The Road To The City (8 page)

I found out the truth only when Giovanni came to see me, bringing a horn for the baby, as if he were already big enough to blow it. He was carrying a brief-case and said he was a travelling salesman for a wholesale draper. There was something nervous and evasive about his manner; he waved his arms in the air and didn't look at me when he spoke. ‘He must be in some trouble,' I thought to myself. ‘Perhaps Antonietta's left him.' Finally I asked him what it was.

‘Nothing,' he said. But he rubbed his hands nervously as he walked up and down, and finally he stopped in front of the wall with his back to me.

‘It's Nini,' he muttered. ‘He's dead.'

I put the baby down abruptly.

‘Yes, he's dead,' Giovanni repeated, starting to cry.

I fell back into a chair, feeling as if I couldn't breathe. Gradually Giovanni calmed down, wiped his face, and said that Nini had died some days ago, but they had told him not to let me know because I wasn't well enough to stand the shock. He had died of pneumonia, but Antonietta said it was all because of my cruelty. She said he had always been in love with me, even when he was living with her, and I had done nothing but tease him, even when I was pregnant by another man and knew I was going to be married. After that he had lost his head and begun to live like a savage, shutting himself up in a smelly room, without eating or sleeping, and getting drunk every day. If she ever ran into me on the street, Antonietta said, she'd tell me to my face what she thought of me. But Giovanni said none of this was true. Nini was a cold fish, he said, who cared more for drink than for women. He'd found him delirious in his bed one day and, thinking he was drunk, had poured a pitcher of cold water on his head, which Antonietta said had probably made him considerably worse. Because after that he had gone to call on Antonietta, and she had seen right away that he had pneumonia. She had called a doctor, and for three days she had kept hot mustard plasters on his back as the doctor told her, and she had cleaned his room and brought fresh sheets from her own house. But Nini breathed hoarsely and never came out of his delirium. He tried all the time to get out of bed, and she had to hold him down by force until he died.

When Giulio came to see me that evening I was walking up and down the room in tears and wouldn't go back to bed. The supper that the Sister had brought me lay untouched and cold on the table.

‘What's the matter?' he asked.

‘Nini's dead,' I said. ‘Giovanni just told me.'

‘Giovanni's a jackass! I'll settle with him!'

He felt my pulse and told me I had a fever and ought to lie down. I didn't answer and went on crying. Then he said that he was ashamed to have the Sisters see me standing there half naked, with my wrapper open down the front, and if I didn't look out I'd get pneumonia myself and follow Nini to the grave. His feelings were hurt because I didn't pay any attention, and finally, after he had telephoned to Azalea to come over, he sat down to read his newspaper without so much as looking up at me.

When Azalea came she told him to go out and get his supper and he went away, saying that he would leave us with our secrets, since obviously he was of no importance and we didn't need him around.

‘He's jealous,' Azalea said. ‘They're all the same.'

‘Nini's dead,' I said dully.

‘That's not exactly news,' she answered. ‘I cried, too, when they told me. But later I thought maybe it was the best thing that could happen to him. I wish I were dead myself. I'm sick of being alive.'

‘I caused him to die,' I said.

‘You?'

‘Yes, he was in love with me and I led him on just to see him suffer. After he heard I was marrying Giulio he lost interest in everything and shut himself up in his room and drank worse than before.'

Azalea looked at me incredulously.

‘When someone's dead it's all very easy to imagine things. He took ill and died, that's all. You can't do anything about it and there's no sense in embroidering explanations. What did he care for you? He always said that he was sorry for you because you were such a silly girl and couldn't say no to the first man that came along.'

‘He did so care for me,' I said. ‘He was always taking me down by the river to talk. He read his books to me and told me what they were about. And once he kissed me. I loved him too. Only I didn't know it and thought it was only that I liked to tease him.'

‘Don't go mooning over Nini,' she said. One man's just like another. The thing to do is to have one around for company because it's too bad to be a woman alone. Nini wasn't as much of a fool as most of them, that's true, and his eyes were so bright that I can almost see them this minute. But even he was a bore in the long run, when you couldn't fathom what he was thinking. I'm not surprised he died, with all the cheap brandy he had in him. It's a wonder he lived as long as he did.'

When Giulio came back Azalea hurried away to cook her husband's supper because Ottavia had a toothache. That night I dreamed that Nini came to the hospital and ran away with the baby. I ran after him frantically, and he showed me the baby, about the size of an apple, in his coat pocket. All of a sudden Nini ran up a flight of stairs and Giovanni was with him, but when I called them there was no answer. I woke up breathless and perspiring and found Giulio standing beside my bed. He had come by early in the morning to see how I was feeling. So I told him about my dream.

‘Nobody's run off with the baby,' he said. ‘He's sleeping right here beside you and he won't be kidnapped, don't worry.'

But I went on saying that I had seen Nini big as life before me and he had held out his hand and spoken to me. I sobbed and tossed on my bed until finally Giulio told me to control my feelings and went away.

A few days later I left the hospital for my new apartment. This was the beginning of a different life. Nini was dead and there was no use thinking about him. Now I had Giulio and the baby, a houseful of new furniture and bright lights and my mother-in-law in person. The maid took care of the baby and I slept late every morning in the big double bed with the orange velvet cover. There was a bell beside me if I wanted to be waited on and a rug to put my feet on when i was ready to get up. I would walk around the apartment in my wrapper, admiring the wallpaper and the furnishings, running a brush slowly through my hair and drinking a cup of coffee. I thought back to my mother's house, with the mess left by the chickens all over the floor, the damp spots on the walls, and the little paper flaps fastened on to the lampshade in the dining-room. Was that incredible house still standing? Azalea kept saying we must go out there together, but I had no desire to do it. I was ashamed to think that I had ever lived there and I knew it would make me sad to see the room where Giovanni and Nini had slept together when we were all at home. When I walked about the city I stayed away from the river and sought out the most crowded streets where people could see me with my painted lips and new clothes. I looked at myself in the mirror half the day and thought no other woman had ever been so beautiful.

When my mother-in-law came she would shut herself up in the kitchen to question the maid about me, and I would listen at the keyhole. The maid told her that I didn't seem to care about the baby at all; I never picked him up when he was crying or asked whether he was eating properly. I was always sleeping or looking at myself in the mirror or going out for a walk, and she had not only to look after the baby but to do all the washing and cooking as well because I couldn't make so much as a cup of soup. My mother-in-law repeated these complaints to Giulio, but he said they were all poppycock. He always saw me with the baby in my arms, and there was no harm in my going out for a walk because I was young and he himself had told me to have a bit of fun. Giulio was so much in love with me that he paid no attention to his mother or anyone else. She told him that he was fat and stupid and couldn't see the truth even when it was staring him in the face. If I were unfaithful to him, she said, it would be no more than he deserved. But she didn't say anything to me because I scared her. She smiled and asked me to come and see her and stopped peering into my drawers because I told her to attend to her own business.

‘When the baby's a little bigger,' I said to myself, ‘and scoots around the house on a tricycle and asks me to buy him sweets and toys, maybe he'll be more fun.' But just now, with his big head on the pillow of his crib, he was very boring, and every time I looked at him I was annoyed and went out. It still seemed to me too good to be true to step out and find the city before me. Once I had walked over a dusty road, crowded with wagons, and arrived grimy and tired. Then when darkness fell and things were beginning to be lively it was time to go home. Now I would meet Azalea outside and we would sit in a café together. Little by little I came to live the same way Azalea did. I stayed in bed all day, got up in the late afternoon, made up my face, and went out with a fox fur thrown across my shoulders. As I walked I tossed my head and smiled in a provocative way, just like Azalea.

One day, on my way home, I ran into Antonietta and Giovanni walking arm in arm and bending over because it was raining and they had no umbrella.

‘How do you do?' I said.

We went together to a café and I waited for Antonietta to jump on me and scratch my eyes out with her pointed red nails. She must have spent hours lacquering them, although it was hardly worth while because she had become so ugly and old. Instead of jumping on me she seemed actually afraid of what I might say and hid her feet under her chair when she saw me looking at them. She said that she had seen my baby in his carriage in the park and wanted to give him a kiss, but she did not dare go near him on account of the maid.

‘You're lucky to have a servant,' she said. ‘I have to do all my own work. But there isn't so much to do without a man in the house and myself alone with the children.'

She blushed, and red splotches came out on her neck. We looked at each other in silence, with the same thought in our minds. Then she asked me again about my husband and the baby and wanted to know whether I often went to dances and had a good time.

‘You haven't been to see us at home,' said Giovanni. He said that things were just as usual and I was lucky to have got away. Then he asked me to lend him some money because although he had a good job my mother and father took all his salary.

They walked along with me and said good-bye at the door. While I was undressing in my room I thought of Giovanni walking home along the dark country road because he was afraid that if he stayed with Antonietta he'd end up by marrying her. All the time that we had sat at the café we had not said a word about Nini, as if we had forgotten how he used to like to sit crosswise on his chair and smoke and talk, propping his chin up on one hand and running the other through the lock that fell across his forehead. It was harder and harder to remember the way he looked and the things he used to say, and it frightened me to think of him now that he had receded far into the distance and become one of the vast multitude of the dead.

‘T
ELL
me the truth' I said.

‘What truth?' he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what it was: a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it and himself leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief.

I shot him between the eyes.

He had asked me to give him something hot in a thermos bottle to take with him on his trip. I went into the kitchen, made some tea, put milk and sugar in it, screwed the top on tight, and went back into his study. It was then that he showed me the sketch, and I took the revolver out of his desk drawer and shot him between the eyes. But for a long time already I had known that sooner or later I should do something of the sort.

I put on my raincoat and gloves and went out. I drank a cup of coffee at the counter of a café and walked haphazardly about the city. It was a chilly day and a damp wind was blowing. I sat down on a bench in the park, took off my gloves and looked at my hands. Then I slipped off my wedding ring and put it in my pocket.

We had been husband and wife for four years. He had threatened often enough to leave me, but then our baby died and we stayed together. Another child, he said, would be my salvation. For this reason we made love frequently toward the end, but nothing came of it.

I found him packing his bags and asked him where he was going. He said he was going to Rome to settle something with a lawyer and suggested I visit my parents so as not to be alone in the house while he was away. He didn't know when he'd be back, in two weeks or a month, he couldn't really say.

It occurred to me that he might never come back at all. Meanwhile I packed my bags too. He told me to take some books with me to while away the time and I pulled
Vanity Fair
and two volumes of Galsworthy out of the bookcase and put them in one of my bags.

‘Tell me the truth, Alberto,' I said.

‘What truth?' he echoed.

‘You are going away together.'

‘Who are going away together? You let your imagination run riot. You eat your heart out thinking up terrible things. That way you've no peace of mind and neither has anyone else…. Take the bus that gets to Maona at two o'clock,' he said.

‘Yes,' I answered.

‘He looked at the sky and remarked: ‘Better wear your raincoat and galoshes.'

‘I'd rather know the truth, whatever it may be,' I said, and he laughed and misquoted:

I sat on the bench for I don't know how long. The park was deserted, the benches were drenched with dew, and the ground was strewn with wet leaves. I began to think about what I should do next. After a while I said to myself, ‘I should go to the police and try to tell them how it all came about.' But that would be no easy matter. I should have to go back to the day when we first met, at the house of Dr. Gaudenzi. He was playing a piano duet with the doctor's wife and singing dialect songs. He looked at me hard and made a pencil sketch of me in his notebook. I said it was a good likeness, but he said it wasn't and tore it up.