Redenta and the Mayor

Reading Time: 3 minutes

by Rita Siligato

Standing in front of the house where she had been living all her life, Redenta stares at the potholes in the pavement.

“It’s a shame, Cavana used to be so clean when I was young!”, she thinks.

She always forgets that back then the streets were paved with loose stone slabs: when the children tried to play hopscotch they had to try and find a smooth spot on the floor. 

She looks up and down: no one around in the narrow alley where she lives, it is a work day. She skips and jumps for a second, trying to balance on one leg. At ninety years old, it is difficult, but she blames the uneven floor. 

She moves to the square: Piazza Cavana at ten in the morning, coming from Piazza Unità, is lovely, the houses on the right are bathed in sunlight and even the smells seem familiar.

Fried fish here, from the small tavern just round the corner; and coffee there, from the new café facing the square. 

But she spots someone: the Mayor! He stands firmly on his feet, legs apart, by the café, looking around with his hands on his hips like a foreman on a construction site.

She approaches him.

“Mr. Mayor?”

“Yes, madam?”

“As you are inspecting Cavana, I would like to show you something.”

He looks down on her, a tiny elderly lady with red hair in a standing out colorful outfit: this morning she decided to sport her new red dress under a checkered blue and yellow jacket.

“Ok, I have a moment to spare. Lead me through, please.”

She escorts him to the small road that leads to her home. He looks everywhere, and she does the talking.

“Have you seen?”

“What?”

“Have you seen the state of the flooring?”

“I think it’s almost perfect, madam.”

“Have you seen the pellitory on the walls?

“Just some weeds, madam.”

“You have to call someone to clean it up! To clean it off, I mean!”

“It’s normal for old houses to have some pellitory on the walls. The dampness of old buildings, you know…”

“In my times there was no pellitory on the walls! And we could play hopscotch on the pavement! Now it is impossible… Look at this huge dent. You may break your leg, even walking.”

He looks up and down, and around. He stands on one leg and tries to jump.

“Do you want me to find you a pebble to throw, just to try?”

“No, it is not necessary, madam. I can figure it out.”

“And let me show you… here, around the corner, some people are using this recess as a toilet, over and over!”

“I see,” says the Mayor wrinkling his nose. “Maybe you want to come with me to the Citizens’ Information Desk to file a complaint?”

“I don’t need to be informed,” says Redenta. “I just want you to know the state things are in, right around the corner from Piazza Unità.”

He looks at her: he recognizes a good fighter when he sees one.

“Do you want to show me something more, madam?”

She walks around with him for half an hour, talking and telling him how beautiful her district was when she was young. The fountain at the corner was working back then: if you had no running water in the house, you had to walk to the fountain with a bucket. Her sister Marina used to make a ring with a tea towel and put it on her head to stead the bucket, and she stood straight in a tightrope walker fashion to bring the full bucket home. Redenta never mastered the trick herself.

The streetwalkers worked all around: she knew each one by her surname, the Blonde, the Gipsy, the Redheaded, the Mute.

As a child, she feared the women standing by the corners. Her mother told her not to talk to them. When she grew up, she understood that they were working to make a living, as everyone else did. They had children and lovers, and on a Sunday you could see them at mass, face scrubbed, hands clean, and with a veil on their head.

“Thank you so much, madam, it was instructive. Do you want to talk some more?”

She looks at her wristwatch: “Not now, Mayor, maybe another time. I have an engagement in five minutes.”

He puffs his chest: “And with whom, if I’m not too indiscreet?”

She stares at him from bottom to top: “With my husband! And I’m almost late for our coffee!”

He looks at her while she leaves, without thanking him.