XXIX
The widow was a woman of about forty, with good flesh on her bones, and she lived on the first floor, in an apartment of two or three big rooms with high ceilings.
"They call her the widow," my mother said. "But she's not really widowed. She was kept by an important gentleman. . . ."
"Why does she need injections?"
"Because she's a lady," my mother answered. "Gentlemen have injections. And she got used to it with them. But she may also have a bit of TB."
She was a pleasing woman, in every way, and she had good flesh on her bones. It seemed that she lived alone, in her big rooms; she came herself to let us in.
"I was waiting for you, Concezione," she said. "I knew that a son of yours had come to visit. Is this he?"
The apartment, from the door on, had a strong smell as if all fall it had been fermenting must. This was the smell of city houses that weren't poor, in Sicily--stuffy, suffocating, not intoxicating, a smell that was a carnal partner of the dark.
The widow greeted us noisily, laughing, and she had a large bosom, and a voice rich from her big-breasted bosom, and dark eyes, dark hair.
"I guess I did well to bring him," my mother said. "A good-looking son, no?"
"And tall and strong!" the widow said. "Worthy of you, Concezione."
And she laughed noisily and ushered us into her rooms which smelled of must, like the doorway and the stairs, but also a little of cinnamon. They were old rooms, without much furniture, but with at least twenty tinted postcards on the walls. The rooms were rather dark because the balconies looked over a courtyard garden, facing north.
My mother continued to talk about me.
"How did you know he'd come to see me?" she said. "I guess I'd have been in trouble if I hadn't brought him. . . ."
"Oh," the widow responded. "I would have stayed curious about him."
She wanted of course to offer us marsala and biscotti. From the table where she offered them, one could see the whole apartment, two or three big rooms with many doors, all thrown open, and a table in each room, and an immense bed with a red coverlet in one of them.
"And so," the widow said.
And she laughed noisily. She asked me some questions about Northern Italy, and asked my mother if she had brought me with her to all the houses on her rounds.
"Naturally," my mother said. She was satisfied to have imposed me on so many houses; she'd wanted to show me how good she was at giving the injections, she added. And the widow laughed. She looked at me, a man, with her dark eyes. And in a voice rich from her big-breasted bosom, she said:
"But with me, no, Concezione."
"What with you, no?" my mother said.
"With me you're not going to show him how good you are at giving the injection."
"Why not?" my mother said.
And the widow laughed, saying:
"I won't allow myself to be injected in front of him."
"Why not?" my mother said. She was armed with the will to impose me. "Why not?" she said.
"Because it's not necessary, Concezione," the widow responded. "Here it's not necessary. There are so many rooms. He can wait without going out into the street."
"But it's not that," my mother said. "I want him to see how it's done."
"He's seen it enough times already," the widow responded. "It's not necessary for him to see it here too."
And turning to me, laughing, she said, "Isn't that true, Mr. Silvestro?"
"Yes, I suppose," I said. But I liked being imposed on her.
"What do you mean, yes?" my mother then asked. "Don't you want to see how I give an injection to the lady?"
"Oh, yes," I responded.
"There you go," my mother said. "He wants to see."
"But Concezione!" the widow exclaimed. "I don't want him to see me."
My mother laughed.
"But he's my son," she said. "It's the same as me seeing you. . . ."
"But he's a young man," the widow said.
And my mother said, "Do you think he's never in his life seen women?"
The widow didn't say anything more. She laughed and surrendered. And with a gesture toward me she said laughing:
"And him waiting there, the devil!"
She lay down on the bed, and my mother uncovered her.
"This is an outrage, Concezione," she said from her pillow, laughing.
And my mother stuck the needle in her flesh with gusto, and then looked at me, victorious, and pointing to that flesh, said: "See how shapely she is?"
The widow squirmed on her bed, laughing. "Oh, Concezione!" she said.
"And she's almost forty," my mother said.
I complimented her.
And the widow cried, "Oh, Mr. Silvestro!" She tensed, wanting to get up but my mother held her down, uncovering her even more.
"Wait so he can see you well," she said. And to me: "Look, Silvestro!"
"But it's an outrage!" the widow said, and struggled, wanting to get up.
Finally my mother let her get up, and the widow, laughing and red in the face, said to me: "You're quite a devil, Mr. Silvestro."
We parted cordially, and my mother and I went out on the street, into the bagpipe music and the sun, facing the sunset, and we laughed, and my mother said that the widow had protested so much because she had been a kept woman and felt she wasn't in a regular position.
"But she's a good woman," she said. "And shapely, no?" she added. She looked at me, winked at me, while we crossed the street.
"Oh, yes!" I said.
"And she has fresh skin," my mother added.
Oh, yes," I said.
And my mother: "She has one of the best complexions for her age here in town."
And I: "I would think so."
And my mother: "But there are women her age who look better than she does. I was in better shape than she is," she said. "And compared to her, I don't think I've lost my figure, now that I'm fifty," she said.
"Oh, no!" I said.
"I'm always in good shape, aren't I?" my mother said.
"Oh yes," I said. "You don't have a single white hair."
"You should see how youthful I am underneath."
And I: "You can be proud of yourself."
"Naturally," my mother exclaimed. "That's what I used to say to your father. You should be proud of a wife as youthful as I am at my age. . . . But he doesn't understand a thing about women. He talked about nothing in his poetry but slender hands and eyes and so on."
"I imagine he felt that he couldn't talk about other things in his poetry," I said.
"Okay, but he could have considered the rest before talking," my mother said. "He would have been proud of me if he had considered the rest. My father was so proud of me and his other daughters. . . . He used to say that no girl had a backside as shapely as ours in all of Sicily. . . . Oh, he was proud of me, my father!"
XXX
Higher up, facing the sunset, we had come to another doorway like the widow's, but smaller and less pretentious, with one of the knockers broken.
"Now we're going to see one of my friends," my mother said.
"To give her an injection too?" I asked.
"Yes," my mother responded. "I want you to see how youthful she is, too. Maybe more so than the widow. . . . And she's almost forty, too."
"Is she a widow too?" I asked. "That is," I asked, "was she kept by a big shot, too?"
"Oh no!" my mother answered. "She's a married woman. She has four children."
We entered the foyer through a worm-eaten doorway, and there too, around the stairs, there was the old smell of must common to houses of the not-poor, in Sicily. But inside the house there was less than at the widow's; everything in the house was too old, the furniture, the floor tiles, the curtains, the bedcovers, everything was too old and dead, and one smelled dust more than anything else.
"Why are you giving her injections?" I asked. "Is she sick?"
"No," my mother said. "She thinks she's a little anemic."
"Will she let you inject her in front of me?" I said.
"Why not?" my mother said.
"But if she doesn't want it, don't insist," I said.
"But she will," my mother said.
A five-year-old child had opened the door for us. Two other children greeted us, one perhaps seven years old, and one about eight or nine, all with long hair and long aprons so one couldn't tell if they were boys or girls. "Concezione! Concezione!" they shouted, and brought us back and forth through the house, where all the rooms were very dark, and then out onto a little terrace where we met a girl of sixteen or seventeen who also began to cry out, "Concezione! Concezione!"
Finally we met my mother's friend.
"Concezione! Concezione!" she said.
She was not a very big woman, and in fact had nothing anemic about her appearance, but was young, round, and pleasing, with a lovely body. She threw herself on my mother and kissed her, with her arms around her neck, as if she had not seen her for months, and while the children jumped up and down and shouted, she said, "I heard you'd be bringing your son!"
"You knew he'd come to visit me?" my mother said.
"Yes," my mother's friend answered. "I knew it right away, and so I thought you'd bring him with you. What a good-looking son!"
The children were shouting, the girl was talking, we were in a room with a very high two-postered bed, and my mother said to her friend:
"Go on, throw yourself on the bed!"
"You're going to do it in front of him?" my mother's friend said.
"Why? You want me to send him out?" my mother exclaimed.
"I didn't say that," my mother's friend replied.
All of the children were in the room, even the girl, and the lady friend of my mother's said: "It makes me a little shy. He's so big!"
My mother laughed and she laughed with my mother. The girl laughed too.
"But I'm the one who made him so big," my mother said. "You shouldn't be shy."
Then my mother's friend threw herself on the bed.
"I imagine he's already seen so many women!" she said.
She uncovered herself, and while she waited for my mother to stick her, said:
"I imagine he's seen more appetizing women than me."
The children jumped around, shouting, and my mother, not yet ready to inject her, said, "Are you afraid of giving him an appetite?"
She laughed, and the girl laughed with her, and while the children jumped around, my mother's friend laughed against her pillow and exclaimed, "Oh, no, Concezione! I know perfectly well I could almost be his mother."
Then I said," I don't think that matters. . .."
She had a lovely body; I wanted to give her a compliment. And she cried, "What are you trying to say?"
And my mother said, "Are you saying that she gives you an appetite?"
"Why not?" I said.
"Oh!" my mother's friend cried, laughing.
"Oh!" my mother cried, laughing.
The girl laughed with them, the injection was done, and my mother's friend got up to talk to me, laughing, wagging a threatening finger at my chin. "Do you know what you are?" she said. "You are impertinent."
As soon as we were outside my mother asked me:
"Did she really give you an appetite?"
"Why not?" I responded.
"Oh!" my mother exclaimed. And laughed.
"A woman ten years older than you!" she said. And added: "The widow gave you an appetite, too?"
"Sure!" I answered. "Even more so. . .."
"Oh!" my mother exclaimed.
She laughed and said, "If I'd known I wouldn't have let you see."
But inside she was elated, somehow victorious, as we came to the end of the uphill street and into an open space looking out over the whole valley and the setting sun.
My mother looked at the sun, then asked me:
"When was the first time you saw the shape of a woman's body?"
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