The Women of Saturn Read online

  In my book, the innocent Lucia is tricked, sent out on an errand, then kidnapped and brought to the castle of l’Innominato—the Unnamed—a man so powerful and evil that the author could not even name him.

  I felt weak, and really wanted to go to our room and lie down. I decided to go look for Lucia. She wasn’t on deck, or in the dining room, or in the first-class or third-class lounges. What was I supposed to do, run around the ship looking for her, bleeding as I was? And Armando wondered why I didn’t make friends. After a while, I was so frustrated that, not knowing what else to do, I went to the dining room and looked for the Neapolitan waiter, and asked him if he knew where Armando could be. He pointed and I turned to see Armando busy setting a table. He seemed surprised to see me.

  “You’re alone? Where’s Lucia?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for her. I thought she was still with you.”

  “That one is a mystery to me.”

  “I have to find her. I need to go back to the cabin.”

  “Have you checked with the hawk?”

  “Who’s the hawk?”

  “The Calabrian who follows her like one, who else?”

  I wasn’t the only one who had noticed that Nicodemo had the appearance of a menacing bird.

  Armando jotted a number on a piece of paper. “Check this cabin. It’s on this floor.”

  When I got there, I could hear noises inside, but I didn’t have the courage to knock. I was sure that Lucia was in the cabin, so I sat in the corridor and forced myself to read my book. At least I knew where she was.

  I skimmed through long passages about the life of the l’Innominato. The book had so many stories to keep up with that I skipped whole chapters. All I cared about was finding out what would happen to Lucia in the hands of the evil man. She pleads with him, “God forgives so much for one deed of mercy!” In her prison, Lucia prays continuously for help, and then, to my surprise, she makes a vow of chastity in exchange for safety: “I make a vow to you to remain a virgin. I renounce my poor Renzo forever in order to be henceforth yours and yours alone.”

  I was utterly disappointed at this turn of events. Even if Lucia was saved, she would not be reunited with Renzo. What kind of ending was that? I felt bad enough that Lucia’s and Totu’s story had ended as it did!

  I leafed through the book to see what Renzo was up to. Each time I spotted his name, he was in a different place, looking desperately for Lucia, even as he observes the misery of the outbreak of a plague around him:

  Ceased everywhere were all sounds from shops, all noises of carriages, all cries of street vendors, all chatter of passersby; only rarely was that deadly silence broken by anything but the rumble of funeral carts, the lamentations of the poor, the moaning of the sick, the shrieks of the delirious….

  Vandals called untatori are rumoured to purposely spread infection with plague-tainted objects. Renzo ends up in the lazzaretto, a place set up to contain the thousands who are infected with the black skin blotches of the plague, often to die of hunger, but, most often, from thirst. But Renzo never gave up on his search for his love—not like Totu who had let Rome get to his head.

  After I had been reading for about forty minutes, I knocked lightly at the door. Nicodemo came out and looked surprised.

  “Ah! A picciotta,” he said, “Come in.”

  He took me by the hand and closed the door. Lucia was lying on a cot, hair dishevelled, straightening her clothes. She walked to the bathroom, saying, “I better go, before they have the whole ship after me.” Then Nicodemo sat on the bed and stroked my face as I stood facing him. It wasn’t the usual friendly tap on the cheek, but a slow caress. He took my hand and moved it over his chest towards his waist. I felt a strange sense of fright in being two women alone with a man, but also of pleasure at Nicodemo’s unexpected gesture of affection. No one had ever done that to me before.

  “Stai cca,” Nicodemo spoke to me in dialect, asking me to stay. In a strange mixed feeling of both fright and curiosity I felt like staying, and moved to sit on the cot, just as Lucia came out of the bathroom.

  She looked flustered and angry, rushed towards the cot, took my hand and pulled me away before I could say anything.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  Once on deck, she let go of my hand, pushing me against the railings.

  “Why are you mad at me?” I screamed at her. “You’re jealous because Nicodemo wanted me to stay?”

  “You’re so stupid,” Lucia said, as she leaned against the railing, looking into the water.

  “You’re stupid, not me. I’m tired of watching over you like a baby.” She kept staring at the water with a glazed look in her eyes.

  “I’m a woman, you’re a baby,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have come into that room. You should be playing with girls your age.”

  “How can I, when I have to follow you all the time?” I screamed at her. “Stop running around with other men. Don’t you care about your husband?”

  “How can I care about someone that I don’t know?”

  “So whom do you love now, Nicodemo or Armando?”

  “Who is talking about love, you stupid thing? And what do you know about life? You’re still a baby. You think you’re smart just because you’re good in school?”

  “I’m not a baby, and I’m smart enough to know that both Armando and Nicodemo are only fooling around with you,”

  “What do you know about what I know? You make me laugh, with your face in that book all the time. All you know is what’s in that book.”

  “At least in the book Lucia and Renzo love each other and they won’t go with anyone else.”

  “That’s a book. It’s not real, stupid. They can write anything they want in a book.”

  “Stop calling me stupid. If you were smarter, maybe Totu wouldn’t have run to Rome to get away from you, and you wouldn’t have married someone else so fast.”

  She turned and slapped me on the face. The slap took me by surprise, and I regretted what I had said to her, until she yelled at me, “If you hadn’t forgotten your stupid jug, maybe Totu and I would still be together.”

  If she had hit my head against the railing, it wouldn’t have hurt as much as those last words. Lucia and Totu, too, had tried to elope one night in late summer and I was to be their accomplice, and prevent them from getting caught. If I had played my part well, their scheme wouldn’t have been botched up and revealed.

  I broke down in sobs, but she didn’t try to console me. Instead she yelled, “I don’t ever want you to mention his name to me again.” She returned to the railing, looking down into the water, and mumbled something I didn’t understand.

  Finally, I yelled, “I’m sick and you don’t care. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of this ship.” She didn’t respond. I yelled louder, “I’m feeling sick. I’m bleeding, do you understand? I’m bleeding.” She didn’t seem to have heard me. “I want to go to bed. What am I supposed to tell the others when I go back to the cabin without you?”

  She kept staring into the ocean, mumbling to herself. Was she really thinking of doing something crazy? I went closer to her and said softly, “Sorry, I’ll never mention him again. Come to the cabin, so the others won’t talk.”

  She ignored me and kept on mumbling in a low monotone voice. I moved even closer to her and pulled on her sleeve. I heard her talking to herself as if in a wail, the way older women moaned at funerals to show their sorrow.

  “I was already dead when I set foot on this boat. I embarked as a walking corpse ... feels neither joy nor pain. I eat just to eat … can’t tell the difference between a pear and a potato. I can’t even vomit … my body is numb … stuffed in a suitcase … it belongs to someone else … someone will claim it and I don’t care where it’s taken. I walked to my own funeral … dressed in white. My heart was torn from my body when I said yes to a ghost. I
didn’t even cry when I left my mother, my father, my brothers, the home where I was born, the home I wanted to live in. How can a body cry without a heart? The only person that can re-join my body to my heart stopped listening … what point is there in crying? Who will hear me?”

  I knew that nothing I’d say would make her feel better. But at least, I understood why she had paid so little attention to me. She didn’t care about herself, how could she care about me? I left her to her mumbling, leaning on the railing. It was only five in the afternoon but the sky was already dark and the mist was so thick that I wondered if we would ever see land again.

  I didn’t know what to think anymore. I had told Lucia off for being with Nicodemo. I also felt dirty and shameful for the strange desire to stay in his room after he had caressed my face. The other Lucia would never have done anything like that. This Lucia was also being delivered to a man against her wishes, even if she had gotten married in a white dress she had designed herself and with the longest veil I’d ever seen. She hadn’t been kidnapped, but I couldn’t blame her for acting like a prisoner held against her wishes.

  As I walked toward the cabin, I had to hold onto the railing. I felt dizzy and weak. I couldn’t wait for this trip to be over and to walk on solid ground again.

  When I returned to the room, I found Luigi, Giuseppina, and the two kids in their beds as usual, but my mother’s bed was empty.

  “I finally convinced her to go to the infirmary,” Luigi said. “They’ll keep her there for the night. She’s too weak.”

  Why had I not been here to take my mother to the infirmary with my brother? “I want to go see her,” I said.

  “No,” replied Luigi. “They’re all sleeping. She’s better off there than here.”

  When Armando came down, he saw me crying. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s a doctor and a nurse watching over her. They’ll give her something to regain her strength.”

  “I want to go see her.” I felt so guilty for having stayed up on the deck for so long and for having blasted her about Lucia.

  “First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll bring you there myself. You have my word,” Armando promised.

  I went back to my book, but I couldn’t read anything. Finally, I dozed off, crying.

  10. DAY EIGHT

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, I heard a man come to my bed. He whispered, “Come with me.”

  I didn’t want to make him wait, so I got up in my slip. I took his hand, and went with him quietly, trying not to wake the others. We went down a staircase. Funny, I thought, I didn’t think the ship had a deck lower than ours.

  “The hospital is way, way up,” he said. “But we need to go down before we go up. We still have a long way to go.” I should have taken my shoes, my coat, before leaving. I didn’t even have underwear on. I touched my bum and it was naked. I walked along a long corridor. Some of the cabins were open, but so dark I couldn’t see any people inside them or even any walls—only emptiness. I screamed when, inside one, I saw huge columns rising, like in a church. “Untatore, untatore,” people screamed, while a priest all dressed in gold held up a gold ostensorium that sparkled like a sun. It must be the feast of Corpus Christi. I looked for my basket of rose petals to take to the procession, but the man pulled me by the hand.

  “Let’s run out of here,” he said, alarmed. A mother kissed a baby girl on the forehead, then laid her down as if putting her to bed. “Goodbye, Cecilia! Rest in peace.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Finally, we’re in Milano.” It was Armando.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll see my father here. Where’s my mother? I stayed out too long. I want to see her before she dies.”

  “Sure, sure,” he answered. “Come with me and you’ll find your mother and your father.”

  “You’re tricking me,” I screamed at Armando. “Chiaccherone, chiaccherone.” A wave as high as the boat raised me up to the ceiling. The boat bobbed up and down and I felt very sick, but I kept myself from vomiting. I was too embarrassed. All around me I saw litter—bloody rags, rotting bandages, infected straw.

  I tried running up a hill but I kept slipping backward on the brown vomit that flowed down like mud. I heard a bunch of kids playing ring around the rosie, running round and round, covered in vomit and shit, while an old woman threw a pot with yellow piss at us. Here and there lay corpses … and I can hear the lamentations of the poor. Men in brown sackcloths, their heads bent and covered with brown hoods, carried stretchers on which naked bodies were dumped one on top of the other. Shrieks of the delirious….

  A surge of warm vomit made me reach for the bucket, but it was at the foot of the bed and I threw up all over the blanket. “Ma,” I tried yelling, but no sound came out. I folded the slimy wet cover away from me. I lay back again, but it was so cold without the cover. I scrunched myself up into a ball, and pulled my slip down to cover my bum and bloody rag.

  “When will I see my mother?” I cried. I started running away in a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys, but no matter how hard I tried, I was going nowhere. My slip rode up above my hips and I was completely naked, cold and ashamed, and with nowhere to hide.

  I heard muffled voices. I opened my eyes and saw Armando walking slowly toward my bed, holding Mother by the arms.

  “Caterina,” he said. “Wake up. I have a surprise for you.” I tried to pull the cover over myself, but it felt sticky and damp. Mother was smiling.

  As she came to kiss me, she felt the folded-up blanket. “You’re throwing up now? I finish and you start?”

  “I had a bad, bad dream,” I mumbled groggily.

  Then mother must have noticed spots of blood on the sheet. She lifted my slip up and felt my bum.

  “That’s all I needed, now,” she said, smiling, and pulled my slip down.

  “See, Caterina,” Armando said, “I always keep my word. I went to see her this morning and she insisted on coming back down here. I tried to convince her to stay up, but you Calabrese women are all the same—hard-headed!”

  “You look better today,” Giuseppina told my mother.

  “You’re joking,” she replied. “Paru na morta.” Then she went over to kiss Luigi, who was just waking up. She acted as though she had been away for a long time. Then she asked, “Where’s Lucia?”

  I looked around and saw that Lucia’s bed was empty. I didn’t remember hearing her come in after I had gone to bed. My heart leaped into my throat in a rush of panic.

  I remembered her staring into the water. I jumped out of bed.

  “I’ll go look for her,” I said.

  “When you find her, come back right away. I want to talk to you,” Mother said with a sigh.

  “She must have felt really hungry to get up this early,” Armando said, not sounding at all alarmed. “That one gets hungrier and hungrier the stormier it gets.”

  I washed, and went looking for Lucia. I felt better now that I had finally thrown up and relieved that my mother had seen the blood and had not been frightened. I had been so happy to see Mother back, but now I had to worry about Lucia, again. Had she stayed out all night, or had she come to bed and then gone out again? Had I dreamed that a man came into the room? Or had it been Armando looking for Lucia? “Come with me,” he had whispered. Had he called to me, or to her?

  I passed by the deck and went to the dining room, but there was no sign of Lucia. Then I ran to the first-class deck and lounge, but still no Lucia. I contemplated going to Nicodemo’s room, but as I walked down the stairs, I heard her call me from the top deck.

  “Where were you all night?” I asked her when she came down.

  “I slept on the sofa in the lounge. I couldn’t take it in the cabin with those two little pests, crying and sniffling, and everyone vomiting all over. I got up in the middle of the night and went to the lounge.” She sounded normal as if nothing had happened bet
ween us the day before.

  “It scared me when I didn’t see you in the room.”

  “What could have happened to me?” she asked.

  “I was afraid you had really jumped into the water.”

  “If I had the courage to jump into the water, I wouldn’t be on this ship.”

  “I heard someone come into the room during the night. Did Armando come to get you?”

  “No, I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. You must have been dreaming.”

  “I had a nightmare. Why did you go to Nicodemo’s room?”

  “Caterina, I didn’t do anything wrong. When you’re older you’ll understand. You can be with a man and not do anything really wrong. In Mulirena we were really stupid. They made us believe that just being alone with a man was a sin, that everything we did for ourselves was a sin. It’s too late for me, but you’re still very young. Don’t let anybody tell you what’s good for you.”

  “But why would you go with someone like Nicodemo and not Armando, who is so much smarter?”

  “Armando talks and talks, but he lives in the clouds all the time.… I don’t trust people like him anymore.”

  I would have chosen Armando over Nicodemo anytime, but I held my tongue and said instead, “I need to go back to the cabin, to tell Mother you’re okay. She wants to talk with me.”

  Mother took me aside in her bed and explained to me in a low voice what the blood meant. She seemed uncomfortable speaking about it, but she assured me that it was all normal, that I wasn’t sick, but that I would have to be very careful about what I did with boys from now on, that I wasn’t a little girl anymore.