The City and the House (13 page)

I've just heard from a friend of Serena that she has a flat she could lend me for a year. She's an Australian and she's going back to Australia for a year. The flat is in Piazza del Paradiso. It's a bit dark and there's no central-heating. But there are some electric heaters.

What you said to me about treating my children as if they were furniture or luggage was wicked and unjust. You tell me what else I could do. I'm doing what other women do when they get separated. The children have to stay with me, and I have to stay with LF. in Rome. We are trying to sell
Le Margherite
. Piero has already found a little apartment in Perugia, near his office, and he will live there with his mother.

I can't sleep and at night I keep twisting and turning in bed, I put the light on then put it off, light up a cigarette then put it out, push all the pillows and blankets off the bed. My eyes seem to be full of pins. I'm not well. Roberta is very good to me. She is a great help to me. I talk a lot, I do nothing but talk.

The flat that was yours before is above my head. The Lanzaras live there. We went there for tea once. Your flat has been so changed that you wouldn't recognize it. What used to be the sitting-room is now a bedroom with chenille bedspreads in it. That's where I broke the ashtrays, remember?

My life has reached a turning point. This is why I can't sleep. I'm a bit annoyed with I.F. because he took it into his head to go off to Paris at such an important moment for us. And just when we have to look for a flat.

One thing about him has astonished me. He hasn't said that he would give me the money to buy a house, seeing that the money I have isn't enough. If he had offered it to me I'd have refused. But to tell you the truth I expected him to offer it to me, but he hasn't done so. And he's rich too. I think he's rich. But he and I never talk about money.

He doesn't want to leave his house in via della Scrofa. He pays according to the fair rent laws, and it's convenient. It's too small for us all to stay there, it's virtually just one room. Besides, he hasn't offered.

I'll have some money when we've sold
Le Margherite
. But I shall have to put some aside for living expenses. Piero will give whatever's necessary to support the children.

I think I'm pregnant. I get morning sickness. I don't want an abortion. I shall have a sixth child. It is I.F.'s. But I.F. is in Paris and doesn't know about it yet.

I want this sixth child. You know how much I like being pregnant. And I wanted to have a child with I.F. I told him I wanted to have a child with him. He didn't say anything. Sometimes he becomes extraordinarily silent, and I think he'll never talk to me again.

Serena has got back from Russia. She is in Pianura. On Saturday I shall go over and start emptying the place, room by room. Serena will help me. I get dizzy just thinking about it.
Le Margherite
is a big house, and full of things. I loved it so much once. Now I hate it.

I can't bear the country any more. I want a city around me: Rome.

We've already got a buyer for
Le Margherite
. He has offered two hundred million. Piero says it's not enough. He wants two hundred and fifty. They're discussing it.

My mother-in-law's at
Le Margherite
and she spends every day crying. When I go there she follows me from room to room and cries. She asks me if I won't reconsider, out of love for the children. I try to be kind to her, but I can't bear her.

The children are still at my sister-in-law's, in Forte die Marmi. They have missed more than a month of school. Never mind.

Piero and I now only talk about practical things. About possessions and money. How to divide the furniture, the crockery and the silver. Sometimes Piero also talks about me, He does this particularly when he phones. He starts out in a cold, calm tone and then little by little his voice gets thick and harsh. Then I ask him however he managed to live with me all this time, if he sees me as such a hypocrite and so faithless.

You've no idea how many things there are in a house. Too many. It seems impossible to have bought so much. It seems impossible to have bought all those things, and with such pleasure too. At the moment when I have to choose whether to leave things or take them with me I hate them all.

I met your son on the landing the other day. He recognized me and offered me his cold hand. He was going to the Lanzaras'. He's being psychoanalysed. Roberta says I should be psychoanalysed too because I'm at a difficult moment in my life. Perhaps she's right.

What a small world - your son is being psychoanalysed in the very flat you once owned.

Yours

Lucrezia

Rome, 10th October

Dear Giuseppe,

Lucrezia gave me her letter to you to post. I'll add a few words of my own. Poor Lucrezia. She says she's happy, but to me she seems tired and lost. She's very pale. But then she's always pale. She says that she might be pregnant. I'd be desperate and would have an abortion immediately.

Piero phones in the evenings from Monte Fermo. These phone calls last for hours. Goodness knows how much that poor devil spends on long-distance calls. Luckily it's always him who calls, not Lucrezia, otherwise goodness knows how much I'd be spending.

I.F. phones too, but not so often, and not at such great length. He's phoned maybe three times since Lucrezia's been here.

I'm helping her to find a flat; we have seen a great many but she doesn't like any of them. Now she's going to stay in an apartment someone is lending her - it's not bad, a bit dark.

I feel sorry for the children.

With love from

Roberta

Princeton, 20th October

Dear Lucrezia,

I'm sending this letter to Monte Fermo. I imagine you are there now, packing everything up.

You wrote to me that your life has reached a turning point. My life has also reached a turning point. I'm getting married. I'm marrying Anne Marie, my brother's widow.

I wanted to let you know immediately. I wanted you to be one of the first people to know.

With love from

Giuseppe

Rome, 10th November

Respected father,

I heard from Roberta that you have got married. I'm pleased. I know you've phoned to tell everyone - Roberta, and even Egisto. You didn't phone me though. I found that strange.

I am well. The baby is growing well. My life is pretty uneventful. They've accepted the screenplay for my film and I've been paid for it. I shall direct it. I think the film will be dreadful. But I enjoyed myself well enough thinking it up, and I think I'll enjoy myself making it.

In via Nazario Sauro a few days ago I met that friend of yours on the stairs, the woman who has the house in the country and all those children. I thought she'd become ugly and worn out; her eyes had dark circles round them. I think she's called Ophelia, or something like that.

Alberico

Princeton, 18th November

Dear son,

I phoned you but you weren't at home. A woman's voice answered. She talked half in English and half in Italian. Clearly she forgot to tell you. I'm sending you a little photograph of Anne Marie and me together in our garden. Mrs Mortimer, our next-door neighbour, took it.

Anne Marie is a very intelligent woman. She works in an Institute for Scientific Research. That is, she works on something I understand nothing whatsoever about. And I'm working on something she understands nothing whatsoever about. I'm writing a novel in Italian, a language she doesn't know.

Our days are spent in two separate worlds that have nothing to do with each other. We meet in the evenings, in the kitchen, and each of us says something about what we've done during the day, but very little for fear of boring the other. In living with someone else boredom is the worst risk.

Boredom appears when each person knows everything about the other, or thinks he knows everything about the other, and no longer gives a damn about it. But no, I'm wrong. No one knows why boredom appears.

My brother's and Anne Marie's marriage was based on interests held in common. Ours is based on the distance between my world and hers.

Don't think fm not astonished to have married her. I feel astonished about it every day. I don't know if she wonders why she has married me. I still don't know.

She smiles all the time. She's one of those people who smiles all the time. At first I used to smile too, in answer to her. But I thought that at a certain point we would both stop smiling. I've stopped. But she hasn't, she smiles from when she gets up in the morning to when we go to bed in the evening.

I'm very pleased about what you told me concerning the film.

With love from

your father

Pianura, 28th November

Dear Egisto,

Perhaps you will have heard that Albina's mother has died. Perhaps she has phoned you or written to you. She is in a right mess now. Her father can't live alone. He's old, he's ill and he's deaf. Her sisters are very young. Her brother can only be bothered with his own affairs. An aunt was helping them but she has left. Albina will have to stay in Luco dei Marsi now. She has had to give up that job she had in Rome at the convent school. I shall have her bedsit.

I'm leaving Pianura. I'm sorry because I've become fond of the area. I've been there a few years now. But there isn't anyone at Monte Fermo now.
Le Margherite
is up for sale, and it doesn't make sense for me to stay here any more. For me, living in Pianura meant being near Piero and Lucrezia, seeing them every day. But what will I do in Pianura by myself? I shall go to Rome, that way I'll be company for Lucrezia. Lucrezia, if you ask me, has got herself into real trouble. She's done everything too quickly. She's sick of Piero, she can't stand him any longer. But then they had an open relationship, or so they said. People with an open relationship don't separate, each one comes and goes as he pleases.

Lucrezia is deceiving herself about Ignazio Fegiz. She imagines that this is her great love and that he is the one man in her life. Like hell he is. He hasn't gone to live with her and I don't believe he ever will. He wouldn't dream of it. And so she's alone and pregnant with five children and a dog in a dark, noisy apartment in the old part of Rome - without a blade of grass in sight or even a balcony, with a cleaning woman who's paid hourly, with hardly any money and hardly any freeedom to go out. It's a disaster.

Piero has moved to Perugia with Signora Annina. Just imagine the joy of having his mother under his feet all day. She even follows him to the office, because she doesn't know what to do with herself.

But it was good being with Piero and Lucrezia. Remember? It was good being with them both whether or not they had an open relationship. I mustn't think about it, because before I know where I am I'll start crying.

I'll tell you about my Russian trip. It was wonderful.,We haven't seen each other since then. We haven't seen each other for ages.

I'm coming to Rome and I hope I'll see you a few times.

I've closed the Women's Centre, even so I have to pay the rent for a year, until the contract runs out.

Yours,

Serena

Rome, 12th December

Dear Giuseppe,

So, you're married. I'm not surprised because it was very clear from your recent letters that you were considering the idea.

I ought to congratulate you. I can't because this marriage of yours doesn't make me feel in a congratulatory mood at all. I keep all your letters. I keep them in my wardrobe in a cardboard box. Every now and then I get them out and look at them. How you hated Anne Marie when you arrived in America, and then later too, all the time your brother was alive. ‘We haven't anything to say to each other in any language', ‘I can't stand either her long neck, or her clear squinting eyes, or her smile, or her plait, or her bun.' I'm picking out phrases from your letters at random.

Roberta says that when you and your brother were children, you always wanted to do what he did. And so now you've married his wife. But I think you've finished up in a real stinking mess. I've seen a photograph of you and Anne Marie. Roberta showed it to me. Anne Marie is ugly. Those eyes, that raincoat, that smile. She's cross-eyed. Her smile is false. You have your usual look of a bird that's just fallen off a roof.

I'm fine. I'm in Rome, in an apartment someone's lent me, in Piazza del Paradiso. I see Roberta a lot. She is a great help to me. I see Serena who has come to live in Rome, in Albina's bedsit. Albina is at Luco dei Marsi. Her mother's died.

My apartment is a bit dark. I'm cold. I've bought some more electric heaters. There were already three of them, but I feel the cold a great deal.

However, the children are happy, and they like Rome. Vito goes to a kindergarten run by nuns. Cecilia takes him and picks him up. I feel sick all the time. My new baby will be born in April.

I brought one of the dogs, Joli, with me because the children liked him a lot, I gave the other dogs to the help at
Le Margherite
.

Piero comes to see us quite often. Relations between us are calm now. He phones before he comes because he doesn't want to bump into T. I call him T now. Even the children call him T. Once however, T and Piero did bump into each other. It didn't go too badly. First they talked about the price of houses, then about the price of pictures.

T hasn't come to live here yet. He's coming but not at the moment. He has to think things over for a while.

He usually eats lunch with us. At supper time he has to go to her place, to Ippo's. It's a relationship that's gone on for twenty years and he can't just break it off in one fell swoop. And she, Ippo, has a bad heart. My God, what a bloody nuisance she is. She has a bad stomach and she has a bad heart. I, on the other hand, am as strong as a horse. She has such a bad stomach and she can't eat. She has a horror of getting fat, and because of this she stopped eating years ago and this has made her stomach shrink. A carrot, a glass of hot water with a slice of lemon in it - that's what her meals are. T has to go to her house every evening to see that she at least eats her carrot. Ippo. All day her name goes round and round inside my head. What with T and Ippo I feel that / is the only letter in the alphabet.