The Road To The City (2 page)

‘Azalea wants to see you,' Giovanni said to me one day after I hadn't been to the city for a long time. I put on my new dress and shoes and a pair of sunglasses. At Azalea's house everything was in disorder. The beds weren't made and Ottavia, with the children clinging to her skirts, was leaning up against the wall in tears.

‘He's through with her,' she said. ‘He's getting married.'

Azalea sat on the edge of the bed in her slip, with wide-open, flashing eyes. A pile of letters lay in her lap.

‘He's getting married in September,' she said.

‘We must hide all these things before the master comes back,' said Ottavia.

‘We'll burn them, that's what we'll do,' said Azalea. ‘I never want to see them again. I don't want to look at his stupid face either,' she added, tearing up the picture of a smiling Army officer. And she began to scream and sob, knocking her head against the foot of the bed.

‘She's going to have convulsions,' said Ottavia. ‘My mother used to have them too. We ought to put her in a cold bath.'

Azalea wouldn't let us do anything of the sort. She said that she wanted to be alone and that we should go and call her husband so that she could confess the whole story. We had quite a job talking her out of it. Finally we burned the letters in the kitchen stove, while Ottavia read passages out loud to me before she threw them into the flames, and the children chased pieces of charred paper all over the room. When Azalea's husband came home I told him that she was in bed with a fever and he went to get a doctor.

It was night when I reached home, and my father asked me where I'd been, I told him that Azalea had sent for me, and Giovanni put in a word to say that it was true. My father said that for all he knew it might be so, but he had heard I was going around with the doctor's son, and if this was the case he'd smash my face for me. I said that I would do what I pleased, regardless, and then I lost my temper and threw my soup on the floor. I shut myself up in my room and cried for two or three hours until Giovanni called to me from next door to be quiet and let them sleep. I went on crying and finally Nini came to the door and said he'd give me some chocolates. I opened the door and Nini made me look at my swollen face in the mirror and gave me the promised chocolates, which he said he had got from his girl. I asked what his girl was like, and he said she had wings and a tail and wore a geranium in her hair. I said that I was engaged, too, to the doctor's son.

‘Very good,' he said, but he grimaced and got up to go. I asked him where he kept his bottle of brandy, and he said that was none of a girl's business.

The next night Nini didn't come home, or the night after, either. We didn't see hide or hair of him for some time, and even my father, who rarely noticed anything, asked where he had gone. Giovanni said that he was all right but that for the time being he was staying away.

‘Boys come home as long as it suits them,' said my father, ‘and then when they find something better, it's good-bye. They're all alike, the lot of them.'

‘Giovanni told me that Nini was with his girl, a young widow called Antonietta. I went to the city for the express purpose of finding out if this was true. And there I came upon him sitting with Giovanni in the café, eating ice-cream. I sat down and had some ice-cream, too, and we stayed there a while listening to the music. When we left Nini paid the bill like a gentleman. I asked him if it was true about the widow and he said it was, and why didn't I come to the little apartment where he was living with her and her two children. Antonietta owned a stationery shop, he said, and did a fairly good business.

‘So you're living off her, are you?' I said.

‘What do you mean?' he answered. ‘I'm earning good pay.' And he said he was getting ahead in the factory and hoped soon to send some money back home.

The next time I was in the woods, smoking a cigarette with Giulio, I told him about Nini and how I had gone to see him.

‘You shouldn't do a thing like that,' he said.

‘Why?'

‘There are things you're too much of a child to understand.'

I told him that I wasn't a child at all, that I was seventeen years old, the age at which my sister had married. He said again that I couldn't understand and that no young girl should go to the house of a man who is living with a woman that is not his wife. I went back home in a bad humour that evening, and as I undressed for bed I thought of how Giulio was always kissing me there in the woods, but he hadn't yet asked me to marry him. I was in a hurry to get married, but I wanted to enjoy myself afterward too. And perhaps with Giulio I shouldn't be so free. He might treat me the way his father treated his mother, shutting her up on the pretext that a woman's place was in the home, until she had turned into an old hag who sat all day long by the window, waiting for someone to go by.

Somehow I missed having Nini around the house, with his torn raincoat and his books and the lock of hair hanging over his forehead, telling me the way he always did that I ought to help my mother. Once, just to annoy Giulio, I went to see him. It was a Sunday afternoon and they served tea and cakes on an embroidered tablecloth and Antonietta kissed me on both cheeks and made a great fuss over me. She wore good clothes and painted her face, and she had blonde hair, wide hips, and narrow shoulders. Her children were there, too, doing their homework, and Nini sat listening to the radio instead of reading a book the way he used to do at home. They showed me the whole apartment, the bedroom and bath and the potted plants all over. The place was neater and cleaner than Azalea's. We talked about one thing and another, and they told me to be sure to come again.

Nini walked back with me part of the way, and I asked him why he didn't come home. I began to cry and told him it was worse than ever there without him. He sat down on a bench with me and stroked my hands and told me not to cry or else the mascara would run off my eyelashes. I told him that I didn't paint myself up like Antonietta, who looked like a perfect fright, and that he'd do a lot better to come home. The best thing of all, he said, would be for me to get a job and come and live in the city, and then he'd take me to see the films. But the point was for me to earn my own living and be independent. I told him he might just as well put that idea out of his head because I didn't have the slightest intention of doing anything of the sort. I was going to marry Giulio and come and live in the city with him, because he didn't like the country either. And that was how we said good-bye.

I told Giulio that I'd been to see Nini, but this time he wasn't angry. All he said was that he was sorry to see me do something that displeased him. I told him about Antonietta and her apartment, and he asked me if I'd like to have a little place like that of my own. Then he said that when he'd taken his medical degree we'd get married, but it wasn't possible any sooner. Meanwhile, he said, I shouldn't be so hard on him.

‘I'm not hard on you,' I answered.

Then he asked me to go with him the next day to Fonte Le Macchie. This was a long walk, a large part of it uphill, and I was afraid of snakes.

‘There aren't any snakes up that way,' he said. ‘And we'll eat blackberries and stop for a rest whenever you are tired of walking.'

I pretended not to see what he was driving at and said Giovanni might come with us, but he said that he wanted us to be alone together without Giovanni tagging along. We never got all the way to Fonte Le Macchie, because at a certain point I sat down on a rock and swore I wouldn't go a step farther. He tried to scare me by saying he could see a yellow snake beating around under the bushes. I told him to let me alone, because I was tired and hungry, and so he pulled some provisions out of a bag. He had a couple of flasks of wine with him, too, and made me drink so much of it that finally I lay down in a daze and he did exactly what I had expected.

It was late when we started home, and I was so tired that I had to stop at every other step. When we reached the beginning of the woods he said he'd have to run on ahead or else his mother would wonder why he hadn't come home. He left me alone and I stumbled back in the darkness, with a pain in my knees. Azalea came to the house the next day and I went part of the way home with her and told her what had happened. At first she thought I was bragging and didn't believe me, but suddenly she stopped and said abruptly:

‘Is that true?'

‘Yes, it's true, every word of it, Azalea,' I said, and then she made me tell her the whole story again. She was so worried and angry that she tore the buckle off her belt and said she would tell her husband to speak to my father about it. I told her not to and added that there was plenty I could tell about her if I chose to. We exchanged quite a few hard words, and the next day I went to the city to make peace with her. She had calmed down overnight, and I found her cutting out a dress to wear to a dance to which she had been invited. She told me I could do what I damn well pleased as long as she didn't have to be bothered about it, but she thought the doctor's son was a vulgar fellow and didn't care for him at all.

On the way home I met Giovanni with Nini and Antonietta and we went for a dip in the river, all except Antonietta, who stayed in the boat because she didn't know how to swim. I swam up and jiggled the boat as if I were going to turn it over, but then I began to feel cold and climbed in and started to row. Antonietta told me about her husband and the illness he had died of and the debts and lawsuits he had left behind him. I was bored with her story and thought how funny she looked, sitting in the boat as if she were making a formal call, with her pocket-book and hat on her lap and her knees held close together.

That evening Giovanni came into my room and said he was in love with Antonietta. He paced up and down the floor, saying that he didn't know how he'd ever get over it and asking me whether or not he should tell Nini. I was very impatient with him and told him that I'd had enough of all these love stories and I only wished he and Nini and Azalea would let me alone.

‘It was a bad day when you were born,' he said, and went out, slamming the door behind him.

Giulio said I should go swimming in the river with him and have some fun afterward in the city. So we went for a swim and ate some ice-cream and then he took me to a hotel called the Moon. The hotel was at the end of a solitary street. With its drawn blinds and deserted garden it looked like a private house whose owners had gone away, but the rooms had mirrors and wash-basins and rugs on the floor. I told Azalea about going to the hotel and she said that sooner or later I was going to get myself in trouble. I didn't see Azalea very often just now because she had taken up with a new lover, a penniless student, for whom she was always buying gloves and shoes and things to eat.

One evening my father burst into my room, threw his raincoat on the bed, and said:

‘I told you that I'd smash your face for you.'

He took me by the hair and began to hit me, while I cried:

‘Help! Help!'

Finally my mother came, with her apron full of potatoes, and said:

‘What's the matter ? What are you doing, Attilio?'

‘This is the last straw,' said my father. He turned quite pale as he sat down and ran his fingers through his hair. I had a bleeding lip and red marks on my neck and I was so dizzy that I could hardly stand up. My mother wanted to help me wipe away the blood, but my father took her by one arm and pushed her out of the room. Then he followed her, leaving me alone. His raincoat still lay across my bed, and I picked it up and threw it down the stairs.

While the rest of them were at supper I crept out the front door. The sky was clear and starry. I was trembling with cold and fright, and the blood dripping from my lip had run down over my dress and stockings. I set out toward the city, but I was uncertain as to where I should go. I thought first of Azalea, but her husband would have stormed me with questions and reproaches, so I went to Nini instead. They were all sitting around the dining-room table, playing parcheesi. The children took one look at me and screamed. I threw myself down on a couch and began to cry. Antonietta brought an antiseptic to put on my lip, gave me a cup of camomile tea, and set up a cot for me in the hall.

‘Tell us what happened, Delia,' said Nini.

I told him that my father had attacked and tried to kill me because I was going with Giulio and that they must find me a job in the city because after this I couldn't live at home.

‘Get undressed and go to bed,' said Nini, ‘then I'll come and talk to you about what to do.'

They all went away and I put on a lavender nightgown belonging to Antonietta and slipped into the cot. After a while Nini came and sat down beside me.

‘If you like I can find you a job in the factory where I work. You'll find it hard going at first because you've grown into a big girl without ever lifting a finger. But you'll get used to that. If I can't find you anything there you'll have to do housework.'

I told him that I'd rather work in the factory than do housework any day. But why couldn't I sell flowers on the steps of the cathedral?

‘Don't be silly,' he said. ‘You don't know enough arithmetic to sell anything.'

Then I said that Giulio was going to marry me as soon as he had his degree.

‘Put that notion out of your head,' he said. And he told me that Giulio was engaged to a girl in the city, whom everyone knew, a thin girl who drove her own car. I started to cry again, and Nini told me to go to sleep and brought me an extra pillow.

The next morning I got dressed and went out early with Nini into the cool and empty city. He went with me as far as the outskirts and we sat down near the river until it was time for him to report to work. He said that every now and then he felt an urge to go to Milan and look for a job in a bigger factory.