The Road To The City (6 page)

Santa and her mother talked all evening long about Giovanni's ghost and one of their own, the figure of a nun which Santa herself had seen at the fountain. They got me so scared that I couldn't sleep. I tugged at Santa's arm, but she only muttered and turned over. I got up and walked with bare feet over to the window, thinking of Nini drinking alone in his room with his hair all rumpled and hiding the bottle when Giovanni came in. I wished I could talk to him and tell him I was afraid of ghosts and hear him tease me the way he used to do. But was he still such a joker? Perhaps he was slightly crazed with drink and didn't laugh as he did before. I began to cry uncontrollably, standing in my nightgown in the middle of the room. My aunt woke up, jumped out of bed, lit a candle, and asked what was the matter. I told her I was afraid, and she said to stop being silly and go back to sleep.

One day Santa's fiance came for a furlough. He was tall and red-faced and too shy to talk. Santa asked me how I liked him.

‘Not much,' I said.

‘Perhaps a man has to have a moustache for you to like him.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I like men without moustaches too,' I thought of Nini and wished again that I could be far away from where I was now, lying with him beside the river in my light blue summer dress. I should have liked to know whether he still loved me. But I was so strange and ugly-looking at this point that I should have been ashamed to have him see me. I was embarrassed enough by the presence of Santa's fiance.

Santa was angry with me because I told her I didn't like her fiance. She didn't talk to me for several days until I made a formal apology because I needed her help washing my hair. She heated the water and gave me a kiss when she brought it in. She said that she didn't know what she would do without me when I was gone and I must promise to write to her. The sun was out and I went to sit in the garden with a towel over my shoulders to dry my hair. All of a sudden the gate opened and in walked Nini.

‘How goes it?' he said. He was just the same as usual, with his old raincoat, his hat jammed down over his head, and a scarf thrown around his neck, but he had an absent and somewhat disagreeable look about him and I couldn't think of anything to say. I couldn't bear to have him see me in this condition. He told me to come and walk with him outside the garden because he didn't want to have to talk to my aunt. I took the towel off my shoulders and followed him outside, and we walked among the stripped grapevines on the frozen snow.

‘How are things with you?' I asked. 

‘Not so good,' he said. ‘Are you getting married in February?'

‘Yes.'

‘Does Giulio come here often?' 

‘No, he's never been here at all.' 

‘Are you sorry that he doesn't come?' I made no answer, and he stopped in front of me and looked into my eyes.

‘No, you're not sorry. You don't really care for him either. Well, I ought to be glad. But instead it hurts me all the more. It's all such a silly business. It's really not worth bothering one's head about.'

He stopped again, waiting for me to say something. Then he added:

‘Do you know that I'm living alone?'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘To tell the truth, I like it. Whole days go by without my speaking to a soul. As soon as I get out of the factory I go back to my room and read without anyone to disturb me.'

‘Have you a nice room?' I asked.

‘No, not nice at all.'

I stumbled and he held me up with his arm.

‘Perhaps you'd like to know whether I'm still in love with you. I think I'm not.'

‘I'm glad,' I said, but it wasn't true and I felt very much like crying.

‘When I came to see you the last time because they told me you were ill I meant to ask you to marry me. I don't know how such an idea ever came into my head. You'd have laughed or been angry at me, but one way or the other you'd have turned me down. Still I shouldn't have minded as much that way. What made me suffer was to know that you, you with your hair and voice, were going to have a baby, that your love for him might change your life and make you forget me entirely. My life will be just the same: I'll go on working at the factory and reading my books and bathing in the river when it's hot. Once upon a time I was almost happy. I liked to walk along the street and look at the women and buy books, and I thought about so many things that I imagined I really had some brains. I wish we two could have had a baby together. But I never told you I loved you because I was afraid. How silly it all was…. Don't cry,' he added, seeing tears in my eyes. ‘It makes me angry to see you cry. I know you don't really care. You cry like that, but what does it really matter?'

‘So I don't matter to you either?' I said.

‘No,' he answered. It was beginning to get dark, and he took me back to the garden gate.

‘Good-bye,' he said. ‘Why did you send word for me to come?'

‘Because I wanted to see you.'

‘Did you want to see how I'd gone to the dogs? Well, I have, I can promise you that. All I do is drink.'

‘You did that before.'

‘Not the way I do now. Good-bye. I didn't tell you the truth just now when I said I didn't love you. That's not so. I still do.'

‘Even ugly as I am?' I asked him. 

‘Yes,' he said, laughing. ‘And you are ugly, all right Good-bye. I'm going.'

‘Good-bye,' I said.

I found Santa weeping in the kitchen because Vincenzo had told her as he was going away that his family wouldn't let him marry her because they wanted him to marry a girl with more money. He had promised to marry her all the same, but her mother said that he'd never see it through. My aunt asked me where I had been, and I said, ‘Out for a walk with Nini.'

‘Oh, Nini. He might have spoken to me. I was with his mother when she died.'

Santa couldn't eat any supper.

‘You're a silly girl,' her mother said. ‘Why be in a hurry to get married? You've everything you need here at home. When a girl marries her troubles begin. Her children cry and her husband wants to be waited on and his parents make things all the harder. If you married Vincenzo you'd have to get up bright and early and go and work in the fields, because his people are only peasants. A fine occupation that would be. Girls don't know what's good for them. How could you be better off than staying here at home with your mother?'

‘Yes, but later on?' said Santa, sobbing.

‘What do you mean, later on? When I'm dead? Are you in such a hurry to see me die? I'll live to be ninety, just to spite you,' my aunt shouted, hitting Santa over the head with her rosary.

‘With your cousin it's a different story,' she went on after a few minutes, while Santa dried her eyes. ‘She had a piece of bad luck. I trust you haven't played any such tricks on me.'

‘No, no, I swear I haven't.'

‘Well, I hope not. But she may have set you a bad example and rotted you the way one piece of bad fruit rots another. You have no right to go out with a young man in the state you're in,' she added, turning to me. ‘Never mind if you and Nini did grow up together. You can't expect everybody to know that.'

I didn't answer her but gave my attention to Santa.

‘Don't worry,' I said to console her. ‘As soon as I'm married I'll find a husband for you too.'

‘Easy there,' said my aunt. ‘Don't start crowing too soon. I've heard that your Giulio doesn't think of marrying you at all and still goes with a young lady in town. Several people have told me who have reason to know. How does it happen that he never comes to see you? Everyone else has come, even that wild Nini, but not he.'

‘He has to study,' I said.

‘Well, of course, I don't know about that. They've seen him with a young lady, that's what they tell me. You're here like a chicken, waiting for him to marry you, and he's put you quite out of his mind.'

‘That not true,' I said.

‘Go and ask him if it's not true, then. Tell him it's high time to marry you now that he's ruined your life this way. And if he doesn't do it soon you're going to talk. With men you've got to carry a big stick. You'll be in a pretty fix when you've a baby in your arms and have to earn a living. Because your father won't take you back, you can be sure of that.'

My aunt went away, leaving Santa and me alone.

‘What an unlucky pair we are,' said Santa, attempting to embrace me and weep on my shoulder. But I didn't want to have her so near. I ran to the room upstairs and locked the door behind me. I stared into the darkness without crying and thought to myself that Giulio was quite right in not wanting to marry me. I had become downright ugly, even Nini said so, and then I didn't really care for him anyhow. ‘The best thing I could do would be to die,' I said to myself, ‘unlucky and stupid creature that I am. I don't even know what I want.' Perhaps what I wanted was to go back to old times, to put on my light blue dress and run away to the city and ask Nini if he was still in love with me. And to go into the woods with Giulio, too, so long as I didn't have to marry him. But all this was behind me, and there was no possible return. In fact, when I had been free to do all these things I had complained that my life was a bore and hoped for something unexpected to happen, such as marrying Giulio and going away from home for good. Now I remembered that it had often bored me to listen to him and that he had done all. sorts of things to annoy me. I didn't really want to marry him at all. ‘But what's the use?' I said to myself. ‘We've got to get married at this point, or else I'm done for.'

My mother came to see me the next day and found me with a chill and fever which my aunt told her I must have caught when I went out walking with Nini late the previous evening. It was cold upstairs, and I was sitting in my usual place in the kitchen, with my legs practically in the fire. My teeth were chattering and yet I felt hot and feverish all over. My head was whirling and I could barely follow what my mother had to say. She was saying that there had been another scene with my father because Giulio had said that after all the baby might not be his.

‘If you hadn't been such a little tramp,' said my mother, ‘he wouldn't dare say anything of the sort.'

‘That's very true,' said my aunt. ‘Just yesterday she went out with Nini, and that's what's laid her low to-day. It doesn't matter to me, of course, except for the fact that she's staying in my house. If my daughter's reputation suffers, what am I to do?'

I told them to go away and leave me in peace because my bones ached. My aunt told my mother that if Giulio was wavering I should have a talk with him. My mother agreed and gave me his address in the city, which she had secretly obtained from the servant. Then she went away in a hurry in order to reach home before my father, who had forbidden her to visit me and told her he didn't even want to know whether I was dead or alive.

As soon as I felt better I decided to go down to the city. I took the money my mother had left for me and a box of cakes that my aunt wanted me to give to Giulio, but these I left with a woman sitting behind me. I was happy all the way, thinking of the various parts of the city that I hadn't seen for so long, looking out of the windows and listening to the chatter of the people getting on and off the bus. It was a lot more agreeable than my aunt's kitchen, and the mere fact of being in the company of people who didn't know anything about me or my troubles did a great deal to cheer me up. I was thrilled to see the city streets and arcades and looked hopefully around for Nini, but of course at that hour he was working. I spent all the money I had left buying some stockings and a bottle of Nocturne perfume. Then I went to Giulio's. The landlady, who limped and had a moustache, told me that he was asleep and she didn't dare wake him but that if I waited around for a while he would be sure to get up.

She took me into the parlour, pulled up the blinds, sat down beside me, and started to tell me all about her lame leg, how it had swollen up after she had fallen from a ladder, and what sort of care she was taking of it and how much it cost her. When she went out for a minute to talk to the milkman I took off my old stockings with holes in them, tucked them away in my bag, and put on the new ones. Then I waited for the landlady to call me.

When I went into Giulio's room he was still so sleepy that he didn't know who I was. He walked around in his stockinged feet, looking for his jacket and tie, while I turned the pages of some of the books on his table until he told me to leave them alone.

‘What the devil got into you to make you come?' he said. ‘I have a lot to do and I hate to waste time. And what are they going to say here in the house? I'll have to tell them who you are.'

‘Tell them we're going to be married,' I said. ‘Or don't you want to marry me any more?'

‘Afraid I'll get away from you, are you?' he said angrily. ‘Never fear, you've hooked me proper.'

‘Listen here,' I said in a low voice that didn't seem to be mine, ‘I know perfectly well you don't care a fig for me. I don't care for you either. But you've got to go through with the marriage or else I'll throw myself in the river.'

‘You must have been reading cheap novels,' he said.

But all the same he was scared. He told me not to say silly things and called out to the landlady to make some coffee. Later he carried the cups away, locked the door, and said that there were better ways of passing the time than talking.

When I saw through the window that it was dark I said that probably I had missed the bus. He looked at his watch and told me to hurry up and get dressed because there was still a chance of catching it.

‘I wouldn't know what to do with you to-night. If you stayed in my room that old witch would shout it from the housetops.'