Hardcover(1)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810160866 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/20/2005 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
My Version of the Facts
By Carla Pekelis
Northwestern University Press ISBN: 978-0-8101-6087-3
Chapter One 1907 to 1941
1 Like Nothing, Nothing at All
People in search of their past must begin, I imagine, by recalling their earliest memories of childhood and allowing the rest to flow from there. I would like to be free to do the same. I would love to dig in my memory and find, let's say, the dark broom closet in the house where I was born in Rome in the first decade of the century, or the incredibly white hair of my great-grandmother and her imposing double chin, or the dark velvet lining of the glass showcases in my father's jewelry store in Corso Umberto. To bring those things back to life, however, might prove to be a mixed blessing, since the mere mention of them makes me aware that I was frightened by the broom closet, made uneasy by the double chin, and in some way embarrassed by the fact that my father was not really the proprietor of the jewelry store but worked for a rich uncle, who was bald and arrogant. In any case, as I said, I'm not free. For a long time, ever since I arrived in the United States more than thirty years ago, I have felt guilty because of my inability to give a satisfactory answer to the questions inevitably put to me by people I meet. Perplexed by my claim to be born both Italian and Jewish, they have questioned me about the circumstances that occasioned this unlikely combination. When did my family come to Italy, they ask, and from where? How many Jewish Italians are there altogether? What is their situation in a wholly Catholic country?
Somehow I have always managed to postpone the effort needed to give a well-considered answer and have put aside the questions. However, being on the point of letting myself go in the selfish pleasure of remembering, I feel duty-bound not to postpone any further. No imaginary and nostalgic childhood memories for me! Or at least, not yet. First of all, I have to ask myself: "What was it like to be a Jewish child in Italy at the beginning of the century?"
What was it like? As a matter of fact, like nothing, nothing at all. There was no observance of rituals or celebration of holidays in my parents' house ... and that was much more than a failure to preserve the details while maintaining the spirit. Thinking about it now, this attitude was a sort of pride in agnosticism, a pride which my parents shared with many Italians at that time. Italy had come onto the world stage as a nation only a few years before with the motto "Free church in a free state," and the gates of the ghetto had been thrown open to a world where it was not only possible to profess whatever religion one wished, but it was possible, and actually fashionable, to profess none at all. Children, however, seemed to feel the need to be reassured by a religion. Thus, a little after I had learned how to write (and in Europe at that time this was done very early), I composed a graceful prayer which was supposed to serve both me and my younger sister. I still remember the decorated paper that I used, white with red ornaments and a red capital C in a corner. I also remember that my brother made a show of manhood by disdaining to recite the prayer, but that once I heard him refer to me with the words "My older sister is very religious," and that made me proud.
There was nothing particularly Jewish, let me say, about the God with whom I had such an intimate relationship. He was not Catholic, that's certain, because to be Catholic meant to believe in the saints, in martyrdom, and in the Virgin Mary. It also meant dry olive branches on the walls of the maid's room, and churches where my parents looked at the paintings while women dressed in black knelt in prayer; monotonous chants were murmured in the background, and children, seemingly similar to me, approached the altar with a hint of a genuflection and made the sign of the cross. How I would have liked to do the same! Actually, I sometimes knelt and made the sign of the cross in front of the mirror when no one could see me, but I felt sacrilegious and fearful that a lightning bolt might strike me for it. And so I fell back upon familiar prayers in the hope that God would give me credit for them, keep an eye on me and my family, and, naturally, send me good dreams.
Dreams (and their occasional companions, nightmares) were a source of great interest for me at that time, so that my instructions to God to be as helpful to me as possible in this matter were fervid and detailed. He must, if possible, send me good dreams. If he should find it difficult on a particular night, I would be more than happy if he sent me nothing. But please, please, in no case let me have bad dreams, especially those in which one falls, falls, falls, down a bottomless well.
I wondered if adults also prayed for good dreams. It was hard to know, because the only adult of my acquaintance who prayed was my maternal grandmother, and her ways of practicing religion were very mysterious.
I remember Nonna Elisa only as an old woman, although she must not have been so very old when I was a child, especially by current standards. But everyone is old to children, and my memory of my parents is that of a middle-aged couple, not of young and dashing people, who-in the photographs I still have-stand in romantic poses, or hold me, their first born, in their arms. Besides, my grandmother was as frugal with words as she was with smiles, and she intimidated me. It was her reserve, I think, more than the lines in her face, that put her in a world apart for me. I knew, however, that she had been beautiful, and I sometimes stood in admiration before a painting that depicted her as a young bride. Except for the blond of her hair, the whole picture was in blue: the chair in which she sat, the immense skirt falling to the ground, the elaborate embroidery on the sleeves of the little black bodice ... and, above all, her eyes. Looking at a point beyond and distant from the painter, they confirmed the reserve I intuited in my grandmother, as did her mouth, not completely open in a hint of a smile. But the reserve of the portrait suggested only shyness, a hand not quite extended rather than a hand withheld. Perhaps it was the portrait, then, that encouraged me to ask Nonna Elisa once: "Is it true, Nonna, that you were very beautiful?"
Probably I wanted a complete story of the young woman in blue, but Nonna Elisa only said, with a half smile this time on her thin lips, "They used to say that I was the most beautiful girl in Ancona!"
Ancona, on the Adriatic, was the city where she was born, was married, and where all her thirteen children had been born. Nonna Elisa and Nonno Giuseppe, or Geppino, had been engaged for seven years. Her father did not favor the marriage (I don't think I have ever known why), and so she had waited patiently for his consent, embroidering all that time the letters E and G, Elisa and Giuseppe, on her trousseau. I don't remember Nonno Geppino, who died when I was very small; I only remember his photograph in the family album and the marble bust on a pedestal that stood in the garden for years until the Germans knocked it down during the Second World War. Nonna Elisa, on the other hand, had an important if discreet role in the early years of my life because we went to her country house every summer, or rather, every autumn. In summer, we preferred to go to the mountains, and only in September to Ancona for the sea air and for family. It was then that Judaism made a brief appearance in my life.
Nonna Elisa would sit in the garden every day, the still and quiet center of an ever-changing group of chattering women. They were daughters, granddaughters, daughters-in-law, some of them house-guests like us; or they lived in the immediate vicinity, or they came from Ancona for an afternoon visit. Once seated, each woman took out her needlework, and this activity, far from interfering with the general conversation, seemed to help it along, making it easier and freer. I have no childhood memory of my grandmother's garden without that circle of women and without me as part of it, trying to learn from one of my aunts how to embroider, or to make macrame, or to knit. But no other undertaking struck me as much as my grandmother's, on whose lap an intricate miracle of crochet work was forever taking form. I was as fascinated by the yards of lace for linens, of ornamental lace of all sizes and shapes, and the elaborate doilies she was capable of making, as I was by the quickness and steadiness of her gestures.
Her hands rested only on Saturday, and on that day, instead of crocheting, they held a worn, leather-covered prayerbook. I can still see its yellowed pages covered with mysterious lettering. Her hands were still; only her lips moved. They were pale lips, with a blue mark on the lower. They moved silently, and every word I tried to catch was incomprehensible. On Saturday the visitors were less numerous and did not stay so long. Again, they were all women because Saturday was a working day, but their hands were idle and the conversation subdued. In whispers the children were told to play less noisily because Nonna was praying.
Sometimes the prayers lasted longer, and Grandmother wore dresses of a special kind: black or gray silk instead of the usual dark cotton prints. Or she fasted for the entire day. Then the mothers said it was "Rosh Hashona" or "Kippur." Thus all the autumn holidays became vaguely familiar, while the others remained in darkness.
2 Thank You, But I Must Speak French
The desire to postpone a head-on confrontation with religious instruction in general and the Catholic world in particular must have had some part in my parents' decision to conduct their children's elementary education at home. But only a small part, after all, since this system was followed by most bourgeois Italian families at the time and had to do, more than anything else, with purposes and conditions of an intellectual nature. The caliber of the public schools was low, and their physical facilities nonexistent. There were no private schools, so far as I know. Therefore, the children of well-off families were usually "privatisti"; that is, they studied at home where teachers came to give them lessons. My brother, my sister, and I had two such teachers, sisters, both gentle, cultivated, and unmarried. One of them taught us all the subjects of the official syllabus; the other, a subject requested solely by our ambitious parents: the piano. I began my general education at five years, my musical education at seven. Foreign languages were entrusted to a German governess "in residence," but I, for one, would gladly have dispensed with her ministrations. Three or four such governesses must have passed through our lives during the period before the First World War, at which time speaking German luckily became unpatriotic.
They were all terribly cruel, I thought; doubly cruel, really, because of their tendency to be enchanted to the point of indulgence with Luciana, the little one with rosy cheeks, and irresistible Guido, the boy. On the other hand, it was expected, and this was the trouble, that I must be a good example for both of them, which caused me to be the object of the strictest discipline. It was with a wicked pleasure, so I thought, that the current Fräulein used to tie to my wrist at night the homemade glove without fingers called a sachetta, or "little bag," that prevented me from sucking my thumb. With implacable determination, as she hastened to get her duties over with and leave the room, she forbade me to fold my clothing properly on the chair near my bed. If at certain times I managed to frustrate her evil designs, it was only by means of great cunning and at the cost of considerable sacrifice. I had to stay awake long enough to see, through the glass door of the bedroom, the light at the entrance go out, and this could take a great deal of time, especially when my parents had guests. Only when they (and the fascinating sounds of their greetings and laughter) had moved to the dining room, did I slip out of bed and proceed without breathing to fold my clothes according to a precise and methodical ritual: first the dress, then the blouse, then the petticoat, then the underwear, and alone on top of all the rest, the stockings. There was also a robe to put on the back of a chair, and slippers, naturally, to set underneath it, exactly next to one another. The whole operation was not a small undertaking for me, considering that it was conducted in the dark, with my right hand imprisoned in the "sachetta;" I certainly deserved the deep and uninterrupted sleep that followed.
When a French children's nurse took the job of governess, I felt much better. Instead of towering over us, Mlle Robert seemed very needful of protection herself. Her thin body and white, bloodless skin gave her a precariously fragile look. Besides, she was a Waldensian, that is, she belonged to a small French-speaking, Protestant group living in Piedmont, and I thought that this fact weighed in her favor. She, too, was a foreigner, but her beliefs were a little easier to accept than Catholic ones. Not that I had a very clear idea of them. Was it the Virgin Mary that Protestants didn't believe in, or perhaps the saints? In any case, there were undoubtedly fewer "people" that they worshipped, so the guilt of not worshipping them weighed less heavily on my shoulders.
I loved Mlle Robert, and it didn't bother me to learn French under her instruction, all the more as the study was carried on in the simplest of circumstances. Except for rainy days (and there aren't any, or I should say there weren't very many in a Roman winter), our French was learned in the parks, sometimes in the little "public gardens" near our house, chiefly at the Villa Borghese, which we reached by a fairly long but not unpleasant walk. The only inconvenience of these walks was the restriction imposed by our mother-to our displeasure and, I suspect, Mlle Robert's-namely, that in no case were we to waste the precious time dedicated to French by playing with other children, who, furthermore, might be suffering from contagious diseases. Thus, whenever another child approached us in the parks, spontaneously pronouncing the magic words "Do you want to play?" we had to answer, "Thank you, but I must speak French." The fatal phrase was always entrusted to me, the oldest, and I tried to put into it the greatest possible dignity. Nevertheless, the look in the eye of a playmate rebuffed, half disdain and half commiseration, was often hard to bear.
Whenever I think of my years in Rome (we lived there until I was seventeen), I see my cousins Mario, Carlo, and Elena. The two boys were slightly older than me, the girl slightly younger, and I loved them very much. I also loved their mother, their house, and whatever they did. I think my mother, too, felt great affection for their mother, who was her sister. They exchanged frequent visits, and we children had the chance to play together as much as our intense course of studies permitted. It was generally acknowledged that my mother was a progressive young woman with intellectual interests; on the other hand, my aunt was a sweet person without imagination. Besides, my mother had been a very romantic girl (as testified by many photograph albums, poems, and manuscripts) and had married "for love," while my aunt had meekly submitted to the common practice of an "arranged marriage." All that placed certain obligations on our shoulders, and my mother would never have dreamed of engaging the same instructors that my aunt had employed before her; she had to find her own. Thus my cousins and we were denied the pleasure of sharing certain experiences and had to limit ourselves to the dubious one of contrasting methods. I always knew that my teachers were supposed to be better, but I couldn't help preferring theirs.
Now that I think of it, my cousins did "Swedish gymnastics" in the same private gymnasium where we did ours; nevertheless, even in this matter they were privileged, because they were not forced by their parents to continue daily exercises at home along with their scholastic work. Every morning before breakfast we had to bend and stretch and lie down on the floor, kicking our legs up and down with great effort, while our mother came and went briskly to and from her bedroom overseeing our activity.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from My Version of the Facts by Carla Pekelis Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.