The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg Read online

  On the same day that I arrived, Vilma decided to speak to me straightaway. It was the evening and Walter had gone out for a moment. She sat down in front of me and, speaking with a resolute frankness which was distressing to see, began to talk about herself and Walter. She had suffered a lot in their years together: I knew Walter, and this fact shouldn’t have surprised me. She said that she had got married when she very young and inexperienced. As I looked at her I tried to guess how old she was, but she didn’t appear to me to be very young – if anything I’d say she looked older than Walter. She had unruly black hair and narrow eyes, dark blue and piercing. Despite her long nose and her complexion which had been ruined by age, she seemed to me quite good looking. “And now I have met up again with an old friend … Vrasti. He has a superior and noble spirit, and his first instinct has been to help me and show me kindness. But my feelings for him are pure, and cannot possibly harm my child and Walter.” She spoke to me freely and in a trusting way; however, instead of inspiring the same trust in me, this left me feeling embarrassed and troubled. She said that all this was complicated because of money problems and the frail health of their child, who was in need of a very stable family atmosphere.

  Later I met Vrasti. I knew that he was in the habit of visiting every day; however he was almost pathologically shy, and once he knew that I was there, at first he avoided coming. He was about fifty years old, had long limp hair streaked with grey, light eyes, and a gaunt lined face. He hardly spoke; he sat next to Vilma and watched her sew, fidgeting with the tassels on his scarf. He would call to the reluctant child, seizing him by the wrist and stroking his hair with his large hand, which had broken, shabby fingernails.

  “An artist, a true artist,” Vilma said to me aside when Vrasti came for the first time. “But it’s difficult to get him to play.”

  I asked Vrasti to play but he said no, absolutely not, but you could tell that he really wanted to very much. Eventually he sat down at the piano and played Mozart and Schumann at length, crudely and tediously.

  Vilma would often invite him to join them for dinner and he would refuse, saying it wasn’t possible, but it was clear that he really wanted to accept, and was afraid that she would stop insisting and that he would have to go away. At table he handled the cutlery clumsily and drank a great amount, repeatedly pouring himself wine. After drinking, he would splutter unintelligible phrases and then begin to shake. Walter would turn away from him with a disgusted expression. Next to his wife, Vrasti, and the child, he appeared curiously young and healthy. His tall frame, broad shoulders, strong bare arms, and the simple serenity of his body filled the entire room. Vrasti sat timidly at his side with a guilty smile, hardly daring to address him directly. I, on the other hand, was quickly shown familiarity and friendliness.

  I had been there for some time and felt very relaxed, and in good health. The thought of having to leave made me feel miserable. So I wrote to my uncle asking for more money and received slightly less than I had asked for, together with a letter of admonishment. My mother also wrote complaining about my absence, her feelings of loneliness since I had left her, and the job I had abandoned. Thoughts of work, the city, and my mother made me unhappy and I dismissed them. I felt as though I had been there for as long as I could remember. The others never mentioned my leaving, nor did they seem to recall that I had been summoned there in order to give them advice. I’d given no advice and nobody had asked me for any. I had understood that the love Vilma professed for Vrasti was not real, but simply a figment of her imagination. She had attached herself to the only person she thought could help her, but perhaps inside she understood how artificial and false this was and suffered even more as a result.

  When I received the money from my uncle, I offered a large part of it to Walter and he accepted. When Vilma learned of this, she thanked me and her eyes filled with tears. She said that I had shown myself to be a true friend to them. “I will never forget it,” she said.

  I would get up very early in the morning and stand at the window: I could see the green dewy lettuce and the red and yellow flowers in the vegetable garden, the vast expanse of fields, and the distant mountains, covered by a light mist. Then I would go downstairs. The beach was almost deserted, and the sand, still untouched by the sun, was damp and cool. I would see Walter (he would get up even earlier than me) emerge from the water and come and meet me with his light, gentle step. He wore a pair of tight mesh trunks that made him appear naked when seen from a distance. Still wet, he would lie down heavily beside me and run a hand through his fair hair. An American girl from a rich family, who had a cabin not far from ours, had fallen in love with him, and, on seeing him alone, would approach in order to speak to him. He would speak to her in an offhand way and then walk off. He had nicknamed her ‘the parrot.’ He gave everyone nicknames; Vrasti was either ‘old Punch’ or ‘Doctor Stutters.’ He told these nicknames to his child and made him laugh.

  Vilma and the child used to come to the beach very late. Walter would lift the child onto his shoulders and carry him into the water, making him laugh and scream with fright. The child absolutely adored him and I could see that this made Vilma jealous.

  Quite soon I noticed that something strange was happening to Vilma. She now invited the musician to dinner less often, and, generally speaking, it appeared that she had become indifferent as to whether or not she saw him. Vrasti also noticed it eventually, and I sensed that he worried and suffered because of it. She no longer begged him to play and no longer tried to stop him drinking. On one occasion, while speaking of Vrasti in her presence, Walter said ‘Doctor Stutters’ and she laughed.

  I felt her desire to please me in her every gesture, her every word. If she was walking around the house tidying things, or chasing the child on the beach, or stretching out, I sensed that she was doing it not for Vrasti, but for me.

  I should have left straightway. But I couldn’t do it. At first, I told myself that I was imagining things. I fooled myself into believing that I had blown things out of proportion. Nonetheless I avoided being alone with her. I spent most of the day wandering round the countryside with Walter.

  During our interminable walks he always remained silent. We would watch the sun set while stretched out on a rock cliff, surrounded by wild vegetation of prickly pears and palms that fell vertically into the sea. I had no idea what those intervening years had meant for Walter while we had been far apart, what he had done, believed, longed for, but I knew that to question him would have been useless. He asked me no questions, and I knew that he would take no interest in anything I could have told him. Such a lack of interest in somebody else would have mortified me, yet in him I saw it as totally natural and obvious and felt no pain. I understood, better now than I had in the past, that he was different from other people and estranged from them, and for this reason all his relationships were strange, inexplicable, and offensive to everybody except me. He was like a large, solitary tree. The wind that blew through his foliage and the earth that fed his roots were a part of his existence, nothing more. Thus I felt that what gave him joy or pain did not depend on his fellow men, but on mysterious unknown sources, like the earth or the wind.

  At times he would speak to me about his child, and he appeared to care for him a great deal. He said that Vilma was not up to raising a child. She got him up late, she didn’t let him stay in the water for long or play in the sun without a hat. “And then, look how she dresses him, and lets his curls grow. He’s like an actress’s child.”

  Eventually, I decided to leave. When I told Walter, he expressed neither surprise nor regret. But Vilma looked at me with such a desperate expression that I felt a shudder inside me. I had rarely been the object of a woman’s desire and this gave me an obscure sense of pleasure. But immediately I felt ashamed of myself. I had gone there to resolve things and make myself useful in some way, but I had resolved nothing, and had indeed made things worse, possibly ruining them forever. I went up to my room and began to pack. It was ni
ght-time; I would leave the following morning. Walter had already gone to bed.

  A little later, I heard a light knocking at the door, and Vilma came in. She said she had come to see if I needed any help. I had already finished; it was only a little case, I answered. She sat on the bed and watched me while I dealt with my few objects and books. All of a sudden she began sobbing very quietly. I went to her and held her hands. “No. Why? Why Vilma?” I said to her. She placed her head on my shoulder, drew herself close, and kissed me. I kissed her back. I couldn’t help myself. I felt I loved that woman just as she did me, and I covered her body with passionate kisses.

  When I awoke the following morning I was so tired that I had trouble getting up. I felt ashamed and disgusted. I got dressed distractedly and went down to meet Walter on the beach. I couldn’t leave without telling him what had happened. I didn’t ask myself whether mentioning it was a good or a bad thing, I knew only that I couldn’t leave without speaking to him. I saw him stretched out on the sand with his arms crossed behind his neck. During the night it had been very windy, and the sea was stormy with great foaming waves breaking on the shore.

  When he saw me, he got up. “You look pale,” he said to me. We began walking along the beach. Anguish and shame prevented me from speaking. “Why are you so quiet? Look, I know, I know you spent the night with her,” he said. I stopped and we looked each other in the face. “Yes, she’s told me. She’s one of those people who make their life an open book. She can’t help herself. But you mustn’t think badly of her. She’s just a poor wretch, that’s all. She doesn’t even know herself what she wants any more. And now you too have seen how we are.” His voice was spent and bitter. I put my hand on his arm. “But don’t suffer because of this,” he said to me. “If you could only understand how meaningless I find all this! I don’t know what I want either.” He made a gesture of helplessness. “I … I don’t know,” he said.

  Vrasti also came along to say goodbye to me. They had woken up the child and all together they accompanied me to the station. Vilma did not say a word. Her face was pale and wore a bewildered expression.

  Aboard the train I looked out to say goodbye: I saw for one last time the child’s curly hair blowing in the wind, Vilma, and Vrasti, who was waving his floppy hat at me. Then Walter turned round and began to walk away, with his hands in his pockets, and the others followed him.

  For the whole journey I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Back in the city, for a long time, I thought of nothing else but them; I felt nothing in common with the people around me. I wrote several letters to Walter, but received no reply. Later I learned from strangers that the child had died, they had separated, and Vilma had gone to live with the musician.

  My Husband

  Let every man give his wife what is her due:

  and every woman do the same by her husband.1

  (I Corinthians 7:3)

  I WAS TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD when I got married. I had always wanted to get married but had often thought, with a sort of gloomy resignation, that there was not much prospect of it happening. I was orphaned as a child and lived with an elderly aunt and my sister in the country. Our existence was monotonous; besides keeping the house clean and embroidering large tablecloths which we didn’t know what to do with once they were finished, we didn’t have much to keep us occupied. Ladies would come to visit us sometimes and we would all talk all day about those tablecloths.

  The man who wanted to marry me came to our house by chance. He had come to buy a farm which my aunt owned. I don’t know how he came to know about this farm. He was just a local district doctor for a little village out in the country, but he was fairly well off as he had private means. He came in his car, and as it was raining, my aunt told him to stay for lunch. He came a few more times and in the end asked me to marry him. It was pointed out to him that I was not rich, but he said this did not matter.

  My husband was thirty-seven years old. He was tall and quite smart, his hair was going a little grey, and he wore gold-rimmed glasses. He had a stern, reserved, and efficient manner; one could recognize in him a man accustomed to prescribing treatments for his patients. He was incredibly self-assured. He liked to stand motionless in a room, his hand resting underneath his jacket collar, silently surveying everything around him.

  I had barely spoken to him at all when we got married. He had never kissed me or brought me flowers; indeed he had done none of the things which fiancés usually do. All I knew was that he lived in the country with a rough young male servant and an elderly female one called Felicetta in a very old big house surrounded by a large garden. Whether something in my personality had attracted or interested him or whether he had suddenly fallen in love with me, I had no idea. After we had taken leave of my aunt, he helped me into his car, which was covered in mud, and started to drive. The level road, flanked by trees, would take us to our home. I took the opportunity to study him. I looked at him for a long time with some curiosity, and perhaps even a certain impertinence, my eyes wide open underneath my felt hat. Then he turned towards me and smiled. He squeezed my bare, cold hand and said, “We’ll have to get to know each other a little.”

  We spent our first wedding night in a hotel in a village not very far from our own. We were to continue on the following morning. I went up to the room while my husband took care of the petrol. I took off my hat and looked at myself in the big mirror which reflected everything. I was not beautiful – I knew that – but I did have a bright, lively expression and a tall, pleasant figure in my tailored dress. I felt ready to love that man, if he would only help me. He had to help me. I had to make him do this.

  Yet when we left the next day nothing had changed at all. We barely said a word to each other, and nothing happened to suggest there was any kind of understanding between us. As a young girl, I had always thought that an event of the kind we had experienced would transform two people, bring them closer or drive them apart forever. I now knew it was possible for neither of these things to happen. I huddled up, chilled inside my overcoat. I had not become a new person.

  We arrived home at midday, and Felicetta was waiting for us at the gate. She was a little hunched woman with grey hair and sly, servile ways. The house, the garden, and Felicetta were just as I had imagined them. In the house nothing looked gloomy as is often the way in old houses. It was roomy and light, with white curtains and cane chairs. Ivy and rose plants climbed on the walls and all along the fence.

  Once Felicetta had given me the keys, stealing round the rooms behind me to show me every minute detail, I felt happy and ready to prove to my husband and everybody else that I was competent. I was not an educated woman and perhaps I was not very intelligent, but I did know how to keep a well-organized and orderly house. My aunt had taught me. I would apply myself diligently to this task and, in so doing, show my husband what I was really capable of.

  That was how my new life started. My husband would spend the whole day away while I busied myself around the house, took care of lunch, made desserts, and prepared jams; I also liked working in the vegetable garden with the male servant. Though I squabbled with Felicetta, I got on well with the male servant. When he tossed his hair back and winked at me, there was something in his wholesome face which made me smile. Sometimes I would go for long walks in the village and talk to the peasants. I asked them questions, and they asked me questions too. But when I came home in the evenings and sat down next to the majolica stove, I felt lonely; I missed my aunt and sister and wanted to be back with them again. I thought about the time when my sister and I would get ready for bed; I remembered our bedsteads, and the balcony looking over the road where we would sit and relax on Sundays.

  One evening I started crying. All of a sudden my husband came in. He was pale and very tired. When he saw my dishevelled hair and tear-stained cheeks, he said to me, “What’s the matter?” I stayed silent, my head lowered. He sat next to me and caressed me a little. “Are you sad?” he asked. I nodded. He pressed me to his shoulder
. Then all of a sudden he got up and went to lock the door. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while,” he said. “I find it difficult, that’s why it’s taken me so long. Every day I’ve thought, ‘today will be the day,’ and every day I’ve put it off; it was as if I was tongue-tied, I was scared of you. A woman who gets married is scared of her man, but she doesn’t realize how much a man is also scared of a woman; she has no idea how much. There are lots of things I want to talk to you about. If we can talk to each other, get to know each other bit by bit, then perhaps we can love each other, and we’ll no longer feel sad. When I saw you for the first time, I thought ‘I like this woman, I want to love her, I want her to love me and help me, and I want to be happy with her.’ Perhaps it seems strange to you that I should need help, but that’s the way it is.”

  He crumpled the pleats of my skirt in his fingers. “There is a woman in this village whom I have loved very much. It’s ridiculous to call her a woman; she’s not a woman, she’s just a child, nothing but a scruffy little animal. She’s the daughter of a local peasant. Two years ago I cured her of a bad bout of pleurisy. She was fifteen at the time. Her family is poor; not just poor but mean too; they have a dozen children and wouldn’t dream of buying medicine for her. So I paid for the medicine, and after she got better, I would go and look for her in the woods where she would go to gather wood and I would give her a little money, so that she could buy herself something to eat. At home she had nothing but bread and salted potatoes; she didn’t see anything unusual in this – her brothers and sisters, her mother and father, and most of their neighbours all lived like this. If I’d given her mother money, she would have quickly hidden it away in her mattress and wouldn’t have bought a thing. But I soon saw that the girl was ashamed of buying things, afraid that her mother would find out what was happening, and I realized that she too was tempted to hide the money away in her mattress as she had always seen her mother do, even though I told her that if she did not eat properly, she could get ill again and die.”