All Our Yesterdays

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Concettina’s husband had been sent to Greece, then from Greece to Jugoslavia, and Signora Maria wrote that she could not come, because Concettina was sad and needed her. Signora Maria also was very sad, because her nephew had been sent to the war as well, and Giustino was working for his final exams and was very nervy and was treating her badly. Cenzo Rena, now that he had a radio, spent the evenings trying to pick up foreign stations, he clung on to those tenuous voices and afterwards told the news to the contadini and the Turk, the Turk was now too much afraid of the police-sergeant and did not dare listen in to foreign stations with the landlord of the inn.

  One evening Anna was in bed and was feeding the baby and suddenly Cenzo Rena came in and told her that Germany was going to war against Russia. There he was, with a flask of wine in his hand, in the evenings when he was listening to the radio he always kept a flask of wine by him. He was happy because Germany at last had a very big, strong country as an enemy. He was very happy and wanted to go and wake up the contadini and tell them, but he was afraid that if he went out he might meet the police-sergeant and be seen by him with an altogether too happy expression on his face. He walked up and down the room with the flask of wine, and said that the war was now becoming rather interesting. He said that Russia was so very strong and that it might even come about that in two or three months’ time it would all be over. At San Costanzo, perhaps, after the war was over and the Fascists had gone up in smoke, they might want to make him mayor, but he would not accept. A contadino friend of his called Giuseppe would do very well as mayor ; to the devil with the police-sergeant, he said, and out he went with the wine-flask to go and wake Giuseppe and tell him to get ready to be mayor and to drink with him to Russia which was now fighting against Germany.

  Cenzo Rena decided next day that they would go to the seaside for a month with the baby, In that way he would not be seen by the police-sergeant with too happy an expression on his face. La Maschiona was very pleased to see them go because now she could work all day long in her field, Cenzo Rena told her the only thing she must do was to look after the dog, she must take it with her when she went to her field because if she left it alone it would become savage and melancholy. They went in the bus to the town and there they got into the train, If they had gone by car they would have needed too much petrol and petrol was now to be found only on the black market and was extremely expensive. Between the bus and the train Cenzo Rena rushed off to the town market to buy bathing costumes, he seized two costumes at random off the counter from amongst corsets and garters and ran off with them, offending the woman who wanted to wrap them up in a parcel for him. This woman came from Masuri and he knew her, and afterwards he wrote her a post-card to explain that his train was just leaving and that was why he had offended her.

  The costumes were of poor quality and when they were wet they hung down in all directions. While Anna went to bathe Cenzo Rena stayed with the baby in the shade in the garden of the hotel, even there there were mosquitoes and he drove them off with a bough. Anna came back with her bathing-costume all slack and shapeless and he laughed as he looked at her, it was certainly the ugliest costume on the whole of the beach. Anna combed her hair and squeezed the water out of it and out of the edges of her costume. He told her that she had not had quite so much of an insect face recently, perhaps it was since the baby had been born, they looked together at the baby and he said to her that this was the baby she had once wanted to get rid of. He said he hardly ever remembered that this baby was not his own daughter, in any case why remember it, it was he who chased away the mosquitoes and even sometimes walked the baby up and down when she cried, and in the meantime no one knew what on earth the baby’s real father was doing, perhaps he was sitting for his exams and being ploughed once again. They were there at the seaside when they had a letter from Giustino, he had sat for his exams and had passed and now he was asking to go to the war. Anna cried all day, she was sure Giustino would be killed in the war, she still seemed to see him going off in the bus with that reserved, gloomy expression that had come to him in the last few months, ever since he had been living alone with Signora Maria. But Cenzo Rena told her that Giustino would never be in time to go, the war would last only another month or two. Cenzo Rena rowed and swam and had scorched the whole of his back, at night he had to sleep on his stomach. He was still very happy about Russia but gradually he began to be a little less happy, the Germans were taking pieces of Russia. There at the seaside there was no means of listening to the foreign broadcasts and you had to be content with the Italian communique put up in the hall of the hotel, Cenzo Rena came to hate that hall because he always heard bad news there.

  All of a sudden they both realized that they were homesick for San Costanzo, Cenzo Rena was certain that the baby too, when she cried, cried because she wanted them to take her back home. Cenzo Rena said he was homesick for the contadini and even for a sight of the police-sergeant’s cloak, and he said that perhaps he had gradually become accustomed to being a kind of person whom everybody knew well, here at the seaside no one knew him and he did not like it that no one should know him. Once upon a time, when he was on his travels, he had been happy to be knocking about all alone in hotels and trains and towns, without even a dog knowing who he was, but now perhaps he was beginning to grow old, and all he wanted was his contadini and the police-sergeant’s cloak, he wanted to have the same things always in front of his eyes. And Anna wanted to be at home, with La Maschiona spirting water from a wine-flask on to the floor in the morning. At the seaside she had realized all at once that that house had become her home, that house with the pine wood at the back and a tumbled mass of rocks down below. At the seaside there were ladies on the beach in black spectacles who asked her questions, and were astonished that she, so young, should already have a baby, and were astonished that Cenzo Rena, so old, should be her husband, they did not exactly say “so old” but they were astonished and they pulled up their black spectacles so as to have a good look, and all of a sudden Anna was ashamed of having an old husband, and was also ashamed of their bathing-costumes that had been bought in the market. But she told Cenzo Rena that she was ashamed and he told her she was an idiot, at San Costanzo the contadini did not like her and were astonished by her and he was not ashamed.

  They went back to San Costanzo and Cenzo Rena immediately started quarrelling with La Maschiona because the dog had become melancholy and savage just as he had thought, of course La Maschiona had left it alone tied up in front of the house, she had gone off to work in her field and had neglected the dog. Cenzo Rena lay on the bed with the dog on top of him making him all dirty with earth, and he talked to the dog and said bad things to it about La Maschiona for having left it alone all the time, he asked it if it was not true that she left it alone all the time and had paid no attention to anything except her own field. Then La Maschiona said that at the seaside they had neglected the baby, they had let her be bitten by mosquitoes and had allowed her to grow even thinner, a nephew of hers born a whole month later was three times as fat. Cenzo Rena shouted at her not to talk about her nephews because they had dysentery, as he got out of the bus he had met the doctor and had heard from him that the village was full of dysentery. La Maschiona said yes, her nephews too had a touch of dysentery but it was nothing much, and Cenzo Rena said that of course she bought them those pieces of almond paste at the shop, and if he ever saw her give a piece of almond paste to his own baby he would turn her out of the house for good and all. After being one hour at San Costanzo Cenzo Rena was bored to death with La Maschiona and with everything else, but he remembered that at the seaside he had been bored with the seaside and he thought it must be the fault of the war that he was bored and did not feel at ease anywhere. The very next day he started going round all the houses with the gloomy doctor, to see the babies with dysentery, and he quarrelled with the women and with the doctor as well because he told him he was no use as a doctor with that disgusted, gloomy appearance.

  Anna went
up through the pine wood with the baby. The pine wood was dark and cool, one of the few dark, cool spots in that country of sun and dust, and Anna sat down and put the baby on a cushion with her feet wrapped up in a blanket, the baby threw off the blanket and stuck her red, thin feet up in the air, Anna covered the thin feet again and again the baby stuck them up in the air, then she sucked one of her hands with a prolonged murmuring sound, for some time she made this prolonged murmuring sound and sucked at her hand with loud clucking noises, and Anna sat looking at her and found nothing to say to her, because she did not know how to chatter to small babies in the way that Signora Maria chattered to them. As soon as the baby had gone to sleep she started trying to disentangle her endless thoughts, she collected all the scattered threads of her own life and wove them together, and she was able to stay for hours in the pine wood beside the baby without being bored, weaving together and then separating her endless thoughts, beside the baby who for a long time had been merely a piece of darkness within her, and then suddenly had become a real baby in the hands of La Maschiona, with feet that were thin and red and long, tender, pale hair, and the name of Cenzo Rena’s first love, she sought Giuma’s face in the sleeping face of the baby but there was no sign of any other face in that naked sleeping face, with its little lips pursed and pale and its short breathing. Cenzo Rena came and brought the post with him, Giustino had left for Russia, Signora Maria had gone to stay with Concettina and had let the house to some relations of Emilio’s, Emilio too had been sent to Russia, Signora Maria could not come to San Costanzo because she had swollen ankles and would never be able to manage those rocks, she was sorry not to be able to come and see the baby, she chattered about Concettina’s baby and about Anna’s baby, she filled pages and pages with her chatter. She was well off with the Sbrancagnas and they were very kind but even with all the maids that there were in the house she still had a lot of work to do, perhaps she had come by her swollen ankles by standing too long at her ironing. There was also a letter from Emanuele in which he said that Giuma had scraped through his exam this time but had got it into his head to study literature and philosophy, Mammina on the other hand wanted him to study commercial sciences, otherwise he would not be able to work at the soap factory. Giuma was now saying that he did not feel himself to be cut out for the soap factory. Emanuele wrote that he felt even more lonely without Giustino, he saw Concettina every now and then and certainly Concettina had become rather tire-some, she always had the baby with her and one could never manage to have a sensible conversation with her, absorbed as she always was in combing the baby’s hair and cleaning his hands with a handkerchief and calling him if he moved even one step away from her, but she was still Concettina and he was very pleased when he met her with the baby on the road beside the river, they walked along together for a moment or sat down in a café and recollected the same things. But Concettina became very ill-humoured if Danilo’s wife went past and he, Emanuele, called to her and greeted her, Concettina said it was the fault of that woman Marisa that Giustino had been so determined to go away, she had played the coquette with Giustino who was only a boy until she had made him fall in love with her, and now Giustino was where he was, when he might have been still at home studying, instead of which he had gone off with a tragic air, and she herself had been left with Signora Maria to look after, and it was very boring to have to spend the whole day with her. Then Emanuele said that Marisa had not played the coquette at all, in any case she had other things to think about than playing the coquette, with a sick husband to whom she had to send money and with all the extra hours she was working at the foundry, and he told her that she, Concettina, ought to have respect for a woman who worked, she who spent her days without doing anything, except petting and spoiling her baby. Concettina was deeply offended, her baby was not in the least spoilt, and of course everyone nowadays ought to have respect for all the people at the foundry. But then they made it up and he went back home and felt sad when he looked out of the window at seeing the Sbrancagnas’ relations in the house opposite, and no more of Signora Maria’s black underclothes hung up on the line, Mammina on the other hand was very pleased at not seeing the underclothes any more and she was also pleased because the Sbrancagnas’ relations did not manure the rose-trees with dung as Signora Maria did. Anna’s heart beat fast as she waited for the post, but afterwards, as soon as she had read the letters, she always felt slightly mortified, as it were, because of the things that were going on without her.

  5

  Autumn went by, with the tomatoes laid out in front of the houses to dry, for the making of tomato paste, and then with the maize and the beans laid out to dry, and with people coming down from the pine wood with sacks of pine-cones; there were even some who broke off entire branches from the pine-trees and the forest guard would arrive with his gun and there would be a great sound of running down through the pine wood and the forest guard shouting and firing into the air. The pine wood was also full of a certain kind of white mushrooms shaped like little ears, they were tough to cook and they tasted like pith, but the whole village feasted off them. There were also some real mushrooms but not very many, all those that there were were found by a little old man who lived down at the old station. He was a little old man with a dirty white jacket and white trousers turned up to the knees, as a young man he had been a servant in the house of a naval officer, and he had had this white uniform given to him as a present. He used to come down from the pine wood in the evening, looking as if he were in his drawers, and carrying, tied to a stick, a little bundle of real mushrooms, and Cenzo Rena, if he happened to be at the door of his house, would buy the whole bundle of mushrooms, and would be very pleased because he knew he was doing something to annoy the Marchesa, who was waiting at her window for the mushrooms, and when the little old man passed under the Marchesa’s window without any mushrooms she would call him into the hall and make a furious scene. The old man would swear he had not found any mushrooms, and the Marchesa would swear that she had just seen him selling his mushrooms to Cenzo Rena, and she would pull out a pair of her coachman’s cast-off shoes and swear to the little old man that she would make him a present of them if he brought her mushrooms every evening. But the little old man did not believe that she would ever make him a present of the shoes, the Marchesa was miserly and never gave away even so much as a pin.

  Autumn went by and winter began and by now Anna knew well all the people in the village, from the little old man in white to the man with the corkscrew leg who came past with his cart full of pots and pans, from La Maschiona’s seducer to the farrier who burnt the hooves of the mules, in front of his door there were always mules’ hairs scattered about and a smell of scorched skin. La Maschiona’s seducer’s family were still waiting for news of the son who was at the war and had been posted missing, a man from the village who had come back from Greece told of how he had left him at a cross-roads and after that had heard nothing more of him. His mother kept thinking about that cross-roads, she had been told that in Greece there were so many cross-roads and it was easy to get lost, she came to Cenzo Rena to ask if this was true, and she had letters written through the Red Cross. La Maschiona hid herself when she came because she did not wish to meet the wife of her seducer, and she told Anna about this young man who was missing at the cross-roads, a fine young man he was, very tall and with black moustaches like his father. But still, it was better to be missing in Greece than to be missing in Russia, said La Maschiona, because in Russia it was so cold that the birds fell down dead out of the sky, and Russia was very big and just one great expanse of snow, and anyone who got lost in that snow never found the road to come back home again. News arrived con-stantly, sometimes at Masuri and sometimes at San Costanzo, of men who had been killed in Russia or wounded or missing, all of a sudden as you walked through the lanes you would hear shrill cries, an official announcement had been made that someone had been killed. La Maschiona wanted to put Mussolini in a cage and send him round very slowly thro
ugh the lanes of all the villages, so that everyone could do whatever they liked to him.

  In the winter Giustino had a month’s leave because he had been wounded in the shoulder. The wound was not a serious one and he came to San Costanzo one day towards Christmas. Men belonging to San Costanzo had also come home on leave and they stood about in the village square and told people about Russia, so many men had had their feet frostbitten because of the boots that the Government provided, the Germans and the Russians did not get frostbitten feet because they had boots of a different kind. No one knew very much about who was winning or losing, it was all a matter of going forwards and then back again. They had been afraid of the Russians but also of the Germans, they were allies but all the same they made you afraid of them, they were completely armed from head to foot and well protected from the cold. Giustino was seen getting out of the bus one day, he had given them no notice that he was coming. He was strange in his soldier’s uniform and he had allowed his beard to grow, and it grew all curly and chestnut-coloured, just a little lighter than his hair. There he sat in the dining-room and he supported his shoulder with one hand because it still hurt him a little. There he sat with a rather crooked smile on his face which looked just like Ippolito’s smile, the curly beard making his face look thinner and older, with its eyes that had seen the war.