Chiara Cesetti
MEMORIES OF OUR DAYS
Translator Emanuela Paganucci
Publisher: Tektime
Copyright © 2021 – Chiara Cesetti
For Renato, Claudia, Leo
for their patience, love, and tenderness
“…you know that novels have always seduced me because they are like a bowl where you can pour in time, reality and fiction at the same time, dialectics and poetry, ideas and feelings. You know that it seduces me because in its mixture with reality and fiction, dialectics, poetry, ideas and feelings, it provides a truth which is more true that the real truth. A reinvented truth, universalized, in which each of us identify ourselves and recognize ourselves. A novel never exclude Man. No matter what story it tells, and where and when it is set, a novel tells about men.”
(Oriana Fallaci)
I wasn’t there
I need to go back
Go back to the beginning
Flicking through opaque sheets one by one to get here, with you, now.
Giulia
1 Part one
1 Chapter 1
Giovanni e Giulia
-Thank God, it’s over!
-What a night! What a night! What a night!-
The two women were moving about in a frenzy trying to tidy up all the things scattered in the kitchen. They stopped now and again for no reason, rubbing their hands on their aprons or removing from their eyes an invisible lock of hair.
-It is a miracle that it went well-
-No, it is not a miracle- Dr Marinucci’s voice made them turn suddenly to the door –it’s not a miracle Ada. It has been a long but not risky labour. Giulia had a hard time but she will recover soon and the baby is healthy and strong. And now please make me a good cup of coffee!- he said clapping his hands.
The doctor smiled and that released the tension quickly and for the first time Ada and Maria could start feeling the joy that the birth of a baby brings.
The first ray of sun peeped through the window.
Winter had been long, almost endless, but the day Antonio was born, there was a warm sun which let foresee a slow spring.
The stressful moments of the night just gone, gave way to the happiness for this joyful event. Quietness followed the commotion of earlier on, to show respect for the hard time that the mother had. Giulia was now asleep beside a baby with black hair and dark eyes.
The baby’s slanty eyes were the same as his mother and the dark complexion like the father. His tiny lips were closed on an inexpressive and undefined face of someone who, totally helpless, has landed, without knowing it, to a place unknown to him. Giovanni was afraid to touch him.
Wrapped around in a swaddling blanket, covered up in of the many woollen blankets that the aunts had made for him -Hold him in your arms- Giulia said to him.
-No, no. It is so tiny- he replied, looking with apprehension at the little head which was dangling motionless. She was making a laugh of his fear; she managed to get a smile tickling the baby’s chin.
She was quite petite, her well-proportioned body made her look taller than she actually was. Her face was not particularly beautiful, her thick eyebrows framed her bright hazel eyes in which you could see that the liveliness was hardly restrained by the effort made to think before speaking. You could get from her this sense of firmness in her beliefs which shielded her from the difficulties of every day life and, though still quite young, she had the ability to quietly get her place in every situation arising.
Giovanni was tall, almost sturdy, and was, as everybody said, a handsome man. So many people were astounded to hear that he asked Giulia to marry him just because they could not see inside his soul. He had met her in the house of a common relation and he saw in that little woman something that he would have never found in anyone else. Giulia, on the other hand, felt a strong attraction, which she hid very well when there were other people around, but it would feel her soul and sometimes, suddenly and unrestrained, was showing in the looks she would give him.
They got married a few months after they had met, on May 12th, 1906. In their wedding photo the bride was only slightly shorter than the husband because the photographer insisted on her to get up on a little stool.
They lived with Giovanni’s family: his father and his two unmarried sisters, Ada and Maria, in the big house just outside the small town.
In the early days Giulia felt observed and judged: she had to undergo a daily test under the watchful eye of her new relations. She soon understood everybody’s boundaries and struggled in silence to have her own space.
Day after day, among all the unspoken words which materialised in small silent gestures, the exchange of quick allusive glances and the daily worries, each of them changed their ways a little and the household could bear the presence of three women.
The sisters-in-law learnt soon enough that Giulia’s unsaid words were much more meaningful and started to fear her judgements, without blaming her for anything, considering that she was never impolite to them. While the two sisters compared their sensations and express their dissatisfactions, Giulia never even mentioned her little daily worries to her husband. Giovanni was not aware of the minor underground conflicts taking place within the household walls and in the evening he could enjoy her warm presence without worries, more and more aware and almost shocked at the inner strength of his little woman.
A few months later, the old Antonio Barrieri died peacefully in his bed. His daughters found him dead one morning when, as usual, they went up to his bedroom to give him his breakfast.
The pain was alleviated knowing that the old man passed away without suffering, happy to know that he would have had a heir. He had passed on the farm to his son a few years before and things went on exactly the same after his death.
The house was big, one of the biggest in the small town, surrounded by land owned by the family. It was a two-storey house, the two small windows in the attic were always closed. Above the big hall door there was a balcony with a balustrade made of small grey columns, it overlooked the valley as far as the river that circumscribed the property . On the right-hand side, down below, there was a forest, where the cattle grazed in the wild: horses, cows, pigs that were bred and sold. The Barrieri family were farmers and they were trading cattle too.
The birth of little Antonio legitimised Giulia as unconditioned mistress of the house. The aunts were now ready to pass on the sceptre to the one who had given the family the precious fruit of her femininity. The gift of maternity that they could never have, acknowledged the undisputed superiority: they subdued to the little one who was asleep upstairs and to his mother as a consequence. On her part, the young woman never gave the impression of taking advantage of her condition, and quietly, over time, she arranged and managed the household according to her wish.
Over the following five years three more children were born: Clara, Agnese and Luciano; everybody’s help was needed.
Clara was the image of her father. She had black and curly hair, her skin was amber and glowing, her eyes had an undefined dark green colour and her upright posture made her into a beautiful creature.
She showed self-control and stubbornness which discouraged any quarrel with her. Looking at her, her mother prayed to God she would always make the right choices, because she knew that nobody would have deflected her from anything she had set her mind on. Her mother too found it difficult to get deep down her soul. At times, during a discussion, she was concerned to see her isolate herself with her thoughts, leaving herself out of conversations on purpose and chase one of her secret feelings, she would then make an effort within herself to get back and take part in the conversation. If was