The City and the House (14 page)

I asked T if Ippo knows that I am pregnant. He said yes, she knows. But he says very little about her to me. Before, I used to ask lots of questions about her, and he answered me to some extent. Now he doesn't answer, so I've stopped. I keep all these questions inside me now. They swell my belly up,, like the baby.

I don't sleep well at night. I'm always waiting for T to phone me, or I'm waiting for the noise of the lift and his key. He doesn't always come. Sometimes he phones me at one in the morning, worn out, really worn out, from via della Scrofa. It's difficult to get back to sleep, to find reassuring thoughts that will make me sleep.

Yours

Lucrezia

Rome, 15th December

I'll tell you about my new home.

It is L-shaped. There's a coat-stand in the entrance hall, not one that's fixed on the wall, but one of those you can move about, with lots of arms; it was black but I've painted it red. The living-room is long and narrow. I've put the Persian carpet in there, and the picture with the two coaches, and a sofa that I've had recovered. Piero kept the picture of King Lear. I've put the chest of drawers with the tortoises and the green wardrobe in my room. Daniele, Augusto and Graziano have a room with bunk-beds in it. There's another room with two beds where Cecilia and Vito sleep. I have put the quilts with dragons on these two beds. There's another little room next to my room and that will be for the new baby. Cecilia is fed up with sleeping with Vito and wants to sleep alone. She says I ought to give her the little room and have the new baby sleep in with me. But I don't want babies in my room. Cecilia and I argue about this all day long. She comes and sits herself down in front of me and tells me all the mistakes I made during the move. According to her, I have arranged the furniture and the rooms wrongly. She looks at me severely and I look at her in the same way. I think she's grown ugly. Her eyebrows have become bushy and her nose is swollen. She still has her lovely chestnut curls. But she's got fat and she always wears the same tight-fitting tartan dress. At the moment my relations with Cecilia are very bad. Cecilia doesn't love T and misses her father. She doesn't say so, but when she sits in front of me and reproaches me for the chaos here, and for the furniture which according to her I've scattered all over the place, I know only too well what her real reproaches - which she hides and doesn't mention - are. I tell her she'll have a room of her own in our real new house, the one I'm buying. She answers that I'm not buying any real house. It's true. Sometimes I read the advertisements in
II Messaggero
, but I imagine the houses in those advertisements to be extremely ugly, and then I feel unhappy, as if I were already living in one of them. And I'm very tired too. I'll go house-hunting after the baby is born.

As soon as I get up in the morning I put my fur coat on and go down to shop at the market in Campo dei Fiori, with Joli. This is quite a happy moment. I bought the fur coat second-hand in a shop near here. It's a long, yellow and black coat, made of German wolf fur, I'm not tired in the morning and I feel strong. I usually meet Selena because her bedsit, or rather Albina's bedsit, is near here, in via dei Sediari. Serena says to me, ‘You're so big you look like a tower coming towards me.' ‘And in fact I'd much rather be a little woman,' I answer. Tittle and very thin, around seven stone,' she says. I turn my face away because there are some things I don't like talking about. I don't like talking about Ippo. She takes my arm and we go between the stalls, I in my fur coat and she in her jacket made from African ram's wool. Then we have a cappuccino in a bar. I get on with Serena when she doesn't tell me about the mistakes I've made. At the moment everyone tells me about the mistakes I've made: Serena, Cecilia, Egisto (who came to see me one evening). After the market Serena helps me to carry the bags up. I don't ask her to stay for lunch because T comes for lunch and relations between T and Serena are very bad. I don't even ask her to come to supper because though T isn't usually there, it could turn out that he is. So when Serena takes herself off she's always slightly offended. She eats alone in a pizzeria. She doesn't see many people. Egisto is having an affair with an American girl who is living with your son Alberico. She was supposed to be leaving, but she hasn't left yet. She is called Anais. I start cooking. I've a woman I pay by the hour who comes in to help. She's pretty unpleasant and I want to change her. She's called Enzina. She says she doesn't know how to cook but she hangs about while I am cooking and tells me all the mistakes I'm making. Then T arrives. This is a very beautifulmoment, perhaps the most beautiful of all. It doesn't last long, because almost immediately I'm afraid that something in the house is going to upset him -Enzina's face, or the smell of cauliflower, or the record-player which doesn't work properly. I was never afraid with Piero. Fear is a new thing for me. Usually T sits in the living-room and puts records on while I finish preparing the lunch. I don't know, he seemed to love cooking when I first met him, but he never comes in the kitchen now. I don't understand why. I sit in the living-room with him and wait for the children. I'm on tenterhooks because he keeps looking at the time and the children are always late. He was so friendly to the children before, but now he and the children hardly speak. This upsets me a lot. We - T and I - spend a few hours together in the afternoon. Sometimes we go to via della Scrofa and there we can be undisturbed. But Ippo's paintings are there. There are lots of pictures but I only see Ippo's, and I find them incredibly ugly, they are all a carroty red. I'm not always able to go to via della Scrofa with him because sometimes I have to go and pick up Vito from the kindergarten and take him for a walk when Cecilia says she has too much homework and can't go. She often says this, perhaps to stop me from going to via della Scrofa.

I think I'll get rid of Enzina and take on a woman from Capo Verde. I've met her and talked to her, but she isn't free yet, I have to wait. I'm always having to wait for something.

When I imagined my life in Rome, I imagined it so differently. I believed that T would be living with me. Then suddenly he can't, I'm always asking him about it and he gets angry, he says I don't understand because I don't want to understand, it's suddenly completely impossible. Later. Later but when? He doesn't know.

I wish Ippo would die. It would be enough if he would leave her but he says he can't and then I wish she would die. He says I shouldn't say such terrible things and I shouldn't even think them. Perhaps I could manage not to say them but how can I not think them? What can anyone do against their thoughts? They crawl about your body, backwards and forwards, like worms or like diseases.

Lucrezia

Princeton, 28th December

Dear Lucrezia,

I wish you a happy Christmas, even though Christmas is over.

I received your letter. It depressed me. To tell you the truth I don't think 'I' is ever going to live with you. It's not so simple to live with five children, and soon there'll be six, when you are not used to it. 'I' has acted badly because he didn't tell you at once that this would be difficult for him and perhaps impossible. I was more honest with you.

The really bad thing is that he hasn't left that woman he's with. I've never seen this woman. I've seen her pictures in 'I's house in via della Scrofa. Her pictures seemed fairly ugly to me too, if that makes you feel any better.

Anne Marie and I spent Christmas alone, but yesterday Anne Marie's daughter, Chantal, arrived with her baby in her arms, She has left her husband. We knew there were difficulties between them. She arrived from Philadelphia at nine in the evening without having let us know she was coming. There had been a violent row. Chantal says that he hit her. She pulled up the sleeve of her dress and showed us a bruise on her arm. She's going to ask for a divorce. Something similar to what happened to her mother has happened to her. Anne Marie's first marriage also broke down suddenly. Anne Marie also left her husband with her baby in her arms.

Anne Marie wants me to go to Philadelphia to talk to Danny. I don't want to do this at all because I shall have to interrupt work on my novel and because I don't like being away from the house. But I shall have to do it.

Anne Marie smiles all the time. Chantal almost never smiles. Things are difficult between mother and daughter, as they are between you and Cecilia. They also argue all day. They argue savagely but very quietly. They never raise their voices, neither of them.

The baby is very pretty. Her name is Margaret, but she gets called Maggie. The baby and Chantal sleep in the room with the bear-cubs.

Write to me soon. Tell me how things are with you.

Giuseppe

Rome, 6th January

Dear Giuseppe,

I spent Christmas and the New Year at Terminillo, in a hotel, with Serena and the children. Piero was to have come but he caught influenza and stayed in Perugia.

'I' left for Paris before the holidays began and he hasn't come back yet.

Serena and the children went skiing at Terminillo. I went for little walks with Joli. We had taken Joli along. Which was a bad idea because they couldn't stand dogs in the hotel.

I went for little walks, very short, never going very far from the hotel. I was afraid that 'I' would phone me and they wouldn't be able to find me. Also I have a big belly now and I was afraid of slipping in the snow.

I spent hours stretched out on a deck chair on the terrace in front of the hotel. I did some knitting. Knitting is good for the nerves - I think your Mrs Mortimer said as much.

For a while now I've done nothing but wait. I wait for 'I' to phone me. I wait for my child to be born. I wait for my life to become less confused. Waiting gets on one's nerves. If you're waiting for a child to be born you shouldn't be waiting for anything else.

What an awful place Terminillo is. Windy, and full of stupid people. Serena chose it. She likes it. She enjoyed herself and so did the children. They ate like wolves, and so did I come to that. In the evenings we played
duhito
. It's a card game that children like. But then when we were alone in our room Serena started to say unpleasant things to me. She said I was wrong about everything. The separation, the house in Rome, everything. According to Serena 'I' doesn't care about me very much. This child I'm going to have won't have a father. He will have Piero's surname, certainly Piero won't deny paternity. But after that he'll be a child without a father. 'I' won't even look at him. He will say he isn't his. According to Serena he will do what you did over Graziano, just the same. Except that Piero accepted Graziano as his, but I hadn't broken the marriage up then and now on the other hand I have broken it up, and I've got myself in a real fucking mess. According to Serena men are bastards, all except for Piero who is an angel and I have been a complete idiot to leave him. I left him to be with 'I' who is the worst bastard of the lot. I got undressed and got under the blankets and turned my face to the wall and she walked up and down the room and then I saw her face hanging over me all smothered in cream, and we both started to cry.

Now we are back in Rome. Piero came to see us for a day; he brought lots of presents for the children, and a shawl for me.

Yours

Lucrezia

Rome, 9th January

Dear Giuseppe,

I went and talked to Ignazio Fegiz, or to 'I' as Lucrezia calls him. I didn't say anything to Lucrezia, I just went. I thought that as I don't like him and he probably doesn't like me, we wouldn't run any risk of spoiling our relationship, seeing that it was so bad to begin with. I phoned him, put my fur coat on and got into my little Fiat 500. It was snowing. Unfortunately the Fiat stopped at Largo Argentina. I had to go quite a way on foot, walking through the snow and mud.

Our discussion was cold, calm, and at the same time inconclusive. I don't understand that man. He seems to be open but in fact he's as closed as an oyster. As far as I can see he's already tired of Lucrezia. And now he doesn't know how to free himself from her. I told him that he should be clearer with Lucrezia. That when a woman messes up her whole life for love she deserves at least a little honesty. He responded with great gestures of assent. I asked him if he intended to give his name to the baby that was going to be born. He said there was no doubt at all of that. Then he started to explain to me that all the same, he found himself in a delicate situation. He has an old attachment. A sick, a very sick woman. It is a deep and very close attachment. In a certain sense it is no different from a matrimonial attachment. And so he has to move very, very cautiously. I told him that it seemed to me that he was using this person to shield himself from other weightier responsibilities. He blushed, he blushed a great deal. He said that perhaps, in a certain sense, I could be said to be right. But how rash, how impulsive, Lucrezia is, he said. An unbroken horse. She never thinks of others, she thinks only of herself. She drags those children about as if they were so much luggage. He felt sorry for those children. He felt sorry for Piero too. He felt sorry for everyone, I said, except Lucrezia. No, he said, he felt sorry for Lucrezia too. He wanted her to be happy. How, I said, if she's happy only when she's with him and he's both there and not there. Finally I asked him if he was in love with her. This was the essential thing I had to ask him but it was only at the end that I dragged it out of him. He said that he loved her very much. Then he looked at the time and I realized I had to go. He put his raincoat on and that peaked cap he wears, and came out with me. I must say I didn't entirely dislike him when he was walking along the street. He strides along quickly and has a cheerful air about him. He walked to Largo Argentina with me and helped me push the car till it started. Then I saw that he went off to his olive-green Renault which was parked in corso Vittorio.