Read Online From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Milena Agus
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grandmother boldly made a hollow for herself in the curve of his body and put the Veteran’s arm around her shoulders and his hand on her head, and the impression made by this position, which she had never before experienced, was such that she couldn’t resign herself to the idiotic—in her view—idea of sleeping when you’re happy. So you had to wonder if lovers lived like that. And if it was possible. And if even they at a certain point had to decide to eat and sleep.
Now the Veteran had the black notebook with the red border, which he read, and he was a very demanding professor, because for every spelling mistake, or repetition of the same word, or other mistake, he gave her a spanking and mussed up her hair and insisted that she rewrite. “ Non mi va bééne , I don’t like it,” he said with that narrow “e” of Genoa and Milan, but grandmother wasn’t offended; in fact, she was highly amused. And she was wild about the music when he performed classical works with all the instruments, and then after a while he would do them again and she would guess the title and the composer; or he sang operas, with the voices of the men and the women. Sometimes he recited poems, for example those of a schoolmate of his, Giorgio Caproni, which grandmother loved, because she felt she was in Genoa, where she had never been, but it seemed to her that the places in the poems resembled Cagliari. Thus vertical , because when you arrive in the harbor from the sea—it had happened to her once, on a boat returning from Sant’Efisio—the houses look as if they were built on top of one another. Cagliari, like the Genoa described by the Veteran and his friend, or by that other unfortunate fellow, Dino Campana, who died in a mental asylum, is a dark and labyrinthine and mysterious and damp city, which has sudden and unexpected openings onto the great, blinding Mediterranean light . So, even if you’re hurrying, you can’t not look out over a wall, or an iron railing, can’t not enjoy the astonishingly rich sky and sea and sun. And if you look down you see the roofs, the geranium-dotted terraces and the drying laundry, and the agave plants on the cliffs and the life of the people, which seems to you truly small and fleeting, yet also joyful.
Of grandmother’s services the Veteran’s favorite was the geisha, which was also the most difficult. With grandfather she managed it by telling him what they would have for dinner, but the Veteran wanted sophisticated routines like descriptions of the Poetto beach and of Cagliari and of her village, and stories of her daily life and her past and the emotions she had felt in the well, and he asked a lot of questions and wanted detailed answers. So my grandmother emerged from her silence and began to enjoy this, and she went on and on about the white dunes of the Poetto and their blue-and-white striped bathing hut, and how if you went there in winter, after a wind, to make sure it was still standing, mountains of white sand blocked the entrance, and if you looked from the shoreline it really was like a snowy landscape, especially if the cold was intense and you were wearing gloves and a wool cap and overcoat and all the windows of the huts were closed. Except that the huts had blue, or orange, or red stripes, and even though the sea was behind you, you certainly knew it was there. In summer they spent vacations there, along with the neighbors and their children, and brought everything they needed in a cart. She had a dress buttoned up the front, just for the seaside, with big embroidered pockets. When the men came, on Sunday or for their holidays, they wore pajamas or terrycloth bathrobes, and they all bought sunglasses, including grandfather, though he had always said that sunglasses made people give themselves airs— ta gan’e cagai .
How she loved Cagliari and the sea and her village, with its odor of wood, hearth, horse manure, soap, grain, tomatoes, warm bread.
But not as much
Now the Veteran had the black notebook with the red border, which he read, and he was a very demanding professor, because for every spelling mistake, or repetition of the same word, or other mistake, he gave her a spanking and mussed up her hair and insisted that she rewrite. “ Non mi va bééne , I don’t like it,” he said with that narrow “e” of Genoa and Milan, but grandmother wasn’t offended; in fact, she was highly amused. And she was wild about the music when he performed classical works with all the instruments, and then after a while he would do them again and she would guess the title and the composer; or he sang operas, with the voices of the men and the women. Sometimes he recited poems, for example those of a schoolmate of his, Giorgio Caproni, which grandmother loved, because she felt she was in Genoa, where she had never been, but it seemed to her that the places in the poems resembled Cagliari. Thus vertical , because when you arrive in the harbor from the sea—it had happened to her once, on a boat returning from Sant’Efisio—the houses look as if they were built on top of one another. Cagliari, like the Genoa described by the Veteran and his friend, or by that other unfortunate fellow, Dino Campana, who died in a mental asylum, is a dark and labyrinthine and mysterious and damp city, which has sudden and unexpected openings onto the great, blinding Mediterranean light . So, even if you’re hurrying, you can’t not look out over a wall, or an iron railing, can’t not enjoy the astonishingly rich sky and sea and sun. And if you look down you see the roofs, the geranium-dotted terraces and the drying laundry, and the agave plants on the cliffs and the life of the people, which seems to you truly small and fleeting, yet also joyful.
Of grandmother’s services the Veteran’s favorite was the geisha, which was also the most difficult. With grandfather she managed it by telling him what they would have for dinner, but the Veteran wanted sophisticated routines like descriptions of the Poetto beach and of Cagliari and of her village, and stories of her daily life and her past and the emotions she had felt in the well, and he asked a lot of questions and wanted detailed answers. So my grandmother emerged from her silence and began to enjoy this, and she went on and on about the white dunes of the Poetto and their blue-and-white striped bathing hut, and how if you went there in winter, after a wind, to make sure it was still standing, mountains of white sand blocked the entrance, and if you looked from the shoreline it really was like a snowy landscape, especially if the cold was intense and you were wearing gloves and a wool cap and overcoat and all the windows of the huts were closed. Except that the huts had blue, or orange, or red stripes, and even though the sea was behind you, you certainly knew it was there. In summer they spent vacations there, along with the neighbors and their children, and brought everything they needed in a cart. She had a dress buttoned up the front, just for the seaside, with big embroidered pockets. When the men came, on Sunday or for their holidays, they wore pajamas or terrycloth bathrobes, and they all bought sunglasses, including grandfather, though he had always said that sunglasses made people give themselves airs— ta gan’e cagai .
How she loved Cagliari and the sea and her village, with its odor of wood, hearth, horse manure, soap, grain, tomatoes, warm bread.
But not as much
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