All Our Yesterdays Read online

  Books by Natalia Ginzburg

  All Our Yesterdays

  Family Sayings

  The Little Virtues

  The City and the House

  The Manzoni Family

  Valentino and Sagittarius

  Family: Family and Borghesia,

  Two Novellas

  Voices in the Evening

  Copyright © 1952, 2012 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a.

  Translation copyright © 1956, 2012 by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  The character and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61145-666-0

  Contents

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART ONE

  THEIR mother’s portrait hung in the dining-room : a woman seated on a chair, wearing a hat with feathers in it, and with a long, tired, frightened face. She had always been weak in health, suffering from fits of giddiness and palpitations, and four children had been too much for her. She died not long after Anna’s birth.

  They used to go to the cemetery sometimes on Sundays, Anna, Giustino and Signora Maria. Concettina did not go, she never set foot outside the house on a Sunday ; it was a day she detested and she stayed shut up in her room mending her stockings, wearing her ugliest clothes. And Ippolito had to keep his father company. At the cemetery Signora Maria would pray, but the two children did not, because their father always said it was silly to pray, and perhaps God might exist but it was no use praying to Him, He was God and knew of His own accord how matters stood.

  Before the time of their mother’s death Signora Maria did not live with them but with their grandmother, their father’s mother, and they used to travel together. On Signora Maria’s suitcases were hotel labels, and in a cupboard there was a dress of hers with buttons in the shape of little fir-trees, bought in the Tyrol. Their grandmother had had a mania for travelling and never wanted to stop, and so she had run through all her money, for she liked going to smart hotels. Latterly she had turned very nasty, so Signora Maria said, because she could not bear having no money and could not make out how in the world this had happened, and every now and then she forgot and wanted to buy herself a hat, and Signora Maria had to drag her away from the shop-window, thumping the ground with her umbrella and chewing her veil with rage. Now she lay buried at Nice, the place where she had died, the place in which she had enjoyed herself so much as a young woman, when she was fresh and pretty and had all her money.

  Signora Maria was always pleased when she was able to talk about the money the old lady had had, and when she could tell stories and boast about the journeys they had taken. Signora Maria was very small, and when she was sitting down her feet did not touch the floor. For this reason, when she was sitting down she used to wrap herself round with a rug, because she did not like it to be seen that her feet did not reach the floor. The rug was a carriage rug, the one that she and the old lady used to spread over their knees twenty years before, when they drove about the town in a carriage. Signora Maria used to put a little touch of rouge on her cheeks, and she did not like to be seen early in the morning before she had put on her rouge, and so she would slip into the bathroom very quietly, holding her head down low ; and she started and was very angry if someone stopped her in the passage to ask her something. She always stayed quite a long time in the bathroom, and everyone would come and knock at the door and she would begin to shout that she was tired of living in that house, where no one had any respect for her, and she intended to pack her bags at once and go to her sister’s in Genoa. Two or three times she had pulled out her suitcases from underneath the wardrobe and had begun putting away her shoes in little cloth bags. The only thing to be done was to pretend nothing had happened, and then after a little she would start taking the shoes out again. In any case everyone knew that the sister in Genoa did not want her in her house.

  Signora Maria would come out of the bathroom fully dressed and with her hat on, and would then run out into the street with a shovel to collect dung to manure her rose-trees, moving very swiftly and taking good care that nobody was going past. Then she would go off with her string bag to do the shopping ; and her quick little feet in their little shoes with bows on them were capable of carrying her all over the town in half an hour. Every morning she ransacked the entire town to find where things were cheapest, and she came home dead tired, and was always in a bad humour after doing the shopping, and would get angry with Concettina who was still in her dressing-gown, and say that never would she have believed, when she was sitting in the carriage beside the old lady, her knees nice and warm under the rug and people greeting them as they went by, that one day she would have to go toiling round the town with a string bag. Concettina would be very slowly brushing her hair in front of the looking-glass, and then she would put her face close to the glass and look at her freckles one by one, and look at her teeth and her gums and put out her tongue and look at that too. She combed her hair and knotted it in a tight roll at the back of her neck, with a ruffled fringe on her forehead, and this fringe made her look exactly like a cocotte, Signora Maria said. Then she would throw open the door of the wardrobe and consider which dress to put on. In the meantime Signora Maria would be throwing off bedclothes and beating carpets, a handkerchief tied round her head and her sleeves rolled up over her dry, withered arms, but she would run away from the window if she saw the lady of the house opposite appear on her balcony, for she did not like to be seen with a handkerchief round her head, beating carpets, remembering that she had come to the house as a lady companion—and look at the things she had to do now !

  The lady of the house opposite had a fringe too, but it was a fringe that had been curled by the hairdresser and then put into a graceful disorder, and Signora Maria said she looked younger than Concettina, when she came out in the morning in one of her fresh, bright-coloured wraps, although it was known for certain that she was forty-five.

  There were days when Concettina could not manage to find any dress to put on. She tried skirts and blouses, belts, flowers at her bosom, and nothing pleased her. Then she would begin to cry and complain what an unlucky creature she was, without a single pretty dress to wear, and with such a bad figure into the bargain. Signora Maria would shut the windows so that no one in the house opposite should hear. “You haven’t a bad figure,” she would say, “it’s just that you’re a bit heavy in the hips and a bit flat in the chest. Like your grandmother ; she was flat-chested too.” Concettina bawled and sobbed, throwing herself half-undressed on the unmade bed, and then all her troubles would come out, the exams she had to pass and the difficulties with her fiancés.

  Concettina had so many fiancés. She was always changing them. One of them was always standing in front of the gate, one who had
a broad, square face and wore, in place of a shirt, a scarf, fastened together with a safety-pin. He was called Danilo. Concettina said she had given him up some time ago, but he had not yet resigned himself to this and walked up and down in front of the gate, his hands behind his back and his cap pulled down over his forehead. Signora Maria was afraid he might come in all of a sudden and make a scene with Concettina, and she went to Concettina’s father to complain about all the troubles the girl had with her fiancés, and drew him over to the window to look at Danilo with his cap and his hands behind his back, and wanted him to go down and send him away. However Concettina’s father said that the street belongs to everybody and one has no right to drive away a man from a street; and he pulled out his old revolver and put it on his desk, in case Danilo suddenly climbed over the gate. And he pushed Signora Maria out of the room, because he wanted to be left in peace to his writing.

  He was writing a big book of memoirs. He had been writing it for many years, he had in fact given up his work as a lawyer in order to be able to write it. It was entitled Nothing but the Truth and it contained fiery attacks upon the Fascists and the King. The old man used to laugh and rub his hands together at the thought that the King and Mussolini knew nothing about it, while in a small town in Italy there was a man writing fiery remarks about them. He was telling the whole story of his life, the Caporetto retreat in which he had been involved and all the things he had seen, and the gatherings of Socialists and the March on Rome and all the fellows who had changed their shirts in his own little town, people who had appeared honest and decent and the shady, dirty things they had afterwards done—“nothing but the truth”. For months and months he wrote, ringing the bell every minute to ask for coffee, and the room was full of smoke, and even at night he sat up writing, or called Ippolito to write while he dictated. Ippolito would tap hard on the typewriter, and his father would walk up and down the room in his pyjamas as he dictated, and nobody could get to sleep, because the house had thin walls, and Signora Maria would turn over and over in her bed, trembling with fear lest someone in the street should hear the old man’s raised voice and the fiery things he was saying against Mussolini. But then all at once the old man lost heart, and his book no longer seemed so fine to him, and then he said that the Italians were all wrong but that you certainly could not change them by means of a book. He said he would like to go out along the street shooting off his revolver, or else that he did not want to do anything at all, just to lie on his back and sleep and wait for death to come. He no longer left his room ; he spent his days in bed and made Ippolito read Faust to him. And then he would call Giustino and Anna and tell them how sorry he was that he had never done the things a father usually does, he had never taken them to the cinema or even out for a walk. And he called Concettina and wanted to know about her exams and about her fiancés. He became very kind when he was sad. He woke up one morning and no longer felt so sad ; he made Ippolito massage his back with a horsehair glove, and he wanted his white flannel trousers. He went and sat in the garden and asked them to bring him his coffee there, but he always found it too weak and gulped it down with disgust. He would sit in the garden all the morning, his pipe between his long, white teeth, his thin, wrinkled face screwed up into a grimace, and it was impossible to make out whether this was because of the sun or because of his disgust at the coffee, or because of the effort of holding the pipe in his teeth alone. He made no excuses for anything to anybody after he had stopped feeling sad, and he used to flog the rose-trees with his cane while he was thinking afresh about his book of memoirs, and then Signora Maria would be distressed about the rose-trees which were so dear to her-heart, and every morning she made the sacrifice of going out into the street to collect dung in her shovel, notwithstanding the risk that someone might see and laugh at her.

  The old man had not a single friend. Occasionally he went out and walked all over the town, with a contemptuous, hostile air, and he would sit in a café in the centre of the town looking at the people passing, in order to be seen by those whom he had once known very well, to show he was still alive and meant them to be angry with him. He would come home well satisfied when he had seen one of the ones who had once been Socialists like himself and were now Fascists, and who did not know the things that were written about them in his book of memoirs, about the time when they were honest and decent people and about the shady, dirty things they had afterwards done. At table the old man would rub his hands together and say that if God existed, He would let him live till the end of Fascism, so that he could publish his book and see people’s faces. He said that in that way one would know at last whether this God existed or not, but he himself thought, on the whole, that He did not exist, or again, possibly He did exist but was on Mussolini’s side. After the meal the old man would say, “Giustino, go and buy me a paper. Make yourself useful, seeing that you’re not ornamental.” For there was nothing kindly about him when he was not sad.

  From time to time big boxes of chocolates used to arrive, sent by Cenzo Rena, who had been a great friend of the old man’s at one time. Picture post-cards also used to arrive from him, from all parts of the world, for Cenzo Rena was always travelling, and Signora Maria would recognize the places where she had been with the old lady, and she stuck the post-cards into her dressing-table mirror. But the old man did not like to hear Cenzo Rena’s name mentioned, because they had been friends but had then had a terrible quarrel, and when he saw the chocolates arrive he would shrug his shoulders and snort with rage, and Ippolito had to write secretly to Cenzo Rena to thank him and to give news of the old man.

  Concettina and Anna had piano lessons twice a week. A timid little ring would be heard, Anna would open the gate, and the music-master would walk across the garden, stopping to look at the rose-trees, for he knew the story of the dung and the shovel, and also he hoped that the old man would pop out from some corner of the garden. At first the old man had paid him a great deal of attention and had imagined that this music-master was a great man ; he had sat him down in his own room and given him his own tobacco to smoke, and had tapped him hard on the knee and told him over and over again that he was an exceptional person. The music-master was engaged in writing a Latin grammar in verse ; he copied it out into a little exercise-book and every time he came he was anxious that the old man should hear a few new stanzas. And all of a sudden the old man had become terribly tired of him; he did not wish to hear any more new stanzas of the grammar, and when the music-master’s timid little ring at the gate was heard the old man could be seen escaping up the stairs to hide where best he could. The music-master could not resign himself to being no longer welcomed in the old man’s room, and he would talk in a loud voice in the passage and read out his stanzas, looking this way and that all the time. Then he grew sad, and used to ask Concettina and Anna whether he had perhaps offended their father without knowing it. Neither Anna nor Concettina played well. They were both sick of these lessons and wanted to stop them, but Signora Maria was unwilling because the music-master’s was the only face from the outside world that was ever seen inside the house. And a house is really too gloomy, she said, without a few visitors now and then. She herself was always present at the piano-lessons, with her rug over her knees and her crochet-work. And afterwards she used to carry on a conversation with the music-master and listen to his new stanzas, and he would stay on till it was quite late, still in the hope of seeing the old man.

  The music-master was in very truth the only stranger who came to the house. There was indeed a nephew of Signora Maria’s who put in an occasional appearance— the son of that sister of hers at Genoa ; he was studying to be a veterinary surgeon and at Genoa he always failed in his exams, and so he had come to study in this little town where the exams were much easier, but even so he failed from time to time. In any case he was not a real stranger because everyone had seen him constantly ever since he had been a child, and Signora Maria was always on tenterhooks when he arrived, for fear the old man should trea
t him unkindly. The old man did not want anyone about the house, and even Concettina’s fiancés were not allowed to enter the gate.

  In the summer they all had to go to Le Visciole, every year. Each time Concettina wept because she wanted to go to the seaside, or else to stay in the town with her fiancés. And Signora Maria, too, was in despair, because of the contadino’s wife there, for they had quarrelled one day when the pig had eaten some handkerchiefs. And Giustino and Anna, too, who as children had enjoyed themselves at Le Visciole, now wore cross expressions when they had to go there. They hoped their father would let them go one summer to stay with Cenzo Rena in a kind of castle he possessed, for Cenzo Rena wrote every year to invite them. But their father did not wish them to go and said that in any case it was an ugly castle, a wretched thing with poor little towers ; Cenzo Rena only thought it beautiful because he had spent money on it. Money is the devil’s excrement, said their father.

  They went to Le Visciole by a little local train. It was near, but departure was a complicated business, for the old man gave no one any peace during the days when the packing had to be done ; he flew into rages with Ippolito and with Signora Maria and the trunks had to be packed and unpacked a hundred times over. And Concertina’s fiancés, who had come to bid her good-bye, hung about the gate, and she cried because she was filled with a tremendous rage at having to stay for so many months at Le Visciole, where she grew fat from boredom and there wasn’t even a tennis-court.

  They left early in the morning, and the old man was in a very bad temper throughout the journey, because the little train was crowded and people were eating and drinking, and he was afraid they would soil his trousers with wine. Never once did he fail to start a quarrel in the train. Then he would get angry with Signora Maria, who always had numbers of little bundles and baskets and her shoes in cloth bags stuck about all over the place, and in her string bag a wine-flask of coffee and milk ; the old man was particularly disgusted at this flask, to him it seemed revolting to see coffee and milk in a wine-flask; and he said to Signora Maria that he quite failed to understand how the old lady could have wanted to take her about with her on so many journeys. But when they arrived at Le Visciole he was content. He sat himself down under the pergola and took in deep, strong breaths, breath after breath, and said how good the air tasted, It had such a strong, fresh taste that he felt he was taking a drink each time he breathed. And he called the contadino and greeted him warmly, and called Ippolito to see whether he didn’t-think the contadino looked like a Van Gogh picture ; he made the contadino sit with his face supported on his hand and put his hat on his head, and asked if he didn’t look like a real Van Gogh. After the contadino had gone, Ippolito said he might indeed be a Van Gogh, but he was also a thief because he stole grain and wine. The old man flew into a great rage. He had played with this contadino as a boy, and he could not allow Ippolito to start pouring contempt in this way upon the things of his childhood, and it was much worse to pour contempt upon the childhood of one’s father than to keep back a few pounds of grain when you needed it. Ippolito made no answer, he held his dog between his legs and stroked its ears. As soon as he arrived at Le Visciole he used to put on an old fustian jacket and high boots, and he went about dressed like that the whole summer, and he was shockingly dirty, and besides, he must be bursting with heat, said Signora Maria. But Ippolito never looked hot, he did not sweat and his face was always dry and smooth, and he used to go about the countryside with the dog in the hot noonday sun. The dog ate the armchairs and had fleas, and Signora Maria wanted to give it away, but Ippolito was mad about this dog, and once when the dog was ill he had kept it in his room at night, getting up to make bread and milk for it. He would have liked to take it with him to the town, instead of which he had to leave it at Le Visciole with the contadino who did not look after it and who gave it bad food, and Ippolito was always much distressed in the autumn when he had to say good-bye to the dog, but his father agreed with Signora Maria about the dog and would not hear of having it in the town. So Ippolito would have to wait patiently for him to die, his father said, and really, perhaps Ippolito did hope very much that he would die soon, perhaps this was his pet dream, to be able to go for a walk in the town with his dog.