“MARTA” Inversion

      “MARTA” Inversion by Ida Renzicchi (translated from Italian by the author)

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Voce narrante Giuliana Poleggi Quaranta 

The big oak, north of my house, surprises me every year. From Autumn and throughout the Winter, until the end of March, when all the other trees raise their bare, skeletonized brown branches to the sky like a lot of old men in prayer, it keeps all its leaves attached, like an old matriarch who does not want to let her children go away, or are its leaves that, as children, do not want to leave…?

Then, suddenly, one morning in April, I look out and see it: bigger, luxuriant, completely of a beautiful light green … its leaves tender and shiny … plumped up like a young woman after a long illness that has made her lean … Rejuvenated …! Can we say it about a tree?

I’ve been keeping an eye on it, this year. From the bedroom window I carefully observed it every morning, from the end of March, day after day.

Magritte, “Voix du sang”, 1961

I gave it my silent good morning, trying not to make it understanding  to be under control: “Oh no, my beauty … this year you will not fool me! Let’s see what you are up to in these few days… let’s see what your secret is… ” Indeed, within three, four days… miracle! All its dry leaves disappeared overnight and… after a couple of days and rainy nights … surprise! …. it reappeared domineeringly in its brazen, luxuriant green beauty. Big, still oak! How much I envy your strength, your resilience … your stripping of the old and rising to new life … and all of this standing there firmly on your trunk, clinging to your deep roots jealously hidden by the fresh grass, … how much I would like to look like you …  to keep everyone with me, don’t let anyone fall in the first cold of Autumn, greening every Spring!

Instead here I am sitting on the edge of the bed, brooding in the mud of my memories, stirring up what shouldn’t be touched anymore because what could come out of it would be only the stench of suffering. How to do? How to forget? If it were possible to bleach my soul.. She is at home. She has returned home! Healed? What do I know?

She never thought to be sick and neither did I. Just because she was smarter and more sensitive than a lot of people, almost than everyone she had to deal with? I don’t think it’s a disease … Or why sometimes sadness got the upper hand and darkened her face? Depression? And who doesn’t suffer from it? Or why, when happy, she seemed to be able to move the world? She exceeded! In everything! She had always been exaggerated!

The mind. The mind… the brain is the cause of everything! Thinking, and rethinking. Analyzing, evaluating, dissecting a problem down to the smallest details… But does it mean being sick? Having a mental disorder just because people like her make their mind working too much?

If they had told me she had a heart problem, I would have accepted it. But they say it’s her mind to be sick. Sometimes I doubt she’s dead… Her heart beats boom, boom, boom like an automaton but in reality it’s dead… she can’t love. That is really true!

Sitting on the naked slatted base of another bed, I look around stunned.

My brother is hugging me. He holds on to my shirt. One hand in front, under my breasts and the other in my back, in the middle of my back, just above my waistline. His head resting on my shoulder. He weighs me down. A heavy, unbearable weight. I try, with difficulty, to loosen his fingers closed around the fabric of my blouse, I open one of them and he immediately closes another one from which I have just removed the grip. At last I succeed and he, without support, collapses curled up on the bed base. Unbalanced by his strong grip on my back, I struggle not to ruin on him. He remains motionless, his lean knees reaching his chest, his face hidden by his folded arms. I’m sure he isn’t sleeping.

My father, sitting on a chair, looks like a soulless puppet. Poor beaten Christ! Thin, his hair disheveled, his eyes hallucinated, his pants too wide and his white shirt also wide, seem not to belong to him.

“Dad, what are we doing?” He does not reply me. He turns to the dresser hiding his face in the hollow of his bony arm. He’s crying. He can’t hold back the sobs shaking his shoulders.

I don’t dare to say a word, I don’t know what to say. Then, modestly, he wipes away his tears, calms down and finally turns to me. “It’s evening. We have to eat something … ” “To eat? …And who is hungry?” “Your brother … we need to eat something …” He gets up, rummages in his trouser pockets, takes out a purse. He seems to be counting in detail all the change, which he then hands me, but in fact he is not doing it, his is just a mechanical gesture, his mind is absent, his head empty. “You think about it? Eh? “

René Magritte, La chiave dei campi , 1936

The lady from the grocery store, a few buildings from where we live, along the street, greets me politely when she sees me entering her shop. There is no one but her and me. I put the coins on the counter. “Could you please give me something for dinner?…” I see her turning and bustling about the slicing machine, then she turns and turns again, then one more time. I don’t even see what she’s putting into the bulging plastic bag she is handing me. I am convinced the little money was not enough to pay for what she has prepared for me. “Should I give you something else? If anything, I’ll tell my father and he’ll come over … tomorrow…” “No, no my dear, go … say hello to your father and hug your brother … go, go … it’s okay … that’s fine … “

So good? Damn it’s all bad! But who would ever say to you: “It’s all bad… it’s bad like this!”. My father looks at the wrapped meats and cheeses on the table. Who knows if he realizes that his change would have been enough only for bread and that tonight, for dinner, we are eating the generosity of the grocery store lady. Yet, he is practical about shopping… he knows how much food costs.

Who knows what she will be eating?

She went away like that, not giving a damn about everyone. She fell in love … the madwoman! Damn love! Damn her! And cursed be her too! No, no, not her, not her! God, forgive me, not her!

She has always been impatient. The country was too narrow, limited for her, the family suffocated her, my father turned her off… everyone was against her, while she was her own worst enemy!

She had met her last lover one evening in August when she went out saying to be going to a dance hall by the sea. My father had offered to accompany her. He was very tired and would have liked to go to bed but he had taken a quick bath, changed his clothes and they went out together. We, my brother and I, happy to see them go away, above all to see them together, we had slept in the same bed that night. Hugging each other.

We had heard them coming back late at night. She and her speaking aloud had woken us up, her voice, shrill and irritated, in the silent darkness, accusing him of being jealous, of being good for nothing … of having accompanied her to ruin her evening … that next time … woe to him … if he had dared …

He, whispering to her repeatedly to get it over with, to lower the tone of her voice, not to wake us up… to remember to be a wife and a mother … to stop getting chatted up by the whole country …

Felice Casorati, Ragazza con scodella (Interno) (Mattino), 1919-1920

Wife? Who knows? Mother, for sure not. It wasn’t her who looked after us… we bothered her. My father took and had always taken the burden of the family on his shoulders, avoiding her all the hassles. My father took us to school, my father took us to the doctor, my father did the shopping … She? She would grumble when he brought her the vegetables to prepare because they had to be cleaned, washed … seasoned … then he, with holy patience, would calmly get there to clean the salad, the green beans, the cauliflowers… depending on the season. On the very rare occasions that she went shopping, she came back from the supermarket with bags of ready-made and washed salad that she threw directly into the salad bowl. If he brought her some meat to cook she complained of being a servant all day and even then my father, after having asked by telephone, some colleague of him how to cook it, would calm down in the kitchen. She could, at most, heat up something she bought ready-made in the microwave.

The whole country knew about her relationship with another man. And that wasn’t the first time my family was on everyone’s lips. She went from one man to another, as one changes one’s clothes.

My father? He knew everything and maybe even more. There were constant quarrels. She, who swore again and again that nothing was true, that gossips would have to die, that the very ones she had refused were those who spread the rumors… My father loved her. He loved her with a deep, unconditional love that went beyond everything, that flew high above all baseness and wickedness, he loved her of a noble love. My father, I think, was content with having her near. She, cunningly, rubbed on him like a cat on heat if she wanted something or when she saw him exasperated and feared his anger… she knew how to calm him… she needed him, to be well covered by a man everyone respected. And he always fell into her trap, he couldn’t help but to love her. Anyone would have kicked her out of the house, as shameless, as she was. Not him, he did everything to avoid offenses or winks. He went straight ahead, shunned friendships and company, he knew the gossip about his wife too well …

Lately she had become even more impatient: she was passing from euphoric days to others of gloomy, deep sadness.

Even with me and my brother she changed her mood and attitude for no reason whatsoever: from unusual, sudden kisses and hugs, to endless reproaches for no reason, to telling us clearly that she was tired of us … that, who knows, if really we were children of hers… dragging us up and down in a swing of emotions that went from joy to despair. I feared for my brother … I felt him fragile, desperate, alone.

Rene Magritte, Il donatore felice-1966

To my father… you had to see her greeting him warmly, welcoming him back from work with a thousand stupid coaxing manners and then to hear her offending him in the most disgusting and vulgar ways.

When, lately, during her phases of black mood, she began to say she wanted to kill herself, at first we didn’t worry, she used to talk too much. One day, we found her in the bathroom in a horror movie scene: she was covered in blood from head to toe. She had made cuts trying to sever the veins in her wrists and was screaming she was unhappy. I remember the deafening sound of the ambulance, the bustle of the nurses, the ladies of the building with their hands in their hair, someone who took us away to bring us back later, after the bathroom had been perfectly washed and polished as perhaps it was not ever been, a lady who had brought us something for dinner in a white plastic container …

And my father with his head down as if he were really the culprit of her oddities while the rescue workers looked at him almost in disgust.

Then she returned home from the hospital. We, all pages at her service. “Mom, don’t get up, I’ll take it …” “No, no my darling, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it …” “I’ll do it …” “I’ll go …” “Don’t move … rest yourself…”

Everything useless. She had moved. Not half, she had moved! To leave permanently with another man. She had taken everything away, including our lives.

The emptied bank account, all the valuable furnishings, even the gifts my brother and I had received, even the few pennies from the tips our paternal grandparents had given us the rare times that now, and always because of her, they came to visit us, even my father’s wallet she had taken … she had left him only the purse with a few coins, those that had been spent in the grocery store that same evening. All her clothes. Also two sweaters belonging to me, since I had grown up and we were wearing the same size. My grandmother had given them to me and she, envious, had immediately specified they fitted her, who had beautiful breasts, better than me, who was flat as a pastry board. It did not matter to her that I could suffer from her indelicate and inopportune words at that moment of my early youth.

We have spent hours, days, months, years licking our wounds, hiding our suffering from each other, swallowing tears … stunned … we, without naming her anymore, and instead she always present in our thoughts …

My father? He spoke little. He ate little. He slept little.

We rolled up our sleeves. Our paternal grandparents helped us. My brother and I have never been children, not even teenagers. While loving him above everything in the world, I could not avoid the pain of abandonment, that veil of sadness that cloaks his deep gaze and his whole being.

We grew up fast… two young old ones.

René Magritte, La condizione umana II, 1935

After five long years, she has come back. She showed up on the doorstep. She seemed taller to me but she can’t have grown, maybe she gave me this impression because she is thinner, very thin.

She arrived without a suitcase, without anything. She greeted us as if she didn’t see us, what do I know? For an hour? For a day?

Today, sitting at the table with us, she ate with appetite what we prepared. My father rushed to look for her even the cherries she was crazy about… and the cake, the one she liked so much.

She looks dazed. She watches with amazement my father and brother  getting up and helping me clearing the table. Yet we have always done it, all three of us.

Now she is resting in her room. I watch her sleeping. She is still beautiful, very beautiful! She makes me tenderness. She looks like a little girl. My baby.

My father stays in the kitchen. Sitting on a chair with his elbows resting on the table, his head in his hands, who knows what he thinks … who knows how many questions he is asking himself …

My brother, with his head down, is leaning with his back against the door jamb, his hands stuck in his trouser pockets. After a while he walks away slowly, in silence. He is the one who suffered most of all: he adored her. Will he be able to forgive? Will he ever understand? I have seen him gloomy, he did not open his mouth, during the meal he always kept his eyes down on the plate and never even touched the cake … and the cherries he also likes so much …

I see my father gently pulling the door closer. He is afraid some noise will disturb her.

I can finally cry! I’m crying silently, sitting on the edge of the bed. Tears streaking my face, washing my heart, soul, mind of a thousand thoughts steeped in pain, gloomy sadness. She turns, stretches her thin legs, smiles in her sleep. I am happy to have her here. She reaches out her hand as if to look for something, I take it gently, slowly, but she immediately grabs mine, she doesn’t let go of it anymore, she holds it firmly, even if I just hint to free myself, she squeezes it even tighter, her long and thin fingers with lacquered in dark red nails, look like the claws of a bird grabbing its prey. I lie down next to her. I fall asleep waiting for tomorrow to arrive.

Felice Casorati, Ragazza distesa -1962

Only the beautiful oak in its insolent, leafy immodesty is still there.