The Road To The City (3 page)

‘But you'd have to shake off Antonietta,' I said.

‘Of course. You can't see me taking her and her two brats and her stationery shop along, can you?'

‘Then you don't love her?' I said.

‘Oh, I love her after a fashion. We'll stick together just as long as we like it, and then we'll call it quits without any ill feelings on either side.'

‘Then turn her over to Giovanni, who's crazy about her,' I said.

He started to laugh. ‘Giovanni? Antonietta's not so bad, you know. She makes faces every now and then, but that's not serious. Only I'm not in love with her.'

‘Who are you in love with, then?' I asked, and it flashed across my mind that he might be in love with me. He looked at me and laughed and said:

‘Does everybody have to be in love? It's possible not to love anyone and to put one's mind on other things.'

I had on a thin dress and my teeth were chattering.

‘You're cold, little girl,' he said, taking off his jacket and throwing it around my shoulders.

‘How affectionate you are!' I said.

‘Why shouldn't I be affectionate with you? You're so unlucky that it's really a shame. Don't think I don't know that you've got yourself into a mess with that Giulio. Azalea told me, but I know you well enough and I had guessed as much already.'

‘It's not so,' I said, but he told me to be quiet because he knew better.

Just then the whistles blew and Nini said that he had to go to work. He wanted me to keep his jacket, but I refused because I should have felt funny meeting anyone with a man's jacket around me.

‘Why don't you come back home, Nini?' I asked when we said good-bye.

He promised to come and see me the next day, which was Sunday. Then he leaned over abruptly and kissed me on one cheek. I stood still, watching him go away with even steps, his hands in his pockets. I was astonished that he should have kissed me, something he had never done before. I walked slowly along, thinking of how Nini had kissed me and how Giulio was engaged to a girl in the city of whom he had never said a word. ‘People are strange,' I said to myself. ‘You never can make out what they want.' And then I thought how my father might be at home and hit me again, and this made me feel very sad. But my father pretended not to see me and didn't say a word, and neither did any of the rest of them.

The next day Nini came in a state of great excitement, saying that he had found me a job. Nothing doing at the factory, but there was an eccentric old lady who wanted someone to go out with her every afternoon. I was to come to the city every day after lunch and go back home at night. The pay wouldn't be enough at the start for me to rent a room of my own, but she had promised to increase it very soon. The old lady was an acquaintance of Antonietta, and Antonietta had recommended me to her. That day there was no one in the house, and Nini and I lay out under the pergola and talked as peacefully as if we were beside the river.

‘The river's the best, though,' said Nini. ‘You must meet me there soon for a swim. You don't know how wonderful it is early in the morning. It's not too cold and it puts life into you.'

Then I asked him again with whom he was in love. ‘Let me alone,' he said.'Don't tease me today, when I'm so happy.'

‘Tell me, Nini,' I insisted. ‘I won't breathe a word to a soul.'

‘What does it matter to you?' he answered. And he began to tell me to wash thoroughly and put on a dark dress when I went to the old lady. I told him I didn't have any dark dress and if she was so fussy I didn't want to go at all. Then he was angry and went away without saying good-bye.

I went to the old lady's house in my light blue dress and found her all ready to go out, with her hat on and powder smeared over her wrinkled face. I was to take her for a walk and make things agreeable for her, so her daughter told me, then bring her home and read the newspaper aloud until she was sleepy. I took very short steps, while she hung on to my arm and muttered the whole while about one thing and another. She said I walked too fast, that I was too tall for her, and reaching up to my arm was a strain. She shook all over when it came to crossing the street, and everyone turned around to stare. One day we ran into Azalea, who didn't have the slightest idea that I was working and gaped with astonishment.

When we went back to the house the old lady drank a cup of hot milk and I read the paper. Soon after that she began to nod and I was free to go. But I was often in a bad mood and got no enjoyment from being in the city. One evening I decided on the spur of the moment to go and meet Nini at the factory gate. He saw me from a distance and his face lighted up. But when he started to walk with me, dirty and tired as he was, and wearing an old, pale grey hat and down-at-the-heel shoes that were too large for him and dragged along the pavement, I was ashamed to be seen with him and began to be sorry I had come. He was quick to catch on and take offence and he became angry when I told him that the old lady bored me to death. But by the time we reached the river he had calmed down and told me that he had found a picture of Giovanni with a message scrawled on the back in one of Antonietta's bureau drawers.

‘Perhaps it's all for the best,' he said.

‘What do you mean, all for the best?'

‘Why should I care?'

'You're a cold fish. I hate you.'

‘Very well, then, I'm a cold fish. And what are you?' He looked at me for a minute and then said:' You're just a poor little girl.'

'Why do you say that?'

‘Is it true that you went to the Moon ?'

‘Who told you?'

‘A little birdie told me' he said. ‘Have you been there more than once?'

‘That's none of your business,' I said.

‘Poor little girl! Poor little girl!' he said half to himself.

I was angry and clapped my hand over his mouth. He put his arms around me and threw me down on the ground, kissing my face and ears and hair.

‘Are you crazy, Nini?' I said. ‘What are you doing?' I was half laughing, half afraid. He sat up and pushed back his hair.

‘See the kind you are? Any man can go as far as he likes with you'

‘Is that what you were trying to find out just now?'

‘No. Forget it. I was only joking.'

Giulio was waiting for me on the road that evening.

‘Where have you been all this time?' I asked him.

‘In bed with a fever,' he said, trying to take my arm. But I told him to go away and leave me alone, because I knew that he was engaged to a girl in the city.

‘What girl?' he asked.

'A girl who has a car of her own.'

He laughed and struck his knee with his hand.

‘People are always telling tall tales,' he said. ‘And you fall for them. Don't be a goose. Meet me in the woods to-morrow after lunch.'

But I told him that I wasn't free in the afternoon any more because of the old lady.

‘Come in the morning, then,' he said.

I turned my face away because I was afraid that he might see that Nini had kissed me. The next morning in the woods he kept asking who had told me that he was engaged to a girl in the city.

‘There are plenty of people who have it in for me,' he said. ‘Sour grapes, most likely.'

He teased and teased me until I told him it was Nini.

'I'll tell Nini a thing or two when I see him,' he said. Then he began to tease me about my job of taking the old lady out for a walk.

I went again to meet Nini when he came out from work. But he was annoyed because the old lady's daughter had complained to Antonietta that I was always late.

‘There's no counting on you,' he said. ‘You won't get very far if you go on like this. It's just as well they didn't take you on at the factory.'

I said that I was sick and tired of the old lady and didn't want to have anything more to do with her.

‘Keep on going until the end of the month and collect your pay,' he said. ‘And give the money to your mother, so she can buy the boys some shoes.'

‘I'll keep it, that's what I'll do,' I said.

‘Good! Good girl! Don't think of anyone but yourself! Buy some glad rags and have a good time. What should it matter to me?'

He didn't want to go down by the river, and we walked along toward his house. We got there just as Antonietta was closing the shop. She was very angry and said that if she'd known me better she'd never have recommended me for the job. Now I'd put her in a very awkward position. They had told her that I always came late and went away early and when I read the paper I was always giggling and making mistakes, just to be funny. She barely nodded good-bye as she and Nini went into the house.

On my way home I was very low in my mind. I hadn't felt well for several days, and the mere smell of food was enough to make me lose my appetite. 'Do you suppose I'm pregnant?' I thought to myself. ‘What am I going to do?' I stood still on the road, with my heart in my throat. The country was silent around me, and I could see neither the city that I had left behind me nor our house that lay farther along the way. Other girls went to school, spent the summer at the shore, got asked to dances, and chattered like so many magpies. Why wasn't I one of them? Why wasn't my life like theirs?

When I got up to my room I lit a cigarette, but it had a bad taste and I remembered that Azalea couldn't smoke either when she was expecting her children. I must be pregnant, and when my father found out he'd kill me. ‘Perhaps it's just as well,' I thought. ‘Why not die and get it over with?'

But the next morning when I got up I felt calmer. The sun was out and I picked grapes from the vines on the pergola with the boys. Then I walked through the village with Giulio. There was a fair on the street, and he bought me a good-luck charm to hang around my neck. Every now and then a wave of fright came over me, but I pushed it away and said nothing. I enjoyed the sight of the fair, with chickens clucking in their boxes and children blowing their horns.

Later I remembered that Nini had been angry with me and decided to go and make up with him. Because it was a holiday Nini had not gone to work, and I found him just as he was coming out of the café. He asked me if I wanted a drink, and I could see that he was no longer angry. I said no, and we went down by the river.

‘Let's be friends,' I said after we had sat down.

‘All right. But in a few minutes I've got to go home.'

‘Can't I come too? Is Antonietta still angry?'

‘Yes. She says you never even thanked her for what she did. And she's jealous too.'

‘Jealous of me?'

‘Of you, yes.'

‘I'm glad of that!'

‘You would be glad, you little monkey! You love to see other people suffer. Now I've really got to go. But I don't want to.' He lay flat on the grass with his arms folded under his head.

‘Do you like being with me? Better than with Antonietta?'

‘Yes, I do. A whole lot better.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know why, but I do.'

‘And I like being with you too. Better than with anyone else.'

‘Better than with Giulio?'

‘Yes.'

‘Now, how do you account for that!' he said, laughing.

‘I really don't know,' I said. I wondered if he was going to kiss me, but there were too many people passing by. All of a sudden I saw Giovanni and Antonietta coming toward us.

‘I was sure we'd find them here,' said Giovanni. But Antonietta eyed me coldly without saying a word. Nini stretched lazily and got up, and all four of us went for a walk in the city. That evening Giovanni said:

‘What a funny girl you are! All of a sudden you're crazy about Nini and do nothing but hang around him.' - That was quite true. I waited to see him all day long and went to meet him every evening at the factory gate. When he and I were together I managed to forget my new fear. I liked him when he was talking and when he was silent, as he often was, biting his nails and thinking about something. I was always wondering when he would kiss me, but he never did. He sat some distance away from me, rumpling his lock of hair and then smoothing it down again, and then he said:

‘Go on home.'

But I didn't want to go home. The only time I wasn't bored was when we were together. I liked to hear him talk about the books he was always reading. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I nodded my head and pretended to understand.

'I'll bet you haven't understood a word of what I just said,' he'd say, giving me a playful slap on the cheek.

One evening while I was undressing I suddenly felt as if I were going to faint and I had to lie down on the bed. At the same time I was shivering and covered with perspiration. ‘Azalea used to be the same way,' I said to myself. 'I'll tell Giulio to-morrow. After all, he's got to know. But what will he say? What are we going to do? Can it really be true?' I knew very well that it was. I was so hot that I couldn't go to sleep, so I threw the covers off and sat up in bed with my heart thumping. What was Nini going to think of me? Once I had almost told him, but then I had lost my nerve.

I saw Giulio in the village the next morning, but only for a minute, because he was going hunting with his father.

‘You're not looking like much,' he said.

‘I didn't sleep well,' I answered.

‘I hope to shoot a hare,' he said. ‘I feel just like going out in the woods.' He looked up at the clouds floating over the hills. ‘It's good hunting weather,' he added.

That day I didn't go to the old lady's. I wandered about the city for a while and then went to see Azalea. She was out, but I found Ottavia ironing in the kitchen. She had on a white apron and shoes instead of bedroom slippers. The whole household was in better order when Azalea's personal affairs were running smoothly, and even the children seemed to have put on weight. While Ottavia ironed one of Azalea's brassieres she told me that everything was all right and Azalea was very happy. The student was quite different from his predecessor. He never neglected telephoning her and he did whatever she asked; in fact, he had not gone to see his parents in the country on this particular day just because Azalea had told him not to. The main thing was that ‘the master' should not catch on. They must be very careful. And Ottavia begged me to wait until Azalea came home and tell her how careful she must be. I waited for a while, but Azalea didn't come and so I went away. It was time for Nini to be coming out of the factory, but I walked slowly toward home. Rain started to fall and my feet got wet. As soon as I reached home I went to bed and slid away down between the sheets. I told my mother that I didn't feel well and wouldn't have any supper.