The City and the House (3 page)

I'm sorry, I would have liked to have come to stay with you and play tennis with Piero. It's true that your tennis-court is wretched after that last storm, it's full of holes and the last time I almost sprained my ankle. But it doesn't matter.

I met a very pleasant person the other night, at the Rotunnos'. He is called Ignazio Fegiz and he is a picture-restorer. He took me home because I had come on foot. He has an olive-green Renault. He is very intelligent. If you like, when I come next Saturday I will bring him with me. You have that still-life Piero bought in Salerno, the one that is full of stains and cracks, and perhaps you could have him look at it. It seems a mess to me but I know that Piero values it. He will be able to tell you how to get rid of the stains, and perhaps even the cracks too.

I've seen Giuseppe. He seems to me very depressed. We were supposed to go and eat in a restaurant but then his cousin arrived and asked if we would like to eat something downstairs with her. She is called Roberta. I think you know her, she has come to
Le Margherite
a few times. She is blonde, with big hips, and big teeth that stick out. She is a cheerful, interfering, busybody of a woman. We went down and she made us spaghetti in a very complicated way that I can't remember. It involved spinach, cream and eggs. The spinach was frozen, that I know. She is on a diet and didn't eat the spaghetti. She only ate an apple and a little plate of chicory without oil or salt.

Roberta's flat is similar to Giuseppe's but bigger. She and I talked about flats. Giuseppe has sold his. I think he has made a real cock-up of it. He had already been to the solicitor's and signed the contract. A family called Lanzara are buying it. He is a psychoanalyst who is quite well-known.

With the money from the sale of that flat Giuseppe is going to buy some Treasury Bonds. So he will have something if he decides to come back. Or they will be there for his son if he should need them. His son is rich because he inherited a lot from an aunt, but he has no desire to do anything. He has been in prison on a drugs charge. He's a lost soul.

Princeton is a tiny, very beautiful town. It was founded by the Quakers. It has big parks and lots of trees. The trees are full of squirrels. When Giuseppe opens his windows he will see squirrels. But I think he will soon come back here, in less than a month. America is not at all his kind of place. It's because he no longer wants to go that he is so depressed.

We'll see one another next Saturday, I'll bring Ignazio Fegiz.

Egisto

Monte Fermo, 26th October

Albina gave me your letter and also one from Egisto. She rummaged in her handbag with that greenish lizard's claw of hers and pulled out first a handkerchief, then a comb, and then some tampax and then the two letters. I was in the kitchen bottling wine with my mother-in-law and that general help who arrived a few days ago from Piazza Armerina and who has no idea how to help do anything at all.

I left them all there and came up to my room and locked myself in.

What a strange person you are. We've said almost nothing to each other for so long and then all of a sudden you write me a long letter. There was a period when we wrote each other letters, you and I, but there weren't many of them and they weren't very long either, and that period was quite some time ago, four, five years ago. Afterwards we didn't write to each other any more and neither did we talk to each other very much. How many times have we been alone together during these years, you and I, how many times have we gone for long walks in the woods, and you said nothing more than ‘How are things?' and ‘What are you doing?', and I was just the same.

I don't know why you say I'm spiteful to you. It's not true. I don't have any spiteful feelings for you. I wouldn't have any reason to. We had an affair which lasted a few years and ended. A simple story.

You annoy me when you say that Graziano is an insignificant child. It's not true. None of my children is insignificant. All five of them are very special and very good-looking. Everyone says so.

Graziano is yours. But if you prefer to pretend that he isn't, it doesn't matter.

In your letter you mention only four of the children. You don't mention Augusto. I don't know why. Perhaps he is the one that is most like me. Even if he has red cheeks and not ‘my splendid pallor'.

I was pleased that you wrote that phrase. It re-echoed in my head all day long. Every so often I go in front of the mirror to look at ‘my splendid pallor'.

Today I am going to Pianura with Serena and Albina. Serena has got it into her head to open a ‘centre'. Her landlord's family have a warehouse. Serena has asked them if she can rent it. Serena is bored. She wants to open a centre in this warehouse which she will call ‘The Women's Centre'. There will be a library and meetings once a week on Friday evenings. We shall recite poetry and act plays together. Serena enjoys acting. She particularly enjoys acting Alfieri's
Mirra
. Serena was a very bad student and she can't remember anything of what she studied, but she does remember Alfieri's
Mirra
, goodness only knows why. She wants to be able to stand in a theatre, in front of people who have come to listen, and say, ‘When I asked you/ You should have given me the sword, Euriclea/ I would have died innocent/ Now I shall die guilty.'
Mirra
is the story of someone who is in love with her father. Though Serena has never been in love with her father. No, not even in her wildest dreams. But she says that when she thinks of that ending it always makes her want to cry.

What a strange person you are. In your letter you tell me about your son. You have never talked about him to me, nor to Piero, nor I think to the others. When we asked you about him you always answered briefly and changed the subject. But I know everything about your son, from Roberta. I already knew what you wrote to me. Aunt Bice, the cat, the California Bar.

Later.

I don't know why you think I feel spiteful towards you. No, not at all. Why should I. We had an affair that lasted for quite a while. Then it finished. Simple.

I wanted to leave Piero and come and live with you. It would have been a big mistake, but I didn't see this. It would have been a mistake because we were already tired of each other, you of me and I of you. But I didn't see it, I hadn't realized. Youofthat told me that I should not leave Piero, that I shouldn't even think of doing so. You said the children would suffer. I said that I would bring them with me and they wouldn't suffer much; Piero could have seen them sufficiently often. That house where you live is big enough and with a few little rearrangements we could have all fitted in. Then you got very frightened. I read the fear on your face. You probably envisioned your house being turned into a camp-site. I don't know how to tell you how much that fear of yours hurt me. You said that you didn't feel up to being a father to the children. You didn't feel you could take on the role of father. Your usual obsession. You are always afraid that someone will make you take on the role of a father. Then I told you that you were a coward. We were in your house. You hate that hotel in Viterbo, but I hate your house. I decided that day not to go back there ever again. But as it turned out I went back there a couple of times, later on.

That day I broke some ashtrays too, not just one but three or four. I grabbed the ashtrays I saw within reach and hurled them on the floor. You knelt down on the carpet to pick up the pieces and I cried. I despised you and I cried.

I don't remember the name of that hotel in Viterbo. I remember there were red curtains that had a vile smell. We talked very calmly, sitting on the bed. Then we went out and went to the cinema.
The Four Feathers
was on. I can't remember anything about the film. Just the name. I cried, my tears cascaded down, but you took no notice.

After Viterbo I fell in love two or three times. Once with one of Piero's clients, someone who had a ceramics shop in Perugia. But he was always worrying about his financial affairs and took no notice of me. Another time with an English archaeologist, a friend of Serena's. Neither time was it very important and it was quickly over. As you know I fall in love easily. Months passed, I was sad and I thought I wanted another child, because I like being pregnant. At first Piero was rather against this, and then he accepted it. When Vito was three months old I stopped feeding him with my milk and I couldn't find the right way to wean him. I was recommended to a doctor. He came from Perugia almost every day to see Vito and sometimes he stayed for lunch. I waited for him very anxiously because he used to reassure me, and perhaps waiting so anxiously made me fall in love with him. I think you saw him at our house once, his name was Civetta. He was neither handsome nor young, he was white-haired and he stooped a little. I went to bed with him twice, in his surgery in Perugia. But it wasn't anything important and I didn't mention it to Piero. Only Serena knew. But he told his wife, he had a short, plump wife who was always walking around Perugia with a little dog. His wife said he shouldn't see me again. He immediately agreed. Then he was transferred to Vicenza. All the same, for a while I continued to wear his tattered old red and black check jersey, which he had left on a peg in the hall and forgotten, and then never asked for it back, and Piero used to ask me how ever I could wear that horrible jersey that reminded him of Doctor Civetta and that time when I couldn't find the right way to wean Vito.

One day when I was crying Piero asked me if I was crying because of you. There were two or three Saturdays when you didn't come and you had phoned to say you couldn't because you were writing something or other. But that time I wasn't crying because of you, I was just crying, for no earthly reason. Then Piero said that you had many fine qualities but that you lacked back-bone. He kept consoling me as though I were crying for you, even though I kept telling him that everything with you had been over for a long time.

Today I was at the Women's Centre with Albina and Serena and we cleaned up the floor a bit, then Serena climbed up a ladder because there are two little windows with grimy glass covered in cobwebs. She wiped them with newspapers while I held the bucket for her, but they stayed grimy from top to bottom just as before.

Albina and Serena say that I should come to Rome and talk to you and persuade you to stay in America for a fortnight or a month but no longer. They say America is not your kind of place. But I think you will enjoy being in America and if I had a brother in America who said to me come and stay here for good, I would go immediately. I would take all my children and go. But I don't have any brothers, neither in America nor anywhere else, and you are lucky that you have this brother in Princeton, a town that's full of squirrels and trees. A town that must be solid, orderly, clean and hospitable. You will say that here I have all the trees I could want and that though there aren't any squirrels, there are lots of other animals, cats and dogs and rabbits and hens. Our place is smothered in trees and animals. Since I was a girl I've wanted to live in the country and have lots of children. I have had what I wanted, but meanwhile I've become a different person. The children are fine, but I've had it up to here with the country. I want to have a town around me: Princeton. Instead, I only have fields and woods around me. If I stand at the window and look at this countryside with its fields and woods and vines I don't feel a sense of peace but of fear. When we bought this house I thought it was really beautiful -so big and yellow and old, but now there are days when I can't bear it, not the front nor the back nor inside it. If I make the effort to get to Monte Fermo, I find a village of fifteen houses leaning over a ravine, of old women sitting on steps, and of hens. If I make the effort to get to Pianura I don't find a town but another village, a big crowded noisy unpleasant village and I'm fed up to the back teeth with that too.

I told Piero that we could sell this house and go and live in Perugia or even in Rome. He doesn't want to hear of such a thing. He is happy here. He doesn't see the countryside much because he spends his days in Perugia and only comes back here in the evenings. He is only here on Saturdays and Sundays and friends come then and he likes it.

Later still.

As far as your son is concerned, I want to say that if he won't come and say goodbye to you before you go, you should go and say goodbye to him. But you don't even think of such a thing. You just break things off with hardly a word. You let him go with hardly a word. You should at least feel a little curiosity, find out whether he is getting on all right in Berlin and how this film of his is going. What do you mean he is already twenty-five. Someone can suffer from the absence of his parents at twenty-five, even if it is he who wants to be away from them because he has decided that he doesn't like them at all. But he will be secretly pleased if his parents run after him.

At twenty-five I had been married for three years and I already had two children, nevertheless my mother still gave the orders and I obeyed them. I phoned her ten times a day to ask her how I should dress and what I should cook and she answered everything point by point in that thick voice of hers. I had married Piero because she liked him, she thought him a good man, serious, calm, ‘a worker'. I married Piero because he was ‘a worker'. She made me see everything she liked through rose-tinted spectacles. She even liked Signora Annina, Piero's mother, who is in fact a pest, and she and Signora Annina went off on little trips together. When I married Piero I realized that I had done well, reasonably well, but I knew that in marrying him I had only obeyed my mother. Then we lived in Florence, my mother in one house and Piero and I in another, in the same street. Signora Annina was living in Lucca and appeared every now and then. My mother had chosen our house, she had even chosen the furniture and the disposition of the rooms. My mother was a strong, robust, energetic woman who went about the city every morning busying herself with prisoners' families. She went marching around the city with her military step and flat shoes and a bag over her shoulder. She had a thick, deep, hoarse voice. After I got married she lived alone, with a serving woman called la Lina, and in the evenings she and la Lina knitted things, always for prisoners' families. With my mother, Piero and la Lina I felt protected, safe, secure; it seemed to me that they would keep every danger, every disaster away from me. Then my mother became neurotically depressed. But you know that, I've already told you. She began to complain of headaches and insomnia. The doctor examined her but there was nothing wrong, she was healthy. Bit by bit she stopped going out of the house, washing herself, eating and knitting. She sat in an armchair in her drawing-room, in semi-darkness, with her hands in her lap, and stared at a point on the carpet. When I phoned it was always la Lina who answered, by that time my mother didn't move, and when I went to see her she gave me a faint smile with half her mouth, then she immediately lowered her eyes and stared at the carpet. In a short time she became very old and thin, a shrunken frame with clothes hanging loosely on it. To me it seemed as if the world had been turned upside down. The doctor came all the time, he would sit down next to her and ask her questions which she hardly answered in her voice that was still hoarse and thick but also now harsh and grating. The doctor was young but not particularly good-looking, he was just very kind and I fell in love with him, because I always fall in love with doctors, but it wasn't anything important, he didn't realize and it soon passed. My mother was committed to a hospital for nervous disorders. La Lina went back to her village in Sardinia. Piero got a job in Pisa in a refrigerator factory, a job which seemed to be much better than the one he had had in Florence, and so I had to empty my house and my mother's too. Piero was busy with his new job, and he also had problems with one of his superiors whom he didn't like, he was tired and in a bad mood and he told me to get on with it all by myself because he didn't have time and besides I was twenty-five years old. And so I no longer had any protectors. My mother stayed in that hospital for three months. I went to be with her as much as I could and I waited for her to say a few words to me; but she didn't say anything to me, she just gave me that faint smile with half her mouth every so often. One night she died, of a heart seizure. Piero had a furious row with his superior and was fired. We had only just settled in the new house in Pisa. Signora Annina, my mother-in-law, came to lend us a hand, but she did nothing except complain about the heat, the mosquitoes and the house. And we had very little money. Piero sat all day in our bedroom, smoking and staring at the window, and I looked at his big head with its blond curls that had become dark with sweat, and I would ask him what we should do now and he would raise his eyebrows and turn the corners of his mouth down. Certainly, I had no protectors any more. Then, that summer, I met Serena. Meeting her cheered me up. She was looking after children as an
au pair
with a Dutch family. When the Dutch family left she came to our house to look after our children. We became friends. She was no protection, on the contrary it was we who had to protect her, and comfort her when she cried. Serena often cries. She was hopeless with the children because she had no patience. In fact I stopped paying her almost at once. Anyway, she didn't need money because her father was rich and he looked after her. Serena phoned her father and asked him to find a job for Piero. Her father found him one. And that's how we left for Perugia, at the end ofthat summer. Piero immediately cheered up when he had a job. It has always been his dream to work in a legal office and he liked Doctor Corsi, his boss, a lot. He liked Perugia, he liked the office, he liked everything. Serena came to Perugia with us. Later on, when we bought
Le Margherite
, she took that room over the cinema in Pianura.