New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction Read online

  NEW ITALIAN WOMEN

  A Collection of Short Fiction

  Edited by

  Martha King

  Italica Press

  New York

  1989

  * * *

  Copyright © 1989 by Italica Press

  ITALICA PRESS, INC.

  595 Main Street

  New York, New York 10044

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of Italica Press.

  This Book Was Completed on August 1, 1989 at

  Italica Press, New York, New York.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  New Italian women: a collection of short fiction / edited by Martha King.

  p. cm.

  Translated from the Italian.

  1. Italian fiction — Women authors — Translations into English. 2. Italian fiction — 20th century — Translations into English. 3. English fiction — Translations from Italian. I. King, Martha. 1928-

  PQ4253.A9N49 1989

  853'.01089287'0904 — dc20 89-45539

  ISBN: 978-0-934977-16-6 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-59910-067-8 (e-book)

  Cover Photo: James Stokoe

  Cover Design: Nora Crain

  This translation has been made possible in part through a grant from the Wheatland Foundation, New York.

  For a Complete List of Titles in

  Italian Literature

  Visit our Web Site at:

  www.ItalicaPress.com

  * * *

  Contents

  Introduction by Martha King

  The Courage of Women by Anna Banti

  The Sardinian Fox by Grazia Deledda

  Carnival Time by Paola Drigo

  Dear Giuseppe by Natalia Ginzburg

  The French Teacher by Geda Jacolutti

  Tosca’s Cats by Gina Lagorio

  That One Dance by Rosetta Loy

  Maria by Dacia Maraini

  The Kiss in the Sea by Milena Milani

  My Mother Wore Pink by Milena Milani

  Ice Cream by Milena Milani

  Rita’s Trip by Marina Mizzau

  The Salt for Boiling Water by Marina Mizzau

  Berlin Angel by Giuliana Morandini

  The Mirrors by Elsa Morante

  The Benedictines by Maria Occhipinti

  The Tree by Anna Maria Ortese

  Perfetta’s Day by Fabrizia Ramondino

  The Electric Typewriter by Francesca Sanvitale

  Pink by Monica Sarsini

  Lavender by Monica Sarsini

  Silver by Monica Sarsini

  Green by Monica Sarsini

  White by Monica Sarsini

  The Authors

  The Translators

  Glossary

  Credits

  * * *

  Introduction

  After many years of neglect, women writers in Italy are beginning to receive the attention they deserve. They are not only recipients of coveted annual literary prizes but are taking first place on the vaunted bestseller lists.

  This attention has been long overdue as Italian women have been writing professionally for more than a hundred years. A number of talented and ambitious women ventured into print in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in conjunction with the upsurge of feminism and the interest in socialism and universal education. At the same time the proliferation of women’s magazines opened up a new forum for their efforts, as did the field of journalism. While most of the magazines designed for women provided their readers with escapist sentimental romances, Sibilla Aleramo, Ada Negri, Matilde Serao and others were exploring – realistically, lyrically, critically – the traditional roles of women in their fiction and enacting these new roles in their own lives. And Grazia Deledda, isolated and unschooled, was teaching herself to walk the narrow line between realism and melodrama in her poignant tales of a disappearing Sardinia. For her fiction she was the first Italian woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, in 1926.

  This initial impetus was soon to flag. Two World Wars and the era of Fascism relegated most Italian women to the traditional concerns of home-keeping and child-raising. Only a few women dared – or were allowed the opportunity – to speak, such as Deledda, and later Natalia Ginzburg.

  Women’s fiction had a second burst of activity after the Second World War with writers such as Elsa Morante, Anna Banti, Alba De Crespedes, Dacia Maraini, and Anna Maria Ortese who developed and expanded the body of women’s literature begun in the previous century. Although these women were writing well, and not only on subjects of interest to women, it was still a relatively small and for a long time a generally neglected group.

  After nearly a century of change in attitudes and expectations, and years of hard-won professional and creative growth, there is an impressive number of women writing fiction in Italy in the late 1980s. For this change in the political and social condition of women, they are wittingly or unwittingly indebted to the efforts of the women’s liberation movement in collaboration with the Italian Communist Party. (Anna Banti disclaimed any interest in group advocacies, while Dacia Maraini and Maria Occhipinti have joined with the struggle for a variety of social reforms.)

  Though many of these women writers have only recently received critical acclaim, most of them have been writing and publishing for many years. Anna Maria Ortese, whose L’Iguana has been called one of the best books of the past ten years, published her first novel in 1937; Paola Drigo was not well-known until her novel Maria Zef, published in 1936, was made into a TV film in 1981. Rosetta Loy’s first little-noted novel appeared in 1974, but in 1988 her Le strade di polvere was not only a bestseller but it won two literary prizes.

  The works making up this anthology have not been chosen from the worthy works of the pioneers, those few self-aware, ambitious and heroic women writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but are by the mature writers of the ’80s who have built upon the efforts of their precursors. The one exception to the rule governing selection is the inclusion of Grazia Deledda’s short story – an inclusion justified by the renewal of interest in her in the United States.

  For many years only the names of Morante and Ginzburg were readily recognizable in the United States and England. Now, thanks to a resurgence of translations, Ortese, Banti, Maraini, Morandini, Drigo and others are winning a growing audience. It is hoped that this volume will augment the international appreciation these women deserve.

  The subjects treated by women writers have expanded as women’s horizons have broadened; attitudes have changed in concert with changes taking place in personal lives, the family, work-place, and society at large. However, the fact remains that these women tend to recreate their environment in close detail – a tendency seen from the earliest novels of Matilde Serao. Such care in observation of rooms, furniture, knickknacks, houses, gardens, does unite the women authors gathered here. Even Dacia Maraini, whose story is largely set in a factory, carefully pictures the rooms where her characters live and the food they eat – not as background or props for the drama, but as essential elements of plot.

  But subject matter is not confined exclusively (if it ever was) to the typically traditional occupations of women, such as house and family relationships. Francesca Sanvitale details the det
erioration of a male novelist; Marina Mizzau presents vignettes where her characters act out small, touching dramas in a variety of settings, and Dacia Maraini ventures on the previously forbidden ground of love between two women.

  The women in this collection deal not only with the concerns of their time, but in many cases their fiction is significantly colored by their specific region. This is characteristic of the fiction of a country that is made up of greatly diverse areas – even though television is slowly eroding sharp contrasts. Fabrizia Ramondino is Neapolitan, and the essence of her work is nourished by that southern culture. Gina Lagorio often recreates scenes of the Ligurian coast in her fiction. Paola Drigo’s inventions are steeped in northern Italy, and Sicilian life and customs unmistakably flavor the work of Maria Occhipinti.

  Though from different regions and writing out of disparate experience, these women have several notable characteristics in common. They write with an ease born of confidence in their art, and they exhibit a control, an apparent emotional detachment, that allows a deeply ironical view of their invented world to play below the surface. Another distinctive by-product of this apparent ease and control is a succinctness, a skill in limiting details that reveals more than layers of detail possibly could. These women also share a talent for contriving psychological insights that continually surprise and touch the reader. Such resemblances do not suggest imitation or fashion; they are simply the traits of fine writing.

  One Italian critic has said that fiction is either metaphorical or autobiographical and private (letters, diaries), but that the best writing combines the two. Such a combination of creative stimuli marks the writing here. Many of the stories are based on personal recollection, rather than pure invention, but issue from a maturity of style that permits memory to be cast in metaphorical form.

  The reader will note that many of these works are excerpts from novels. This form was dictated by the reality of Italian reading preferences of the past few decades; that is, the general lack of interest in short stories. Out of necessity the fiction writer was confined to the novel form. Exceptions to this are the short story collections of Dacia Maraini and Anna Banti. This phenomenon is beginning to change. Just as is occurring in the United States, Italian readers are becoming once again more receptive to shorter fiction.

  There is a notable inclination among some, such as Monica Sarsini, Marina Mizzau and Milena Milani, to write unusually short pieces, often a mere page or two. The brevity and compactness of these stories makes them the very antithesis of rhetoric (the traditional Italian style); the terseness of these works, dense with subtle meaning and ambiguity, gives them their power and points to a new creative way of expression entirely these women’s own.

  This collection of fiction by Italian women of the latter half of the twentieth century celebrates a high level of accomplishment. The selections presented here not only continue the tradition of women’s literature begun over a century ago, but they inaugurate an exciting vitality in Italian letters that promises continued growth.

  Martha King

  * * *

  The Courage of Women

  by

  Anna Banti

  The group came straggling down by a short cut that threads across the crest of the hill. They were in such a hurry that the upturned rocks rolling down and striking the feet of the three women didn’t even amuse the children. The early evening crickets began calling to each other; some dried olives in the fields beyond the walls clattered down from the branches onto the stubble.

  No one was chattering or singing anymore as they had an hour ago under the chestnut trees. Only the two little girls, more heedless, still kept their arms around each other and whispered in each other’s ears. Then when the silence of the countryside grew deeper, almost nocturnal, and the noise of all those footsteps seemed blindly mechanical, the shortest and palest woman pushed aside the eternal frayed strand of hair that hung to her mouth, and began her litany: “My God, let’s hope he’s not already home....”

  Looking upward, almost imploring the end of the path, she repeated the words softly two or three times with weary sighs. Then her friend on the right, a tall, good-looking woman in tight-fitting clothes, turned to her and almost stopped. Words were certainly her vocation.

  “Think, silly. What can happen by being a little late? I know the doctor; you have to approach him in the right way. I’ll have a few little words with him....”

  The conversation was cut off by breathlessness, because the speaker had to run if she wanted to keep up with her companions who were more intent on hurrying than in listening to her counsel. Panting, she managed to reach the lead, leaving behind the friend who had been silent up to now – light-footed, but moving along as if perplexed and absorbed, certainly the least communicative of the three women.

  Now the low dry-walls bordering the fields on both sides rose higher, becoming proper walls, and the path became a road. And when they were a few yards from the sharp turn that revealed the first chimneys of the town, smoking at the dinner hour, the short, pale woman stopped. It was the act of an instant, more an inward than an outward expression, but the children also noticed it.

  “I won’t do it, I won’t do it; I’m afraid,” the woman moaned in a very quiet voice, head down; she resembled a goat or a countrywoman giving birth. Her two companions were on either side, one encouraging her in a forceful tone, taking upon herself the task of supporting and dragging her along before it was necessary, the other only staring at her in pity, with a lost, fearful intensity. The children gathered around in a circle, and their faces had that uncertain apprehension that can break out in frightened eyes, sobs and cries, or can disperse in a second, like a cloud.

  “Don’t act like that, Amina, think of the children,” the tall woman urged, enunciating in the soothing falsetto tone used to divert children from a scene they must not remember; but the children, almost hostile, tightened the circle. Amina continued to stand motionless, her face in her hands. Then suddenly, just like a goat, she changed her mind and charged ahead quickly, almost impatiently. Now the comforter had difficulty in following her and showed by her gestures the intention of stopping her. The silent companion, on the other hand, had put wings on her feet and went ahead with an expression half unconscious and half wild. Still mute, but fervent right up to her imperceptibly moving lips, one near her could have heard her murmur under her breath Amina’s last words: “I won’t do it, I won’t do it,” repeated without emphasis, like a prayer or a class assignment that had to be learned.

  As they grew near their destination, the subdued children rocked on their feet and stopped to scrape the crumbling plaster from the side of the house with their fingernails; then they were already through the gate and lined up in the kitchen like hungry donkeys. The three women gathered in a tight group with ashen Amina in the middle. Only her friends looked up toward the house to see some sign at the door or windows that the master of the house was home; and they were beginning to cheer up – “Come on, he is still out” – when they saw him appear at the side of the awful house, still dressed in his black hat and suit, but with his collar and tie loosened: a gloomy and agitated untidiness under that face of a citizen gone wild. By merely looking at him they could imagine the bitter, dry lips of a country squire after a day spent in debauchery: too many cigars, too many bottles and cards and talk with too bored friends; the saliva sticks under his tongue. With a heat burning under his skin, his blood-shot eyes see everything as unjust, polluted, hostile: his harvest poor, his house in shambles, his children badly brought up and that wife – that wife with cat eyes. “Damn the Maremma where I found her and which has reduced me to this state,” he had been thinking all the way home, kicking stones. And now what will he say?

  The women have stopped: better to leave to the husband the choice of arms and the initiative of the first outburst. Feverishly Amina tidies her fallen lock of hair and seeks her voice to respond to the first peals of thunder; Rosa is spellbound, but Norma believes
in the right moment and takes a chance. With tiny steps such as one makes not on the trodden ground of a courtyard but in a large room among knickknacks, she advances: elbows close to her sides, hands pressed to her stomach. It appears the man cannot see clearly, the scant light of the sunset flees like the thread of his great rage, difficult to change itself as quickly as he would have liked into a whip, a rope, into the most offensive instrument possible. Suddenly he finds under his nose that small body, those round shoulders, and a smiling little mouth. Jokes about the beautiful widow who plays the romantic lady of the manor are all very fine: but in the sunlight, in the morning, when one has a fresh head. Now they seem only enemies – these women! who give support to his daily enemy, and instead of running away confront him with this voice like a frivolous pigeon that charms with song and then double-crosses: “The fault is all mine, doctor! Amina would have come back long ago, but I heard a nightingale on the plain below and I detained her. You forgive me, don’t you, doctor?”

  And her little curved hands flutter like a butterfly, echoing the little motions of her bowed head luxuriant with curls, bows and feathers. Many years ago a small, thin, brilliant young doctor had adored the apologies of beautiful women; but for the poor, mean little man who has taken his place everything is poisoned, and these beautiful manners seem to him like betrayals. The few remains of his worldly memories are so disturbing that he suffers embarrassment for his loosened tie and unshaven face. His liver hurts, his rage grows; and he doesn’t make her wait for his reply: “I don’t give a damn about you or your feathers!”