What is the message of the Angel with two wings, in the red and blue robe, holding two vases, one red and one blue, and making water gush in a mysterious way from one vase to the other? Is he not the one who bears the good news that beyond the duality of “either-or” there is—or is possible—still that of “not only-but also” or “both-and”?
The Church was watching over us. So they all said, and Jutta and I repeated it mockingly, sitting on the straw chairs in front of our cabin, alluding to the freedom with which you could now circumvent the rules, as the odor of the soup on the fire wouldn’t stay inside, but came to us outside and saturated our shawls.
The sun set little by little before our eyes, which no longer saw the Strait, for in between there were so many ruins that by now I had forgotten I lived on the sea. April, arriving, brought Easter and demolished the days of Lent. At the end of March, the wind from the north had knocked on our bones, forcing us to knot our shawls tighter. Jutta insisted: Cover up, cover up. In fact I never felt cold with my belly, the growing child was my stove, I sweated, and the armpits of my dresses stank. I had to wash them often and the soap wore them thin, until they were threadbare around the elbows or collar.
“The Church has watched over us again,” Jutta laughed, while we were sitting in front of the cottage stealing the last light of afternoon. “The third wedding in a week.”
“Who is it this time?”
“Rosa’s daughter and Carlo, the baker.”
“Another bun in the oven.” I had become more vulgar. I wasn’t ashamed of laughing noisily, speaking in a loud voice, making remarks on subjects I would once have ignored: yet another effect of the pregnancy, that symptomatic dictatorship of the body that made me see in a different light the bodies of others, of all other men. And of all other women.
As if the walls of the cabins were transparent, I passed through them and spied on the girls: at night they made love, flashed like lightning in a storm, kindled fires in the darkness. Disobey was the word that enabled them to survive; the mothers endured, and hurried to celebrate their daughter’s marriage before the sin was evident. I liked those young women: what for my body had been violence they knew how to get with the joy of rebellion; and even if they had to bow their heads like thieves, they were courageous, daring.
Thanks to them, my child would have in the village many sisters and brothers, many cousins, as long as we stayed there; the time of the births would arrive, but how long would the time of reconstruction last? The survivors coupled with one another, the future was promises forgotten by the rulers, vague promises left to gather dust along with the pile of magazines that every so often Jutta and I remembered to throw away: Messina will be reborn more beautiful, Messina rises again, new plans for Messina.
“How did it go today?” Jutta changed the subject. She got up to pull the shawl tight over my chest, which was gradually getting bigger; under the dress my nipples darkened and spread.
It had been a difficult day. Mimma, the wildest and most unruly of my students, had broken a window in an attempt to sneak out of the room, taking advantage of a moment when I had left to arrange with the priest for the delivery of some chairs.
She was a tempestuous child. I knew that, like many of them, she had lost her father in the earthquake. Each had a different reaction to loss: there were some who talked a lot and some not at all, some who shielded themselves by studying diligently and some whose exorcism was boasting. Mimma had a demagogic tendency; she was very smart and refused to cooperate with her companions, preferring to show off in startling actions. She had been hurt falling out the window, and, after scolding her, I told her to come to school the next morning with her mother.
Jutta said she wouldn’t even know where to begin to keep those unknown children under control. They arrived in class in disarray, like dishes scattered on a table, and making them work together was a continuous effort. It was difficult to give dictation to the young ones while the older children wrote summaries; not to assign grades that emphasized the disparities; and to make them want to return the next day. Just keeping them in school was difficult, as everything they’d learned in recent months had been outside of school, outside of their homes, and outside of themselves as well. Keeping them inside, while they still felt the call of the outside. I was about to ask her about her day, about the dressmaking course that was now advanced, when we were interrupted.
“So I’m right, you’re ’a maestra.”
Standing before us was Elvira, my grandmother’s neighbor who had lost her daughters the night of the earthquake. She stared at us with one hand on her hip, her head tilted, and the expression of someone who had come to look for us in particular.
“Mimma described you well—you emerged precisely from her words. I made her repeat your name twice because it didn’t fit. When I knew you, your name wasn’t the widow Cosentino.”
“What do you have to do with Mimma?”
“She’s my daughter.”
That girl was one of Elvira’s daughters? She didn’t look like her, and then: How could she have survived? In the collapse of our part of the Palazzata no one had remained alive. I myself had asked repeatedly, I had asked Jutta to ask, and the answer was always the same: No one but us. Neither my grandmother nor Jutta’s friend or maid. No one.
“You found her?” I asked, confused.
“We all found something. You, in fact, a husband . . .”
Jutta stood up. “Signora, if you’ve come to threaten us, you can go back to where you came from.”
“What do I care about threatening you? I learned to get by in these months, which maybe before I wasn’t able to do.”
Behind the hard, challenging expression a strained face was revealed. Elvira had a wish to cry, her desire to break down vibrated, so I freed a seat from the sewing that Jutta was practicing; but she refused to sit down. A gust of wind gave her an excuse to cover her eyes with her hands.
“If you stay, besides the soup I can make three egg frittatas with Gruyère. Do you like the cheese from the north?” Jutta must have had the same sensation, because she immediately softened. “Unfortunately we can’t have meat, if you sit down with us we’ll tell you why.”
“I have to return to the American village.”
“We’ll just keep you a moment, but at least don’t eat alone.”
A few minutes later, we had dragged the chairs inside and were all three sitting around the table. Jutta rose often to stir the soup and fry the eggs according to her recipe.
“They did it to me as well,” said Elvira, staring at my belly. “And I wasn’t lucky, no.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t get pregnant, nothing remained to me, only the disgust.”
I remembered clearly the two men in uniform who had approached at the dawn of the disaster, when we were still stunned. I remembered the way they had looked at her, and how I had tried in vain to carry her away, while she was ready for anything in the mad hope of having her daughters back.
“I wish I’d had a picciriddu, but I got nothing; instead, with the new year my husband showed up. His lover was dead, only he and one of their children had survived. I hated him, but the child had something in her eyes.”
“You did well,” I said. The gaze of a child: something that subjugated me, too, a specter I knew well. Since I had gotten off the torpedo boat Morgana, the eyes with the long lashes had continued to torment me. I set aside the shadow of my ghost and returned to reality. It must have been horrible to share a bed with a man like that.
“I did well, yes, because he died after a week. The earthquake had split his head from the inside, and his brain was bleeding, even if you couldn’t see anything. Cerebral hemorrhage, but in those days, with all those who were bleeding on the outside, no one cared about the wounded without wounds. He died in front of me, and I’ll tell you the truth: luckily I didn’t have time to call the doctor because I don’t know if I would have, and if I hadn’t called I’d burn in hell when I die. But he didn’t deserve any doctor.”
“And Mimma?”
“She’s my daughter now. The Madonna sent her to me. She’s crazy, you’ve seen her.” She laughed. “Completely mad, like the one who brought her into the world and like her father, but I’m raising her and no one can take her away from me. I’ll straighten her out little by little. She didn’t want to go to school and yet she’s come around, she likes Teacher Cosentino.”
“She’s clever, but she’s so skittish I’m afraid she’ll escape me through the window. It’s good to send her to me in class, the other students are fond of her,” I exaggerated to reassure her.
“My three were three angels, this one is different, but anyway she’s mine.”
“They’ve opened the new registry office, you can register her with your surname.”
“I’ll keep her with my husband’s surname, that way they’ll give me the pension and the house. I don’t have to explain it to you.”
I lowered my gaze.
Jutta brought the eggs to the table and the soup waited. The hot cheese formed a string, and before reaching our mouths it stretched and lengthened, we had to break it with our fingers; we set aside the silverware and began eating with our fingers, perching comfortably with our bare feet under our skirts, while night fell on us.
The next night, Elvira came back with Mimma. Together they came the day after, too. The day after that, Jutta and I had already made a bed for the two of them, because it was better for them not to go home in the dark, and it was convenient for Mimma to come to school with me in the morning; we were near the school and she could sleep a little longer. Sleeping longer calmed her, and in the morning she was less agitated; besides, she was no longer alone—there was me, there was Jutta, there was that creature in my belly whom she fantasized about playing with.
Before a week had passed Mimma and Elvira had moved in with us. Where we’d been two we would be four and then five, unless they gave us our houses first, but by now we had stopped believing in them, the future would arrive sooner or later, like death, and in the meantime you had to live. Before leaving the American village, Elvira gave her cabin to another woman, one whom the bureaucracy had cut out and who slept where she could, and she kept for herself only the request for a home in the new workers’ housing. Who knew where, who knew when.
Meanwhile, we kept one another company. Jutta improved in the kitchen and I had less nausea. I began to taste some flavors again, but my mouth remained metallic and after every meal the food rose like acid, though usually I was able to keep it down—I wasn’t throwing up every day. One morning I woke with my belly sticking out, as if it had doubled during the night. Jutta and Elvira asked me: Is it kicking? I didn’t feel anything, only gurgling, and I was afraid that the child had died or wasn’t strong enough to live and move.
“As long as you’re throwing up there’s no need to worry,” said Elvira. “Then you’ll stop and the kicks will start.”
I looked at her, puzzled. “Trust me,” she said, “I’ve had three children.”
“Four,” I added, pointing to Mimma, and transformed the loss of the three others into the one who represented the future.
One afternoon Jutta returned from the course all excited: As she was leaving, some women had stopped her to commission some mending. She stayed up late and delivered the garments the next morning, receiving in exchange the first money earned from that work and, most important, orders for men’s and women’s clothes. Few among those living in the cabins could afford a real dressmaker, but all were tired of wearing the clothes stolen from the dead, always the same and saturated with the smell of the catastrophe, always too short or too large, belonging to the souls buried under our feet.
“You hear them,” Jutta whispered to me at night. “They’ll never forgive us for living on top of them.”
Then she, too, usually so solid, gave in to weeping softly, clinging to my shoulder, and it was I who caressed her hair and told her that it would all be all right, comforted her, as by day she did with me. I brought her hand to my belly and little by little she calmed down, we fell asleep together, close under the covers, while Mimma and Elvira slept in the other bed, in an embrace.
But that night Jutta didn’t weep. She began to work on her first man’s jacket, made from a curtain.
“You’ve never had a desire to return home?”
The question emerged spontaneously the Thursday of Easter, while we were taking turns in front of the mirror, tying the veils under our chins before visiting the tombs.
“This is my home,” Jutta answered, abruptly. I already knew that, and yet I was glad to hear her say it, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t ask her again. In reality I wanted to get to her friendship with my grandmother, about whom I knew very little. When we talked about her it was Jutta who asked, listened; I held on to the special relationship I had as her granddaughter, and became gradually more possessive in memory; but I knew that the figure of my grandmother was not contained in the family role, and now that she was no longer here I wanted to imagine her in the life she had far from me.
Jutta said they’d met at a party at the house of a biology professor, a mutual friend. I smiled thinking how the university fascinated Grandmother, how happy she was whenever she could touch the edges of that world. Jutta described an ostentatious living room, chandeliers, silver, a party that was far removed from where we were now: an unbridgeable distance. Had the earthquake been lurking in the faults in the sea that surrounded the balconies, had the earth’s desire to sweep us away already cracked our foundations?
“Is this OK?” Mimma brought us back to the present, she, too, standing in front of the mirror. I arranged the veil so that it covered her neck, the west wind was blowing and I was afraid she’d catch cold. I realized only afterward that it was the same care Jutta showed toward me: it was easy for us to take care of others, less easy to care for ourselves.
Elvira was waiting for us in the doorway. We set off, the four of us, in a procession for the Easter visit to the tombs, altars of grain and sprouts that guarded the Eucharist, the body of Christ. The graniceddi were small tombs that received not the end of the body but the miracle of the Resurrection, and were displayed in the city’s churches on Holy Thursday. The tradition was to visit at least seven, like the sorrows of the Madonna; Elvira said that for her five were enough, the wounds of our Lord.
It was a long time since I’d walked through Messina. The time of my solitary crossings in the just-destroyed city, still bleeding and in flames, was distant: now everything was covered by a quiet normality, the rubble piled at the street corners was like the wings in the theater, while new shops took the stage, along with jerry-built shacks, renovated offices, and even some hotels for travelers passing through. We headed toward the churches spared by the disaster, recalling among ourselves those we would never see again. With my grandmother I’d always started with San Gregorio, which no longer existed; we started instead at Santissima Annunziata dei Catalani, went on to the new churches built in the past months, and ordered a lemonade in a cloister beside the old Santa Maria Alemanna, the most beloved church. I looked for a free kneeling stool and, amid incense and flowers, knelt to pray, when a hand was placed on my shoulder.
“Barbara,” a woman I didn’t recognize called me.
She was wearing a light sweater with ruching at the neck, from her lobes hung a pair of teardrop pearl earrings, a scarf framed a large face with small features and dark skin.
“You’re alive, then. You don’t recognize me? I’m Vittorio Trimarchi’s mother.”
“Of course, I’m sorry,” I lied, startled.
“We saw each other on December 27th, at Aida.”
“Of course, I remember,” I lied again, my heart pounding, because I remembered only her son.
“He had come for you.” I looked at her in amazement. “It was all he talked about. We had tickets for the night before, but he wanted to exchange them at any cost: Mamma, Signora Ruello’s granddaughter will be there, he said, all pleased.”
“Where is he?” I stammered.
“What sort of question is that?” She seemed angry, more than surprised. “They pulled him out three days later, too late. I didn’t move from there, I talked to him, prayed, but they took forever and killed him.”
A hand wrung my heart until it crushed it. “He ended like the professor . . .” I added, breathless.
“Who? Salvemini? Where are you living? The professor is alive, he lost wife, children, sister, but he’s still among us. Of course, he fled Messina, he who could.”
“I had different news,” I explained.
“It was the first days, when no one understood anything.” Vittorio’s mother looked down at my belly. “Is it mine?”
I blushed.
“Is it my son’s?”
“What do you mean? We had never seen each other before that night.”
She looked at me doubtfully, grim. “He had absolutely seen you. I suspected he wasn’t telling me the truth, and also I didn’t really trust you, you came to the city too often. Why didn’t you stay in your town?”
Someone reproached us, asking us to be silent, we were in a church, after all. A candle went out, other people entered, I looked for Jutta and Elvira, but they must have already left and probably were waiting for me: Mimma couldn’t stay still for long.
“I have to go,” I defied the mother of Vittorio Trimarchi, and she followed me out.
“I’ll find you and take back my grandson,” she hissed, while my friends hurried over to me. “It’s mine and not yours, understand?” She began shouting, then insulted and spit at me. A group of people approached.
“You’re crazy, leave us alone,” shouted Elvira. Jutta had taken Mimma and me by the hand, and some bystanders intervened to calm the woman.
We hurried away. The wind whipped hands and ears, the belly-stove was no longer working, and as soon as we were home Jutta prepared compresses to ward off ear infections and a salve for my scraped and cracked knuckles. We were shocked and frightened, but we tried to talk about other things in order not to frighten Mimma. Elvira told her a fairy tale, the child continued asking who was that woman and wasn’t satisfied by hearing us answer that we didn’t know either.
That night we shut ourselves in the cabin. Elvira fell asleep right away, but Mimma came to Jutta and me. She couldn’t sleep, so we put her between us and she calmed down. I had agitated dreams: Vittorio’s mother pulled on my stomach with long, bony hands and detached it from my body with a knife, I cried for help, but my friends didn’t come. I woke in tears, Mimma escaped to her mother’s bed, and was welcomed, Jutta calmed me, insisting that no one would take my child, not then or ever.
At dawn, a thud woke me that came right from the womb. My baby had given its first kick.