Can a life of quarrels and envy close in a whisper, not a scream? Can a life of endurance, obstinacy, and ado collapse in a silent departure from the world you believed eternal?
In a sentence taken from Aldo Palazzeschi’s famous novel Le Sorelle Materassi, the essence of the Papale sisters’ life - Lucia, Bettina, and Lorenza - is captured:
“[...] era la vita, quella, o si recitava una commedia? L’una cosa nell’altra: tutte e due le cose insieme.” “[...] was that life, or was it a comedy being acted? One thing within the other: both things together.”
If you have Neapolitan blood in your veins, you cannot separate the two; and they were daughters of that blood - the real native blood from Santa Maria Capua Vetere.
I met them when they were already buried alive, away from the world of Hylics, beautifully preserved and happy to be in their own world after years spent working in a factory as labourers.
I remember their smiling and grotesque faces, like a Neapolitan face in a De Filippo comedy. I remember their arguments - one of them had drunk more whiskey than the other. I remember their gargantuan Christmas lunches, and the hours spent unwrapping presents for my girls, their nieces. I remember their house, spotless and gleaming like a mirror. I remember their happy, loud voices, their Neapolitan accent…
But life is envious of happy people, beautifully preserved and happy to be preserved from Evil - and one by one, one after the other, reclaimed ingloriously their happiness: the happiness of women never touched by a man’s hand.
They are yet here, in this mind and heart of mine, still alive and happy and loud as they were in those far and stolen days - in many sunny Christmases that will never fade away, as their bodies silently and unnoticed did.
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