All Our Yesterdays (18 page)

They left for Le Visciole, Signora Maria said that Concettina could not stay there all by herself, with that baby that frightened her because it was the first baby she had ever seen, and with her grief for Ippolito and her fear that her husband would be called to the war. In the train everyone was talking of the bombing of Turin, some of them had been there at the time, the sirens had sounded when the aeroplanes were already streaming over the town. There were fourteen dead, said the newspapers, but goodness knows how many there had really been, you had to multiply what the papers said by ten if it was bad, muttered someone, divide it by ten if it was good. It was an old pedlar who spoke, with a drawer full of laces and buttons tied round his neck, he was a little drunk and kept on talking about multiplying and dividing, he counted on his fingers and got all muddled up. He also told a story of a young man who had shot himself through the head in the public gardens, because he did not want to go to the war. His neighbours made him keep quiet. The pedlar had seen Giustino looking at him, and tried to insist on selling him a few pairs of shoe-laces.

Concettina was sitting under the pergola suckling her baby. When she saw them arriving she immediately started crying, but the
contadino's
wife ran over to tell her that she must not cry when she was suckling the baby or else her milk would be salted with tears. The
contadino's
wife was now also weeping for Ippolito, and so was the
contadino,
and they remembered how they had given him rides on the cart when he was a little boy. But the dog was running after the hens and the
contadino's
wife said that hell had begun again for her with that dog.

Emilio came back late in the afternoon and went off early in the morning : on Sundays he stayed all day. He was no longer so calm and fresh as he had once been, he no longer seemed so like a grazing calf. He had taken to thinking all the time about Ippolito, he too was always searching his memory for words that Ippolito had spoken to him. When he went through the public gardens he seemed to see Ippolito sitting dead on the seat. He said that he, Emilio, had never suffered much, even when he wanted to marry Concettina and she refused he did not suffer very badly, he had an obscure feeling that they would get married some day. But now it had occurred to him that perhaps there were a great many things that had to be suffered, and that the reason he himself did not suffer was merely because he was incapable of thinking about these things, when he wanted to start thinking about something very important or very remote his breath failed him and he became as it were giddy, and it had occurred to him that perhaps this was not at all a good thing. Ippolito had thought about everything, he had died thinking about everything. But he himself, if he was called to the war and if it happened that he was killed, would be dying so very poor in thoughts, so very poor in sorrow, he would be dying without having thought about all there was to think about. He did not feel at all ready to die, if God existed what would he be bringing to this God, God would ask him what he was bringing and he would not know what to answer, he had worked a little in industry with his father, he knew a little about monosulphides and hydrates, he had got his hands a bit stained with acids, he had put on a black shirt and had marched in processions. Concettina started crying, she asked why he too had to die, Ippolito was dead already, why did she have to lose everyone she had? And then Emilio told her for goodness' sake not to cry, perhaps the
contadino's
wife was right, perhaps if she cried her milk would be spoiled in some way or other. Together they went to look at the baby. He had lost his black feather-brush, his head was now all covered with a fine down which glistened in the sun. The baby started yelling and immediately Concettina was frightened, perhaps her milk was not so very good now, she touched her breast to feel if there was still milk there. Concettina said how silly she had been as a girl, she had tortured herself so much on account of her breast, she had been distressed at having so little of it, now all she wanted to know was whether what breast she had was suitable for suckling the baby. Emilio left her alone and went off to roam about the countryside like Ippolito, with Concettina it was now quite impossible to hold a sensible conversation, all she could talk about now was milk and babies. He wandered for a long time among the vineyards and the oak-trees, In the places where he knew Ippolito had been in the habit of walking with the dog; and whenever he knocked his foot against a stone he wondered whether Ippolito had also knocked against it, with those feet that now were dead; and wherever he rested his eyes on the countryside he reflected that Ippolito too had looked at that spot, and he thought how strange it was that the eyes of men should pass across things without leaving any trace, thousands and thousands of dead men's eyes had rested upon that green and humming countryside.

Anna did not roam about the countryside, she lay on the bed in her room with the curtains drawn, she did not want to look at the countryside, she did not want to look at the brow of the hill where once upon a time Ippolito could be seen passing and repassing with his gun and his dog. The days lowed past, and she knew now that her baby was still there, she had finished all the quinine, she kept the thousand ire in an envelope pinned to her underclothes, she thought that one day she would go into the town in the little train and look for a midwife, she would tell Signora Maria that she had left one of her mathematical books behind. She pictured the midwife as looking rather like Danilo's mother. Gradually she came to picture her as being more and more kind-hearted and motherly, she did not even want the thousand ire and did everything for nothing, so sorry was she for her. But on the other hand there were times when she imagined that she would let this baby come into the world, and that she would go and live with it in some distant town, and work hard to support it, and all of a sudden Giuma would appear by chance in this distant town, he would have left the girl Fiammetta for good because he had realized that she was an impossible kind of person. And Giuma wanted to marry her but now she no longer wanted it, she ran away with the baby to some even more distant town, she worked even harder, she sat at an office desk and handled business affaire, she handled them with vertiginous speed and the manager came and told her that no one could handle affairs so speedily as she. And the Germans were there but all the same it suddenly became possible to start a revolution. She and the manager were running over the roof-tops, placing secret papers in safety. But the baby had to be placed in safety too, the house in which the baby was had caught fire, she and the manager threw themselves into the flames in order to save the baby.

Giustino came and sat down in her room. He looked at her a moment and said she had got very fat, if she went on ike that she would become ike a barrel. So then she thought that she must go to the midwife as soon as she possibly could, before everyone noticed the baby inside her. Giustino was smoking, smoking had now become disgusting to her, she tried not to breathe so as not to smell the smell. Giustino asked her whether she and Giuma wrote to each other, she said no, Giustino said that of course the great Giuma would not condescend to write to her. Giustino on the other hand was always getting letters, the tall, thin girl wrote to him on stiff blue paper with her initials printed on it, Giustino when he received these stiff blue letters would go and hide in the woods in order to read them. Anna asked him to let her see them, he said no, it would not be behaving correctly towards the tall, thin girl, but he assured her that they were very fine letters, she was a girl who was able to write very well. Answering her was rather an effort, sometimes he got a headache trying to find things to say to her, he waited for rainy days to answer her letters, days when the daughters of the Humbugs did not come to the village square. For some time now coffee was not to be had, and Giustino and the Humbugs' daughters drank substitute coffee in the little bar in the square. The Humbugs' daughters were waiting for zero hour, the hour when the Germans would land in England. Then the war would be over and Germany and Italy would divide the English colonies between them, and from the English colonies would come coffee and other things, the English were the people who ate five meals a day because they had all those colonies. The newspapers could talk of nothing but zero hour. One day there was a rumour that the Germans had already crossed the Channel in barges, ships like small sailing rafts that moved very fast, the sea round the coasts of England was quite black with men. The Humbugs' daughters were very pleased and so were the Humbugs, everyone in the village square was talking about these little rafts, they were very very light and they had reached the coasts of England by night, swift and silent as arrows. But the newspapers said nothing about it, and gradually people were forced to conclude that it. was not true, goodness knows how the news got started, the Humbugs began playing bowls again, zero hour had not yet struck,

Giustino told Anna that none of the Humbugs' daughters meant anything at all to him, nor did the tall, thin girl mean anything to him, never yet had he fallen in love, zero hour had not struck for him either. He did not write love letters to the tall, thin girl, in fact he said to her in every letter what a beautiful thing friendship between a man and a woman was, the tall, thin girl asked if such a thing could exist and he swore it could. He had found a stanza of a French poem which said: “Si tu savais quel baume apporte—au coeur la presence d'un coeur—tu t'as-séyerais sous ma porte—comme une soeur.” He had copied out this stanza for the tall, thin girl, and so she knew that she had to sit at his door and that was all, nothing more. With the Humbugs' daughters it was different, he teased them and flirted with them a little. He was not like Ippolito, who walked along a street without ever looking at a woman. Then Anna and Giustino were silent, both of them thinking of Ippolito, how they had found him that morning in the public gardens. And then Giustino said he was going to look for the Humbugs' daughters, they were so silly that they kept him cheerful.

16

Anna left the house to go to the butcher's shop one day when it was raining very hard. Signora Maria had told her that she must have the meat, she had given her the basket and told her to be as quick as possible, Giustino had locked himself in his room and had shouted that they could go to the devil with their meat. Obviously he was writing to the tall, thin girl. As she walked Anna was thinking of the tall, thin girl, who had to sit at Giustino's door “
comme une soeur
”. And yet she was lucky, that tall, thin girl, to get a few letters from Giustino, even if he wrote to her only on rainy days. Giuma had never written to
her,
there had arrived simply a visiting card of Mammina's with condolences. All at once it seemed dreadful to Anna that Giuma had never written to her, that he had not even troubled to find out whether the business with the midwife was over. The rain came hissing down over the countryside, the paths were muddy rivulets and the ears of corn were bent down to the ground, whipped by wind and water. She ran floundering through the mud and thought how nobody loved her, they sent her out in the rain for a little bit of meat. She thought how she had neither father nor mother, and how she had found her brother dead on a seat and how she had a baby inside her. But she had not the courage to tell anybody about the baby, nor had she the courage to go and look for a midwife in the town. It seemed to her that she would have courage only for starting a revolution. She ran in despair through the rain. There was a car standing in the village square, a man was just coming out of the tobacconist's and trying to light a cigarette in the rain. He was wearing a long white waterproof which looked like a nightshirt, and a hat which was all out of shape and dripping. For a moment they looked each other in the face and she discovered all of a sudden that that was the only face in the world that she wanted to see. Then she ran across to him with a cry and started to weep on the shoulder of his waterproof. Cenzo Rena pulled out a big coloured handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

He took her to the car and they sat talking for a little shut up inside it under the hissing rain, underneath the big stone young man with the badge and the fez. She told him how it had been with Ippolito, how they had found him that morning in the public gardens. Cenzo Rena knew all about it already, he had had a letter from Giustino. He sighed and rubbed his hands all over his face while she was telling him. They went out of the village and the car started floundering slowly through the countryside. Really there was no need to go home at once, he said. He drove with one arm round her shoulders, she was crying and talking, she had no need to hunt for words, she told him everything little by little and her heart grew light, she wondered suddenly whether they were really such great friends, she and Cenzo Rena, she had. not thought about him very often but she had felt a great joy at seeing him, as though she had been waiting for him for a very long time. She told him how Ippolito had been while the Germans were invading France, how he used to walk up and down in his room and fumble in the drawers at night. But it had not been on account of a girl, it had been simply on account of the Germans and France and the war, and perhaps a great many other things too which nobody knew much about, very distant things, possibly. She felt that at last there was someone who was listening to her, when she talked to Giustino or Giuma there was always a kind of doubt in her mind as to whether they were really listening. She had no need to hunt for words, little by little she told him about the baby she was going to have, she looked at him and on his face she saw neither fear nor horror, his face was looking back at her attentively and was sorry for her. She pulled out the envelope that she kept pinned to her underclothes to show him the thousand lire, she said to him that he must come with her one day to look for a midwife in the town, perhaps it might be necessary to hunt round all over the town, it would be so much easier with the car. Then he asked her whose the baby was. She said it was Giuma's, she did not find it very easy to talk about Giuma. This was what Giuma was like, she said, he had blue eyes, he was always pushing back his hair from his forehead and he had small, sharp teeth, a little bit like a wolf's. He asked her whether they loved each other. And she said that perhaps they did not love each other so very much, Giuma had the girl Fiammetta as well, who went ski-ing in white velvet trousers. He asked her why they had made love if they did not love each other so very much, he asked her whether she wanted to spend her life making love here and there with anybody. She said she had not yet thought of how she wanted to spend her life. He asked her how old she was and she said she was sixteen. He said that at sixteen a person ought to begin to know how he wanted to spend his life. She said she wanted to spend her life making a revolution. Then he started laughing heartily, he had small teeth but not like a wolf's, he had separate, gay little teeth like so many grains of rice. He told her that there was no question of a revolution now.