When I saw her for the first time she gave me the idea of a tender old lady with silver gray hair, thin, a curved back who struggled to get up from her chair. How old was she now? Over eighty, well worn. I entered her large kitchen, the fireplace lit and on the table a huge vase full of celery and carrots instead of flowers. This image struck me immediately, I thought that she was responding to her being pragmatic and not very romantic. In the car, Orietta had done nothing but talk to me about herself: "You understand? She is a woman with a thousand facets, someone who fought in the war in the sense that she was a partisan, then she was the wife of a senator, she was involved in politics, she wrote many books and then she translated the poems of this Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet , do you remember? I gave you a book by her some time ago..."
I remembered Nazim Hikmet and his splendid love poems, they had immediately entered into me and I thought that it must have been wonderful to meet such a man, that this thing had never happened to me. And not even in Orietta. But I hadn't said anything to her so as not to please her, in that period, taken as I was by the profession of life and its difficulties in progress, it was difficult for me to admit everything, even that I liked her poet and the story of Joyce Lussu, of whom, beyond his past as a partisan and politician, I was attracted by his English origins and the fact that he always felt like a fish out of water in this region. A bit like myself at least, even if I couldn't boast any exogenous origin. The five English ancestors who at the beginning of the nineteenth century arrived and disembarked like Martians in the countryside near Fermo, it was the most beautiful story of all, then Joyce had turned it political, he had added his own by telling the story of her years as a partisan in the mountains and the fight between fascists and anti-fascists, between Catholics and anti-Catholics, important stories that had been the basis of my young existence, but also similar to those of my grandfather Lazzaro, an anarchist from Ancona, which my father and my aunt loved telling me until they were exhausted.
Therefore I felt like a veteran compared to my friends, excited and proud of this new and important friendship, unlike them I felt no ardor, no underground thrill.
"Listen to me – Orietta says to me, perhaps sensing my state of mind – she's old and we need to be tactful – he tells me this by moving his right hand in a wavering, jerky way, he always does this when a serious conversation begins – Joyce Lussu is a woman of a certain caliber, but also of a certain age and it would not be kind of us to cross her."
"You are wrong– replies Teresa, the group's oldest friend and link with Joyce – it is a very strong woman, imagine that only a month ago she stood up to a priest during a conference, if you had seen her you wouldn't say that, she loves debates, real people”.
"Yes, yes – says Simona, so far the quietest of all – but I think Orietta is right, after all she is still an old woman."
“She hates being treated like that, don't do it”. – warns Teresa again.
“For my part, I will always stay silent ok? – I finally say, my face glued to the window from which I admired the gray and imposing sea, the waves so high that it seemed they were entering the A14 – so I'm not wrong."
“Noooo!!!- they answer me in chorus – absolutely don't do that!” - in truth they were making me a little nervous - you have to do such and such - Orietta continued with her undulating jerking manner - say this and that - and in the end I felt sick to my stomach, I wanted to stop and get off in a layby or any motorway service station, take the first vehicle I could find, get on and ask for a ride home. Maybe a truck driver! I would have given us a truer-than-true discussion, and not like with these old-school-feminist-post-XNUMX ragged intellectuals, not with Joyce Lussu and her pseudo-noble origins, her contempt for money and her anti-liberal dogmas . This was what they ultimately wanted: to nullify my opportunity to express my opinion on many issues, a fair and open clash as is done between civilized people.
But when I finally shook her hand and told her my name, I saw her blue eyes, deep and energetic like the stormy sea just before, staring at me intensely, I was kidnapped by her austere beauty and I imagined her young, tall, blonde.
I imagined her alive and brilliant and her way of shaking my hand tightly transmitted to me episodes of her life, and her way of dealing with it.
“How nice that you are here, I'm happy” and I realized that I was just as much as her, without knowing why, I wanted to hug her and kiss her and hold her close to me for a long time, but I knew she wasn't used to this type of fuss and I held back. I was moved, stupidly, I said to myself, I really didn't understand why.
But Orietta was the most nervous of all, she talked and talked and described the trip and who I was and why we were there, and what she was doing and where she came from. Then she, she doesn't pay, she began to praise the place and the house and the furniture and furnishings until she exclaimed with too much verve: “How cute here, I really like it! It must be nice to live among memories" – and that's when I saw Joyce changee suddenly expression, let out a sigh, look her straight in the eye and reply: "I'm not looking for compliments."
I saw Orietta become silent, her lips still quivering and her eyes staring at Joyce dazedly. Like a boxer played. Teresa said: “Joyce, look, Orietta told you from the heart”.
“I don't know if it was the heart, but I wish the words weren't so machine gun-like, let yourself breathe, let the others speak too, otherwise it's a monologue and not even very attractive”.
Toucheè, I thought amused.
“Among other things, I'll tell you that although I love my home, I don't have a passion for objects and the home in general, I'm not possessive, and so all this babbling about what you see here is out of place. You will understand last year I wanted to sell it! And then they stole everything from me, about three years ago– he sighed – Never mind, I'm not going to cry about it."
“You didn't tell me you had been robbed – says Teresa, Orietta was still knocked out.- in fact now that you tell me, a lot of the furniture I knew is no longer there, I thought you had brought it to Rome"
“I didn't tell you because it's not important. I am a person free from material possessions, you know."
Free from material possession... How many times have I heard this phrase? Suddenly all the stories about being and having and the wars that man unleashes come to mind, sermons worthy of the Holy Inquisition: “They invented God to rob men! – my grandfather shouted, waving his stick. Religions are the opium of the people!"
Then Joyce's voice wakes me up from the flashback.
“Clinging to things means being slaves to them. Ultimately man kills for two reasons: religion and material goods.”
Orietta nodded, Teresa continued, seraphic: “I must say that I am very attached to my things, to family objects I mean, to my books... cooking, in this Joyce I feel different from you even if we have similar views on many other things.”
“They are all objects that you can replace at any time, you make a mistake in attaching yourself to things, because you can't take them away” – says Joyce.
“Well no, I write notes in books, for example, and sometimes I go and reread them. Notes that I also wrote thirty years ago... I will leave them to my son and my grandchildren, like a message in a bottle, I would be very annoyed if someone or something took them away from me".
“It's useless to delude yourself: an earthquake, a fire, a thief and tac you have nothing left! Being attached to material goods is unhealthy, what matters is people's lives.". – Joyce repeats excitedly.
“Life now, not the afterlife of which we have no proof.”
At a certain point I got lost in my thoughts and only woke up when I heard Joyce raise her voice and say to Orietta: “Do you eat your soul? do you touch it? did you see her?". Orietta had a seriously ill mother and although she had reconnected with religion she did not dare reply.
It was there that I opened my mouth, driven by I don't know what inspiration and said: “You feel your soul”
silence – and I again: “There is little to say, either you feel it or you don't, then you call it what you like, God the Madonna, Vishnu, the Neoplatonists, nothingness, yes that too is a belief, and please don't bust my balls, because even the nullists seem like a bunch of fundamentalist fanatics to me and I know something about it if you allow me."
Frost among my friends.
“It's you who speaks, not your soul, it's your intelligence, your mind, you're wrong to think like that”. Joyce answers me with glacial calm.
“Maybe, but I like to call it soul if you don't mind, it's more poetic. And then enough with these idolatries of nothingness, everyone does what they like. Do you think there is nothing? Okay! Another no, okay? There must be absolute freedom, no one criticizes the fact that you Joyce don't feel anything, I too am perplexed in some ways, but I believe that religion serves to console man from the fear of an after of which we have no certainty. If this makes him feel better, why do you have to come and ruin his party? What did Leopardi say? Sometimes illusion is reality and what seems like reality is illusion."
“That's good! Leopards!”
“Don't touch me Leopardi please! All I need to do is call him a "loser" and then I get up from this chair. I want to be free to feel ok? Also free to consume as well as not to touch anything. Your approach to materialism is clerical, as well as suffocating".
I had never told him. I was afraid he would throw me out. Instead he rubs his hands together:
“Girls, these lovely discussions have made me hungry, how about some bread and salami? Please take some wine from the cupboard and some glasses, I will also make a dip." He takes the carrots and celery from the jar in the center of the table and rinses them under the tap.
Then he places a red and white checked placemat and arranges some napkins. Teresa pours the red wine into the glasses and gives them to us smiling: “A nice glass to toast the meeting, Joyce – raises the glass and does "Health!"-
"Health!" – we answer in chorus.
“You see, for me the company of people, the people themselves are the most important thing in the world, I fought for a more just world, and even if the war ended a while ago thank goodness, I always continued to fight. Men, don't forget, have not yet learned that they are on earth by chance, and that life is the most important good. I love simple and true people – turning to me – and not particularly bourgeois intellectuals, they make me nervous." I started cutting the salami and then distributing it to my classmates. The bread tasted like things from the past, authentic, and the wine seemed like that of the farmer from 30 years ago, a little bisulfite, but good.
I thought about how simple life must have once been and how the world was divided into good or bad without filters and color variations. Black or white, that's it. Not like now, with the thousand variations of tone, without distinctions or guilt and responsibility. It was simpler but also more infinitely hard, but it was hard even now, even if I couldn't explain how.
Or maybe yes. Maybe I could, but later, have my say on many things that I couldn't explain at that moment. I would have contrasted the harshness with the sweetness of life, with the love that I did not receive and the little that I gave and that I unraveled, like a skein, on people, animals and things without ever expecting anything and above all without founding parties or movements , it was my thing alone and not the others' and the others don't belong to me nor do I feel like I'm leading them down who knows what path. The love. Perhaps this is simply what she and her generation ended up not really expressing. It was such a harsh world that they feared being destroyed by it. And then I thought that I was the simple one and not them, they were just pretending to be. They were the true intellectuals.
When I got back to the car I started singing, Orietta and Simona sang a chorus, “they called it rose mouth it put love it put love, they called it rose mouth it put love above everything…” and I felt free and light, happy deep down to be in my century, on the right path that was mine, with no more wise men or teachers telling me what is good or bad. Happy to be on my way, I mentally said goodbye to everyone: Joyce, my grandfather, my father and my aunt. All those who were part of my past, I greeted them with the words of a Persian poet, which they would surely have appreciated.
"Out there. Besides what is right and what is wrong there is a garden. That's where I'll wait for you."
Invented dialogue between me and Joyce Lussu which unfortunately never happened, because I refused to meet her then, when my friends invited me to go to San Tommaso.
Joyce Lussu is an icon of the Marche and Italian twentieth century, writer and essayist, politician. She translated into Italian all the works of Nazim Hikmet and other foreign poets. She knew many languages, besides English, of course. She studied philosophy in Germany in Heildeberg at the time (unfortunately) of Heidegger, then at the Sorbonne in Paris and finally Philology in Lisbon. And all this in the early years of the last century. She married senator Emilio Lussu. In those days, immediately after the war, being a senator was a great merit.
