All Our Yesterdays (17 page)

She and Giustino spent the afternoon packing the suitcases, and suddenly Danilo appeared and asked for Ippolito, and told them that Italy was going into the war on the side of Germany. They went out into the street with Danilo, the radio was shouting from the open windows of the houses, people were standing in groups under the windows and round the cafés. The town was full of that yelling voice, and the people stood silently in groups, and then someone said they must think about the black-out, they must put black curtains in the windows so that not even a thread of light should filter through. Then everyone went in search of black material, Anna and Giustino too, and Danilo who had found his wife. They bought yards and yards of black material. Danilo told his wife that he himself almost certainly would not be sent to the war, he had been a political prisoner and people like him were not sent to the front for fear they should go over to the other side. Probably a person like him would be put in prison again.

Anna and Giustino went home with the big parcel of black material, and in the kitchen they found Ippolito giving the dog its dinner, and they asked him if he had heard about the war. Ippolito said yes. His shoes were dusty and he had a very tired look on his face, he must have been walking all day long, goodness knows where. He was preparing the dog's dinner, mixing together some remains of macaroni and crusts of bread and old cheese-rinds. Giustino asked him whether they would go next day to Le Visciole, Ippolito thought for a moment and said yes. Giustino said they would have to get up very early to catch the train, that local train would be very crowded since everyone was leaving the town, because there was a war on now and everyone was afraid that they would begin bombing immediately. Ippolito said they would not bomb their little town immediately. He spoke a great many words, for days and days they had not heard him speak so many words. He seemed pleased that war had finally come. He looked at the black material they had bought and laughed a little, he asked them whether they wanted to dress up the whole town in mourning. Giustino measured the windows and Anna cut out big black curtains and they got up on the ladder and fixed them to the window-frames with small nails. Then they made themselves something to eat, tomatoes and eggs fried with half a glass of milk, and Ippolito said it was a very good dish. After supper they went on sitting, all three of them, round the table, and Ippolito said that if he went to the war they would have to take care of his dog. He advised them to send it to the dog show, he had heard that there would be a dog show in the town before very long. Giustino remarked that it would be difficult for them to hold a dog show, with the war going on. But Ippolito said that war was not as they imagined it, things were going on as usual except for black curtains at the windows, cinemas were going on, and theatres and dog shows. Except for black curtains at the windows. Giustino asked him if he wasn't going to go and say good-bye to Danilo, Danilo would probably be put straight back into prison to-morrow, because people like Danilo were not wanted at the front. Ippolito said that indeed it would probably be like that. He himself, on the other hand, was not so lucky, in a short time he would be sent to the war and would have to shoot, and there was nothing he disliked so much as shooting, he liked shooting at birds but not at people. He said he wouldn't go and say good-bye to Danilo, he was too tired, he wanted to go straight to bed, seeing that they had to get up early next morning and go away. All of a sudden he bent down and kissed Anna, he gave her arm a little squeeze, then he went up to Giustino, gave his usual twisted smile and kissed him too. They heard his footsteps on the stairs and finally the thump of his shoes on the floor, and the creaking of the bed as he lay down. They were left looking at each other in bewilderment, he had kissed them, it did not often happen that he kissed anybody. He had kissed them, therefore he must be thinking that he would be sent at once to the war, and perhaps he thought he would die there at once, he would throw his rifle on the ground refusing to shoot, and then they would kill him at once, perhaps that was what he was thinking. But Giustino was sure that in war even Ippolito would shoot, everybody shot. How strange he had been all the evening, said Giustino, and then when he had started talking about the dog show, perhaps he might really have gone off his head, wanting to send that extremely ugly dog to the dog show.

Anna slept soundly all night, because she was tired and because she had partly forgotten the baby. During the night she heard the dog barking down in the garden, then she heard the gate creak, she wanted to look out of the window but fell asleep at once. In her sleep the dog was barking, she dreamed that Ippolito was putting on soldier's uniform and going off to the war, Giuma too was going off to the war with a tennis-racquet, the war was in the meadows beyond the river and it was just a wooden enclosure full of dogs. Giustino came to awaken her, it was six o'clock in the morning and they had to go, but Ippolito was not in his room, there were just his pyjamas on the unmade bed, he had looked for him all over the house and had not found him. Anna dressed hurriedly and they went out into the cool morning, in the garden the dog was barking, it was scratching the ground and worrying at the gate and barking. Goodness knows where Ippolito had gone, he was really off his head. They walked along the road by the river, they went as far as Danilo's house but everyone there appeared to be asleep, all the shutters were still closed. They waited for a little outside the door and then Danilo's wife came out, going to the foundry, no, Ippolito had not been with them. They walked a little way with Danilo's wife. Danilo's wife advised them to go to the public gardens, Ippolito had acquired a habit of going there to sit on a seat and smoke early in the morning, she saw him when she passed that way to do her shopping in the market, certainly he had been behaving very strangely for some time now. They left Damlo's wife at the main gate of the foundry, that day was not a market day, she would have liked to go with them but she was already late. The road by the river was now beginning to be crowded, the air was becoming dusty and hot, and thick white smoke was rising from the chimneys of the soap factory. Their train had left some time ago, they had heard it going off with its shrill whistle into the country. As they went into the public gardens they saw, standing round a seat, a little group of people and two policemen, so they started running. On the seat was sitting Ippolito, dead, and beside him on the ground was their father's revolver.

It was an old revolver with an ivory handle, it was the one that their father used to keep on his table when Danilo was standing waiting for Concettina at the gate. There was not much blood to be seen, just a line along his cheek, and a little on his shirt-collar and on the worn collar of his coat. The small head with its streaky fair hair had fallen back on the back of the seat, and you could see the fine white teeth between the parted lips, and the thin line of blood on the stubbly cheek, how rarely he had shaved since France had been defeated. And his hand hung down white and empty, the hand that had fired the shot and then dropped their father's revolver on the ground.

A doctor in a white overall looked at the wound, he unbuttoned the shirt over Ippolito's chest and bent down holding a black trumpet to his ear. And then two men took up the long, inert body from the seat and carried it home. All at once the house was full of people, there were Danilo's sisters and Signora Maria's nephew and the music-master, and later Danilo's mother came rushing in, her bosom heaving and her comb stuck crookedly into her cloud of hair. They had laid Ippolito on the bed in his own room, they had lit wax candles round him and had tied up his face tightly with a handkerchief, Anna had had a long search for the handkerchiefs in the suitcases. In the garden the dog went on barking and scratching, it had dug a hole in front of the gate and was sniffing round inside it and barking. Danilo and his wife appeared. But upon Danilo's face there was no surprise, there was hardly even any sadness, it was as though something had happened that he had been expecting for a very long time. He sat on the edge of an armchair in the sitting-room as if he were paying a visit, with the same precise, prudent look as he had worn on the day he came back from prison. His wife was weeping, every now and then she burst into a sob which sounded like a cough. Later Signor Sbrancagna also arrived, and sat down in an armchair with his hands crossed on the handle of his stick, and he asked Danilo whether Ippolito had said anything to him. No, said Danilo, Ippolito had not said anything to him. And Signor Sbrancagna said that he had at once taken a great liking to Ippolito, from the very first day he had seen him, and also he had had a suspicion that he might have some secret trouble, a woman perhaps, who knows ? He was such a silent boy, he had no words of friendship or pity for anyone and yet one felt the better just for being with him, as though a great power of friendship and pity proceeded from him. Perhaps few people had understood him. He himself had understood him, he had always sat beside Ippolito with great pleasure and had told him all about himself. Perhaps Ippolito had never got over the death of his father. Then the music-master started to speak of Ippolito's self-sacrifice in looking after his father, in giving him his injections and reading aloud to him. Giustino suddenly asked whether there was no way of keeping the dog quiet. But then he remembered that Ippolito had asked him to take care of the dog, and he went into the kitchen to get its dinner ready. At the windows the black curtains were fluttering in the sunshine, and Signor Sbrancagna asked Danilo what he thought about the war.

Towards evening Signora Maria arrived, they had said nothing to Concettina, Emilio had remained at Le Visciole to break it to Concettina gradually. When Signora Maria arrived she looked very, very small, if ever a misfortune occurred she had a way of contracting herself and growing smaller, and this was a misfortune that she could not manage to understand, there she was with her hat all crooked and a little twitch in her shoulder. She wanted to know who the girl was who had refused to marry Ippolito, she asked her nephew, Signor Sbrancagna and the music-master. Danilo she did not ask because she had never been able to endure Danilo, she was sure it was Danilo's fault that Ippolito was dead, she did not know how but she was sure it was his fault. There must surely be a letter somewhere, surely Ippolito must have left a letter, they had not looked properly. She was sure it would not have happened if she had stayed in town, she would have understood from Ippolito's face that he was in some sort of trouble, she would have made him speak and she would have gone to the girl and put things right. She told Signor Sbrancagna that Ippolito had so much confidence in her. But Giustino said that there was no girl, no letter, nothing. Signora Maria wrung her hands and lamented that she had gone away, something in her heart had told her she ought not to go, why, oh why had she not listened. She knelt down and prayed at the foot of Ippolito's bed, she would have liked Anna and Giustino to knee! down too and pray with her, she considered it had been a mistake on the part of their father not to allow his children to kneel down and pray sometimes. Their father said one should not go down on one's knees in front of anyone, not even in front of God, and one did not know whether God existed or did not exist but if He did exist He liked to see people standing and with their heads held high. Signora Maria thought now that the old man had said many foolish things, perhaps Ippolito would not be dead if as a child he had been taught to pray.

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All the portraits of Ippolito were taken out and framed and arranged on the piano in the sitting-room. The house was searched for yet more portraits, was it possible that there could be so few, why had nobody thought of having more photographs taken of him? Memories, also, were searched for words that he had spoken. But he had spoken so few words. It seemed impossible now that nobody should have asked him for a few more words, it seemed impossible that nobody should have asked him whether perhaps he needed help, that nobody should have followed him when he went out for walks alone, or sat down with him when he was smoking on the seat in the public gardens. After the funeral the drawers of his desk were tidied up, the few letters collected and tied together, there was nothing except a few letters from his father and a few picture post-cards, there were no letters from girls. And Anna and Signora Maria spent a day polishing the floor of his room with wax, tidying up the books and the shelves and cleaning the windows. Anna had forgotten her baby, if she thought of it she said to herself that by now it must certainly be dead, she had sobbed so much and the baby must have been killed by her sobs. Then the room was shot up, the mattresses rolled and covered over. Two days after the funeral Emanuele arrived. He thought he would still be in time for the funeral, he had driven his car like a man in desperation but he was too late for the funeral. He fell into an armchair in the sitting-room and burst into sobs. Anna and Giustino stood in front of him in silence, they had already sobbed a great deal and now they had no more tears left, they had nothing left inside them but amazement and silence. Emanuele could not forgive himself for having said good-bye so casually to Ippolito on the morning he went away, just a wave from the window, the figure of Ippolito at the window would stick in his memory for ever, and that little wave of his hand. And he could not forgive himself for having gone away, he was sure that if he had stayed Ippolito would not be dead, he would not have allowed him to think of dying, he would have told him that it wasn't all over. He took up the portraits of Ippolito one by one from the piano, looked at them and began sobbing again. He had known about it through a letter from Danilo, a very short, cold letter, which did not even mention the day of the funeral. He asked Giustino to go and look for Danilo, but Danilo was no longer there, he had been summoned to the police station and sent away to an island, and there he would have to stay until the end of the war. His mother said there was always typhus on that island, and perhaps typhus was worse than war. His wife had not been able to follow him, she could not lose her job at the foundry. For a short time people in the town had talked of Ippolito, in whispers and in secret because he was a suicide, the Fascists did not like suicides mentioned, in the newspaper the news had been given that a young man had been killed in the public gardens while cleaning his revolver. But soon everyone had forgotten Ippolito and started thinking about the war again. Italian soldiers had begun firing up in the mountains, the Germans were entering Paris. Emanuele said he himself did not feel it was all over. He asked Signora Maria whether she would let him sleep in the sitting-room, he did not want to sleep all alone in his own house. He limped up and down the sitting-room till late talking of Ippolito, never again would he have a friend like Ippolito, never again. No one had known him, he alone could say that he had known him well. And if he had stayed in town he would not have let him die, he would have followed him everywhere and would have snatched the revolver out of his hands, he would have explained to him that the Germans might take Paris and London too, into the bargain, and yet it would not be all over. He went away again next day. He put another case of soap into the car, Mammina always had a horror of being left without soap, of having to wash with those greenish cubes that were being turned out now. Anna and Giustino helped him to load the case on to the car, and stood on the pavement waving their hands until the car disappeared.