A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi Read Free Book Online Page B

landing?
    Much of the rest, I divvied up into small legacies. Sophie was transforming a spare bedroom into an office; hence, she got the French desk. I knew my friend Luly wanted the baker’s rack, and so we stuffed it into the backseat of her car one evening. There were many such scenes. And rather than being sad at parting with so much, I found my new and relative minimalism exhilarating. I felt as though I’d weeded, scrubbed, dug in the earth clear down to China.

    My waiting days were full. The café in the morning, writing in the afternoon, back to the café for final prep. I fitted in meetings,way out on the godforsaken edges of the city, with the Italian consulate, which comprised a battered old wooden desk, an older Smith Corona portable, and an older yet
palermitana
—a woman from Palermo—the wife of the insurance agent in whose office the consulate was situated.
La signora
was aubergine-haired, thick at her middle, and had spindly legs. Her fingernails were painted bright red, and she sucked at cigarettes in a hungry, hollow-cheeked way. She somehow pulled the smoke up into her nose and into her mouth at the same time, then tilted her head back and sent the last wisps of it curling upward, all the while holding the smoldering thing between those red-tipped fingers and up close to her cheek. She whispered a lot. It was as though her husband—two yards away and seated at a huge formica desk—shouldn’t be privy to our discourse. She pecked away on the Smith Corona, preserving my life’s story on sheaves of official paper provided by the Italian government.
    My personal data, my motive for moving to Italy, testimonies of my free and unmarried state and my upright citizenship, the size of the bankroll with which I would enter my new country, premarital documents to satisfy the state, premarital documents to satisfy the church—all were transcribed. It was a work that might have been accomplished in less than forty efficient minutes, but the lady from Palermo saw fit to extend the task over four full-morning congresses. The signora wanted to talk. She wanted to be sure, she whisperedthrough her smoke, I knew what I was doing. “What do you know about Italian men?” she challenged, from under her dark-shadowed, half-closed eyes. I only smiled. Miffed at my silence, she typed faster and stamped the papers viciously, repeatedly, with the great inked seal of the Italian state. She tried again. “They’re all
mammoni
, mama’s boys. That’s why I married an American. Americans are less
furbi
, less cunning,” she whispered. “All they want is a big-screen television, to play golf on Saturday, go off to Rotary Club on Wednesday, and to watch, once in a while, when you’re dressing. They never complain about food as long as it’s meat and it’s hot and it’s served before six o’clock. Have you ever cooked for an Italian man?,” she whispered more loudly.
    As her inquiries became more intimate, she typed and stamped more furiously. She told me to leave my money in an American bank, to put my furniture in storage. I’d be back within a year, she said. She saved for last her story of the Illinois blonde who divorced her handsome politician husband to marry a Roman who already had a wife whom he kept in Salerno and, as it turned out, a Dutch boyfriend to whom he made monthly visits in Amsterdam. I paid her arbitrary and exaggerated fees, took my thick, perfectly executed portfolio, accepted her airy Marlboro-scented kisses, and drove away, wondering about this compulsion some women seemed to have about saving me from the stranger.
    The evenings I spent almost always alone, in a soft sort of idleness. Before leaving the café, I’d pack up some small choice thing for my supper and be home by eight. I’d pull Fernando’s same old woolen undershirt, still unwashed, over my nightgown, light a fire in one room or another,