The City and the House (12 page)

Ignazio Fegiz left with me. As soon as we were in the street he was his old self again, noisy, talkative, nothing at all cat-like about him. Neither he nor I had a car. The nights are cool and it's pleasant to walk through the city. He likes the summer. But it also seems a malevolent season to him because lots of people go mad during the summer. He didn't once mention Lucrezia. I told him that I had been to
Le Margherite
. He said that unlike me he hadn't been there for a while.

I think that Lucrezia has imagined this great love. As far as I can see Ignazio Fegiz is someone who doesn't want to change his private life one iota.

How you go on about Vito, the poor child. He's irritating, certainly. All children are irritating. But don't go on about him so much. If you didn't want him in the house you should have thought ofthat before.

My neighbours haven't left. Yesterday I went down to get the pressure-cooker I'd lent them. They never return things. A girl in a violet-coloured bikini opened the door to me, she was very thin with a mane of carroty hair. Though it's true that I see carrots everywhere these days ever since I saw Ippo eating them. Nadia was in the kitchen - also in a bikini - she was mixing a rice salad; she had that sullen, gloomy look she always has. The girl in the bikini is an American and she is called Anais. I mentioned the writer Anais Nin but they had never heard of her. There was an incredible mess in the kitchen. They had had people around the previous evening. I helped Nadia to cut up some zucchini. The baby was crying. They had put her on the balcony in a baby-chair, under an umbrella, but the sun was on her legs and she was covered in sweat. I suggested they bring her in and give her something to drink. They brought her in and stuck a feeding-bottle full of orange juice in her mouth. These modern girls don't know how to look after a baby. Then Alberico and Salvatore appeared from one of the rooms in their vests and underpants, still very sleepy and dishevelled. They looked like a couple of owls. Alberico got angry because the plates had not been washed yet. I ate with them. First the rice salad then an omelette I made. Then Salvatore and I washed the plates. The baby cried the whole time.

Yours

Egisto

Princeton, 30th August

Dear Piero,

I had heard what you wrote to me from Lucrezia.

I did get your other letter. I didn't reply not because I didn't think it necessary to answer you, but because I found it difficult to do so, as I had sensed from a distance things that you didn't mention, and as I had had letters from Lucrezia that said everything.

Even now it's not easy for me to write to you and tell you what I went through as I read your last letter. It isn't easy to tell you how close I feel to you in this disaster that's overtaken you. I think of it as a disaster for both of you, even though only you are suffering at the moment, and she perhaps is happy, or thinks she is.

I'm sorry not to be with you at Monte Fermo, not to go for walks with you in the woods and over the little hills there as we have done so many times. You know that you have a loyal friend in me, even though in the past I betrayed you - though we stayed friends - in the way you know about. It's not that I'm someone who is careful not to hurt anyone as he goes by, not to trample on or destroy things. It's not true. I have destroyed and trampled underfoot a great many things that were in my way. In fact when I get up in the morning I find in myself a deep disgust for what I am, for my feet in their slippers, for my sad face in the mirror, for my clothes draped over the chair. As the day goes on this disgust becomes gradually more and more stifling.

As you know I'm not returning to Italy for the moment. I'm writing a novel and I want to finish it. Besides, I have a relationship here with someone, a strange relationship that's quite different from all the others I've previously had with women. It's a woman I'm talking about. It's Anne Marie, my brother's widow. My brother was very fond of her and for this reason I am very fond of her. But she and I don't talk to each other, or we say very little. It's a relationship of smiles and murmurs. It's a relationship that seems calm, but inwardly it is shaken by continual shocks.

I too am always thinking of you.

Yours

Giuseppe

Rome, 27th August

Dear Albina,

I stayed in Follonica for a week. Just imagine, I'd been there for two days when I saw my neighbours from downstairs arriving. I was in the little garden of my pensione reading the newspapers when I saw them getting out of their little maroon Panda. I'd told them in passing where I was going, and they came. It's strange, sometimes I don't go down to them because I'm afraid of bothering them, and then they follow me to Follonica. Strange. You name them a place and immediately they come after you. They had rucksacks and blankets and they put the baby in a little rucksack affair which they took in turns to hoist on to their backs, to carry her around. They had a tent for sleeping on the beach, which they did, all except for Nadia and the baby who slept in my pensione; however there weren't any rooms free and so I had to give her mine. I slept in a bathroom. I don't like sleeping in bathrooms at all, I like rooms with beds in them, but I couldn't do anything else -I realized that the baby was too little to sleep in a tent. There was a sudden downpour one night and Salvatore came to the pensione to find me. I hadn't gone to bed yet. The tent had collapsed in the wind and they wanted me to help them put it up again. We re-erected the tent in the pouring rain. I was drenched to the skin. And then their mattresses were completely soaked and they bundled themselves into the Panda to sleep.

I don't know if they feel any affection for me. Perhaps they do, seeing that they came to Follonica where I was staying. But perhaps that was just lack of imagination. I don't know if I feel any affection for them. They intrigue me, and then as you know I'm alone a lot. We don't have anything to talk about. If we talked about the big subjects - politics or whatever -I don't think we would agree about anything. At Follonica I tried to find neutral, inoffensive subjects. The tent. The baby. The film. That film they say they are making. But they let every subject drop. Occasionally violent arguments broke out between them. They were ridiculous arguments about a tent-peg or a camping-stool, but they yelled like wild animals and seemed on the point of tearing each other limb from limb. I don't know if they take drugs. I suspect it, but I'm not sure. They smoke joints. I've smoked them occasionally when I've been with them, out of politeness and not to seem old-fashioned but I prefer
Marlboros
. They had bought a plastic basin in the country which they used to fill with sea-water; they'd let it warm up in the sun and then bath the baby. But that baby is very tiny, she's only three months old, and I was always afraid that they would harm her with all the heat and the sea-water and the feeding bottles of orange juice which they left for ages in the sun and let them get filthy in the sand and then stuck in her mouth. Nadia is one of those people who is terrified of everything, for herself; a wasp stung her and Alberico had to rush off and find some ammonia. Alberico was cursing but he quickly came back with ammonia, cotton wool and little packets of sterile gauze. For the baby on the other hand Nadia never fears anything. It never occurs to her that anything could hurt the baby. Her milk has dried up and she gives her baby-food which she buys, mixtures of flour and goodness knows what else; she goes into a bar and asks for a little hot water, tips the lot into a bottle and she's away. Then Alberico washes the bottle at a public fountain. She doesn't remember to and she'd be quite happy to use it still filthy.

Anais intrigues me the most of all. She is not beautiful but I find her quite pretty. She and I have made love three times. Once in the bathroom of the pensione, where I had my bed. Once behind some bushes. Once here in Rome in my house, about an hour ago. She is going back to America in two weeks time. That doesn't mean much to me. In fact it means virtually nothing to me. I haven't been able to find out much about her. She speaks Italian badly and I speak English badly. She has an eight-year-old son in America. Her mother looks after him. The boy's father was a Pakistani. She is a millionaire. She didn't tell me that, the others told me.

We came back to Rome two days ago. Anais is sleeping at the other side of my room. She says that no one bothers her when she is here in my flat, but down below there's all hell going on - the baby crying, and yelling about one thing and another. Yesterday Salvatore slapped Nadia and made her nose bleed. I think she'd called him a fucking queen, or something like that. I arrived when it had already happened. Nadia was lying on the bed with a wad of something to stop the bleeding, Salvatore was cooking a chicken stew, Alberico was typing. When Alberico saw me come in he looked pleased. He made me a coffee and told me about his film. He had already told me a little about it during the journey from Follonica to Rome. He and Anais travelled in my car. To be more comfortable, they said, and also to keep me company. I thought that was kind of them. The film is extremely complicated and full of corpses.

Come away from Luco soon, come back to Rome. I'll take you out to dinner. You'll meet Anais.

Egisto

Rome, 22nd September

Dear Giuseppe,

We haven't written to each other for a while now. For months we've just talked over the phone and that's been it. But when you're making international telephone calls you think about the money you're spending and so you finish up not saying anything.

So many more things can be said in a letter.

As I told you on the phone, Alberico has agreed to undergo psychoanalysis, after I had strenuously insisted that he should. He comes and sees Doctor Lanzara four times a week, at two in the afternoon. He started on the 10th September. He's been punctual so far. I asked Lanzara if the fact that his consulting room is in what was once your flat might disturb Alberico and remind him too much of you. Lanzara thought about it for a while but then he said it wasn't important. Besides the flat is completely different now, it seems virtually unrecognizable.

After each session Alberico comes down to my flat and has a coffee. In this way I see him often, which pleases me. He seems fairly well to me. As ever he's very thin and pale, and has that shuffling way of walking; he wears sandals and his feet are always filthy. He always seems like somebody who has just walked for miles and miles. Though in reality he's just caught the bus in Piazza Sonnino and got out a few yards away from here.

He's working, he says. He's writing the screen-play for a film. He told me the story. I didn't understand any of it.

The film's title is
Deviance
.

I always ask him what he's eaten, because he looks undernourished. However it seems that they eat an incredible amount at his house. They do nothing but cook. Fish, peppers.

The baby has been weaned and is growing well. That's what he told me. I haven't been to their place for a while. I don't want to bother them. I belong to a different generation.

You will have heard that Piero and Lucrezia are separating. What a pity. I'm very sorry; I remember them together and I can't imagine them apart. She is trying to find a flat in Rome, with the money she inherited from her mother. She has seen a great many but she doesn't like any of them. She has asked me to help her. You know I have a friend who runs an estate agency. Lucrezia wants to have a house in old Rome. But she has very little money. It's not an easy matter by any means.

They are going to sell
Le Margherite
. What a pity. With the money they get from the sale he will buy an apartment in Perugia and the rest will go to her.

How quickly everything is happening. It seems only yesterday that you and I went to
Le Margherite
, that I saw
Le Margherite
in front of me - the porch, the swing, all those children and all those dogs, and that entrance hall where there was a coat-stand that was always overloaded.

I feel sorry for Piero. People tell me he's a broken man. Egisto told me - I met him in a café with a girl who had red hair, an American who was staying with Alberico and the others. Lucrezia is taking all the children with her. She's become Ignazio Fegiz's lover. They're going to live together.

It's unbelievable how quickly everything happens. Goodness only knows what they're going to do with all those dogs. I love dogs and I can't not think about them. It's true though that the main worry is all those children being moved into a flat in the city, and with another father.

I remember that day when Ignazio Fegiz came to your place and then we all came down to mine and made spaghetti. Then I remember that time he took us to Florence in his car. I didn't like him. He was always telling me I was wrong. He's one of those people who always tells everyone they're wrong.

That time we went to Florence was shortly before you left for America. I remember that trip to Florence very well. I remember the last weeks before you left very well. You were very restless. You looked bewildered, wandering about the house, in the midst of all that chaos. Once or twice your brother phoned. He wanted to be sure that you were coming. I can still hear his voice in my ears, curt, deep, authoritative. I congratulated him on his marriage. Goodness, how quickly everything happens.

I didn't really understand what kind of woman Anne Marie is. She was very kind to me, for the few days I was a guest in her house.

I really know nothing about you now. You say so little on the phone.

With love from

Roberta

Rome, 10th October

Dear Giuseppe,

I've been in Rome for a week. I'm here in Roberta's house as she has kindly put me up. I must buy a flat but flats are so dear and I haven't much money. I have the money I inherited from my mother but it's not enough. I've seen some flats but they were small and ugly. LF. is in Paris and he'll come back around the middle of the month. Besides I've realized that he isn't going to help me find a flat and that I have to look at them myself. I've enrolled the children in schools here. The two eldest will go to the Tasso school, the two little ones to the German school in via Saleria. I have to find a nursery for Vito. I do nothing but go round and round Rome like a spinning top and I'm worn out.