A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi Page A

told me these things only many years later. At the time, what he did was to reinforce my clearly pathological insecurities about being a lovable person.
    â€œHe’s a psychologist. He’s also cunning. And what he did was stop talking to me. He withdrew, leaving me to stumble and tremble, to wonder what was happening. And when he did talk, mostly it was to ridicule and threaten. He seemed to enjoy his immense capacity to frighten me.” Fernando’s face is no longer red but very white. Each phrase seems to need five minutes of translation, then another eternity for him to take it in. At least the water is cooling. But I’m crying.
    I continue, “I didn’t even understand what depression was, but depressed I must have been. I was pregnant with Erich during the worst of it. Perhaps I knew then that his father was already gone from us. It was my little girl, Lisa, who got excited by the baby’s firstkick. It was she, her head in my lap, who rejoiced at his rumblings, translated them for me. She and I sang to the baby, told him how we already loved him, that we couldn’t wait to hold him. Still, somehow, Erich was born knowing about sadness.”
    Now Fernando is crying too, and he says he needs me to be in his arms, and so we slosh out to the bedroom and lie down.
    â€œSoon after Erich’s birth, there were moments when I confronted my husband, telling him I was lonely and frightened. ‘Why are you so cruel,’ I’d ask him. ‘Why don’t you hold your daughter? Why don’t you hold the baby? Why don’t you love us?’
    â€œBut he was just biding his time waiting for that exit cue. So I provided it, Fernando, I provided just the perfect reason to make him go away. I met a man and fell madly for him. I thought him kind and sensitive. I saw him infrequently, but I was certain his passion was an expression of love. ‘Ah, so this is what it’s like,’ I’d think. When my husband followed my well-laid tracks, I still believed he’d fight for me. But he was gone in three days. Still it would be okay because the other man really loved me. He really loved me, I was sure.
    â€œI couldn’t tell my lover by telephone, though, so I got on the train and we met for lunch and I said, ‘He knows. He knows everything, and now he’s gone and we’re free.’
    â€œâ€˜Free to do what?’ he asked me, without taking the cigarette from his mouth.
    â€œâ€˜Free to be together. I mean, that’s what you want, isn’t it?’ I asked him. He was a master at hesitation. Through a fresh puff of smoke, I heard him say, ‘Fool.’ He must have said other things, but that’s all I can remember. I got up from my chair and careened to the ladies’ room. I stayed there, being sick, for a very long time. The woman who tended the rest room was waiting for me when I finally came out of the toilet, a wet cloth in her hand. She told me to lean on her, to sit. I tried to laugh, saying that perhaps I was pregnant. ‘No. This is a broken heart,’ she told me. The French say that women die only from the first man. For me, death came twice in the same week.”
    We lay there quietly until Fernando got up on his knees and, looking down at me, his hands on my shoulders, he said, “There isn’t an agony in this world more powerful than tenderness.”

8

Everyone Cares How They Are Judged
    As often as I give the stranger reasons to cry, I seem to give him even more reasons to laugh. I tell his colleague at the bank, a man from Pisa, that I find
i piselli
among the kindest folks in Italy. Unfortunately what I really say is that I find
peas
to be among the kindest folks in Italy.
Piselli
, peas. The citizens of Pisa are called
pisani
. Signor Muzzi is clever enough to not react to my gaffe and loquacious enough to recount and embroider the story so that
l’americana
causes tittering among staff and