Here in hospital there’s plenty of time for everything. It would be nice to write a little about María Asunción.
For the first time in his life my brother asked my father for something: to extend the girl’s summer stay. Actually, her time was up already, because the association Papà belongs to had only managed to get one month. It’s gone quickly.
María Asunción is twelve, maybe thirteen. My father met her at the market where she lived with other kids, eating when she could, sleeping in fruit crates and selling whatever she could find in the rubbish. He didn’t follow her – she was the one that followed him, timid and shy as she is. When Papà wandered around the market with the other volunteers, he’d always come across her along the way. So he’d ask her about her life and she’d say playful things, I’m sure she was irresistible. But it’s not like my father got too familiar with her, at the start he thought she was trying to make a bit of money by offering herself to him, as the girls down there often do. But no. María Asunción would put her hand in Papà’s and want to walk a little way with him, joking around. One day my father discovered that María Asunción is an artist, because she turned up with a jar full of little stones and sand with which she made a marvellous sound, as she sang like a siren. That day my father simply couldn’t joke around and he burst into tears and told her how his son is a pianist and plays all day long and thinks of nothing but music and how much he’d like her to meet him.
So they went looking for María Asunción’s mother, who lived with her second husband, from whom the child had fled after an attempted rape. A failed attempt – she was lucky and had only ever made love with kids like herself and never with adults, plus she had her music and her singing.
Nonna immediately wanted her to live with her and sleep on the soft mattresses of her daughters’ beds and taste her most delicious foods.
I think María Asunción is the reincarnated daughter of Atahualpa: utterly regal. She won’t touch so much as a trinket in Mamma and Zia’s room without being invited to do so over and over and she won’t eat until she’s sure everyone’s had their fair share and we’ve convinced her that if she doesn’t eat those things, we’ll be throwing them out. Then her face lights up.
‘Muchas gracias!’ says our indio princess with her long straight hair, fine fingers and skinny legs.
When she comes over to our place she spends her time in adoration of my brother playing the piano and my father has convinced her to make one of her musical instruments. So one day, early in the morning, we went to Poetto beach so that she could find little stones and sand to put into jars and the sea was as calm as in a bathtub. Not too much wind. Not too hot. Not too many people. She was afraid, so to show her there was nothing to be scared of we all dived in, even Nonna. And all you could hear was our breathing with every two or three light strokes and the sound of the last wave on the shore. My brother turned around and convinced María Asunción to climb on his back and she trusted him and joined with ours her breath, her light strokes, and her princess’s feet among the shoals of silvery fish. I was sure she was finding the opening between the teeth of her own shark now that it was sleeping, and that my father would contrive a way to keep her here with us.
Getting to know María Asunción I’m more and more convinced that the whole world suffers the same hunger. Every night, before we go to bed, we have to phone and reassure the little girl that we’re alive.
‘Buenas noches, María Asunción!’
‘Buenas noches!’
‘Buenas noches!’
Nonna says only after that will María Asunción go to sleep. And in the morning it’s the same ceremony again to let her know that we’ve woken up safe and sound.
‘Buenos días, María Asunción!’
‘Buenos días!’
‘Buenos días!’
Then one day my brother comes back from the conservatorium and happily informs us that he’s won a scholarship and he’ll be going to Paris to finish his studies.
Who’s going to tell María Asunción tonight?