“We feel strange and, as it were, discouraged,
when we realize we were damned happy,
even when we didn’t know it."
Misfatti, Joyce Carol Oates, Bompiani 2003
Now that my mother is dead, I feel an infinite nostalgy for this house. I shut my eyes and can almost hear her voice again calling me from the kitchen saying that breakfast is ready: now there is only the noise of an old fridge.
Once my grandparents lived here. Then she arrived, she married and came to live with my father. I was born, then my sister, and then, as in an inevitable cycle, my mother was left alone. Families are born, grow up and then die. That’s all. I don’t know why I chose to start filling up the boxes in her bedroom. Perhaps it’s a way to stay close to her a bit longer, to hear her voice one more time.
In the wardrobe are all the clothes I always saw her wearing, even ones she hadn’t put on for years. It doesn’t seem possible they can exist without her. Inside, on a high shelf, I can see an old cardboard suitcase that I don’t recognize. I grab it and put it down on the floor; it isn’t heavy. I brush off a layer of dust with my hand. Here and there it’s dented; the dark brass lock is open. Inside I find three objects: a schoolbook, a pendant and an old pipe.
The pipe, smooth and black, belonged to my grandfather. Today it feels as though he, too, has only just passed away. He died when I was only two. The only thing I remember about him is his conspiratorial look when he asked if I wanted an ice-cream after my mother had scolded me. He loved me. That’s all I know about him, and it’s enough. Or maybe it’s not. I bring it to my nose and discover that after all these years it still smells of tobacco.
I take the schoolbook in my hands and look for a certain page that comes after the chapter on Euler-Venn diagrams. It’s still there, still written there: the name of the girl with long black hair who sat in the first row. During the break she never ate red apples instead of cakes wrapped in plastic. She had a knife to peel them with, and every day after she’d eaten she washed it in the bathroom. Everyone thought she was too poor to have the money to buy snacks, but I didn’t car. Once in a while I would ask her for a slice and she would give me half of it.
The heart-shaped silver pendant was my little sister’s; it was a Christmas present. One day when I was already in middle school and she wouldn’t stop asking me to play with her, I got even by hiding it from her. She asked me to give it back, and started crying desperately. When mum asked for it, I swore and forswore that it hadn’t been me. If she were here now, I’d tell the truth.
I shut the wardrobe. I try to shut up the memories inside the suitcase and I take it away with me. I go down to the kitchen and open the old fridge. But right away I take two steps back to avoid the stink of something that’s gone off. When the smell has dispersed a bit, I look inside. I see how different this fridge is from mine; it doesn’t contain multitudes of little coloured packets piled one on top of another. Only a few cartons, some water, a pot with some left-over meat and a big, strong-smelling piece of cheese. I take a garbage bag out of a drawer and throw it all away. Except for the piece of cheese, which I just can’t find it in me to throw away. I pick it up and look around for a place to put it. I see the suitcase and I put it here, together with the book, the pendant and the pipe. Irreverent. It makes me want to laugh. I can’t help laughing, seeing these things all together. Keepsakes and cheese. I take a last look round, pick up the garbage and carry it outside.
translated by Brenda Porster