A Very Italian Christmas Read online

  “Precisely this morning you have to be so dutiful, Aunt Nana? Don’t you feel how cold it is?”

  “Beautiful, beautiful,” answered Nana, getting up humbly and all excited, her eyes on the window. She had understood “beautiful.” “Very beautiful day,” she said, “made just for the young.” And again she lowered her gaze to the floor. Once, she would have envied Anastasia her height and her nice clothes, because as a young woman she had been peevish and mean. But life, confining her to the lowest positions, had triumphed over those flaws, and now there was no one humbler than Nana, and inclined to be satisfied by the happiness of others. For Anastasia, then, she felt true adoration. Ultimately, it was Anastasia, with her work, who maintained her, and who knows where she would have ended up, poor Nana, if God had not blessed Anastasia’s work.

  In his room, bleak and cold as his sister’s, and, like it, cursorily furnished, Eduardo, the older brother, was shaving in front of a small mirror attached to the window. As tall as Anastasia, and terribly thin, he had a chest hollowed like the moon, resembling all those of his ilk. But now he was cured, although secretly he still coughed something up, and in fact he, too, was about to marry, not to mention that he had been promised a temporary position at City Hall. Having seen his sister passing in the mirror, he called out in a shrill, pleading voice:

  “Anastasia, my shirts!”

  “They’re already ironed!” Anastasia answered. “Next to the socks.”

  And she was about to go on, when she noticed, as if seeing it for the first time, his long back, his flattened, feeble figure, and she thought of a half-desiccated spider that sometimes hung from a web and appeared to move in the wind, and then one realized it was only a shadow. Similarly, Eduardo lived the life of a man only in appearance. Here if you saw him shave and ask shrilly for his shirts, he was a man … As her gaze fell on the two beds, Eduardo’s and Petrillo’s, she recalled that in two months they would be replaced by a single big bed. The expenses for the furniture were Dora Stassano’s; she worked as a dressmaker and earned pretty well, but Anastasia, too, would contribute, and she and Dora Stassano would have to support the children who would come, with long backs and the faces of miniature old horses. Anna, on the other hand, was not making such a good marriage, because Giovannino Bocca, the clerk, would never earn much, but her mother, because of Anna’s delicate health, and fearing that death would take her away before she could enjoy herself, was determined to make her happy: and Anastasia alone, with the help of that clerk, would have to support the little children, with faces white as a winter rose and slightly protruding, astonished eyes. But she didn’t linger on that detail: as a workhorse has the sensation that his burden is increasing from minute to minute, and his legs are folding under him, but his gentle eyes can’t look back, so she couldn’t see from which direction this enormous and useless life flowed over her, and knew only that she had to bear it. She thought for a moment how different the rooms of the house would be in spring: here Eduardo with Dora; in the sisters’ room Anna with her husband. She, Anastasia, would go and sleep with her mother, while Petrillo would be settled on a cot in the dining room. In the past, when her father was alive, no one would have foreseen these changes, no one would have thought that Eduardo and Anna, marrying, would stay in the house. She recalled suddenly how she liked her room, when she was younger, and the endless chatter with Anna, between the beds, on summer nights, with the moonlight on their feet, the low laughter when the name of this or that man was mentioned. Unnoticed, that whispering had ceased.

  As she passed the black box of the intercom, it rang. “Hello,” said Anastasia.

  “Your brother’s fiancée is here,” the porter’s voice informed her from below.

  In that home (because they still didn’t know what type Petrillo’s girl was) the official fiancée was Dora Stassano. So Anastasia said right away:

  “Dora Stassano, happy Christmas to you and all your family.”

  “Who is it? Doruccia? Tell her to come up,” cried Eduardo with the shaving brush in hand, turning his feverish eyes toward her.

  “Eduardo says come up if you want,” Anastasia reported. And after a moment: “Yes, he’s expecting you. We’re all here. Anna and Petrillo, too.” She hung up the intercom receiver. “She’s coming,” she said, turning toward Eduardo’s room.

  In the kitchen, all four burners of the stove had been lighted. There wasn’t enough coal (the gas was used only for coffee), and Signora Finizio had needed to add some wood, which had filled the space with an acrid smoke. A ray of sun, entering through the open window, lightly rippled that massive gray veil upon which millions of colored spots sparkled. Her eyes red, half closed because they stung, Signora Finizio, a lively woman, all bone, with red hair and a shrewd, loving face, moved with incredible agility, given her fifty-eight years, from one burner to the next. Seeing Anastasia, she cried:

  “Please, dear daughter, have a quick look at the broth, while I finish the kneading.”

  It seemed to Signora Finizio, sometimes, that Anastasia wasted time in futile things, but she didn’t dare to protest openly, for it appeared to her that the sort of sleep in which her daughter was sunk, and which allowed them all to live and expand peacefully, might at any moment, for a trifle, break. She had no liking for Anastasia (her beloved was Anna), but she valued her energy and, with it, her docility, that practical spirit joined to such resigned coldness. She was always amazed that her daughter was so resigned, but of course it was part of God’s plan.

  Anastasia went to get an apron hanging behind a door, among the brooms, and she tied it in front. But instead of going to the stove she washed her hands at the sink, and said:

  “You look at the broth, Mamma, I’ll take care of the kneading.”

  “Thank you, dear daughter,” the mother said, with a rapid smile; and for a moment stood looking at her, as her large hands plunged into the pond of water and flour, feeling that obscure sense of pity and celebration, of remorse and joy, that always gripped her upon observing Anastasia’s perfect, unchangeable ugliness, her rigid, expressionless features, like those of a fork. She was silently comparing that ugliness with the memory she had of herself as a girl, with the image of Anna, so luminous in her weakness, and smiled without knowing it.

  “Your sister doesn’t want to do anything,” she said aloud.

  “Anna’s young, Mamma,” Anastasia answered without looking up, as if she felt that gaze. “And she’s never been too healthy.”

  “That’s also true,” said Signora Finizio, full of emotion. And she added impulsively and with a tinge of melancholy, “So often I say to myself: What will become of that daughter of mine the day Anastasia wants to marry? Will the eyes of her husband be enough to protect her? Because, some time or other, that day may come.”

  “You’re joking, Mamma,” Anastasia said in a slightly altered voice. “I’m not pretty.”

  Signora Finizio smiled again, and as Anastasia, looking at her, had misinterpreted that smile, she didn’t want to disappoint her, and changed the subject.

  “Don Liberato sent the servant to tell me he is coming to see us after lunch. He’s arrived from Salerno. Bless us, I think Donn’Amelia is very ill.”

  “May the Lord have mercy on her,” Anastasia confined herself to saying.

  Signora Finizio was never at rest. Like her arms, her thoughts were never still, and she needed to shift, always biting into this subject or that. So, after glancing at the broth, she turned and said:

  “I also heard from the Lauranos that their son came back last night from Genoa. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d feel bad. It seems that he’s also engaged.”

  And she quietly observed her daughter’s long face, which had become horribly hard and unpleasant in her efforts to control herself. Signora Finizio’s lips lengthened into a very thin smile. Her youth had quickly run its course, and she didn’t easily forgive anyone who wished to avoid the law that she had been subjected to. She was constantly irri
tated by Anastasia’s secret intentions, her lack of humility, by seeing her live so independently, almost a lady, while she herself led a servile life.

  “It’s better this way, don’t you think?” she insisted.

  Anastasia didn’t answer; she went to the sideboard to get some flour, and for a few moments, although she wished to, Signora Finizio couldn’t see her daughter’s face. But she already knew she had hurt her enough.

  “May I? Ooh, what smoke! Merry Christmas to all!”

  Dora Stassano, in the kitchen doorway, showed her face, common, thin, and eager, the olive skin made greener by the red of her scarf. “Can I give you a hand?”

  “Shoo … shoo …” Signora Finizio cried playfully. She somewhat regretted what she had said to Anastasia, but she remained cheerful. “Everybody out. When my daughter and I work we don’t want anyone in the way.”

  Dora Stassano was a small woman in a bright-green coat trimmed with golden fur, wearing green gloves and shoes, and Anna’s charming blond head, along with Eduardo’s ugly smiling face, could just be glimpsed behind her.

  “Mamma, will you let us see the dessert?” asked Eduardo.

  “You, hurry up, if you don’t want to miss the last Mass,” his mother cried to him. “This family of mine is filling up with heretics,” she said, turning to Dora. “Except Anastasia, who never fails in her Christian duties, and every morning peeks into church before she opens the shop. I want to know who honors God in this house. Look at him, at the age of thirty, he has to be led by the neck to the last Mass. And his siblings follow his example. At least you, Dora Stassano, have done your duty?”

  “Last night we were all at Santa Maria degli Angeli, if that’s what you mean,” the girl answered.

  “Good, good!” Like Nana, Signora Finizio was becoming a little deaf, and so she said even the most delicate things in a loud voice.

  “The church was so crowded it was suffocating,” Dora continued, in the contrite and mischievous tone of one who says things that, in essence, she doesn’t care about but likes others to believe. “I didn’t see you, Mamma, you must have been farther up front. But I saw the Torri sisters, then Donn’Amelia with her brother, and the servant behind, and when the Elevation came Donn’Amelia began weeping. More toward the front were the Lauranos, all of them, including the son.”

  There was a brief silence at that word “son.”

  The thought that Donn’Amelia, a good neighbor, was in her last days (she had a serious heart ailment) moved and at the same time cheered Signora Finizio, who in her meager existence drew obscure consolation from the misfortunes of others, and in fact was undecided for a moment whether to stay with that subject or the second. But the second was more important. She still didn’t feel at ease concerning Anastasia’s feelings.

  “So, Antonio really is back?” she cried. “I’m pleased. And he’s getting married?”

  This question, who knows why, no one answered. The smoke in the kitchen, pierced by a thin ray of sun, glittered like gold. There was a sensation of happiness and of expectation in all of them, even, impossible as it might seem, in the unhappy Anastasia. And now advancing through that ray of sun, almost crawling on the floor, was the horrible body and the waxy smiling face of Nana. With comical gestures, leaning on her man’s walking stick, she indicated that someone had come; like a dog, humble and content, she pulled on the motionless Anna’s dress.

  She finally understood.

  “Oh, Giovannino!” she said, turning her head, suddenly animated and blissful. And she disappeared into the hall.

  “They love each other, ah. They’re in love. They’re so in love. Fine thing, fine thing youth is,” and, looking this way and that, Nana spoke by herself, as always, partly because no one paid attention to her, while Eduardo had sneaked away, in secret from his mother, to open the sideboard and see the dessert.

  Taking advantage of that moment, Dora Stassano went up to Anastasia and, looking at her with eyes burning like black fire and encircled by just a thread of melancholy, said in an undertone:

  “Greetings from Laurano.”

  Again the bells began to ring, but this time only in her mind. Anastasia cleaned her flour-covered hands on a rag and, head lowered, said coldly:

  “Same to him.”

  “I know that you once entertained a thought,” Dora said, staring at her.

  “We were all young,” Anastasia answered.

  “He also told me that, one of these days, if he had time, he would stop by for a moment.”

  “He can come when he wants, it will always be a pleasure for us.”

  Signora Finizio, with her long pointed nose over the boiling pot, felt that around the table, in the smoke and cold of that holiday morning, there was a mood different from the normal one; she realized that Anastasia Finizio, even if her appearance was, as usual, indifferent and serious, was disturbed. With true anguish, she understood that the equilibrium, the peace of the family would be in danger if the pillar of that house softened. She would have liked to get rid of Dora Stassano, but she didn’t want to fight with Eduardo, and then Dora was important. Nor was it good to annoy Anastasia. Humiliate her, she had to, that was all, humiliate her and, indirectly, delicately, recall her to her duties. In thinking this, she had to make an effort to repress a torrent of anger, and a hidden suffering (to this she was reduced, begging from her children), which suffocated her. Smiling, she turned to Dora:

  “And Antonio, how was he? He’s not coming to see us? At one time he did come.”

  “Yes, he told me that he’ll come one day soon,” Dora shouted in one ear.

  “Ah, good, good!” said Signora Finizio, with an expression almost of lament. And, as she turned her gaze, seeing that Eduardo had taken the dessert down from the sideboard, and was furtively running a finger over it, then licking it, she shouted with savage irritation: “Get out, you shameless boy, get out!”

  Eduardo obeyed, happy, partly because he knew that her shout wasn’t directed at him, and he left the kitchen, pulling Dora Stassano along with him.

  “I feel exasperated today, who knows why,” Signora Finizio complained when she was left alone with Anastasia.

  “You must be tired, Mamma.”

  “Maybe. These holidays are a terrible strain, only the young enjoy them. As for us, at our age, there’s nothing that can bring us comfort. To serve, serve until death, that’s what’s left for us. Everything we do is for others.”

  In the dining room, the table was set with all the best silverware, plates, and glasses. There were eight places because Dora Stassano’s only sister had also been invited, and with her Giovannino Bocca, Anna’s fiancé. On the sideboard, among some bunches of pink flowers, the famous green glasses were lined up, twelve in all, and, farther back, the porcelain plate with the Sicilian cassata could be glimpsed. The fruit was arranged on a lower table.

  But the most interesting thing was the crèche, an enormous construction of cardboard and cork. It was Eduardo’s doing. Every year, with the eagerness of a child, he started work on it two months before the holiday, shrieking like a madman if someone disturbed him. This year, since things were going well for the family, it was bigger than ever before, taking up the whole corner between the balcony and the kitchen door, where usually there was a small console table with a scene of Venice above it. Because of this construction, the room seemed smaller and more cheerful. It really was a work carried out with painstaking and patient love, in which all a man’s capacities and intelligence were on display. The background had been made from an immense sheet of royal-blue cardboard sprinkled with perhaps two hundred stars cut out of silver and gold paper, and attached with glue. The grotto, dug into the arc of an undulating, peaceful hill that somewhat resembled Naples, wasn’t large, and you had to stoop down to make out the figures inside, which were barely thumb-size. St. Joseph and the Virgin, both molded with the rock they were sitting on, had bright pink faces and hands, and, bending over the manger, seemed to be grimacing horribly, like p
eople who are dying. The child, much bigger than his parents (in part for symbolic reasons), was instead smooth and pale, and slept with one leg over the other, like a man. His face showed nothing, other than an apathetic smile, as if he were saying, “This is the world,” or something like that. A tiny electric light illuminated the stable, where everything, from the child’s flesh to the animals’ noses, expressed passivity and a harsh languor.