to take her raincoat because the weather was cloudy—Good morning, Giuseppe—and then she had thrown herself into the river.

In the meantime, a lot of people had arrived at the chapel. I saw the Captain behind a column, pretending to be a passerby who had wandered in by chance. I instantly squeezed Lydia’s arm, which she acknowledged with a slight nod. Other women from our building came in, emotional but circumspect, afraid of being intrusive. Some were crying, and all were moving their lips, putting a dramatic intensity into the prayers.

Their presence and the impulse that had moved them to demonstrate their support for my mother even though they hardly knew her inspired a desperate strength in me. So I made an effort to watch the men standing in a group on the other side of the coffin. I was overcome by rage and I wanted to chase them away so they would leave us alone. We were divided, like two armies preparing for combat, and there was already, in that coffin, one of the fallen.

My mother was buried in the municipal cemetery. The undertakers placed the wreath of roses on the grave, arranging it, smoothing it, and tucking it in as you would a sheet. My father watched, no longer mocking or threatening. His power had come to an end.

“Let’s go,” he finally decided. Uncle Rodolfo took my arm and Signor Celanti said that the buses are empty at that hour.

So we went home. I was very tired and wanted to lie down on my bed, see no one, and sleep. In sleep I hoped to be with my mother and speak to her. But my father begged Lydia to have me again for lunch because he needed to talk to his brother. Later, he called for me and announced that I would be leaving with my uncle Rodolfo for Abruzzo the following morning.

WE SAT OPPOSITE one another on the train, with little to say, since we hardly knew each other. We both feigned the familiarity we should have felt, being so closely related. But, as soon as he closed his eyes to sleep, I studied him carefully and when I dozed off I could feel him looking at...