XXII
We passed behind the house on a street that went downhill, and passing between garden walls, we came to a door and knocked. The door opened.
Inside it was dark, and I couldn't see who had opened it. There were no windows; there was only, high up in the door, an opening with a blackish pane. I couldn't see a thing, I couldn't even see my mother any longer.
I could hear her speak, though.
"I have my son with me," she said.
Then she asked: "How is your husband?"
"As usual, Concezione," a woman's voice answered.
And exclaimed: "What a big son you have!"
And from the back a man's voice spoke:
"I'm here in bed, Concezione."
The man's voice sounded as though it came from underground, and spoke again: "He's your son, this one?"
"This is Silvestro," my mother said.
They were speaking far away from me, all three voices; they were the voices of invisible creatures. They were still talking about me.
"You made him big like you!" said the woman's voice.
They could see me and they were invisible: they were like spirits And like a spirit my mother gave the injection perfectly in the dark, talking about ether and a needle.
"You must eat," she said. "Eat more and you'll get better sooner. What have you eaten today?"
"I ate an onion," the man's voice answered.
"It was a good onion," the woman's voice said. "I roasted it for him in the cinders."
"Good," my mother said. "You should also give him an egg."
"I gave him one Sunday," the woman's voice said.
And my mother said: "Good."
>From deep in the darkness she yelled to me: "We're going now, Silvestro."
I was stroking the warm fur of a goat in front of me. I had moved a few steps forward on the uneven floor of bare earth and searching with my hands I had met warm animal fur, and had stayed still, in the cold dark, warming my hands in this living fur.
"We're going now," my mother repeated.
But the voice of the man, from the back, held her another minute.
"How many more injections do I have to have?" it asked.
"The more you have the better the cure," my mother responded.
"I have five more to go, though," the voice added.
And the voice of the wife said: "Do you think with those five more he'll be cured?"
"Everything is possible," my mother responded.
Then she opened the door, and my mother became visible again on the threshold, with her midwife's purse over her arm.
We went out and began walking again, between the walls of the gardens, towards another house on my mother's rounds. We turned onto a street that ran downhill below the first. Facing us across the open spaces of the valley was the mountain hairy with snow; and on one side of us, in their gardens, little houses rose against the sky and faraway mountain; on the other side, in a wan sunlight, there were passages to homes carved into the rock beneath the huts and the gardens further up. The gardens were tiny; higher up, seen between the roofs, they seemed like containers of vegetables; and in the street there were goats sluggish in the sun--in the cold air, the bagpipe music and the tinkling of the goats' bells. It was a little Sicily heaped up with medlar trees and roofing tiles, of holes in the rock, of black earth, of goats, of bagpipe music that faded in the distance behind us, turning into clouds or snow, high up.
I asked my mother:
"What sickness did that man have?"
"The same as all the others," my mother said. "Some have a little malaria. Some have a little TB."
XXIII
We only walked a minute or two before my mother knocked at another door, and again I found myself in the dark, on a floor of bare uneven earth. It smelled like an abandoned well.
"I have my son with me," my mother said again.
And again I heard them talk about me, people I couldn't see, and among the voices I could pick out the small voice of a child.
My mother said: "Do you have the little vials?"
"We've got them." The voice of a man replying.
Other voices talked all at once.
"Light the fire, Teresa."
"Get the straw."
And the voice of the man talked with the voice of the child. It was the voice of a man holding his one or two-year-old son in his arms. My mother said some more about the injection, and the man answered and made noises as he opened a drawer, accompanied by the small high voice of his son in his arms.
Then in that profound darkness like the interior of a well, the light of a match flared and I saw my mother's hands, and after that moment of light on her hands, I heard her ask:
"All right?"
Two or three times she asked: "All right?"
She asked: "How do you feel?"
And the man's voice asked loudly together with hers:
"Concezione is asking how you feel."
"Eh?" came the response.
And my mother asked:
"What have you given her to eat?"
"We gave her chicory, tonight," the man's voice answered.
Then there was the question about how many more injections were necessary, and we left those spirits, and went away, my mother said that it was lucky it was the woman who was sick instead of the man, because it doesn't matter if a woman is sick, but if a man gets sick, goodbye. . ."
"What do you mean, goodbye?" I asked.
"They won't eat again, winter or summer," my mother said.
And she said that in general women don't know what to do when the man gets sick; they don't even know how to go pick a little chicory in the valley, or even how to go look for snails on the plains; they don't know how to do anything but get in bed with the man.
XXIV
The music of the bagpipes was far away at the highest point of the town, perfectly transformed into cloud or snow, and down below in the valley there now rose the roar of a stream.
We entered a suffocating darkness. It was all dark and smoke; yet the voices of the invisibles spoke calmly like those in the other houses. Even the voice of my mother spoke undisturbed by the smoke.
"I have my son with me," she said.
She had the same discussion before; she spoke of me, then of the little vials and the needle; and for a moment the light of a match shined over her hands. When the light went out she asked:
"Well, then, how are you?"
The response was: "Mah!"
And my mother asked:
"What have you given her to eat?"
"We'll be eating now," was the response.
And "We're cooking."
There were many voices.
So we went out again, and my mother said the opposite of what she had said before. She said it was a disgrace when a woman was sick, the mother. It was better when the man was sick, she said. So many men didn't work in the winter anyway, and were good for nothing, and if the woman got sick, goodbye. . . . Because a woman, she said, could always go to pick chicory in the valley or to look for snails on the plain. It was the woman, the mother, who kept the household going.
And again we entered a darkness, again my mother became invisible, spoke invisibly.
She spoke of me: "I have my son with me!"
Then she spoke of the little vials and the needle, and did the injection while for a moment the flame of a match lit up her hands. Then she asked if the sick one had eaten, and they told her what he had eaten that evening or would eat tomorrow, and we went out, my mother became visible again and said the opposite of what she had said before, said that when a man was sick, goodbye. . . .
And again we descended through the black ditch of the street, where there was no more sunlight, where everything was in shadow, with the tinkling of the bells of the goats and the noise of the stream, in the cold: and again we entered dark places smelling like wells, darkness and the smell of darkness, and darkness and smoke, and my mother talking about me as a preamble, speaking of the little vials and the needles, putting forth questions about their eating; and always, while we were leaving, there was a little suspense in a worried voice wanting to know how many more injections one had to have in order to be cured, and if one had to have more than a certain number like five or seven or ten.
In this way we journeyed through little Sicily heaped up with medlar trees and slate; with the noise of streams outside, and of spirits inside, in the cold and dark; and my mother was a strange creature who seemed to live with me in the light and with those others in the shadows, without ever getting lost the way that I got a little lost every time we went in or out.
Every time we went out, she said the opposite of what she'd said the time before. One time she would say that when the man was sick, goodbye. . . . and the next time she would say that when the woman was sick, goodbye. . . .
She would say: "Some have a bit of TB, some have a bit of malaria."
And one time she would say it was better to have a bit of malaria than a bit of TB; the next time she would say it was better to have a bit of TB than a bit of malaria. She would say:
"With malaria you don't have to go to Enna for the medication."
She told me it was a disaster to have to go to Enna to get TB medication from the dispensary, to have to make a long trip, to have to spend 32 lire, and then run the risk of being stuck in the hospital. People went to Enna the first time, she told me, then they didn't want to go there again. They couldn't afford it.
"The town gives out malaria medication," she said.
But the next time she would say:
"With TB, you just have to go Enna and they have all the medication you want."
She told me it was a disaster to have to depend on the town for malaria medication. The town was poor, it didn't have much medicine, and it never gave out more than one box. How could one get well on one box?
"The dispensary in Enna gives out the TB medicine," she said. "It's big, it's rich, it's supported by the government," she said.
And each time she said the opposite of what she'd said the time before.
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