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| Pia Di Marco |
ROME – Clinic, abortion and a taxi encounter: a story of the female body, choice, and the strength of today's women. Diversely Women. “In my dreams and my daily behaviour – as is common to all men – I live my prenatal life, my happy immersion in the maternal waters: I know that there, I existed.” Rome, 3rd February, 1 p.m. I am on level -1 of a Roman clinic specialising in gynaecology. The operating theatre looks like a Red Cross camp in wartime: dozens of cots with women dressed in green, either sleeping or barely moaning, their faces weary from the anaesthesia. I wait for my turn, still awake, my hair enclosed in a blue cap. I clutch the edges of my gown, which opens mercilessly at the back. I answer a few questions from the anaesthetist and scribble my name—made of four words—here and there. It's something I've resented since primary school; the more self-assured girls had only one name and one surname, just enough not to feel in pieces.
“Is it an abortion?” they ask her. She nods.
A patient arrives, dressed just like me. She sits in the chair next to mine. A doctor asks for her details: “I was born in Caltanissetta,” she says, her voice lingering on every syllable of that place so far from her—from us—as we wait for everything and nothing. She isn't very young, somewhere in the middle; the cap gives her the look of a "Madonna of the people". “Is your father upstairs?” they ask. She replies that her husband is up there—not her father—and he's from Caltanissetta too. “Is it an abortion?” they ask. She nods. “Come, don't be afraid.” They take her hand; she hesitates... Go away, I'm about to tell her, but I remain silent. You can leave this place. I can see you're suffering, that you're hurting. If you do this, you can't go back; what is there now will be no more. Is that why they asked if your father was upstairs? Is it hard to guess you have a husband even if you want an abortion? But why? Is it a foetal abnormality? Can't you afford it? Are you sure? Go away. Of all the women here, you're the only one who still can. Those who are unwell, those who are damaged, must submit; they must leave what they can under the lamps pointed at “The Origin of the World”, as Courbet titled his painting.
Pasolini's legacy and the 1975 controversy
But you can leave, you want to leave... she stands up, slightly unsteady, forgetting the gown flapping open over her slender frame (that ridiculous “bare-bottomed” effect has something of an animal led to the slaughter). She lets herself be led by the hand into the theatre. I never saw her again, but lately, remembering her brings to mind Pasolini's words in that famous article in the Corriere della Sera on 19th January 1975, which provoked vitriol from everyone, even his friend Moravia. 9th February, I leave the clinic. There are many taxis at the rank in Piazza Cavour. This one or that one? I ask the drivers of two cars lined up. I get in. It's a woman; the reflection on the glass had prevented me from noticing. “Good evening, where are we heading?” I give her the address and she repeats it to the sat-nav. “The storm? No one saw it today, the weather spared us,” she's keen to talk. “Yesterday, oh, yesterday the rain was relentless. I was coming from... and the mountain peaks were all white, snow!”
Like a cat on a motorway: A Roman encounter
“And then I get to Rome and the rain... the rain! Have you seen the Tiber? It's swollen; you can't even see the banks anymore. There are huge waves at the Tiber Island, it looks like the sea.” She turns slightly: in the dark, I see a sharp profile, a fleshy tip of the nose, a few wrinkles, a thick fringe, chestnut hair falling to her shoulders—an air of feminine masculinity. I'm reminded of the scene in Like a Cat on a Highway (Come un gatto in tangenziale), where the imperious Paola Cortellesi is mistaken for a transvestite. I also noticed her very long nails, lacquered in silver; they sent out lunar glints as they moved lightly over the immense black steering wheel. “The waves, you know, there were real waves against the island. I told my daughter. And mind you, getting through there is a nightmare—forget about A&E, ambulances stuck, a bin lorry always blocking the way. Can you hear? It's the radio; the match is over and everyone's looking for a taxi.”
The long haul: From Rome to Milan by taxi
“These people came to Rome from Cagliari, they want a taxi for the station—the traffic, the weather... no, it's not worth it. Once, at Termini, I picked up three Russians. It was a trip to Milan, fourteen hundred euros, return price included. I told them: 'Look, the high-speed train hasn't even left yet.' But they weren't having it. And the suitcases! They made me lug them; they'd seen the car was nice, big, with a spacious boot. I'm a woman, they paid in advance and they got through customs scot-free.
Because there was definitely something in those cases. And on I drove, it was six in the evening, they all looked like tunnels to me, they never ended. It was the exhaustion, the tension—I'd only had two hours' sleep the night before. I told my son when he rang me; I was going up, he was coming down, heading back to Rome from Bologna. He'd picked up a giant Angora cat. Well, I trusted them. One of the three didn't matter at all; the boss was the one with the white briefcase, the smallest one: 'Don't touch this, I'll take care of it,' he said.”
The irony of beauty and the kindness of strangers
“Who knows what was inside.” She turns more, smiles. Now I see her better: a beautiful woman doesn't grow old, she seasons, as Moni Ovadia used to say in one of his shows where eras, languages, and features blended in an intoxicating whirl. “We got to Milan station at midnight. They made me haul down the suitcases which weighed a tonne, while the boss's one was light.”
What kind of men must they have been, I thought, to let a woman heave suitcases out of the boot, and again I thought of Cortellesi with her broad shoulders and the irony of being beautiful. “Driving back at that hour? No, I didn't feel up to it. And the hotel prices? Terrifying, three or four hundred—I would've eaten up everything I'd earned. And the maranza [troublemakers] hanging around the station... so many of them! Finally, a colleague on the radio tells me there's a place for 80 euros! 'Don't leave the car outside,' he warns me, 'or it won't be there tomorrow.'”
The silver lining: Jo Jo and the moonlight nails
“So? By then I'd almost reached my destination,” she continued her story, and I noticed the steering wheel had a silver stripe identical to her nail polish, “near the hotel I see a garage, out comes a Senegalese man, Jo Jo—I still remember the name—ah... Jo Jo, you come with me... minus four, you know, those multi-storey car parks, without him I'd have got lost. It was two in the morning; I gave him some cigarettes and bought him a coffee. The next day, I said to the garage owner: 'Are you as kind as Jo Jo?' He was kind; he didn't make me pay.”“How much do I owe you?” By now we are in front of my front door. “Fifteen euros,” she signs the receipt with the pen held between her moon-coloured nails. I get out of the car: “You know? You are wonderful!” That is how I say goodbye, as she is already flared up against an awkward driver who wants her to move.
by Pia Di Marco
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