All Our Yesterdays (13 page)

Giuma told Anna that he and Danilo had been to a café together. He was all excited but did not want to show it. They had met on the road beside the river, and Danilo had come up and started talking to him. Anna had known for some time that this was bound to happen, because Danilo had told Emanuele several times that he wanted to get to know his brother and find out what he was like. Emanuele begged him not to bother about it, his brother was an impossible kind of person, an impossible person and that was that. But Danilo replied that it was a good thing to find out even what impossible people were like. Giuma told Anna that he and Danilo had talked and talked, and in the end they had gone to a little café on the outskirts of the town, where there was a gramophone with a horn which played old songs. He and Danilo had talked about all sorts of things, it had got dark and they didn't notice it. They had even talked about Montale, Danilo had wanted to know all about Montale and Giuma had explained to him. On the way home they had also discussed politics a little : Giuma had spoken of his ideas, saying that Fascism would gradually fizzle out of its own accord. Danilo had invited him to come and see him one evening, seeing that they had had such an interesting conversation. Anna was sad, she wanted to tell him about her visit to Concettina and about the things Giustino had said to her on the way home, she wanted to ask if it was true that she was not at all attractive and that she would never get married. But it was impossible for her to say anything, Giuma went on and on talking about Danilo and Danilo and Danilo, he did not even think of kissing her.

Giuma went to see Danilo every evening for a week. During that week he did nothing but talk of Danilo and Danilo and Danilo, even Danilo's wife no longer seemed to him so pinched-looking, her hair had got into that state because she went to cheap hairdressers, if she had had the money to put herself in order and to dress herself she would have been rather attractive. During that time they kissed very seldom, Giuma had too much to say, he was continually pressing the spring of the black shell to see if it was getting near the time to go to Danilo's, he had given Mammina to understand that he was going to a friend's house to study. Danilo and his wife were of the opinion that he read poetry very well. Then things between him and Danilo began to go not so well, Anna was immediately aware of it, he began saying that there was a bad smell in Danilo's room, and then, that set of bottles and glasses displayed on the chest-of-drawers, that set of bottles and glasses was a wonder, it was the most provincial thing you could imagine. Danilo wanted to draw him into politics but he wasn't having any, he wasn't a clumsy fool like Emanuele, he didn't want to run idiotic risks. At first they had read Montale but then Danilo had asked him whether he knew about Karl Marx's
Das Kapital,
yes, he knew about it, but he had told Danilo clearly that he didn't want to hear any mention of things like that. Later on he would have to be a director of the soap factory, and Emanuele also would have to be a director, and so they could not possibly be on the side of Karl Marx, they were the owners of a factory and they could not be on the side of those who wished to hand over the factories to the workers. It was perfectly clear and if Emanuele did not understand it he was a complete idiot, if he let his head be turned by Danilo and read Karl Marx. Anna said that perhaps it was not right that they two should possess a soap factory and other people nothing, not even enough to clothe and feed themselves. Giuma got very angry and said it was perfectly right, it was right because his father had built up the soap factory out of nothing at all, before that it had been just a ridiculous kind of shanty and his father had worked all his life to turn it into something big and important. In any case justice is not of this earth, said Giuma, justice is of the kingdom of heaven. And he said that he as a child had believed in the kingdom of heaven, but now he had ceased to believe in it, now it was a thing that only babies believed in. Then Anna asked where justice could be found, if the kingdom of heaven, where it could have been found, did not exist. Giuma said it certainly was a pity not to be able to find it anywhere. However he did not believe in the justice of Karl Marx. And he did not want to go to Danilo's again, he did not want ever to smell the smell of that room again, he smelt it upon himself, in his clothes, he had them kept out in the air all night long but the smell did not go away. Anna suddenly remembered what Cenzo Rena had said about the peasants in the South, that they ate nothing but beans, and she said that all the same something ought to be done about the peasants in the South. But Giuma told her not to think now about the peasants in the South, he drew her into a quiet corner of the public gardens and they stayed there kissing for a while. Then Giuma wanted to go back to the café where he had been with Danilo, a café on the other side of the river, smoky and dark, Giuma said it was like certain cafés in Paris, if you hid yourself away in there with that old gramophone with a horn and those old prints on the walls you could really believe you were in a café on the Seine.

At home Anna found Danilo, He was telling how he had lost patience, the evening before, with Giuma, because of all the nonsense he talked about justice and about Marx. Danilo had been partly laughing and partly angry, and finally he had lost patience and sent him away. For several evenings he had been patient, out of kindness he had tried to make him talk about one thing and another and gradually Giuma had thawed, he read Montale's poems and they never managed to send him to sleep. But the nonsense he had talked about Marx ! Danilo had been unable to keep calm, all of a sudden he had thrown his hat and coat at him and had told him never to show his face there again if he was going to talk like that. Emanuele was rather mortified, he told Danilo he had warned him that it was useless to waste his time with Giuma, everyone knew what sort of a person Giuma was, after all he was only seventeen and Mammina had spoilt him terribly, and then he had been at that school in Switzerland, a school for rich, spoilt little boys, in any case Switzerland was a country that ought to be consigned to the flames. What a mania Danilo had for wasting his time with everybody, what a mania he had for knowing what everybody was like inside. And Danilo said that this was politics too, to try and find out what people were like inside, to find out the thoughts and reasonings of a boy of about seventeen, coming of a bourgeois family, spoilt, educated in Switzerland. But Ippolito then said that Danilo was not acting rightly, because he set himself the abstract proposition of finding out what people were like inside, and in each one he saw a political problem, and he had an inquisitorial, offensive way of asking questions. And perhaps without meaning to he had done Giuma harm, perhaps he had wounded him deeply, inviting him to his house in a way that was perhaps human and friendly and then suddenly starting to question him in that inquisitorial, offensive way, that cruel way, Danilo did not know it but at times he could be very cruel. Danilo asked him why he himself did not try and discuss things with Giuma, it was an interesting experiment. Ippolito answered that he did not make experiments, he despised everything that was in the nature of mere experiment, all of a sudden he seemed very angry, the had become pale and breathless. He did not make experiments, he left people alone and was indifferent to them, but Danilo who loved to have disciples must learn to control his temper, you don't invite a boy to your house to have confidential talks and discussions and then laugh in his face and throw him out. Danilo compressed his lips and tapped gently with a pencil on the table, from time to time he raised his eyes and fixed Ippolito with a cold, attentive stare, Emanuele limped restlessly up and down. But in the meantime Giustino had come in and was asking why they never tried to study
him
to find out what he was like, he also was seventeen and came of a bourgeois family and why didn't anyone ever think of studying
him
? Then they all burst out laughing together and Danilo put the pencil in his pocket and said he was going home to bed, there had been so many evenings when he and his wife had sat up till the small hours reading Montale with Giuma.

11

Anna told Giuma nothing of what she had heard. She was careful to say nothing to him that might displease or provoke him. She pretended to believe all he said to her, she pretended to believe it was because of the smell that he had given up going to see Danilo. She pretended to believe that he did not like the company of his school-fellows because they did not wash properly and were silly, she pretended not to know that they turned their backs on him when he approached. She felt cowardly in relation to Giuma, she had a great fear that he might suddenly get tired of being with her and of kissing her, if she contradicted him over something and they started quarrelling. So she tried never to contradict him and never to quarrel. They no longer talked about justice, they no longer talked about the revolution. But Anna still thought about the revolution when she was alone in her room, she saw a Giuma who had suddenly become different, who mounted the barricades with her and fired shots and sang. These were thoughts that she allowed to grow in secret within her, every day she added a new adventure, the flight of herself and Giuma with guns over the roofs, Fascists whom Danilo and Ippolito had not succeeded in capturing and whom she and Giuma led in chains in front of the people's tribunal. And she and Giuma, after the barricades, would get married, and they would give the soap factory to the poor. While she was with Giuma these thoughts would dissolve in smoke, she would be deeply ashamed of them and it would seem to her that she would never think them again, but she always thought them again when she got back home and shut herself up in her room, as soon as she sat down at the little table in her room these thoughts blossomed joyous and arrogant inside her.

The snow had come and they were cold walking about the avenues, they went every day now to the café that seemed like Paris. They were together every day but not on Sundays, on Sundays Giuma went off ski-ing, sometimes he had to take Mammina with him who did not ski but sat, all dressed up in furs, in the hall of the hotel and played bridge. Giustino also went off ski-ing if he could manage to scrape together a little money by selling some old books or passing on his mathematical exercises to his school friends, because Giustino was good at mathematics. He used to pass on his mathematical exercises to Giuma too, he said he made Giuma pay double rates, because he could not stand him and because he knew he was always full of money. When he had scraped together the money he went up into the attic and started hammering, his skis were never in good order, they were old skis with the fastenings all coming to pieces. Then he put on Ippolito's army trousers with a big patch in the seat, and a waterproof of Concettina's which Signora Maria had cut down as a jacket for him. Giuma told Anna later that he had seen Giustino on the ski slopes, it was enough to make you die of laughter, Giustino in a woman's blue jacket giving great shouts and whistles and rolling down like a sack, he was covered with snow from head to foot. On Sundays Anna stayed at home, she sat at the table in her room and did her homework for the whole week, and every now and then she put down her pen and thought about the revolution.

Gradually these Sundays became very gloomy for her. She had her usual thoughts, gunshots and flights over the roofs, but at the back of these thoughts was the face of the real Giuma, laughing with his wolf-like teeth, and it became more and more difficult for her to pluck out this real face from her heart. At the back of these thoughts there was the figure of the real Giuma who did not make his escape over the roofs but went out to the ski slopes or had tea in the hotel with Mammina all dressed up in furs, so very remote from the revolution and from her. She knew from Giustino that he had taken to ski-ing always with a girl, a girl with white velvet trousers, they held each other round the waist as they ski-ed, and Giustino admitted that she was rather an attractive girl. Anna begged Giustino to take her out ski-ing just once. But Giustino said that she had neither the skis nor the costume, she couldn't possibly go ski-ing in a skirt and ordinary shoes, besides she didn't know how to ski and he certainly had no intention of sticking behind her all the time. Anna said that Giuma would teach her. But Giustino shrugged his shoulders and laughed, just imagine the great Giuma bothering himself about her on the ski slopes, the great Giuma had the girl with the white velvet trousers. In the end Giuma himself also spoke to her about this girl, she was called Fiammetta, she was not stupid and she ski-ed well. Anna asked him if he was in love with this girl. Giuma said no, he had never been in love, if by any chance he fell in love perhaps he might fall in love with this girl but for the moment he was not in love, he liked her just to go ski-ing with. Anna on the other hand he liked for talking to and also for kissing. For kissing there was no need to be in love, it can easily happen that a boy and a girl when they are great friends can give each other a few kisses now and then. Anna asked him whether he had kissed the girl Fiammetta. He said no, he hadn't kissed her, at least not for the moment. All of a sudden Anna started to cry, they were sitting in the Paris café and outside the windows you could see the river going away into the mist, between telegraph-poles and banks patched with snow. It seemed to Anna that there was nothing in the world so horrible as that river, those telegraph-poles and that café, and that snow, those patches of snow, suddenly she was seized with longing for a scorching summer that would make all traces of snow vanish from the whole earth. Giuma frowned at her tears, he ran quickly over to the cash-desk to pay and told her to come away, she couldn't possibly start sobbing there in the café. They walked along together in the evening light, Giuma kept his hands in his pockets and his face hidden in his coat-collar, she was sobbing and giving little sudden starts, and nibbling her thumbs inside her gloves. All of a sudden, with a weary, resolute air, he drew her behind the bushes on the river bank, they kissed and he begged her not to get such silly ideas into her head, he showed her that she had made a hole in her gloves by her nibbling. They had to make their way through clumps of bushes to get back to the bridge, he pulled off the brambles that had got entangled in her coat as he had done before with the chestnut-shells, there were no chestnuts now, the time of the chestnuts was over. Their shoes were muddy and they cleaned them with a newspaper before they came back into the town.