As I looked at Stefano and his great-aunt, tracing out the unlikely family resemblances between them, a crease at the eyes, the angle of the jaw, I thought of Christopher. Of my husband, who might so easily have been here, only a few days earlier. I almost thought I felt his presence in the room with us, he might have sat in this exact seat, opposite these exact people, looked at them exactly as I now looked at them. But what he would have made of them I did not know, I could not guess the questions he might have asked. As always, I returned to the absence that was at the heart of my experience of him.
I almost asked the great-aunt then if she had met Christopher, if he had been here in real life and not supposition. But I couldn’t locate the words, I didn’t know how I would phrase the question, and after a moment, I asked the great-aunt about the fires instead, whether she knew any of the parties involved. She laughed, her body shaking a little, she was short but not a small woman, her body looked as if it was made of compacted flesh, she was wearing a flower-print dress but her features were androgynous, perhaps by nature or perhaps by age. She knows everyone, Stefano said. The men behind the arson—she says they are boys. They are men, but they are boys. She smiled, nodding as he spoke, as if she understood English perfectly.
Should he ask about the weeping, Stefano said, lowering his voice and leaning toward me. I was startled, I had almost forgotten the reason for our visit, quickly I replied. How long have you been a weeper? It was an inane question, I felt immediately self-conscious, I almost thought Stefano gave me a look of reproach, perhaps the question was too blunt. Christopher would undoubtedly have made a better job of it. But Stefano promptly translated the question and the reply, My mother was a weeper, and so was my aunt, it is in the family, there was no question that I would not also become a weeper, once it became obvious that I could do it.
When did you realize you could?
When I was very young. Like I said, my mother and my aunt were both weepers, they would sing together, I remember being a child and hearing them perform at a funeral. I would sit with the bereaved, and I would watch them begin the wailing, they were famous, they performed together. So I was young when I began trying to sing. And I learned, they taught me first to sing, then to channel the sadness that is necessary to weeping.
They taught you this when you were only a child?
Even children have experience of sadness. At first, when I was a young woman, I would think about sad stories that I had heard, about soldiers who had been killed at war, and the wives and girlfriends who waited for them in vain. Eventually, as I became older, I had my own losses to call upon, and it became easier: I lost my father, my brother, then my husband, at this point in my life there is no shortage of inspiration.
So you think of a personal loss?
Yes. The songs themselves, they are fixed lamentations, they tell stories. But in order to really feel the songs, in order to trigger the emotion that you need to lament, I need to think about something personal, it is hard if it remains abstract. This is one reason why you become better as you grow older, when you are young, you do not have an intimate experience of death, of loss, you do not have enough sadness in you to mourn. You need to have a great deal of sadness inside you in order to mourn for other people, and not only yourself.
Her eyes were twinkling as she said this and she smiled, as if she had made a joke. Then she cleared her throat and looked at Stefano, as if waiting for him to ask the next question.
Do you think she would be willing to sing for me?
He seemed to hesitate—he had already told me it was unlikely—but then asked the question anyway. She paused, adjusting the folds of her skirt with her hands. She cleared her throat again and then began to sing. Her voice was low and throaty, she began almost tentatively, as if growing accustomed to its weight, raising one hand in the air as she sang in a series of atonal registers. She seemed then to find the thread she had been seeking, her fingers pulled together against her thumb as though she were drawing it through the air.
Her voice, as it unfolded across the room, was not beautiful. It was heavy, as heavy and awkward as the boulders that marked the Mani landscape, a collection of rocks. The notes dropped out of her mouth and tumbled across the room, first one and then the next and then the next. They accumulated, the room was soon full of their discordance. She continued, her voice growing in volume, the objects in the room vibrating, the sound of her singing transforming the kitchen interior where we sat. She began slapping her hand against the table, she closed her eyes and then she rocked back and forth, her hand still keeping rhythm.