excerpt from
LENA BERTONE’S
Letters to the Devil

THIS WAS MY LIFE BEFORE YOU

I lived on a farm with my toothless invalid father and my sister. Our house was a shack and our farm was a yard of chickens and goats. We stole wheat and beans from the fields of the other farmers late at night, two in the morning, after everyone had gone to bed but before the first roosters crowed.

From the time I was seven or eight, my job was to make the bread and pasta, to bring the wheat to the miller, to do whatever he asked to persuade him to give us flour in trade.

CARISSIMO

This was my life before you

I lived with my toothless invalid father and my twin sister. Our house was a shack and our farm was a yard of chickens and goats. We stole wheat and beans and greens and fruit from other farmers at night, enough to feed us for a day or two at a time. I made bread and pasta. I brought the wheat to the miller, persuaded him to give us flour in trade.

I was eighteen when I left. My father was an old man. He had been an old man a long time. I didn’t think of him as my father, but as the old man.

I had decided years before, when I was ten or twelve that I would not bathe the old man anymore. I would not dress him. I would not rub oil into his cracked skin or pick the rotting food from his gums. I would not talk to him except to tell him how much his existence disgusted and nauseated me. I would not wipe his nose or ears and I would not take him to shit or piss or give him my arm so that he could lift himself from the broken bench he sat on from morning till night. I would not smile at him because looking at the sagging skin of his face started a hammering rage in my gut, and I would not make the gnocchi he loved because he didn’t deserve them. I did, however, soak his bread in goat’s milk so that he would be able to chew it. I did this not out of kindness or compassion, but because I could not not do it. It was the least I could do.

I was eighteen when I left with my twin. We wore our best dresses. We held hands. We were looking for a prince. We found you.

I’m so lonely here without you.

I’m so lonely here without you. No one will look at me. Your servants disgust me. They are like cooked poultry. Their necks are crooked, their heads cranked down to the floor like walking dead. I can’t tell if their eyes have dried up or rolled back into their heads and they never look up and I don’t know if they’re unable or unwilling to look at me because of how I look or who I am, but honestly I don’t care, or I didn’t when you were here, but now, if they would just saw a word to me, if they would just say Yes when I tell them to shut the door, or make dinner, or build a fire, or take the child. But they’re silent, and old, even older than I am and feel, and every part of their faces is sunken in so that I don’t know if they have eyes or if their eyes are dried up bulbs in those pinched, twisted faces. And what would they need eyes for anymore? There’s nothing to see. They know this house. They’ve been here forever. Longer even than me and they mumble to each other but they won’t say a word to me and they stop when I come near so that I can’t hear their voices, what they say about me. I see their closeness, their collusion, and then they break apart and creep to their stations, chins down and gnarly hands curled into each other. It’s so quiet except for the wind and their feet dragging and the boy’s crying and my own voice and I want to hear them speak to me. I want them to ask me what I want for dinner, which bed sheets, what does the child want, Signorina? Take this child back, Signorina. If only they would say my name. I need someone to say my name.

But not them. I don’t want them to say my name. I don’t want to hear it coming from their fetid rotting mouths.

CARO

I’m so lonely here without you. I have the baby but he’s no companion. He’s no companion like you were. When will you be back? Where are you? I ask but I know you won’t answer. I’m your servant and I’ll do anything for you, but also I just miss you so terribly I don’t know what to do. My arms and chest ache with sadness. My fingers ache with sadness. I’m getting old. My hair is half gray, but I curl in your chair and I ache for you. You are the same you you were twenty years ago

you will always be the same you Caro

but I am getting old and my fingers ache with sadness thinking about your soft hands, your palms on my face. I think about the sound you make

that growl that moan

when I push my face into your neck. I close my eyes and curl in your chair and live in that sound

in my ear pounding in my ear

I don’t want to forget it. And then the boy cries and I have to put him in the closet or put myself in the closet because I can’t bear to hear anything when I feel like this. You’ve been gone so long and it hasn’t even been a year yet. I’m afraid to think how long it will be. How long do you mean to leave me here alone with this boy

I hate this child, this obligation, and I don’t understand. I know it doesn’t matter if I understand—and it doesn’t matter if it makes any sense. When has anything you’ve ever asked of me made any sense. You make no sense and I love you, despite it being the stupidest thing I could possibly do. I am so tired tonight. I want to talk to you. He wouldn’t sleep and he cried when I tried to leave him and his crying was so shrill and saw-like―the only thing I could do to quiet him was let him sit on me and rock him while I held him tight to my chest. When he whimpered, I hummed to distract myself from the sound. I could feel the boniness of my elbows and knees as my limbs pressed together to hold him close. It was tiring, Caro. This is shitty work. And as I was holding this soft clump of body and tears, this thing sucking its thumb, I thought: Why did I find it for you? How stupid of me. I didn’t know, couldn’t have known, the consequences. I’m so good at doing what you ask and you asked me to find the boy, like a riddle. Find a boy in this house. So I found him for you. In that corner. On that chaise. Under that newspaper. I thought he was dead, he was so blue and stone hard. But I brought him to you and your hand awakened him, and then you gave him back to me to care for. You gave him to me and he shit black tar shit on my gabardine trousers.

I think of your face. I sit in your chair in the library and think of your face, the first time you let me touch your face. My eyes closed, you let me sit on your lap, and your face, Caro, always a haze, always in shadow, you let me touch your face, and with my eyes closed, I imagined the skin of your cheeks was soft and fatty. Your cheekbones, set wide. Your beard, soft, smoky, red-brown. I touched your eyes and they were squeezed shut like mine. When I kissed you, your lips were hard and soft and flat and round all at the same time. I hooked my fingers around your ears and you breathed into my mouth. Your hand left a hot red print on the back of my neck.

I remember when―this was a long time ago. This was for about five minutes? I remember when you made me feel beautiful. or not ugly. or forget that I was burned and hairless on part of my head. or maybe you restored it because I remember your hands in my hair or maybe you made me look different when you wanted me to look different from how I look. Did you do that? I don’t remember now. Maybe you did but it’s one of those things I don’t want to remember. How you made my breasts more plump and my hair softer and wavier. Chestnut, that color you like on girls and horses. Did you change my face? It bored you. It wasn’t pretty enough. I never saw your face, love. I can’t imagine wanting to change it, but maybe if I saw it? Could I tire of you? How could I tire of you?

Early, when I was still young, you dressed me up as a witch in a black Chanel suit and snakeskin pumps I couldn’t walk in. I wore a hat and a beaded veil over my eyes, and you made me walk all over the city in those shoes. They dug into my heels and blisters formed at each of my toes but your voice in my head growled at me to go on, go on.

I had envelopes to deliver for you, and what was in them? I still don’t know.

I don’t know what those people saw when they looked at me, when they opened their doors. I don’t know what the Farmacista saw when I stepped into his store. You had dressed me in that black Chanel suit and the lipstick I wore was a pale, sweet pink. The pearled veil covered my eyes but the Farmacista, when he saw me, stepped back and knocked a shelf of headache drops to the floor. He took the letter but he shook.

I don’t know what the butcher saw when I pushed open his door and removed my white gloves. He gasped and crossed himself, shut his eyes and cried, a big man like that!, cried so that his chest heaved and I gave him his envelope.

I don’t know what the old woman in her courtyard saw when I pulled open the rusty gate. My feet were bloody beneath my stockings, the blisters burst and your voice in my ear growling at me to go on, go on. Despite my bloody feet, my legs were shapely under the sheer black, a cramp like a fist in each calf. The old woman, when she saw me, she tried to run away to her door, clutched at her garden vines with her ugly tortured fingers, but old ladies are slow, and I grabbed her arm and pushed her down onto the iron bench. I made her open the envelope and read it, like you said I should, and then I asked her:

What do you see when you look at me? What do you see?

She wouldn’t answer me, Caro. I grabbed her wrist, I nearly broke her dusty wrist, and I told her to tell me, at the very least, how much she liked my shapely suit.

MY LOVE

Remember the time you had me chase those tiny children in La Villa Bellini? They trampled our picnic but we had them for supper. It was so romantic. My sneakers were ruined but I have them saved to remind me. It was a lovely day, wasn’t it?

They tasted so sweet, but I think

I think it was because of the way you looked at me.

MY LOVE

What did you see when you looked at me?