The Dry Heart

by Natalia Ginzburg

  I shut my eyes, but there was one sight I couldn’t get away from. It was the expression in the baby’s face when I was rocking her in my arms. Her eyes were bitter and indifferent, indifferent even to Le bon roi Dagobert. I could see all her clothes and toys: the camel, the ball, the squeaking rubber cat, the leggings, the galoshes, and the apron with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on it. I remembered the things she ate and the words she knew how to say. Then I fell asleep and dreamed I was walking along a road and bumped up against a stone wall, which made me wake up screaming.

  I called Francesca, but she wasn’t in the room. There was only Augusto, standing by the window with his head against the glass. He said Francesca had gone in to the baby and asked me if there was anything I wanted. I asked him to sit down beside me, and he sat there, holding my hand and stroking my hair. Then I began to cry. I cried all night long, with my face buried in the pillow. I hung on to his hand and said things that made no sense. As long as I cried or talked I could forget about the camel and the ball. Alberto arrived at five o’clock in the morning. He dropped his bag and ran sobbing to kneel down beside me, and his head of curly grey hair on my shoulder seemed to be the only thing in the world I needed.

  I told Alberto that I never wanted to see the camel or the ball again, and Francesca and he made a bundle of all the baby’s things and gave them away. Francesca left San Remo several days before us and removed from the house the baby’s carriage, crib, and all the rest of her belongings. At the same time she told Gemma to go and pay a visit to her family at Maona. Gemma left in tears, taking the cat with her. I couldn’t bear to see her because I should have been reminded of the stye in her eye when she bent over me the day the baby was born. Alberto wrote to my mother and father that I didn’t want to see them but preferred to be alone with him for a while. I didn’t want anyone else, and they must be patient and let me fill my own needs as I thought best. Everyone reacts to sorrow in his own particular way, he told them, and throws up the best defences he can. And in such cases the family and friends must hold their peace and stand by quietly until it is over.

  We went back to the city, and for a while I didn’t leave the house because I didn’t want to see any children. At first a woman came to do the cleaning, but it was so hard for me to talk to her that finally I told her not to come and did the work myself. Still I didn’t have very much to do. I stayed in bed late in the morning, watching my arms lie empty and free on the bedcover. Then I slowly got dressed and let the empty hours of the day drag by. I tried not to think of the song about Le bon roi Dagobert, but it rang continually in my ears. And I still saw in front of me the doctor’s mouth, like that of an animal drinking, the long halls and red-carpeted stairways of the Hotel Bellevue and the wicker chairs and palm trees on the terrace below.

  Alberto stayed at home a great deal. He was extremely kind, and I was amazed by his efforts to help me. We never mentioned the baby, and I noticed that he had taken away the oatmeal and the rest of her food that Francesca had forgotten. He read Rilke’s poems out loud and also some of the notes he had written on the margins of various books. He said that some day or other he wanted to put all these notes together in a volume which he would call Variations on a Minor Scale. I think he was slightly envious of Augusto for the books he had published. Anyhow, he said I was to help put the notes in order, and sometimes he had me work over them on the typewriter until late at night. I didn’t type fast enough to keep up with his dictation, but he never lost his temper. He even told me that I should make comments on anything that didn’t seem clear to me.

  One day I asked him if he was going away and he said no. Sooner or later, he said, he’d empty the zinc case where he’d begun to pack his books. Meanwhile it sat there in his study, half filled with his things. When he wanted one particular book he had quite a time digging it out, but still he didn’t get around to putting everything back on the shelves. We spent most of the time in the study, and he never said a word about wanting to go out. At first we didn’t talk about the baby, but later we did, and he said perhaps it was good for me to unburden myself to him. He said that we’d have another child and that even if now this prospect gave me no pleasure, I would love the new one just as well, and all my peace of mind would come back to me when I saw it lying at my side. We made love together and gradually I began to imagine the time when I would have another baby. I thought of how I would nurse it and rock it, and of all my thoughts this was the only one from which I got any satisfaction.

  Then I began to fall in love again with Alberto, and the realization of it frightened me. I trembled now at the idea of his going away, and the sight of the zinc case became painful. When I typed to his dictation I was afraid of going too slowly, and when he looked at me I imagined that he didn’t like my face. I reflected how easy everything was for other women — Francesca and Giovanna, for instance, who never seemed to have known even the shadow of my great fear. How easy life is, I thought, for women who are not afraid of a man. I stared for a long time at my face in the mirror. It had never been very pretty, and now it seemed to me that every trace of youth and freshness was gone.

  Alberto and I were always at home, and I understood now how a man and woman live together. He never went out, and I saw him from one end of the day to the other. I saw him get up in the morning and drink the cup of coffee I had made for him; I saw him bend over and dig into the zinc case and make notes on the margins of his books. We made love on his couch in the study and lay awake in the darkness while I felt him breathing calmly beside me. Before going to sleep he always told me to wake him up if I felt sad. I didn’t dare actually wake him, but the thought that I could if I wanted to was a great consolation. He was so very kind that now I knew what a man’s tenderness could be. It was my own fault, I realized, if even now I wasn’t altogether happy with him. I was always worried about my face and body, and when we made love I was afraid he might be bored. Every time I had something to say to him I thought it over to make sure it wasn’t boring. When he read me the notes he wanted to make into a book occasional comments came into my mind. But when one day I finally said something he seemed displeased and explained to me at length why I was wrong. I could have bitten off my tongue for having spoken. I remembered the time before we were married when we sat endlessly in cafés and I babbled on without stopping. Then it was easy enough for me to talk. I said whatever came into my head and moved before him with all the confidence of youth. Now that I had had the baby and the baby was dead I couldn’t bear the idea of his leaving me.

  “Why don’t you go away?” I said. “I know it’s just that you’re sorry for me. Why don’t you go?”

  “I don’t like the idea of your being here alone,” he replied.

  “I never expected you to be so kind,” I went on. “I didn’t dream you’d try to help me as much as you’ve done. I didn’t think you cared much for the baby or for me either. I thought you cared only for Giovanna.”

  He chuckled quietly, as if to himself. “Sometimes I think I don’t care for anyone,” he said.

  “Not even for Giovanna?”

  “No, not even for Giovanna,” he said. “She and her husband have gone to their country house near the lakes, and I don’t know when she’ll be back. When I don’t see her I hardly ever think of her at all. Queer, isn’t it?”

  We were silent for a few minutes. He lay at my side breathing quietly, toying with my hand on the bedcover. He opened my fingers and closed them suddenly; he tickled my palm, then put my hand down and drew away.

  “It’s difficult to know what we have inside of us. We’re here today and gone today. I’ve never understood myself properly. I was very fond of my mother, for instance, and terribly sad to see her go. Then one morning I walked out of the house with a cigarette in my mouth, and just as I was striking a match to light it I had a sudden feeling of relief. I was almost glad that she was dead, that I would never have to play draughts with her again or hear her
irritated tone of voice when I put too much sugar in her coffee. That’s how it is that I don’t really know how much I care for Giovanna. I haven’t seen her for several months now, and I can’t say I’ve thought very much about her. I’m lazy, when you come down to it, and I don’t want to suffer.”

  “And when she comes back,” I said, “do you think you’ll want to go away?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I might, at that.”

  As I lay awake I remembered that he had told me to call him whenever I felt too sad. But I didn’t have the nerve to do it, and besides I was beginning to realize that there was no use counting on him for anything. It was absurd to expect anything from a man like Alberto. Even Giovanna couldn’t really count on him. I looked at his sleeping face, with the immobile lips that gave no answer. Would he stay or go? Did he really want to have another child? I lay there with my eyes wide open and said to myself: “I’ll never know what he really wants. I’ll never know.”

  It was then that I remembered the revolver. I began to think about it in somewhat the same way as I had thought of nursing another baby. The idea of it calmed me and I thought of it while I was making the bed or peeling potatoes or ironing Alberto’s shirts or going up and down the stairs. If I were to have another baby I’d be in constant fear that it might take ill and die. I was tired of being afraid, and now that I understood him there didn’t seem to be much point to bearing a child for Alberto.

  Francesca came occasionally to see me, and she told me that she had a new lover. He was a man she had met with the countess at San Remo, and she had given up painting in order to spend all of her time with him. She said she had a weakness for him, but nothing too serious, and that he was somewhat of a gangster, so that I shouldn’t be surprised if I read in the paper one day that he had strangled her in her sleep. He was strictly no good, she said, and every time he left her she went to make sure he hadn’t broken into her jewellery. But he was a handsome devil, and she liked to be seen with him, because women all turned their heads to stare, and for quite some time he had been a fancy man to the countess. She said that the countess was an old bitch and a dreadful miser because she wouldn’t buy the picture she had painted of her. When the countess had come back from San Remo they had had a terrible row over Francesca’s new lover. Francesca didn’t want to hear any more of Augusto, and Augusto didn’t want to hear of her either. But Augusto came to see us very seldom because he was working hard to finish his book on the origins of Christianity.

  Alberto read his notes to him and tried to interest him in his writing, but Augusto hardly paid any attention. He seemed to prefer being with me and often he hung about watching me iron shirts. I thought of the windy day when we had gone for a walk together and I had imagined making love with him. When I looked at his face I felt that he was a little like me, with his eyes continually staring into a well of darkness within him. For this reason I thought that we might be happy as lovers and that he might understand and help me. But then I told myself that it was too late, too late to start something new like falling in love or having another baby. It was too hard work, and I was tired. Looking at Augusto, I remembered the night at San Remo when the baby was taken ill and the night after, when I had lain clutching his hand. There are other things in life, I told myself, than making love or having children. There are a thousand things to do, and one of them is writing a book on the origins of Christianity. My own life seemed to me meagre and limited, but it was too late to change it, and back of all my thoughts now there was always the image of the revolver.

  Alberto had begun to go out again. He said that he was going to the office, but I was sure that Giovanna must be back. He said that she wasn’t, but I didn’t believe him. Then one day Giovanna came to see me. It was in the morning, and Alberto had gone out, leaving me to type his notes.

  This time Giovanna was dressed in grey with a round, straw hat and a sort of cape over her shoulders. Her hat and dress were new, but she was wearing the same worn gloves as she had worn before. She sat down and started immediately to speak of the baby. She said that she had written me a letter and then torn it up because it seemed silly to send it. I had been very much in her thoughts, she said, but she hesitated a long time before coming to see me, until finally she had put on her hat and come. I looked at her hat, and it didn’t seem to me like a hat that had been put on in a hurry. It was a stiff little hat, and I wondered if it didn’t press against her forehead. She spoke quietly and simply, as if she were trying not to give me pain. But I didn’t want to talk to her about the baby.

  “It’s very odd,” she said, “but I dreamed about your baby for two or three nights in succession just before she died. I dreamed that we were in this drawing room, and Alberto’s mother was here, too, lying on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. She said that she felt cold and I threw my fur over her and she thanked me for it. The baby was sitting on a little stool, and she was afraid the baby might get a chill and asked me to shut the window. I had bought the baby a doll and I wanted to take it out of the package, but I couldn’t seem to untie the string.”

  “The baby didn’t play with dolls,” I said. “She played with a ball and a camel.”

  “I thought the dream was a strange one,” she went on. “I woke up in a state of anxiety, which I couldn’t explain. Then a few days later I got a letter from Alberto about the baby.”

  I looked at her hard and tried to make out whether she had really had any such dream. I had a strong suspicion that she was making the whole thing up.

  “He wrote only a very few words,” she said. “We had guests that day and I had to talk to them and entertain them. And all the time I was in distress. Strange to say, I wasn’t thinking of Alberto as much as I was of you.”

  She sat in an armchair with her slender legs crossed, her hands folded underneath her cape, and her hat perched stiffly on her head.

  “That hat must hurt you,” I said.

  “Yes, it does,” she answered, pulling it off and revealing a red mark on her forehead.

  I looked at her hard. She had a kind and peaceful expression on her face, and her body was peaceful and cool in her new spring dress. I imagined her picking it out of a fashion journal and ordering a dressmaker to make it. I thought of the succession of peaceful days that made up her existence and of her body that knew neither uncertainty nor fear.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t exactly hate you. But I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t see any point to our being in the same room. I think it’s stupid and ridiculous. Because we’ll never speak of really important things or be honest with one another. I don’t really believe you had that dream, you know. I believe you made it up on your way here.”

  “No,” she said, and began to laugh. “I can’t make things up. Hasn’t Alberto told you that I have no imagination?”

  “No. We don’t talk much about you. Once when we did talk about you he said that he didn’t think of you often when you were away. That should have made me feel better, but it only made me feel worse. It means that he doesn’t love anyone, not even you. Nothing is sacred to him. Once upon a time I was jealous and hated you, but now all that’s gone. Don’t think for a minute that he’s unhappy without you. He refuses to be unhappy. He just lights a cigarette and walks away.”

  “I know,” she said. “You can’t tell me anything about him that I don’t know. You forget how long I’ve known him. Time has gone by and now we’re no longer young. We’ve grown old together, he in his house and I in mine, but together just the same. We’ve said good-bye over and over, but we’ve always come together again. He didn’t make the first move, that’s true. I did. But he was always very glad. We get on well together. You can’t understand him because you started off on the wrong foot.”

  “Please go away,” I said. “If you stay any longer I shall begin to hate you.”

  “Hate me, if you like,
” she said. “You’re quite within your rights. Perhaps I hate you too. But I’m sorry your baby died. I have a child myself and I feel sorry for any woman who loses one. After I had read Alberto’s letter I couldn’t think of anything else all day. I was stunned.”

  “I don’t want Alberto to write you,” I said. “I don’t want you to meet and take walks and trips together and talk about the baby and me. After all, he’s my husband. Perhaps I shouldn’t have married him in the first place, but I did, and we had a child and lost her. This can’t be wiped out just because you two enjoy making love together.”

  “Perhaps what’s passed between Alberto and me can’t be wiped out either,” she murmured as if to herself. She put on her hat, frowning, and slowly pulled on her gloves, looking at every finger.

  “I don’t know what there’s been between you two,” I said. “Important things, no doubt, but not as important as the birth and death of a baby. Little trips you’ve had, haven’t you? And little walks together. But go away now, will you? I’m tired of seeing you there in front of me. I’m tired of your dress and hat. I’m saying things that don’t make sense. If you stay here any longer I may want to kill you.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said with a shrill, youthful laugh. “You wouldn’t do a thing like that. You look like too much of a simple country girl. And I’m not the least bit afraid of you.”

  “So much the better,” I said, “but go away.”

  “Very well, I’m going,” she said. “But I shall remember this day. It’s a landmark, somehow. I don’t know exactly why. But I have a feeling that we’ve said a lot of honest and important things to each other. I’ll come to see you again, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’d rather not, thank you just the same,” I said.

  “Well, you say what you mean, anyhow, don’t you?” she said. “Don’t hate me too much.” And she went away.