2.
S he had married late, in June of 1943, after the American bombing of Cagliari, and in those days to be thirty and not yet settled was already to be something of an old maid. Not that she was ugly, or lacked suitors—on the contrary. But at a certain point the wooers called less frequently and then stopped, each time before they had officially asked my great-grandfather for her hand. Dear signorina , circumstances beyond my control prevent me from calling on you this Wednesday, and also next, which would be very enjoyable for me but, unfortunately, impossible. So grandmother waited for the third Wednesday, but a little girl, a pipiedda , always arrived with the letter that put off the visit again, and then there was nothing.
My great-grandfather and her sisters loved her just the same, though she was almost an old maid, but not my great-grandmother; she always treated her as if she were not her own flesh and blood and said that she knew why.
On Sunday, when the girls went to Mass or to parade along the main street with their young men, grandmother gathered her hair into a bun—it was still thick and black when I was a child and she already old, imagine what it was like then—and went to church to ask God why, why he was so unjust as to deny her the knowledge of love, which is the most beautiful thing, the only thing that makes life worth living, a life in which you get up at four in the morning to do the household chores and then you go to the fields and then to the school for boring embroidery and then to get drinking water from the fountain with the pitcher on your head, and then you’re up one whole night out of ten to make the bread and then you draw the water from the well and then you have to feed the chickens. So if God didn’t want her to know love he might as well kill her, any way he wanted. In confession the priest told her that such thoughts were a serious sin and that there are many other things in the world, but grandmother didn’t care at all about other things.
One day my great-grandmother waited for her in the courtyard with the whip, made of ox sinew, and began to hit her until even her head was bleeding and she had a high fever. She had discovered from rumors in the town that the suitors stopped coming because grandmother wrote them passionate love poems that alluded to obscene things and that her daughter was disgracing not only herself but her whole family. And she went on hitting her, hitting her and yelling “ Dimonia! dimonia! ” and cursing the day they had sent her to elementary school, and she had learned to write.
3.
I n May of 1943 my grandfather arrived in the town; he was over forty and was an employee of the salt works in Cagliari. He had had a beautiful house on Via Giuseppe Manno, just beside the church of San Giorgio and Santa Caterina, a house with a view over the rooftops to the harbor and the sea. After the bombing of May 13th, nothing was left of this house and the church and many other things, except a hole and a pile of rubble. Grandmother’s family welcomed this respectable gentleman, who had not been called up to fight because of his age, who was a very recent widower, an evacuee with only a borrowed suitcase and a few things pulled from the ruins. They took him in for nothing. By June he had asked for grandmother’s hand, and married her. She wept almost every day in the month before the marriage. She knelt at my great-grandfather’s feet and begged him to say no, to pretend that she was promised to someone away in the war. Otherwise, if they didn’t want her in the house anymore, she would go to Cagliari, she would look for a job. “ De Casteddu bèninti innòi, filla mia, e tui bòli si andai ingúni! Non c’esti prus núdda in sa cittàdi ”—“They’re coming here from Cagliari, child, and you want to go there! There’s nothing left in the city.”
“ Macca esti ,” my great-grandmother shouted. “ Macca schetta! In sa cittadi a fai
S he had married late, in June of 1943, after the American bombing of Cagliari, and in those days to be thirty and not yet settled was already to be something of an old maid. Not that she was ugly, or lacked suitors—on the contrary. But at a certain point the wooers called less frequently and then stopped, each time before they had officially asked my great-grandfather for her hand. Dear signorina , circumstances beyond my control prevent me from calling on you this Wednesday, and also next, which would be very enjoyable for me but, unfortunately, impossible. So grandmother waited for the third Wednesday, but a little girl, a pipiedda , always arrived with the letter that put off the visit again, and then there was nothing.
My great-grandfather and her sisters loved her just the same, though she was almost an old maid, but not my great-grandmother; she always treated her as if she were not her own flesh and blood and said that she knew why.
On Sunday, when the girls went to Mass or to parade along the main street with their young men, grandmother gathered her hair into a bun—it was still thick and black when I was a child and she already old, imagine what it was like then—and went to church to ask God why, why he was so unjust as to deny her the knowledge of love, which is the most beautiful thing, the only thing that makes life worth living, a life in which you get up at four in the morning to do the household chores and then you go to the fields and then to the school for boring embroidery and then to get drinking water from the fountain with the pitcher on your head, and then you’re up one whole night out of ten to make the bread and then you draw the water from the well and then you have to feed the chickens. So if God didn’t want her to know love he might as well kill her, any way he wanted. In confession the priest told her that such thoughts were a serious sin and that there are many other things in the world, but grandmother didn’t care at all about other things.
One day my great-grandmother waited for her in the courtyard with the whip, made of ox sinew, and began to hit her until even her head was bleeding and she had a high fever. She had discovered from rumors in the town that the suitors stopped coming because grandmother wrote them passionate love poems that alluded to obscene things and that her daughter was disgracing not only herself but her whole family. And she went on hitting her, hitting her and yelling “ Dimonia! dimonia! ” and cursing the day they had sent her to elementary school, and she had learned to write.
3.
I n May of 1943 my grandfather arrived in the town; he was over forty and was an employee of the salt works in Cagliari. He had had a beautiful house on Via Giuseppe Manno, just beside the church of San Giorgio and Santa Caterina, a house with a view over the rooftops to the harbor and the sea. After the bombing of May 13th, nothing was left of this house and the church and many other things, except a hole and a pile of rubble. Grandmother’s family welcomed this respectable gentleman, who had not been called up to fight because of his age, who was a very recent widower, an evacuee with only a borrowed suitcase and a few things pulled from the ruins. They took him in for nothing. By June he had asked for grandmother’s hand, and married her. She wept almost every day in the month before the marriage. She knelt at my great-grandfather’s feet and begged him to say no, to pretend that she was promised to someone away in the war. Otherwise, if they didn’t want her in the house anymore, she would go to Cagliari, she would look for a job. “ De Casteddu bèninti innòi, filla mia, e tui bòli si andai ingúni! Non c’esti prus núdda in sa cittàdi ”—“They’re coming here from Cagliari, child, and you want to go there! There’s nothing left in the city.”
“ Macca esti ,” my great-grandmother shouted. “ Macca schetta! In sa cittadi a fai
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