I have recently been accused of wanting all things in
life to be lovely. And in a country where cynicism is a means of survival and a
way of life, the comment was meant to be an insult. Of course, I had no
adequate rebuttal. It was a legitimate
accusation: if I could have my way, I would make loveliness the only currency
you could cash in at banks. While the dollar plummets and the euro climbs, we
could all sure use a bit more beauty in exchange for our trouble.
If
that makes me a goody-two-shoes, well, oh well. Most of the time, I’m just an
occasionally optimistic fatalist, like most people in Italy.
I consider it a learned habit; fifteen years in a country can do that to you.
But
if the truth be told, when you’re on a quest for fatti belli, myriad
examples of ugliness often march into your mind and demand to stay for dinner.
The ugliness onslaught gets especially bad when the clock strikes eight and the
TG crew announces the evening news. My sporadic efforts to be informed always
inspire me to conjure up strange and violent metaphors that scare me more than
the news report. Yesterday, I had an urge to fold the edges of the political
spectrum together and squash all the politicians in Italy
as if they were ants on a picnic blanket. And on Friday, I frightened my family
with, If they do one more report on over-priced bread, I’ll beat the TV to
smithereens with a day-old baguette.’
Point
being, it had not been a particularly bright week. I’d spent far too many hours
working on a guide about baroque churches built by popes who, thankfully, are
now in crypts. And besides that, my heart was troubled by a very trivial
episode that haunted my mind the entire week, making me blind to all the beauty
in this world.
They
say that writers, like most self-absorbed, slightly neurotic individuals, are
easily traumatized. My psychological wound of the week’ was inflicted by a
ridiculously large tome listing thousands of magazines and cultural associations
willing to give you 50 cents a line per published poem. The fine print
specifies the selection criteria. Due to sheer quantity of unsolicited
manuscripts, one company decides which submissions to read based on the color
scheme of your postage stamp. An ethnic cultural association had written,
please, no poems about grandparents’. It’s the anti-granny policy that kept me
angry for seven days straight. Forget postage stamps, medieval decay and modern
political corruption: if you can’t get a good poem out of grandma, there ain’t
no use for the printed word.
Thankfully,
Sunday promised to bring an end to my hypersensitivity. It’s first communion
season and the last member of my 23-cousin clan was celebrating his second
sacrament with mass and a garden party. The afternoon would be warm, we’d eat
salty vegetable cakes in the garden and sing Celentano songs from the 1970s
until it got late enough for the adults to put their sweaters back on. But
church came first.
I
sat in the pew in front of Signora Ada and let her kick my knee-rest during the
entire ceremony. Ravaged by senile dementia, she couldn’t really be blamed for
the kicking. Besides that, I love her. Our feisty across-the-alley-lady used to
tell me to marry a rich man because love would come once the bills were paid.
Widowed since the winter of 1943, she has always dined with our family on
holidays, holy days or any other time we were stuck in the bind of having 13 at
the dinner table. She was our good-luck guest.
At
parties, Ada
would scold the children to sit up straight and make them laugh when the
grown-ups finally turned their backs. Some jokes are meant only for those under
seven or over 70. Adolescents could tell
her anything-her advice never lasted longer than two full heartbeats. And she’d
trade your secrets for fisherman’s biscuits and made sure you left her house
feeling both empty and full. In adulthood, the only sins Ada
wouldn’t forgive were the ones that made you leave your laundry out long enough
for your whites to turn yellow. This woman who could listen to anything but
lies and stand anything but self-pity, now lived with a Polish care-giver who
couldn’t sleep at night because of her screams.
But
good-luck guests’, even those who are crazy and old, cannot be excluded from
holy day dinners, especially the one called Communion’. So the priest droned
on and the kicking continued and we all believed we could bear it, but only
because the church’s ceiling was high enough to make one remember God. And then, all at once, the kicking lessened
and Ada-still sitting and swinging her legs-called out to the priest in a voice
that stirred the dead and drowsy, E ora basta! Sta zitto! I’ve had
enough already.’
And
the priest did stop to look our way, and, finding the culprit, he moved from
the microphone and said, You be good now, signora. We’re almost done.’
He said it with a gentleness that seldom makes it to the altar and the laugh
that had started to form in my throat came out as something closer to a sob.
The uncommon exchange between the old lady and the clergyman was the most
beautiful thing I’d heard all week. Oh, how I wish you’d believe me-the benevolence
of that You be good now, signora. We’re almost done’ was by all means
holier than the sermon. It was il fatto bello della settimana. By beautiful’ I mean it felt
funny and sad and slightly unjust, but somehow alright anyway. Like ageing and
endings-and, well, life.
So, sorry for having to set the record
straight: bello has nothing to do with head-in-the-sand stories of saccharine optimism. This
doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be wonderful for this world to have many-a-happy
ending. Frankly, I prefer articles and sermons that send you away with a spring
in your step. But, if necessary, I am willing to sacrifice both as long as the
people on this planet keep producing poems about grandmothers. In a country
overflowing with old people, I can think of little else so deserving of the
sparks that fly when pen meets paper and memories take hold of the still-sane
mind.
