Arturo's Island Read online

  ARTURO’S

  ISLAND

  A Novel

  ELSA MORANTE

  Translated by Ann Goldstein

  LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION

  A Division of W. W. Norton & Company

  Independent Publishers Since 1923

  NEW YORK • LONDON

  for Remo N.

  What you thought was a tiny point on earth

  was all.

  And no one can ever steal that matchless treasure from your

  jealous sleeping eyes.

  Your first love will never be violated.

  Virgin, she is wrapped in night

  like a gypsy in her black shawl,

  star suspended in the northern sky

  for eternity: no danger can touch her.

  Young friends, handsomer than Alexander and Euryalos,

  forever handsome, protect the sleep of my boy.

  The fearful emblem will never cross the threshold

  of that blessed little island.

  And you’ll never know the law

  that I, like so many, have learned—

  and that has broken my heart:

  Outside Limbo there is no Elysium.

  If I see myself in him, it seems clear to me . . .

  —Umberto Saba, Il Canzoniere

  CONTENTS

  1. KING AND STAR OF THE SKY

  King and Star of the Sky

  The Island

  The Story of Romeo the Amalfitano

  The Boys’ House

  Beauty

  The Absolute Certainties

  The Second Law

  The Fourth Law

  The Prison Fortress

  Pointless Acts of Bravado

  The Story of Algerian Dagger

  Departures

  Immacolatella

  Grandson of an Ogress?

  Women

  The Oriental Tent

  Waits and Returns

  More about the Amalfitano

  The Amalfitano’s Dream

  Arturo’s Dream

  Final Events

  2. A WINTER AFTERNOON

  A Winter Afternoon

  The Three of Us Arrive

  In Western Light

  Upstairs

  The Suitcase

  Eternal Life

  The Double Oath

  The Ring of Minerva

  In the Moon’s Reflection

  The Great Leaders

  At Supper

  Night

  3. FAMILY LIFE

  Family Life

  The Head of the Household Gets Bored

  Against Mothers (and Women in General)

  Alone with Him

  In My Room

  Sleeping Women

  Bad Mood

  Pasta

  Solitary Song

  4. QUEEN OF WOMEN

  The Hairstyle

  Starry Nights

  Queen of Women

  Autumn. Last News of Algerian Dagger

  Foreign Lands

  The Iridescent Spider Web

  Murdered?

  The Midwife

  The Young Cock

  The Sea Urchin

  A Surprise

  Lamentations

  The Conversion

  5. TRAGEDIES

  Tragedies

  Golden Locks

  The Attack

  The Great Jealousy

  Suicide

  The Pillars of Hercules

  From the Other World

  Silly Little Kisses

  Atlantis

  The Catastrophe

  6. THE FATAL KISS

  The Fatal Kiss

  Forbidden

  The Palace of Midas

  On the Dock

  Sinister Individual

  Assunta

  The Corals

  The Little Bite

  Intrigues of Gallantry

  The Lane

  Scene between Women

  Stepmother of Stone

  The Indian Slave

  7. THE TERRA MURATA

  Dearer than the Sun

  Conventional Pearls and Roses

  Metamorphosis

  The End of Summer

  The Terra Murata

  The Hunt

  The Palace

  The Wretched Voice and the Signals

  8. FAREWELL

  Hated Shadow

  One Night

  In the Big Room

  Betrayal

  Parody

  The Final Scene

  The Letter

  Farewell

  December Fifth

  The Earring

  In the Cave

  The Goddess

  The Enchanted Pin

  Contrary Dreams

  The Steamship

  ARTURO’S

  ISLAND

  CHAPTER 1

  King and Star of the Sky

  . . . Paradise

  lofty and chaotic . . .

  —SANDRO PENNA, POESIE

  King and Star of the Sky

  One of my first glories was my name. I had learned early (he, it seems to me, was the first to inform me) that Arturo—Arcturus—is a star: the swiftest and brightest light in the constellation of Boötes, the Herdsman, in the northern sky! And that this name was also borne by a king in ancient times, the commander of a band of faithful followers: all heroes, like the king himself, and treated by the king as equals, as brothers.

  Unfortunately, I later discovered that that famous Arthur, King of Britain, was not a true story, only a legend; and so I abandoned him for other, more historical kings (in my opinion legends were childish). Still, another reason was enough in itself for me to give a noble value to the name Arturo: and that is, that it was my mother, I learned, who, although I think ignorant of the aristocratic symbolism, decided on that name. Who was herself simply an illiterate young woman but for me more than a sovereign.

  In reality, I knew almost nothing about her, for she wasn’t even eighteen when she died, at the moment that I, her only child, was born. And the sole image of her I ever knew was a portrait on a postcard. A faded, ordinary, almost ghostlike figure, but the object of fantastic adoration for my entire childhood.

  The poor itinerant photographer to whom we owe this unique image portrayed her in the first months of her pregnancy. You can tell from her body, even amid the folds of the loose-fitting dress, that she’s pregnant; and she holds her little hands clasped in front of her, as if to hide herself, in a timid, modest pose. She’s very serious, and in her black eyes you can read not only submissiveness, which is usual in most of our girls and young village brides, but a stunned and slightly fearful questioning. As if, among the common illusions of maternity, she already suspected that her destiny would be death and eternal ignorance.

  The Island

  All the islands of our archipelago, here in the Bay of Naples, are beautiful.

  For the most part, the land is of volcanic origin, and, especially near the ancient craters, thousands of flowers grow wild: I’ve never seen anything like it on the mainland. In spring, the hills are covered with broom: traveling on the sea in the month of June you recognize its wild, caressing odor as soon as you approach our harbors.

  Up in the hills in the countryside, my island has solitary narrow roads enclosed between ancient walls, behind which orchards and vineyards extend, like imperial gardens. It has several beaches with pale, fine sand, and other, smaller shores, covered with pebbles and shells, hidden amid high cliffs. In those towering rocks, which loom over the water, seagulls and turtledoves make their nests, and you can hear their voices, especially in the early morning, sometimes lamenting, sometimes gay. There, on quiet days, the sea is gentle and cool, and lies on the shore like dew. Ah, I wouldn’t ask
to be a seagull or a dolphin; I’d be content to be a scorpion fish, the ugliest fish in the sea, just to be down there, playing in that water.

  Around the port, the streets are all sunless alleys, lined with plain, centuries-old houses, which, although painted in beautiful pink or grayish shell colors, look severe and melancholy. On the sills of the small windows, which are almost as narrow as loopholes, you sometimes see a carnation growing in a tin can, or a little cage that seems fit for a cricket but holds a captured turtledove. The shops are as deep and dark as brigands’ dens. In the café at the port, there’s a coal stove on which the owner boils Turkish coffee, in a deep blue enameled coffeepot. She’s been a widow for many years, and always wears the black of mourning, the black shawl, the black earrings. A photograph of the deceased, on the wall beside the cash register, is festooned with dusty leaves.

  The innkeeper, in his tavern, which is opposite the monument of Christ the Fisherman, is raising an owl, chained to a plank high up against the wall. The owl has delicate black and gray feathers, an elegant tuft on his head, blue eyelids, and big eyes of a red-gold color, circled with black; he always has a bleeding wing, because he constantly pecks at it with his beak. If you stretch out a hand to give him a little tickle on the chest, he bends his small head toward you, with an expression of wonder.

  When evening descends, he starts to struggle, tries to take off, and falls back, and sometimes ends up hanging head down, flapping on his chain.

  In the church at the port, the oldest on the island, there are some wax saints, less than three palms high, locked in glass cases. They have skirts of real lace, yellowed, faded cloaks of brocatelle, real hair, and from their wrists hang tiny rosaries of real pearls. On their small fingers, which have a deathly pallor, the nails are sketched with a threadlike red line.

  Those elegant pleasure boats and cruise ships that in greater and greater numbers crowd the other ports of the archipelago hardly ever dock at ours; here you’ll see some barges or merchant ships, besides the fishing boats of the islanders. For many hours of the day the square at the port seems almost deserted; on the left, near the statue of Christ the Fisherman, a single carriage for hire awaits the arrival of the regularly scheduled steamers, which stop here for a few minutes and disembark three or four passengers altogether, mostly people from the island. Never, not even in summer, do our solitary beaches experience the commotion of the bathers from Naples and other cities, and all parts of the world, who throng the beaches of the surrounding areas. And if a stranger happens to get off at Procida, he marvels at not finding here that open and happy life, of celebrations and conversations on the street, of song and the strains of guitars or mandolins, for which the region of Naples is known throughout the world. The Procidans are surly, taciturn. All the doors are closed, almost no one looks out the window, every family lives within its four walls and doesn’t mingle with the others. Friendship, among us, isn’t welcomed. And the arrival of a stranger arouses not curiosity but, rather, distrust. If he asks questions, they are answered reluctantly, because the people of my island don’t like their privacy spied on.

  They are a small dark race, with elongated black eyes, like Orientals. And they so closely resemble one another you might say they’re all related. The women, following ancient custom, live cloistered like nuns. Many of them still wear their hair coiled, shawls over their heads, long dresses, and, in winter, clogs over thick black cotton stockings; in summer some go barefoot. When they pass barefoot, rapid and noiseless, avoiding encounters, they might be feral cats or weasels.

  They never go to the beach; for women it’s a sin to swim in the sea, and a sin even to watch others swimming.

  In books, the houses of ancient feudal cities, grouped together or scattered through the valley and across the hillsides, all in sight of the castle that dominates them from the highest peak, are often compared to a flock around the shepherd. Thus, too, on Procida, the houses—from those densely crowded at the port, to the ones spread out on the hills, and the isolated country farmhouses—appear, from a distance, exactly like a herd scattered at the foot of the castle. This castle rises on the highest hill (which among the other, smaller hills is like a mountain); and, enlarged by structures superimposed and added over the centuries, has acquired the mass of a gigantic citadel. To passing ships, especially at night, all that appears of Procida is this dark mass, which makes our island seem like a fortress in the middle of the sea.

  For around two hundred years, the castle has been used as a penitentiary: one of the biggest, I believe, in the whole country. For many people who live far away the name of my island means the name of a prison.

  On the western side, which faces the sea, my house is in sight of the castle, but at a distance of several hundred meters as the crow flies, and over numerous small inlets from which, at night, the fishermen set out in their boats with lanterns lighted. At that distance you can’t distinguish the bars on the windows, or the circuit of the guards around the walls; so that, especially in winter, when the air is misty and the moving clouds pass in front of it, the penitentiary might seem the kind of abandoned castle you find in many old cities. A fantastic ruin, inhabited only by snakes, owls, and swallows.

  The Story of Romeo the Amalfitano

  My house rises alone at the top of a steep hill, in the middle of an uncultivated terrain scattered with lava pebbles. The façade looks toward the town, and on that side the hill is buttressed by an old wall made of pieces of rock; here lives the deep blue lizard (which is found nowhere else, nowhere else in the world). On the right, a stairway of stones and earth descends toward the level ground where vehicles can go.

  Behind the house there is a broad open space, beyond which the land becomes steep and impassable. And by means of a long rockslide you reach a small, triangular, black-sand beach. No path leads to this beach; but, if you’re barefoot, it’s easy to descend precipitously amid the rocks. At the bottom a single boat was moored: it was mine, and was called Torpedo Boat of the Antilles.

  My house isn’t far from a small, almost urban square (boasting, among other things, a marble monument) or from the densely built dwellings of the town. But in my memory it has become an isolated place, and its solitude makes an enormous space around it. There it sits, malign and marvelous, like a golden spider that has woven its iridescent web over the whole island.

  It’s a two-story palazzo, plus the cellar and the attic (in Procida houses that have around twenty rooms, which in Naples might seem small, are called palazzi), and, as with most of the inhabited area of Procida, which is very old, it was built at least three centuries ago.

  It’s a pale pink color, square, rough, and constructed without elegance; it would look like a large farmhouse if not for the majestic central entrance and the Baroque-style grilles that protect all the windows on the outside. The façade’s only ornaments are two iron balconies, suspended on either side of the entrance, in front of two blind windows. These balconies, and also the grilles, were once painted white, but now they’re all stained and corroded by rust.

  A smaller door is cut into one panel of the central entrance door, and this is the way we usually go in: the two panels are, instead, never opened, and the enormous locks that bolt them from the inside have been eaten by rust and are unusable. Through the small door you enter a long, windowless hall, paved with slate, at the end of which, in the style of Procida’s grand houses, a gate opens to an internal garden. This gate is guarded by two statues of very faded painted terra-cotta, portraying two hooded figures, which could be either monks or Saracens, you can’t tell. And, beyond the gate, the garden, enclosed by the walls of the house like a courtyard, appears a triumph of wild greenery.

  There, under the beautiful carob tree, my dog Immacolatella is buried.

  From the roof of the house, one can see the full shape of the island, which resembles a dolphin; its small inlets, the penitentiary, and not far away, on the sea, the bluish purple form of the island of Ischia. The silvery shadows of mo
re distant islands. And, at night, the firmament, where Boötes the Herdsman walks, with his star Arturo.

  From the day it was built, for more than two centuries, the house was a monastery: this fact is common among us, and there’s nothing romantic about it. Procida was always a place of poor fishermen and farmers, and its rare grand buildings were all, inevitably, either convents, or churches, or fortresses, or prisons.

  Later, those religious men moved elsewhere, and the house ceased to belong to the Church. For a certain period, during and after the wars of the past century, it housed regiments of soldiers; then it was abandoned and uninhabited for a long time; and finally, about half a century ago, it was bought by a private citizen, a wealthy shipping agent from Amalfi, who, passing through Procida, made it his home, and lived there in idleness for thirty years.

  He transformed part of the interior, especially the upper floor, where he knocked down the dividing walls between numerous cells of the former monastery and covered the walls with wallpaper. Even in my time, although the house was run-down and in constant disrepair, it preserved the arrangement and the furnishings as he had left them. The furniture, which had been collected by a picturesque but ignorant imagination from the small antique and secondhand dealers of Naples, gave the rooms a certain romantic-country aspect. Entering, you had the illusion of a past of grandmothers and great-grandmothers, of ancient female secrets.

  And yet from the time those walls were erected until the year our family arrived, they had never seen a woman.

  When, a little more than twenty years ago, my paternal grandfather, Antonio Gerace, who had emigrated from Procida, returned with a modest fortune from America, the Amalfitano, who by then was an old man, still lived in the ancient palazzo. In old age, he had become blind; and it was said that this was a punishment from Santa Lucia, because he hated women. He had hated them since youth, to the point that he wouldn’t receive even his own sisters, and when the Sisters of the Consolation came to beg he left them outside the door. For that reason, he had never married; and he was never seen in church, or in the shops, where women are more readily encountered.