The Road To The City Read online

  ‘I expect I know what’s in fashion better than you people here in the sticks,’ Giulio retorted.

  ‘Then why don’t you dress like everybody else instead of wearing those ridiculous boots?’ Santa asked him.

  Both of them were put out, and Giulio began to talk to me as if we were alone. He said that if we lived in the city we’d have to entertain people every now and then, and this was one of the many things I’d have to learn how to do. Sometimes, he said, I seemed to him to have fallen from the moon. I looked at him to see if he was thinking of the Moon Hotel, that prostitutes’ hangout, where he used to take me in the old days, but apparently he wasn’t. He seemed to have forgotten all about the days before we were married and his reluctance to marry me and the fact that his father had offered me money if I would disappear along with our unborn child. Now he spoke often of the baby and how he imagined it would look and of a new kind of collapsible baby carriage that he had in mind to buy.

  13

  My labour pains came on at night. My aunt got up to call the midwife and sent Santa to her godmother’s because she said it wasn’t proper for a young girl to see how a baby is born. Santa was impatient to kiss the baby and give him a cap with pale blue ribbons that she had embroidered for him. Toward morning my mother arrived, bringing more caps and ribbons. By this time I was wild with pain and fear. I had two fainting spells and the midwife said they must take me to the hospital in the city. My mother wept all the way to the hospital, and looking into her face, I was sure I was going to die. I scratched my mother’s hand and screamed at the top of my lungs.

  The baby was a boy and they baptized him immediately for fear he wouldn’t live. The next morning he was flourishing, while I felt very weak and had a fever, and they told me I couldn’t nurse him. I stayed at the hospital a whole month, and the Sisters fed the baby with a bottle. Every now and then they brought him in for me to see, wearing Santa’s cap on his head. He was ugly as sin, with long fingers, which he wriggled very slowly, and a secretive staring expression, as if he were about to discover something of importance.

  The day after the baby was born my mother-in-law came to see me and scolded one of the Sisters for not binding him up the way she should. Then she sat stiffly on the edge of a chair with her pocketbook on her lap and a melancholy look on her long face and told me that in her time she had suffered a great deal more than me and the doctors had praised her for her courage. Against their advice she had nursed her baby and she had cried all day when she heard I wasn’t going to nurse mine. At this point she pulled out a handkerchief and dried away her tears.

  ‘It’s sad for a baby to be denied his mother’s breast,’ she said. Then she pulled down my nightgown and said that I wasn’t well enough developed to have milk, anyhow. I was angry and told her that my head ached and I wanted to sleep. She asked me if she had hurt my feelings, ran her fingers caressingly under my chin, and said that perhaps she had spoken too frankly. Then she pulled out a box of dates and put them under my pillow.

  ‘Call me Mother,’ she said as she went away.

  When she had gone I ate all the dates, one by one, and put the box away, thinking it might be good to keep gloves in. I began to think of the white gloves with black stitching like Azalea’s that I would buy as soon as I got out of the hospital, and all the dresses and hats I had set my heart on, partly just to annoy my mother-in-law and make her say that I was wasting money. I was depressed by my mother-in-law’s visit and the prospect of having her hang around me.

  When they brought in the baby and laid him beside me in the bed I almost hated him because he seemed to look so much like her. I was sorry to have a baby with my mother-in-law’s long chin and something of Giulio about him but not a trace of myself ‘If I loved Giulio, I’d love the baby too,’ I said to myself, ‘but this way it’s out of the question.’ Still there was something about his soft damp hair and the way the breath came and went in his little body that attracted me and lingered in my thoughts after they had taken him away. He didn’t care in the least about what I thought of him or whether I was happy or sad. He knew nothing of what was in my mind or of the things I wanted to buy, and I was sorry that he was still so small that I couldn’t talk to him and tell him what I was thinking. Then he sneezed and I pulled the shawl up over him. Strange, I thought, how long he had lived inside me, all the time I had sat in my aunt’s kitchen and when I had gone out walking with Nini. What had happened to Nini, anyway? Why didn’t he come to see me? But perhaps it was just as well he didn’t come because I was weak and tired and talking made my head ache. Besides, Nini would surely have said something nasty about the baby.

  Giulio came to see me every evening, when the Sisters were saying their prayers in the hall and a tiny lamp with a silk shade was lit beside my bed. As soon as he arrived I began to complain that I didn’t feel well and that my whole body ached as if it had been pounded into jelly. This was partly true, but I said so mostly because I enjoyed giving him a scare. I told him that I was sick and tired of the hospital and the time never went by and some fine day I was going to run away to the films. Then he would beg me to be patient and make a great fuss and promise to bring me a surprise if I stopped giving him so much worry. He was very tender and affectionate and said he’d do anything in the world to make me happy. In fact, he’d already rented an apartment in a building that had an elevator and every other possible convenience.

  It wasn’t true that I was unhappy at the hospital. I enjoyed myself there very much because I didn’t have to lift a finger. Whereas after I left I would have to rock the baby to sleep and boil his milk and change his nappies all day long. As long as I was in the hospital I didn’t know how to handle him at all and I was desperate every time he cried because he would get all red in the face and I thought he was going to burst. Occasionally, now that I had the money, I was impatient to get up, put on my clothes, look at myself in the mirror, and go out on the street. At times when I was bored like this there was nothing to do except to wait for someone to come and see me. My mother no longer came very often because she was busy at home and didn’t want to come to the city in her shabby clothes. She didn’t seem to be as satisfied with my marriage as she once was, and she had quarrelled with Giulio already over his refusal to lend her some money. My mother wouldn’t forgive him and extended her grudge to me as well.

  Azalea came to see me as soon as she returned from the shore. Her nose was peeling and she wore beach sandals. She wasn’t getting on very well with her lover. He was jealous and wouldn’t let her go to any dances, she said, and they fought tooth and nail most of the time.

  ‘How’s your son?’ she inquired. I asked her if she wanted to see him, but she said she was fed up with children and tiny babies made her flesh creep.

  ‘How are you making out with your husband?’ she said. ‘You were very wise to hold out for an apartment of your own. If you’d gone to live with his mother you’d never have a penny to call your own. You have to take a strong hand with the men because if you show any signs of weakness they’ll strip the shirt off your back.’

  The next day she brought her dressmaker to see me. I told her that I couldn’t get out of my bed to have my measurements taken, but she said that the dressmaker was just coming to make my acquaintance and tell me about the latest styles. Then Azalea began to say that it was high time for me to get up. There wasn’t a thing in the world the matter with me, she said; in fact, I was much stronger than she was.

  It was a great occasion when I got up for the first time and slipped on a feathery pink wrapper that Azalea had brought me. I walked slowly down the hall on Giulio’s arm, looking out the high windows at the street below. Who knows if Nini mightn’t be passing by? I watched out for him every day. If I’d seen him on the street I’d have called down to him to come and see me and we should have talked and quarrelled as we did before. After all this time he couldn’t possibly love me. But even if he did that was no reason for not coming to see me. Still my watch was all in
vain and I grew ill-humoured and fought with the Sisters when they told me to go back to bed.

  14

  I found out the truth only when Giovanni came to see me, bringing a horn for the baby, as if he were already big enough to blow it. He was carrying a brief-case and said he was a travelling salesman for a wholesale draper. There was something nervous and evasive about his manner; he waved his arms in the air and didn’t look at me when he spoke. ‘He must be in some trouble,’ I thought to myself. ‘Perhaps Antonietta’s left him.’ Finally I asked him what it was.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. But he rubbed his hands nervously as he walked up and down, and finally he stopped in front of the wall with his back to me.

  ‘It’s Nini,’ he muttered. ‘He’s dead.’

  I put the baby down abruptly.

  ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ Giovanni repeated, starting to cry.

  I fell back into a chair, feeling as if I couldn’t breathe. Gradually Giovanni calmed down, wiped his face, and said that Nini had died some days ago, but they had told him not to let me know because I wasn’t well enough to stand the shock. He had died of pneumonia, but Antonietta said it was all because of my cruelty. She said he had always been in love with me, even when he was living with her, and I had done nothing but tease him, even when I was pregnant by another man and knew I was going to be married. After that he had lost his head and begun to live like a savage, shutting himself up in a smelly room, without eating or sleeping, and getting drunk every day. If she ever ran into me on the street, Antonietta said, she’d tell me to my face what she thought of me. But Giovanni said none of this was true. Nini was a cold fish, he said, who cared more for drink than for women. He’d found him delirious in his bed one day and, thinking he was drunk, had poured a pitcher of cold water on his head, which Antonietta said had probably made him considerably worse. Because after that he had gone to call on Antonietta, and she had seen right away that he had pneumonia. She had called a doctor, and for three days she had kept hot mustard plasters on his back as the doctor told her, and she had cleaned his room and brought fresh sheets from her own house. But Nini breathed hoarsely and never came out of his delirium. He tried all the time to get out of bed, and she had to hold him down by force until he died.

  When Giulio came to see me that evening I was walking up and down the room in tears and wouldn’t go back to bed. The supper that the Sister had brought me lay untouched and cold on the table.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘Nini’s dead,’ I said. ‘Giovanni just told me.’

  ‘Giovanni’s a jackass! I’ll settle with him!’

  He felt my pulse and told me I had a fever and ought to lie down. I didn’t answer and went on crying. Then he said that he was ashamed to have the Sisters see me standing there half naked, with my wrapper open down the front, and if I didn’t look out I’d get pneumonia myself and follow Nini to the grave. His feelings were hurt because I didn’t pay any attention, and finally, after he had telephoned to Azalea to come over, he sat down to read his newspaper without so much as looking up at me.

  When Azalea came she told him to go out and get his supper and he went away, saying that he would leave us with our secrets, since obviously he was of no importance and we didn’t need him around.

  ‘He’s jealous,’ Azalea said. ‘They’re all the same.’

  ‘Nini’s dead,’ I said dully.

  ‘That’s not exactly news,’ she answered. ‘I cried, too, when they told me. But later I thought maybe it was the best thing that could happen to him. I wish I were dead myself. I’m sick of being alive.’

  ‘I caused him to die,’ I said.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, he was in love with me and I led him on just to see him suffer. After he heard I was marrying Giulio he lost interest in everything and shut himself up in his room and drank worse than before.’

  Azalea looked at me incredulously.

  ‘When someone’s dead it’s all very easy to imagine things. He took ill and died, that’s all. You can’t do anything about it and there’s no sense in embroidering explanations. What did he care for you? He always said that he was sorry for you because you were such a silly girl and couldn’t say no to the first man that came along.’

  ‘He did so care for me,’ I said. ‘He was always taking me down by the river to talk. He read his books to me and told me what they were about. And once he kissed me. I loved him too. Only I didn’t know it and thought it was only that I liked to tease him.’

  ‘Don’t go mooning over Nini,’ she said. One man’s just like another. The thing to do is to have one around for company because it’s too bad to be a woman alone. Nini wasn’t as much of a fool as most of them, that’s true, and his eyes were so bright that I can almost see them this minute. But even he was a bore in the long run, when you couldn’t fathom what he was thinking. I’m not surprised he died, with all the cheap brandy he had in him. It’s a wonder he lived as long as he did.’

  When Giulio came back Azalea hurried away to cook her husband’s supper because Ottavia had a toothache. That night I dreamed that Nini came to the hospital and ran away with the baby. I ran after him frantically, and he showed me the baby, about the size of an apple, in his coat pocket. All of a sudden Nini ran up a flight of stairs and Giovanni was with him, but when I called them there was no answer. I woke up breathless and perspiring and found Giulio standing beside my bed. He had come by early in the morning to see how I was feeling. So I told him about my dream.

  ‘Nobody’s run off with the baby,’ he said. ‘He’s sleeping right here beside you and he won’t be kidnapped, don’t worry.’

  But I went on saying that I had seen Nini big as life before me and he had held out his hand and spoken to me. I sobbed and tossed on my bed until finally Giulio told me to control my feelings and went away.

  15

  A few days later I left the hospital for my new apartment. This was the beginning of a different life. Nini was dead and there was no use thinking about him. Now I had Giulio and the baby, a houseful of new furniture and bright lights and my mother-in-law in person. The maid took care of the baby and I slept late every morning in the big double bed with the orange velvet cover. There was a bell beside me if I wanted to be waited on and a rug to put my feet on when i was ready to get up. I would walk around the apartment in my wrapper, admiring the wallpaper and the furnishings, running a brush slowly through my hair and drinking a cup of coffee. I thought back to my mother’s house, with the mess left by the chickens all over the floor, the damp spots on the walls, and the little paper flaps fastened on to the lampshade in the dining-room. Was that incredible house still standing? Azalea kept saying we must go out there together, but I had no desire to do it. I was ashamed to think that I had ever lived there and I knew it would make me sad to see the room where Giovanni and Nini had slept together when we were all at home. When I walked about the city I stayed away from the river and sought out the most crowded streets where people could see me with my painted lips and new clothes. I looked at myself in the mirror half the day and thought no other woman had ever been so beautiful.

  When my mother-in-law came she would shut herself up in the kitchen to question the maid about me, and I would listen at the keyhole. The maid told her that I didn’t seem to care about the baby at all; I never picked him up when he was crying or asked whether he was eating properly. I was always sleeping or looking at myself in the mirror or going out for a walk, and she had not only to look after the baby but to do all the washing and cooking as well because I couldn’t make so much as a cup of soup. My mother-in-law repeated these complaints to Giulio, but he said they were all poppycock. He always saw me with the baby in my arms, and there was no harm in my going out for a walk because I was young and he himself had told me to have a bit of fun. Giulio was so much in love with me that he paid no attention to his mother or anyone else. She told him that he was fat and stupid and couldn’t see the truth even when it was staring him i
n the face. If I were unfaithful to him, she said, it would be no more than he deserved. But she didn’t say anything to me because I scared her. She smiled and asked me to come and see her and stopped peering into my drawers because I told her to attend to her own business.

  ‘When the baby’s a little bigger,’ I said to myself, ‘and scoots around the house on a tricycle and asks me to buy him sweets and toys, maybe he’ll be more fun.’ But just now, with his big head on the pillow of his crib, he was very boring, and every time I looked at him I was annoyed and went out. It still seemed to me too good to be true to step out and find the city before me. Once I had walked over a dusty road, crowded with wagons, and arrived grimy and tired. Then when darkness fell and things were beginning to be lively it was time to go home. Now I would meet Azalea outside and we would sit in a café together. Little by little I came to live the same way Azalea did. I stayed in bed all day, got up in the late afternoon, made up my face, and went out with a fox fur thrown across my shoulders. As I walked I tossed my head and smiled in a provocative way, just like Azalea.

  One day, on my way home, I ran into Antonietta and Giovanni walking arm in arm and bending over because it was raining and they had no umbrella.

  ‘How do you do?’ I said.

  We went together to a café and I waited for Antonietta to jump on me and scratch my eyes out with her pointed red nails. She must have spent hours lacquering them, although it was hardly worth while because she had become so ugly and old. Instead of jumping on me she seemed actually afraid of what I might say and hid her feet under her chair when she saw me looking at them. She said that she had seen my baby in his carriage in the park and wanted to give him a kiss, but she did not dare go near him on account of the maid.