Authors: Cesare Pavese
"No, Becuccio," I said, looking aside. "I like to be alone too."
"Shall we go?" he said.
Outside he tried to kiss me in the first doorway. "Good," I said. "I don't want to hurt any one."
"Let's not hurt ourselves," he said, laughing. He tried to kiss me again.
I let him. He nailed me against the wall. I felt the live shock of his mouth and the smell of his hair. I didn't open my lips.
"You're young," I said on his shoulder. "You're too young. I don't do this kind of thing in the street."
For a while we walked arm in arm, not knowing where. It seemed like those evenings with Guido when Rome was far away and I wasn't eighteen yet. It was the same sort of night, late March or September. The only difference was that Becuccio wasn't a soldier.
He went back to squeezing my middle. I wanted to kiss him. Instead I asked: "What are you thinking?"
He stopped, and stopped me. "That you should come with me," he said darkly.
"I'm coming," I said. "But it's a gift for tonight only. Remember."
25
Becuccio was a Communist and said that he had been in the war. I asked him if he had been a soldier. "I was in Germany," he told me.
Then I wondered about Carlotta, whether she was still alive and would ever again find herself waking like me, in a hotel room in Val Salice, with a window looking out on the trees.
"We even have a trolley line," Becuccio said.
He went down to pay, and we didn't have breakfast. The owner, in pajamas and waistcoat, silently watched us walk out. I was thinking that the important things always happen where one wouldn't expect it. A miserable little hotel, a room with a pitcher and basin, sheets to get between in the dark. Outside, Becuccio was smoking in the first rays of the sun.
I went back to my hotel alone. I wasn't tired, I was calm and happy. Becuccio had understood me, he hadn't insisted on coming. I was so happy that I almost promised myself: until Sunday, you can see him when you like. But I knew I shouldn't do it; I was already bored by his way of taking me by the chin and looking into my eyes.
At the hotel, Mariuccia brought in breakfast, saw the empty bed, and her eyes popped. I imagined her expression if she had seen me an hour earlier. I told her I wasn't in to anybody, and that I wanted to take a bath.
That morning I telephoned Febo at Via Po. He wasn't there. Becuccio answered. He called me "Miss" in his usual tone. I left some messages for Febo and then was free. I phoned Momina; she wasn't in. I phoned Mariella; they had gone to a Mass for some titled woman, a relative who had died a few weeks before. I knew the church, the Crocetta.
I went out and strolled very slowly along the avenues. The first leaves were coming out, and I thought of the woods of Val Salice. I arrived at the Crocetta just as the Mass was over,- the black and white announcement was still up, and the funeral decorations. I read the dead woman's name: she had been a tertiary, almost a nun. A group of girls and older women chattered beside the open doors of a large black car. A grating in front of the columns at the top of the steps closed off the loggia,- someone had told me it was put there to keep out the beggars and had been paid for by a special legacy. A woman was sitting by a basket on the lower steps, selling violets.
I don't know why, but I thought I'd go in. It was cold inside and a sacristan was snuffing the last candles on the altar. I stood by a pillar. All churches are alike. I breathed the smell of incense and dead flowers. It occurred to me that priests knew something about decoration too, but it's no trouble to them: it's always the same, and people come anyway.
Two women came out of the shadows, Rosetta and her mother. We nodded; at the door they dipped their fingers in the holy water and crossed themselves. The mother wore a fur and a black veil.
Outside, we said hello and Rosetta asked me to accompany them home, only a few steps. We mumbled about this and that; the mother complimented me on the shop; she carried a small black book. Her fur notwithstanding, she had a domestic air, and even while talking she seemed amazed at everything, she sighed. They stopped before the gate of a small, ivy-covered villa.
"Come and see us," the mother said. "It's a small house, but I'm sure you won't mind."
Rosetta was silent; then she said she would keep me company as far as the trolley.
Her mother said: "Don't be late. I leave her in your hands."
We walked down the little avenue. I heard about Momina and Mariella. I asked if many people had been there.
"Don't you think," Rosetta said, "that doing funerals, baptisms, and weddings in the same way is wrong? I can understand marrying or even being born—some people enjoy them and like to talk about them—but people who die should be left alone. Why go on tormenting them?"
"Some dead people like it," I said.
"Once, at least they buried suicides in secret."
I didn't answer, I kept on walking. I said suddenly: "Don't let us torment them, too..."
When we stopped at the corner, I said: "Rosetta, do you love your mother?"
"I suppose so," she faltered.
"Because your mother is very fond of you," I said. "... Look at the flowers on that tree. They look like puffs of white silk."
That afternoon I saw Becuccio again. He had climbed a ladder to attach a chandelier, and we talked from floor to ladder.
Febo was there, and we were leafing through photographs in the salon when I realized that Becuccio had come in noiselessly. A rush of blood ran to my face and I felt my knees trembling.
"What is it?" I said.
But Becuccio said quietly that people were waiting for me downstairs. It was Morelli with some women who had come to see what was going on. I handed them over to Febo and went down to speak to the electricians. Any day now, madame might show up and let loose the avalanche of the opening. Becuccio, running up and down the stairs, winked at me as if to say: I'll do it. Febo, Morelli, and the women soon left, inviting me to tea. I said no, that I had to stay on.
I stayed to test Becuccio. As I went through the empty rooms, some in half shadow, some blindingly lit up, I expected him to appear at every step. Instead I found him at the door, putting on his jacket.
"Going home, Becuccio?"
"Oh, here you are," he said. "How about a vermouth?"
We went to the cafe across the street, where we had been the first day. The cashier looked at me as she had then. Becuccio said he was sore at Febo because he was talking about changing the placement of the wires and tearing up the baseboards after he had already made them redo the shelves three times. Becuccio said he had known people like Febo in the war: the regular brass. "He must know his business," Becuccio said. "He damn well has to know it. They knew theirs, too. But I don't like people who waste material..."
As I drank the vermouth, I raised my glass a little as a sort of toast, said goodbye with my eyes; Becuccio wrinkled his forehead and smiled. No, he wasn't a boy.
That evening I found myself with Momina and Rosetta in the rooms of the gallery where we had planned the trip to Saint Vincent. Somebody was showing some paintings, but it wasn't necessary to look at them. We three remained seated while people drifted around us. I seemed to recognize all those faces, the same faces you see in hotels, salons, and at fashion shows. The paintings meant nothing to them. The thought crossed my mind that for Rosetta and Momina I must be the same type that Becuccio was for me. I don't much like people who waste material either. Rosetta and Momina had started discussing music.
26
Momina said she enjoyed art shows, concerts, and plays because there were a lot of people there. "Imagine being alone in a theater," she said. "Or in a gallery..."
"But it's the people who are annoying."
"Really?" Momina said. "These shows aren't always enjoyable —you only go when you want to see people and talk. Like going visiting."
"Music, no," Rosetta said. "You have to be alone with music. When they used to give passable concerts in Turin..."
I wondered what Becuccio would have said. But it was absurd even to think of him. There's nothing like spending a night together on the same pillow to understand that people are made differently and have their own road to follow.
I asked Rosetta: "Do you really like music?"
"I don't like it, but it's ... something. Maybe only suffering."
"It must be like painting," Momina said.
"Oh, no," Rosetta said. "Painting is an ambition. But listening to music, you let yourself go..."
I smiled to myself. With so many things in the world, with so many things that both of them knew and possessed, they discussed music as if it were cocaine or the first cigarette.
"I don't think that artists suffer at all," Momina said. "They make whoever listens feel worse, if he takes them seriously."
"It's others who suffer and enjoy," Rosetta said. "Always others..."
I said: "You mean, the winemaker never gets drunk?"
"Whores never enjoy it," Momina said. "Do you know anyone who's more a whore than Nene? She's intelligent, she has her craft at her fingertips, and all the temperament a sculptress could have. Why doesn't she stick to that? But no. She has to dress like a child, fall in love, get drunk. One of these days there'll be a baby. She has the face for it... She thinks that others fall for her babyishness."
"You're nasty," Rosetta said.
"Momina's right," I grumbled. "It's the work you do that counts, not how you do it."
"I don't know what counts," Momina said. She looked at us almost surprised, innocent. "I'm afraid nothing counts. We're all whores."
We took Rosetta home in the car and at the gateway she asked me again, embarrassed, to come to tea the next day. She asked Momina, too.
When I arrived, Momina was already there. Rosetta's mother, in turquoise velvet, was talking to a dry woman who shook hands, looking me over from stockings to hair, and complained about wide-pleated skirts, insisting that someone or other would soon narrow them. In these cases I always say that whoever doesn't accept a style when it's in fashion will wear it the next year when it's passed. Then Momina began to argue and joke with her, and Rosetta took me to the window and told me to be patient; that woman was a pest.
The mother's hand was certainly invisible in that light and airy living room. It was cut in two by an arch. On our side were the chairs and occasional tables; on the other, a large, triple-casemented window and a long gleaming table under a chandelier. I asked Rosetta if they had lived there very long. She said no, her earliest memories were of the house at Montalto. She was born in the suburb of San Paolo, near the factory, but the apartment was probably either destroyed or damaged.
"You will want to see the garden," the mother said.
Rosetta said: "Another time. It hasn't bloomed yet."
"Show her the pictures," her mother said. The pest had stopped talking about fashion and said that even in Turin beautiful things were made. "You people don't really have to come up from Rome," she said. "Isn't that so, Rosetta? We know how to cut cloth and paint."
She left after tea, to make another call. Rosetta's mother sighed, looking at us good-humoredly. "She means well," she said. "It's bad to be left a widow."
We went to Rosetta's room, which I barely glanced at, white and blue, with a window at the far end. In the corridor she opened a wardrobe to show me a dress that Momina said was wrong for her. I caught a glimpse of the blue tulle dress.
Altogether I liked the house. The mother, poor creature, must have enjoyed it as much as she enjoyed her daughter. The maid was a little peasant girl but wore black with a little white apron,- the mother wouldn't let her do anything, but served us herself.
Momina had taken off a shoe and was smoking distractedly in a chair.
After a while the father arrived, coming in cautiously with his glasses in his hand, his eyelids red. He was iron-gray, his mustache the same color; and he was stocky and a little stooped. But his expression was very like Rosetta's, impatient and stubborn.
Momina gave him her impudent smile and held out a hand from the depths of her chair. He bowed and muttered something to me, glancing at his wife. He was a man of antique cut, not like Morelli. Passing Rosetta, he touched her cheek caressingly; she shook her head.
He said he didn't mean to disturb us but that he was glad to meet me. Wasn't I the person who had come up from Rome to direct the new firm? At one time it had been Turin that opened branches in Rome. "Times change," he said. "You'll find it's not easy to stay on your feet in Turin. The war hit us hard."
He spoke in bursts, tired but positive. His wife brought him a cup of tea. He said: "At least in Rome you work?"
I said yes.
He looked around. "You have to dress. You're right. The world is made for you."
All on our feet now, we watched him holding his cup. His wife, heavy and patient in her turquoise velvet, waited. I realized that he was an old man, tolerated, and that only his work meant anything to the women. I also saw that he knew it and was grateful to us for having let him talk.
27
Rosetta told me that she didn't understand her father.
"I understand him," Momina said. "He's one of those men who used to wear beards. Then one night some woman would cut it off and they would spend the rest of their lives trying to redeem themselves."
"However, he made a Rosetta," I said.
"Probably he didn't know how to make her or not to make her."
Momina slowed down, stopped beside the portico, and none of us moved.
"Anyhow, Rosetta resembles him," she said. "Weren't you a good student, Rosetta? I'll bet your father is one of those who say: 'If I were a boy, I'd begin all over again.'"
Rosetta said, over my shoulder: "All young people are fools. And the old men, and the old women, and the dead. All of them wrong. Oh, Clelia, teach me how to earn a little money and get away to California. They say that there you never die."