The Road To The City (16 page)

‘Do you love him very much?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Very much indeed.' She put her cup down on the table and both of us stood up.

‘It's been eleven years now,' she said. 'I couldn't give him up.' All of a sudden tears came into her eyes. ‘No, I couldn't possibly do it. I've thought of it often enough. I've been unfaithful and lied to him and said the cruellest things. We've sworn to put an end to it, then we've begun all over again, and I may say that now I know how much I love him. I can't give him up. I'm sorry.' She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. Then she blew her nose and rubbed her face, shaking her head at the same time. ‘I've been unhappy; I was on poor terms with my husband from the start. I'd have left him long ago if it weren't for the boy. He's not a bad man and I suppose he loves me in his own way. But we haven't anything to say to each other and he thinks I'm silly and queer. For a long time I thought I really was as silly and queer as he said. I tried to live up to what he expected of me; I went out and gave little tea-parties and chatted with all the ladies. Then I was bored to death and gave up trying. He was terribly angry at first and made dreadful scenes, but finally he got over it and we settled down to tolerating one another. That's the way it's been with me.'

She put on her fur and gloves and tied a net scarf around her neck. ‘If I'd married Alberto,' she said, ‘I might have been a different woman. Stronger and braver and more energetic. And perhaps he would have been a different man. Don't think I like him the way he is now. I know his weaknesses very well, and sometimes I find him positively hateful. But if we two had married it wouldn't have been the same. We met too late. We're stupid and don't know what we really want when we're young. Life runs away with us before we know what it's all about.'

She took my hands in hers and squeezed them. She had a sad, hesitant smile on her face; perhaps she was wondering whether or not we should kiss each other good-bye. I put my face close to her cold face and had the scent of it in my nostrils for a second while we kissed.

‘Too bad I didn't see the baby,' she said as we went down the stairs.

After she was gone I realized that there were other things I wanted to say to her. But I was relieved to be alone and feel the muscles of my face gradually relaxing. I lay down on the sofa with a cushion under my head. It was dark outside. I always missed the baby when evening came and wondered if my mother was tucking her in tightly so that she wouldn't toss the blankets off in her sleep. I went into the kitchen and lit the gas under a kettle of soup. Then I called the cat and threw him some scraps of cheese.

I had thought that after seeing Giovanna I should feel more peaceful, and as a matter of fact I did. An icy calm spread through me. Where before there were fantastic but silent images, now I saw a woman drinking a cup of tea and showing me a picture of her son. I felt neither hate nor pity. I felt nothing at all. Inside there was a great black hole that made me even lonelier than before. Now I realized that those silent images of Giovanna had somehow peopled my solitude and kept me company. I was alone now, and when my hand groped for the picture I had made of her it found only an empty black hole and withdrew with a withering chill upon it. The real Giovanna who had sat in the armchair near the window did not hate me, and I did not hate her; indeed, there was no relationship of any kind between us.

I wondered when Alberto was going away and wished it would be soon. But he couldn't seem to make up his mind. I watched the bookshelves gradually empty themselves as every day he packed a few more books away in the zinc case. When they were altogether empty, I thought to myself, he would go away. We hardly talked to each other at all. I made lunch and supper and ironed his shirts because Gemma was away. He polished his own shoes and sometimes he helped me clear the table. Every morning I made his bed while he stood by the window waiting for me to finish.

I didn't tell him about Giovanna's visit, nor did I know whether or not she had told him. A few days later I went to Maona to get the baby. I meant to tell my mother that Alberto and I were separating, but when I saw her I didn't say anything. She was slicing ham in the kitchen when I arrived, and the baby had a cold. I said she must have tossed off the blankets in her sleep, and at this both my mother and father took offence. I went back in the bus with the baby in my arms and Gemma weeping like a fountain beside me because she was leaving her family. While we were rolling among the hills and fields that bordered the highway I held the baby tight and tried to imagine the time when we would be alone together. My mother had pinned her hair up in two braids around her head, and her thin, bare face had a new alert but melancholy expression. I had a feeling that she knew what had happened. She sat on my knees, crumbling a biscuit in her fingers and putting an occasional piece in her mouth. She didn't talk yet, but she seemed to understand everything. When we reached home we met Alberto coming out of the gate. He took the baby in his arms and kissed her, but she only started to cry. He set her down on the ground, shrugged his shoulders, and went on his way.

I telephoned Francesca, and when she came to see me I asked her if she felt like taking that long-delayed trip to San Remo with the baby and me. I told her that probably Alberto would leave in the next few days and I didn't want to be around and see him go. She was very pleased and said we'd go to the Hotel Bellevue, where they served hot ice-cream every Saturday night. I asked her what that was and she said it was vanilla ice-cream with a hot chocolate sauce over it. She looked up the trains and made all the arrangements in no time at all.

When Alberto came home he found me packing my bags. This time it was my turn to be going somewhere without him and he looked on in glum silence. I told him that Gemma would stay to look after him and asked him for some money, which he gave me. We left early the next morning while he was still asleep.

San Remo was very windy. At first we were all in one room, but Francesca couldn't stand the baby's crying and took another room for herself. For some days she hung about us and said that San Remo was a resort for doddering old gentlemen and she was bored to death with it.

Then she made friends with some people at the hotel and went out boating and dancing with them. She had any number of evening dresses, each one more beautiful than the next. I stayed with the baby until she fell asleep, and then I went downstairs with my knitting, but I was always afraid that the baby might wake up and cry, so I went to bed very early. When Francesca came up she knocked at my door and I went into her room and heard who had danced with her and what they had to say.

After we had been there a fortnight Augusto came to join us. He was ill-humoured and jealous, and Francesca treated him very shabbily. He sat smoking in the hotel lobby and wrote a chapter of his new book on the origins of Christianity. I asked him if Alberto were at the house and he said that he was still slowly packing his books in the zinc case. I wanted to talk to him about Giovanna, but he cut me short because he was in too gloomy a mood to listen. Sometimes he walked silently up and down the pavement with the baby and me, looking around for Francesca's plaid coat. Francesca didn't want him about. She had made friends with a countess, and every night she got drunk with her and they went to the casino. She was bored with all her evening dresses and made herself a new one out of a long black skirt and some silk scarves sewed together. She painted a picture of the countess stretched out on a tiger skin and she was always telling me that the countess's children weren't little pests like mine.

The baby had begun to talk. Every day she said something new and I thought she was very clever. When she had eaten her biscuit she stretched out both hands and said: ‘More!' with a wily, melancholy smile. Every morning she stood up in her bed and said: ‘Baby sleep no more!' and I would take her and the camel into my bed and make the camel walk up and down on the bedcover. Then Francesca would come in wearing a wrapper, with cold cream on her face and her hair in curlers, smoke a cigarette, and tell me between yawns about the evening she had spent with the countess.

I told her she ought to be a little nicer to Augusto. She was heartless, I told her, to lead him a life like this. Every now and then they went for a walk together, and perhaps they found a place to make love somewhere because he always seemed slightly more cheerful when they returned. But then the countess and her friends whistled under Francesca's window and she powdered her face in a hurry, threw on her plaid coat, and ran to join them. I never knew whether she had taken a liking to one of the men in the party or not. She said no. She said that they were amusing, while Augusto was solemn and jealous and his origins of Christianity bored her to death.

The baby was taken ill on November seventeenth. She was upset all day long and would not eat. It was Saturday and they served the famous hot ice-cream, but she cried and spat it all over the place, until I lost patience and struck her across the hands. She cried and cried, and I didn't know what to do. She didn't want to hear about
Le bon roi Dagobert
or have her camel beside her or anything. She cried steadily until ten o'clock in the evening, and then she fell asleep. I lowered her gently into the bed and sat down beside her. She slept for half an hour or so, but very lightly, shifting about and twitching at intervals. Francesca dropped in to see me on her way to a dance at the casino. She had combed her hair back from her forehead in a strange new way and painted her lips a colour that was almost yellow. She had on what she called her Hindu dress, the one made of silk scarves sewed together, and a wide silver lamé sash around her waist. The effect was really stunning. She looked down at the baby and said she must have worms to twitch that way in her sleep. She walked around the room, and I hated her for making so much noise. Then the countess whistled under the window and off she went.

While she was running down the hall the baby woke up screaming and I picked her up in my arms. She seemed burning hot, and so I took her temperature. The thermometer read 102. I paced up and down the room with her, wondering what could be the matter. She was breathing hard and twisting her lips. It couldn't be just an ordinary fever. She had been feverish a number of times, but never before had she cried so desperately. I tried asking her what hurt, but she only cried louder and pushed away my hands. I was terrified. Finally I laid her down on the bed and went to call Augusto. He was lying fully dressed on his bed with the light on, and there was a distressed look in his half-closed eyes because Francesca had gone to the dance without him. I told him that the baby was very sick and asked him to go and get a doctor. He sat up and smoothed his hair without really understanding what I had said. Then he pulled himself together and put on his overcoat. I went back to my room, picked up the baby, and paced up and down, holding her wrapped in a blanket. She had a red face and excessively bright eyes. Every now and then she fell asleep, only to wake up again with a start. I thought of how men and women spend their time tormenting one another and how stupid it all seems when you are face to face with something like a baby's fever. I remembered how once upon a time I had tormented myself waiting tremblingly for Alberto and wondered how I could have attached importance to anything so idiotic. I was badly frightened, but beneath my fright there was a feeling that the baby was going to get well and Francesca would tease me for being such an alarmist. So many times before I had been scared to death over nothing at all.

Then Augusto came back with the doctor, a red-haired young man with a freckled face. I hurriedly and nervously undressed the baby on the bed. She was crying more feebly now as the doctor held her thin little body in his hands and Augusto looked on in silence. The doctor said that he couldn't diagnose her trouble, but he saw no reason for concern. He prescribed a mild sedative and Augusto went to have it made up at a pharmacy. Then the doctor went away, saying he would come back in the morning. Augusto stayed with me and I felt much calmer. The baby went to sleep and I looked at her thin, red face and perspiration-drenched hair. I asked Augusto not to go away because I was still frightened to be alone.

At three o'clock in the morning the baby screamed. She grew purple in the face and threw up the small portion of icecream I had forced down her the evening before. She waved her arms and legs and pushed me away. The chambermaid and a woman who had the room next to mine came in and suggested I give her an enema prepared with camomile. While I was preparing it Francesca appeared at the door, looking very drunk. Hating her with all my might, I shouted:

‘Go away!'

She went into her room and came back a few minutes later, after she had apparently bathed her face in cold water. She asked the maid to get her a cup of strong coffee. I hated her so much that I couldn't look her in the face. My throat was dry and constricted with terror. The baby was not crying any more; she lay there under the blanket with all the colour gone out of her cheeks, breathing jerkily.

‘You nincompoops!' said Francesca. ‘Can't you see she's in a very bad way? You've got to get a doctor.'

The maid told her that one had already come, but Francesca said none of the San Remo doctors was any good except the countess's doctor. She spoke in a loud voice and a decisive manner, as if to show that she was no longer drunk. She went out to look for the countess's doctor, and Augusto went with her, leaving me alone with the woman who had suggested the enema. Her face was heavy and wrinkled, with powder caked in the furrows; she wore a violet kimono and spoke with a strong German accent. For some reason her presence was very reassuring; I had complete confidence in her heavy, wrinkled face. She told me that the baby must have an upset stomach and such a disturbance often takes on terrifying forms. Her son had had an attack of the same kind when he was a baby. And now he was a grown man—she raised her hand to show me how tall he was—who had taken a degree in engineering and got himself engaged to be married.