Not all Bastards are from Vienna by Andrea Molesini

Author:Andrea Molesini [Molesini, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802190192
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2010-02-20T06:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Two

‘NOT A PENNY IN HER PURSE, NOT A TOOTH IN HER HEAD, but a whole barrel full of children instead,’ sang Teresa to herself as she came and went in the steam that billowed from the cauldron. It was there, at the fire, at the heart of the kitchen, that it all began. In the cauldron two and a half litres of water were on the boil. They had to boil for twenty-five minutes ‘because that way twenty per cent goes off in steam’. For Grandma the cleanliness of the bowels was more important than that of the soul.

Like all rituals, the enema demanded its liturgy, and Grandma was partial to cosmic coincidences. ‘No enemas on windy days’ was her dogma. With her daughter’s assistance Teresa decanted the purified water into a round-bellied bottle with a narrow neck set at an angle. In the pot was one leaf of mint and one of tarragon.

Then came the solemn procession. Loretta, followed two steps behind by her mother, hands gloved in white silk as if she were a general, bore the alembic containing the precious fluid. On reaching Grandma’s bedroom – which on the chosen day was always spotless from top to bottom, with clean sheets and a blazing fire – Loretta’s task was to set the alembic down on the table at the foot of the bed and disappear. Once alone with ‘the mistress’, Teresa selected the enema. If there was snow and sunshine – the ideal day – the bag was round with a long tube, whereas if there was damp in the air the choice fell on a square bag with a short tube.

Of the most delicate phase of the ritual, the interplay of backside and nozzle, nothing is known. For the occasion Teresa would put on her lace cap – it towered white and cock-eyed over her bun – and regarding certain matters she kept mum.

If Grandma was pleased Teresa would get a reward, sometimes cash, at other times a few hours off. The cook preferred the former, because freedom is a coinage more difficult to spend.

An outstanding page in the family chronicles was the ‘December Yell’. On that occasion, in the course of the ritual, Grandma gave a yell that pierced the walls, the cook rushed out of the room white in the face, and Grandma didn’t speak to her for a week. At lunch Grandpa poked fun at her: ‘There’s nothing more tragic than a clumsily penetrated anus.’

‘If you weren’t the good-for-nothing that you are, a good rinsing of the bowels would do the world for you. Those cobwebs in your head all come from your infected intestines.’

Grandpa usually let it go, taking his wife’s intellectual superiority in good part. But that time he came back at her tit for tat: ‘Nancy, when you talk like that you sound like our P.M. Orlando when he says “I’ll reduce the National Debt”.’

Grandpa was on good-natured terms with the world, but he could not forgive ‘that pettifogger Orlando’ for having granted all combatants a life-insurance policy starting on 1 January 1918.

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