All Our Yesterdays (26 page)

6

During the summer Anna had a letter from Signora Maria in which she stated, in obscure terms, that she never wished to see Concettina again, nor Concettina's mother-in-law either, she had come away from that house for good. She wrote from Turin, she was in a boarding-house at Turin and was very ill, she would have come to San Costanzo but she was unable to move. Cenzo Rena said to Anna that she must go and fetch her, Concettina was really a monster to let a poor old woman go and die in a boarding-house at Turin. He himself could not leave San Costanzo because the dysentery season was just on the point of beginning, and he did not trust either the doctor or the chemist, he had to stand over them both all the time. And besides, he had started teaching English in the evenings to the
contadino
Giuseppe. He told her to leave the baby and go off alone and free, it was the first journey she had ever taken by herself in her whole life and very likely she would quite enjoy it.

She started off and during the journey her heart beat fast with the pleasure of travelling alone for the first time. She rather forgot Signora Maria and listened to the strong pulsating of the train as it went through fields and towns, and she was very happy not to have San Costanzo in front of her any more, but a swift flow of changing things in that strong pulsating movement. It was a long journey, she had to pass through a great part of Italy. Before leaving, Anna had had a dress made for herself by the San Costanzo dressmaker, a dress which, in the dressmaker's room, she had thought beautiful but which she now saw was not beautiful at all, when she looked at the dresses of the ladies in the train; it did not resemble any of these dresses but instead it resembled a curtain. Anna thought that Signora Maria would think it beautiful because it so closely resembled the dresses she herself used to make for her. Signora Maria, however, did not consider it at all beautiful, she looked at it from every direction and said it was very badly cut, in any case it was crumpled from the train and needed ironing. Signora Maria was living in a boarding-house called the “Pensione Corona”. Anna met her in the street a few steps away from the boarding-house, with a string bag full of small green tomatoes. She was surprised to see her in the street, she thought she was ill in bed. Signora Maria said she had got up only that morning and had continual fits of giddiness, she put two fingers up to her forehead and swayed as though she were on the point of fainting, she had come out simply in order to buy three or four little tomatoes because at the boarding-house there was not enough to eat. They went up to her room and Signora Maria at once started cutting the tomatoes in slices and pouring oil upon them out of a small beer-bottle, but now and then she remembered that she had been ill and swayed slightly. The room was full of folded tablecloths and towels, all the things which Anna's grandmother had left to Signora Maria, and besides that there were Signora Maria's dresses and coats and hats of which she had a very large number, there were some on the bed and on the chairs and even outside on the balcony. She wanted Anna to eat the tomatoes but Anna did not want to, so she started to eat them herself and all the time she talked about Concettina, she could never have believed that Concettina could be so unkind to her, of course she had been egged on by her mother-in-law who was a miserly, suspicious old woman and who always came into the kitchen to see what Signora Maria was cooking, sometimes she was cooking herself an apple to eat in her room before she went to sleep, because she slept better if she had eaten an apple. One day she had taken the baby out and it had started to rain slightly, she had gone with the baby into a doorway and he had hardly got wet at all, and when she came back home Concettina had started shouting that it was her fault if the child was always catching sore throats, she felt the child's feet and said they were soaking wet, so she told her that she had gone into a doorway, but all of a sudden Concettina's mother-in-law had come in and they both of them shouted at her, Concettina and her mother-in-law, and the mother-in-law said she was always in the kitchen brewing up mixtures and using up all the sugar, she had even come close up to her and given her a bit of a shaking, Signora Maria had said she was not going to allow anyone to lay hands on her. Signor Sbrancagna had been the only one to defend her, he had said that the child was not wet and that in any case it was a warm rain. But she had packed her bags and left, right up till the last moment while she was getting ready to go she had thought that Concettina would come and ask her pardon, but Concettina had stayed shut up in her room. Signora Maria recalled all the sacrifices she had made for Concettina, how she had gone to pawn the jewellery for her trousseau, and how she had made her trousseau for her all out of real linen, now, with the war on, you couldn't find the smallest piece of real linen in all Italy. Signora Maria did not wish ever to see Concettina again, Concettina might drag herself on her knees to the Pensione Corona but now she could never forgive her. She was only sorry on account of the child who had grown so very fond of her, she chattered for a moment about the child but very soon stopped again. She said she was not coming to San Costanzo because she hadn't the strength to walk up over those rocks, and besides, she didn't want to become fond of Anna's baby, she did not wish ever to become fond of anyone again because it only led to trouble. No, the Pensione Corona was the right thing for her now, it did not cost much and in any case Cenzo Rena sent her some money from time to time, he was a man who had understood her situation. Once upon a time she had made a will in which she left a great part of what she had to Concettina, but now she had torn up that will, now she wanted to leave what she had to Anna. She made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the shoes and towels scattered about the room and said, “After my death all this will be yours.”

They went down to lunch at the
table d'h
ô
te
and Anna realized that Signora Maria was happy at this Pensione Corona, perhaps it reminded her of the hotels in which she had stayed once upon a time with the old lady, but it was just a dreary boarding-house and the
table d'hôte
was a table in the form of a horseshoe at which a large number of little old ladies like Signora Maria had their meals, each one had her little bottle of oil and they ate bowls of hot water with herbs in it and a couple of anchovies and eight cherries each. Signora Maria was very friendly with these other old ladies, and she introduced Anna as her niece, she explained to her in a low voice in French that it was no use going into a great many details. In the afternoon Anna went out for a walk by herself because Signora Maria was very much taken up with the other old ladies, they invited one another to their rooms and drank substitute coffee. Anna would have liked to go and see Concettina at their own town, but Signora Maria told her that Concettina had gone off to the mountains with the baby and her mother-in-law, Concettina belonged entirely to her mother-in-law nowadays and had no more sisters and brothers, she might as well have a cross put up over her.

Anna went for many walks by herself during those days that she stayed at Turin, because Signora Maria always had engagements with the little old women in the boarding-house and with other acquaintances whom she said she had in Turin, Anna used to see her going out with big parcels under her arm and suspected that she was going off to sell clothes or towels, things that the old lady had left her. But as for clothes and towels and shoes, there was always a heap of them in her room, there were even some on the desk, between a picture of Ippolito and the plate of tomatoes.

It was the month of July and the streets of Turin were hot and deserted, the asphalt was melting and stuck to your shoes, Anna walked along very slowly on this burning asphalt with big bags of cherries and ate them as she looked into the shop windows, there were not many things in the windows but she enjoyed looking into them all the same because at San Costanzo there were only two shop windows, the draper's and the food-shop with the famous almond paste that sent Cenzo Rena into a rage. The public gardens were now to be seen without any railings because the iron had been requisitioned, and inside the public gardens were to be seen stone kiosks and arrows pointing to the underground air raid shelters, the air raid warning would sound and people would go without haste and without any confidence down those short stairs, they were not much frightened because there had not been any big raids and very often the siren would sound and then nothing would happen, in any case people said that the underground shelters were not dug deep enough below the ground to be really safe. These underground shelters were usually occupied by couples for the purpose of making love, people who went down into them when the air raid alarm sounded used to find quantities of couples kissing and whispering.

One afternoon when Anna was walking along the Corso all of a sudden she saw Giuma coming towards her. He had not recognized her and was walking quietly towards her, his jacket thrown over his shoulders and the usual lock of hair over his eyes. Suddenly they found themselves face to face and he gave a start, but he recovered himself and made her a sort of little bow.

They walked along together and exchanged a few first hesitating words. He was there studying, he had told Mammina that he refused to have anything more to do with their own little town. He was studying commercial sciences but he still thought of taking a degree in philosophy some time or other. He was attending lectures in philosophy all the time as well. He was living in a furnished room and taking his meals at a students' canteen, very often in the evenings he cooked something for himself in his room so as to save money. It was vacation-time now but all the same he was not going home, at home there was Mammina whom he could no longer manage to put up with. He had made a mess of so many of the things in his life, he said, now he wanted to live in quite a different way. Anna saw that his shoes were dusty and worn and that his white trousers were rather dirty, they were his old tennis trousers but dirty and worn, and he no longer had the watch in the black shell, he had no watch and he asked a passer-by what time it was. He invited her to have some substitute coffee with him. They went into a café and sat down inside in the half-darkness, all of a sudden the expression on his face relaxed and he smiled, he seemed very pleased to be there with her in the café. He asked her if she still remembered the Paris café. Its owner had never had the money to finish doing it up and had sold it, the Paris café had now become a tobacconist's shop.

He asked her for news of Giustino at the war. He said that he himself would never go to the war, if the war went on for a long time and they called up his class he would do anything in the world not to go, perhaps he would manage to develop some serious illness. Or perhaps he would do as Ippolito did, on a seat in the public gardens. He thought a great deal about Ippolito, very often he had a great desire to do as he did. He was sorry he had not been a friend of Ippolito's, he understood now what a lot of things they might have said to each other, very often nowadays he was alone in his room and he talked to Ippolito just as though he had him there in front of him. It had been a beautiful death. It had been a beautiful death and it had left a full and serene memory to anyone who could understand it, of course there were vulgar people who did not understand it, who thought it was cowardly to choose a seat in the public gardens to die on. But he himself, Giuma, lived by the thought that he could always choose himself a seat in the public gardens some time or other. He had had difficult moments, he said, and he lowered his eyes, clasping and unclasping his hands. Very difficult moments, and he had thought much of seats in public gardens. Anna asked him if it had been because the girl Fiammetta had been unwilling to marry him. That too, he said, that too, and his voice went small and fragile, but in truth that girl had been just a small detail in the whole mass of things. His chief trouble was that he had no one to talk to, and so he took to talking to Ippolito, who was dead. It was not cheerful, talking to the dead. Also he found it very difficult to remember Ippolito's face, he had seen him only a few times and as it were hastily, he used to go into Emanuele's room to look at his portrait. What a beautiful face Ippolito had had, nobody among the people you met had such a beautiful face. But Emanuele had at once been frightened at seeing him looking at the portrait of Ippolito, he had asked him what there was for him to look at, and when he went out he had followed him with a very suspicious air. He had followed him but then they had not known what to say to each other, Giuma when he was with Emanuele felt a tightness in his throat and not a single word would come out. It had been Emanuele who had insisted upon Mammina allowing him to study at Turin. Every now and then he came to see him in Turin and asked him clumsy questions, he wanted to know whether he had any girl friends. No, he had no girl friends now. He had no friends of any kind, he stayed shut up in his room reading the philosophers, he never even went to the cinema and he was careful not to spend money because he had come to hate money, it made him think of the people who were dying of hunger. He asked Anna whether she still remembered their conversations about justice, now all of a sudden he had seen that she had been right about justice, he remembered that he had laughed when they had talked about the revolution. Now all of a sudden he had started to believe in the revolution. He ordered some grey-looking cakes and ate three or four of them hurriedly, he said that was the only dinner he had, he did not have anything else. Anna asked him all at once whether he knew she had had a baby girl. Yes, he said, he had heard about it, and immediately he went red and looked away from her. He started violently stirring his sham coffee. And how was San Costanzo, he asked her, Emanuele had spoken to him about it but in his usual superficial, fatuous way, Emanuele was a good chap but so very superficial. He could not endure Emanuele and Mammina any longer, if he ever went home he felt that he would explode, Mammina still had her provisions, her lady friends and her bridge. He could not understand now how he could have lived so long in that house, dragging round the drawing-rooms with Mammina, expecting to have a job in the soap factory some day. He was studying commercial sciences to please Mammina but he had no intention of ever setting foot in a factory. It was getting late, Anna said she must go, she had to pack her bag because she was leaving next day. He begged her to stay a moment longer, he still wanted to say something to her, Anna waited with her heart beating fast. He pushed back the lock of hair from his forehead and asked her if he had made her suffer a great deal, he himself had suffered too now and he knew what it was, he knew he had been very cruel to her. No, Anna said, no. Then he heaved a long sigh and slipped on his jacket and they went out of the café. And afterwards they could hardly find anything to say to one another, he merely went on and on repeating that he was now going to his room to read and that he had already had his dinner, his whole dinner had consisted of those grey cakes and that sham coffee. He said good-bye to her at the door of the Pensione Corona, he looked for a little at the front of the Pensione Corona and said it was like Paris, poor Paris, he said, poor France, now there was General Pétain. He walked off with a step which had grown very slow and listless,' she stood looking at him from the door, he turned round towards her again for a second and waved his hand, he smiled with his wolf-like teeth. She started going up the stairs of the boarding-house and wondered if it had really been true, if she had really spent that afternoon with Giuma in a café. She left Turin again next morning, on the platform at the station stood Signora Maria waving her handkerchief exactly as she had once been used to shake the dust out of her duster at the window. At the last moment Signora Maria had wanted to make her a present of a cape, she said these were much worn. As soon as the train moved Anna took off the cape, which was a mantle of pale lilac silk.