I came here to Via Manno today to clean up, because as soon as the work is finished I’m going to be married. I’m glad that the façade is being redone; it’s been crumbling. The work was entrusted to an architect who’s something of a poet and respects the building’s past. This is its third incarnation: the first time, in the nineteenth century, it was narrower, and had just two balconies on each floor, with wrought-iron balustrades, and very tall windows, with two rows of three panes in the upper part and slats below; the big front door was surmounted by a stuccoed arch, and the roof was partly a terrace, then, too, and from the street you could see only the imposing cornice. Our apartment has been empty for ten years; we haven’t sold or rented it, because we love it, and don’t care about anything else. But then it hasn’t really been empty. On the contrary.
When my father returns to Cagliari he comes here to play his old piano, the one that came from the Signorine Doloretta and Fanní.
He did that even before grandmother died, because mamma has to practice the flute, and so at home they always had to set a schedule. Papa took his scores and came here, and grandmother began cooking all the things he liked, but then, when it was time to eat, we’d knock at the door and he’d answer, “Thank you, later, later. You start.” But I don’t remember that he ever came to the table. He left the room only to go to the bathroom and if he found it occupied, for example by me—slow about everything, imagine in a bath—he would get angry, he who was such a quiet man, and say that he had come to Via Manno to practice and instead not a thing went as it should. When hunger, unscheduled, made itself felt violently, he went to the kitchen, where grandmother used to leave him a covered plate and a double boiler on the stove so he could warm up the food. He ate alone, drumming on the table with his fingers as if he were playing scales, and if, perhaps, we stuck our heads into the kitchen to ask him something, he responded in monosyllables, to make us go away, and be left in peace. The best was always to be in mid-concert; it’s not everyone who gets to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, do homework, watch television without sound while a great pianist plays Debussy, Ravel, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and the rest. And even if at grandmother’s we were more comfortable when papa didn’t come, it was wonderful when he was there, and as a child I always wrote something in honor of his presence—an essay, a poem, a story.
This house also didn’t stay empty because I come here with my boyfriend. I always think that it still has grandmother’s energy, and that if we make love in a bed in Via Manno, in this magical place with only the sound of the port and the cries of the seagulls, then we’ll love each other forever. Because in love, perhaps, in the end you have to trust magic—it’s not as if you can find a rule, something to follow to make things go well, like the Commandments.
And rather than do the cleaning, or read the news about the situation in Iraq, where it’s not clear if those Americans are liberators or occupiers, I wrote, in the notebook that I always carry with me, about grandmother, the Veteran, his father, his wife, and his daughter; about grandfather, my parents, the neighbors of Via Sulis, my great-aunts, paternal and maternal, grandmother Lia, and the Signorine Doloretta and Fanní; about music, Cagliari, Genoa, Milan, Gavoi.
Now that I’m getting married the terrace is a garden again, as it was in grandmother’s time. The ivy and the fox grape climb up the wall at the back and there are the groups of geraniums, red, violet, and white, and the rosebush and the broom, which is thick with yellow flowers, and honeysuckle and freesias, dahlias and fragrant jasmine. The workers have waterproofed it and the dampness in the ceilings no longer causes bits of plaster to fall down on your head. They’ve also whitewashed the walls, leaving intact grandmother’s decorations halfway up, of course.
That’s how I found the famous black notebook with the red border and a yellowed letter from the Veteran. In fact I didn’t find them. A worker gave them to me. A section of the living-room wall had flaked off, along with the decorations. Let’s give it up, I said to myself, replaster it and put a piece of furniture in front of it. Grandmother had dug a hole at that point and hidden her notebook and the Veteran’s letter, and then painted over it, but she didn’t do a good job and the decorations disintegrated.