N. 1 Portrait of Woman
"Tatiana Quercia De Bartolomeo"
Culture always wins
Who were your grandmother and mother?
Women with long pompous dresses in the photos and jewels of the Russian goldsmith's art sold out for a little condensed milk during the escape. Women with a slightly severe and lost look. I remember my mother, sick but still beautiful with the waves of her blond hair sunk in an old pillow on an embroidered but patched and freshly starched cover. Tenacious those women to maintain until the last a decorum of small gestures and old habits, as a last bulwark against a world gone to pieces. So I learned early on, my dear friend, that titles of nobility don't count; you're worth what you are.
In Constantinople, my mother met an Italian embassy official, a Neapolitan with a history of Bourbonism. My father. What a crossroads of cultures my childhood was! Between the Russian intelligence in the hands of the women who made salon and the Spanish Bourbon world of the master man's military style!
I didn't know it, nor did I realize it, but already there were seeds of Europe that would germinate years and years later.
And you?
I was born on Christmas day in what was then Yugoslavia and then in Naples following my father. I remember that my childhood was marked by two Christmases, the Italian one and the Russian one thirteen days apart.
Lunches as different as the women who were busy in the kitchen. The women of my childhood? My nania or Polish nanny, sweet, mild, comfortable and good, and Anita, grey, black-rimmed eyes, who came and went around the house, her hands in pockets full of loose cigarettes and tranquilizers.
Women of the house without emancipation either from Eastern Europe, now at the mercy of the hammer and sickle, or from the sunny South of Naples.I learned early on from these differentiated messages that in life nothing is lasting and that everyone is only what they are, at the precise moment in which they live. The only safe baggage is oneself. Hence my inexhaustible curiosity and desire for independence.
That's why I studied so much! My mother did not understand my efforts, she wanted me bloodless and spoiled as a reminder of her golden leisure in Russia. My life before the war was a blissful unconscious happiness waiting for the tragedy that later overwhelmed everything. I spoke Russian, Italian, French, German and English, graduated in pure chemistry, was a painter and writer, the world had no boundaries and I married the great love of my life.
His name was Franco and he was a commander in the Italian Navy.
I met you when I approached the F.I.D.A.P.A BPW ITALY Milan section.
I spent 45 years in this Milanese section, which will be ninety years old next year. I wrote a lot in the F.I.D.A.P.A. newsletter during those years! We used to organize conventions, seminars, meetings... a great movement of ideas, proposals, initiatives among women who were very different from each other in terms of customs and culture but who shared a great respect. Of course we argued, you know? Everyone had their own opinion and some strong personalities clashed a lot! But we loved each other anyway. Why? Dear, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. What united us all was culture. Culture always won. If I had to tell a girl how to pursue her ideas, do you know what I would tell her? Read, everywhere, in books, on the media you now have and on everything before you have an opinion of your own, be well informed. Rude people are ignorant and there are some even among women. Then in 1986 I became National President of FIDAPA until 1989. I remember March 19, 1988 when the FIDAPA Foundation was officially constituted, I was one of the people on the promoting committee. An important historical moment, you know... as I wrote in the F.I.D.A.P.A. newsletter number 82.
A moment in your history that was certainly central was the World Congress of Women for Peace.
At the personal invitation of the Russian Embassy, I officially represented FIDAPA at the World Congress of Women for Peace, Fraternity and Development without Nuclear Weapons called by Gorbachev in Moscow in 1987 with the participation of 3000 women from all over the world.
What a moment! I remember when I spoke in Russian in front of that audience. In an instant I relived the ancient history of my parents and then I saw in front of me women of all peoples and I understood that no matter where you come from, there is a common denominator in the world which is the desire for peace, brotherhood and hope.
We were welcomed, you know, with all the pomp and circumstance and the dinner in the halls of the Kremlin was a triumph of silverware and Russian dishes... That's how we women are... we go from planetary topics to fashionable, everyday ones. Thank goodness.
Dear friend, thank you now I'll leave you because you are tired, but everything that is your life, is just like a novel to the female historical period along the twentieth century.All seasoned with your unmistakable intelligent irony.
