I went to the fridge, then returned to the bathroom, and found her sitting on the toilet in her wifebeater, holding her pale breasts up with one hand while wiping with some toilet paper.

“Is the announcement still being held up?”

She stayed seated, opened the can I’d handed her, and took a sip. A few sips later, she seemed to come up with an idea that gave her some relief. She got up, and setting the beer on the wide, flat sink, she knelt by the hamper where I’d draped the bath mat; she gave the heavy material a loud sniff, said it was filthy, and stuffed it inside an old chamber pot we used as a basin.

“You’re losing it,” I said.

Finally, her laughter. Guttural, eyes half closed. But after her beer, she stretched out on the couch and complained with a vengeance: the Roman council was destined to fail, soon she’d be out of a job, politics and culture were collapsing, money for cultural activities was so limited at this point, the dream was over.

I brought her some stuffed pizza, and she ate it, breathing hard, her head on a lumpy pillow. I finished a beer and opened another, checking if she wanted some. We went to bed before nine and I started reading her a Japanese story.

It was about a couple on their honeymoon, and they were so anxious, they couldn’t let go and enjoy the trip. Barbara listened, hands on her stomach, and started muttering to herself; then she was snoring. I felt a shiver of pleasure that she was asleep, and I kept reading in a monotone voice so my silence wouldn’t wake her; another half page on, my voice grew quieter; a few paragraphs after that, my voice turned to thought and I continued reading to myself. That passage from voice to mind was magic.

My wife’s position, faceup, so dignified, was entertaining, and watching her, I felt a tickling throughout my body. Her narrow hips in her faded pajamas, her feet, her bunched toes peeping out from under the jumbled quilt: I laughed at her, silently, and that laughter was good company.

Daniela

And women don’t count in this family.

I mean that our women stay home

and bring us into the world and say nothing

and count for nothing and we don’t remember them.

—CESARE PAVESE,
“Ancestors”
(trans. Geoffrey Brock)

It was midafternoon, and my nephew Angelo stood on the tall kitchen table, gripping my hands up high. He had on a pink, long-sleeved jumpsuit, a gray onesie underneath, and white wool socks with no-slip soles. I sat on a barstool, facing him, while he tried out his muscles, his motions sometimes voluntary, other times reflexive. Angelo’s chubby knee would give, buckle, he lost his balance, almost fell backward or forward, and I’d save him. Reassured, he’d immediately try again.