The Road To The City (12 page)

‘Is she as bad as all that?' I asked.

‘She's unfortunate,' he said, running his hands over my body. ‘She can't help being unkind.'

Hot, silent tears streamed down my cheeks. He touched my face with his hands and held me tighter.

‘A perfectly hellish trip,' he said, and I heard him laughing under his breath. ‘Don't ask any questions. Don't ever ask any questions. You're all I've got. Just remember that.'

His hand lay on my shoulder, and I put out my hand to touch his thin, hot face. For the first time I wasn't disgusted when we made love.

A few months later Alberto went away again. I didn't ask him any questions. He was packing his bag in the study and I saw him put in a volume of Rilke. He used to read Rilke's poems out loud to me, too, in the evening. When he went out the door he said:

'I'll be back in a fortnight'

Then he turned the key in the lock, something he never forgot to do. I smiled at him as he left. The smile was still on my lips when I went back up the stairs and into my room, and I tried to keep it there as long as I could. I sat down in front of the mirror and brushed my hair, still with that silly smile on my face. I was pregnant and my face was pale and heavy. The letters I wrote to my mother had in them the same cowardly and idiotic smile. I hadn't gone to Maona for some time because I was afraid of the questions my mother might ask me.

‘You're all I've got. Just remember that.' Yes, I had remembered; indeed these words had helped me to go on living from day to day. But little by little they had lost their sweetness, like a prune stone that has been sucked too long. I didn't ask Alberto anything. When he came back to the house late at night I never asked him what he had been doing. But I had waited for him so long that a burden of silence had accumulated inside me. I looked in vain for something amusing to say to him so that he wouldn't be too bored with me. I sat knitting under the lamp while he read the paper, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick and scratching his head. Sometimes he sketched in his notebook, but he no longer drew my face. He drew trains and little horses galloping away with their tails streaming in the wind. And now that we had a cat he did cats and mice too. Once I told him that he should put my face on a mouse and his on a cat. He laughed and asked me why. So I asked him if he didn't think we two fitted into these roles. He laughed again and said there was nothing mouselike about me. Still he did draw a mouse with my face and a cat with his. The mouse was knitting, with a frightened and ashamed expression on its face, and the cat was angrily making a sketch in a notebook.

The evening after he had gone away for the second time Augusto came to see me and stayed quite late. He said that Alberto had asked him to keep me company sometimes in the evening while he was gone. I was taken aback and couldn't find anything to say. He sat there with his pipe between his teeth and an ugly grey wool scarf thrown around his neck, staring at me silently out of his square stony face with the black moustache. Finally I asked him if it was true that he didn't like me. He turned brick-red up to the eyebrows and then
we
had a good laugh together. That's how we started being friends. Sometimes when two people don't know what to say to each other some such trivial remark will turn the trick. Augusto told me that on general principles he didn't like anybody, that the only person he'd ever really liked was himself. Whenever he was in a bad humour, he said, he looked at himself in the mirror and began to smile and then he felt positively cheerful. I told him that I had tried smiling at myself in the mirror, too, but it didn't do any good. He asked me if I was in a bad humour very often and I said yes, I was. He stood in front of me with his pipe in his hand, blowing smoke out between his closed lips.

‘That woman, Augusto…' I said. ‘What's she like?'

‘What woman?' he asked.

‘The woman who goes on trips with Alberto.'

‘Look here,' he said. ‘It's no use talking about her. Besides, it doesn't seem right.'

‘I don't know anything about her,' I said, ‘not even her name. And I torment myself trying to imagine her face.'

‘Her name is Giovanna,' he said. ‘And her face—well, her face isn't anything special.'

‘Isn't she very beautiful?' I asked.

‘How should I know?' he said. ‘I'm not an expert on beauty. Yes, she's beautiful, I suppose, when you come down to it. Or at least she was when she was young.'

‘Is she no longer young, then?'

‘Not so very,' he said. ‘But what's the point of discussing her?

‘Please,' I said. ‘I'd like to be able to talk to you about her once in a while. It gets on my nerves to mope all by myself. I don't know a thing, you see. I didn't even know her name. I feel as if I were in the dark, as if I were blind and groping my way around, touching the walls and the objects in the room.' My ball of yarn fell to the floor and Augusto bent over to pick it up.

‘Why the devil did you two marry?' he asked.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I made a mistake. He wasn't very keen on it, but he didn't stop to think. He doesn't like to think about important things. In fact, he hates people who are always searching inside themselves and trying to find some meaning to life. When he sees me sitting still and thinking he lights a cigarette and goes away. I married him because I wanted to know all the time where he was. But the way it turned out, he knows where I am—I'm just sitting here, waiting for him to come home—and I don't know where he is any more than I did before. He isn't really my husband. A husband is a man that—well, that you always know where he is. And if someone asks you: “Where's your husband?” then you ought to be able to answer without hesitation. Whereas I don't go out of the house for fear of meeting people I know and hearing them ask: “Where is he?” Because I shouldn't know what to answer. You may think I'm very silly, but I don't go out of the house.'

‘Why did you marry?' he repeated. ‘What got into you?' I began to cry. ‘It was a hell of an idea,' he said, blowing the smoke out of his mouth and then staring at me in silence. He had a stubborn and gloomy expression on his face, as if he refused to be sorry for me.

‘But where's Alberto?' I asked him. 'Do you know where he is now?'

‘No, I don't,' Augusto answered. ‘I've got to go. Good night.' He scraped the ashes out of his pipe with a matchstick and took his coat off the chair. Now his tall and solitary figure was standing in the doorway. ‘There isn't anything I can do about it,' he said. ‘Good night.'

I couldn't close an eye all night long. I imagined that Augusto had fallen in love with me and I was his mistress. Every day I would go to meet him at a hotel. I would come home very late and Alberto would search my face agonizingly to see where I had been. But when Augusto came to see me again a few evenings later I was ashamed of all the things I had imagined. He picked up my ball of wool when it fell to the floor, filled his pipe, lit it, scraped the ashes out of it with a matchstick, and paced up and down the room, while all the time I imagined how we would make love in a hotel room and blushed with shame at my own imaginings. I didn't speak again of Alberto and myself and neither did he. We didn't know what to talk about, and I had an idea he was as bored as I was. Only I was glad we had become friends, and I told Alberto as much when he came back. He didn't say anything, but he didn't look very pleased. He shouted and made a great fuss in the bathroom because the water was too hot and he couldn't find his shaving brush and the other things he was looking for. He came out of the bathroom freshly shaved, with a lighted cigarette in his mouth, and I asked him if this trip had been any more of a success than the one before. He said that it was a trip like any other and not worth talking about, that he had gone on business to Rome. I said I wished he wouldn't go away again before the baby was born because I was afraid of what might happen if I had pains during the night when I was all alone. He said I wasn't the first woman in the world to have a baby and if I was so nervous it was just too bad. We didn't say anything more, but I cried over my knitting, and then he went out, slamming the door behind him.

Augusto came to the house that evening and I kept him in the drawing-room, where Alberto told him that he'd been on a business trip to Rome and thanked him for keeping me company. A little later Gemma called me into the kitchen to look over the household accounts, and when I came back the two men had gone into the study. I wondered whether to join them there or to wait In the drawing-room, and after considerable hesitation I decided that there was nothing so strange about my going to join them. I picked up my knitting and started to go Into the study, but the door was locked and I could hear Alberto saying: ‘It's quite useless.' What did he mean? I sat down in the drawing-room and began to count stitches. I felt tired and heavy and the baby stirred inside of me. Then and there I wanted to die with my baby, to escape from this torment and not feel anything more. I went to bed and to sleep but woke up when Alberto came In.

‘I'm not afraid any more; I only want to die,' I said.

‘Go to sleep and don't be silly,' he answered.' I don't want you to die.'

‘What difference would It make to you?' I asked him. ‘You have Augusto and Giovanna. You don't need me. You don't need the baby either. What will you do with a baby anyhow? You've grown old without ever having a baby and you got along perfectly well without it.'

‘I'm not so old,' he said with a laugh. ‘I'm only forty-four.'

‘You are old, though,' I said. ‘You have a lot of grey hair. You got along without a baby for forty-four years. What will you do with one now? It's too late for you to get used to having a baby crying about the house.'

‘Please don't say such silly things,' he said. ‘You know perfectly well I'm anxious to have this baby.'

‘Why didn't you ever have one with Giovanna?'

Out of the darkness he gave a deep sigh.

‘I've asked you not to talk about that person.'

I sat bolt upright in the bed.

'Don't say “that person.” Say “Giovanna.'”

‘As you like.'

‘Say “Giovanna.'”

‘Giovanna, then.'

‘Why didn't you ever have a baby together?'

‘I don't think she ever wanted to have a baby by me.' 

‘No? Then she can't love you very much.' 

‘I don't think she does love me very much.' 

‘I don't love you either. No one can love you. Do you know why? Because you have no courage. You're a little man who hasn't enough courage to get to the bottom of anything. You're a cork bobbing on the surface, that's what you are. You don't love anybody and nobody loves you.'

‘You don't love me, then?' he asked. 

‘No.'

‘When did you stop loving me?'

‘I don't know. Some time ago.' Once more he sighed. ‘It's all too bad,' he said.

‘Alberto,' I said, ‘tell me where you were these last few days.'

‘In Rome, on business.' 

‘Alone or with Giovanna?'

‘Alone.'

‘Do you swear it?'

‘I don't want to swear,' he said.

‘Because it isn't true. That's why. You were with Giovanna. Where did you go? To the lakes? Did you go to the lakes?'

He put on the light, got up, and took a blanket out of the cupboard.

'I'm going to sleep in my study. Both of us will get more rest that way.'

He stood there in the middle of the room with the blanket over his arm, a slight figure in rumpled blue pyjamas, with his hair in disorder and a look of weariness and distress in his eyes.

‘No, Alberto, don't go away. I don't want you to go away.' I was weeping and trembling and he came over and stroked my hair. I took his hand and kissed it. ‘It's not true that I don't love you,' I said. ‘I love you more than you can possibly know. I couldn't live with any other man. I couldn't make love with Augusto or with anybody else. I like making love with you. I'm your wife. I'm always thinking of you when you're away. I can't think of anything else, no matter how hard I try. It's idiotic of me, I know, but I can't help it. I think of every single thing that's happened to us since the day we first met. I'm glad I'm your wife.'

‘Then everything's all right,' he said, picking up the blanket. He went to sleep in the study, and it was a long time before we slept together again.

It was dark when I left the café. The rain had stopped, but the pavement was still glistening. I realized that I was very tired and I had a burning feeling in my knees. I walked about the city for a while longer, then I took a tram and got off in front of Francesca's house. There were bright lights in the drawing-room, and I could see a maid passing a tray. Then I remembered that it was Wednesday, and Wednesday was Francesca's day for receiving her friends at home, so I didn't go in. I went on walking. My feet were heavy and tired, and there was a hole in the heel of my left stocking, where my shoe rubbed against the bare skin and gave me pain. Sooner or later, I thought, I'd have to go home. I shivered and a wave of nausea came over me, so I went back to the park. I sat down on a bench and slipped off my shoe to look at the sore spot on the back of my heel. The heel was swollen and red; a blister had formed and broken and now it was bleeding. Couples were embracing each other on the park benches, and in the shadow of the trees an old man lay asleep under a dark green coat.

I shut my eyes and remembered certain afternoons when I used to take the baby out in the park. We used to walk very, very slowly and I would give her warm milk out of a thermos bottle I carried in my bag. I had an enormous bag where I used to put all the baby's things: a rubber bib and one of towelling and some little raisin biscuits that she especially liked, sent by my mother from Maona, Those were long afternoons I used to spend in the park, turning around to watch the baby follow me in her velvet-edged hood, her little coat with the velvet buttons, and her white leggings. Francesca had given her a camel that swayed its head as it walked. It was a lovely camel with a gold-embroidered red cloth saddle, and it swayed its head in a very wise and appealing way. Every other minute the camel would get tangled up in its string and fall and we had to set it on its feet again. Then we walked slowly on among the trees in the warm, humid sunshine. The baby's mittens would come off and I would lean over to pull them on and blow her nose and then carry her when she was tired.