The House in Via Manno Read Online Free PDF Page A

into two old-fashioned buns, made of plaits that started from the part in the middle of her head and never turned white or thinned out. I was proud when Nonna, with her young smile, came to pick me up from school amongst all the other children’s mothers and fathers — my parents, being musicians, were always travelling around the world. My Nonna was entirely dedicated to me, just as my father was entirely dedicated to music, and my mother was entirely dedicated to my father.
    No girl ever wanted Papà, and Nonna suffered and felt guilty because maybe she’d passed on to her son the mysterious illness that made love flee. In those days there were clubs, and kids went dancing and intertwined love affairs with Beatles songs. But for my father, nothing. Sometimes at the Conservatorium he rehearsed pieces with girls — singers, violinists, flautists — and they all wanted him to accompany them on the piano for their exams since he was the best. But when the exam was over, that was that.
    Then one day, Nonna went to open the door and saw Mamma arrive with her flute over her shoulder, gasping, because here in via Manno there’s no lift. She had an air that was timid but sure — exactly the same air she still has — and she was beautiful, simple, fresh, and gasping for air, and as she gasped her way up the stairs she laughed about nothing, joyfully, as young girls laugh, and Nonna called Papà, who was busy practising, and cried out to him, ‘She’s arrived. The person you were waiting for has arrived!’
    Nor can Mamma forget that day, the day they were supposed to rehearse a piece for piano and flute and there were no free rooms at the Conservatorium and my father told her to come to via Manno. It had all seemed perfect to her: Nonna, Nonno, the house. Mamma lived in an ugly spot on the outskirts of town, in a big grey building like an army barracks, with her widowed mother, my other nonna, signora Lia, who was strict and inflexible and obsessed about order and hygiene, and waxed the floor so much you had to wear slippers to protect it, and was always dressed in black. Mamma had to phone her mother constantly to tell her where she was, but Mamma never complained — not at all. The only happy thing in Mamma’s life was music, which signora Lia, however, couldn’t stand, and she’d shut all the doors so as not to hear her daughter practising.
    Mamma had loved my father from a distance for ages. She liked everything about him, even the fact that he was completely potty and always turned up with his jumper on back to front, and never remembered what season it was and would wear summer shirts until he caught bronchitis, and everyone said he was crazy, and the girls, even though he was very handsome, didn’t want to go out with him because of all these things — above all because his craziness wasn’t fashionable at the time, and nor for that matter was classical music, at which he was a genius. But Mamma would have done anything for him.
    In their early days she made a point of keeping herself available and didn’t even look for work, because that was the only way to be close to Papà: accompanying him on tour all over the world, turning the pages of the few pieces he didn’t know from memory, sitting on a stool by his side. In fact, the only times she didn’t go away with him were when she couldn’t — for example, when I was born. The day of my birth he was in New York to play Ravel’s Concerto in G. Nonna and Nonno didn’t even phone him so as not to excite him, and for fear that he might play badly because of me.
    As soon as I’d grown a little bit, Mamma bought a second playpen, a second baby walker, a second high chair, a second set of food-warmers and brought them all here to via Manno so she could quickly put some baby clothes in a bag, leave me with Nonna, and go straightaway to catch the plane to join Papà.
    They never left me with my maternal grandmother, signora Lia; if they did I’d cry floods of