Aza had wept only once in her life, when her mother had died, and then she’d promised herself she’d never do it again, because how could there ever be a greater sorrow, a harsher pain?
The signora had died in her sleep, after letting out a scream that had awakened her. Aza had raced into her bedroom, she’d seen her motionless as usual, and, seized by a presentiment, she’d lowered her ear to the signora’s chest. Nothing, and not a breath from her mouth. She’d left the room afraid, and then she’d felt tears roll down her cheeks, salt on her lips. The taste of her mother.
Before calling the ambulance and the signora’s children, Aza had taken the time to say a prayer. They’d loved each other, Aza and the signora, in spite of the Alzheimer’s tireless efforts to delete their relationship. Aza had mothered her, right up to the end.
The signora’s children showed up the next day, by which time Aza had already made all the arrangements. She didn’t trust those three ungrateful wretches who had made no more effort than a weekly phone call, at least not since Aza had taken up her duties: “Everything okay, Mammà?”
The heirs entered the apartment with the gait of someone finally taking possession of a territory. The two sons were accompanied by their wives; they barely said hello to Aza and then headed for the bed where their mother had slept for almost her entire life, but they didn’t sit down next to it. They brushed the dead woman, with either a sleeve or the back of a hand, but none of them bent over to give her a kiss. Worried she might be an unwelcome presence, Aza went back to the kitchen, where the youngest daughter was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette. She was clearly working up her nerve to go into the bedroom, or maybe she just wanted to be alone when she saw her mother; she didn’t get along well with her sisters-in-law. As soon as she looked up at Aza, she asked whether her mother had said any final words before dying.
“Your mother hasn’t said a word in months,” Aza replied politely.
“Ah” was all she said, and then she made up her mind to enter the bedroom.
After not even five minutes the sons and the daughters-in-law were already sifting attentively through cabinets and drawers, rummaging at first discreetly and then with increasing gusto, eyes narrowed like someone hoping to unearth buried treasure.
Aza stayed in the kitchen, looking out the window as she waited for the hearse to arrive from the undertakers’. Only the undertakers would be able to silence those jackals, as they pawed over the dead, she raged inwardly. She was furious, she wished she could kick them all out of the apartment; in fact, she was tempted to pull out one of the weapons that she was watching over for Nicolas and mow them all down in the living room. She froze, gripped the window casement, and berated herself for her stupidity. The weapons! How could she have failed to think of it? She’d had a whole day to make the weapons disappear, and now the apartment was full of people poking and prying in every corner.
While the signora’s children were busy in the living room, keeping an eye on one another, she slipped into the hiding place, stood on tiptoe, and glimpsed a corner of the green duffel bag. That was enough to reassure her. In the living room, she found the children sitting on the sofa with unhappy looks on their faces: they hadn’t even bothered to shut the drawers, to tidy up in the aftermath of their revolting treasure hunt. Which still wasn’t finished.
“Mammà promised me that she would give the apartment to my daughter Giorgia,” said one of the daughters-in-law.
“What are you talking about?” the signora’s daughter rebelled. “Mammà promised it to me.”
“Sweetheart,” the other brother said acidly, both hands in his pockets, a serious expression on his face. “Mammà was sick and didn’t leave a will.”
“Teresa,” the other brother drove in, “you don’t have any children. What would you even do with Mamma’s apartment?”
The doorbell interrupted them. The undertakers, at last. Aza got up to answer the door while the others went on arguing about lawyers, notaries, and inheritance taxes. She ushered the four men through the front door, and, hats in hand over their belt buckles and in silence, they approached the heirs.
“Our sincerest condolences,” said one of the undertakers, a guy with a pair of legs as long as stilts, so that he looked like an oversized wading bird.
The children and the daughters-in-law murmured “grazie” a couple of times, but it was obvious that they’d been interrupted and just wanted to get back to their discussion. The men from the undertaker exchanged embarrassed glances, whereupon the tall skinny one said: “We’re here to take care of the signora.”
The tension still showed no sign of subsiding, and Aza spoke before she even realized she’d done it. “A moment of silence for the signora,” she said, without anger, in the tone of a priest inviting the faithful to kneel. They all turned inward in a brief moment of prayer, then the heirs left the apartment with the excuse that they couldn’t stand being there for the closing of the coffin.
Aza showed the men the way to the bedroom where the dead woman lay and remained with them as they gently lifted the signora’s withered little corpse and delicately laid it in the coffin. They’d hold the wake in one of the rooms designated for that purpose at the funeral parlor.
Transporting the coffin down the stairs was hard work. Aza helped the three pallbearers carrying the casket by giving them directions: “Higher, look out for the railing, hold on, careful.” Down in the street, the signora’s family had resumed their earlier discussion, and it was only at the very last that they even noticed the coffin being placed in the hearse.
In the chilly little room, under the anguished eyes of a Madonna painted on a pennant, Aza went on praying, for herself, for the dead woman, and to hold at bay her unhappy thoughts about her own future: Now what would she do? Where would she find another position, another job? And to bring down a benediction on those big green duffel bags that, she hoped, would still be there upon her return. She’d been a very capable custodian of them all this time, Nicolas would have to recognize that much at least.
She came back on the bus nearly three hours later, and she hurried straight over to the hiding place. The bags were gone. She pulled out her cell phone and angrily texted Nicolas.
Aza
The signora’s children. Those pigs took everything and carried it off.