9

 9

GIOVANNA DID VERY POORLY in the first assignment of the year. Silvia corrected it, marking the whole thing with red. She didn’t know whether to give Giovanna a very low mark or an encouraging one, and she didn’t want to use her father’s beatings to force her to apply herself—it seemed disloyal. But neither could she treat her differently from the other children. She felt she was losing her authority, and not marking her down would only make matters worse. Unless Giovanna realized that her behavior had consequences she would never shake off her lethargy. In fact, maybe this terrible assignment was a cry for help, and pretending that it wasn’t so bad would be tantamount to ignoring her.

In the end, Silvia thought it was the first bad mark she’d given, and that Giovanna could improve. It was better to give it now than later. She marked her just above failure. But she slept badly that night.

Giovanna took back her homework in class without batting an eyelid. When the bell rang, Silvia stopped her.

“You can do better. Don’t worry.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No.”

“I saw you out with those guys. Do you want to fail again?”

“No, Miss.”

“You’ve already skipped four days in less than a month of school.”

“I was sick one of those days.”

“If you miss another day I’ll have to tell your parents, you know that? School is a requirement. Let’s finish out the year, Giovanna.”

The girl nodded and slipped away.

Silvia went home dragging her feet, which seemed heavier with every step, her legs two pig’s trotters. She imagined Giovanna going home with her homework in her schoolbag, waiting for her father to return. What should I have done? The assignment wasn’t salvageable, she said to herself. She thought about calling Giovanna’s home, but that seemed excessive. Anyway, how many times had it happened? A poor mark, a few smacks. Almost all her students got them, some more than others. Several of the boys even bragged about them. But it was Giovanna’s look that made Silvia uneasy. Her eyes seemed to turn inward.

The next day Giovanna was in class, and it didn’t seem that she’d been beaten badly. During break she played with the others and talked nonstop to the girl she sat next to; the daughter of a pharmacist, she did well in school. Silvia felt encouraged. I’m the one who’s making a meal of this, she said to herself. But within a week Giovanna was skipping school again.

The teacher looked at her empty desk, thinking. If I phone now, her mother will be at home and she can tell me if Giovanna has a fever or some other setback. I’ll phone and convince her to go easy on her. Maybe forbid her to go out in the afternoon, yes, but smacks: no. She’s not a dog.

She phoned. At seven thirty, Giovanna had gone out with her schoolbag as usual and seemed bursting with good health. When she found out about her daughter’s absence, Giovanna’s mother immediately became agitated.

“That good-for-nothing! When she gets home I’ll show her!” She didn’t want to let on that she didn’t consider school important—she herself had stopped after the third year.

“Oh no, Signora. That’s not why I called. I’m worried about Giovanna—recently she seems listless.”

“That’s because she’s hanging out with those two morons.”

“I think the best thing to do is to talk to her but without going on the attack. She’s at a tricky age. I’ve been her teacher for over four years and I’ve never found her to be uncooperative.”

“I’m telling you, she’s just really stubborn.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Will you promise to try and go easy on her? Let’s try. Trying doesn’t cost a thing.”

“Sure, Miss. Thank you for calling.”

Giovanna knocked at ten past one and pretended nothing was amiss. Her mother studied her and held back from laying into her right away with the slap that was tickling her right hand. After lunch the girl started washing up without complaining. Conscientiously, she plunged her hands into the soapy water while her brothers played Shanghai. She ran her fingers down the hot ceramic plates until they squeaked to make sure there wasn’t any grease left on them.

That afternoon, seeing that she wasn’t about to confess, her mother took her aside.

“Your teacher called, so I know you weren’t at school. Why are you such a liar?”

Giovanna stood rooted to the spot, saying nothing. A few seconds of silence, broken by the grinding of the washing machine.

“I don’t feel like keeping this from your father. I don’t want to be a liar like you. But I’ll try to keep him calm—your teacher asked me to do that. I’m not sure I’ll manage—we both know what he’s like. But you’re not making it easy. All you have to do is go to school and get a pass. Why do you rile him up like this?”

“If you tell him, I’ll kill myself,” Giovanna replied, and she went to the children’s room and shut the door. Her mother shook her head. She didn’t believe it for an instant.

Giovanna, however, opened the window. The river ran past four floors below. The apartment block ended at a stone and cement wall just over the bank, a step away from the gray-green water. Giovanna could make out pebbles on the riverbed, stirred by the Cervo as it smoothed and rounded them like sweets, muddy weeds, a can of paint, a nylon sock. She wasn’t thinking about the meadows ready for haymaking, cheese molds, the wind blowing off the glacier, bringing with it the scent of snow even in midsummer, the animals’ bluish drooling.

She kicked off her slippers. She seemed to be on the moon, looking down on everything from far away: her house, her family, her father ready to finish his shift and come home, herself at the window. She felt hurt and remote. She wanted to go backward somehow, but also not to go back at all anymore. The only clear thought she had was this: she didn’t want to be punished. If anything, she wanted to punish.

They found her three kilometers downstream.