Authors: Cesare Pavese
Then Rosetta asked me: "Do you think girls are fools to work? Should they sell themselves instead?"
Momina said, staring down at the water: "It looks more like a sewer than the sea. Do you suppose they wash their dishes here?"
"Going to the office is also selling oneself," I answered Rosetta. "There are dozens of ways to sell yourself. I don't know what is the most useless."
I don't know why I was saying such things, particularly to her. Especially since I didn't believe them myself.
Touched, Rosetta replied: "I know that life is hard..."
"Oh, drop it," Momina said. "All this political talk... Let's move."
Now we were walking in the middle of the street. Rosetta, reflective, kept glancing at me. Suddenly she said: "Please don't think I despise prostitutes. One does anything to keep alive... But isn't it simpler to live by working?"
"That's working, too," I said. "Don't think there's any other reason for it."
"I think that prostitutes are stupid," Momina said. "You only need to look at their faces."
"It depends on whom you call a prostitute," Rosetta said. "You're talking about the unlucky ones."
"It's all a matter of knowing how to look after yourself," Momina said.
Finally we got back to the Studebaker in the square, and our tearoom. Momina said: "Shall we go in?"
The other two were dancing among the palms, wrapped together like husband and wife. We stood by the bar and watched them awhile. Tall Mariella's blond head rose above the other dancers. There's one who knows how to take care of herself, I thought.
They came up to us, smiling a bit stupidly. They had had quite a few. The baron asked Rosetta to dance. They danced. Then we told him we ought to go back. Mariella, excited, said she would have liked to see Savona with us. Rosetta, very serious, said that she hadn't missed anything.
In an instant we were back at Noli and it wasn't yet evening. The sea began to take on color. We found the others in the cafe on the square, bored and noisy. We decided to eat there and then go back in comfort, without any more fuss.
23
The next day I had a visit from Nene at the Via Po. She wanted to see the fitting rooms and tell me what a fool she'd been to get sick. She examined the niches and mirrors, the porcelains and frames, and then invited me to a little party they wanted to give in Loris's studio. She asked why I didn't decorate the shop with something modern. She damned Febo. She discussed the Turin painters, knowingly and cleverly. I replied that I was seeing some projects through and had a lot of work these days.
The same day Mariella sent me a bouquet of white roses with a card: "In remembrance of an innocent trip." During dinner at Noli the baroness had asked us if we had had a good time in Savona. Mariella, too, invited me to an evening at her house: someone was going to read poetry. I said that I had a lot to do.
Morelli invited himself to dinner at my table. He asked why we didn't eat upstairs in my room. I replied that it wasn't proper even with a mistress.
Even Maurizio put in an appearance with a long letter; he wrote that he missed me; people in Rome were beginning to tease him about his widowhood, and I should please not come back married to a Turin football player. In short, I should tell him whether he was to confirm the renting of the villa for next summer. I suddenly realized I could no longer remember the faces of people in Rome, that I often confused Maurizio's with Guido's. But what I didn't confuse were those wild times with Guido, his fits of bad temper, his demands, and mine too, and the tranquil resignation I enjoyed with Maurizio. Maurizio was shrewd, Maurizio was in no hurry. You get things when you can finally live without them.
I talked about it with Rosetta when she came back for a visit. She appeared in her usual way, at the door, as I was going out. I told her I had been asked to Loris's party.
"Are you going?" she asked with a half smile.
"Nene wants me, Mariella wants me. When I was a girl and ate in dairy bars, such invitations would have driven me wild. But those days one used to go into the hills instead."
Rosetta asked me what I used to do on Sundays.
"I told you. To the hills. Or dancing. Or to the movies. Played around with the boys."
"Did you do that in the hills?"
"Not much. Much less than in other circles."
"Sometimes Loris used to take me to the cafes in the slums."
"Where blood flows," I said. "Have you ever seen blood flow?"
"Loris played billiards. There was often a floorshow. Disgusting women..."
"What do you think of those slums?"
"Those are things one does to see life. It's an existence, a suffering we can't understand."
"It's not enough just to see things. I'll bet that you got only one thing from all that experience."
"What?"
"You got to know Loris better."
Rosetta did something I didn't expect. She laughed. She laughed in her forced way, but she laughed. She said Nene was right: men are babies, and artists are doubly babies. It didn't take much to know Loris, much less than to get rid of him.
"I don't believe in this nonsense about babies," I said. "Men aren't babies. They even grow up without being mothered."
Rosetta made another unexpected response. "They dirty themselves," she said. "They dirty themselves like babies."
"What do you mean?"
"Whatever they touch. They dirty us, the bed, the work they do, the words they use..."
She spoke with conviction. She wasn't even irritated.
"The only difference," she said, "is that babies only foul themselves."
"Women don't foul?" I asked.
She looked at me frankly. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "I don't mean that. I'm not a lesbian. I've been a girl, that's all. But love in any form is a dirty thing."
Then I said: "Momina told me about you two. About that day at the sea when you opened the door and found her with someone. Is that what has disgusted you so?"
"Momina," Rosetta said, blushing, "does lots of crazy things. Sometimes she is laughing at us—but she agrees with me. She says there's no water that can clean people's bodies. It's life that's dirty. She says that everything is wrong."
I was about to ask her why she went on living then, but caught myself. I told her that when I had been in love, though I knew very well—one knows these things—that we were two maniacs, that my man was incompetent and slept at home all day while I went to work, still, despite all this, one can't learn to live alone unless one has first lived with someone else. There was nothing dirty about it, only an innocence—like animals perhaps—but also an innocence of clumsy people who only in that way can understand who they are.
"Anything can be dirty; it depends on what you mean by the word," I said. "Even dreaming or riding in a car can be dirty... Yesterday Nene vomited."
Rosetta listened with a half smile, more from the lips than from the eyes. It was Momina's smile when she was passing judgment on someone.
"And when love is over," she said tranquilly, as if everything were settled, "and you know who you are, what do you do with these things you've learned?"
"Life is long," I said. "Lovers didn't make the world. Every morning is another day."
"Momina says so too. But it's sad that it should be so." She looked at me the way a dog looks at you. We hadn't stopped in front of some shop windows I wanted to see, but had reached the hotel.
"Well, come to Loris's party," she said. "Mariella's going to bring me, too."
When Momina phoned me, I told her that Mariella was right: that she, Momina, sometimes went too far with Rosetta. But one should never discuss such things on the phone. I heard Momina's voice harden. I could even see her expression when she said: "That's nonsense."
I had to explain that I was only talking about their conversations.
That Rosetta seemed unhappy enough on her own account not to have to listen to her malicious jokes. That it was very important not to touch her on her sore spot. I kept talking and knew that talking was silly. Momina didn't even have to adjust her face; she cleared her throat as she listened.
At the end she said coldly: "Finished?"
"Listen, everyone spends all day putting his nose into other people's affairs. I hope it does some good. I've said my piece."
"And that fool Mariella..."
"Mariella has nothing to do with it. It's our discussion."
"I don't thank you."
"And who's asking you for thanks?"
"I understand."
Then, as if nothing had happened, we talked about what we would do in the evening.
24
Every now and then Momina took an interest in the shop and asked me if we would have it done in time for a spring opening.
"I'm fed up," I said, "discouraged. It's up to Febo now."
"But you work here a great deal."
"Considering all the beautiful show windows there already are in Turin, what do you expect?"
One evening I asked Becuccio if he had a girl. He joked, not committing himself. I told him that if he wanted to keep me company, go out somewhere together, I'd let him take me. He made light of it, not trusting himself to decide.
"Of course we go dutch," I said.
He looked at me wickedly, puffing out his cheeks. He had his outfit on—windbreaker, scarf, leather wristband. He touched his chin dubiously with two fingers.
"This evening," I said. "Not tomorrow. Right away."
"I've got to shave," he said.
"I'm leaving in half an hour."
He reappeared punctually. He must have run around God knows where to get some money. His hair was perfumed.
He said: "Let's eat and then go to a movie."
"I go to the movies alone. This evening I want to make the rounds."
"Then we'll make the rounds."
He took me to eat in a little Tuscan restaurant in Corso Regina. He said: "It's dirty, but the food's good."
I said: "Becuccio, no fooling now, where do you go with your friends?"
"We'll go there later," he said.
We ate and drank, talking about the store and when the people from Rome would come up for the opening. Becuccio had never seen a fashion show and asked if men were admitted. He complained that his work always ended with the fixtures and before the last coat of whitewash. I said that we would invite him.
"They're putting up another building in the Dora suburb," he said. "The supervisor is sending me."
He told me that in the two years he had been doing that kind of work he hadn't yet seen a room finished right. Contractors were always in a hurry at the end. He told me to watch out during the last days.
He poured me some wine. I had to stop him. I asked him if he wanted to get me drunk. "No," he said, "at least I'm paying for the wine."
Then he talked about the day workers who were putting in the shelves. Becuccio laughed. "That Royal Palace cabinetmaker. I'd have him making shelves, that monarchist."
At a certain point he crushed his cigarette and said he knew why he had come out with me this evening.
I looked at him. "Yes," he said, "this is my tip."
"What tip?"
"Sunday we'll be finished. My part will be finished. And you are giving me this present."
I looked at him. He spoke good-naturedly. He laughed with his eyes, self-contented.
"I wish it had happened earlier," he said. "But you are clever. You waited till the end."
My face felt hot. "Look out, I'm drunk," I said. "I've got nothing to lose."
He touched the bottle. "There isn't any more." He called the waitress.
I stopped his hand. "Not on your life. Now we're going to your friends'."
We went out to the avenue. He asked me if I really wanted to go, really wanted to watch him play billiards.
I said: "Are you ashamed of me?"
He suddenly took my arm as we walked and said that all women were alike. They said, "I'll watch while you play," and then they didn't like it, they acted as if they're at the dentist, they got bored. "I wouldn't like to take you there. I wouldn't enjoy you or the billiards. But I can't order you..."
"Why? Does your girl order you?"
"Don't they do the same in Rome?" he said. "Don't you order anyone, Clelia?"
Then I said: "Make up your mind. Where are we going?"
We went to dance at the Nirvana. Nothing less. Becuccio wanted to do things properly. It was a large, colonnaded room with a four- piece orchestra. I remembered it from that night with Morelli and Momina. It would be funny to meet someone now, I thought. Becuccio, in his windbreaker, guided me firmly to the tables in the rear. For a moment I imagined what going out with him every evening would be like. We would meet on a corner of the Corso Regina and one fine day I would see him roar up on a motorcycle. He would say, proud as a peacock: "Hold on tight. We'll hit sixty." What kind of man would Becuccio be?
We danced, joking about his girl. I said: "Suppose she found you here dancing with the boss, what would you do? Which of you would yell?"
"Depends on what excuse I could think up," Becuccio said, and winked.
I had made up my mind. I wasn't drunk, but the rancor, the tiredness and malice of earlier in the evening had left. I danced and talked contentedly, warm inside. Tomorrow I would start worrying again. But tonight that scrap of music and Becuccio's scarf were enough.
"Did you ever know girls," I asked him, "even experienced ones, who did it out of anger? Or even girls who wouldn't hear of it because they have it in for men in general? Girls who are bored to have someone in bed with them?"
Of course I was talking too much, talking just like Rosetta and the others. Becuccio had me in his arms, he bent me back, he practically walked on me. He had already whispered once in my ear: "Do you want to go?"
"Girls have a lot of funny ideas," he answered. "God knows where they get them. But once in bed, they stay."
"Sure?" I said.
He took my arm and we returned to the table. He circled my waist and squeezed me tightly.