All Our Yesterdays Read online

  Such was Borgo San Costanzo, Cenzo Rena’s village, and the day that Anna and Cenzo Rena arrived in the village square all the people had come out to see what sort of a wife Cenzo Rena had taken to himself, and they were disappointed with this little wife with her dishevelled hair, wearing Cenzo Rena’s waterproof that came down to her ankles. They decided that she looked like the daughters of the draper, but worse, and they considered that there was no need to go a long way away to find a wife like that. The old Marchesa, too, was peering out of her carriage, with her plump, powdered face and blue paint on her eyelids and all round her eyes, and to Anna they all appeared to be contadini of the South, including the old Marchesa and the draper, who was standing in the doorway of his shop with his fingers thrust into his waistcoat. And after a minute she had a terrible longing to be back again in her own home, at Le Visciole or at the house in their own little town, with Giustino and Signora Maria and without any contadini of the South, and as soon as she found herself in the village square even Cenzo Rena seemed like a stranger, even he seemed something like a contadino of the South, and all of a sudden he appeared to have forgotten her and he had started talking very earnestly to a man on a donkey, they were very friendly and goodness knows what they were planning together, something to do with Government land. They laughed loudly and slapped each other on the back, and there was she, standing waiting amongst those four trees, and beside her she had La Maschiona with her big bare feet in the dust, and she hunted for a few words to say to La Maschiona but could not find any words at all, and La Maschiona was looking at her in a fright, and every now and then would heave a sigh and rub her big brown nose with the palm of her hand. The dog, on the other hand, was very pleased to be out of the car, and was running about the square barking in the midst of a heap of children, and rolling in the yellow, sandy dust, and then it went and scratched in the rubbish heap behind the draper’s shop.

  Cenzo Rena at once had a collar made for the dog with iron spikes on it, because sometimes in the winter at Borgo San Costanzo the wolves came down, they came down from the pine woods and all the dogs had collars of this kind so as to be able to defend themselves. On account of the wolves La Maschiona had never consented to sleep in that house at the edge of the pine wood, and in the evening she would take her bucket with the offscourings of the plates and run off to sleep at her own home down below, amongst a heap of nephews and nieces and sisters, for even in summer she thought she could hear a howling of wolves in the pine wood at night. The offscourings of the plates were for the pigs, her own pig and Cenzo Rena’s, which were brought up together in her mother’s pigsty. She came back early in the morning, climbing with her big bare feet up the tumbled mass of rocks, and circled about the rooms with a flask, sprinkling water over the brick floors.

  Cenzo Rena’s house consisted of large, almost empty rooms, with black cupboards that looked like coffins against the white walls, and with canvas deck-chairs, Cenzo Rena could not bear any other kind of armchair but these. All round were to be seen the useless and not beautiful objects that he bought when he went on his travels, tobacco-pouches embroidered in silver and long pipes with carved bowls and Tartar cloaks and fur caps, but nothing succeeded in filling those big rooms, with their cold deck-chairs.

  Sometimes contadini would come to Cenzo Rena’s house. They would come even from distant villages, to ask his advice and get him to write letters for them, they asked his advice about everything, about illnesses and marriages and the buying and selling of farms and about questions of Government land and about how not to go to the war. Sometimes they had nothing much to ask him, but they enjoyed sitting on those strange canvas chairs and seeing whether La Maschiona would bring grappa or wine. Cenzo Rena called them all by name and laughed loudly with them, and Anna did not like the way he laughed with them and slapped them on the back and talked the local dialect with them. It seemed to her that he enjoyed acting as the protector of the contadini. When no contadini came, Cenzo Rena was very gloomy. He wandered idly about the rooms, he touched the Tartar cloaks and the pipes and said he was dying to go on his travels again, to get into a train and be carried far away, to get out at a strange station and fill his pockets with strange newspapers and sit down in a bar and order something green to drink. He cursed the war for not allowing him to travel, and he cursed the smell of the mutton that La Maschiona was cooking for supper, black, old mutton was all you could get to eat at Borgo San Costanzo since the war had started, and all desire to eat was taken away by the memory of the big wethers coming back from pasture with their old paunches encrusted with mud. Then he would take the car and go off with Anna beyond the village along the sandy road, in search of other villages scattered amongst the hills and other contadini, there was always someone who welcomed him and offered him wine and talked to him about the Government land. And so Cenzo Rena would be happy again. Anna would sit in a corner and sip her wine slowly, and she had a terrible longing to be somewhere else, in some place without contadini.

  Cenzo Rena explained to Anna that these were not among the most wretched of the villages, the truly wretched villages were still further south, villages of utterly poor contadini, without either schools or chemists’ shops or doctors. At Borgo San Costanzo there was a doctor and a school, but the doctor took no interest in illness and the schoolmistress took no interest in teaching, with the years they became more and more depressed and more and more cynical, allowing their work to crumble away in their hands. And so even that was a fairly wretched village, and after the war there would have to be a revolution. Anna, at the mention of revolution, woke up and asked if he would allow her to take part in the revolution with him. But starting a revolution meant, to Cenzo Rena, going to the municipal offices and pulling out all the old deeds crumbling in the drawers, and making the Marchesa disgorge money for improving the drainage and setting up a dispensary, with an active doctor who would not let himself crumble away. All these were things that at present seemed like a dream, because Fascism was in power and Fascism wanted people to let themselves crumble away. This kind of revolution did not please Anna, revolution to her meant shooting and escaping over the roof-tops, and she felt sad at the thought of Cenzo Rena’s dull revolution, just a few deeds thrown away and a quarrel with the old Marchesa.

  One day they came to Cenzo Rena to tell him that some Jews were on the point of arriving at Borgo San Costanzo. The police authorities were distributing Jews here and there in small villages, for fear that if they remained in the towns they would harm the war in some way. There were some already at Masuri, at Scoturno, only San Costanzo seemed to have been forgotten. But now they were on the point of arriving. For a short time the people of San Costanzo had hopes of the Jews, at Masuri and the other villages very rich Jews had arrived, who spent a great deal of money. They waited for the Jews in the village square. But the Jews who arrived at San Costanzo were poor Jews, three ragged little old women from Livorno with a canary in a cage, and a Turk who was trembling with cold in a light-coloured overcoat. The little old women from Livorno at once started showing the kind of shoes they were wearing, with soles worn right through to their stockings. The Secretary of the Commune took the Turk to the inn which was close by, in the village square, on the floor above the wine-shop, and the old women were taken in by the tailor, in a kind of barn that he owned. The little old women’s canary died at once, La Maschiona had predicted that it would, this was no village for canaries.

  Gradually the Turk and the little old women became village faces, everyone had grown accustomed to seeing them and had found out all about them, and now everyone said that Jews were just the same as other people, and why in the world did the police authorities not want them in the towns, what sort of harm could they possibly do? And these Jews were poor, too, and they had to be helped, anyone who could gave them a little bread or some beans, the little old women went round asking and came back with their aprons full. In exchange they mended clothes, they did it so well that there was nothing to be s
een, they mended not with thread but with their own hair, it was a custom of the Jews. They often came up to Cenzo Rena’s house and La Maschiona would make them sit down in the kitchen and would give them coffee and milk, they were old and she thought of her own mother, supposing she had had to go round begging. Only she was disgusted at the idea of the mending they did with their own hair. The little old women were three sisters, one very tall and two very short and just alike, it made a curious impression to see those two little old twin sisters that you could not tell one from the other. The Turk sat all the time in the village square, like an old monkey sick with cold, and he wore a woollen jacket with red and yellow checks which had belonged to Cenzo Rena, and he was always waiting for Cenzo Rena to come down into the square to talk Turkish with him. Winter had come all of a sudden to San Costanzo, after a long autumn, dusty and hot as summer. Winter at San Costanzo brought snow and wind and sun, a dry wind that bit at your throat and flung a cold, fine dust in your face, and whistled in the loose tiles of the roofs and shook the smoke-yellowed panes of the little windows. The paths were paved with ice and big fringes of ice hung from the fountains, and the people of San Costanzo were stupefied by all this cold, every year they were stupefied by it and complained as though they were seeing winter for the first time, and the women groaned and shivered as if taken by surprise, with bare, purple arms and fluttering little scarves round their necks. La Maschiona, too, was still wearing her torn blue summer dress, but now she wore thick black woollen stockings and men’s boots, and a black scarf round her neck. Cenzo Rena had several years before given her a coat with a fur collar, but La Maschiona kept it in a cupboard and had not the courage to put it on, she went sometimes and stroked the collar and rubbed her cheeks against the sleeves and was filled with pleasure, she did not put it on because she was afraid people would laugh at her, coats were not worn in San Costanzo.

  Many men from the village had gone off to the war, they had done all they could to stay at home and those who owned pigs had given the police-sergeant presents of sausages and hams, the women had gone by night to the police-station with the sausages hidden in their shawls. And some had succeeded in staying at home because of the sausages but they were few, or the amount of sausages had been small and even the police-sergeant had not been able to do anything about it. And now in almost every house there was someone who had gone to the war and a family waiting for the post. At one o’clock you could hear the radio news bulletin in the village square, but no one listened to it except the Turk, Cenzo Rena and the draper, the others did not come and listen because they could not make out from these news bulletins what was happening to the Italians, whether they were winning or losing, and they preferred to have it all explained to them by Cenzo Rena, who explained it on the map.

  The Turk was very pleased that the war was not going well, in Africa the Italians were running away over the desert, in Greece there was slush and snow and mud and the Italians were unable to advance. But Cenzo Rena told him in Turkish not to delude himself too much, the war would go on for a very long time yet, the Italians were not fighting well because they had no boots and because they did not like the war, but the Germans had boots and everything, and they liked the war very much because they liked killing. The Turk trembled and grew pale at the mention of the Germans, if the Germans won the war what would happen to him, a Turkish Jew, he would never go back home again. With the Italians he had no great quarrel, all they had done to him was to send him to San Costanzo, they had spotted him in Rome selling carpets in the street and had put him in prison for a little and then had sent him here. He was getting on all right but he was very cold, even with Cenzo Rena’s sweater and the coat with red and yellow checks, all they put in his room at the inn was a bowl with charcoal embers in it, which was barely enough to warm his hands. You could see he had sold carpets because he always kept his shoulders bent, as though beneath a heavy weight of carpets, you could easily picture him walking with long carpets hanging down from his shoulders.

  2

  In December thick, heavy snow began falling, the whole countryside was covered with it, the sun disappeared, swallowed up in grey snow-clouds, and La Maschiona called Anna to come and listen to the wolves howling in the pine wood; Anna listened carefully but she heard nothing. La Maschiona, by this time, was-no longer at all frightened of her, she kept calling her every minute to the window to show her something, the dog which was eating the snow, or her old seducer driving past in his cart; this was a thing that had happened many, many years ago and the baby had died after only a few hours, La Maschiona thought it was on this account that she had never found a husband, for she had not been by any means ugly once upon a time. She rubbed the window-pane with her shawl so as to have a good sight of her seducer as he drove away bumping up and down in his cart, she was pleased that he should still be a handsome man with big moustaches that were still quite black, she bore no resentment towards him after all those years, he had afterwards married a woman from Masuri who owned a great deal of land, they were full of children and one of them was now fighting in Greece. La Maschiona was pleased that her baby long ago had died after only a few hours, because now he might have found himself fighting in Greece in all that snow and slush, and she might have been waiting and waiting for a letter. But as it was, she was not waiting for anything, either for good or for bad. But Anna’s baby that was soon going to be born would never fight in any war, said La Maschiona, because Cenzo Rena knew so many dodges to save people from going to war, and he was so rich that he would find a way to prevent his going. La Maschiona was delighted at the idea of the baby that was going to be born, and she was knitting some little woollen socks, and Anna felt ashamed at the sight of these little socks, and at the thought that the baby that was going to be bom in the house was not the child of Cenzo Rena but of a far-away boy with teeth like a wolf’s. She herself knew it, and Cenzo Rena and Concettina, and that was all, Cenzo Rena had made Concettina swear never to say a word about it to anybody. And there was no knowing what Giuma knew, or where he was, she had sent back the thousand lire to him at Stresa in a registered envelope. She kept saying Giuma’s name to herself; how strange it was that a boy called Giuma should ever have existed, a boy who read Montale and ate ice cream at the Paris café. All of a sudden she found herself back again in the hot summer, with France having lost the war and Ippolito on the seat. But she did not want to think about Ippolito, she thrust away that seat from in front of her eyes, she was afraid that the baby would suffer if she started sobbing.

  She had become very big and heavy, and she spent the days sitting with her hands in her lap, letting the baby grow inside her. She sat at the fireside and rummaged in the fire with the tongs, she thought about the baby and saw him with blue eyes and sharp teeth, it seemed to her that as soon as he was born he would have a whole lot of wolf-like teeth in his mouth. She felt no rancour against Giuma, just as La Maschiona felt no rancour against the man who went past in the cart, to her too it seemed that many years had gone by, she felt now quite a different person from the one who had been with Giuma amongst the bushes on the river bank. Now, when she thought of “the river” she saw only the San Costanzo river, the narrow, clear river amongst the grass along the rusty railway lines, a river that wasn’t even on the map. The fire was kept burning all day and from time to time La Maschiona would come in and throw on a log and a few dry pine-cones and blow on it. It was warm only within a few feet of the fire and the rest of the room was icy; Cenzo Rena said that after the war he would have a central heating plant put in, if there was an after, but there was no knowing whether there would be an after, perhaps there would not. He wore two sweaters and a jacket lined with sheepskin, and he sat at the table reading, he had made up his mind to become cultured seeing that he was not travelling. The horn of the bus would be heard and La Maschiona would look out of the window to watch the bus starting off, heavily laden and swaying back and forth in the snow. Anna sometimes imagined to herself that Giuma had a
ll of a sudden arrived at Borgo San Costanzo, for instance with Franz who was a Jew and had been sent there just as the Turk and the three old women had been sent; all of a sudden Giuma and Mammina and Amalia and Franz all got out of the bus. They took rooms at the inn, and she could not help laughing at the thought of Mammina at the inn in company with the Turk, eating tough stewed mutton. But when she had finished thinking of Giuma’s arrival there was nothing more left to think about him, what could she and Giuma have had to say to each other now, he had vanished out of her life for ever. Cenzo Rena took up his book and came and sat by the fire opposite her, he had now discovered a man called Ricardo, Ricardo with only one c, he was a great economist and he had foretold almost everything. He read aloud from the pages of this man Ricardo, and every now and then he stopped and asked if it wasn’t splendid. But she was not listening to Ricardo, just as she had not listened to Montale when Giuma was reading, and now instead of thinking about Ricardo she was thinking about Montale, and she was thinking that she would like to have the poems of Montale with her. But the poems of Montale were not amongst Cenzo Rena’s books. Cenzo Rena was her husband, she reflected, but she still had not persuaded herself that he was her husband, sometimes she still, to herself, called him Cenzo Rena. Sometimes in the morning when she awoke she did not at once turn round, so as not at once to see that strange grey head beside her. In the morning when she awoke that head was unknown to her, as though in sleep all the days they had spent together had been lost, and the consciousness of being husband and wife. Then she would begin to reflect that Cenzo Rena had indeed always been in her life, he had been a friend of her father’s, he had sent post-cards and chocolates from all parts of the world, the post-cards that Signora Maria slipped into the looking-glass of her dressing table. That grey head beside her had known Ippolito, Giustino and Signora Maria. And yet she found it strange to turn towards that head on the pillow. She turned round and the day began, with the fire on the hearth and La Maschiona and the thoughts that she was gradually disentangling, once again immersed in her insect-like silence. How difficult it was to be husband and wife, it wasn’t enough to sleep together and make love and wake up with the head close by, that wasn’t enough for being husband and wife. Being husband and wife meant turning thoughts into words, continually turning thoughts into words, and then you would be able to find that a head beside yours on the pillow was no longer strange, provided there was a free flow of words that was born again fresh every morning. She remembered the days at Le Visciole when she had talked so much with him, but now she found it difficult to talk, now again she had gone into her insectlike silence. Cenzo Rena told her not to make that insectlike face. She shook herself and rubbed her eyes, and tried to blow away the silence from her heart. She told him she had not understood very much of Ricardo, he said he knew that quite well but it did not matter, above all she must remember that Ricardo was spelt with only one c, not two. He asked her if she would like to go for a walk in the pine wood, they went out taking with them a long stick with iron spikes because of the wolves, they walked in the soft, deep snow amongst the pine-trees, they saw imprints in the snow and Cenzo Rena said they were the imprints of wolves, until he discovered that they were merely the imprints of the dog which had run on in front. Cenzo Rena, as he walked, beat his stick against the trunks of the pine-trees to make the snow drop down, he told her not to worry if she did not understand Ricardo, there were other things that she must understand first, now in a short time there would be the baby to understand. They went home again and in the dining-room they found the contadini. Anna went back and sat in her place by the fire, and she took up the tongs again and rummaged amongst the embers. The contadini had a look at her and were of the opinion that Cenzo Rena had not found anything special in the way of a wife even though he had roamed over so many countries; she was a wife who did not even make you feel shy, so plain and so young was she, without anything of a lady about her. The contadini had hate on their heads and scarves round their necks, they sat round the table and swallowed their wine, they had come in just for a moment to ask about the war, but it was not going at all so well and people were losing patience; if only it would finish soon. Then they described how the Marchesa was writing anonymous letters against Cenzo Rena to the police in the neighbouring town, every week she wrote one, but at the police-station they perhaps already knew her handwriting and put them in the waste-paper basket without opening them. The Marchesa wrote that Cenzo Rena kept his servant called La Maschiona chained up and whipped her till she bled, or else she wrote that Cenzo Rena was a Communist because he spent all his time with contadini, or else she wrote that he had several hundredweight of coffee in his cellar. The contadini called to La Maschiona to show them the marks of the chains, and they had a good laugh, bending forward with their hands on their knees, and then they swallowed down some more wine, and one of them described how the Marchesa shaved every morning, lathering her face in the proper way with a brush. And Cenzo Rena laughed too and drank and slapped everyone heartily on the back. But as soon as the contadini had gone away, he turned to Anna and asked her why she put on that insect face while the contadini were there.