A Life (27 page)

In town they would both live happily and comfortably, because the money from selling the house and garden would help. They would not go to the Lanuccis, who were too gloomy: they would keep to themselves because they wanted to live happily. Perhaps neither’s hopes were sincere, but they were listening to lovely music. His words sounded almost reasonable. Why, in leaving the country behind, should she not leave her illness behind too?

Soon they were recalled to sad reality. For a quarter of an hour Signora Carolina succeeded in hiding that she was in pain. To questions by Alfonso, who had noticed her restlessness, she replied that she was well, though agitated. She pressed Alfonso’s hand as if seeking relief by that grip and kept her eyes closed, warning that she wanted to sleep. But this resistance lasted a short time, and she sat up with a cry of pain.

“I can’t bear any more!” she muttered dully. Her breathing was fast and short. “Here,” she said, pointing to her chest, “the air doesn’t reach beyond here.” Only from this did he realize what she felt.

He helped her to get out of bed as she asked, and to sit on a comfortable armchair in which old Nitti had spent idle hours in the open air and which now was next to the bed, ready for the sick woman’s worst hours. He covered her as she let her head fall back in a cold sweat: apparently she did not see what he was doing. From time to time she gave a cry in an altered voice or, with a supreme effort, brought out some complaint or curse.

She did not find so much voice to speak to him as she did to complain. Twice he did not understand what she was asking. She wanted air, she wanted him to open the window; after he had understood and was hesitating for fear of her catching cold, she murmured with a glance of exasperated resentment:

“I’ll open it.”

She did not do so because she could not manage to get out of the chair.

From the window which he had thrown open, air now entered in abundance. In spite of his agitation he felt it enter her gasping lungs with relief. His mother continued to breathe hurriedly and with shallow breaths.

He remembered he might need Giuseppina. He ran into the next room and found her sleeping with the covers pulled up to her chin. He called her with a cry, but in vain, then impatiently decided to shake her by an arm.

“What’s up?” she muttered, obviously still half-asleep and
struggling
to go on sleeping because she was trying to unloose his hand and was huddling up against the wall.

“Mother’s bad. Get up and light the fire.”

“What’s the use? It will pass by itself.”

She was certainly nearly awake, but used the little capacity for reason so far acquired to show him he would do better to leave her in bed.

“Get up!” replied Alfonso imperiously, but had to rush back at a shout from his mother.

Signora Carolina had got back into bed alone and was pressing her mouth on the pillow. She now asked him to close the window as the warmth might do her good, and soon after made him
reopen
it again, always surprised that she got no relief from so many efforts.

“I’ll have the fire lit. Would you like some tea? It may soothe you.”

“Yes, yes!” she cried with delight as if his suggestion would make her feel better immediately.

Giuseppina was still in bed and asleep again. Furious, he pulled violently at an arm dangling out of the bed; it was the only part of her which had obeyed his first call. Giuseppina, annoyed now and
wide awake, began shouting that it was a shame that she was not allowed to sleep after such a hard day’s work. Then she became alarmed.

“Are you mad?” she asked in a whisper, seeing him rush about the room and fling her skirt at her.

“Go and make some tea at once!” he yelled furiously. “Or I’ll throw you out of that door!”

Without another word she began getting up.

His mother’s terrible panting had lessened; she was still
breathing
fast but no longer complained. A little colour had returned to her face. Supine like that with arms inert she seemed to be
sleeping
. He shut the window, taking care to make no noise. When Giuseppina came with the tea he tried to prevent her going up to the bed, but Signora Carolina called her. She drank some
spoonfuls
of tea without opening her eyes and Giuseppina, seeing her calm, said harshly: “So it wasn’t so serious!”

“Out with you!” yelled Alfonso, furious at seeing her so indifferent.

“Why do you get so angry?” asked Signora Carolina when
Giuseppina
had left. “It’s no use! She does not understand.”

So she too had suffered from the other’s idiocy and indifference.

For another half-hour she did not move, but when he was just hoping she had fallen asleep, he heard her talking. She was
thinking
out aloud.

“I didn’t say anything,” she replied to his question. Then
without
his asking anything more she added, “I was thinking how silly it was to make plans for the future when I’m in this state.”

He tried to encourage her and for lack of better arguments spoke of the medicine prescribed by the doctor. That should make her well, and as she had never taken it as regularly as she should, she must try. He was the first to be convinced by his own words.

His chief duty in fact, what others had neglected, was to
convince
her to follow the treatment. If salvation was still possible it could come only from that.

He put a spoonful of the medicine to her lips before she had agreed. Shrugging her shoulders she let herself be convinced.

An hour later she felt better.

“Yes, yes,” she said to calm Alfonso’s enthusiasm. “Last month
too the medicine helped me the first time I took it, but then it only did me harm.”

He stretched out, fully dressed, on his father’s bed, intending not to fall asleep. But sleep overcame him, and he awoke only in broad daylight.

“How are you?” he asked his mother, who had been looking at him as he slept.

“Better, better!” she replied with a smile of gratitude. “I took another spoonful of the medicine and feel slight relief.”

Then she asked him if he did not want to see the village and greet old friends. She assured him that she could remain alone for an hour or two.

He told Giuseppina, whom he found busy again among the vegetables, to look after his mother, and she promised to do so. He spoke gently. Alarmed at the sight of him the peasant woman hurriedly told him she was gathering herbs for dinner. She was not simple, but preferred working on the land to tending a sick woman, and whoever had made her a nurse was really to blame.

One side of the house overlooked the main road and was
connected
to it by a track made by the feet of passers-by.

The country was still white with the frost which the autumn sun had not yet melted. Seen from there the village looked much more insignificant than it really was; it seemed only a couple of plain rows of houses. A bend of the main road hid the less regular but more populated part. On the valley side was another street of half the length of the main street to which it was parallel, and next to that a disordered tangle of dirty shacks where the poorest of the population lived. In its small way the village contained in
embryonic
form every city district. Alfonso felt excited and hastened his step on seeing at a window the dark head of Rosina, his first love. He no longer loved her, that was certain, but it gave him a joyous sensation to see her again!

She looked after an old relative with whom she lived, but had so little to do in the house that she lived like a lady, better than any other girl in the village. Alfonso had danced with her at a fiesta and chosen her from all the others because he thought her pretty and also because she was more cultured and her clothes seemed superior. Then a friendship had developed between them; they
exchanged a few words daily, she at the window and he on the road. Some evenings they would chat just beyond the houses and out of the village, but even in the complete darkness he had not risked kissing her hand. He had paid her exaggerated compliments on her beauty, but not even told her he loved her. Rosina was not the culmination of his ideal and at the time he had not given up the chance of reaching it. So he had never intended the matter to go further, while it was said in the village, so Signora Carolina had written to Alfonso a number of times, that Rosina had been very downcast at his departure.

He went closer, surprised she had not recognized him at once though she had seen him.

“Signorina, don’t you recognize me?”

“Oh, Signor Alfonso!” said Rosina with calm surprise, and she gave him a slight hesitant bow, either because she really had not recognized him or had decided not to.

“Won’t you even give me your hand?”

“Here.”

But she did not give it him yet. Before leaning out of the window she looked right and left to make sure no one saw her.

“How’s Signora Carolina?” she asked, withdrawing her hand which she had left, limp, for only a second in Alfonso’s.

“Bad! Very bad!” said Alfonso, oddly moved by those black eyes and the smooth hair over her temples and ears. What she lacked in dress sense and speech gave her a haughtiness which made so much more desirable the friendly smile with which she had been lavish at other times.

“Are you still staying here?”

“No!” replied Alfonso. “Only as long as mother can’t move because of her illness; then we’re settling in town.”

“I’m engaged,” she said with simplicity.

As she had not been asked for this information, it was obvious she was giving it to warn him that she cared very little about his leaving the village.

He almost forgot to ask her who the happy bridegroom was.

“Gianni.”

Gianni was the son of Creglingi the grocer; a good-looking young man who looked after his father’s land, as the latter could
not leave the shop where he made his money. Rosina was making a good match, certainly better than if she had married Alfonso.

“Congratulations!” said Alfonso, rather too late for them to seem sincere.

“Remember me to Signora Carolina!” exclaimed Rosina and suddenly withdrew.

He soon saw the reasons for her flight. From a turn of the street had appeared Mascotti the notary, accompanied by Faldelli, owner of one of the two taverns in the place. He was an old man with dirty clothes hanging from skinny limbs. He must have been cold because his hands were plunged into his jacket sleeves.

They greeted him, and he went up to them. Faldelli raised an arm, drew his hand out of the sleeve and shook Alfonso’s in a strong short grip; then he put his hand back into his sleeve. He was not polite, and when Mascotti asked Alfonso after his mother, he drew aside and looked around.

Mascotti’s courteous question made Alfonso think that now was the chance to reproach him for taking so little care of Signora Carolina.

He began very seriously to describe his bad night and the fright he’d had; then, in a very bitter, angry tone, spoke of the behaviour of Giuseppina to whom his mother’s life had been entrusted.

Mascotti must have realized that it was he himself Alfonso wanted to get at. He said airily but firmly:

“Oh we’re all a bit lazy. Giuseppina must have been taking it easy now you’re here, as there’s no need for four people round a sick bed!”

It was not how he had defended himself the day before, and this surprised Alfonso. Now he saw him resolute and obviously prepared, for he had understood and rejected the attack at once. He no longer denied that little care had been taken of Signora Carolina but treated the whole matter as of little importance. He was her executor, but could it be proved that this made it his duty to look after Signora Carolina’s health? Alfonso feared that if he said some harsh words to him, such as those he had thought up during the night in his anger at Giuseppina, Mascotti might give a sharp answer. But he was silent.

The notary now told him that Faldelli had saved some capital and intended to buy land. This communication seemed to be a preliminary to others which could be more important for Alfonso. Faldelli interrupted to bid goodbye. He said to Mascotti as he shook his hand, “There’s no hurry, you know, Notary!”

He hurried off towards his tavern, which faced Creglingi’s shop in the triangular piazza.

“Are you taking a stroll to see your childhood haunts?” said Mascotti good-humouredly. “I’ll come with you as long as you don’t run.”

It was a teasing allusion to the moment when Alfonso had lost his head at the news of his mother’s state.

Every house on the main street had remained unaltered, with colours unchanged because they could not fade more, the same shop-signs, some windows always shut, others always open. To Alfonso the village seemed as old as some object in a museum which is only touched for repairs necessary to keep it as it was. The inhabitants’ activity was all outside the village, in the fields.

Only one house had been changed, with a floor added, and the new building could be distinguished from the old by the
blackened
lime covering the latter. It was now inhabited by Silini the baker, but the house was still called Carli’s, after the family who had owned it before.

In his thoughts Alfonso easily took away from this house all that had been added and saw it smaller again, dark and sad, a house of misfortune in which every member of the family except one had died within a few days of each other; two boys with whom Alfonso had played, a child of three and her father, who had been a close friend of old Nitti, neat and always dressed in such a clean white smock that it never showed the flour scattered over it. Alfonso remembered all the details of that disaster, which had left an indelible trace on his youth. The fact of all those strong and healthy people being created and destroyed uselessly had given him his first religious doubts.

One evening old Nitti had come home later than usual and told him that Guido Carli, the younger of the sons, had caught typhus so seriously that the doctor thought he would not pull through. The day before, Alfonso had spoken to the boy who was now
dying. The Nittis then lived opposite the Carlis, and often during the night Alfonso went to the window to look at the dark brown house in which only one room was lit, the one in which a struggle was taking place with death.