Read Online That Summer in Sicily by Marlena de Blasi - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Marlena de Blasi
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mountains at the center of an island where only the past seems present. A black faille sheath, an emerald at her throat, long brown fingers twined about the Baccarat stem, she sips and I think she, too, wants to laugh. At me, at my jeans, my three-day-old T-shirt, my great head of hair, once again unshackled. She walks back to her chair and motions for me to sit across from her.
“I rather do like speaking in English. I haven’t done so in years. I fear all that’s left are phrases from Dickens or the Brontës which, by now, I can parrot. I don’t know if I could find the words for a spontaneous conversation with you, but I might like to try.”
“But I think we’ll be leaving tomorrow or the day after . . .”
She steps quickly, resolutely, upon what she does not want to hear. “Yes, of course, you’re right. We’d only just have begun and then off you’d go.”
As further proof of her Anglo-Saxon penchants—or only to prolong the moment—she says, “There’s a
New York Times Magazine
over there in the top drawer of that console. Perhaps you would like to look at it.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it up with me if you don’t mind,” I tell her, and go to fetch it from the tall French Empire chest she indicates.
“Ah, here it is. Lovely,” I say but notice how faded, wrinkled it is. I look at the date. January 1969.
Now I do laugh. “But
signora,
this is a museum piece.”
Resuming Italian, she says, “Not at all. What do you suppose has changed in twenty-five years or so? I found the journal to be well written back then when someone or other left it behind. I thought it set things out rather nicely, addressing the events of the day, which are, of course, the same events of this day. Think of it. Even if its theater and its motives are being played out in a different geography, there’s still war, isn’t there? Still avidity and hate and violence and fear. Poverty and righteousness are still thriving. As are revolution and arrogance and lies. There is always perversion and torment, of course. What I particularly admired about this paper was the shrewd touch of pathos and poignancy strewn among the squalor and the filth. You know, The Good News. So, should I wish to be informed of events outside these mountains, I read
The New York Times Magazine.
I’ve perhaps reread it every two or three years just to be certain I’ve not missed anything. I have also been known to thrash about in that same console where I keep a Sony television. Black-and-white and with its own antenna and a twenty-two-centimeter screen on which, should nostalgia move me, I can view the nightly news broadcasts from Rome or Milan. As I might an old movie. But unlike when I watch an old movie, the news broadcasts leave me empty, angry, and I must tell myself yet again that one need tune in only once in a lifetime to the nightly news to know the chronic story of man. To know how wrong the world is. How
wronged
it is. I don’t hide from the wrong. Surely I don’t deny it. It’s only that the wrong has yet to find its way up here. And I do my best to confound its path.”
Still standing with the magazine in my hand, I say, “I do appreciate the thought,
signora.
”
I turn back to the “media chest,” open the archival drawer, and gently replace the magazine, then return to my chair across from hers.
I understand that her device is sarcasm and that her message is visceral. The past is the present. The human condition endures. A venomous reading of Cosimo’s same dictum. Perhaps I prefer his. We say nothing. I look at her, wondering why I resist her. The authenticity of her. The wisdom. She repels me. She enchants me. There is so much sadness just beneath her skin. Like so many of us, perhaps she is greedy about her sadness. And the scorn, the mockery, are confines that she sets out to protect it.
We are still silent when three widows enter to set the table for dinner and Tosca, distracted by their presence, perhaps dismayed
“I rather do like speaking in English. I haven’t done so in years. I fear all that’s left are phrases from Dickens or the Brontës which, by now, I can parrot. I don’t know if I could find the words for a spontaneous conversation with you, but I might like to try.”
“But I think we’ll be leaving tomorrow or the day after . . .”
She steps quickly, resolutely, upon what she does not want to hear. “Yes, of course, you’re right. We’d only just have begun and then off you’d go.”
As further proof of her Anglo-Saxon penchants—or only to prolong the moment—she says, “There’s a
New York Times Magazine
over there in the top drawer of that console. Perhaps you would like to look at it.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it up with me if you don’t mind,” I tell her, and go to fetch it from the tall French Empire chest she indicates.
“Ah, here it is. Lovely,” I say but notice how faded, wrinkled it is. I look at the date. January 1969.
Now I do laugh. “But
signora,
this is a museum piece.”
Resuming Italian, she says, “Not at all. What do you suppose has changed in twenty-five years or so? I found the journal to be well written back then when someone or other left it behind. I thought it set things out rather nicely, addressing the events of the day, which are, of course, the same events of this day. Think of it. Even if its theater and its motives are being played out in a different geography, there’s still war, isn’t there? Still avidity and hate and violence and fear. Poverty and righteousness are still thriving. As are revolution and arrogance and lies. There is always perversion and torment, of course. What I particularly admired about this paper was the shrewd touch of pathos and poignancy strewn among the squalor and the filth. You know, The Good News. So, should I wish to be informed of events outside these mountains, I read
The New York Times Magazine.
I’ve perhaps reread it every two or three years just to be certain I’ve not missed anything. I have also been known to thrash about in that same console where I keep a Sony television. Black-and-white and with its own antenna and a twenty-two-centimeter screen on which, should nostalgia move me, I can view the nightly news broadcasts from Rome or Milan. As I might an old movie. But unlike when I watch an old movie, the news broadcasts leave me empty, angry, and I must tell myself yet again that one need tune in only once in a lifetime to the nightly news to know the chronic story of man. To know how wrong the world is. How
wronged
it is. I don’t hide from the wrong. Surely I don’t deny it. It’s only that the wrong has yet to find its way up here. And I do my best to confound its path.”
Still standing with the magazine in my hand, I say, “I do appreciate the thought,
signora.
”
I turn back to the “media chest,” open the archival drawer, and gently replace the magazine, then return to my chair across from hers.
I understand that her device is sarcasm and that her message is visceral. The past is the present. The human condition endures. A venomous reading of Cosimo’s same dictum. Perhaps I prefer his. We say nothing. I look at her, wondering why I resist her. The authenticity of her. The wisdom. She repels me. She enchants me. There is so much sadness just beneath her skin. Like so many of us, perhaps she is greedy about her sadness. And the scorn, the mockery, are confines that she sets out to protect it.
We are still silent when three widows enter to set the table for dinner and Tosca, distracted by their presence, perhaps dismayed
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