again and have a laugh once in a while. There was never a reason to laugh now that she was all alone. And she wished that Angela were still living on the first floor, so she’d have someone to talk to, not just her four brothers who ordered her around like a mule.
On a sunny spring day that made even the darkest of the caruggi come alive, Clotilde went to the Sottoripa market to buy fruit. On the way back, she crossed paths with a beautiful, elegant, tall woman with long wavy cinnamon hair falling on her shoulders beneath a beige satin-brimmed hat. Her dress, a perfect match to the hat in color and material, glimmered under the sunlight and fit her body like a glove. Clotilde stopped walking and stared at the woman as she passed by. In front of Clotilde, the woman stopped and smiled. “You don’t recognize me, do you? I can’t blame you. I’ve changed.” It was then that Clotilde realized that the elegant woman was Angela. “You haven’t changed,” Angela continued. “I’ve thought of you many times.”
Clotilde spoke with a thread of voice. “I’ve thought of you, too. What happened?”
“Come along,” Angela said, taking Clotilde’s hand. “I’ll tell you everything.”
They went to Angela’s home, a spacious two-room apartment on the top floor of a white and gray building, with high vaulted ceilings and a tall window off the sitting room overlooking the port. The contrast to the dark room on Vico Caprettari couldn’t have been starker. “This is it,” Angela said. “My private palace. Bright and airy, for a change.” She opened the window, and Clotilde stood by it a few moments, blinded by the brilliance of the sea, inhaling the sharp, familiar odors of salt and weeds, lost in the multitude of sounds that rose in waves from the docks. “It’s beautiful here,” she said, taking a seat next to Angela on a worn-out couch. Angela nodded, then explained that the reason she could afford the place was that she had found a way to make good money with little effort, and she had done that for a couple of years now, since her mother had gone blind and moved in with her sister in the Lerici countryside. “And what about you?” she asked.
Clotilde summarized her life in two sentences, then inquired about the way to make good money with little effort, asking if there was a chance that she could do that, too. As Angela went on explaining, Clotilde understood what the way was and told Angela she was happy to have met her that day but now she had to go, and, no, she wasn’t interested in that way at all. True, she added, it was a bad life to be serving her brothers day and night, but at least she wouldn’t be going to hell after her death, which would be coming soon, as she couldn’t keep living like this much longer.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Angela replied. “And you don’t go to hell for this. You go to hell if you do things that hurt other people. I make men happy.” She paused and cocked her head. “For a fee.” She stared at Clotilde. “What’s wrong with that?”
Clotilde was out of arguments against the way.
“Come with me tonight,” Angela said. “You don’t have to do anything. Just watch me. Then decide. Can’t make a decision without knowing, can you?”
Clotilde couldn’t find an argument against that, either.
“Look at my clothes,” Angela said, showing Clotilde to her closet. “I buy the cloth at the market and then I cut and sew. For myself. Which is so much better than that silly idea I had of opening a store and making dresses for other people. I’ll make you a dress—what am I saying—three dresses of your favorite colors. For tonight,” she said, rummaging in the closet, “you can borrow this.” It was a dress of pale yellow muslin, with little glass beads along the hem and the neckline.
“Me?” Clotilde said, pointing a finger at herself. “Wearing that dress? I couldn’t. Look at me. My hair is wild, my hands are rough.”
“We have time,” Angela insisted, hanging the dress back in the closet. “Come with me.” It took them a few hours of scrubbing, drying, and styling. Then Clotilde wore the yellow dress and a pair of shoes with heels and a golden buckle she had seen before only in her dreams. Angela pinned a yellow cloth flower to her hair, dabbed some powder on her cheekbones, and took her downstairs, so she could see herself in the windows of the furniture store across the street. “I guess you won’t be going horseback riding on the hills any time soon,” Angela said with a naughty smile as Clotilde stared at the image of a woman she didn’t know. She stood still a moment, then turned around and shook her head to make her black hair bounce. Hands on her waist, she took two steps back, then two steps forward, and bowed at her reflection in the dusty glass. Angela laughed. “You’re on your way to heaven, darling. Forget hell.”
That night they went to a bar by the port, the Stella Maris, a pickup place for prostitutes who worked illegally out of the brothels. Angela was one of them. By then, she had already experienced most of the dangers of that life: adventurers without scruples, drunks, perverts prone to violence and rough games, and, last but not least, the hostility of the brothels’ owners, who hated the “strays,” as they called them, for taking away their business by charging less than the brothels did. Still, Angela entered the crowded bar with her head high, proud of her shiny pink dress and the fresh rose she wore on her heart, below the neckline. Clotilde walked behind her in a daze, staring at the men drinking and smoking cigars, intoxicated by sounds and odors she had never heard or smelled before. They sat at a table, and three sailors who were standing by the counter joined them at once. One of them bought a round of drinks. A second sailor ran a hand across Angela’s breasts, and Angela chuckled, then told the sailor that would cost him and did he have any money or was he a bum. Then the third sailor grazed Clotilde’s neck with his fingers, and Clotilde felt a long wave of heat filling her cheeks and going to the tip of her nose. Angela noticed at once her friend’s big, fearful eyes and told the sailor not to touch her, as she was not what he thought she was. The sailor laughed and asked, “What is she doing here if she’s not a whore?”
“They are not all like him,” Angela said after the sailors had left the table. “I meet gentlemen sometimes, who know how to treat a lady.” Clotilde stared at Angela a while, wondering where those gentlemen were, as she would have liked to be treated like a lady right there and then. Two of the three sailors came back shortly with a roll of banknotes. Angela counted the money carefully before nodding a yes and standing up. “Come along,” she told Clotilde. She paused, then spoke softly in Clotilde’s ear. “Unless you want to stay here by yourself.”
At that, Clotilde stood up fast, and they all went back to Angela’s place, which was only two blocks away. Clotilde sat outside the apartment, on the stairs, while inside Angela took care of the sailors, and that was the part of the evening Clotilde liked the least, sitting all by herself on the musty floor, and thank God she was still wearing the yellow dress, so she could look at it and feel less alone.
The sailors left in a hurry a half hour later. From the open doorway, Angela waved for Clotilde to come in. She showed her the money, stacked in a pile on the small table next to the wood stove. “One of these is for you,” she said, taking a banknote and handing it over.
Clotilde shook her head.
“You helped me,” Angela insisted.
So Clotilde took the banknote, hoping her mother would be busy that night up in heaven and wouldn’t have time to look down and notice.
They went back to the bar ten minutes later and returned home shortly with more sailors. Again, Angela handed Clotilde a banknote after the sailors left. “I’m tired,” Angela said, yawning. “Let’s go to sleep.”
It was then that Clotilde realized that she had left home many hours earlier to go to the market and had not returned. She hadn’t made dinner for her brothers, or washed the floors, or ironed clothes. For sure her brothers would beat her if she showed up. Her stomach shrank for a moment. She looked out the window at the dark shadows of the sea, then gazed about the room and saw Angela snuggling under the covers and falling asleep. “Good night,” she whispered, then understood with clarity that she would never go back to Vico Caprettari, because home for her was where she was now, in Angela’s apartment, with the yellow dress, the banknotes, and the musky smell of the sailors.
The