A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano (tr. Brian Robert Moore)

There’s been something of a resurgence of interest in ‘classic’ Italian women writers in recent years, largely focusing on Natalia Ginzburg, whose work I very much enjoy. (Her essay collection The Little Virtues is easily one of my standout reads of the year so far.) Other female writers from the mid-20th century are also being rediscovered, from Alba de Cespedes and Anna Maria Ortese to Elsa Morante and Iris Origo. (Whilst Origo wasn’t born in Italy, she lived there for many years, documenting the events of WW2 from her home in Val d’Orcia, Tuscany.)

Now we can add the Italian writer, poet and artist Lalla Romano to that list, courtesy of this beautiful reissue of her 1957 novella A Silence Shared – freshly translated by Brian Robert Moore and recently published by Pushkin Press. It’s a gorgeous, enigmatic novella, like an ode to stillness and silence, all expressed in Romano’s subtle, poetic prose.

The story takes place deep in the midst of the Italian countryside during the autumn and winter months of 1943. Giulia, the young woman who narrates the novel, has left her home in Turin to stay with two of her mother’s elderly cousins, leaving behind her husband, Stefano, who works in the city. With bombings continuing across Northern and Central Italy, the cousins’ rural home is a place of relative safety, particularly given the tense atmosphere in Turin.

Shortly after her arrival, Giulia becomes intrigued by an enigmatic married couple also sheltering in the hills – the lively, spontaneous Ada and her distant, pre-occupied husband, Paolo. The pair have been driven into hiding at the secluded Tetto Murato (which literally means ‘walled roof’) mostly due to Paolo’s activities in the resistance – a situation compounded by severe asthma, which frequently lays him low.

I had heard people talk about them [Paolo and Ada], the way locals talk about out-of-towners: as something suspicious, if not outright scandalous.

He, a teacher and intellectual, sent to that isolated town near the border as if in a kind of exile; she, proud, aristocratic. No one knew how they managed to get by: they didn’t give lessons, and yet no one could say they had racked up any debts. Worst of all was that they “didn’t go to church”. (p. 15)

As the weeks slip by, Giulia is increasingly drawn to Paolo and Ada at Tetto Murato, walking there and back each day to spend time in the couple’s orbit while helping with Paolo’s care. A sense of connection swiftly develops between Giulia and Paolo, a kind of affinity or unspoken bond which flourishes in their shared silences, enhancing the rarefied atmosphere in the house. Similarly, when Stefano pays the occasional visit to Giulia, he is often drawn to Ada – not in a sexual way but in a spiritual sense, like two kindred spirits coming together as one.

There is something dreamlike and hypnotic about this novel, as if the reader is viewing every development through a light, gauzy curtain, rendering everything with a hazy, shimmering glow. Romano excels in creating an intimate, emotionally charged atmosphere, highlighting the developing relationships between Giulia, Paolo and Ada – not forgetting Stefano during his occasional visits to the house.

The stove at the foot of the bed emitted heat, but the siege of the night and the cold was pressing up against the small windows. I lay motionless, the fur weighing lightly and pleasantly on my body, in the warmth and in the faint scent of that bed that wasn’t my own. “Their” bed. I was a bit perturbed, but happy, too. It had been easy: with Ada, everything was easy. (p. 77)

This is a novel in which silence envelops everything from the house at Tetto Murato to the occupants themselves. Very little happens in terms of narrative plot; instead, Romana is more interested in evoking atmosphere and mood, painting her novel in scenes where so much remains unsaid. Moreover, there is an unspoken air of disapproval in the cousins’ attitude to Giulia’s closeness to Paola and Ada – another kind of silence that permeates the book. 

The need for concealment offers the central characters the possibility of deep intimacy – an atmosphere that encourages intense, unspoken emotions to flow between them, transcending marital bonds and fidelities – with Paolo’s illness adding another layer of intimacy and intensity to an already clandestine situation.

I would give my all, straining to make out what Paolo said when, in the drowsy state caused by the injections, a sudden start would jolt through him. I spoke to him for hours during the night: it was my task, and—in the dark and in the silence—communication between the two of us became natural, profound. (p. 106) 

Romano was a painter before she became a writer, and her gift for visual imagery plays a significant part in this book. In conveying the mood at Tetto Murato, the author draws on all the senses, from the starlight gracing the landscape at night to the aromas of smoke, grain and baked apples wafting through the house. As Giulia, Ada and Paola lie in bed together, snuggling under the fur blanket for warmth, we can feel the heat from the fire, sense the sharp frost outside, hear the crunch of snow underfoot.

I held my breath for a second when arriving at Tetto Murato. The silence enveloped—more compact than the snow—the semi-buried houses, and the great black pine tree, in its infinite melancholy, seemed simultaneously to point to and to hide a secret. (p. 130)

The sense of place is also beautifully evoked, particularly the countryside that Giulia cuts through on her daily pilgrimages to Tetto Murato. The simple, untamed beauty of the landscape – a beauty ‘born out of poverty’ – is characterised by fields of mulberry trees and patches of wild brambles, highlighting the contrast with the tense atmosphere in town.

Beyond town, the riverbanks—the high, woody stretches along the river—flourished, thick and blooming; and so much beauty seemed like madness, now that the sky was cut through daily by flocks of migrating birds and the town was becoming more and more withdrawn, taciturn, patrolled up and down by the frightening ranks of the Muti brigade. (p. 37)

As winter gives way to spring, other changes permeate the air – a sense of wistfulness or regret as the protagonists’ time together may come to a natural end.

Romano has written a haunting, dreamlike novel here, like a love letter to human connection in a time of great uncertainty, heightened by the need to shelter from the turmoil of war. (My thanks to the publishers and the Independent Alliance for kindly providing a review copy.)

Evening Descends Upon the Hills by Anna Maria Ortese (tr. Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee)

First published in Italian in 1953, Evening Descends Upon the Hills is a brilliant collection of short stories and reportage by the critically acclaimed writer Anna Maria Ortese. As a whole, the collection conveys a vivid portrait of post-war Naples in all its vitality, devastation and squalor – a place that remains resilient despite being torn apart by war. Sharp contrasts are everywhere Ortese’s writing, juxtaposing the city’s ugliness with its beauty, the desperation of extreme poverty with the indifference of the bourgeoisie, the reality of the situation with the subjectivity of our imagination. It’s a powerful and evocative read, enhanced considerably by Ortese’s wonderfully expressive style.

Evening begins with three fictional pieces – the first of which is A Pair of Eyeglasses, an excellent story in which a young girl, Eugenia, is eagerly anticipating her first pair of glasses. Eugenia lives with her parents, spinster aunt and two younger siblings in an impoverished neighbourhood of Naples. Partly in return for their basement-level accommodation, Eugenia’s parents are at the beck and call of the Marchesa, the rather demanding and thoughtless owner of the dwelling, who thinks nothing of doling out casual put-downs at various opportunities.

Ortese skilfully captures the inherent spirit of the neighbourhood, complete with a multitude of vivid sights and animated sounds.

When the cart was behind her, Eugenia, raising her protruding eyes, basked in that warm blue glow that was the sky, and heard the great hubbub all around her, without, however, seeing it clearly. Carts, one behind the other, big trucks with Americans dressed in yellow hanging out the windows, bicycles that seemed to be tumbling over. High up, all the balconies were cluttered with flower crates, and over the railings, like flags or saddle blankets, hung yellow and red quilts, ragged blue children’s clothes, sheets, pillows, and mattresses exposed to the air, while at the end of the alley ropes uncoiled, lowering baskets to pick up the pick up the vegetables or fish offered by peddlers. (p. 22)

Nevertheless, it’s an environment that Eugenia is unable to see clearly, particularly as she is virtually blind. Only with the aid of glasses is the true horror of the environment revealed – an experience Eugenia finds utterly overwhelming, shattering her previous perceptions of life in the bustling courtyard.

…the cabbage leaves, the scraps of paper, the garbage and, in the middle of the courtyard, that group of ragged, deformed souls, faces pocked by poverty and resignation, who looked at her lovingly. They began to writhe, to become mixed up, to grow larger. They all came toward her, in the two bewitched circles of the eyeglasses. (p. 33)

The contrast here is particularly striking, pitting Eugenia’s blurred, almost rose-tinted impressions of her surroundings against the brutal reality of the situation. It’s a memorable story, effectively setting the tone for the collection as a whole.

In Family Interior – probably my favourite of the three stories – we meet Anastasia Finizio, a successful shop owner, who has worked tirelessly to support her mother, spinster aunt and younger siblings for several years. At thirty-nine, Anastasia is vaguely aware that her life is slipping by – a realisation brought into sharp relief when she hears news of the return of Antonio, a man from her youth. This development rekindles dormant feelings within Anastasia, prompting her to dream of the kind of life she might have had – and may still to be to have? – with Antonio.

What Ortese does so well here is to convey the power dynamics within the family, particularly in relation to Anastasia’s mother who sees the danger in any disruption to the present equilibrium.

It seemed to Signora Finizio, sometimes that Anastasia wasted time in futile things, but she didn’t dare to protest openly, for it appeared to her that the sort of sleep in which her daughter was sunk, and which allowed them all to live and expand peacefully, might at any moment, for a trifle, break. She had no liking for Anastasia (her beloved was Anna), but she valued her energy and, with It, her docility, that practical spirit joined to such resigned coldness. (p. 48)

In truth, Signora Finizio is a selfish woman, one who takes a perverse satisfaction in hurting Anastasia – effectively humiliating her to keep everything in check. It’s an excellent story, subtle and nuanced in its exploration of Anastasia’s position, highlighting the tension between familial responsibility and personal freedom.

After The Gold of Forcella – a vividly-realised story of a pawnshop in the heart of Naples – the focus shifts to non-fiction pieces, essentially conveyed in a reportage style. The Involuntary City is the most powerful essay in this section – a candid account of Ortese’s visits to Granili III and IV, a sprawling shelter for those made homeless by the devastation of war. Initially intended to be a temporary solution for the displaced and dispossessed, The Granili is ‘home’ to some 3,000 individuals (approximately 570 families), with an average of three families per individual room. The conditions are horrific – damp, cramped and filthy – particularly on the lower floors of the building where the most impoverished residents are housed.

In a few homes someone was cooking: smoke, which had the density of a blue body, escaped from some doors, yellow flames could be glimpsed inside, the black faces of people squatting, holding a bowl on their knees. In other rooms, instead, everything was motionless, as if life had become petrified; men still in bed turned under grey blankets, women were absorbed in combing their hair, in the enchanted slow motion of those who do not know what will be, afterward, the other occupation of their day. The entire ground floor, and the first floor to which we were ascending, were in these conditions of depressed inertia. (pp. 86-87)

There is a sense of desperation about the existence in these squalid, smoke-ridden conditions, almost as if the building’s lower echelons are representative of a race’s demise following the destructive impact of war.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a form of class structure has developed within the Granili, separating the displaced into different social strata, largely according to status. Some of those on the higher floors have jobs – consequently their days are structured, and this sense of order tends to be reflected in the immediate surroundings. In short, these individuals have adapted to reduced circumstances without giving up their sense of decorum. Nevertheless, there is a widespread understanding of the precarious nature of this situation. On occasions a random stroke of bad luck, such as an illness or the loss of a job, will force someone on the third floor to give up their lodgings and descend to a lower one, usually to move in with another family member. For the most part, these people are destined to remain in their relegated positions, despite harbouring hopes of regaining their previous status.

In the final section of the book, Ortese recounts a series of journeys to visit former colleagues from Sud, the avant-garde cultural magazine where she worked in the late ‘40s. There is a melancholy, elegiac tone running through these pieces, a sense of alienation from those who have become indifferent or embittered.

In summary, Evening Descends Upon the Hills is a fascinating collection that blurs the margins between fiction and reportage to paint a striking vision of post-war Naples, vividly capturing the city’s resilience in the face of poverty, suffering and corruption. The attention to detail is meticulous – as is the level of emotional insight, particularly about women’s lives and family dynamics.

The collection comes with an excellent introduction by the translators which outlines the reactions to Ortese’s candid (and sometimes brutal) vision of Naples following the book’s initial publication – the author was subsequently banned from the city for several years. Also included is the preface from the 1994 reissue, in which Ortese reflects on how her disoriented state of mind may have influenced her picture of post-war Naples, as captured in the original book.

In short, this is very highly recommended indeed – particularly for fans of Elena Ferrante, who has cited Ortese as a key influence on her work. My thanks to Pushkin Press and the Independent Alliance for kindly providing a review copy.