New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Italica Press, Inc.
Published: 2009-03-30T05:00:00+00:00

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Ice Cream

by

Milena Milani

There were days when I would buy myself a half-pint of ice cream and I couldn’t wait to get home so I could eat it. I would always choose strawberry and lemon, deceiving myself that they weren’t fattening since it was fruit. The flavors I liked very much – cream, cocoa, vanilla – I deliberately passed up after looking at them one last time and reading the ingredients, the warnings and all the rest on the packaging.

When I fished greedily around in the big freezer compartments where the containers of ice cream were (there were many different brands and even pint-size cartons), the frost, which formed around them in tiny white slivers and often contracted into whimsical ornaments, became a bizarre fire which shot up to my heart. Absurdly I flamed up like an adolescent and furtively looked around me to see if anyone had noticed.

People were passing by and lingering in the vast supermarket. There were many foreigners, mostly Germans, elderly women with short white socks in plastic sandals, skirts gathered at the waist, stiff hair. I hated those tourists, they made me furious. They were strong with evident muscles, large hands. The men wore colored and patterned Bermuda shorts, jerseys over chests whose pectorals were like those of horses or draught mules who had reached the Dolomites.

I was, in fact, in the mountains, and they invaded the valley, all over the place with those guttural voices which sometimes drove me crazy with rage. I would have thrown them into their cars and forced them to leave quickly. But then I read the newspapers and watched TV and I said to myself that one must tolerate them.

The balance of payments needed their currency, those bank notes, those coins. I, too, dealt in currency. I paid money to buy that ice cream, not a great sum, mind you. For one thousand eight hundred lire I took home those two hundred and fifty grams of afternoon ardor.

I went out around six pm on certain dark days when the desire for the carton (that round box of cardboard with its cover that I removed hurriedly, licking the inside of it so as to not leave one bit of that burning cold) made me absurdly nervous and restless. I moved fast along the street, almost running and without looking at anyone. From the house to the supermarket I went through Concordia Park, taking a private road with a sign that said “No Trespassing” but that no one obeyed.

As I left my condominium, my eyes rested for a moment, almost against my will, on a large green meadow there to the left, at the bottom of which there were many trees. Here and there, in the shade or sun, were lawn chairs, cots with foam rubber mattresses, slides for children, and swings. I could glimpse semi-nude bodies, I could hear laughter and voices, but it was as if in a dream, because I was propelled by a strange anxiety. I felt even sick, I was losing my breath.

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