The City and the House (17 page)

I'd be very pleased if you'd like to read my novel one day -there's no hurry, there's all the time in the world. When Danny came here the last time, a few days ago, he said that his friend had already translated sixty pages or so and that he'd given them him to read, and that he had found it very interesting and was impatient to find out what happened next. The next time he comes here he might bring his friend, who is very keen to meet me and ask me about certain moments he hasn't understood. Danny doesn't want to see Chantai when he comes here, so I take the baby to his hotel, which is a pretty squalid little rooming-house because Danny hasn't much money and he has recently lost his job. I leave the baby with him and go back to pick her up and then we arrange to meet in the evening and we spend hours talking together. Anne Marie isn't happy about this, she doesn't say anything but she turns the corners of her mouth down and gives an exasperated little sigh. Perhaps Chantai isn't happy about this either, but she shrugs her shoulders and bursts out into a shrill laugh and says that everyone is free to spend his time with whoever he likes. Last time Danny asked me to lend him some money and I gave him some, but I didn't tell either Anne Marie or Chantai.

Danny and Chantai have begun divorce proceedings. According to Danny, Chantai won't be able to put up with living with her mother for long, and according to him she is already thinking of going off and living alone, maybe in New York. I asked Chantai if this were true and she told me it wasn't, that for the moment she would remain with us. If Chantai leaves I shall really miss her. The house is much more cheerful with Chantai and the baby here, and Chantai and I talk together a lot, and enjoy doing so, and when she is at work and I am at the school I amass a great heap of things in my mind that I want to tell her, and that I actually do tell her as soon as we are together again. She is a sweet girl, Chantai. She has her cold moments because her mother has always been too strict with her. Anne Marie isn't a motherly person. I told Anne Marie this and she said I was right. Mother and daughter can't stand each other. In fact, Anne Marie can't stand the baby either. She says she feels too old to have a baby in the house. Send me your news.

Giuseppe

Rome, 20th May

I went to Vallombrosa for ten days, with 'i'. We got back four days ago. Roberta and Piero said I needed a change of air. 'I' came with me. He didn't want to at first, because he said he had lots of commitments in Rome. Then all of a sudden he decided to come and it was him who chose the hotel. A good hotel. He said he had a lot of money at the moment and that I needed all the comforts available, and so did he for that matter.

We set off in the olive-green Renault, which I hadn't been in for ages. Roberta moved into my place, to look after the house.

I put your novel in my suitcase. So I've finally read it. I enjoyed it.

What happened between you and me at Viterbo happened between 'I' and me at Vallombrosa. We said goodbye, it's over. With this difference, that at Viterbo it was me who said we had to finish, and at Vallombrosa he said it. And also with another difference, that at Viterbo you and I were both very sad, but calm underneath, and neither of us felt that we wouldn't see each other again. But at Vallombrosa we both felt that we had acted very badly, I to him and he to me, and that we should never see each other again for any reason whatsoever. Perhaps this didn't seem so terrible to him, but it seemed terrible to me because I think I'm still in love with him.

Egisto says that when he is with Ippo, Ippo talks and he stays quiet all the time. But I'd guess that his silence with Ippo is a beautiful thing. He was silent with me at the end and it was an ugly silence. I didn't talk either. We both felt worn-out and tired, and suddenly old. He stared into space and patted that grey crew-cut of his. I fiddled with my hair and gathered it all up on to the top of my head.

It rained the whole time at Vallombrosa. I read your novel while 'I' read some books he had brought with him. When I finished your novel I wanted to give it to him, but he said he couldn't read modern novels. He was reading Aeschylus' tragedies. When it stopped raining we went for walks in the woods. I remembered the walks he and I went for at Monte Fermo when we first got to know each other. Long strides. Long, beautiful silences, full, of secret words. Sudden, silly bursts of laughter. Short, inconclusive phrases. Thoughts that got tangled up and went round in circles. Hair in my eyes. That constant sense of triumphant complicity. Now we walked separately, he in front and I behind. Every now and then he waited for me to catch up. He would sigh and then start walking again without turning round, with one hand in his pocket and the other behind his back. You remember he always keeps one hand behind his back. I followed on behind and wondered every now and then what was happening at home, if they'd remembered to take Joli out, if Cecilia was in a bad mood, and Vito was being difficult. I had an immense desire to go home, and at the same time I didn't want to go there at all. We went back to the hotel and I changed my shoes. In our room there were some dark pictures, of fruit and dead pheasant. We went down to have dinner in the dining-room, which was in a basement. I looked at the people at the other tables, he looked at the wall. At a certain point during dinner he would disappear, and I knew that he was telephoning. He came back and gave me a little twisted smile, moving just one corner of his mouth.

He said we had to finish with each other. And then all of a sudden we rediscovered our intimacy and a sense of complicity. But it was a complicity that was as heavy as a rock, and it's only use was to show us that there was no way we could go on. That's how we spent the last days together.

A French couple he knew arrived at the hotel, and he cheered up when he saw them. They knew Ippo and mentioned her. He went for a walk with them once. He tripped and twisted his ankle. He couldn't drive, and so I drove the Renault on the way back.

Now I'm at home. When I got home the children had measles. I asked Roberta to stay on for a few more days. She sleeps in the little room. She's going on Saturday because Piero's coming. Being with people wears me out, but I get even more worn out when I'm alone. I find the children wearisome. They asked why in the world 'I' doesn't come to lunch any more. I told them he doesn't come because he's hurt his foot.

Egisto and Serena come and see me. They come out of pity because I don't entertain them, I don't say a word, and sometimes I treat them badly. I haven't told anyone that 'I' has left me but I think everyone has realized.

I had a lover and he left me. I feel ugly and old. My hair is falling out, I've got wrinkles. My face isn't pale any more, it's yellow. ‘My splendid pallor' has gone.

Sometimes I think I'll never see you again, and I'm happy that this should be so, because I don't want you to see me as I am now. But at the same time I feel that perhaps you are the only person in the world I could be with without feeling exhausted.

As I told you, I enjoyed your novel. I think it's well written. But I didn't read it properly because I was thinking about myself as I read it. I didn't skip anything, not even the descriptions, but to tell you the truth I read just with my eyes, and my thoughts were elsewere. There are perhaps rather too many descriptions, and I can't bear descriptions in novels. Sometimes I thought you were spinning it out and not really saying anything. That character who experiences a taste of one thing and the smell of another, he goes here and there but he doesn't meet up with a damn soul and nothing happens to him, until the end when there's all that mess, and then it's over and you're left with a great confused blur in your head. All that mess comes a bit late. But at the moment I'm no judge, and even if you were Thomas Mann I don't think I'd realize it.

Yours

Lucrezia

Princeton, 30th May

Dear Albina,

I heard from Roberta that you are married, and I send you my best wishes, I'm very happy for you. Roberta often phones me and gives me news of everyone, Lucrezia, Egisto, Serena and you, and in this way I follow you all at a distance. I hope you will be happy. I think you are someone who is made to have a house and children, even though you have that boyish look, and even though, as you keep saying, you find bed a problem.

I've never written to you since I left Italy, and you have never written to me either, though you promised me you would write and I promised I'd write to you. But I always remember you, I see you sitting at the table at Mariuccia's, when we used to eat together, and then at Monte Fermo when you played the flute, I see your long, thin hands, like a lizard's as Lucrezia used to say, your chestnut-brown eyes, and your curls falling forward over your forehead. I don't know anything about your husband, whether he's young or old, Roberta didn't know and on long distance ‘phone calls the money is ticking away and there isn't time to say much. I got married too, a year-and-a-half ago, as you must have heard; I married my brother's widow, and I teach Italian literature in a school. I've written a novel, which I sent to Lucrezia, but Lucrezia is going through a difficult time and so she read it rather half-heartedly and she says she feels unable to judge it. I understand, and I'm not offended. Go and see her if you happen to be in Rome, I think she needs friends, above all old, loyal friends who'll help her to regain her former spirits. She has broken up her marriage and had a baby who died immediately, she's alone, and I read her letters and wish I could be there with her, but I can't come at the moment for various reasons. My wife's daughter left her husband a few months ago and is staying with us with her baby girl, and there is some tension in the house, my wife and her daughter don't get on very well and my presence is useful because if I were not here these two women would row openly, and then I'm very busy with the baby and I take her out for walks; neither my wife nor my step-daughter can be bothered to spend time with her. The little girl is two now; she is called Maggie, and she's a delicious little creature.

With love from

Giuseppe

Rome, 5th June

Zezé is black, fat, with big hips, thin shoulders and legs, and large, bony, flat feet. She is about as tall as I am and she tells me I'm the tallest lady she's worked for. She arrives at midday with bags full of shopping. When it rains she has a fake tiger-skin raincoat. When she does the housework she puts a handkerchief on her head, like a turban. She was born in Capo Verde, but grew up in an aunt's house in Torpignattara.

She doesn't like tall women. She is tall but well proportioned. Luckily she has slim legs, it's a pity that my legs are not very slim. I have small breasts and hers are large, and if a woman is tall she should have large breasts otherwise she looks like a tree-trunk with a couple of bumps on it. She thinks I do my hair badly. If I have my hair all gathered up on top of my head like that it makes my face look too thin and it shows the circles round my eyes and the wrinkles. She has a full face and there's no need for her to hide it with her hair. Her hair is tight, curly and thick. She cuts it very short and she just has to ruffle it over her forehead a bit for it to look nice. Luckily her hair is still black. But I have lots of white hairs and goodness only knows why I don't dye them.

At the moment I am the only lady she works for. Before she comes to me she goes to piazza San Cosimato: she has an hour at Egisto's where there's nothing to do because Egisto is clean and tidy, and then two hours on the floor below at Alberico's, and there it's a real mess. There are no ladies at Egisto's or at Alberico's. There is Nadia at Alberico's, but you couldn't call her a lady. She comes from a rich family but she's a whore. Anyway she doesn't give orders and she doesn't give a tinker's curse about anything. Alberico gives the orders. After she's been at my house she goes to do the ironing at an architect's, and there aren't any ladies there either. She likes working when there's at least one lady there.

She comes to my house at midday and leaves at a quarter past four. She is supposed to go and pick Vito up from his kindergarten at four, but she doesn't like to. Vito is too lively and she doesn't want to run along the street after him. She doesn't like taking children for walks. Though she takes Giorgina, Alberico's baby, with her sometimes when she goes shopping, just to get her out of that mess for a moment or two. She is a very intelligent child, much more intelligent than Vito who is three years older. She's a little love that baby is, one day she'll bring her for me to see. Alberico adores that baby. Though Alberico isn't her father, no one's set eyes on her father. Alberico gave her his name out of pity. And the baby adores Alberico too, she calls him Tico. If Tico goes out she cries. She'll only eat when he's there. But that baby never wants to eat, and anyway they give her such unsuitable things, tagliatelle and sauce first thing in the morning, mussels in brine, never a cup of milk, once Zezé tried to give her a cup of bread and milk but she wasn't used to it, she asked for her tagliatelle again, but she didn't want it really and she picked the tagliatelle strands up and stuck them on the wall one by one. She doesn't want to eat with her mother. And anyway her mother doesn't give a tinker's curse about the baby or about anything. She's a little whore. She often spends the night out somewhere, comes back dead tired the next morning and throws herself down and sleeps and no one bothers her for a while. When Zezé is ready to go the little whore wakes up and asks for coffee. Salvatore yells at her to get up and get it herself. Fucking queen, she yells back and then he comes and drags her out of bed and they start brawling. Salvatore's terrifying when he loses his temper and once he nearly strangled her, Alberico tore his hands away just in time. They're all a bunch of queers there and so you can understand that she spends the night outside, with men who aren't queers, but Zezé thinks that she gets a lot of money doing it and hides the money somewhere, and when she and Salvatore row the real reason is the money because she doesn't want to tell him where she's hidden it, or the drugs she doesn't want to tell him where she's hidden, because they're all on drugs, Zezé's certain of that, she's seen the syringes. Sometimes Salvatore spends the night out too and Alberico stays alone in the house with the baby. What a mess. Boys who come and go, all queers, Adelmo, Luciano, Gianni, Zezé knows them all. They are nice to her and sweet with the baby, they're not bad people. Salvatore isn't bad either, but he has an ugly character, he argues with everyone and when he argues he's like an animal. He argues with Alberico even, but never very violently, Zezé has never seen him brawling with Alberico. When Zezé arrives she has to start washing the dishes, and there are always lots of them, unless they've had lunch sent up from a restaurant, and then all she has to do is put the dirty dishes in a basket and take them back. Zezé suggested they use paper plates when they make lunch themselves, but Alberico didn't want to know anything about paper plates, they make him melancholy. Once Salvatore used to wash the dishes but now he's fed up because there are always so many people eating there - Adelmo, Luca, Gianni, Giuliano often stay and eat with them. It's Alberico who decides whether they get lunch sent up from a restaurant or cook for themselves. He is in charge, and anyway he has the money. He's the one who wants Zezé to come every day, and he's the one who pays her at the end of the week. He's very rich and he'll be even richer because in a few days they're showing his film. He always types in the kitchen, naked except for red underpants, with oropax in his ears, sometimes with the baby on his knee. Every now and then they give supper parties for fifteen people and then they ask Zezé to cook. Zezé makes them bowls of pasta and bowls of mixed salad, lettuce, cucumbers and peppers, never meat because they don't eat meat, it's corpses Alberico says. Zezé pointed out that fish are corpses too, sardines, mussels, squid, all of which they buy often enough. But Alberico thinks that meat more than anything else gives the feeling of being a corpse because when you buy it and eat it you think of hair and blood, but when you eat fish you don't think of these things, fish don't have hair and their blood is different, colder and clearer. Egisto is usually at these supper parties and also 'I', the doctor as Zezé called him when she used to see him here, now she calls him Fegisse, doctor Fegisse, and usually doctor Fegisse brings along that little thin thing with the nose. She's someone who doesn't eat anything. She just wants a stick of celery and a cup of hot water. Once she asked for a carrot but there weren't any carrots in the house. She's called Ippo. She's an ugly little thing, Ippo, but Fegisse prefers her to me because she dresses well and has really beautiful hair, thick, tight and curly à la Angela Davis, and besides she's quite small and small women are always very lucky. When it's half past four Zezé takes the handkerchief off her head and her black, tight, thick hair à la Angela Davis appears, which is even more beautiful than Ippo's because it's black. She goes off to the architect's. She has put a lot of money aside and soon she will buy a flat. She wants it to be in old Rome. Where I am is old Rome too, but she prefers the area around the Pantheon. Yours