About the suitors who fled, about the well, about the hair like a mangy dog, about the scars on her arms, and about the brothel—grandmother told the Veteran all of this the first night they spent together at risk of ending up in Hell. And grandmother said that there were only two people she had really talked to in her life: to him and to me. He was the thinnest and the handsomest man she had ever seen, and it was the most intense and prolonged lovemaking. Because the Veteran, before he penetrated her, again and again, slowly undressed her, stopping to caress every part of her body, smiling at her and telling her that she was beautiful. He wanted to take the pins out of her hair himself and, like a child, sink his hands in that black cloud of curls, and unbutton her clothes and gaze at her lying naked on the bed, so he could admire her large firm breasts, her soft white skin, her long legs, and all the while he caressed her and kissed her where she had never been kissed. She could have fainted with pleasure. And then grandmother undressed him, carefully placing the wooden leg at the foot of the bed, and she kissed and caressed his stump for a long time. And for the first time she thanked God in her heart for having brought her into the world, for having pulled her out of the well, for having given her a beautiful bosom and beautiful hair and even, in fact especially, kidney stones.
Afterward he told her that she was very good and that he had never encountered anyone like her in any brothel at any price. Then grandmother proudly listed her services. The prey: the man captures the woman, naked, in a fishing net in which he makes one opening, just so he can penetrate her. She is his fish. He touches her everywhere, but feels only the shapes and not the skin. The slave: she gives him a bath and caresses him with bare breasts, and offers them to him to bite but doesn’t dare look at him. The geisha: he simply has her tell him stories that take him away from the problems of daily life; she is completely clothed and they don’t necessarily make love. The lunch: she lies down and the man spreads the food out as if on a table that has been set, for example a piece of fruit in her vagina or jam on her breast or ragù or custard, and eats everything. The girl: it’s he who gives her a bath in the tub, with lots of bubbles; he washes her all over and in gratitude she will take him in her mouth. The muse: he photographs her in the most indecent poses, with her thighs spread, while she masturbates and squeezes her tits. The dog-woman: she wears only a bra and brings him the newspaper in her mouth, while he pats her sex from behind or her hair or ears and says, “Good dog.” The servant: she brings him coffee in bed wearing an outfit that’s modest but reveals her breasts almost completely, and she lets him milk them, then she climbs the wardrobe to clean and isn’t wearing underpants. The lazybones: she is tied to the bed because she has to be punished with the belt, but grandfather never really hurt her. Grandmother always performed outstandingly and after every service her husband told her how much it would have cost at the brothel. They put that sum away for rebuilding the house on Via Manno, and grandmother insisted that a small amount be used for pipe tobacco. But they continued to sleep on opposite sides of the bed and never spoke about themselves, and maybe that was why grandmother couldn’t forget the emotion she felt on those nights with the Veteran, with his arm around her head and his hand sleeping but present, seeming to caress her hair. The Veteran said that in his view her husband was a lucky man, really, and not, as she said, unfortunate, cursed with a poor madwoman; she wasn’t mad, she was a creature made at a moment when God simply had no wish for the usual mass-produced women and, being in a poetic vein, had created her. Grandmother laughed heartily and said that he was mad, too, and so wasn’t aware of the madness of others.
On one of the following nights the Veteran told grandmother that his father hadn’t died during one of the bombings of Genoa but had been tortured by the Gestapo. His body had been thrown into the street outside the Casa dello Studente, disfigured by brutal wounds. But he hadn’t told where his daughter-in-law was, or the partisans who had been telegraphing from his house to the Allies. He had insisted on staying in the house so that everything would seem normal to those who were watching them after the tip-off, and so the others had been able to escape into the Apennines. He wanted his son and daughter-in-law to have a family, he had told her as he said goodbye, and then he had sat down to wait for the Gestapo. The Veteran’s daughter was born in the mountains. But maybe it wasn’t true, he had heard that she was the daughter of a German. He couldn’t even imagine his wife in love with someone else, so he felt that the father of his daughter was a monster who perhaps had taken her violently, surely when she had tried to save her father-in-law. And he had never been able to touch that woman again, that was why they hadn’t had children. He, too, had become a habitué of the brothels. The Veteran burst into tears and then he was horribly ashamed, because he had been taught as a boy never to show grief. Then grandmother also began to cry, saying that she instead had been taught not to show joy, and maybe that had been right, because the only thing that had gone well for her, marrying grandfather, she was indifferent to, and she never understood why those suitors all fled, but anyway what do we really know about others, what did the Veteran know.
On the subject of not understanding, she had once got up her courage and, with her heart beating so hard she thought it would burst out of her chest, asked grandfather if, now that he knew her better—not that, for heaven’s sake, knowing her better was a great thing—but anyway if, having lived with her all this time and having no need to go to the brothel anymore, he loved her. And grandfather had sort of smiled to himself, without looking at her, and then he had given her a pat on the behind and hadn’t even dreamed of answering. Another time, during a service that she couldn’t tell the Veteran about, grandfather said she had the most beautiful ass he had ever had in his life. And so what can we know, truly, even about those closest to us.