The City and the House (9 page)

Giuseppe

Rome, 20th February

Respected father,

I have been in Rome for a week. I stayed with Roberta, who had just returned from America. I'm sorry about your brother. I saw him three times in all. Once when I was little, in my grandparents' house, and the other two times in your house. He told me to study civil engineering all three times, and all three times I told him I had other plans. Though to be honest I've changed these plans continually over the years. At the present moment I don't have any.

Roberta has found me a flat. Someone called Egisto, whom I think you know, lives on the floor above. He's a short, squat, dark chap. He has come down two or three times and asked me if I needed anything. We needed some bouillon cubes and he brought me some. There are three of us in the flat; me, Nadia, Salvatore. You know Nadia, you saw her that day in Florence. She's pregnant. Roberta told me that you also have a pregnant girl in the house, in Princeton. Nadia is an idiot. She uses her pregnancy as an excuse to do nothing but read magazines. Salvatore and I do the shopping and cook, and we have started to paint all the rooms white. Salvatore is a graphic artist. But he hasn't any work and he's looking for some. We met in Berlin, in a Chinese restaurant.

Roberta suggested that I come to America with her, but I didn't come, I thought I'd probably just be in your way.

With love from

Alberico

Princeton, 27th February

Dear Alberico,

You address me as ‘respected father' as if I were a priest. However I'm grateful to you for your letter. I haven't had many from you, in your life. I will keep this one in my wallet, next to my heart, like something rare and precious.

You write ‘If I'd come, I would have just been in your way'. I stopped and thought for a while about that ‘just'. I asked myself if you really believe that a meeting with you would give me nothing but the feeling that you were in the way.

I had Anne Marie read your letter. She smiled. She really does smile the whole time. Sometimes - very rarely - she turns the corners of her mouth right down. But perhaps you don't know who Anne Marie is. She is my brother's widow. My brother loved her, and as it's turned out, she is the only thing of his I still have.

With love from

your father

Rome 29th February

Dear Giuseppe,

As soon as I got back to Rome I phoned you but neither you nor Anne Marie were at home and Mrs Mortimer answered. She said you'd gone out shopping. I didn't phone again but in any case it's often impossible to say anything on the phone.

Alberico is in Rome and he has moved into his flat. Three of them are living together; Alberico, that girl Nadia who is six months pregnant, and a friend of Alberico's called Salvatore. He isn't the child's father. The child's father is a Viennese who is in Vienna and who Nadia has finished with. Salvatore is one of those like your son. He doesn't go out with girls. It seems to me that the three of them get on perfectly. The flat is pretty filthy but Salvatore says he is going to clean it thoroughly. He has a long, bony face, a big black moustache and black side-whiskers. Nadia has a great belly. She wears black silk harem-pants and a sweat-shirt with ‘/ want to decide' written on it. She has a little pale face that seems all eyes and hair. She hasn't got anything ready for the baby yet, but a friend has lent them a pram which they keep in the sitting-room and which is at the moment piled high with saucepans. When I saw them, she was stretched out on the sofa reading comics. Her parents send her money but they don't want her in Sicily. Your son was typing, he's writing the screen-play for a film. Salvatore was doing the ironing. In the flat there's a typewriter, an ironing-board, a table, some beds and a telly. The clothes are all piled up on a bed they are not using.

Now I'll talk to you about yourself. I'd like you to tell me what you intend doing, because I asked you in Princeton but you always answered vaguely. I imagine you will come back to live in Rome. I don't think you will want to stay in America now that you no longer have your brother there. And so I'll have to find you a flat. As for the money, well you've been fretting over this recently but that's just self-indulgence, you have land in Puglia that you could sell for a pretty good price. With the money from the flat you sold you could buy another flat - much smaller and much worse than the other one of course. Those fine Lan-zaras led you up the garden path. Enough. We all make mistakes. Anyway, let me know what you plan to do. With love from

Roberta

Monte Fermo, 5th March

Dear Giuseppe,

I received your letter and it has made me very melancholy. I don't understand why you don't say when you intend to come back. I phoned Roberta and she told me that she doesn't know either. You wanted to live with your brother but now he is dead, so whatever are you doing there?

You talk a lot about Anne Marie and Mrs Mortimer and other people I don't know and never will know. I don't understand why you don't just leave them all to stew in their own juice.

Ignazio Fegiz came and I told him about your letter. It had really chilled me, made my soul feel stone-cold, and I had to talk to someone about the cold feeling it had given me. We went for a long walk with the children and when we came back it was dark. Piero and Egisto came out with torches to meet us. Piero had become worried when he didn't see us coming back.

I don't like writing 'Ignazio Fegiz' because I don't like the name Ignazio, and I don't like his surname much either. And so when I mention him in my letters I shall just ppt the initials ‘I. F.‘ ‘I.F.' sends his regards. He doesn't generally write letters, but perhaps he'll write to you some day.

Lucrezia

Princeton, 10th March

Dear Roberta,

You ask me if I want you to find me a flat in Rome. Good God, I don't know. I haven't decided anything.

Thank you for your concern, and for the affection with which you think of me. When I start thinking of coming back I'll write to you. Then will be the time to look for a flat.

Chantal's baby was born yesterday. They've called her Margaret. Danny phoned from the clinic. We will go to Philadelphia to see her within the next few days. I bought a bottle of champagne and a cake. Mrs Mortimer came round too and we celebrated Margaret's birth.

Giuseppe

Perugia, 10th May

Dear Giuseppe,

I heard from Lucrezia that you are not coming back at the moment. I haven't seen your letter to Lucrezia. Lucrezia wouldn't let me read it, as is right seeing that it was addressed only to her. She simply told me that for the moment you aren't coming back. Certainly it must be difficult to separate yourself from the places and people that made up your brother's world. I understand you. Lucrezia doesn't understand you. But sometimes Lucrezia can be lacking in sensitivity. She views human feelings in a rough, business-like way.

I am going through a difficult time. I work reluctantly, and everything wears me out. These days I can't bear my partner, Doctor Corsi. It bores me to see people and I prefer to be alone. The best time for me is here in my office when Doctor Corsi and the secretary have gone home, and I see the sunset over the rooftops, through the window, and then the greyness of the dusk, and then darkness. I go home when it has already been dark for a while. I find the children's noise tiresome and I prefer to arrive after supper is over. The noise continues because we have brought the children up badly and they go to bed late, but at least I don't have to put up with the chaos at supper. I eat alone. It's a really terrible time for me. It'll pass. No point in worrying.

Last Saturday Egisto brought your son and two friends over to see us. You never introduced us to your son, and you rarely talked about him. Now, as you know, he lives in the same building as Egisto, on the floor below.

I liked your son, and also his two friends, a girl who is pregnant and a chap with a black moustache. I thought that one of them was the baby's father - either your son or the other one - but Lucrezia said no, and that I had got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick.

The girl upset me because she is so tiny, and she had a lost look about her. She wanted to see the garden and I went out into the garden with her. She told me she is terrified of dying in childbirth and that she doesn't sleep at night. I told her that millions of women give birth every day without dying. Yes, but every now and then there's one who dies. I told her that I had seen Lucrezia give birth five times. I'd always wanted to be present when her children were born. I told her it wasn't anything to be frightened of. We chatted affectionately for a long time. Meanwhile your son and his friend had gone to Pianura with Lucrezia and Ignazio Fegiz, because Serena wanted to be photographed at the Women's Centre, while she was acting a new play in which she is Jocasta - wearing a sheet with a long military cloak over it. Your son and his friend are good photographers, and then Serena had got hold of the notion that they know people in the theatre world and that they could help her break into it. An argument erupted over supper between Serena and Ignazio Fegiz, less of an argument than a real row, about Pirandello whom Serena adores and whom he can't abide. Ignazio Fegiz loses his temper easily, and it seems to me that he has no respect for any one else's opinions. I like Pirandello and I don't find him at all artificial and false as he says, but I'm no expert on the theatre, I rarely go to the theatre. Anyway, I was bored by this argument, and your son and his friends must have been bored to death. Lucrezia was irritable and she finished up arguing with Serena too, not about Pirandello but because Serena had said that the children eat badly and that they are pests.

Your son isn't like you at all. You are both very thin, but his thinness is loose and lazy, whereas yours is angular, straight and lean. I like him, even if he seems a bit strange to me, as young people are these days; you never really know what they think of you, whether they respect you a little or consider you a perfect imbecile. He always seems sleepy and abstracted, but you sense that hidden inside him there is a sharp curiosity about others, and that he conceals his judgements - which are as prickly and sharp as thorns - of other people.

Your son and his friend slept in the room that has the quilts with dragons on them, and the green wardrobe in it; the girl asked if she could sleep with Cecilia because she gets frightened when she sleeps alone in a new place.

Although I don't want to see anyone these days, as I told you, I enjoyed seeing your son here at
Le Margherite
, where you always came without ever bringing him - goodness knows why.

With love from

Piero

20th May

I forgot to post this letter and it's remained here on my table for ten days. Egisto came yesterday. He told us that that girl, Nadia, had her baby without any complications a few days ago. Your son and Egisto took her to the hospital at night, in Egisto's car. She had a girl who is doing well.

Rome, 6th June

Dear Giuseppe,

I am not a letter writer. When your brother died I didn't write you a word. I am sorry about this.

According to Lucrezia I should write fo you and tell you to return to Rome. I obey her and write that you should return. All the same, I don't know if you wouldn't be better off staying in America. I don't know. I don't know you at all well. We had hardly made each other's acquaintance when the relationship was almost immediately interrupted. We were divided by the ocean. All the same I often think about you.

I am passing through a rather difficult period. I sleep very little. I get up during the night and walk about the city until morning.

But now I want to tell you that I often see your son, Nadia, and a young man with a big moustache called Salvatore. I saw them one Saturday at
Le Margherite
, then I went and called on them a few times at their flat. The first time I went because they wanted to read me some notes they had jotted down for a film. It is a detective film with an extremely complicated plot and a lot of dead bodies. Nadia has had a baby girl. She came home from the hospital a few days ago. I don't know if you know that your son has registered the child as his daughter. He decided to do this because he likes the baby a lot. He says he will never have children of his own and so he is happy that there should be a baby with his name. Nadia agreed immediately. You could marry me too she said, that would make my parents happy. But he said no, certainly not that. Nadia was chattering away while she gave the baby her breast, and Alberico and Salvatore were shelling beans. It was a very charming little family picture.

I took a friend of mine to their place one day. Her name is Ippolita Teodori. When you came to my house you saw her pictures. She likes new-born babies and she likes people like your son, Nadia and Salvatore. In fact she felt very at ease there. She invited them to have supper on her terrace one evening. She lives in Porta Cavalleggeri. She cooks very well and her terrace is pleasantly cool. They will take the baby because they have bought one of those portable things you put babies in. They have also bought a car, a Panda. It doesn't seem to me that they have any problems about money. I wanted to give you all this news because it seems to be good news to me.

Yours affectionately

Ignazio

Princeton, 20th June

Dear Ignazio,

Thank you for your letter.

I'm glad that you see my son. The news you give me about him is very reassuring. My cousin Roberta phoned me a few days ago and I knew from her that Alberico has registered the baby as his. The baby is called Giorgia, like my mother. Her surname is Guaraldi, like mine. In a way I've become a grandfather.