I
I see Anna Magnani sitting there, on a couch at the back of the elegant sitting room, behind a valuable antique sideboard laden with little boxes and trays of exquisite sweets. She is half hidden and says nothing. Her skin is pale, and her eyes hover like a black kerchief above her nose. She says nothing, but sits with her back straight just as her grandmother sat at her doorstep a century earlier. I can see that her silence is full of tension. Behind the black kerchief of her eyes lie still darker shadows, now interrupted, now back again, repressed like a silent belch, or released like a peal of laughter. It is clear that the people around her press in on her, and she flows into herself, like a spilled liquid returning to its vase, remaining there, quietly, on her best behavior.
She drinks the delicious champagne offered to her by her host, and she gets drunk. After a few minutes she gets up from her corner, bellows for all to hear that she is going to the bathroom, and when she returns, she sits in the center of the room, on a small chair in the middle of the green carpet. It is as if she were on a stage; she sits with her back straight and her breasts pushed forward. And they’re nice breasts too, because she has just refashioned herself in the style of a hot number. And yet still she is like her grandmother; somehow her dress combines the latest fashion with the eternal fashion of the rough peasant woman. She sits defiantly.
She has removed the dark kerchief from her pale face, and her eyes float in pitch, flashing shyly and maliciously, with sidelong glances suddenly extinguished or prolonged, now with a different expression. Glances that destroy their object and make whoever looks at her feel stupid.
This feeling of being stupid in her presence immediately becomes affection. Like those lowlifes who drive up to a prostitute on a motorcycle as she waits there, absolutely still, sitting on a bench at the Baths of Caracalla. Before her air of defiance, even the coolest tough guy loses his bearings and finds himself merely standing there, as if before the statue of a miraculous saint.
From her defiant air, it is impossible to know what Anna might be hiding. But what everyone hopes is that she will sing. An old popular song. One of those old songs that everyone knows, with some slight improvisation, a new ending or a joke. She can only express herself by singing, because what she has to express is something indistinct and whole: she expresses pure life, her own, and that of generations of Roman women who have gone before her….
II
The ragazzo emerges from a crumbling alleyway onto the street, itself crumbling, near the Parioletti neighborhood. Like dried-up brooks, a series of alleys flow down from this street in the Parioletti toward the Pigneto48 neighborhood, among shacks, little country houses, and new walls and buildings, cement still wet.
The ragazzo is dark, with dark hair; this is all that is visible in the shadows of the evening. In the dark, his white jeans seem even whiter; they gleam like a polished mirror. He has just put them on, and only a few creases have formed, under the bulging pockets, at his thighs. These are the first white jeans of the season; it is late spring, but what sweetness, heavy with midsummer, is in the air in Torpignattara….
He crosses the street, walking straight as a horse wearing blinders, determined, fierce, ready to fight if need be in order to set things straight. There, between two Fiat Seicentos and a Morini, in the light of a late-night snack bar, two people are waiting for him.
They are two young women, terribly young, like two kittens; they are wearing summer dresses, but, because it is still cool out, they have dutifully put on little sweaters, brown, or hazelnut-colored, serious, clean. One of them is slightly taller than the other, and she has long chestnut-colored hair with an ever-so-slightly reddish tint, especially where it puffs out and curls, against the searing light of the snack bar behind her. Her little face is pale, tender; it could fit in the palm of a hand, and she has a small mouth like only pale, dark-skinned girls have: it is a bit Arab-looking, tender but not too soft, probably like that of her younger brothers, also adolescents.
The boy, with his marvelous white jeans, walks directly toward them. He says something inaudible, probably something like: “What’d you say to Maria about me, huh?” or “Say, what’d you do last night?”
She makes excuses, dutifully; she talks and talks, serious and tender. He has trouble maintaining his anger in the face of such worried, careful excuses. At first he scowls, but then flashes a relaxed, playful glance. The girl, who from the beginning sensed that his aggressive air was just a pose, slowly calms down, softens up; the threat hidden in those bright, wicked white jeans no longer frightens her.
III
He walks next to her, at a sacred pace. He stands to her left, and rests his hand on her right shoulder, holding her close. It is a protective, possessive gesture; it has lost all affectionate or even sensual connotations, and represents a kind of right of ownership. And, in order to make matters even more clear, they are walking down the Viale Trastevere, or rather crossing it, but not on the crosswalk, no, but right in the middle of traffic, between the tram turning onto the Viale from Via Induno, a 75 tram about to turn onto Viale Dandolo near the Palazzo degli Esami, and a row of cars is backed up all the way to the Garibaldi bridge.
But the ragazzo, with his rough face that looks like it has been boiled, and his hand on her shoulder holding her close, sees and hears nothing, neither the tram, nor the bus, nor the cars. Their sacred gestures and pace protect them, the two of them, the couple, from all danger. Let the tram, the buses, the cars, slow down; what we are seeing before us is youth and love, species and society, all concentrated in the two of them, in the miracle they embody.
She is possessed, protected, and symbolized; she looks as though she were in mourning. She is so serious; there is not even the shadow of a smile, present or future, on her face. She has somehow become rigid and hardened in the silent enactment of this ritual consummated by two people, on this ordinary avenue, in front of this ordinary public building, headed toward an ordinary, working-class neighborhood: she is in the center of the universe.
It is all up to them; and we must tip our hats to them. He, with his rough, flushed cheeks, looks as if he might strike anyone who is not disposed to accept such a solemn investiture, and naturally she agrees. Nuzzled, dispirited, joyless, she is on his side.
Her skin is dark, almost black, and her lips turn downward, as if she were nursing a longstanding distress; her eyes are melancholy and distracted, with a glint that suggests recent tears. Actually, there is no doubt at all; that slight glint in her eye is a tear: perhaps a tear of consolation, but still a tear. Cleverly, he cultivates this profound seriousness, adding new material to the fire: he is probably telling her that he knows people…He will do this, that, and the other: and she walks beside him, silently, sadly, complicitous, in his magic circle, like a novice.
IV
Everyone in Rome knows that one of the most beautiful spectacles in the city is the Porta Portese market on Sunday mornings.
I walk with a picture frame under my arm and a small inkstand in my hand through a crowd that forces me to slither like a snake between rows of stalls and blankets covered in merchandise spread out on the ground. It is Christmas time, but a summer sun cooks our heads and the wobbly chairs, dusty fabrics, false antiques, bad copies, and medals on display. The salesmen have been there since before dawn, and they are sleepy, under this beautiful sun; they call out, in hoarse voices, laughing, overcome by a kind of restlessness just as they are every Sunday, as if they were drunk or crazy; but one can see that they are overwhelmed with sleepiness, and they could practically lie down on the spot, struck down by exhaustion, and fall asleep between a wooden statue of Sant’Antonio and a portrait of Il Duce.
A hysterical crowd, electrified by the sweet atmosphere of Christmas, swarms down the road through Porta Portese, which is about one or two miles long, beneath warehouses, huts, and baroque ruins, and above the filthy banks of the Tiber.
Suddenly, beyond a clump of sweaty youths, between the curved backs of bourgeois ladies buying Christmas presents—intimidated by this close contact with the underclasses—and the outlines of a herd of foreigners in the midst of a shopping spree, I catch a glimpse, like a hallucination, of a scene from a Roman living room.
It is Mrs. Livia De S. and Mrs. Paola M. The first lady hovers in the midst of the throng like a large swan in a muddy pond, with a long, puffy, heraldic neck holding up a head that is not overly large, but worthy of a great eighteenth-century mannerist, preferably educated in Spain and deceased in Sicily. Her round mouth expresses surprise, and her eyes, placed classically halfway between nose and forehead, look out inexpressively and mysteriously, with a look of adolescent confusion, despite her advanced age; it is not clear whether they are blue or brown. The second lady seems shorter than her actual height (she is a real Roman, well built) because she is so fascinated by the objects laid out around her feet. Her huge eyes, rimmed in black like those of a silent screen goddess beneath a square forehead and hair as black as that of old, cameo-wearing aunts, carefully scour the merchandise that intrigues her, which her acute practical intelligence easily distinguishes from the rest.
They see me; we are like augurs, like accomplices. We compare our purchases. The two ladies are laden with copper objects. The sun burns our eyes and skin, and reflects against the objects in our hands. I think it is the first time I have met these two ladies during the daytime. But the crowd separates us, pushing us in different directions. They say goodbye, happily, shaking their copper objects and crying out: “They’re for Fellini…for Fellini…” And they disappear in the sacrilegious mob.
V
Behind the Janiculum hill, up above, in the new neighborhood filled with Garibaldine mementos, the sun, at this hour, dominates in solitary splendor. The blooming wisteria, already wilted, fills the air with the fragrance of sugary sweet cadavers, and Monteverde is filled with an explosion of green, Roman green, too heavy to reveal variations or shadings, all of a piece, desperate, suffocating, and splendid.
In the sun, sitting at a small metal table of a café—without drinks—are six or seven girls: it is just the sun and them.
The little café is on the corner of Via Fratelli Bonnet and Via Carini, next to the bus stop. The passers-by can see them: the drivers of empty buses or shop assistants wandering around waiting for the workshops to open, or the attendant at the Ozo gas station which stands next to a trellis covered in greenery, like a salad. The girls are embarrassed, and so they laugh; the café owner tolerates their presence, sitting there on his metal chairs, and the few men in the vicinity glance over at them, amused by their clumsy appearance, unbrushed hair, and unfashionable clothes. They look at them as colleagues, in a comradely manner. And the girls just laugh and laugh. They are all wearing the same white smock. Even their shoes are all, practically speaking, the same shapeless, cheap, worn out shoes, worn by poor, working-class girls. It is hot out, and so they do not wear shirts or blouses under their smocks.
Their faces are marked, aged before their time. The oldest among them is not more than twenty-five years old, and yet their skin is bad, pasty, chapped. Their messy hair frames pallid, sweaty, prematurely wrinkled foreheads. Most of them are skinny, drawn. One of them, the homeliest of all, is quite small; you can tell from her protruding, taut cheekbones and from the buck teeth visible through the thin layer of flesh around her mouth, that she travels from some far-off suburb to work in the city, somewhere like Trullo, or Magliana, or Primavalle.
But she too laughs about nothing along with the others. They laugh at their senseless embarrassment, at their nurse’s smocks, at their very presence, there, all together, as they attract the attention of the men around them, at the drudgery of their lives. They laugh without subtlety, and without even a hint of brutality. They are there, whoever wants them can come and get them; poor factory workers, homely and marked by hard labor, but, even so, as good as any other when it comes to certain things….
VI
How little my mother49 is, tiny as a schoolgirl, diligent, frightened, but determined to do her duty to the end. These women frighten her; she watches them with apprehension. They are her age, or even younger, much younger in some cases. But she is sweet and delicate, and has remained a young girl compared to them; they are adults. Each one of them seems to conceal a man inside of her. Less so when they are young, or at least it is less apparent (but what to make of their overt meanness, their rage, the rancor one sees in their eyes?). But as time goes by, the man they carry inside grows and comes to the surface: his voice, and over time even his face, his protruding chin, his pouting lower lip, his enlarged nostrils, his hairiness. They are frightening as they stand at their vegetable stands; my mother is right to tremble slightly as she asks for an artichoke or cherries in her light, mild, ancient, Veneto accent. The women grab and pack up the artichokes with coarse rage. They have other things on their mind. But when you think about it, it’s hard to imagine what these other things could be. After all, they are fruit vendors: strong as mules, hard as stone, ill humored, and suffering from heart problems. But fruit vendors. Their lives are limited to two or three things: a small, dark house, old as the Colosseum, in a dark alley behind the Campo dei Fiori, or perhaps in a new neighborhood like the Ina-Casa, San Paolo, or Via Portuense; two, three or four children, half boys and half girls, half toddlers and half adolescents, perhaps one of them in the army; and a husband with a beat-up car, who speaks as if he had a boiling hot battery in his throat, red in the face and pasty skinned, with a face so wide you could fit all of Terracina in it. The usual. So why the attitude? Why do they act as if they were the cupolas of Saint Peter’s? Because they are like cows or pigs, truly ancient, pure, and vital; they were born before Christ, and their philosophy is that of the Stoics, as interpreted by the people. Life is a battle; there’s no mystery about it. We are doomed to suffer, but survive, and get on with it, but with rage. Maybe there’s a Christian, Catholic God, who must be placated with candles and prayer; and then we get on with it. It’s here, in this life, that we are rewarded or punished: food and drink are the reward, and delinquent kids or a drunk husband are the punishment. Men are weak, traitorous, lazy, lewd; it’s up to the women to keep life on track no matter how it is handed down to us when we’re born. And the painful, maddening certainty in those warty, pimply faces frightens us, weak, uncertain Christians that we are….
VII
The Vicolo del Cinque at dusk: a dingy alley, cobbled with stones and old bricks, settles down for the night, the sun blazing through in patches on the rooftops. People have finished working for the day. The ragazzi and kids are dressed up—not quite in party dress, but in their clothes for the evening, which is a sort of party. They loiter on the sidewalk next to the freshly closed shutters of the shops, in front of barber shops, at pinball machines, on motorcycles. The little ones are dirty because all day they’ve been playing in the dust, and they go on playing, serene and unworried. The old folks, in the long dusk of life, take walks, and they too are dirty because what’s the point of cleaning up and fixing one’s hair at that age? They are no longer full of mischief, but their eyes, mean and turbid, reveal that at heart they are still pitifully adolescent….The alley is dominated by those who are absent: young men and their older companions who are out drinking, under the same sun, surrounded by the same smells and sounds, further along the Tiber or toward the end of the Via della Lungaretta, or under the brush-woods of the Janiculum hill….Life in the alley goes on without them; one day they will return, clean-shaved like supplicants. Meanwhile, the others, those who are present, the beardless youths and the old cronies stinking of wine, continue on, chewing American gum or cursing to themselves, hoping to one day join the ranks of the absent, hoping that nothing will change. This life is guarded and watched over by those who seem almost not to exist at all: crowding in doorways, standing framed in the windows, some with the same dark skin and licorice eyes as their sons, others with the softness of a younger brother, and still others with the animal rage of their fathers. They are like an audience, or a backdrop, anonymous and uniform, spread throughout the alleyway, mixing with the men as oil mixes with vinegar. The men act, move, laugh; they watch, wait, grumble. And yet they are the conscience of life in the alleyway, of life as it is, not as it should be. People who have lost hope do not hope for their lives to improve; people who are condemned to darkness do not desire the light. Only a very young girl here and there, whose breasts have swelled under her sweater in the past two years, begins to rebel against this ancient confinement, this servitude to men for whom the only recognizable code of honor is the subjection of women. There she is, moving about in her pretty dress, crying out….
Donne di Roma (Women of Rome), introduction by Alberto Moravia, seven stories by Pier Paolo Pasolini and 104 photographs by S. Waagenaar, Il Saggiatore, Milan, 1960.