The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg Read online

  “I started taking food to her myself every day. To begin with she was ashamed to eat in front of me, but she soon got used to it and she would eat and eat, and when she was full she would stretch out in the sun, and we would spend hours like that, just the two of us. I got an extraordinary pleasure from watching her eat – it was what I most looked forward to during my day – and later when I was alone, I would think about what she had eaten and what I would bring her the next day. It was like this that I started making love to her. Whenever I could I would go to the woods and wait for her, and she would come; I didn’t even know why she came, whether it was to eat or to make love, or out of fear that I would get angry with her. Oh how I waited for her! When passion is penetrated by pity and remorse you’re done for; it becomes an obsession. I would wake up at night and think about what would happen if I made her pregnant and had to marry her, and the idea of having to share the rest of my life with her filled me with horror. Yet at the same time I couldn’t bear to imagine her married to another person, in somebody else’s house, and the love that I felt for her was unbearable, it took all my strength away. When I saw you I thought that by tying myself to you I would be freeing myself from her, maybe I would forget her because I didn’t want her. I didn’t want Mariuccia; it was a woman like you that I wanted, a woman like me, who was mature and responsible. I could see something in you that made me think you might forgive me, that you would agree to help me, and so it seemed to me that if I behaved badly with you, it wouldn’t matter, because we would learn to love each other, and all this would go away.”

  “But how will it go away?” I said. “I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know. Since we got married I don’t think of her anymore in the way I did before, and if I see her I say hello calmly, and she laughs and goes all red, and so I tell myself that in a few years I’ll see her married to some peasant, weighed down with children and disfigured by hard work. But then something stirs inside me when I meet her, and I want to follow her to the woods again and hear her laugh and speak in her dialect, and watch her while she collects branches for the fire.” “I want to meet her,” I said. “You must show her to me. Tomorrow we’ll go for a walk and you can show her to me when she goes by.” It was my first decisive act and it gave me a sense of satisfaction. “But don’t you feel bitter towards me?” he asked. I shook my head. I didn’t feel bitter. I didn’t know what I felt. I was happy and sad at the same time. It was late, and when we went to have dinner we found all the food was cold: but we didn’t feel like eating anyway. We went down to the garden. It was dark and we walked for a long time on the grass. He took my arm and said, “I knew you would understand.” He woke several times during the night and pulled me close repeating, “You’ve understood everything!”

  When I saw Mariuccia for the first time she was coming back from the fountain, carrying a bucket of water. She was wearing a faded blue dress and black socks and she was stumbling along with a huge pair of men’s shoes on her feet. When she saw me red blushes appeared on her dark face, and she spilled a little water on the steps of the house as she turned to look at me. I was so overwhelmed by this meeting that I asked my husband if we could stop, and we sat down on the stone bench in front of the church. However, just at that moment he was called away and I was left there alone. A deep discomfort came over me at the thought that perhaps I would see Mariuccia every day and that I would never be able to walk around those roads freely again. I had believed that the village where I had come to live would become dear to me, that I would belong in every part of it; now it seemed this had been taken away from me forever. And it was true. Every time I went out I would see her, either rinsing her laundry at the fountain or carrying buckets or holding one of her grubby little siblings in her arms. One day her mother, a fat peasant, invited me into their kitchen; Mariuccia stood by the door with her hands tucked into her apron; she gave me the odd sly and inquisitive look and then disappeared. When I got home I would say to my husband, “I saw Mariuccia today.” He would ignore me and look the other way until one day he said to me in an irritated voice, “So what if you saw her? It’s all in the past, there’s no reason to discuss it any more.”

  In the end, I stopped venturing beyond the confines of our garden. I was pregnant, and I had become big and heavy. I sat in the garden sewing, and everything around me was calm; the plants were rustling and giving out shadows, the male servant hoed the vegetable garden, and Felicetta went back and forth in the kitchen polishing the copper. Sometimes I would think with amazement about the child that would be born. He belonged to two people who had nothing in common, who had nothing to say to each other and who sat beside each other for long periods of time in silence. Since that evening when my husband had spoken about Mariuccia he had stopped trying to come near me and had shut himself off in silence; sometimes when I spoke to him he would look at me in an empty, almost offended kind of way, as if I had disturbed him from some important thought with my ill-chosen words. Then I would tell myself that our relationship needed to change before the arrival of our baby. Otherwise what would the child think of us? But then I would be moved to laughter: as if a little baby would be able to think.

  The child was born in August. My sister and aunt came to stay, a party was organized for the christening, and there was a great deal of coming and going in the house. The child slept in his crib next to my bed. He looked quite red, with his fists closed and a patch of dark hair sticking out under his cap. My husband came to see him all the time; he was cheerful and smiling, and spoke about the child to everybody. One afternoon we found ourselves alone. I had lain down on the pillow, wearied and weakened by the heat. He looked at the child and smiled, stroking his hair and ribbons. “I didn’t know that you liked children,” I said all of a sudden. He gave a start and he turned to me. “I don’t like children,” he replied, “but I like this one, because he is ours.” “Ours?” I said to him. “He’s important to you because he is ours, you mean yours and mine? Do I mean something to you then?” “Yes,” he said as if lost in thought, and he came to sit on my bed. “When I come home and know that I will find you here, it gives me a feeling of pleasure and warmth.” “Then what happens?” I asked quietly, looking him in the eye. “Then, when I’m in front of you, and I want to tell you about what I have done during the day, what I have thought, and I just can’t do it, I don’t know why. Or maybe I do know why. It’s because there is something in my day, in my thoughts, that I have to hide from you, and so I can’t talk to you anymore.” “What is it?” “It’s this,” he said, “I’ve been meeting with Mariuccia in the woods again.” “I knew it,” I said. “I’ve known for a long time.” He knelt down in front of me and kissed my bare arms. “Help me, I’m begging you,” he said. “What am I going to do if you won’t help me?” “But how can I possibly help you?” I screamed, pushing him away, and burst into tears. Then my husband picked up Giorgio, kissed him, gave him to me and said, “everything will be easier now, you’ll see.”

  Since I did not have any milk, a wet nurse was summoned from a nearby village. My sister and aunt left us and we went back to our old routine; I got up and went down to the garden and gradually took up my familiar old tasks again. But the house was transformed by the presence of the child; little white nappies hung in the garden and on the terraces, the velvet dress of the wet nurse swished through the corridors, and her singing echoed throughout the rooms. No longer a young woman, she was a rather fat and proud person who liked to talk a lot about the aristocratic houses where she had worked in the past. We had to buy her new embroidered aprons every month or pins for her handkerchief. When my husband came home I would go to meet him at the gate, and we would go up to Giorgio’s room together to watch him sleep; after this we would have dinner and I would tell him about how the wet nurse had bickered with Felicetta, and we would talk for a while about the baby, the coming winter, the supply of wood, and I would tell him about a novel I had read and what I thought about it. He would put his arm around my wai
st and stroke me while I rested my head on his shoulder. Truly the birth of the child had changed our relationship. Nonetheless, I still sometimes felt that there was something strained in our conversations and in his goodness and affection, although I couldn’t focus properly on the feeling. The child was growing up; he had started toddling and putting on weight, and I liked watching him, but at times I wondered if I really loved him. At times I didn’t feel like climbing the stairs to go to him. It seemed to me that he belonged to other people, to Felicetta or to the wet nurse maybe, but not to me.

  One day I learned that Mariuccia’s father had died. My husband had said nothing about it to me. I took my coat and went out. It was snowing. The body had been taken away in the morning. Surrounded by their neighbours in their dark kitchen, Mariuccia and her mother held their heads in their hands, rocking back and forth and letting out shrill cries, as is the custom in the country when a close relative dies; the children, dressed in their best clothes, warmed their cold blue hands against the fire. When I went in, Mariuccia stared at me for a moment with her familiar look of amazement, lit up by a sudden animation. But she quickly recovered herself and began mourning again.

  She now wore a black shawl when she walked around the village. Meeting her was still very difficult for me. I would return home unhappy: I could still see her dark eyes in front of me, those big white teeth which stuck out over her lips. But I hardly ever thought about her if we did not happen to meet.

  The following year I gave birth to another child. It was a boy again, and we called him Luigi. My sister had got married and gone to live in a city far away and my aunt never left her home, so nobody helped me when I gave birth except for my husband. The wet nurse who had fed the first child left and so a new one came – she was a tall and shy girl who got on well with us and stayed even after Luigi had been weaned. My husband was very happy to have the children. When he came home they were the first thing he asked about, and he would run to see them and play with them until it was bedtime. He loved them, and no doubt thought that I loved them too. It was true that I did love them, but not in the way that once upon a time I had thought a mother ought to love her children. There was something subdued inside me when I held them on my lap. They tugged my hair, pulled on my necklace, wanted to search through my little work box, and I would get irritated and call the wet nurse. Sometimes I thought that maybe I was too sad to have the children. ‘But why am I sad?’ I asked myself. ‘What’s the matter with me? I don’t have any reason to feel this sad.’

  One sunny autumn afternoon my husband and I were sitting on the leather sofa in the study. “We’ve been married now for three years already,” I said to him. “Yes, you’re right,” he said, “and it’s been just as I thought it would be, hasn’t it? We have learned to live together, haven’t we?” I remained silent and stroked his lifeless hand. Then he kissed me and left. After a few hours I went out as well, crossing the village roads and taking the path that ran alongside the river. I wanted to walk a little beside the water. Leaning on the wooden parapet of the bridge I watched the water run, still and dark, between the grass and the stones, and the sound made me feel a little sleepy. I was getting cold and was about to leave when all of a sudden I spotted my husband scrambling up the grassy ridge of the slope, heading for the woods. I realized that he had seen me as well. He stopped for a moment, uncertain, and then carried on climbing, grasping at the branches of the bushes as he went, until he disappeared in the trees. I returned home and went to the study. I sat on the sofa where just a little while ago he had told me that we had learned to live together. I understood now what he had meant by this. He had learned to lie to me, and it didn’t bother him any more. My presence in his house had made him worse, and I too had got worse by living with him. I had become dried up and lifeless. I wasn’t suffering, and I didn’t feel any pain. I too was lying to him: I was living by his side as if I loved him, when really I didn’t love him; I felt nothing for him.

  All of a sudden the stairs resounded under his heavy steps. He came into the study, took off his jacket without even looking at me, and put on his old corduroy jacket which he wore around the house. “I want us to leave this place,” I said. “I will ask to be moved to another practice, if you want me to,” he replied. “But it’s you who should want it,” I screamed. I realized then that it wasn’t true to say that I wasn’t suffering; I was suffering unbearably and I was shaking all over. “Once you said to me that I must help you, and that that was why you married me; but why did you marry me?” I sobbed. “Yes, why indeed? What a mistake it has been!” he said, and sat down covering his face with his hands. “I don’t want you to go on seeing her. You mustn’t see her again,” I said bending over him. He pushed me away with an angry gesture, “What do I care about you?” he said. “You’re nothing new for me; there’s nothing about you which interests me. You’re like my mother and my mother’s mother, and all the women who have ever lived in this house. You weren’t beaten as a child. You didn’t have to go hungry. They didn’t make you work in the fields from dawn till dusk under the back-breaking sun. Your presence, yes, it gives me peace and quiet, but that’s all. I don’t know what to do about it, but I can’t love you.” He took his pipe, filled it meticulously, and lit it, suddenly calm again. “Anyway, all this talk is useless; these things don’t matter. Mariuccia is pregnant,” he said.

  A few days later I went to the coast with the children and the wet nurse. We had planned this trip for a long time, as the children had been ill and they both needed the sea air; my husband was going to accompany us and stay there with us for a month. But, without needing to mention it, it was now understood that he would not come. We stayed by the sea for the whole winter. I wrote to my husband once a week and received a punctual response from him each time. Our letters contained just a few short and rather cold sentences.

  We returned at the beginning of spring. My husband was waiting for us at the station. While we travelled through the village in the car I saw Mariuccia pass us with a swollen belly. She walked lightly in spite of the weight of her belly, and the pregnancy had not changed her childish smile. But there was something new in her expression, some sense of submission and shame, and she blushed when she saw me, but not in the same way as she used to blush, with that happy impudence. I thought that soon I would see her carrying a dirty child in her arms, wearing the long clothes which all peasant children have, and that child would be my husband’s son, the brother of Luigi and Giorgio. I thought that it would be unbearable to see that child with the long clothes. I wouldn’t have been able to continue living with my husband or carry on living in the village. I would leave.

  My husband was extremely dispirited. Days and days passed during which he barely uttered a word. He didn’t even enjoy being with the children anymore. I saw he had grown old and his clothes had become scruffy; his cheeks were covered in bristly hair. He came home very late at night and sometimes went straight to bed without eating. Sometimes he didn’t sleep at all and spent the entire night in the study.

  On our return I found the house in complete chaos. Felicetta had grown old; she couldn’t remember anything, and argued with the male servant, accusing him of drinking too much. They would exchange violent insults and often I had to intervene to calm them down.

  For several days I had a lot to do. The house had to be put in order so that it would be ready for the coming summer. The woollen blankets and cloaks needed to be put away in the cupboards, the armchairs covered in white linen, the curtains taken out on the terrace; the vegetable garden needed sowing, and the roses in the garden needed pruning. I remembered the pride and energy I had given to all these tasks in the early days after we had got married. I had imagined that every simple job was of the highest importance. Since then hardly four years had passed, but how I now saw myself changed! Even physically I looked more like an older woman now. I brushed my hair without a parting, with the bun low down on my neck. Looking at myself in the mirror, I sometimes thought that
having my hair combed like that didn’t suit me, and it made me look older. But I didn’t care about looking pretty anymore. I didn’t care about anything.

  One evening I was sitting in the dining room with the wet nurse, who was teaching me a knitting stitch. The children were sleeping and my husband had gone to a village a few miles away where somebody had fallen seriously ill. All of a sudden the bell rang and the servant went barefooted to see who it was. I went downstairs as well: it was a boy of about fourteen, and I recognized him as one of Mariuccia’s brothers. “They sent me to call the doctor; my sister is not well,” he said. “But the doctor isn’t here.” He shrugged his shoulders and went away. After a while, he came back again. “Hasn’t the doctor returned yet?” he asked. “No,” I told him, “but I’ll let him know.” The male servant had already gone to bed, so I told him to get dressed and go and call for the doctor on his bicycle. I went up to my room and started to undress, but I was too anxious and on edge; I felt that I should do something as well. I covered my head with a shawl and went out. I walked through the empty, dark village. In the kitchen Mariuccia’s brothers were dozing with their heads resting on the table. The neighbours were huddled by the door talking among themselves. In the room next door Mariuccia was pacing up and down in the small space between the bed and the door; she was crying and walking, leaning against the wall as she went. She went on walking and screaming, and stared at me but didn’t seem to recognize who I was. Her mother gave me a resentful and hostile look. I sat on the bed. “The doctor won’t be long, will he Signora?” the midwife asked me. “The girl has been in labour for some hours now. She had already lost a lot of blood. The delivery is not going well.” “I’ve sent for him to be called. He should be here soon,” I said.