Memories Flayed Up Yearly

Francesca Woodman - Untitled. Rome,
September 1977. From "The Angel Series".

Moving from room to room, endlessly. And then quitting and doing it again. In the house, always inside it. The temperature changes with the seasons. The noises are endless. The electric fan is absolutely worthless, it moves air on air, always the same. Disturbing draughts, I'd better turn it off. And then the movies. I spend the whole day watching movies and reading books.

Today, for instance, I'll watch Mississippi Mermaid by François Truffaut, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. Jinxed couple. She is stylish, pretty and treacherous. She will remind me of Carla, though Carla's tits are better modeled, sculptural in her delicate structure.

I said that to Vincenzo, making no names, but today I'll choose to make names and break this rule which I strictly observe when I give a specific account of my ex. I'll feel like calling Carla, but it'll be necessary to watch the whole movie first, because I shan't like to phone her with Vincenzo around. I'll want to say gentle words, like 'I miss you', 'you're very beautiful', 'I hope you are well', 'what are you doing these days?', 'I love you!'.

Yesterday I wanted to call her. She came into my mind last night, I was craving to touch her, but I didn't want to call her so late. I meant to call her this afternoon, but Vincenzo will be coming for his English lesson, that is conversation in English, on the World Cup and on Fumaroli's stupid article on democracy and rhetoric published on Il Corriere della Sera yesterday. Vincenzo and I will agree for a monthly payment of his lessons, so that if he doesn't come for some reason he'll have his loss. An adequate solution, maybe he'll strive a bit harder and learn English for real.

I'll call Carla in Parma tonight, but I shan't be so merry, I'll be nervous instead, very nervous. I'll light a cigarette and clear my throat. I won't show my sadness, I'll want to have her know that I'm fine and care very much for her. Unfortunately my voice will stiffen and I'll have to clear my throat and swallow a couple of times. There's always so much smoke in the house, especially when I have guests, and when it isn't the smoke it's the heat and the smog coming in from outside.

Mariella, Carla's aunt-in-law, that is the ex wife of her father's brother, will answer my call. She's always very nice, a quiet person that takes life with philosophy, little matters whether western or eastern, since real men were not made to take such sides. She will say on the telephone: 'Are they going to release you soon? You must come and visit us. It's been almost a year since you were here last, hasn't it? August 2nd!'

As a matter of fact she was born on August 2nd, and last year we celebrated her birthday with Carla and a friend of Mariella's who had come to Italy from el-Faiyûm for a few days to meet some Italian basketball players in various towns. He also went to Monteverde, where he met another coach. It's a small world, thought I when I heard of this arrival, here is an Egyptian coming to Mariella's from the quarter I live in!

That night of almost a year ago we dined with mint picked in the fields, vegetable salad and some dainty (strawberries, fruit salad, and I don't remember what). Then we sat around the fire outdoors, and chatted. The Egyptian boy and I prepared the fire (I say boy, though he is ten years older than I). I have always done that, since I was a child in Emilia, and then in Lake Turano, when we used to camp with a couple of tents and cross the lake in canoe. Each evening around six, while Alice was preparing our dinner, I climbed the easy trails along the lake and looked for dried twigs (Turkey oak, usually), and went back to our tents and made the fire that accompanied us till late at night.

There in Parma a year ago, around the fire for almost the whole night long, it was pleasant. Mariella had been given a Dakota pack of cards as a present, and she read them for us. We had to close our eyes and imagine a path ahead leading to a tent, and describe the path and what was in the tent. I picked the Great Mother card, the most important card in the pack. Mariella said that I should seek the femininity within myself through which I might achieve my goal. 'You must trust your femininity,' she said. This made me glad, and I thought of this long after.

It is important to recognize one's own femininity. It's a further richness. It undermines the figurations of induced masculinity. Moreover I always like to be with women. I don't remember what I did with Carla that night, I guess we made love. Maybe I imagined I was making love to another woman, not because I didn't like Carla, but because Carla often becomes rough and thorny to people around her, and to me, too. Yes, I imagined to make love to a girlfriend of Mariella's whom we had met in the morning. Carla didn't realize it, and later she recollected that day and night as particularly happy moments, wherein I was 'relaxed and calm', so she said, and she felt me very close to her. It didn't flash through her mind that when I was in her arms I wished to be in those of her aunt's friend.

Tonight, before calling Carla, I shall feel her as indifferent. She has told me so many times that she loves me, but I don't believe her, because I think that there can be no love in a person who doesn't blindly trust her beloved. A child blindly trusts his parents and loves them. Where trusting is missing love is missing. It's not a matter of passion, but of an ideal sentiment, in which there exists no diffidence. Carla doesn't trust me, she is always suspecting that I'm plotting against her, as if I wanted to steal a part of her soul or betray her, and she becomes mean. Then she uses her body strategically, not lovingly. She mindlessly gives it as a present and takes it back, according to her changing judgment on herself, dissimulating even her passion and affection and repressing her most valuable desires. Her decision on how to make love becomes tactic in those moments, not passionate, even not intimate. I like to see her laughing, joking, making fun of herself. I dislike her fearing, her anxiety, her stiffness, her diffidence. How can she claim to love and be loved if she has no trust, if she fears me, or fears to lose me. She goes from extreme generosity to avarice, from grace to the most slovenly inelegance. She can shine like the sun and the moon and abruptly change into mud. In this she doesn't differ from most girls of her age who have read a few books and have ruminated too many hours on the meaning of life.

Once, on seeing her particularly stressed, I asked her what her problem was:

'I have no problems,' she answered.

'Nobody has no problems,' I replied.

'Well, I don't have any,' she said.

'It's impossible that you haven't any problems. Everybody has small ones or big ones,' I told her.

'I told you I have no problems, and that's it!'

'But it's normal to have problems!'

'I don't have any!'

'Listen, there are two cases—either you have problems that you don't wish to tell me or you are an abnormal person, and so you've got a lot of problems.'

'What do you want me to be abnormal for—I'm absolutely normal!'

'You think you are normal. In fact you don't even realize that having no problems makes you abnormal. Only dull, wishy-washy people have no problems! And if you really think you've got no problems you actually show that you've got more problems than the people who admit they have a few minor ones! If you've got no problems you don't even have any ambition, which in an artist is nonsense.'

I was vexed, especially because she'd shut up like a clam. On seeing her defending herself at a corner of the bed, I took pity of her. I wanted her to understand that one shouldn't hide behind a finger, denying one's own weakness as if a bad wolf were ready to tear her bare belly to pieces. I noticed that she was offended, and I immediately changed my behavior, as I knew it was useless to go on with that dry conversation. I sweetly said 'come here' to her, she approached me on the bed and I embraced her and kissed her forehead and cheeks.

'I love you,' I said. 'I didn't mean to hurt you, I just wished to help you. But if you say you have no problem that's better.' She had changed in one moment. Her thorns shed from her and now she was soft and warm and lovely as ever.

Carla is a wild girl. Once I thought she was a savage. She isn't—she's actually wild, unlike someone belonging to a group. A savage girl has savage customs, a forest sociability that in the long run can be understood. You just need to know the essential rules. Not her. She's like an animal for which you're Ok if you give her milk, love and fantasy, if you listen to her stories which she's unable to tell, if you participate somehow in what she does. But as soon as you leave her she becomes stray again, notwithstanding the fact that her straying also shows even if you don't leave her. If she doesn't like your acquaintances, she treats them badly, showing them her open indifference. Partly, to be honest, she is right with some of them. Or, to be precise, with some of the females.

Once we went to a party at Parioli. She came from the city, whereas I had arrived from Monteverde. I was with some friends (some girls that I regarded as friends at the time) and I was joking with them between a glass of wine and a slice of omelet. At a certain point, while I was sitting on the floor talking with three of these girls, Carla came in. We were in a crowded bedroom of a house whose crowded hall led to other crowded bedrooms; the kitchen was crowded too. I guess only the bathroom wasn't crowded. When I saw Carla I stood up, kissed her and introduced her to my friends, some of whom she already knew. She looked at them with indifference and uttered an equally indifferent 'hello'. One tried to tell her something, but she dismissed her with an 'Excuse me, I'm busy!', and she turned to a boy with whom she began talking. The girls whitened.

'Is she your girl?' asked one of them.

'In a way,' I replied.

'She doesn't like us! What have we done to her?' asked another girl.

'She's jealous! Maybe we are not in the right place! Perhaps she wants to be alone with you!'

'She's like that, leave her alone!' I answered.

'She ought to know better!' said a girl more idiot than her.

'I didn't know you were engaged!' said a girl with a flat face and red hair who looked at least five years younger than she actually was. But nobody said anything else, and we went on talking.

Indeed these girls are thoroughly dumb. They represent the most boorish Roman middle class, made up of the daughters of civil lawyers and rotten journalists who show up at talk-shows with a cigar in their mouths and commedia dell'arte postures. Their daughters have traveled, they really have! They speak three or four languages, but if they knew one alone to voice some sense it wouldn't harm anybody. I can imagine how many damages they make instead, not in Italy alone, but also in all those countries in whose language they stupidly chatter. From this point of view, Carla wasn't so wrong in treating them as half-wits after all. If Carla were upper-class (I wouldn't exclude this possibility anyhow, since I don't know her extraction), she would be a snob. The first time I saw her, she was bearing her chin high while talking to a cousin of mine whom she had met at the Academy of Fine Arts, wrapped up in a coat that didn't quite dissimulate her charms. She had just come back from Portugal, as if a journey to Portugal were like the winning at the New Year lottery or could render a person genial and spiritually rich. I could understand if she had been to Paradise or had survived a ship-wreck, but a journey to Portugal is something I cannot actually realize. There are people who think that traveling enriches to the point of ennoblement. When I came home from my first journey in the United States, Maurizio looked at me and happily exclaimed to my parents:

'He looks the same as he was! America didn't change him!'

'What did you expect,' I replied, 'to see me wearing cowboy trousers and a hat?' So we embraced affectionately as usual.

This story about traveling is nonsense. If one gets something out of it, he'd better avoid wearing it around his neck as if he had robbed a jewelry downtown. It's just personal growth; only the traveler knows that, and nobody else. And even more so if one has been abroad as a tourist.

After my cousin spoke two or three sentences, Carla understood she could lower her chin. Before she had looked like one hurrying somewhere else, but now there she was listening to Gioacchino's words, who had kept practically silent at first, and had just kindly congratulated her for her artistic work. I was standing aside, as I use to do when people don't pay attention to me. Now and then I took a glance at them, as if I wasn't partaking of their conversation. When she left, I dismissed her with light detachment, a plain good-bye and the polite smile of one who has other thoughts on his mind.

'Who's she?' I asked Gioacchino.

'A girl from the Academy,' he answered. 'I set my eyes on her when I was engaged to Monica, but at the time she was engaged to another guy from the Academy. I understand they have split up. I gave her my phone number to show her my works, if she's interested she'll let me know. I think she is!'

'Very smart of you, cousin! She's pretty. Good luck.' And we made for Piazza Farnese.

I couldn't imagine that one day or other I would be holding that attractive and snobbish girl in my arms. I should have liked her to be more cheerful and less unsociable, but that is something I cannot decide in her stead. After all, I haven't always behaved correctly towards her. I simply hoped she would be different, that's all. That she would be a playful person, as she can be from time to time. Unfortunately from time to time doesn't work except in occasional relationships. In a couple relationship it is unbearable.

Tonight, when I try to call Carla, she won't be at home. She will be sleeping where she baby-sits, like many penniless women artists do. Mariella will tell me that she does so from time to time, as if she had to explain why Carla is not sleeping at home. Last time I saw her, within the walls of my segregation, she told me there was another man in her life. And she added that she was sure I was glad of that.

'If you are so…' I replied.

For the first time I told her I wasn't glad at all, although it might have been good for her. In a certain sense, from my point of view, I am sorry. Not because she goes to bed with another man (I always wished her so), but because she doesn't love me anymore. I will be sorry that I am loosing her, but at the same time I am conscious that my situation of segregation will certainly affect our relationship. Whatever I tell her will seem prompted by my condition. For instance, she will think, and surely suspect, that I speak of love to her because I've been deserted in my solitude, abandoned, without either a woman or the possibility of finding another one right now. Not only will she have a right to think so, but she will be stupid if she doesn't realize it.

When she comes here, she will propose me the editing of a collective art exhibition. We will talk about it and I'll agree. We'll put down a first draft of the program and we'll set the date of the next meeting. A few days later my segregation will be over, and she will invite me to Parma where she will be staying with her new boyfriend. I will decline, and she will get angry. After some wrangling from her on the phone, we will agree to meet in Rome. I shall need some vacation at the seaside, but it will be shorter than I shall expect. I'll be back in Rome when she wishes, till we will meet here, in this house which will not taste like our house or anything—it will be a cold anonymous place, like when one meets somebody in a square of an anonymous suburb or in a bar that has no specific feature. The atmosphere will be tense and she will get angry, she will say I've got everything in my life and those who have achieved everything in their lives demand to have more and more. I'll beg her to lower her voice and take it easy. She will tell me that we cannot work together as if nothing had happened between us. I shall say that I don't see the difference. She will follow me from room to room shouting her anger. I'll tell her that since things are as they are maybe we had better not work together. She will say that I already knew, and didn't have any intention of working with her. She will cut a deeper and deeper furrow between us. She will go on shouting and she will refuse to communicate. She will demand, as she's never demanded up to now. And because I shall be tired of misunderstandings and of having to listen her inurbane complaints, I'll invite her to leave this house and I'll start washing up cups in the kitchen. She will remain in some other room for a moment, then she will pop her head into the kitchen and will ask me with her usual formality to open the door for her.

'You know how to open it,' I'll reply wearily, 'I'm not interested in formalities.'

'Well, then see you…' she will say wavering but pretending decision.

'Good-bye,' I'll reply looking at her from the sink.

'See you…' she will say.

'We will not meet anymore,' I'll say, with my arms under the water running from the tap.

'Yes, we will,' she'll say disappointedly, 'these things shouldn't be said.'

'They should. I don't want to meet you,' I'll say.

'We will meet, I say.'

'Please, don't telephone,' I'll say embittered. 'I will not be available.'

She will go away silently from this inexpressive house built for mere money. And we won't hear from each another for the whole following year. I shall know, in the next spring, that she is in child, and my eyes will sparkle with joy at the thought of her with a child in her arms, and I shall desire to meet her downtown, by chance, one morning or one afternoon.But in a year from now, in the evening, I'll be told, in the same kitchen where I saw her last, that she lost her child. A shudder, as gray as death, will crawl all over my back, and bitterness will grow inside me. I'll hesitate for a couple of days. Then I will remember who I am, and that one doesn't respond to indifference with indifference if one has more gentle thoughts. I'll try to find out how she is, without calling her in person, for I will take care not to add one more worry to her possible worries. They will tell me she is better now, and is already back to work, as stubborn as ever, scheduling exhibitions and other initiatives, and would I kindly call her directly. I shall be glad to hear she is serene and will not offer to soften her recent wounds. For a time I'll prefer to hear about her without contacting her, the way angels can be silent and invisible and present. There are different ways to build a future on a collapsed present. Some lift the same old stones, others get new ones from the human resource that has been working for us for millenniums. I won't lift the old stones, but I'll remember their ancient splendor—sometimes I shall find myself imagining her lovely pissed off with the world or laughing and cheerful like a clown, with that same tooth gap that she will not have brought herself to have fixed, and her slender and sculptural body, made of tense nerves below her delicate skin, made of energy restrained in postures and her vehement hilarity, her mouth thirsty for tenderness and her artistic breasts declaring her a mother. In my memory, they will fill the palms of my hands, and will remind me, from time to time, how I longed to become a father.

She won't be a girl like any other, as if nothing had happened between us, even if she will stop bustling about in the pendulous stairways of her life, trying to stand in the sideways gusts of days and weeks, with her wide and long faded coat that helps her poverty, her beautiful face, as haughty and as hard as ever, looking for someone that might understand how clever she is—as if being clever would suffice to stand for oneself or to be happy. Somehow, in my inward eye, her eyes will be serene and curious like a child's, and her features hardened by the day will relax in my arms, and her cheeks and chin will swell. She will hold me forever to be less cold, looking at me, as her fingers will be having fun drawing pictures with my curls, not for the artistic millenniums to come, but for that one moment appearing worthy of attention, within four shabby intimate walls that know no segregation, not even the ravenous grinning faces of executioners, who, like all violent people in history, have been, are and will be waiting behind the doors of people's homes. At least for a while, Carla and I will ignore each other.

Rome, 1999

(transl. Emilia Drigo Noble)

[source:

D'Ugo, Nicola. "Memories Flayed Up Yearly", in Lippiello Calendar 2000. Rome, 1999.]