The Dry Heart

by Natalia Ginzburg

  I didn’t go to San Remo. When Francesca came back I told her I didn’t want to go. She lost her temper, threw the oranges on the floor, and kicked my suitcase over. The colonel’s widow began to knock on the wall with her hairbrush. I told Francesca that San Remo was the last place in the world I wanted to go to, that I hated the violent colours and glaring light of the sea. I said I’d rather give up the ghost in my own room in the boardinghouse than board a train and go away. If you’re in trouble, I told her, it’s better to stew in your own juice in familiar surroundings. A change of air is positively fatal.

  “Look out for yourself, then,” she said. “And next time you’re on your deathbed don’t call me. I’ve better things to do.” She jammed her turban on her head and looked at herself in the mirror while she buttoned up her coat and smoothed it over her hips.

  When Alberto asked me to marry him I said yes. I asked him how he expected to live with me if he was in love with somebody else, and he said that if I loved him very much and was very brave we might make out very well together. Plenty of marriages are like that, he said, because it’s very unusual for both partners to love each other the same way. I wanted to know a lot more about his feelings for me, but I couldn’t talk to him for long about anything important because it bored him to try to get to the bottom of things and turn them over and over the way I did. When I began to speak of the woman he loved and to ask if he still went to see her, his eyes dimmed and his voice became tired and faraway and he said that she was a bad woman, that she had caused him a great deal of pain and he didn’t want to be reminded of her.

  So he said that we’d get married and we went on seeing each other. Now he held my hands and kissed me when we were alone in a café or beside the river, but he never set any definite month or day for our wedding. Finally I told him that we must go together to Maona and he must speak to my father about it. He didn’t seem very enthusiastic, but he came. I wrote to my mother to take the garbage pail out of the kitchen and cook a good dinner for Saturday night because I was bringing someone with me.

  We took the usual bus and Alberto made sketches of all the people on it. When we got to Maona my mother and father were somewhat taken aback, but Alberto reassured them by asking to speak to my father alone. They went into the smaller parlour together and my mother took in a brazier of coals to warm it up. Afterward my father came out looking very happy and we all drank marsala together. But my mother took me aside and half cried. Alberto seemed so old, she said, and then he only came up to my shoulder, whereas in her opinion a man ought to be taller than his wife. She asked me if I was sure I loved him, and when I said yes she took me up to her room to show me the bed and table linen she had set aside for the day of my marriage. Alberto spent the whole day chatting in the kitchen. My mother had taken the garbage pail away and bought two salt cellars so that the salt should not come to the table in a saucer. The vet and the tax collector dropped in after supper, and Father introduced Alberto as my fiancé. Alberto played a game of chess with the tax collector and then we drank some more marsala. Alberto became great friends with the tax collector, and before going back to the city that evening he promised to send him some Danish stamps for his collection.

  Later that night, in my own room, when I was getting undressed and going to bed in the bed I had slept in ever since I was a child, a wave of terror and disgust came over me at the thought that soon Alberto and I would be married and make love together. I reassured myself with the idea that this was only because I had never made love before, but I remembered the slight disgust I felt every time he kissed me and wondered whether or not I really loved him. It’s very difficult, I thought to myself, to know what we’re really like inside. When it had seemed as if he were going out of my life I had felt so sad that I didn’t want to go on living, and yet when he entered my life as he did just now when he talked to my father and mother I was filled with terror and disgust. But I came to the conclusion that I only needed to be a little braver because all girls must feel somewhat the same way. It’s probably a mistake to follow every meandering of our feelings and waste time listening to every echo from within. That, in fact, is no way to live.

  I stayed at Maona all day Sunday while my father went to the city to see Dr. Gaudenzi and find out something more about Alberto. He seemed quite pleased when he came back in the evening and said that he was glad I had found the proper sort of man and one of good social standing. My mother cried and said that marriage was a lottery, but he told her that she was being very silly and that women always have some excuse for shedding a few tears.

  Before we were married, when we went for a walk or sat in a café, Alberto enjoyed my company even if he wasn’t in love with me. He went out of his way to call on me; yes, even if it was raining he never failed to come. He sketched my face in his notebook and listened to what I had to say.

  But after we were married he didn’t sketch my face any more. He drew animals and trains, and when I asked him whether trains meant that he wanted to go away he only laughed and said no. He did go away, though, after we had been married just a month, and didn’t turn up for ten days. One morning I found him packing his bag and he said he was going to the country with Augusto to revisit some of the scenes of their youth. He didn’t ask me if I wanted to go; in fact, such a thought had apparently not even occurred to him. But this didn’t particularly surprise me. Augusto and he had been boys together, and their friendship was so close that they had a way of talking to each other in something like a code which no outsider could decipher. And then he had said once that Augusto didn’t like me. I wasn’t too badly hurt, but I decided it was up to me to make myself agreeable to Augusto so that the next time they went anywhere together they’d ask me to come along. I, too, liked to wander about the countryside, but perhaps he didn’t know it.

  We had a sixteen-year-old girl called Gemma for a maid, the daughter of the shoemaker at Maona. She was very silly and had an unpleasant way of laughing through her nose. She had a notion that there were mice in the house, although I never saw any myself, and she used to sleep with her head under the covers for fear the mice would jump on her bed and eat her up. Finally she came back from Maona one day with a cat and talked to him while she did the cleaning. The cat used to run into the room where the old lady had died, and Gemma was afraid to go after him because she had a peasant belief that the old lady would pop out of a closet and strike her blind. The cat would sit purring on an armchair and Gemma would stand in the doorway trying to lure him out with scraps of cheese. I used to go into this room frequently myself, because I liked to picture the old lady in my imagination and catch the odour of her that lingered in the empty powder box and the tasselled curtains. Her armchair and footstool still stood beside the window, and her black dress and crocheted shawl were hanging in the closet.

  Alberto’s study was locked. Every time he went out of the house he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. When I asked him why, he said because there was a loaded revolver in the drawer of the desk. There was no lock on the drawer, so he locked the door of the room instead. With that he laughed and said he didn’t want to put ideas in my head. For years and years he’d kept that revolver loaded in case he ever wanted to kill somebody, or perhaps commit suicide. Keeping it that way was such a habit that he was almost superstitious about it. He said Augusto kept a loaded revolver in the drawer of his desk too.

  While Alberto was away I often stopped in front of that door. It wasn’t on account of the revolver, I told myself, that he kept it locked. Perhaps there were letters and pictures in his desk. I was sorry that I hadn’t anything to hide from him, that he knew everything there was to know about me. Before I met him my life had been colourless and dull. And after our marriage I had let everything go. I had stopped teaching and saw Francesca very infrequently. Ever since she had offered to take me to San Remo and I had let her down she had shown little desire to see me. I felt that she was making an effort not to say any
thing disagreeable and looked back sentimentally to the time when she used to bully and scold me instead of being distant and polite. The Gaudenzis used to ask Alberto and me to their house in the evening. They were always very nice and said they felt they had a share in our happiness because it was through them that we had met. But Alberto said they were stupid and uninteresting and he was always finding excuses to stay away. What he did like, however, was to have Augusto drop in. They would sit and talk in the study and I went to bed, because Alberto said that it embarrassed Augusto to see me.

  A few days after Alberto had gone I met Augusto in the street. He was walking along with his overcoat collar turned up and his hands in his pockets, and he looked at me hard out of his strong stony face. I began to shake so that I couldn’t say a word, and he nodded to me and walked hurriedly on. So now I knew that Alberto had lied when he told me he was going away with Augusto. I went back to the house and sat down by the stove and the cat crept up into my lap. Then it was that I thought for the first time that our marriage was a big mistake. I sat there stroking the cat and staring through the window at the leaves on the trees, which had turned pink in the glow of the sunset. All of a sudden I realized that I felt like a guest in this house. I never thought of it as mine, or the garden either, and I felt guilty whenever Gemma broke a plate, even if Alberto didn’t say anything. Sometimes I half imagined that the old lady actually would pop out of a closet and chase Gemma and the cat and myself away. But where, then, could I feel at home? In my room at Maona my mother had begun to store potatoes and jars of tomato preserve. For a moment I wished I were back in the boardinghouse, with the landlady’s hysterical daughter and the flowered hangings, boiling an egg over an alcohol flame.

  Finally I had supper and went to bed. But it was cold and I lay there with my teeth chattering instead of going to sleep. Here in this bed we had made love for the first time when we came back from our fortnight’s honeymoon on the lakes. I was disgusted and ashamed every time Alberto made love to me, but I imagined that all women must feel the same way at the start. I liked best to lie quietly and feel him sleeping beside me. I told him the way I felt about making love and asked him if other women felt the same way. He answered that he didn’t know how the devil it was with women. The main thing for a woman was to have a baby, and for a man too. And I ought to cure myself of the habit of thinking about things so hard.

  It had never occurred to me that he could lie. I had helped him pack his bag and made him take a blanket with him because I thought he might be cold in the inns and farmhouses where he said he would stay. He didn’t want to take it, but I insisted. Then he left the house in a great hurry, saying that Augusto was waiting for him at the station.

  I thought of our lovemaking and the tender, feverish words he whispered in my ear. Then he would fall asleep and I could hear his steady breathing beside me. I would lie awake in the darkness and try to remember every word he had said. I didn’t care much for the lovemaking, but I enjoyed lying awake in the darkness and saying his words over and over to myself.

  He hadn’t gone away with Augusto, then. He had gone with that woman. Doubtless this wasn’t the first time he had lied to me; doubtless they had gone on meeting even after he had decided to marry. When he said he was going to the office, perhaps he was going to see her instead. They were making love together and he said the same feverish words to her as he said to me. Then he probably lay quietly at her side and they sighed over the fact that they must live apart. I could see the woman standing motionless in the darkness before me, wearing a shiny silk dress and quantities of jewels. She yawned and pulled down her stockings with an indolent gesture. Then she disappeared, only to turn up again in a tall and masculine guise, striding along with a Pekinese dog in her arms.

  Alberto stayed away ten days. The evening he came back he seemed tired and in a bad humour and he asked for a cup of very hot coffee. Gemma had already gone to bed, so I made the coffee and took it to him in our room. He drank it very slowly, staring at me all the while but making no motion to kiss me.

  “You weren’t with Augusto,” I said. “Who were you with?”

  He put the cup on the table, got up, and scratched his head. Then he took off his jacket and tie and threw them on the chair.

  “I’m sleepy and tired,” he said. “I don’t feel like talking.”

  “Augusto was here all the time,” I said. “I saw him on the street. Who were you with?”

  “Alone,” he answered. “I was alone.” We got into bed and I put out the light. Suddenly Alberto’s voice rose up out of the darkness.

  “It was anything but a pleasant trip,” he said. “I’d have done better to stay at home.” He edged up to me and held me tight. “Don’t ask any questions,” he added. “I feel worn out and terribly sad. Just be silent and very, very still.”

  “Is she as bad as all that?” I asked.

  “She’s unfortunate,” he said, running his hands over my body. “She can’t help being unkind.”

  Hot, silent tears streamed down my cheeks. He touched my face with his hands and held me tighter.

  “A perfectly hellish trip,” he said, and I heard him laughing under his breath. “Don’t ask any questions. Don’t ever ask any questions. You’re all I’ve got. Just remember that.”

  His hand lay on my shoulder, and I put out my hand to touch his thin, hot face. For the first time I wasn’t disgusted when we made love.

  A few months later Alberto went away again. I didn’t ask him any questions. He was packing his bag in the study and I saw him put in a volume of Rilke. He used to read Rilke’s poems out loud to me, too, in the evening. When he went out the door he said:

  “I’ll be back in a fortnight.”

  Then he turned the key in the lock, something he never forgot to do. I smiled at him as he left. The smile was still on my lips when I went back up the stairs and into my room, and I tried to keep it there as long as I could. I sat down in front of the mirror and brushed my hair, still with that silly smile on my face. I was pregnant and my face was pale and heavy. The letters I wrote to my mother had in them the same cowardly and idiotic smile. I hadn’t gone to Maona for some time because I was afraid of the questions my mother might ask me.

  “You’re all I’ve got. Just remember that.” Yes, I had remembered; indeed these words had helped me to go on living from day to day. But little by little they had lost their sweetness, like a prune stone that has been sucked too long. I didn’t ask Alberto anything. When he came back to the house late at night I never asked him what he had been doing. But I had waited for him so long that a burden of silence had accumulated inside me. I looked in vain for something amusing to say to him so that he wouldn’t be too bored with me. I sat knitting under the lamp while he read the paper, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick and scratching his head. Sometimes he sketched in his notebook, but he no longer drew my face. He drew trains and little horses galloping away with their tails streaming in the wind. And now that we had a cat he did cats and mice too. Once I told him that he should put my face on a mouse and his on a cat. He laughed and asked me why. So I asked him if he didn’t think we two fitted into these roles. He laughed again and said there was nothing mouselike about me. Still he did draw a mouse with my face and a cat with his. The mouse was knitting, with a frightened and ashamed expression on its face, and the cat was angrily making a sketch in a notebook.

  The evening after he had gone away for the second time Augusto came to see me and stayed quite late. He said that Alberto had asked him to keep me company sometimes in the evening while he was gone. I was taken aback and couldn’t find anything to say. He sat there with his pipe between his teeth and an ugly grey wool scarf thrown around his neck, staring at me silently out of his square stony face with the black moustache. Finally I asked him if it was true that he didn’t like me. He turned brick-red up to the eyebrows and then we had a good laugh together. That’s how we started bein
g friends. Sometimes when two people don’t know what to say to each other some such trivial remark will turn the trick. Augusto told me that on general principles he didn’t like anybody, that the only person he’d ever really liked was himself. Whenever he was in a bad humour, he said, he looked at himself in the mirror and began to smile and then he felt positively cheerful. I told him that I had tried smiling at myself in the mirror, too, but it didn’t do any good. He asked me if I was in a bad humour very often and I said yes, I was. He stood in front of me with his pipe in his hand, blowing smoke out between his closed lips.

  “That woman, Augusto. . .” I said. “What’s she like?”

  “What woman?” he asked.

  “The woman who goes on trips with Alberto.”

  “Look here,” he said. “It’s no use talking about her. Besides, it doesn’t seem right.”

  “I don’t know anything about her,” I said, “not even her name. And I torment myself trying to imagine her face.”

  “Her name is Giovanna,” he said. “And her face — well, her face isn’t anything special.”