The Bottom of Your Heart Read online

  “I’m going to be happy,” she murmured. And she started to nod, slowly and forcefully, as if she were listening to a voice from within telling her just how to do that. “I’m going to be happy. I know I will. I have it written in the depths of my heart.”

  III

  I’m going to be happy, thought Enrica. I’m going to be happy.

  The air in the closed interior of the steamer was unbreathable, so she’d stepped out onto the deck. But the hot wind brought no relief, and the smell of diesel fuel coupled with the rolling of the deck made her seasick; for the thousandth time she wondered whether she’d made the right choice.

  I’m going to be happy, she repeated to herself firmly. She even whispered it, without realizing it, and a fat woman looking green around the gills stared at her curiously.

  The last few months hadn’t been easy. Shy by nature, she’d had to force herself to build, painstakingly and patiently, a friendship with Rosa, the childhood governess of the man she’d fallen in love with.

  Had she fallen in love? Yes, no question. She was more than certain. Because love, Enrica thought to herself, is a physical thing more than a state of mind. You can measure it by the beat that your heart skips every time he lays his eyes on you, and by the extra little surge in the next beat, when you realize that there’s a tenderness welling up in those eyes. Love is the heat that you feel on your face at the idea of placing your lips against his. Love is the sinking feeling in your belly when you spot his silhouette at the window, on a dark winter evening, glimpsed from across the street, through the rain.

  Love is something physical. And she was in love.

  The absurd thing was that the whole time she’d always sensed, in her heart, on her skin, in her gut, that he loved her too. And during the long months in which he had watched her from the window and she had awaited a single gesture, a word, she’d wondered why he hadn’t declared himself. Was there another woman?

  The only way to find out was to talk to those who knew him, and there was only one person who fit that description, namely his elderly governess, his old tata, a modest woman, only apparently bad-tempered, who’d welcomed Enrica’s desperate appeal with pragmatism, telling her how much she hoped Enrica’s wish would come true, and sooner rather than later, too, because Rosa was tired and afraid that her young master would be left alone, once she was no longer around to look after him.

  Now, on the deck of the steamer, as Enrica clasped her hat to her head with one begloved hand, and pressed a scented handkerchief to her nose with the other, she struggled to remember the enthusiasm and trepidation she had felt when she first set foot in his home. At Easter she had felt she could sweep aside any obstacle, that—with her innate calm and patience—she would be able to claim her desired place, beside the lifetime companion she had chosen in silence, in the privacy of her bedroom, reading and rereading the first awkward letter that he had sent her, in which he asked her permission to greet her when they met.

  She had cooked for him. With Rosa’s help, she’d put together a meal with all the dishes he loved best. She’d picked out a dress, a perfume, a pair of shoes. She’d even planned out the topics of conversation. She was ready; she felt like the woman she most wanted to be.

  She gulped back a sob that was rising in her chest. She felt sorry for herself when she thought back to that night. He’d never shown up at all, and there she had sat, stiff and silent, while Rosa, embarrassed and sad, watched her from the kitchen door, not knowing what to say. Finally Enrica had gotten up and gone home. Later, when her fear for his safety won out over her mortification, she’d stood watching at the window until she’d heard a car pull up in the street below, and she’d seen him step out of the car with a chauffeur holding the door; she’d been able to make out a silhouette in the car’s cab and, in the silent night, she’d heard a woman’s laugh. That woman.

  That was when she’d made up her mind to be happy in spite of him.

  If he preferred the other woman, she could hardly blame him. She’d seen her once, at the Gran Caffè Gambrinus, and she could hardly ignore her beauty, her style, and her elegance. Rosa had said in a contemptuous tone that she was a fallen woman, one of those who smoke in public and flirt with everyone, but Enrica knew how difficult it was, for a simple schoolteacher like her, to complete with someone like that other woman.

  Enrica’s mother—who never missed a chance to point out that when a girl reaches the age of twenty-four she can officially call herself an old maid, that her younger sister (younger!) had not only been married for over two years but already had a son, while Enrica seemed fated to a future of miserable loneliness—watched her with unconcealed and growing concern, and this pained Enrica intolerably, especially now that she couldn’t even lay secret claim to a love she believed was reciprocated. Her father, so similar in temperament to Enrica, quiet and gently determined, understood that if he spoke to her about it he’d only wound her further; and so he watched her surreptitiously, helplessly, sympathetically sharing in the sorrow that he could see on her face.

  Shielding her glasses from the sea’s spray, Enrica told herself that yes, she’d made the right decision. She couldn’t stand the prospect of a long hot summer, of having to duck her head every time she walked past his window; struggling to keep from looking across the street on afternoons when she tutored students forced to take makeup exams in the fall; doing her best to sidestep painful chance encounters with Rosa in the grocer’s shop downstairs. What could she tell the old woman? That she didn’t think she was up to fighting for the man she loved? That the weapons of seduction, which that other woman seemed so expert in, weren’t part of her arsenal? That she was so cowardly and resigned that she was willing to step aside, so long as it put an end to her suffering?

  And so she’d stopped by the teachers’ college where she’d taken her degree and inquired whether they knew of anyone who might be looking for a teacher. Was she running away? Yes. She was running away. From him. From herself. From what she wished had happened and hadn’t. From the stagnant life she hadn’t been able to escape.

  She’d thought it over long and hard, and decided that this was the best solution. They called them “temporary climatic colonies”; they were designed to ward off tuberculosis, one of the diseases that threatened children’s health. Give a sick child to the sea, and the sea will give back a healthy child, ran the slogan; who could say if that were true. In any case, it was a way to offer fresh air to those who couldn’t afford it, and an opportunity for the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the Fascist youth organization, to do some summertime proselytizing. The director of the college, who remembered Enrica as the best student she’d ever had, had given her a hug and promised that she’d make sure she was first in line if any openings presented themselves. Sure enough, a few days later the director had sent for her.

  Enrica’s father had objected; he’d rather have kept his daughter close. But her mother had supported her, in the hope that a new setting might offer a chance to meet new people.

  So now Enrica found herself aboard a ship steaming toward the island of Ischia, twenty miles across the Bay of Naples, where a summer colony was currently missing one of its teachers; the last one had been discovered to be scandalously pregnant, though unmarried. Apparently fate wanted to second her decision to put as much distance as she could between herself and those sorrowful green eyes that appeared to her every night in her dreams—when, that is, she finally managed to get to sleep after tossing and turning for hours.

  She squinted into the sunshine, gulped, and tried to distract herself by admiring the view. She recognized Pizzofalcone, the Charterhouse of San Martino, Castel Sant’Elmo standing atop its brilliant green hill; along the coast, the handsome façades of the palaces of Santa Lucia and Castel dell’Ovo, which stretched alongside the water like a long stone finger. Further back, Posillipo tumbled downhill toward the bright blue waters of the bay, with its court of a hundred fis
hing boats returning after a night out on the water. The city, teeming and treacherous, assumed a stirring beauty from that vantage point, and she felt a twinge of homesickness. Enrica wondered what people who are forced to emigrate must feel when they sail away and turn to look back at that spectacular view, knowing they may never set eyes on it again.

  A knot of despair swelled in her throat. The green-gilled woman, who’d been struggling against an overwhelming urge to vomit, found the strength to ask her if she felt well. Enrica nodded with a tight smile, then turned back toward sea to conceal the ocean of tears that had filled her eyes.

  I’m going to be happy, she said over and over again to herself. I’m going to be happy.

  And she silently wept.

  IV

  Once a year, in this city, the heat comes. The real heat.

  Of course, one might say that there are plenty of times when the temperature is too high, that, generally speaking, it’s never really cold here. But that’s not entirely true. One might also say that, even in other seasons, there are days when the south wind—the sirocco—brings hot air out of Africa, driving people mad, making them do things, say things, think things they would never have otherwise even imagined. And true, that does sometimes happen. But heat, the genuine article, only comes once a year.

  It’s never a surprise. People begin bracing for it in springtime, when the sweet scent of flowers spreads through the city and men loosen their ties in the sunshine, when it becomes more pleasant to stop and chat on the street or out an open window, conversing across the narrow streets and the vicoli of the center of town. The heat’ll come any day now, say the housewives, cheerfully pinning sheets onto clotheslines that might stretch between the balconies of two different buildings; the woman say this with a smile, but in their voices there’s a faint note of concern. Because they all know that the heat, the genuine authentic heat, is a serious, terrible thing.

  When the real heat comes, it doesn’t arrive unexpectedly. It has its fixed dates, and it moves like a naval flotilla, crossing the sea in procession. It sends a few clouds on ahead to give word of its arrival, and perhaps a sudden cloudburst, just to create an illusion, a diversion on the eve of the final onslaught. Dogs sniff at the air, occasionally emitting an uneasy yelp. The old men sigh.

  Finally there’s a night that offers no cool respite from the heat of the day, as it usually would, and that’s the first signal. The men wander through their homes searching in vain for some combination of open windows that will provide a semblance of a crosscurrent. The young mothers watch over their sleeping children, unable to forget the stories they’ve heard of newborns found dead, in their cribs, at dawn.

  The dreaded sun rises, bringing the first day of heat. It rises into the sky like a warship sailing into port, menacing and aflame. And it shows no mercy. The strolling vendors are caught unawares, already out in the streets, and they immediately find themselves dripping with sweat under the burden of their wares; if the goods they’re selling are perishable, they’ll desperately try to protect them and keep them appetizing, but they will inevitably be unsuccessful: everything begins to look withered, poor, and ugly. Much like the vendors themselves, as they strain to attract the attention of the women they sell to with their hoarse cries, women who are careful not to step out onto their balconies, if there is any way they can avoid it. Things are even worse for the shopkeepers, waiting anxiously, motionless at the thresholds of their stores, while the interiors grow so hot that they’re uninhabitable unless equipped with slow-turning ceiling fans.

  The churches are still safe, and their cool naves and aisles are soon invaded by regular churchgoers as well as by those who, in cooler seasons, are busier sinning than seeking redemption. The women bathe the smallest children with damp rags and keep them in the shade, while for the older ones they ready a basin of cool water which, though it will soon turn hot, at least gives them a chance to have some fun, splashing and screaming.

  From the earliest morning hours the beaches are swarming with people, but they seem almost motionless. Because the heat, the real heat, is another dimension altogether in which time swells, like legs in stockings. Words and sounds change, and trains of thoughts run along different tracks when the real heat descends. The boys no longer play tug-of-war, the girls no longer stroll in pairs or quartets along the shore, showing off their cunning little hats or their striped swimsuits which have fake belts at the waist and leave half their thighs uncovered; no one does daredevil flips off the diving boards on the wharfs. It’s too hot to move much in a sea that doesn’t even cool you off for long. All prefer to loll in the water like walruses, carrying on slow conversations interrupted now and then by a brief dunk of the head. The big-bellied captains of industry half-sprawled on the wet sand look like so many beached whales, as they chat about business and politics and sleepily read the morning papers.

  Gradually, as the hours go by, the sun shows less and less pity. The customary topics of conversation—the events of the day, the winning lottery numbers, the American economic crisis of a few years earlier and the resulting depression, recounted in apocalyptic letters from emigrant relatives—are swept away by the heat, the real heat. People look each other in the face, pale and miserable, from across the street, exchange a slow, wan wave, mouth an appropriate cliché (“Hot enough for you?”), and then trudge on, dragging their feet across the cement. People make dates to meet in the Galleria, as if trying to form disheveled salons under the glass ceilings, in search of a little shade, muggy and unsatisfying though it is, and they talk about how long the heat can last.

  A specific body of lore flourishes: buddy, last night just to get a little cool air I slept on the floor; that’s nothing, buddy, I went out and slept on my balcony in nothing but my underpants and undershirt, and the mosquitoes practically ate me alive, alive they almost ate me, look here at the bumps I have on my arms. Straw boaters are waved over the face like fans, and young men in two-tone shoes talk down the charms of the young signorine who walk past slowly, to spare themselves the effort of attempting to strike up conversation. The many overweight gentlemen and the many oversized matrons bemoan, in the presence of the heat, the genuine authentic heat, the bygone years when they strolled light-footed, their toes barely touching the ground as they floated along on the feathered wings of lost youth, but they console themselves with the thought that this heat has killed their appetites, even as they eat the fourth gelato of the day to soothe their parched throats.

  The outdoor café tables, sheltered under broad white awnings, are the objects of rustic duels, and the winners linger, nursing their drinks with tiny sips while those waiting for a spot to open up observe them with ill-concealed hostility, wishing all manner of painful deaths upon them. The coachmen, waiting in vain for paying passengers, battle for a place in the shade of the buildings lining the piazza, nod off seated in their carriages, mouths open, hats pulled down over their eyes.

  The trolleys that rattle and screech up into the hills and down toward the water are loaded with families in search of even a theoretical whiff of cool air. Sweat and stench prevail inside the trolleys, and everyone envies the freedom of the street urchins, the Neapolitan scugnizzi hanging off the outside of the streetcars in clusters, enjoying a free ride, as naked and dark as African natives, shouting and cheerful as clowns. The driver, snorting in annoyance, will stop the streetcar from time to time and step out to chase them off; the scugnizzi scamper away like a flock of swallows, laughing at his threats, calling back insults, only to assault the vehicle as soon as it gets moving again.

  When the heat comes, the real heat, it lowers a blanket of silence and fear over the city, because everyone is certain it will never end. Every item of clothing, no matter how light, seems like a thick woolen blanket, intolerable, and dark haloes of sweat soak the cloth under the armpits and on the chest. Forced to wear suits and ties, office clerks walking up and down the stairs of the buildings where they wor
k sigh as they realize they’ll have to have their garments washed ahead of time, and they dread the cleaner’s bill, while marriageable young women try to go out less often in order to keep the wave the beautician, who made a house call, has set in their hair—for in this heat, the wave will wilt quickly.

  People look down from their balconies, scanning the street for the appearance of the iceman, calling out his wares with a shout. The ice will be more expensive than usual and there will be loud angry protests, but no one who can afford it will go without a hunk of cold, to which he will entrust his hopes that sooner or later the heat, this honest-to-goodness heat, will end. The negotiations with the iceman are different from those with any other strolling vendor. In fact, there are no negotiations at all; he knows his customers’ need and desire, and he refuses even to stop unless he hears the clinking of coins, in part because he knows that to stop means to allow some of the white gold that he carries in his cart, insulated by blankets and rags, to melt. Once he has received the price demanded, he extracts the block of ice with an iron hook and, before the entranced gazes of the children, cuts off a chunk using a hooked black cleaver, while a scugnizzo triumphantly collects the fragments that fall to the ground. Given the weight of the ice, no one will be able to buy it from the upper floors of an apartment building and lower a basket on a rope to haul it up, the way people do with fruit and vegetables; but carrying it back home, up the dark, steep stairs, will be more enjoyable, with that cool bundle in one’s arms.

  Heat, the real heat, lasts only a few days and, with a few rare exceptions, those few days fall between the beginning and the middle of July. Days without rain and without peace, blasted by a harsh light made milky by a shroud of mist that hovers in midair, like a curse floating over the city. Days in which the elderly become taciturn, their eyes lost in the empty air, with no stories to tell, no complaints about their aches and pains, no venomous criticisms of their neighbors or acquaintances in the vicolo. Labored breaths become a sort of lugubrious soundtrack; not even monosyllabic responses to the worried questions of their children about how they feel.