Listen to My Voice by Susanna Tamaro Read Free Book Online Page B

atavistic sense of guilt they had all shared, and this new knowledge allowed them to recognise the incredible violence that had been done to their imaginations with the childhood injunction that girls must play only with dolls and miniature cooking sets. ‘The prelude to slavery!’ one of the women shouted, and everyone applauded
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    My turn was coming up, and I didn’t know what to say. Then a memory came to me like a flash, an episode with my father: I must have been six or seven, and after dinner, walking with great care, I brought him his coffee in the living room. ‘What a good little housewife!’ he exclaimed, smiling at me
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    Now, I said, it was clear that I’d been carrying that mark, that burden, that destination stamp inside me ever since. What if I’d wanted to become a neurosurgeon or an astronaut? My words caught everyone’s attention and earned general agreement. To hell with the good little housewives and all other clippers of wings. When I left the meeting, I felt as though I’d grown lighter
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    27 December
    In order to keep the skirmishes from escalating into full-scale warfare, I had to come home for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, there was the usual gathering of widowed friends, depressed women, and distant relatives with nowhere else to go, and that way at least we could all be together and feel so very very good
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    The M., as usual, played the victim, announcing more than once that she’d been cooking for two entire days and hoping to receive applause and shouts of joy as her reward. And so it came to pass, as though according to a script. The comedy was played all the way through, right to the end, and no one missed a line. ‘It’s been a perfectly lovely evening, my dear, thanks so much,’ kiss kiss, ‘It was nothing, nothing at all, the bare minimum,’ and so on and so forth, in a cloying minuet
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    ‘Cloying’ was also the word for the tree, with all its silvery tinsel, but nothing cloyed like the crèche: the ultimate representation of universal brainwashing, the Holy Family, which has been neutering normal families for two thousand years. There’s nothing sacred about those other families, but they pretend all the same, drain their poisoned chalices to the dregs, and go forth with a smile
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    That night in my bed, however, I thought about the Madonna, about how she’s basically the symbol of the woman of bygone days, the most exploited of all, because she had a child without even getting to enjoy the sexual act; when she looked the Holy Spirit in the eye, that was enough, it was all over for her, and for nearly two thousand years she’s been standing around with that blank expression on her face
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    And so, in the morning, before I left, I did her a favour. I snatched the little statue from her place at St Joseph’s side, left a note in the crèche that said ‘get over it,’ and took the Madonna out for some fresh air
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    Before getting on the bus, I put the statue on the low wall behind the bus stop. Let’s hope someone picks her up and carries her around for a while to help make up for lost time
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    31 December
    Seeing that T.’s still back in her snowbound valley, I’m giving a big party tonight. While I was shopping earlier, I ran into Professor A. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him. I would’ve liked to talk to him, but shyness overcame me. I thought he’d probably look at me with terror in his eyes – he can’t be expected to remember all his students!
    As I moved away from him, pushing my cart, I had the feeling he was looking at me. His eyes are black as coal, and when he speaks they seem to flash. Maybe they’re the reason why I felt such intense heat right between my shoulder-blades
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    Goodbye, old year; we’ll bid you farewell, wrapped in the dense smoke of the peace pipe
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    When 1969 came to an end, I closed the diary.
    An anonymous car alarm sounded somewhere in the distance. There was a talk show on the television. Everyone talked and talked, with empty