A few days before the glottology exam—after which I’d immediately have to start studying for papyrology—my thoughts, which were already something of a mess, got even messier. I was in my little room, trying to memorize the toponyms of Abruzzo and Molise by repeating them out loud, when the door opened, and my grandmother came in. She looked smaller than usual, was more hunched over than usual, and her usual ruddy color had disappeared from her face. She apologized for disturbing me but there was no one home she could talk to. Her knees were shaking, she felt like vomiting, everything had suddenly gone black.
I sat her down and got her a glass of water, and slowly the color returned to her face. Sluggishly, as if her tongue didn’t want to obey, she told me that the feeling had come over her right when she realized that it was almost November 2, the day of the dead, and therefore her husband’s feast day. It’s been so long, she’d thought to herself, and then she felt a shudder run through her.
“Do you feel any better now?”
“Yes.”
But she didn’t get up, she didn’t go back to the kitchen, she said she was scared that she’d feel sick and die before being able to go to her husband’s burial niche and celebrate him.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said firmly to reassure her.
“But what if it does?”
“Then I’ll go and tell Nonno that you have a good excuse.”
She burst out laughing and leaned over to give me a kiss of gratitude, but I moved out of the way. Her presence was making it hard for me to get any studying done. She, who had never wanted anything from me, now clearly did. She beat around the bush for a while and then finally asked if, after my exam, I’d accompany her to the cemetery. She had saved up to buy a pezzotto with four votive lights. I didn’t say yes.
“After glottology, I have to study for another exam.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you want someone to go with you?”
“I might fall.”
“But you always go on your own.”
“I’m scared I won’t make it.”
“Why?”
“This morning old age arrived.”
I looked at her sitting limply in my chair in that little room and recalled not only the voices of the many dead people who inhabited her, but also what a beautiful young woman she had been and how that young woman was probably lurking somewhere inside her body, protecting the kisses she had both given and received. Again, I felt pain for her.
“Fine,” I said, “you helped me out, I can do the same for you.”
“Thank you.”
But then I was the one who kept her from going back to her tasks. I couldn’t get the image of that young widow out of my head and so I asked, “After Nonno died, didn’t anyone else ask you to marry them?”
Although she still looked unwell, the topic was interesting, and she perked up.
“Of course, I had tons of suitors.”
This comment led to a detailed conversation which I quickly wrote down and relate here, without trying to capture her Neapolitan—I’m tired of my futile attempt to imitate her.
“Why didn’t you get remarried?”
“Because I never liked anyone as much as I liked my husband.”
“But he died.”
“Just because someone dies, doesn’t mean you stop liking them.”
“But after a while, you forget about them.”
“Non mi va di scordare, I don’t want to forget.”
“Why?”
“Well, if your chord breaks you can’t play the mandolin anymore.”
“Nonna, the word scordare has the word for heart in it, cor—not chord.”
“Even better: if you forget, your heart breaks. And if your heart breaks, you die. But I’m not dead, I haven’t forgotten my husband, and therefore, he’s alive.”
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t want to forget either.”
“Who?”
She delicately asked me if I had been in love with someone else before Nina, someone I couldn’t get out of my head. I told her it wasn’t a matter of love, but of memories that had never entirely disappeared, and I didn’t know why. She started muttering that if I was thinking about somebody else, that meant I didn’t love Nina, the poor girl, she was so pretty. That’s when I realized something that I had never fully expressed, not even to myself. I told her that Nina had just come along, and that what comes along in life is not the same as what you choose. I definitely had strong feelings for her, but there were other things besides her that filled my head and that moved me. I listed them for her: reading, writing, and death. My desire to live, Nonna, is so violent that I always feel like my life is in danger, which makes me want to hold onto it even tighter, so it can’t get away from me and end; I’ve had this feeling ever since that girl died, the girl who used to play on the third floor balcony of the light blue building across the street. At that point, I needed to be completely sure she understood who I meant.
“Do you remember the girl from Milan?” I asked.
“What girl from Milan?”
“The one who used to play on the balcony of the building across the street from ours, and then drowned. How can you not remember?”
Puzzled, my grandmother looked at me. “She wasn’t from Milan, and she didn’t drown.”
“Yes, she was.”
She shook her head. “She was from Naples, just like you and me, and she died with her grandfather, Professor Paucillo. They were run over by a car while they were coming back from the beach by bicycle.”