The City and the House (10 page)

I'm glad that you often go to
Le Margherite
. And I'm generally glad to think of you involved in my former life. I'm also perhaps a little jealous of you, when I think of you in the places where I am not. But it's a faint jealousy, a vague uneasiness which I feel forming for a few moments and which I then rapidly forget. It's a faint jealousy, with no nails or claws to it.

I haven't much to tell you about myself. Perhaps I'll return to Italy, later, I don't know when. At the moment I don't want to decide. I've lost my brother and I think of myself, for the moment, as being exempt from making decisions. At the moment it would be painful to detach myself from the life I have established here. I'm writing a novel. I go cycling. I teach. I am a bit of company for Anne Marie, my brother's widow. She is a person I get on well with, even though we have nothing to talk to each other about. She is only interested in scientific research, but scientific subjects are all Greek to me. And so we talk very little. Sometimes, very rarely, we talk about my brother.

Yours affectionately

Giuseppe

Rome, 23rd June

Respected father,

As perhaps you've heard, I've given my name to a child. I thought I ought to tell you as my name is also yours. The baby's mother is Nadia, that girl you saw with me in Florence. She is a very stupid girl, but I like her well enough. I live with her. I like the baby, she's very pretty. I want to be her father, not just in name, but in fact as well. I want to give her what I never had, a father's protection. You were never very present in my life. You weren't fnuch of a father. Not that it matters, it's water under the bridge now. If you come to Rome I'll introduce you to my baby girl.

Alberico

Princeton, 30th June

Respected son,

I had heard about the baby. I think what you've done is a good thing. The notion of having a baby daughter, whether or not she's actually yours, will give you a desire for stability. However, you then have to find ways of turning this desire into a reality. Last month you were twenty-six. You could do with a permanent job, but you haven't got one. You jump from one job to another. It's true that you have money, but that will come to an end one day. As you know already, I've no money to leave you; you are, as you know, richer than I am. You will have to support the baby.

Perhaps you thought that saying I wasn't much of a father would hurt me. But you haven't hurt me. I know well enough that as a father I've given you very little. I hope that you will be a better father than I was.

And so in a sense I've become a grandfather. Strange. I feel very young still, but clearly I'm not. But it's not entirely true that I feel young. Sometimes I feel that I'm an old man with an immense past behind me.

If you come to Princeton you can meet Anne Marie. I get on well with her. The memory of my brother, who loved her, is a bond between us. We don't talk much. We don't spend much time together. She has started her work at the Institute - which she had given up temporarily - again. I stay in my room and write. However, we go for walks together sometimes, or we sit in the drawing-room, she knits and I sit and watch her and every now and then say something to her. I think she's very intelligent, but I can't appreciate anything of her intelligence because we have nothing in common and the things that interest her don't interest me at all. It doesn't matter, we keep each other company anyway.

Anne Marie has a daughter who lives in Philadelphia and who is called Chantal. Two months ago Chantal had a baby girl. We went to see her a few weeks ago. Chantal isn't happy with her husband. I think their marriage is on the point of breaking up. The baby is very pretty. And so there are these baby girls in our lives now.

With love from

your father

Rome, 1st July

Dear Giuseppe,

I have never written to you and I feel very guilty about this. Your brother died and I neither wrote to you nor phoned. I could have phoned you from the newspaper without spending a single lira, but I didn't do it. Sad things that happen to other people make me feel diffident.

I'll tell you about your son, whom I see virtually every day. We usually meet on the stairs with the rubbish bags. Sometimes he is carrying the baby. He is a loving father to that child. He often takes her to the park in her pram. It's a very splendid pram. They have borrowed it. They keep it at the bottom of the stairs. Sometimes your son's friend Salvatore goes to the park with the pram. He wears a red sweatshirt and has a big black moustache. They both seem very sweet with the baby, and I like this side of them. The baby's mother, Nadia, sleeps a lot and doesn't go out much. Every now and then the three of them have violent rows and they all yell simultaneously — I hear the yelling and go out on the balcony, but I think the rows are usually about stupid, trivial things,.the words I catch are about clothes that have to be hung out to dry or potatoes that have to be peeled. When they first moved in Nadia used to come up and ask me if she could use my washing-machine, but she doesn't any more because they've bought one.

The other day Nadia's parents came up from Sicily. The father is a little old man with a small bristly grey beard. The mother is a tired, elegant old woman. A huge row suddenly broke out, I think between Nadia and her parents. Salvatore came up and asked me for some lemons. The row died down and from my balcony I saw them having tea and biscuits. Your cousin Roberta was there too. The two old folks, Roberta later told me, left after a few days with the idea that your son Alberico was the baby's real father, and in the firm belief that the whole thing was a disaster. They didn't even like Roberta and were very frosty to her.

I tell you these things because they concern your son and I think that they will interest you. Even though I don't go down that often I see them on the stairs and from my balcony. I don't go down that often because, to be honest with you, I don't feel completely at ease with them. They are more or less my age but I feel myself to be much older than them. They intrigue me, but they make me feel diffident, which is a peculiar sensation.

I took them to
Le Margherite
. They made no comment on either Piero or Lucrezia, nor on Albina or Serena. I don't know whether they enjoyed themselves or were bored. Nadia said only that her mattress was lumpy. Which was probably true. I've finished up with terrible mattresses at
Le Margherite
.

They often have friends round. I see people in their house from my balcony. I envy them because I'm pretty much alone. I sometimes go to the Rotunnos', or to one of my colleague's at the newspaper, but I hold back from phoning too much, I'm afraid of seeming pushy. I'm basically very diffident, and there are few people I get on well with.

Getting back to your son, I know that one evening they went to supper at Ippolita's, that girl-friend of Ignazio Fegiz who lives in Porta Cavalleggeri. Afterwards this Ippolita woman came to see them quite often, and I saw her sitting on a deck-chair - their balcony is right under mine. She is a slim, elegant woman with a big hooked nose and a thick mane of golden hair. Ignazio Fegiz has been with her for a very long time. But they don't live together.

Albina is well. We sometimes eat together in the evenings, sometimes at Mariuccia's where we always used to go with you and where even the walls remind us of you. To tell you the truth I'm a bit bored with her, we always say the same things, we always talk about the same people. Being with her is a bit like being alone for me. But she is a good person, she is fond of me and I'm fond of her too. When she asks me to have supper with her I don't know how to say no. Perhaps she wants to go to bed with me, I don't know, in any case she doesn't attract me at all physically. I think she claims that it's me who's after her, and that she doesn't want me. She's lying, because I've always let her know that I'm attracted by a quite different kind of woman.

I don't have very much that's new to tell you about our friends at Monte Fermo and Pianura - I mean Piero and Lucrezia and Serena. Everything is more or less as it was when^you left. The Woman's Centre goes laboriously forward, there's never much on there and not many people go. Serena is pleased with it but she will close it down soon because she's going on a trip to Russia. Piero and Lucrezia will stay at Monte Fermo even during August. This is not at all how things normally are, because they used to take the children to the seaside, but they say they don't want to this year. Every morning the children go off with the Swiss au pair to play in the stream. As this Swiss girl is extremely stupid I'm always afraid she'll let one of them drown. Lucrezia says she is stupid but sensible. Nevertheless she sunbathes stretched out on a rock with her eyes closed. She could at least lie there with her eyes open. I don't know whether Piero and Lucrezia perhaps have some problem about money. He seems depressed and she seems irritable. But then it's happened before that they have been depressed and irritable. I don't think that there are serious difficulties - either economic or matrimonial -between them. But certainly at the moment, what with her being so irritable and him being so gloomy they are not very pleasant company and you always have the feeling you are bothering them, so I go there less willingly.

You are always, in my thoughts.

Yours

Egisto

Monte Fermo, 20th July

Dear Giuseppe,

All of a sudden I've a great desire to write to you. So I've locked the door to my room so that no one can come and annoy me while I'm writing to you.

It's five in the afternoon and it's very hot. Everyone's in a bad mood, perhaps because of the heat. A short while ago there was a great row between my mother-in law and the Swiss girl, because my mother-in-law went into the Swiss girl's room and the bed had not been made yet and she saw that the mattress was stained with menstrual blood. Then she saw biscuit-crumbs and ants under the bed.

This row irritated me. I found both of them unbearable. The Swiss girl said she would leave tomorrow and took her suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe. I tried to calm her down but without success. If she leaves tomorrow I shall have everything to manage - the children and the house at a time when I want to just stay quietly in my room and think.

So many things have happened to me since you left. My life has changed. I've fallen in love. You will be surprised if I tell you that I've never been in love before, when I always kept telling you that I fall in love very easily, but they were all mistakes, and perhaps you'll be offended if I tell you that you were a mistake too. I thought I was in love with you, I thought I wanted to live with you - what a mistake, Giuseppe - you, thank goodness, were terrified at the prospect and told me for God's sake to stay where I was. You were wise and I thank you for it. I got on with you well enough, at the beginning, I felt happy enough, but it was all on the level of enough. When I met you my life did not change colour. Now it has changed colour. Piero accepted you, he stayed calm, more or less, my adultery with you was a bloodless affair. Now, on the contrary, my adultery is of the kind that scatters blood all over the place. I.F. and I are madly in love with each other and we are going to live together, I don't know when. I don't know where. We shall get a house in a town, I don't know which one. I shall take the children with me. You were afraid of the children, he isn't, he isn't afraid of anything.

When I saw him arrive here the first time and get out of his olive-green Renault and come towards me with that grey crew-cut he has, I suddenly felt scared and irritated. I said to myself ‘Now who in God's name can this be?' We paused for a moment and looked at each other, not moving, face to face. We are about the same height — I'm a very little taller than he is, but only a very little. The dogs started barking. They didn't want him there. Egisto and Albina were behind him and they were surprised that the dogs were barking, usually they don't bark. From that moment I have liked Egisto and Albina even more and I really enjoy seeing them. He went into the house and hung his raincoat on the coat-stand and immediately a nail came out of the wall and the coat-stand came crashing down. Goodness knows why a nail should come out of the wall at that precise moment. Afterwards I told him that the dogs barking and the coat-stand coming down had been two omens.

1 think that Piero quickly realized that something was going on because his manner changed immediately, from the first few times that I.F. started coming here on Saturdays he seemed as if always frightened and upset. At first he only came on Saturday, but then on other days during the week too. He would ‘phone and then come over. Now he doesn't come any more. Sometimes we meet in Pianura and go for a walk in the country. But usually I go to his house in Rome. He has that relationship with that woman called Ippolita, though everyone calls her Ippo. They don't live together. She's a woman with a big nose and beautiful hair. Everybody tells me about her hair. Everybody - Albina, Egisto - tells me about it. What on earth's so marvellous about her hair! I've never seen her. Egisto's seen her, he's been in her house. She has a very beautiful terrace. Everybody talks about her terrace too. I.F. finds it difficult to leave her because it will hurt her, he hasn't told her anything about me, but in a few days now he's going to tell her about me and leave her. It hasn't been easy for me to talk to Piero either, but I had to talk to him because I would have felt bad if I hadn't talked to him. Anyway, Piero had already realized everything. He's very depressed. We had an open relationship - you remember that we were always saying so - but in fact it was only open on my side, Piero has never loved any other woman than me. Anyway an open relationship reaches a point when it either closes or goes to pieces. The relationship between Piero and me is going to pieces. I'm sorry because I'm fond of Piero, I'm sorry to see him depressed. I feel that he wouldn't have been so depressed if I had gone off with you, but he thinks of I.F. as something dreadful. He always comes home very late from Perugia and eats alone; I sit myself down at the table whilst he's eating and he tells me to go away. He can't stand me and I can't stand him. We sleep together but on some nights I tell him I'm too hot and I go and sleep upstairs in the room that has the quilts with dragons on them. It should be cooler in there because it faces west, but in fact it's stiflingly hot in there too. Sometimes I'm very unhappy as well.